Impoverished Streaming Services Are Driving Viewers Back to Piracy (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0178677708
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/14/2158204/impoverished-streaming-services-are-driving-viewers-back-to-piracy
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/14/cant-pay-wont-pay-impoverished-streaming-services-are-driving-viewers-back-to-piracy
> According to London-based piracy monitoring and content-protection firm MUSO, unlicensed streaming is the predominant source of TV and film piracy, [2]accounting for 96% in 2023 (PDF). Piracy reached a low in 2020, with [3]130bn website visits . But by 2024 that number had [4]risen to 216bn (PDF). In Sweden, [5]25% of people surveyed (PDF) reported pirating in 2024, a trend mostly driven by those aged 15 to 24. Piracy is back, just sailing under a different flag.
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> "Piracy is not a pricing issue," Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve, the company behind the world's largest PC gaming platform, Steam, observed in 2011. "It's a service issue." Today, the crisis in streaming makes this clearer than ever. With titles scattered, prices on the rise, and bitrates throttled depending on your browser, it is little wonder some viewers are raising the jolly roger again. Studios carve out fiefdoms, build walls and levy tolls for those who wish to visit. The result is artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance.
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> Whether piracy today is rebellion or resignation is almost irrelevant; the sails are hoisted either way. As the streaming landscape fractures into feudal territories, more viewers are turning to the high seas. The Medici understood the value linked to access. [The 2016 historical drama series tells of the rise of the powerful Florentine banking dynasty, and with it, the story of the Renaissance.] A client could travel from Rome to London and still draw on their credit, thanks to a network built on trust and interoperability. If today's studios want to survive the storm, they may need to rediscover that truth.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/14/cant-pay-wont-pay-impoverished-streaming-services-are-driving-viewers-back-to-piracy
[2] https://6347345.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6347345/2023%20Piracy%20by%20Industry%20Data%20Review-Final.pdf?utm_campaign=PBI%202023%20Report&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=293335558&utm_content=293335558&utm_source=hs_automation
[3] https://www.muso.com/magazine/piracy-in-2020-a-snapshot-view?utm_source=awin&aw_affid=78888&awc=102435_1755208529_86f31618f39e52d1dd0d14798f8c2223
[4] https://www.muso.com/hubfs/MUSO%202024%20Piracy%20Trends%20and%20Insights.pdf?utm_campaign=14558771-PBI%202024%20Report&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--MxOOHl79OsqQo6ki3Gf5COqdPi0yBUfhx-44mumXNkbtAcNdUjuVEM9ExygGjXWtC96dErUITjwbeR1rwzPTzX320sg&_hsmi=365727189&utm_content=365727189&utm_source=hs_automation&utm_source=awin&aw_affid=78888&awc=102435_1755208542_4ee7f9515c74ec34c29a9f71a1d77c3f
[5] https://ttvk.fi/assets/uploads/2023/05/mediavision-nordic-piracy-2023-press-fi.pdf
Look into the mirror (Score:1)
The platforms/studios always blame their tanking profits on piracy. It's always been their favourite scapegoat. Meanwhile, the studios refuse to accept their own failures - repetitive, boring content, reheating the same title over and over again, Star Wars 50, Mission Impossible 20; all of it completely rotten with an offensive amount of political correctness, and they wonder why people are no longer interested and no longer want to pay?
Get a mirror, spend a healthy amount of time looking into it, and accep
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The Bollywood(Indian) movies are doing quite well. I'm pretty sure it's not because they make more on tickets, but because they spend a lot less to produce them. Likewise, the Nollywood (Nigerian) movies seem to be doing okay, despite massive piracy. But yeah, when you spend $100 million to produce something, it had better be a smash hit!
Even more expensive (Score:2)
Looking real quick, $100M is the cost between making and marketing for average mainstream major studio (IE theater release) pictures. Regular movies.
Would be blockbusters? They're over half a billion these days.
And movie makers are consolidating their eggs - fewer mid-budget films and more attempts at blockbusters.
Which makes things more difficult as you used to have a section of people that went to "most" movies, and with fewer movies released, that means less money out of them.
Pirates offer a better product (Score:5, Informative)
I can download the content for offline viewing and archive it for life.
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> Does that apply to software, too? All programmers should work for free and nobody should get paid?
AI will replace programmers, so that is moot.
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What makes you think AI won't replace entire film staff? It's certainly cheaper than actors. (Shout out to my favorite Black Mirror episode "Joan Is Awful".)
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In the past you paid for a piece of software and it worked forever. Then the suits and MBA types realized they could squeeze everyone by renting software perpetually. Oh I can "buy" a digital copy of a movie on Amazon but they can revoke that purchase at any time.
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While I have zero interest in archiving anything, I do have an interest in downloading something to my device. This is something I can no longer do with Netflix since they got rid of that option on their windows app. Now it doesn't matter if I am registered for their streaming service, I'm forced to pirate their material anyway if I want to take a flight or something like that.
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You are not forced to pirate. You CHOOSE to pirate.
You could also CHOOSE to just not watch. Put down your addiction to video media and find something else to do for those few hours on a plane AND not satisfied with what they offer you to watch.
Personally? I just bring a book. Works out pretty well.
People still watch TV? (Score:2)
Honestly, I'm legitimately surprised that there is enough of a market for TV to support an industry.
Not just with the enshitification and commercial operators trying to wring viewers for every penny they have; and not even for myself there hasn't been a single compelling reason to even bother with an online subscription, let alone something like a TV license — it's just bad value. I can get more entertainment value per hour from a half-arsed £5 game from Steam or GOG than TV could ever hope to m
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> Honestly, I'm legitimately surprised that there is enough of a market for TV to support an industry.
There kind of isn't. The studios (Note studio != streaming platform, its a venn diagram with a crossover, but its not a circle) are bleeding out. I know a fair few people who work as crew on film and tv work and its pretty brutal out there. Covid killed off a lot of the theatres and theatre attendance, and the streaming platforms tend to offer pretty shitty deals to the studios and never pay "points" (royalti
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Blame all the people who were not satisfied with the cable tv package model and demanded ala carte - only paying for the services you want.
Well, you got it!! Now there are umteen services and you can pay for each and every one of them individually. Congratulations.
Studio Stupidity (Score:5, Interesting)
Netflix was the herald for diminishing piracy. It provided a good service at a good price, making it more convenient than piracy. Then studios decided that Netflix was doing too much to curb piracy, and made a conscious, concerted effort to promote piracy by balkanizing streaming and raising prices beyond reason.
Congratulations, studios. You have succeeded in once again making piracy more convenient than legal streaming.
Not that Netflix is without blame. Regular price increases to pay for really bad executive decision-making also played a role. Gabe was partially wrong about piracy not being a price issue. There is a balance between the service and the price of that service. If the service (even a good one) is priced too high, piracy is the inevitable result. A poor service that is overpriced will actively promote piracy.
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Netflix was good when it had a very broad DVD library. That went away, in part because of the economic of physical media, but also because of the control studios have over streaming content. Eventually, those DVDs are going to be damaged*. And the studios won't press any more. Streaming gives the studios the control of what appears, or does not appear before viewers eyes. Eyeball time is limited (as old school TV networks knew) and the game is to capture as much of it as possible for your new content, denyi
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> Netflix was good when it had a very broad DVD library.
One big advantage for me was the back catalog of shows like Black Adder, Allo Allo, etc. that simply were not available on streaming and buying them was cost prohibitive. Rentals made it possible to watch them.
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> If the service (even a good one) is priced too high, piracy is the inevitable result.
If a service is too expensive for what it offers, too little value, then I'd argue it's no longer a good service. Other than that I'm in complete agreement.
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Not just. Netflix's own content is also more limited. For example they no longer let you download their content for offline viewing on the windows app giving a nice middle finger to anyone who regularly travels by plane.
Anyway the pirate bay had no such problem.
Lots of stupidity (Score:2)
I used to have a netflix account. Suppose I still probably have a logon.
Anyways, I have to agree about the stupidity. I used to have an account with them, including DVD rental when it was offered, loved it.
My active account, minus suspensions for deployments overseas, lasted through the ending of the DVD section. It lasted through the loss of the large part of their catalog, don't remember what company the deal giving them that huge catalog was with that expired.
Still, I kept it going because it could at
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it's a choice
If you want to call piracy unethical, then say so directly. But charging beyond someoneâ(TM)s willingness or ability to payâ"whether in money, in mandatory ads, or in wasted timeâ"is still pricing people out. If the price is higher than what I can afford, there was never a sale to lose in the first place, so my choice isnâ(TM)t taking anything from the company and therefore not unethical.
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People justify their actions any number of ways. Even murderers.
Music v TV (Score:2)
The issue is multiple monopolies IMO. In music, you have multiple services all offering mostly the same content. You can pick your provider based on cost, or whatever other metric you decide upon. TV however is a minefield. Many services offering different content on each platform. If you want to watch all of the content, you have to subscribe to all of the providers. As a parent of children 9 years apart, it's a nightmare. The kids want to watch different things, on different platforms, each requiring a s
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Or you can do what we do. Pick 2-3 services to subscribe to, and if something isn't available on them, you just don't watch that stuff. Works great, and no piracy required.
FWIW, we currently subscribe to:
Apple TV+
Amazon Prime Video
Paramount+
Netflix
Not impoverished (Score:2)
The streaming platforms aren't broke, they're just insufferably greedy. Until they learn that people won't pay a ransom for fragmented libraries and ads disguised as "value," black flags will keep flying high. Enshittification breeds piracy, then "innovation" surfaces to clean up the mess. The innovation that brings back the market comes in the form of a new company in most cases, as the old company fails to adapt. Then we repeat the same cycle. Paying for three different streaming services and juggling who
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Is it the streaming services or the studios that are greedy?
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Bothum, but especially the publishers. Netflix was doing okay for a long time there, I'll admit that. In fact they may never have really gotten greedy, but I wasn't really talking about Nexflix when I referred to greedy streaming services
Won't somebody think of the shareholders? (Score:2)
"Impoverished Streaming Services"
Oh please. Most of y'all making stupidly obscene profits with a declining quality of service. No wonder people are hoisting the jolly roger once more.
Also the collapsing economy (Score:2)
You basically need an internet connection now to be a functioning adult. And if you have kids in school you absolutely have to have internet and it needs to be fast because half their homework is going to be delivered over the internet.
So when it's time to cut back because the economy is collapsing thanks to absolutely terrible public policy and a big automation push the first thing you do is cut your streaming services and switch to the high seas.
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We have a kid in school. None of his homework is delivered over the internet.
Duh! Who didn't see that coming! (Score:1)
Streaming was cheap, and safer than screwing around download videos online. Streaming companies got GREEDY, thinking their market was saturated. CEO's & stockholder wanted even MORE money, cutting off sharing logons. Now, streamers are going back to piracy! Oh well, they did it to themselves!
Of course it is a pricing issue (Score:2)
If the content was ad-free and free, there would be no piracy.
As it stands, if you want to see one movie a week from different studios, you may have to subscribe to many different services
No different than the old cable bundles. Renting physical media was always more competitive, as the distributor always had the option to buy the discs at retail prices if they couldn't reach an agreement with a studio to get volume discounts.
The costs for streaming rentals should be much lower than retail stores or disc/ta
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> If the content was ad-free and free, there would be no piracy.
If the content was ad-free, reasonably priced and convenient there would be minimal piracy. We actually had that for a little while.
I don't mind paying (Score:2)
But I'm not paying multiple providers, I'm not paying to watch ads at ANY price, and I'm not paying for providers to raise the temp of the water every year. I'm not pirating either, I'm just not watching.
Scrambling for Profit (Score:2)
The streaming services are not struggling to provide value for viewers, they are scrambling for more profit. The catalog of available content is degrading and shrinking. Everything is interrupted every few minutes by an irritating intrusive advert. It's no surprise that people are deciding that piracy is more appealing.
FTFY (Score:2)
> Once seen as nearly dead, piracy has resurged through illicit streaming platforms as the fractured, ad-laden streaming market struggles to deliver convenience and value.
...as the fractured, ad-laden streaming market struggles to deliver profits and customer lock-in regardless of the toll on convenience and value.
HOW ABOUT LETTING ME VIEW OFFLINE (Score:2)
Enshittification was rife at Netflix when I went to prepare for an international flight and realised that the Netflix "app" no longer allows you to download movies onto your device. I say "app" because they also got rid of their windows app in favour of what is now nothing more than a shitty wrapper for a web interface, that's probably why the download option is gone, but frankly I don't give a shit about their technical reasons.
Anyway I pirated a whole lot of shows I already pay to stream as a result. Fuck
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I downloaded a bunch of content from prime video on my vr headset for my last international flight. Coupled with noise canceling headphones, it was great.
An insoluble problem (Score:3)
The problem is that for the studios behind the streaming services, the money isn't in the media itself. It's all in the subscription fees and advertising revenue and the ability to collect and mine data about the viewers. None of those things are available unless the viewers go to the studio's streaming service. Ironically, the things that would stop piracy in it's tracks are the very things the studios and streaming services can't afford to do because it'd bankrupt them.
For purely academic purposes (Score:2)
... how do people pirate these days? Is Pirate Bay still a thing? Usenet?
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I've always found pirating to be more hassle than it's worth.
If I want to watch a movie bad enough, I'll just pay the $5 for it. If it is more than that, I'll find another movie that IS $5 or less to watch. There are many available.
The key to success here is being willing to just not watch something and move on to something else.
yes... (Score:2)
"back" to piracy
Re:yes... (Score:4, Insightful)
I pirate like a mofo with tons of storage. I have a 2U 12 bay NAS with 20TB in them, and I have a content library to make Netflix blush. At one point I had a blu-ray ripper that was automated with a Mac Mini and headless, and I had a shell script add all the meta data, cover art, and subtitles. The best part? No commercials. I stop paying for services once they have commercials, and I havent had Cable TV in 10 years. I even let my friends steam from my NAS over VPN. I have a little two-port Wifi Router with an Apple TV on the top that I take when I travel. Join it to the hotel wifi, plug in the HDMI, and I am home. Also gives me my own SSID which is also tunneled. I cant tell you how annoying Spotify is in other regions.
The sad part is? I have a decent net worth, and I would be more than happy to fork over $150, maybe even $200 for a video-library like Spotify has done for music, IF it were commercial free, and globally accessible. Just let me pay for a second simultaneous stream. But it would have to be comprehensive, with all the old titles. You cant stream "The Godfather", or "Scarface" or "The Wizard of Oz". Even the freaking "Dambusters" from the 1950s is not available. Why? Apple needs to do this. They need to make their iTunes Video library streamable on subscription. I would stop pirating, but alas.
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> I pirate like a mofo with tons of storage. I have a 2U 12 bay NAS with 20TB in them, and I have a content library to make Netflix blush. At one point I had a blu-ray ripper that was automated with a Mac Mini and headless, and I had a shell script add all the meta data, cover art, and subtitles. The best part? No commercials. I stop paying for services once they have commercials, and I havent had Cable TV in 10 years. I even let my friends steam from my NAS over VPN. I have a little two-port Wifi Router with an Apple TV on the top that I take when I travel. Join it to the hotel wifi, plug in the HDMI, and I am home. Also gives me my own SSID which is also tunneled. I cant tell you how annoying Spotify is in other regions. The sad part is? I have a decent net worth, and I would be more than happy to fork over $150, maybe even $200 for a video-library like Spotify has done for music, IF it were commercial free, and globally accessible. Just let me pay for a second simultaneous stream. But it would have to be comprehensive, with all the old titles. You cant stream "The Godfather", or "Scarface" or "The Wizard of Oz". Even the freaking "Dambusters" from the 1950s is not available. Why? Apple needs to do this. They need to make their iTunes Video library streamable on subscription. I would stop pirating, but alas.
Commercials have a hidden cost consumers don't think about. If you've got a choice between a service's pricing plan with commercials and a plan without, you can count on that you're statistically likely to spend more than that difference on other crap . It's manipulative and the best way to deal with advertisement is to do whatever you have to to not expose yourself to it in the first place.
The other problem for me is that there are multiple services, each of which is a data breach waiting to happen. I
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Yes on the commercials. On broadcast TV I get it, but I am paying for a service, I don't want to be the product (exactly to your point). It just needs to be comprehensive like Spotify where it has almost everything ever put to video.
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Well I don't pirate -- although I'm pretty sure that what I do will likely be declared illegal soon because the movie and music studios will claim I'm depriving them of revenues.
When DVD rental businesses started shutting down a few years back I bought as many disks as I could find. That's given me probably over 1,000 movies on physical media. I'm slowly ripping all these to a NAS and when that's done I'll be set for life. At my age I can't remember much about a movie within a year or two of watching it
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Ripping is just as illegal, sorry to tell you. Because you aren't allowed to break the encryption code that only the dvd player is supposed to know.