Piracy Is Back: Piracy Statistics for 2023

> For years, consumers griped about cable bundling and having to pay high prices for hundreds of channels they never watched in order to get the handful they enjoyed. Despite the growing availability of legal streaming options since then, piracy statistics show that infringement has remained a real concern.

That's the thing isn't it? It was convenient when streaming first came on the scene. Everything in one place. "I'll gladly pay for the convenience". After roughly a decade it's approaching the state where it's as fractured as before, but now you pay a lot more - all services combined. So I'm not surprised it's growing again.

To quote Gabe Newell:

> "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

> Digital video piracy is costing the US economy between $29.2 and $71 billion each year.

...

> This number surely affects the US economy in terms of lost movie industry revenue as well as lost jobs and tax revenue.

So no facts to back this up that I saw. Some amount of piracy is uncountable because the user never would have bought the media anyway.

It's always funny for me how the lost profits they calculate are inflated as hell.

Here for example, they state that the US economy lost 29B$ due to piracy. In majority of the cases people who downloaded some of these shows/music would never buy all of these at full price.

I personally subscribe to 3-5 streaming services and still if I'm looking for something classic (e.g. 1995 Heat) it always turns out to be either unavailable in my region or only provided on some niche platform I've never heard of. If you're just watching what's hot right now then everything works fine, but any other case you're in trouble and have to dig through the internet just like in the old days of pirate bay.

Looks like all those interest rate hikes are working after all. Just not in a way that pleases everyone.