Streaming was supposed to stop piracy. Now it is easier than ever
With new streamers constantly launching and lockdowns changing watching patterns, film and TV piracy is mounting a comeback. Can anything be done?
Slightly older (2021) article I found while searching for this place. It pretty much says what we’ve all been saying.
It stopped it for a while when we had 1-2 good streaming sites, then everyone made their own, pulled all their stuff from previous ones. I am not going to pay for 15 accounts. I still have Netflix with family, but it will end soon with password sharing.
It'll go back down when every company and their dog stops trying to have their own $15 sub service.
So it won't happen.
But I do miss the days of it just being Netflix Amazon and Hulu.
I stopped pirating about 10 years ago as it was easier just to pay for the service and stream. Then the providers got greedy; complete segregation of the content not only by platform but also by region. Streaming was no longer easy; you don’t know what platform the show/film is on or if it’s available in your region. So now it back to the high seas for films and TV shows as well as paying for an IP TV service that includes movies and TV on demand as well as live streams.
It all to do with ease of use and accessibility; I mean the music piracy has dropped off a cliff due to Spotify.
I had taken a break from Piracy when US Netflix via VPN had the library it used to 10 years ago, it's mainly in the last couple years that it made sense to return to selfhosting.
Yeah. The paid product must be superior.
I don't generally pirate games, because in the case of games, the paid product is superior to use. Automatic updates, online functionality, workshop integration etc. All reasons to prefer the paid version on something like Steam to pirating the game.
With a home media setup, you are probably still paying money. You need storage, things like VPN and Usenet subscriptions etc. It's not like I'm using them because they are free. I have spent money on them. I've just spent money on the superior implementation. It became the superior implementation once corporations predictably all wanted a slice of the pie and now my media server is much more enjoyable and easier to manage than 10 different subscription services I need to juggle because no way am I going to pay exorbitant amounts a month for all of them.
What I've learnt from this is that I need to find better sources of live sports.
Maybe people would be be less inclined to pirate if the economy wasn't so fucked up. Why would anyone spend money on entertainment when they could barely afford living expenses? (Other than the threat of lawsuits for copyright infringement)
@IsThisLemmyOpen @cccc plus the fact you need 5+ accounts on different platforms if you want to find everything you want. Even then, you won't find old movies I guess
And if you're interested in Movies that are not English, you're basically fucked.
where are you from? I'm from Italy and in 2023 people can only eat if you've two working family members and can barely feed children
Stop blaming the pandemic. The reason Netflix can't hold on to customers is they canceled everything worth watching.
Jacked up prices, added a ton of crappy content instead of focusing on fewer but better quality shows, “crackdown” on password sharing when they once encouraged it.
Yeah, they started canceling shit long before the pandemic, I think around 2016. Once they decided to go all-in on original content, they began letting licensing contracts expire.
What did they cancel? Legit question because I only had one of my shows cancelled.
A better question would be - what DIDN'T they cancel? Here's a list of Netflix Originals they cancelled:
https://decider.com/list/canceled-netflix-original-shows/
That list also doesn't seem to include shows that were informed they were getting cut, so ended it prematurely.
What makes anyone think we want to stop pirating?
Convenience aside, they keep censoring episodes of Tv shows. So even if you pay full price for every single streaming service you still can’t watch every episode of the office or community.
This. It isn't just that the content is/isn't available. It's that content that is available might be a weird format (see the Seinfeld aspect ratio debacle), or has outright been modified. For instance, I can watch old episodes of Clone High on Paramount Plus, but all the licensed music from that time has been stripped out in favor of generic fluff. It's grating and it's not in line with the original vision.
An all-streaming future where anything can be changed at any time, or shows can completely disappear into the abyss because they're streaming-only with no physicality is depressing.
The streaming industry had a couple of benefits, being convenience for an acceptable price. Corporate greed pushed these streaming services to lower convenience and increase the price and they expected people to just eat it. I don't mind paying for good products that I regularly use, but the price has to be acceptable. This doesn't however justify piracy, but it is one possible way forward.
Yeah once plex/sonarr/radarr came along and pirating became both cheaper and more convenient they lost my money.
Easy to see why. Streaming services went through enshittification just like all the social media.
Make streaming actually convenient and I'll pay for it.