Now only 1400$ a month to watch any show at 480p! Upgrade now to 2100$ per month for the high resolution videos? Can't afford it? Just get another job you lazy hobo!

The problem isn't the number of providers, the problem is exclusive licensing deals.

If it was like music, then (theoretically), more choice is better. AFAIK all the platforms have pretty much all the music, so there is some choice available.

With TV and film, it's so fractured that it's literally easier to just pirate things, even for shows I (potentially) have ad-free paid access to already. With Stremio + Torrentio + a Debrid service, I just launch one app and everything's available in seconds. With paid services, I need to search Netflix, then Prime, then CBC Gem, by which point I'd already be watching.

Plus, torrentio lets me pick the video quality I want, so I can force 4K H265 on my big screen for films or just pop on a 720p H264 on my small underpowered laptop (that can't decode H265 fast enough for smooth playback).

It's not even about price, it's just a better experience to pirate. And that's a Big Problem for the industry.

When they remove access to content I paid for... Fuck em.

If buyin' ain't owning, piracy ain't stealin'

Had a very similar experience at the end of last year. Was sick of the bullshit all the providers were pulling and set up jellyfin.

Now running that on a pi so we've got our own streaming platform with movies and shows that you'd either need at least three separate services for or just outright won't find if you don't pirate.

Disney+ is the only one i subscribe to here in BC. Since it comes combined with STAR (almost-Hulu) it is a fair value. TV service from Telus is stupid expensive and I still would not get to watch my hockey team. Not that I want to right now with them backpedalling so fast. Fucking Kings...

Gabe said it best! "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."

If they can't make money while they're charging us, how are the pirates so good at it?

All my homies hate wall street

Yeah this was the entire reason streaming was successful. It was cheaper than cable. Did they think more money would appear from nothing?

The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don't restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.

They had achieved this just a short time ago, and their subscriptions and profit reflected that consumers were happy with the offerings. But the studios wanted MORE, and now everything is fragmented across a dozen different services with increased subscription fees, and geo-locks so you can't share accounts. I was paying almost $100 per month for subscriptions at one point, and then they fragmented it further and I said "fuck it, I'm out!". I cancelled everything. They think they can endlessly exploit their consumers, and maybe there is a sub-section of them that will endure never ending fragmentation and price increases, but I'm not one of them. Bye!

What's a reasonable price to you? Can you apply this same value to everyone? Seems like just about anything is easy to access through various services except for maybe some niche stuff. I don't think being "easy" is quite enough. People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.

"If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing."

I wouldn't ever buy the content so it's not a lost sale either. All I've done is copy a file. gasp

i dunno i heard that you wouldn't steal a car

What about the small, local services that are just trying to pay the broadcast production bills and make a little cash to become viable businesses?

Fuck those people too?

Because these piracy services also affect them. These services restream the content taking away revenue from the small streaming services. In many cases we're talking about volumes less than 100. So these restream services pop up, illegally use trademarks and copyrighted materials to advertise, and can reduce volumes enough that they are no longer viable.

Sometimes these things affect regular people trying to make life work too. Not just billionaire assholes who legitimately deserve the criticism.

I don't use these services either, but my understanding is that some of these thiefs seem to not even have a profit model. One prominent streamer who I won't name, "FZ", as the kids call it, they don't require registration and are allowing those who use ad-blockers to access the site.

I don't understand why Hollywood is even going after these guys. Just wait for their lack of monetization sweeps them under.

The mystery of how movie companies can't own cinemas but can own streaming services.

No subscription fee to use Steam. Games are available to download and play offline. 3 clicks of the mouse to buy, install, and play a game. It's so damn easy to use Steam, I don't miss buying physical PC games and I certainly don't miss rolling the dice on russian cracks.

Steam and Netflix are the sole reasons I stopped pirating as a teenager/young adult.

I canceled Netflix long ago at this point and have been on the brink of going back to pirating films/TV. Too many streaming services.. it's just like TV packages before Netflix disrupted the model.

Haven't pirated a game since 2008. The same year i made a steam account. Coincidence?

I was hoping someone else would mention it. It's quite cool.

You should definitely avoid XtremeHD IPTV (http://xtremehdiptv.org/). For $15 a month, it's way too cheap to offer all the live TV, movies, and series that it does. The article specifically mentions low pricing as a red flag, and I can definitely say that compared to what you'd normally pay for every live channel (including the premium ones and pay per view), series, and any just about any movie you can think of, this is most definitely a service that you should steer clear of.

IPTorrents is even worse at iptorrents.com for only $10/mo

It's projection.

Hollywood was founded on IP theft of European filmmakers' work and funded by various mobs, which then went on to lobby (bribe) politicians into changing certain regulations on gambling in AZ, et al, to pave the way for Vegas and the like.

Fuck Hollywood with a rusty pineapple sideways.

I haven't been able to listen to music since year 2000 😢

I've still got some songs (including horrendously misattributed artists/titles) from limewire in my music library, all these years later.

It's so funny to me that we have to circumvent the site's paywall in order to read an article about pirating.

there’s a special place in heaven for people that link to archive sites to avoid paywalls

Piracy is a service problem

One time I went to this unit of a store and the lady was unfamiliar with werner herzog. Not even in their system.

If someone makes it so I can stream all the shows and all the movies and such in one convenient place, without having to find them myself, hunt down the right versions, etc, I'm good with paying them for that.

It'd be better if it was from a legal service, but as long as exclusives are allowed that can't happen. If the owners of the content were required to allow anyone who wants to distribute it to do so, at the same cost with no special deals for one distributor over another, then every streaming service could have everything, if they choose. They could then compete on quality of service and which content they choose to have, not on what content they can lock down for themselves alone.

Paying somebody for streaming film and TV shows that they have no hand in producing, and thus not supporting new productions — same as I can download for free myself? — that makes no sense to me

It makes sense for me. The one i’m using is $20 per year. I just think of it as convenience fee. It has netflix features but for all movies and tv shows.

Instead of paying for 50 streaming platforms, you pay for one that has it all. Convenient.

Lots of people are. Real Debrid is the shit! It's about $2.80 per month for the ability to stream pretty much everything. But ads? Nah, man. There are ads on the torrent sites, but none on streaming. Pirates are pretty ad-adverse.

If you're paying for it, then you could argue that you aren't "stealing" it. How are you (or at least the average person) suppose to know that the steaming service you used got their content illegally? This way, all of the liability falls on the streamer rather than the consumer.

[Raises hand]

I don't have time to fuck with managing a seedbox to make ratios and community participation bullshit (looking at you, abt). I don't even have time to fight incompletes on a usenet block. Let me drop a Benjamin in your "donation" box every couple of years and I'll cover part of the server as long as I can find what I need, when I want it, in the quality I'm looking for.

I have subscriptions to a few of the big boys through legal cross-marketing deals; it's still better to know that my shows will be waiting for me on my server if and when I ever get around to watching them.

Realdebrid bro

"your failed business model is not my problem"

The same way I haven't seen an ad in years, I also use a paywall bypass extension.

So I guess it skips my mind sometimes; when none of these sites have had paywalls for years.

I would argue a good chunk of the people here would prefer the OG link so they can archive it themselves (or make an offline .html copy directly)

People who pirate content don't do it for free. It might be news to you, but piracy is a huge business.

Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao

For several years (at least half a decade) I used a service that provided live TV for most major networks, and reliable, easy to access streaming of literally every televised sport I ever heard of, and many that I didn't know existed or didn't expect to be televised.

It was easy to use, had all the live TV we cared for (incl and especially sporting events, which was the only thing we weren't already getting by legit streaming services or other means, and which we cared about watching live vs later ) for 30 bucks a month. I started using it right after I forked out a couple hundred bucks to the NHL only to find that doing so just made it so that it cost me a lot of money to be blacked out from the games we cared to watch.

It was what we all want streaming services to be - reliable, comprehensive, high quality, easy to use, and cheap.

That's why.

Edited to add - the service went down last year. I know of no similar replacement, but given this article they must exist.

Convenience, I'd imagine. Not everybody wants to deal with ads or self-hosting.

I also know someone that subs to a pirate streaming site that they use for learning English. It has a solid library but also has dual subtitles on everything and categories based on vocabulary difficulty and accents. It's cheaper than a single legit subscription, but has way more value (both the language stuff and the massive pirated library).

Real-debrid is worth paying for imo

People also should be able to pay the artist directly and not some billion dollar company who continue to try to squeeze the artists and limit creativeness all in servitude to the almighty dollar (or any other currency)

People need to expect to pay reasonable prices on a reasonable basis for art and entertainment, and pretending everyone should be cool with fifty different streaming services and never owning anything again is its own sort of immorality and lack of ethics.

I have no problem paying for such things.

But when the distributors block access, and tell me buying ain't owning by removing access to what I've paid for, well fuck 'em.

I think most people would agree that artists should be fairly paid for their work. But when greedy, profiteering corporations are the ones commissioning and profiting from art, then IMO we have a moral duty to fuck with their exploitative business model.

I agree with you.

But we had a situation where consumers were happy and were paying for content, piracy dropped off, and it was insanely profitable for Netflix.

Then everyone got greedy and stuck their dicks in the pie and ruined it, and this is the backlash.

If you buy content digitally, it gets pulled from your library without your consent or recourse. If you steam you're paying more and more for less.

What we had was good, now none of my friends talk about TV shows because it starts with "hey, did you watch X, it's on paramount?" "No", "oh, nevermind".

And art should be accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. There's a reason that piracy almost died out completely and then came back with a vengeance. People don't mind paying a reasonable price for art, the prices and accessibility of art has just become unfeasible.

I disagree about art. Art exists for art's sake. It's not a commercial product. I don't have to pay to enjoy the Mona Lisa or the Bach. I might pay to enter a museum, or attend a performance, so I agree with you about entertainment, but art is different. Art enriches the world, improves life, expands understanding, and we should all of us pay for it with taxes. And we do!

Where does this expectation come from?

I did not commission these works.

They created their art without a contract between them and I.

Their ability to recover their cost is not my responsibility.

Their right to obtain a profit is capitalist nonsense.

The force of government injecting a contract doesn't create a moral obligation.

So where does this moral obligation come from?

Is there some religious text indicating the divinity of copyright?

The concept was created from nothing.

The writers strike who has to fight over getting streaming royalties goes to show that the money doesn't even make it to the artists.

The issue isn't paying. It's how fractured the services are and how we don't even get to pay to own a copy of the art.

I don't disagree, but isn't there something to be said for denying people access to the popular culture based on their ability to pay for it?

It's a tragedy of the commons - as an economics problem it matters, sure, but copyright is an artificial monopoly, not a human right. We could provide these more efficiently with public funding of the arts or crowdfunds, without the need to make up imaginary property with imaginary ethics.

But if you want to sign up for a bunch of subscriptions because some might trickle down to the writers, be my guest.

I don't expect it to be there. It just is. I can't go about my day without them shoving ads about it in my face.

I expect the lot of them to get their own damn jobs making food and shit that we actually need so I don't have to work all the damn time just to not afford being able to do my own art.