Forgive me. Your complaint is that you can't watch it on the device you want at exactly the time you want for free. (Though if it's on Neflix streaming, one would think you could watch it via Roku.)
Anyway, I think we agree that Fox is making a business decision, just like you make a business decision to provide some of your content for free on the web and some for pay at your conferences.
So your quibble is with the choice of devices. But your post (and reaction above) counts up the amount you are paying, and implies that Fox is being atypically greedy (or myopic) for not making it available on the specific device you want at no additional charge.
My complaint is that you're couching an economic argument--you want to pay +$0, Fox wants $0.99--in moral terms, which smacks of the entitlement to which I object.
I'm not saying Fox is being greedy. I didn't argue that they shouldn't charge me anything. I didn't argue that I should get anything for free.
I argued that I'm already paying them at least once with cold hard cash for that content, twice if you want to count Hulu Plus, where until last year, they also distributed the content. Three times, if you want to count my Netflix subscription.
Despite all of this, I cannot get last week's episode from them through any device I use where I actually have paid them cash.
But if I want to open my laptop, they'll give me or anyone who has paid nothing the episode for free -- and if I want to hook my laptop up to my TV, then it's on my TV.
That's the argument: despite paying them, I'm getting less than if I paid them nothing at all. That's a broken business model, to me.
They "gain" only two things by doing this. One, it's less convenient to stream from my laptop to my TV, so potentially I will prefer to buy some type of cable or satellite TV subscription. But I already have that.
Two, they potentially prevent me from abandoning cable or satellite TV -- cutting the cord -- and going with all web streaming. But that's a false assumption. If anything, they're encouraging me to cut the cord more. That's because with Netflix and their own web site, I'm getting better service than if I didn't have DirecTV at all.
OP wants to pay. OP is, in fact, paying. OP could easily get the content for free, because that's how it's delivered by Fox. Except Fox, for some reason, won't provide the free content in a form usable to the OP on the device where OP is already paying for the content.
Anyway, I think we agree that Fox is making a business decision, just like you make a business decision to provide some of your content for free on the web and some for pay at your conferences.
So your quibble is with the choice of devices. But your post (and reaction above) counts up the amount you are paying, and implies that Fox is being atypically greedy (or myopic) for not making it available on the specific device you want at no additional charge.
My complaint is that you're couching an economic argument--you want to pay +$0, Fox wants $0.99--in moral terms, which smacks of the entitlement to which I object.