Fed up with increasing subscription prices, viewers embrace rogue streaming boxes.
  • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    361·
    5 hours ago

    As always piracy is a symptom not the problem. People pirate when a) they don’t have enough money or b) the experience for paying customers is significantly worse than for pirates, or c) the price of services far exceeds their perceived value. Piracy was down for a while because Netflix and Hulu were relatively cheap (or free), ad free, and the economy was doing OK so most people had a little disposable income.

    Now that we’re in a recession that’s starting to look like it might turn into a depression and Netflix and Hulu (and others) have cranked the prices of their services up and stuffed them full of ads, yeah I’m not in the least surprised to see piracy surging. Every time you turn around there’s another email from some service letting you know they’re raising prices another couple bucks a month, and a bunch of people cancel their subscriptions and start sailing the high seas.

    • -RJ-@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      20 minutes ago

      Or c) the money never makes it to the actual artists so why give the record label money they don’t deserve

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      19·
      4 hours ago

      I stopped pirating when we got a Netflix sub for reasonably cheap.

      I started pirating again when I realized we were subbed to six different platforms, paying over $1k a year for the content, and still couldn’t watch what we wanted sometimes. The fact that I had to jump through hoops to find the thing I wanted to watch was also quite infuriating.

    • DancingTable@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      2 hours ago

      This is it. I was sick of trying to figure out which streaming platform had the content I wanted. Now it’s all on Emby.

    • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      62·
      4 hours ago

      and D) I’m not going to give money to institutions like cable TV where a percentage of my money ends up with Fox News, or Paramount whose ownership is in bed with Trump, or Amazon and Bezos for obvious reasons. Go on down the line, fuck em all.

  • MattBlackAlien@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    4 hours ago

    “You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a baby. You wouldn’t shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn’t go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman’s grieving widow. And then steal it again! Downloading films is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.”