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Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#51

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

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Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#52
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming also had no ads which is now gated behind even more pricey plans.

Low price and no ads were two of the main selling points to ditch cable (along with stream whenever you want). We reached the point were price is almost as high as cable was (with the standard 4-5 subscriptions), and we have ads. This is not a surprise to most though, the question has always been when would it happen.

We are no longer under zero interest rates. Things have to actually be profitable.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#54
Me&family spent like €5k on Apple devices (incl. smart speakers), then another €20+/mo on various subscriptions such as Apple Music. So I play through AirPods from a Mac using Music.app and from Apple's catalogue... the library metadata is a mess, there's entire (well-known) bands whose many albums are not available, Siri keeps mis-interpreting my requests (plays a song that's similarly named by an artist I never heard of even though I used the exact name of an album I listened to dozens of times last year alone), the "smart" playlist seems to play the same 50 songs on shuffle+repeat...

...and now also the playback in Music.app occasionally stutters, on an M1 Mac, with an otherwise idle system. So let's raise the subscription prices.

In my opinions, all of these companies got waaay too comfortable taking our subscription money.

Don't worry, I'll figure out a different way to get these €16.99/mo into the starving artists' hands, plenty of buskers around here.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#55

Music piracy used to be a big problem. I am not sure if it still is or not? Anyway, it feels like music piracy isn't close to what it was at its peak and that they figured out how to make it work. Is there a reason that video is so much different?

Music rights management is independant of production and distribution. This means that Spotify, Apple Music and any other music services are able to negotiate rights to large libraries of music quite easily.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#56
post #52
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low price and no ads were two of the main selling points to ditch cable (along with stream whenever you want). We reached the point were price is almost as high as cable was (with the standard 4-5 subscriptions), and we have ads. This is not a surprise to most though, the question has always been when would it happen.

We are no longer under zero interest rates. Things have to actually be profitable.

Isn't online streaming profitable? Does it absolutely need ads and granular channel subscriptions to be profitable?

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#57

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

Kick.com is banned in Greece as of June. It has some betting streams, not sure if someone bets on the platform, but it got banned anyway for illegal gambling. I don't care personally, just to put it out there.

P2P download of files did fall a lot in the last decade, i think a second wave is coming.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#58

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

yep, as someone who stopped pirating when netflix started streaming, I'm back to pirating and I won't apologize for it.

there are shows for which I cannot even purchase them, which I would be willing to do. You want to lock me into a subscription? jokes on you.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#59

Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…

Steam's Gabe Newell said it best: Piracy is an issue of service, not price. I went from full pirate (we didn't even pay for cable, it 'just worked' -- the beauty of analog) to nearly full streamer. The stuff I kept pirating wasn't available on stream. Then Disney started to take off their stuff from Netflix. HBO suddenly quit in The Netherlands, or I had to combine it with KPN or was it Ziggo (what if you can't have DSL or cable? And, what if you got better; fiber?). I'm still paying for like 6 services, but not forever. Because my children do not know or remember on which service they saw something. Heck, often they can't even remember the name. Or they know the name in our own language and the search doesn't work. And as cherry on top, Dutch public broadcasting organisation (NPO) updated their app which was a step back as it removed a lot of features, such as children profiles, and the navigation of the new UI is atrocious. Series paid for with public money suddenly got removed. I am done with this shit. I am. What I will do is download all my children's favorite series, and put them in Jellyfin. Then every month we pick a different service, and they can watch that, too. I will tell them it is beyond my control (a white lie).

Also the quality of the streams is laughable. Only Apple bring something which deserves the mention 4k (and Apple are part of the problem).

And a piracy setup is very easy. I will get fiber soon. I have a VPN with a container to run BitTorrent on. I have Usenet servers. I have a couple of lifetime ???znab accounts. All cheap.

I wrote this post angrily in less than 10 min, I probably forgot to mention other reasons on top of this all. Yeah, the fuzzy feelings I got for not pirating. I admit, I will miss those.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#60

The streaming space desperately needs consolidation right now. Every rights holder having their own service has killed a lot of the convenience because you'll now need several different services to go through an entire TV show, for instance. And also because all services other than maybe Netflix have garbage software for your various devices. Because every service also has to support 8 different platforms. Video play…

If Netflix had seen themselves strictly as a distribution service, they might have taken an open-to-all, low-margin, high-volume approach, which had a chance to become ubiquitous and unassailable. Basically, they could have been the Cable-over-IP provider for everyone. But it's a lot harder to get there, from here.
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