After years of clinging to traditional business models, media companies have finally started embracing ad-supported Internet distribution in a big way. Yesterday's announcement that several major music labels made nice with YouTube may turn out to be a watershed moment for the industry. Instead of attempting to sue the company out of existence, everyone got together and forged a mutually beneficial deal that's pretty good for consumers, too.

Now comes news from Disney-ABC that content producers have had a revelation: instead of simply trying to squash piracy, it might be more productive to understand and compete with it. That's the message brought by Anne Sweeney, the president of Disney-ABC Television Group and one of the "50 Most Powerful Women in Business," according to Fortune.

"So we understand piracy now as a business model," said Sweeney in a recent analyst call. "It exists to serve a need in the marketplace specifically for consumers who want TV content on demand and it competes for consumers the same way we do, through high-quality, price and availability and we don't like the model. But we realize it's effective enough to make piracy a key competitor going forward. And we've created a strategy to address this threat with attractive, easy to use ways to for viewers to get the content they want from us legally; in other words, keeping honest people honest."

When you start thinking this way, the goal becomes offering a more compelling product than file-swapping networks can provide, rather that attempting (for instance) to sue the users who like your content. For ABC, this has meant launching their own streaming media player and providing shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives online only minutes after they air.