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I don't know. After the recent Sony debacle[1], I wouldn't blame anyone who goes out and downloads the content that was removed from their libraries. You already paid for it, after all.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/playstation-is-erasi...
Is it not? What about when a company like Sony pulls millions of purchased digital content without a refund?
What about when discovery pulls a whole lot of content so they can write it off?
What about when companies push for digital only releases without a way to physically own the content?
No, piracy isn't just ethical, it is the only way one can ensure they actually own what they buy.
Is this really surprising? When it was just Netflix charging a few dollars a month for loads of content, it was great. It was easier than safer than pirating, and people turned to it in droves. Now content is spread over dozens of streaming services, with price rises happening annually and cost of living biting hard for the average person. Most of the time, you only want a handful of shows from a given service anyway…
This is a meme that won't die. This is simply false. Real wages, real per capita GDP, real median income et. al. are all higher now than before covid. There was a 13 month burst of inflation (which correlated almost perfectly with wage growth, FWIW), and it seems like everyone lost their minds.
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…
I can also return it if I end up not lilinkg it, not like with a physical copy.
> More than 70,000 jobs per year in the US alone are lost because of the lost revenues that came from music piracy. > (RIAA) > Music industry piracy statistics highlight the costs of music piracy and the immense consequences on the American economy. Music theft costs American workers significant losses in jobs and earnings as well as costing the US government substantial lost tax revenues.
I get all the rest, and I'm at a point in my life where I pay for my media, and I don't believe in any philosophical or moral justification for piracy (nor do I condemn it - to each their own but don't be a hypocrite about what you're doing).
But these kinds of reports always lose me when they tack on these huge numbers of job and revenue losses.
The majority of people who pirate wouldn't spend the money if they couldn't pirate. So these are totally fake numbers.
> 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. "…
> It’s convenient, it’s not that expensive, and the selection is just good enough.
Welp, netflix (and others) are 3 for 3 on eroding those advantages.
"Digital video piracy is costing the US economy between $29.2 and $71 billion each year." (What an absolutely huge margin) and "Annual global revenue losses from digital piracy are between $40 and $97.1 billion in the movie industry."
As if all these people who consume this pirate content would be purchasing it if the free alternative wasn't available to them. It's a very out of touch assumption to be making I think.
I am fed up of wanting to watch something and needing to figure out which platform to watch it in. I'm even more fed up when stuff is region locked. What makes things worse are device limits. I have nearly a dozen devices at home and would like to watch on whatever device I'm currently using. Just because you're concerned about people sharing passwords, you should not limit me to using your app on one or two devices. It's a broken system.
Streaming is... Horrible. The experience of having to wait a year for a season of a show when US has it on day one is horrible.
And stuff which is in copyright limbo? Being unable to watch older cartoons because it's politically incorrect or because it's inappropriate for today's audiences is downright demeaning. I'd like to laugh at a Tom and Jerry bit without worrying about 2023's current comedy palette.
Spotify also ruined my music tastes by randomly polluting my playlists with stuff it thinks I should listen to because other people around me do. I do not. I'd rather listen to offline music that I've downloaded and made into manual playlists. I used to scrobble my music so I'd get recommendations. Right now, I just want to listen to a small subset of music I loved 10 years ago. Nothing new excites me.
Piracy isn't just about free stuff. It's about being able to use something freely. I'm still paying for these platforms, but I don't stream anything off them anymore. My parents use my accounts instead. I'm going to use Plex with my NAS so I can stream anything I want into my devices.