Right now, there is someone downloading some type of content that someone else worked very hard to create.   The industry and the world have come to know this as piracy.  Since the proliferation of the personal computer, piracy has evolved and become easier to do and harder to stop.  This is the unfortunate nature of the technology and history has shown that the only way reduce piracy it is to provide a solutions that is easier for the masses to use.  Together Hulu and Boxee have done just that.

One of the biggest hurdles for the current generation digital media customers is the availability of space and ease in accessibility.  For digital media customers, the current options of storing large files, such as TV shows and movies, have been limited by the amount of physical media storage a person was willing to purchase; the higher quality the content, the more space required.  Given enough TV shows and movies, digital media customers would either need to upgrade their hardware, or stop purchasing content and neither solution is ideal; however, Hulu solved that problem by keeping high quality copies of content in one place, allowing all customers to easy access it, and incorporating revenue generating advertisements.  This method of content distribution has proven to be safe for the content providers material and easy for customers to access as shown by Hulu's success.

Boxee has assisted users and content providers by taking the next logical step by putting the content partners material where the customers want it and the content partners need it: the television.

Boxee is designed to be a content aggregation service that provides an intuitive and flexible interface to customers personal digital media and content provided by anyone on the Internet.  With access to many high quality content streams such as Hulu, Comedy Central, ABC, CBS, and many others Boxee provides a service like no other available to consumers and solved the issue of getting the content partners media back into the hands of its customers.  Boxee has even partnered with other companies like Netflix to deliver high quality streaming content at the users command.

Boxee integrated Hulu’s services into it’s design.  It was a main selling point for us and a lot of people that we know.  Boxee wanted to be in a set top box like the Apple TV or a Mac Mini and become the new center of the living room.  People could now watch quality content, whenever they wanted, on their TV.

We understand why this frightens you.  You allowed content to stream because it would hurt you if it didn’t, but you didn’t expect it to grow like it did.  But it did. It grew all the way back onto the TV where you put it in the first place, but you weren’t making as much money off of it.

Boxee is the all in one solution that we were looking for.  We feel at this time, we need to clearly define who we are and what we do.  We are your potential customers.  That should be first and foremost.  We are also pirates out of necessity.  We don’t pirate because it feels good, we do it because we were unable to follow your schedule.  In other words, we are an untapped revenue stream, and we're ready to convert.

This brings us back to your decision to block Hulu content on boxee.  We’re not sure that we fully understand the logic behind this, because the content is still available to us through the hulu.com website.  To put it simply, we had something that made our lives more convenient and put more money in your pocket.  Now that you have taken that away, we have found easier alternatives that allow us to access your content on a TV, but do not provide you with a paycheck. Boxee + Hulu benefits everyone.

Please reconsider.

Eric

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