Apparently, ABC television network’s decision to sell content online had nothing to do with money. Perish the thought! It was to show those dastardly pirates what’s what.Angering affiliates, the move, “was aimed at preventing piracy from eroding the broadcasting business, a senior network executive said on Tuesday,” states Reuters, going on:

“ABC, owned by Walt Disney Co., sells some of its shows on iTunes and will soon experiment with offering popular shows such as ‘Desperate Housewives’ and ‘Lost’ free on the Internet, supported by advertising. Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney admitted the iTunes move ‘did not endear us” to local station affiliates but said thousands of illegal copies of hit shows were being downloaded hours after broadcast in a rapidly growing trend.
“It’s actually becoming common for programming in the U.S. to be captured real time from the East Coast broadcast and put online for anyone in the world to see before the same show airs on the West Coast,” she told the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual convention in Las Vegas, says the story.
Local affiliates are afraid they’ll be, “cut out of the revenue picture by the television networks when popular shows are made available for downloading or are streamed directly to consumers over the Internet,” says the story.