Technology

Love how it doesn’t mention the fact that services are getting objectively worse content as they stretch thin, are increasing their prices across the board, and cracking down on password sharing which was previously touted as a benefit.

The shift really proves that Gabe Newell was right and that piracy is a service issue and that, for a time, the many services available were worth paying for.

The EUIPO speculates that financial pressures, like inflation, means that people have less money to spend on entertainment. This can be seen in the way that fewer people are signing up for Netflix or Amazon Prime – and some are even cancelling their subscriptions altogether.

Ah yes, that's the only reason. Not that streaming services are offering less content and functionality for more money, that can't be it.

The article wonders why would anyone pirate, let us give him the reason:

1. Ads
2. Multiple streaming services costing many times more than food. With nothing to see except for re runs and rehashes of old content.
3. Ads
4. Rising prices for poor service and shit content.
5. Ads
6. Geoblocking
7. Ads
8. Low quality videos even if you are willing to pay just because you don't wish to use their specified player or browser. Why can't I stream it to VLC player without the overhead of a browser.
9. Ads
10. All the while the CEO and the executive of the companies raking in billions on the money they are saying charging us for the artists.

Hmmmmm. Let's see here.

People don't like cable, because it's too expensive and inconvenient

People start pirating

People like having 2-3 streaming services that show everything, without ads, for much cheaper even combined than cable. They stop pirating.

People don't like having 20-30 streaming services that show only a little in each service, NOW WITH ADS!?!?! and that become MUCH more expensive than cable ever was.

People start pirating again......

I wonder what happened?!?!

It’s worth noting that although piracy is up, the rates are still far lower than they were 20, 10 or even five years ago. Whether people continue to access content illegally remains to be seen – hopefully this is just a ‘blip’ and rates of theft begin to fall again as the economy recovers.

I can't be bothered to pull back all the layers of naive optimism in just these two sentences.

It's almost like making it nearly impossible to watch what we want and, at the same time, octupling our bills, while also increasing the cost of each would, somehow, force people into the desperation of piracy. Huh. Who woulda thunk it.

I 100% believe this. The video streamers are getting too greedy and pushing out too much subpar content. When it was affordable and easy to find what you want streaming was great. Now it's expensive and stuff in on 12 different platforms.

Also most of what I watch is older so everyone on the creative and production side has been paid the only ones making money at this point are the studio fat cats.

I have subscriptions (and shared subscriptions) to... seven services that I can think of in 20 seconds.

Yet, time and time again, I try to figure out if what I want to watch is covered by one of them (not trivial to figure out), and end up falling back on piracy probably around 50% of the time.

Now that every fucking content owner has its own subscription plan, it makes subscriptions pointless because it's spread so damn thin.

Wow that wording, trying to make pirating sound like an evil crime lol. I feel no moral negativity pirating. In fact, my conscience is clean and I feel morally obligated to, considering how expensive they are making services.

I think reading between the lines is the real story: when they get greedy, pirating puts them I check and causes pricing to become affordable and people stop pirating. Once people are not pirating, greed increases and pirates have to return to put them in place again.

In conclusion... we need pirates to balance things out, this pirating is a necessity in our modern age..

You are welcome everyone, I am doing my part for myself and I am doing my part for you.

If not, we can expect to see legal channels raising their prices again to cover the losses caused by piracy.

what a shitty take. Well, anyone who has better memory than only one month back can realize that the reason the people turned to piracy was that they raised their prices. There is no loss caused by piracy. They only missed potential gains. And the reason they raised their prices were not because they were loosing money. Was because they needed to "grow infinitely". If the free market evangelists are right, the free market will self regulate and the prices will go down in order to attract back the lost customers lol

I believe it was Gabe Newell who said the best way to avoid piracy is by making legitimate purchasing easier and/or better.

In the early history of streaming services, you could get access to a lot of content in a straightforward way for not much money. People started doing that instead of pirating. The corporations got greedy, they made the services worse and increased the price to the point that piracy is preferable again.

And I don't have the least amount of sympathy. Yarr matey.

Guess what’s also been increasing? Prices.

Guess what also has refused to go up? Wages

I just cancelled my Netflix that I had for like 10 years. Total shit nothing to watch.

Now there’s a million services, everything is plus. Paramount+, Disney+, Nutsack+

Even if I wanted to pay for all that shit, everyone has their own shitty app I have to install and configure and have a login and fuck you.

It’s just easier for me to torrent what I want.

Services get worse so piracy gets more popular.

hopefully this is just a ‘blip’ and rates of theft begin to fall again as the economy recovers.

If not, we can expect to see legal channels raising their prices again to cover the losses caused by piracy.

This is a crazy thing to write. Every streaming service already has their prices set at whatever they think will maximize profit. If they raise prices in response to piracy, they'll push even more people away.

If anything, piracy will serve as competition, and it will cause the streaming services to lower prices.

It's tot BUY SOME SHIT! ally nothi BUY SOME SHIT! ng to do BUY SOME SHIT! with th BUY SOME SHIT! ere be BUY SOME SHIT! ing way to BUY SOME SHIT! o many a BUY SOME SHIT! ds to ma BUY SOME SHIT! ke stuff wa BUY SOME SHIT! tc BUY SOME SHIT! ha BUY SOME SHIT! bl BUY SOME SHIT! e.

It's not just streaming services that have turned to shit. Society as a whole has been enshittified because shareholders and directors are chasing the dollar.

Reddit started charging out of their butt for API access, and had killed off 95% of third party apps in the process.

YouTube is downright unusable without a Premium subscription or uBlock Origin. Every content creator meanwhile risks demonetization if their videos are too kid-friendly or too inappropriate, and now have to fill half their videos with endorsements for shitty mobile games like Raid: Shadow Legends if they want to break even.

Porn sites are now astroturfed by e-girls shilling their $20/month OnlyFans pages.

Online dating apps are now a carbon copy of one another, are owned by an oligopoly of big corporations and charge you the same price of four WoW subscriptions for basic features like unlimited swipes, seeing who liked you, etc.

Even real life sucks now. Enjoy paying 70% of your monthly income to pay off some filthy rich landlord's mortgage while the rich continue to snap up properties, all while the wealthy continue to brainwash sheep into voting against their best interests.

Is a lobotomy needed to become a lobbyist?

1.) Article claims w/o any kind of source/data, that people cannot afford subscriptions 2.) Article warns that the big services have to raise their prices soon, because of losses made by piracy, which according to 1.) is caused by people not having enough money for the subscriptions

The article doesn't mention the shareholders, which get billions of wins by milking the subscribers stupid enough to sign up for the bullshit. ... oh, but the article mentions the poor artists/working people, which loose money because of online piracy. I almost forgot about the recent strikes, because the people actually producing the content don't get shit from the companies/shareholders.

Seriously, I'll cancel my last subscription right now, because I am feed up giving my money to shareholders, companies and lobbies who buy politicians and laws.

It's like no longer having one cheap and convinient way of seeing content makes people rather pirate things than paying 7 different platforms each one more expensive than the next and all of them trying to mess with you and your wallet in new and unexpected ways.

Streaming services are becoming increasingly fragmented, prices are increasing admist an inflationary environment, their service sucks.

But hey, online piracy is increasing, what a surprise!

The convenience of streaming services disappeared, this is just a natural consequence.

Nice

Can I get a 🧲 in the comments

Hmm, wonder why. Couldn't be price increases on everything in existence.

This is what happens when you increase pricing, add advertising on top of increased pricing, remove your content from competitors and create your own additional platform, all while decreasing the quality and amount of content.

Often, piracy genuinely gives you a superior experience to the regular paid method. Lots of big service providers have been fucking us over in the past few years as well. So it's no surprise.

Glory to the piracy community!

Piracy is a service problem.

What service is $SHOW on? Doesn't matter, it's already in your favorite piracy site.

The cost of rent/mortgages is going up, the cost of power is now higher than ever, and the cost of essentials (such as food and medication) is nearly double.

People are ditching streaming services because they can no longer afford them, and with price increases there it only makes things worse.

Piracy is the natural fallback, especially in a market where ownership has degenerated into rental. At this point, streaming might follow cable as folks lose access and realise the folly of rental over ownership. Piracy offers a superior service with a superior experience, and the rhetoric of "tHinK oF THe cREatIVes" is wearing thin in the public eye.

• Need a subscription to +5 services to see all the content & shows.
• Ads being forced into paid services.
• Unfinished AAA games now cost +$70 USD.
• All games now have battlepasses and FOMO.

All I need is one VPN subscription.

There are two main problems with digital piracy. First, it robs the creator of their income. It’s not just big companies who suffer – the people working behind the scenes lose out too.

No, robbery is theft under the threat of violence. Theft requires an intent to deprive the owner of their possession. Copyright infringement is not theft.

Businesses do not have a right to peoples' money.

Second, piracy is illegal. Penalties for stealing digital content vary from country to country, but they can be quite harsh. In the UK, digital pirates face up to five years in prison and a £5000 GBP fine (~$6000)

Criminal copyright infringement might attract prison time, but that has a fairly high bar, and is typically focused on profiting from piracy. Most copyright infringement is not a crime, but a civil offense - and it's only because of extensive lobbying by greedy businesses that crimes have been established on the books.

Outside of the US, copyright infringement can only attract actual damages, ie the proveable loss in income. Given that you can't easily prove that someone would've paid for the things they pirate, outside of the US there never really have been big cases of people downloading things being charged and facing significant fines.

What has changed?

The EUIPO speculates that financial pressures, like inflation, means that people have less money to spend on entertainment. This can be seen in the way that fewer people are signing up for Netflix or Amazon Prime – and some are even cancelling their subscriptions altogether.

The EUIPO suggests that rather than stop watching digital content online, these people are now turning to illegal sources to access the TV shows they watch. And that is why piracy rates are on the up.

Of course, it has nothing to do with the quality of these services going down as their prices go up...

I mean, if people can't afford to get the content they want, and you make shitty products with limited content, then piracy is the only way to get some of the content. So why not just get all of it that way, especially since the services are more user unfriendly than pirating is inconvenient.