We've repeatedly noted that when bloggers, industry analysts and the companies they analyze discuss competing for your broadband dollar, there's a tendency to treat piracy like the invisible pink elephant in the room. When a new broadband content service is released, the majority ask if it can compete with iTunes. Few, if any, ask if it can compete with the ease and speed of say - a Bit Torrent file downloaded from the Pirate Bay.

It's as if being illegal (without traditional revenue streams) means piracy isn't a legitimate competitive threat worthy of discussion. No serious discussion means no course correction. The result has been a swath of services with limited libraries, on limited platforms, bloated with DRM, that frequently just do not work.

The reality is that if the film and music industry wants to truly beat piracy, they can't do so with lawyers alone. They need to offer fast, cheap, and simple alternatives to broadband users. This has been a hard lesson for entertainment moguls to learn; instead focusing on the impossible task of developing fool-proof DRM with one hand, while engaging in a scorched earth legal campaign with the other.

That's why it's interesting to see Disney's co-chair Anne Sweeney break from convention and actually admit piracy is a competitive threat. Not only that, but she seems aware of the broader sea change, noting that the "digital revolution has unleashed a consumer coup".

"We understand now that piracy is a business model," says Sweeney during the Keynote address at Mipcom. "It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price and availability. We we don’t like the model but we realize it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward."

Hey, you've got to start somewhere.