Impoverished Streaming Services Are Driving Viewers Back to Piracy (theguardian.com) 135
Rising subscription costs, shrinking content libraries, and regional restrictions are pushing viewers back toward piracy. Once seen as nearly dead, piracy has resurged through illicit streaming platforms as the fractured, ad-laden streaming market struggles to deliver convenience and value. The Guardian reports: According to London-based piracy monitoring and content-protection firm MUSO, unlicensed streaming is the predominant source of TV and film piracy, accounting for 96% in 2023 (PDF). Piracy reached a low in 2020, with 130bn website visits. But by 2024 that number had risen to 216bn (PDF). In Sweden, 25% of people surveyed (PDF) reported pirating in 2024, a trend mostly driven by those aged 15 to 24. Piracy is back, just sailing under a different flag.
"Piracy is not a pricing issue," Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve, the company behind the world's largest PC gaming platform, Steam, observed in 2011. "It's a service issue." Today, the crisis in streaming makes this clearer than ever. With titles scattered, prices on the rise, and bitrates throttled depending on your browser, it is little wonder some viewers are raising the jolly roger again. Studios carve out fiefdoms, build walls and levy tolls for those who wish to visit. The result is artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance.
Whether piracy today is rebellion or resignation is almost irrelevant; the sails are hoisted either way. As the streaming landscape fractures into feudal territories, more viewers are turning to the high seas. The Medici understood the value linked to access. [The 2016 historical drama series tells of the rise of the powerful Florentine banking dynasty, and with it, the story of the Renaissance.] A client could travel from Rome to London and still draw on their credit, thanks to a network built on trust and interoperability. If today's studios want to survive the storm, they may need to rediscover that truth.
"Piracy is not a pricing issue," Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve, the company behind the world's largest PC gaming platform, Steam, observed in 2011. "It's a service issue." Today, the crisis in streaming makes this clearer than ever. With titles scattered, prices on the rise, and bitrates throttled depending on your browser, it is little wonder some viewers are raising the jolly roger again. Studios carve out fiefdoms, build walls and levy tolls for those who wish to visit. The result is artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance.
Whether piracy today is rebellion or resignation is almost irrelevant; the sails are hoisted either way. As the streaming landscape fractures into feudal territories, more viewers are turning to the high seas. The Medici understood the value linked to access. [The 2016 historical drama series tells of the rise of the powerful Florentine banking dynasty, and with it, the story of the Renaissance.] A client could travel from Rome to London and still draw on their credit, thanks to a network built on trust and interoperability. If today's studios want to survive the storm, they may need to rediscover that truth.
yes... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
The sad part is? I have a decent net worth, and I would be more than happy to fork over $150, maybe even $200 for a video-library like Spotify has done for music, IF it were commercial free, and globally accessible. Just let me pay for a second simultaneous stream. But it would have to be comprehensive, with all the old titles. You cant stream "The Godfather", or "Scarface" or "The Wizard of Oz". Even the freaking "Dambusters" from the 1950s is not available. Why? Apple needs to do this. They need to make their iTunes Video library streamable on subscription. I would stop pirating, but alas.
Re:yes... (Score:5, Interesting)
I pirate like a mofo with tons of storage. I have a 2U 12 bay NAS with 20TB in them, and I have a content library to make Netflix blush. At one point I had a blu-ray ripper that was automated with a Mac Mini and headless, and I had a shell script add all the meta data, cover art, and subtitles. The best part? No commercials. I stop paying for services once they have commercials, and I havent had Cable TV in 10 years. I even let my friends steam from my NAS over VPN. I have a little two-port Wifi Router with an Apple TV on the top that I take when I travel. Join it to the hotel wifi, plug in the HDMI, and I am home. Also gives me my own SSID which is also tunneled. I cant tell you how annoying Spotify is in other regions. The sad part is? I have a decent net worth, and I would be more than happy to fork over $150, maybe even $200 for a video-library like Spotify has done for music, IF it were commercial free, and globally accessible. Just let me pay for a second simultaneous stream. But it would have to be comprehensive, with all the old titles. You cant stream "The Godfather", or "Scarface" or "The Wizard of Oz". Even the freaking "Dambusters" from the 1950s is not available. Why? Apple needs to do this. They need to make their iTunes Video library streamable on subscription. I would stop pirating, but alas.
Commercials have a hidden cost consumers don't think about. If you've got a choice between a service's pricing plan with commercials and a plan without, you can count on that you're statistically likely to spend more than that difference on other crap. It's manipulative and the best way to deal with advertisement is to do whatever you have to to not expose yourself to it in the first place.
The other problem for me is that there are multiple services, each of which is a data breach waiting to happen. I want my personal and payment information as few places as can possibly be.
I too require a single source clearinghouse with all the content, ad-free. At the moment the only place that's available rhymes with abhorrent.
Time is the only thing you actually have. (Score:2)
The cost is far higher than the extra trash you might buy from being influenced.
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The cost is far higher than the extra trash you might buy from being influenced.
While some advertising is for "buy our truck instead of the other company's truck", some of it is "hey, doesn't this thing that you didn't know about or plan on buying look really good?"
This is an industry that brought us "limit 10 per customer", purely to prime your brain with the number 10 so you'll settle on buying ~6 of the thing instead of deciding from 0 that you really need 4.
They do manipulate and a lot of it isn't something most people can consciously correct for. If the ad-supported plan is $
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I pirate like a mofo with tons of storage. I have a 2U 12 bay NAS with 20TB in them, and I have a content library to make Netflix blush. At one point I had a blu-ray ripper that was automated with a Mac Mini and headless, and I had a shell script add all the meta data, cover art, and subtitles. The best part? No commercials. I stop paying for services once they have commercials, and I havent had Cable TV in 10 years. I even let my friends steam from my NAS over VPN. I have a little two-port Wifi Router with an Apple TV on the top that I take when I travel. Join it to the hotel wifi, plug in the HDMI, and I am home. Also gives me my own SSID which is also tunneled. I cant tell you how annoying Spotify is in other regions. The sad part is? I have a decent net worth, and I would be more than happy to fork over $150, maybe even $200 for a video-library like Spotify has done for music, IF it were commercial free, and globally accessible. Just let me pay for a second simultaneous stream. But it would have to be comprehensive, with all the old titles. You cant stream "The Godfather", or "Scarface" or "The Wizard of Oz". Even the freaking "Dambusters" from the 1950s is not available. Why? Apple needs to do this. They need to make their iTunes Video library streamable on subscription. I would stop pirating, but alas.
Commercials have a hidden cost consumers don't think about. If you've got a choice between a service's pricing plan with commercials and a plan without, you can count on that you're statistically likely to spend more than that difference on other crap. It's manipulative and the best way to deal with advertisement is to do whatever you have to to not expose yourself to it in the first place.
The other problem for me is that there are multiple services, each of which is a data breach waiting to happen. I want my personal and payment information as few places as can possibly be.
I too require a single source clearinghouse with all the content, ad-free. At the moment the only place that's available rhymes with abhorrent.
When it comes to media, specifically video and audio media, the overwhelming majority of the "costs" for a service are paying the licensing fees to the "content owner". That isn't the artist in most cases, the artist might see 10% of that if they're also the writer. Most of it goes to "(copy)rights holders" who have already recouped the costs (much of which were borne by another company) and are spiriting away the profits to tax havens so they aren't even paying tax on their obscene profiteering.
If you l
Go away, you're not 21 (Score:2)
If you like an artist, make a point of going to their shows
I don't understand how that helps if the band never comes near your city, or if the band plays venues that forbid guests under 21 years of age and then stops touring before you (or your teenage children) turn 21. I also fail to understand what the counterpart to touring is for media other than live music, such as electronic music or TV series or web video series or video games. Who can help?
Re:yes... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I don't pirate -- although I'm pretty sure that what I do will likely be declared illegal soon because the movie and music studios will claim I'm depriving them of revenues.
When DVD rental businesses started shutting down a few years back I bought as many disks as I could find. That's given me probably over 1,000 movies on physical media. I'm slowly ripping all these to a NAS and when that's done I'll be set for life. At my age I can't remember much about a movie within a year or two of watching it so I'll just cycle through these titles.
Nobody's going to put up my prices, reshuffle my library of titles or delete what I *OWN*.
Take that Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and the rest of you!
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I have a 2U 12 bay NAS with 20TB in them, and I have a content library to make Netflix blush
I have Netflix, and rarely watch more than 0.5% of the stuff on there, in a good month. When do you even have time to watch all of this stuff? Or are you just pirating for the fun of it?
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You cant stream "The Godfather", or "Scarface" or "The Wizard of Oz". Even the freaking "Dambusters" from the 1950s is not available. Why?
The Godfather is on Paramount+. Scarface is on Hulu. The Wizard of Oz is on HBOMax and Hulu. The Dam Busters (1955) can be rented or "purchased" from Amazon Prime. I don't disagree with all of your points, but your list of movies are all streamable.
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Yes "back to" piracy, because some content is locked behind paywalls and people have never liked the "cable" model of 100 channels with nothing to watch.
Remember cable? Remember having to buy a TV Guide or something to figure out when the thing you wanted to watch would be on sometimes in the next week?
Or if you had a satellite dish, that guide would be the the size of a paperback book.
The internet, starting with IRC and Usenet made it so you could get the thing you wanted to watch within a day of it being
Look into the mirror (Score:5, Interesting)
The platforms/studios always blame their tanking profits on piracy. It's always been their favourite scapegoat. Meanwhile, the studios refuse to accept their own failures - repetitive, boring content, reheating the same title over and over again, Star Wars 50, Mission Impossible 20; all of it completely rotten with an offensive amount of political correctness, and they wonder why people are no longer interested and no longer want to pay?
Get a mirror, spend a healthy amount of time looking into it, and accept that the mediocrity is your own fault, and it wil only take you so far.
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Even more expensive (Score:2)
Looking real quick, $100M is the cost between making and marketing for average mainstream major studio (IE theater release) pictures. Regular movies.
Would be blockbusters? They're over half a billion these days.
And movie makers are consolidating their eggs - fewer mid-budget films and more attempts at blockbusters.
Which makes things more difficult as you used to have a section of people that went to "most" movies, and with fewer movies released, that means less money out of them.
Pirates offer a better product (Score:5, Informative)
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While I have zero interest in archiving anything, I do have an interest in downloading something to my device. This is something I can no longer do with Netflix since they got rid of that option on their windows app. Now it doesn't matter if I am registered for their streaming service, I'm forced to pirate their material anyway if I want to take a flight or something like that.
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I bet you don't even have a TV! https://theonion.com/area-man-... [theonion.com]
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We have two of them. I got a new 98" model a month or two ago.
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Does that apply to software, too? All programmers should work for free and nobody should get paid?
AI will replace programmers, so that is moot.
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Economics. No one wants to watch AI slop.
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AI will be an alternative and not a replacement. Give it a few years for better models and better hardware, but we will start seeing "Your personalized video" services.
Of course there will be some pre-made AI movies, probably some of them of very high quality. But for pre-made movies, there will still be a large demand for human works, especially since there are many details that require fine control (even with the help of AI). However, the alternative to watching a pre-made movie is prompting what you want
Re:Pirates offer a better product (Score:5, Informative)
In the past you paid for a piece of software and it worked forever. Then the suits and MBA types realized they could squeeze everyone by renting software perpetually. Oh I can "buy" a digital copy of a movie on Amazon but they can revoke that purchase at any time.
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That is nonsense. Only the Windows OS keys are tied to the hardware. Normal apps are tied to your Microsoft account. And who buys legit software off Ebay?
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And who buys legit software off Ebay?
If you can buy pretty much anything else off Ebay, then why should you not be able to buy second hand legitimate copies of Windows of Ebay? The very fact that it's immediately questionable shows how totally corrupt the proprietary software industry is. Probably worse than the media industry.
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"That is nonsense. Only the Windows OS keys are tied to the hardware."
That's what I was talking about.
"Normal apps are tied to your Microsoft account"
Filed under information-I'll-never-need"
"And who buys legit software off Ebay?"
This was 5-10 years ago. According to your id#, you were around. People used to buy software in shrink wrapped boxes in stores. If you wanted a discount or an older version, you could buy a used copy off ebay. Or are you being intentionally obtuse?
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There is no paid service where you can download content for offline viewing and archive it.
Many people would pay for such a service if it existed, but it doesn't.
People still watch TV? (Score:2)
Honestly, I'm legitimately surprised that there is enough of a market for TV to support an industry.
Not just with the enshitification and commercial operators trying to wring viewers for every penny they have; and not even for myself there hasn't been a single compelling reason to even bother with an online subscription, let alone something like a TV license — it's just bad value. I can get more entertainment value per hour from a half-arsed £5 game from Steam or GOG than TV could ever hope to m
Re:People still watch TV? (Score:5, Interesting)
There kind of isn't. The studios (Note studio != streaming platform, its a venn diagram with a crossover, but its not a circle) are bleeding out. I know a fair few people who work as crew on film and tv work and its pretty brutal out there. Covid killed off a lot of the theatres and theatre attendance, and the streaming platforms tend to offer pretty shitty deals to the studios and never pay "points" (royalties), so once its streaming studio workers wont see royalties anymore, something that was always an income smoothing factor for the erratic incomes working on film provided.
The industry is falling apart. And it shows. 5 years ago it was pretty obvious we where in a golden age for television. Now, most of those landmark series are gone, and we're seeing mostly just slop with a few decent shows strewn between them.
Personally I'm over it. Netflix is continuously rising prices and the only affordable option has ads, the entire f***king reason I abandoned free to air. And now theres so many streaming services sharing nothing between them, the only reliable source is now , well frankly, pirate bay.
I was playing the new Dune game with a friend , and he admitted he hadnt read the books or seen the new movies, so I suggested watching the new films (They are actually pretty faithful with a few differences to the source material). Turns out both the part 1 and part 2 films are on DIFFERENT streaming service.
Its a mess.
Re:People still watch TV? (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame all the people who were not satisfied with the cable tv package model and demanded ala carte - only paying for the services you want.
Well, you got it!! Now there are umteen services and you can pay for each and every one of them individually. Congratulations.
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It's not so bad. I _AM_ paying for each and every one individually, sufficient to my video viewing desires. This amounts to:
Amazon Prime $139 / yr = $11.58
Netflix, HBO / Showtime, billed thru Verizon, =~$45
Starz = $25.73
Disney = $32.39
Peacock = $7.99
Roku = $32.01
Paramount $14.06
I think the stuff billed thru Verizon is actually less than the $45, but is a pain to go find, and Prime is a lot more than access to a lot of free streaming movies and TV shows, as I order a lot of (no shipping charges) merch fr
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Only if you accept the premise if you need them all available all the time. Otherwise, you can a la carte one service at a time, which will bankrupt these assholes.
Reject your entitlement to "57 channels and nothing on." Nothing's on.
Comparative reviews (Score:2)
For the task of comparing and contrasting 27 film and TV adaptations of a 19th century children's novel by C. Collodi[1] or 7 adaptations of a 1930s Christmas story by Robert L. May,[2] cycling among services each month isn't quite as practical.
[1] "Ranking Every Version of Pinocchio" by There Will Be Fudd [youtube.com], 2022-12-03
[2] "I Watched Every Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Special" by TheHappySpaceman Reviews [youtube.com], 2024-01-27
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Blame all the people who were not satisfied with the cable tv package model and demanded ala carte
Oh horseshit. The companies who made these streaming networks are the ones who chose the implementations, the way to go about it, or to change how they go about it. That is not the user's fault, never has been, and never will be. You're literally taking away agency for others that exists, and smacks you right in the face.
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Actually it's quite affordable. Subscribe monthly to one service at a time; watch what you want on that service. Cancel. Rinse. Repeat. Do you actually need access to everything all at once whenever you please? First world problems.
But, since service hopping is the only economically sensible strategy left given all the fiefdoms, we are back to tired, old "it's a pain in the arse, better to pirate." The pirates do offer everything all at once, and people in the Western world are soft, lazy, and entitled. So
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Subscribe monthly to one service at a time; watch what you want on that service. Cancel. Rinse. Repeat.
That's fine until one of several things happens. One is a film and its sequel being exclusive to different services, which I'm told is true of Dune. Another is services hiking the monthly rate to offer a deeper discount when paying for a year up front. "Buy 3 months, get 9 free!" A third is when your friend group keeps mentioning a film or TV series that's not available on any streaming service in your country.
Studio Stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Netflix was the herald for diminishing piracy. It provided a good service at a good price, making it more convenient than piracy. Then studios decided that Netflix was doing too much to curb piracy, and made a conscious, concerted effort to promote piracy by balkanizing streaming and raising prices beyond reason.
Congratulations, studios. You have succeeded in once again making piracy more convenient than legal streaming.
Not that Netflix is without blame. Regular price increases to pay for really bad executive decision-making also played a role. Gabe was partially wrong about piracy not being a price issue. There is a balance between the service and the price of that service. If the service (even a good one) is priced too high, piracy is the inevitable result. A poor service that is overpriced will actively promote piracy.
Re:Studio Stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)
Netflix was good when it had a very broad DVD library. That went away, in part because of the economic of physical media, but also because of the control studios have over streaming content. Eventually, those DVDs are going to be damaged*. And the studios won't press any more. Streaming gives the studios the control of what appears, or does not appear before viewers eyes. Eyeball time is limited (as old school TV networks knew) and the game is to capture as much of it as possible for your new content, denying other networks the access to it. The VCR and then purchase and rental DVDs damaged that control structure. Streaming services gained back that control.
*At one point, it seemed that every copy of a few popular titles was scratched. I even suspected the studios of hiring groups of people to rent and then damage them.
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Netflix was good when it had a very broad DVD library.
One big advantage for me was the back catalog of shows like Black Adder, Allo Allo, etc. that simply were not available on streaming and buying them was cost prohibitive. Rentals made it possible to watch them.
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If a service is too expensive for what it offers, too little value, then I'd argue it's no longer a good service. Other than that I'm in complete agreement.
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Not just. Netflix's own content is also more limited. For example they no longer let you download their content for offline viewing on the windows app giving a nice middle finger to anyone who regularly travels by plane.
Anyway the pirate bay had no such problem.
Lots of stupidity (Score:3)
I used to have a netflix account. Suppose I still probably have a logon.
Anyways, I have to agree about the stupidity. I used to have an account with them, including DVD rental when it was offered, loved it.
My active account, minus suspensions for deployments overseas, lasted through the ending of the DVD section. It lasted through the loss of the large part of their catalog, don't remember what company the deal giving them that huge catalog was with that expired.
Still, I kept it going because it could at
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Netflix got into the habit of cancelling shows, which put me off starting them until they managed to get a few seasons in. That made them cancel even more shows.
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That's actually incorrect. Because we'd be in exactly the same position if Netflix was the only service around - it's called a monopoly. Netflix only worked out because it had significant competitio
Music v TV (Score:3, Informative)
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Or you can do what we do. Pick 2-3 services to subscribe to, and if something isn't available on them, you just don't watch that stuff. Works great, and no piracy required.
FWIW, we currently subscribe to:
Apple TV+
Amazon Prime Video
Paramount+
Netflix
Not impoverished (Score:5, Insightful)
The company that offers easy, ad-free paid access to a wide range of streams and then keeps it that way is the one that will win, but first the greedy producers need to see their profits fall for a while. RIP Netflix, we hardly knew ye.
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Is it the streaming services or the studios that are greedy?
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Video streaming services are greedy to the extent that they are willing to pay a studio more for an exclusive license to a particular work as opposed to letting all the competing streaming services offer the same work as well. (The nonexclusive arrangement is more common in music streaming.)
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How often is that the problem, versus studios opening their own exclusive streaming services?
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If one is greedy the other one can be or has to be greedy as well.
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Netflix was fine. Sharing with friends, watching with VPN, etc. and then the studios pressured them in making these things impossible. But let's not kid ourselves, they would also have done so if it wasn't for the studios, because every service is going to be enshittified eventually.
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The streaming platforms aren't broke, they're just insufferably greedy.
Anyone who can piss away a billion dollars on a B-movie trash fest like Rings of Power that was clearly written by a teenage power-fantasy fanboy isn't broke. Well, maybe wasn't broke before that.
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Untrue. They have been operating at a loss for years because they are product dumping. This is "3. ???." I don't think it will result in "4. PROFIT!"
It will result in piracy (yaar!) and service hopping (*yawn*). And then they'll take away the pause your subscription feature. Because, of course, it is our responsibility to make their stupid business plans work.
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I wonder if people thought about account exchanging.
So the services prevent password sharing. But what if I lend you my Netflix account and get your Prime account for a month? No parallel use, a complete exchange for a month just to be able to watch the exclusive titles from the other service, so none of us needs to cancel their subscription while using the other service.
Won't somebody think of the shareholders? (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh please. Most of y'all making stupidly obscene profits with a declining quality of service. No wonder people are hoisting the jolly roger once more.
Also the collapsing economy (Score:3)
So when it's time to cut back because the economy is collapsing thanks to absolutely terrible public policy and a big automation push the first thing you do is cut your streaming services and switch to the high seas.
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We have a kid in school. None of his homework is delivered over the internet.
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So when it's time to cut back because the economy is collapsing thanks to absolutely terrible public policy and a big automation push, the second thing you do is cut your private school services and switch to public school, and public school might have this e-learning crap.
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And it only takes one to show the statement I responded to is a lie.
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No. The plural of anecdote is not data. You are what is called a "statistical outlier," and what he said is essentially correct, not a lie. Stop throwing around the word lie anyway. At best it's a poor representation, a mistake, or a sweeping generalization. None of which are lies.
You lose debate club.
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The plural of anecdote is not data.
Depends on how big that plural is (since an X of say 1, or even 40, or 100 would hold less weight potentially than 300, 2,000, 20,000, etc, but all of these are plurals). Also depends on if we are dealing with absolute universal statements (like "for every X, all X also are Y") in which you do need merely a single counter-example to render the statement false.
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Sides which, he isn't the only one. None of his classmates are getting their assignments over the internet either.
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"Essentially correct" is not correct. If it were, you wouldn't need to add "essentially" in front of it.
The statement is simply incorrect, and highlights the problem of speaking in absolutes.
Duh! Who didn't see that coming! (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course it is a pricing issue (Score:5, Insightful)
If the content was ad-free and free, there would be no piracy.
As it stands, if you want to see one movie a week from different studios, you may have to subscribe to many different services
No different than the old cable bundles. Renting physical media was always more competitive, as the distributor always had the option to buy the discs at retail prices if they couldn't reach an agreement with a studio to get volume discounts.
The costs for streaming rentals should be much lower than retail stores or disc/tape shipping.
But instead, only a small portion of the content catalog is available as PPV.
It is also streamed in inferior quality, especially in the audio department, compared to physical media such as blu-ray.
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If the content was ad-free and free, there would be no piracy.
If the content was ad-free, reasonably priced and convenient there would be minimal piracy. We actually had that for a little while.
Streaming not same as CAble (Score:3)
No different than the old cable bundles.
Yes it is different to the old cable bundles because with the old channels you could only watch what they were showing. Hence, to be sure that you had something to watch you needed to subscribe to multiple channels and they gradually showed you what you wanted spread over months or years.
Streaming services are different because once you subscribe you have access to everything they have. We generatlly subscribe to 1-2 services watch everything we want over a period of several months to a year and then sw
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The catalog on each service is not static. A lot of titles come and go.
Also, some services don't release a whole new season at once, to keep you subscribing and waiting for the next episode.
With the addition of ads to many services in recent years, it is getting similar to cable bundles, INO.
I would prefer PPV for only the content I want to watch, and zero subscription. And no wasted time looking through a catalog that's full of filler content used to inflate the catalog.
Or worse, have the streaming service
I don't mind paying (Score:2)
Scrambling for Profit (Score:2)
The streaming services are not struggling to provide value for viewers, they are scrambling for more profit. The catalog of available content is degrading and shrinking. Everything is interrupted every few minutes by an irritating intrusive advert. It's no surprise that people are deciding that piracy is more appealing.
FTFY (Score:2)
Once seen as nearly dead, piracy has resurged through illicit streaming platforms as the fractured, ad-laden streaming market struggles to deliver convenience and value.
...as the fractured, ad-laden streaming market struggles to deliver profits and customer lock-in regardless of the toll on convenience and value.
Re:FTFY (Score:5, Insightful)
struggles to deliver profits and customer lock-in
Nah, it's not even that. It's same thing that's ruining many products and services -- Wall Street's insistence that "endless growth" is possible.
- Endless growth in customer base -- by adopting anti-password sharing stances to pressure new account signups whenever possible.
- Endless growth in revenue (per customer) -- by selling advertising access and user data to aid targeting of ad campaigns to paying subscribers.
- Endless growth in profits -- by almost-yearly price increases, and reducing operating costs in ways that are detrimental in service quality.
People keep bringing up old Netflix. People were fine paying the rates then and not-pirating. There was a better selection, catalog content to chase the "long tail" of consumer demand, etc. Was Netflix profitable then? If yes, they should be profitable now, but the issue was all the content providers stopped being satisfied with their slice of the pie. "There must be some way we can get more of the revenue for ourselves here!"
- And so they started asking for more for licensing rights (and Netflix starts looking into more original content to reduce their dependence on studios) --- resulting in shittier content and quick pivots to drop anything not top-performing, despite impact on customer satisfaction.
- Then those studios started wanting to start their own services, and cut Netflix out of the deal entirely (now the content is splintered and users are getting pissed having to jump between services to view things, let alone the monthly costs multiplying).
- This follows with them then increasing their own services' subscription rates to consumers.
Every step advancing because shareholders said "there must be some way for this company to make more money now than last year". Whether they were making a healthy profit before or not isn't important. It's never enough.
If Netflix wasn't profitable back then, when they had such a better selection, better pricing, customer goodwill, and so on... then maybe this whole streaming service as a business idea was a failed business idea to start with. With all the anti-consumer moves now they certainly aren't improving the prospects.
HOW ABOUT LETTING ME VIEW OFFLINE (Score:2)
Enshittification was rife at Netflix when I went to prepare for an international flight and realised that the Netflix "app" no longer allows you to download movies onto your device. I say "app" because they also got rid of their windows app in favour of what is now nothing more than a shitty wrapper for a web interface, that's probably why the download option is gone, but frankly I don't give a shit about their technical reasons.
Anyway I pirated a whole lot of shows I already pay to stream as a result. Fuck
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An insoluble problem (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that for the studios behind the streaming services, the money isn't in the media itself. It's all in the subscription fees and advertising revenue and the ability to collect and mine data about the viewers. None of those things are available unless the viewers go to the studio's streaming service. Ironically, the things that would stop piracy in it's tracks are the very things the studios and streaming services can't afford to do because it'd bankrupt them.
For purely academic purposes (Score:2)
... how do people pirate these days? Is Pirate Bay still a thing? Usenet?
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I've always found pirating to be more hassle than it's worth.
If I want to watch a movie bad enough, I'll just pay the $5 for it. If it is more than that, I'll find another movie that IS $5 or less to watch. There are many available.
The key to success here is being willing to just not watch something and move on to something else.
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I don't know a single thing about the "unlicensed streaming" the article points to as being where 96% of all piracy supposedly happens. Torrenting is still alive and well though. A popular modern torrent client that's used to download them nowadays is qBittorrent. It's popular mostly because it has a built in search engine that when set up properly can search pretty much any torrent site you'd want (like Pirate Bay and many other like sites) all in one go making finding things very easy. It's also free, op
Crossing the annoyance barrier (Score:2)
1. Cable used to be easy to consume.
2. Then Came pay per view services. Then it became complicated and expensive
3. Response was easy to consumer pirate disks.
4. Streaming service mature and become easy to use. Lots of content It was a good time.
5. New services start up and take control of content that was once centralised. Now we have Lots of marginal but expensive streaming services.
6. Response is to pirate using download or pirate digital streams. It's easy and less expensive again.
The pattern is pret
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The fragmentation is a big (and new) problem. Back in the days of VHS and DVD even if the physical media was produced by multiple studios/distributors, retailers could stock any of them. And generally if a retailer or a rental house like blockbuster didn't have the particular movie you wanted, they could get it on request.
Something else that's relatively new is global communication. In the days of VHS movies would be released at different times in different locations, but most people wouldn't regularly comm
I can't find anyone streaming what I want to see (Score:2)
I don't really care about TV or movies anymore. Also don't have much time for it.
But I wanted to see the latest episodes of South Park. I can't find any steaming service that offers their latest episodes in my country(Denmark). Their own side used to stream their show. IDK if they still do that but they didn't allow it outside the US.
Yes, I could pay for a VPN and find a streaming service and go through that, but it is not worth it to me. I don't "pirate" it because I don't care that much to figure that out
I can stream most content vs piracy.... (Score:2)
Driving Viewers Back (Score:2)
issue (Score:2)
"Piracy is not a pricing issue, It's a service issue." (Gabe Newell)
For streaming services, not even that. It's a fool-me-once issue.
When I already pay for your service, and then you ask me to pay AGAIN for not having ads, that's a type of protection racket you are running, not a legit business.
Oh yeah, and the TV UI for all streaming services I've seen so far fucking SUCKS. In capital letters. It's aweful. We've had better UIs for 30+ years. The only reason I can imagine these get out the door is that the entire UI/UX team is permanently unavailable due to collective seppu
Pay to look at ads in newspapers (Score:2)
When I already pay for your service, and then you ask me to pay AGAIN for not having ads
Magazines and newspapers have had the combination of ads and a cover price for longer than I've been alive.
You mean physical media (Score:2)
Where and when available (Score:2)
buy/watch/sell of media
Good luck with that when the shipping courier (such as USPS or UPS) and the trading platform (such as eBay) take half of what you're selling it for.
Just pop my disk in my player and watch on my non-internet-connected TV. Way cheaper than 100's per year in subscriptions and perfectly legal!
So long as the movie or TV series is lawfully available on disc in your region. I can think of a lot of things that aren't. The film Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night was released on VHS but not on DVD or BD in North America. The TV series Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea never got a North American home video release at all.
"Piracy is not a pricing issue" (Score:2)
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Why is it (Score:2)
TV stations supported only by ad revenue manage OK, so why can't streaming with ad revenue AND subscription fees manage it? Sure, they have to have a really good internet connection, but they don't need a radio tower and transmission + FCC costs + radio engineers (an ever shrinking profession).
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If you want to call piracy unethical, then say so directly. But charging beyond someoneâ(TM)s willingness or ability to payâ"whether in money, in mandatory ads, or in wasted timeâ"is still pricing people out. If the price is higher than what I can afford, there was never a sale to lose in the first place, so my choice isnâ(TM)t taking anything from the company and therefore not unethical.
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It sure does.
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Advertising of the media, and peer pressure drives users to consume the media, and this is all by design.
Advertising and peer pressure is now global and ubiquitous, but availability of the actual media is not. I will frequently see advertisements for something, or people discussing something which is simply not available to rent or purchase here.
So i'm left with an artificially created demand, and an intentionally created feeling of missing out, which cannot be satisfied any legal way.
If the media becomes a
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Mod Parent Up.
You are not entitled to the benefits of the cable model. You no longer get everything all at once at an enormous price tag because monopoly. You now have the option of one service at a time. Eat up the catalog, one catalog at a time. Wait for them to refresh.
Cost: $20/month. Much better than cable.
The problem is us. We are soft, lazy, and entitled and expect to get the benefits of the cable model and a la carte at the same time. Repeat after me. You are not entitled to a smorgasbord, and there
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Looks like I forgot to close that italics tag. The only thing that was supposed to be tagged was a la carte.
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Being pushed toward something does not imply you don't have a choice.