zlacker

>>ksec+(OP)
I know it's morally dubious, but I'm completely back in pirateland because of all the changes/price hikes/partitioning in the streaming space. My interests make it so I only watch 1-2 shows per platform so I'd be approaching ~100$/month.

And even if I was swimming in money, it's often easier to just download the shows I want and watch them on Plex/Jellyfin than trying to navigate the (often ad-riddled) interfaces of the various platforms and finding where the content I want is.

One example is Rick and Morty, it's made by Adult Swim, but they don't have a streaming service in Canada. It seems to be on Primevideo but under a different system than their regular content. The other way to watch it is to buy it from my cable provider (I don't have cable). So to watch a 20-minutes animated show I'd have to take a +40$ subscription.

>>belval+Qg
Morally, would it not be better to just rotate subscriptions? One month with Netflix, one month with Prime, one with Paramount etc? Or maybe rotate every quarter?

You could claim that by pirating you’re instead protesting about the fragmentation of the streaming landscape and are holding out for an everything-in-one-place service like Spotify/Apple Music but I’m not sure you’ll get far with it due to the nature of the movie industry.

Personally I think you’re probably better off with the rotation approach - after a few economic cycles, the streaming services that aren’t pulling in enough subscribers will end up getting bought by bigger competitors and we’ll probably end up with just a few big ones standing. I don’t think Apple or Prime are going anywhere because they‘re supported by other aspects of the company. Marvel, Star Wars and just general franchise fatigue is kicking in for Disney but they’re always going to have the kid stuff to fall back on so I think they’re safe as well. Which leaves Netflix, Paramount, HBO, Hulu etc scrapping each other for anyone without kids or who don’t mind the extra subscription.

>>rcarr+Yw
Morality gets grey with growing anti-consumer practices and shrinking regulation. Legally protected doesn't equate to moral. Sure it's good for the content creators to get paid, but by and large, they aren't the ones getting paid.

>>kmacdo+6G
How dare they spend money to create content and expect people to pay for it!

>>scarfa+SK
Oh, ho hum. Music piracy was rampant until iTunes and the iPod changed the game to the extent of forcing (alongside court orders) Napster to go legit. Two decades later, music streaming is ubiquitous, consumers are satisfied, and music piracy is a retro anachronism. This is just applying market pressure to bring about necessary product innovation through other means.

>>Apocry+aQ
So do you expect all movies to be available for 99 cents or to be available a la carte like Spotify?

Movies cost a lot more to produce than music. Besides, Spotify is losing money and even iTunes was never hugely profitable. It was primarily meant to sell iPods. The music distribution business is a horrible stand alone business

>>scarfa+MR
I'm sure that even as technology continues to innovate, and tech companies find all sorts of way to find innovative business models (though rising interest rates might end that renaissance of creative unit economics), they'll find a way to curb piracy by fixing the problem of too many streaming services, that they and the studios invented.

>>Apocry+gS
Yes, if only there were companies that aggregated all of the content that anyone wanted and charged more for it. I’m sure since everyone is getting the same content they could send it through a cable…

A money losing low margin business (Spotify) isn’t “innovative”

>>scarfa+uT
Yes, maybe eventually they will invent a cable company that carries the streaming service-specific offerings of the Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and Apple TV+ libraries.

I mean, that probably does exist, that's probably what Sling TV offers, people just opt to do something even simpler and less morally dubious than piracy: they share accounts with one another. That's been a common practice for over a decade now.

> A money losing low margin business (Spotify) isn’t “innovative”

And yet the iPod was. And without the iTunes Store, the iPod wouldn't have been the success that it was- it would have been dependent upon pirates.