Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it weren't for software pirates, countless old pieces of software (esp. DOS-era games) would be forever lost now. Society owes software pirates a huge debt of gratitude for keeping historical digital data archived. However, I feel your perception of the piracy/p2p communities might be dated. I think they took a bit of a nosedive a while back when Netflix reigned supreme, at least for movies, but due to the fragmen…
>the streaming services there haven't made the huge mistakes the movie/TV services have I'm not sure it's so much mistakes of the streaming services as the fact that music has a near enough to universal for most people licensing scheme from a handful of major labels that the major services can offer a near-universal essentially interchangeable (other than UX and integration with other services) service to consumers.…
It is the mistakes they've made: you're specifying the exact mistake I'm referring to.
>Whereas the fragmented (and frequently changing) rights owners in the film/TV business have no equivalent. I'm honestly not sure of the impact on piracy though.
Well, to listen to all the music you want, you just need one subscription for $10/month or whatever it is. To watch the films and TV you want, you need 10 different subscriptions, and it adds up to a lot of money. Why would this not have an impact on piracy?
>and just ignore all the stuff we can't trivially watch.
Maybe you do, but I imagine a lot of people turn to the high seas when they really want to watch one thing, and it's only available on some service they're not subscribed to, when they're already subscribed to several other services.