Reminder:
If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing!
The problem I have with this is that there’s no definition of what “owning” means. Never have individuals bought a game and then owned all rights associated with it. It was always a license that included personal use and nothing much else.
However, due to how media distribution worked, this license was generally valid forever and could be transferred to another party, and these two factors - especially the first one - make a good point: why would I enter such a license if the other side can factually nullify it at any point, while I lose that option after a certain time?
Apart from that, media piracy was never stealing in the first place. It’s about unlicensed usage and distribution of media. And rightholders can’t be surprised if people don’t license it if the construct is so stacked to their disadvantage.
Oldie but goodie:
We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem, - Gabe Newell
He gets it. No wonder why I pay for every game I play, but I refuse to sign up to streaming services again.
If I can get better quality in almost every aspect for free, your service is really crappy.
I’m pretty sure it can be both. If there’s AmazingService that allows streaming everything there is on torrent and then some, but it costs thousands of dollars per month, no one would be able to afford it and it won’t have any meaningful impact on piracy.
But but but rational actors supply and demand something something invisible hand of the market.
Orthodox economics can’t be wrong. That’s why you have an orthodoxy, to make sure everybody knows it’s right! That’s how science works!
Why can’t it be both?
I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to pay a lot of money for a streaming service that guaranteed a good amount of shows I’d want to watch without ever taking any shows or features away
Sadly, no streaming service does this basic feature. It’s all enshitification and fragmentation of good shows across multiple services
Because it is. Who wants to pay $120 a month on streaming services you barely use?
Sadly I know some who spend $ on multiple services. I find that troubling.
If there was a paid service that let me stream shit with the same variety and ease as torrentio then I would pay for it in a heartbeat. But to get almost the same variety I would need to buy every streaming service and even if I did that it would be a pain in the ass to manage every streaming service. The media corps did this to themselves.
And you would still need to pay extra to watch the newest or older titles even if you subscribed to every service, and there are plenty of movies that just aren’t available regardless of which service you subscribe to.
It’s all enshittified.
If there was a paid service that allowed me to download a file instead of having to buy a Blu-ray and rip it myself or be DRM attached to Amazon or something, I’d buy my movies for the higher quality than whatever odd torrent I find. The movie industry needs to do what steam has done. Make it more convenient to do it legally and people that have money will pay instead of stealing.
The movie industry needs to do what steam has done. Make it more convenient to do it legally and people that have money will pay instead of stealing.
They had that. It was called Netflix. Then they got greedy and everyone decided to have their own Netflix. Now piracy has gone up.
Monopolies undermine their own products because of greed. Color me shocked.
This isn’t even like a personal opinion or a thought experiment. Pirating was huge, then Netflix popularized streaming and pirating went WAY down, and then the streaming experience went to shit and pirating went back up.
When streaming companies continue to give ads after you paid, raise prices, remove content, remove content from your “purchase library”, force you to arbitration when your spouse dies (Disney), and spy on your network or phone, ultimately having crappy ever changing EULAs, then piracy is the way to go
The world has left everything on the shelf in full public view and access for anyone to take. Everything is based on a system of trust where we willingly pay for things and take what’s on the shelf, knowing full well that we could just take the thing off the shelf and walk away without paying. We all trust one another to be fair and do the right thing … and for the most part, the majority of everyone agrees with that.
Unfortunately, some asshats decided that it was a good idea to make everything expensive or to nickel and dime everyone to death … most people especially young people just get so pissed off because they can afford fewer and fewer things that they decide that the system of trust is no longer working or worth it.
So they just take the things off the shelf and tell the asshats to go fuck themselves.
“afford fewer and fewer things” needs correction: most “things” are being turned into “services” so people end up owning nothing and being forced to overpay for “service” they never asked for
Seems a bit low lol
The other half needs a bit of education on the topic.
Fuck corporate parasites. Either provide the service or get fucked.
Instead of focusing on external threats and concerns, legal streaming platforms themselves could make the most progress by changing their pricing.
Among all self-proclaimed Norwegian pirates, the most common reasons to stop were more affordable legal streaming services (41%) and the availability of a broader range of content per service (35%).
It’s almost like people don’t like paying more and more for streaming services with less and less shows on them, when the pirates will offer you everything in one much smaller subscription (if not for free).
No. If I had money to spend on media, “affordable legal streaming services” would NOT stop me from pirating. Broad availability of DRMless media purchases would.
What’s that about organized crime? I have never heard of that before. Is it only a scare tactic or is it really something to be concerned about when sailing the 7 seas, other than the usual caution (uBlock, VPN, private browser tab)
ISIS run multiple pirate bay mirrors from their caves.
Why only half? Do the other half not have an opinion at all?
How about reading the article before commenting
