It sure is fascinating how surges in the usage of pirate platforms tend to coincide with eras of worsening value proposition in entertainment. We should really get some top notch analysts on this to get an explanation.
If you follow some of the links to pirate sites in the article you’ll get redirected to some anti-piracy site which amongst other things tells you this:
Now only 1400$ a month to watch any show at 480p! Upgrade now to 2100$ per month for the high resolution videos? Can’t afford it? Just get another job you lazy hobo!
Or, fill your phones, laptop and streaming devices with 1000 of our proprietary apps! Your personal information and viewing habits get sent 1000 ways from Sunday thanks to all the Privacy Policies you agreed to~
The problem isn’t the number of providers, the problem is exclusive licensing deals.
If it was like music, then (theoretically), more choice is better. AFAIK all the platforms have pretty much all the music, so there is some choice available.
With TV and film, it’s so fractured that it’s literally easier to just pirate things, even for shows I (potentially) have ad-free paid access to already. With Stremio + Torrentio + a Debrid service, I just launch one app and everything’s available in seconds. With paid services, I need to search Netflix, then Prime, then CBC Gem, by which point I’d already be watching.
Plus, torrentio lets me pick the video quality I want, so I can force 4K H265 on my big screen for films or just pop on a 720p H264 on my small underpowered laptop (that can’t decode H265 fast enough for smooth playback).
It’s not even about price, it’s just a better experience to pirate. And that’s a Big Problem for the industry.
I don’t expect it to be there. It just is. I can’t go about my day without them shoving ads about it in my face.
I expect the lot of them to get their own damn jobs making food and shit that we actually need so I don’t have to work all the damn time just to not afford being able to do my own art.
People also should be able to pay the artist directly and not some billion dollar company who continue to try to squeeze the artists and limit creativeness all in servitude to the almighty dollar (or any other currency)
Okay so what I'm hearing is you want companies to make investments in artists directly - so a form of profit sharing essentially. Why would a company invest in artists if artists get all of the profits when its successful and the company loses all of the capital if it fails? Why would any business want to partake in a system like that?
No, fuck the middle man, we don’t need billion dollar conglomerates to distribute our media. The people have the tools and connection to create and share without these old business models trying to keep us in the 19th century as wage slaves, happy for the peanuts that their monopolies allow us to have.
I pirate things, and I also pay artists directly for their work when I can. Companies like Netflix manipulate the data and the market to ensure they are making the most profit possible. That is their entire goal as businesses. This exploitation should be separate from art altogether.
To be fair, the billion dollar conglomerates are the ones that fund the creation of the media. Without those billions, the media just doesn't get made.
They spend the majority of those billions on marketing, higher tier salaries, a very small portion goes to the artists. Without those billions media would still get made because there is always demand for entertainment and art.
Imagine paying $1 to each name that appears in the credits of a movie or tv show, which would be paying the artists directly for their work. It's not feasible, but that's what I read when folks toss out paying the artist directly.
Let’s assume that this hypothetical movie had 2,000 people working on it, which isn’t a crazy number to assume. You think people should pay $2,000 to watch a movie?
But if we assume a movie that made a billion dollars, and assume a high ticket price like $20, then that’s 50 million tickets sold. That math only checks out if each person paid $0.01 per worker. If we cut out useless executives, that number goes way the fuck down. So yes, let’s pay artists directly, and we’ll save money at the same time. Even if it were a tenth of a penny to each credit per viewer, that’s $50k on average, which is higher than the actual average wage for crew.. I know actors and directors make more, but that’s why I’m not going so far as to say we should only pay $2 for a ticket.
Based on actual ticket prices, from producers that expect to triple their investment I guess. Us idiots are fantasizing about ~10% while they’re hitting triple digit percentages.
Maybe start at a much lower number. If the movie is popular, then millions of people will watch it. Pay each person who worked on the film a penny per view. If the movie gets viewed by 10 million people in the movie theater, each person who worked on the movie gets paid $100,000. If the movie was made by 2000 people (a bit big for most films crews) then each viewer would have to pay $20 to see the movie, or roughly what a normal movie ticket costs anyway. The difference is the studio would make zero dollars and not have a marketing budget.
People need to expect to pay reasonable prices on a reasonable basis for art and entertainment, and pretending everyone should be cool with fifty different streaming services and never owning anything again is its own sort of immorality and lack of ethics.
I disagree about art. Art exists for art’s sake. It’s not a commercial product. I don’t have to pay to enjoy the Mona Lisa or the Bach. I might pay to enter a museum, or attend a performance, so I agree with you about entertainment, but art is different. Art enriches the world, improves life, expands understanding, and we should all of us pay for it with taxes. And we do!
I think your point about paying for museums touches on part of the issue.
It does cost to distribute art/entertainment. I have no problem paying for that.
It’s that over the years distributors have gotten greedy (ads on a paid service, like cable did? Fuck you), and are telling us “buying ain’t owning” by removing things we’ve paid for.
Art being for everyone, well, while I agree on an abstract level, there’s a whole discussion we could have about that, starting with the range of “art” that’s produced, from the mass-appeal art (so more base, simpler, becuae that has the broadest appeal), to the more niche.
At one time artists were supported by a patron (and now we have things like Patreon).
Then we have the players who get into the “art” business as an opportunity - consider things like the explosion of popular music in the 50’s (that sounded similar courtesy of things like Rockola) and today’s Autotuned music.
It’s a big bucket of questions, ideas and concerns, and while philosophical me agrees with the basic premise of the value of art, the realist recognizes that art has a tangible value too, or people wouldn’t be willing to pay for it.
It’s that over the years distributors have gotten greedy (ads on a paid service, like cable did? Fuck you), and are telling us “buying ain’t owning” by removing things we’ve paid for.
Not to mention they just eliminate shows and movies from their services without any regard to what the artist wants. I'm still mad about Final Space.
So then we don’t worry about people’s ability to engage in their communities through shared experiences and exposure to arts and culture, we just leave people out? Exclude them if they’re poor. I don’t think I care for that to be honest.
Most places will still have OTA broadcasts of content, at least from the major networks. That is still “free” but cable/digital TV prices are ridiculous.
Where I live there are no digital broadcast stations available so expensive subscription TV or piracy are the best options.
And art should be accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. There’s a reason that piracy almost died out completely and then came back with a vengeance. People don’t mind paying a reasonable price for art, the prices and accessibility of art has just become unfeasible.
I think most people would agree that artists should be fairly paid for their work. But when greedy, profiteering corporations are the ones commissioning and profiting from art, then IMO we have a moral duty to fuck with their exploitative business model.
It’s a tragedy of the commons - as an economics problem it matters, sure, but copyright is an artificial monopoly, not a human right. We could provide these more efficiently with public funding of the arts or crowdfunds, without the need to make up imaginary property with imaginary ethics.
But if you want to sign up for a bunch of subscriptions because some might trickle down to the writers, be my guest.
But we had a situation where consumers were happy and were paying for content, piracy dropped off, and it was insanely profitable for Netflix.
Then everyone got greedy and stuck their dicks in the pie and ruined it, and this is the backlash.
If you buy content digitally, it gets pulled from your library without your consent or recourse. If you steam you’re paying more and more for less.
What we had was good, now none of my friends talk about TV shows because it starts with “hey, did you watch X, it’s on paramount?” “No”, “oh, nevermind”.
Gabe said it best! “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
Honestly, this assumes that the content is even worth that. The older I get, the more conscious I am that my time left is constantly shrinking. Do I really wanna spend 3 hours watching a shitty movie? Do I really wanna spend 6-12 hours watching a shitty season of a shitty show? Nah, I’d rather enjoy an active activity than passively pass the time. I’ll pay a little for the little amount of content I care about at a time to be presented in a convenient way. I’m probably not gonna pirate until they make it impossible to cycle between services, and I’m sure that’s coming within a few years. Get ready for 2 year contracts for Netflix, $8/month (“for the first 6 months” in tiny print).
For now. My knees and back ache, I don’t understand a lot of new slang and memes, I have pairs of “good socks”, and it’ll all happen to you one day too.
Even that cost and arrs aren’t strictly necessary. For those who like to binge their shows, most of them get a “complete” version on most good torrent sites once they’re done releasing (let’s not get started on the cousin-fucking yeehaw lissencephalic level of thinking it takes to release streamed shows weekly). Download those, watch them, preserve what you think you’ll rewatch in the future then delete the rest. So long as your machine has a good few terrabytes it’ll last some time.
I’ve dropped something like 5 services in the last year and a half no the last year, due to the declining quality of their offerings, both in user interface, user experience, and content. EDIT: And price hikes!
In fact the easier option is anti-piracy technology. As shown by the continued investment in various DRM vendor offerings. Competing on service quality is very hard.
Though anymore I archive pretty much any article I share. I have a Macrodroid script to grab the link from my clipboard and send it to archive.ph and open it in a browser.
I’m currently setting up ArchiveBox for my own use too.
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