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>>ksec+(OP)
Bold prediction: if ads on paid streaming services become the norm, there will be a renaissance of piracy because it will once again offer the superior user experience.

>>jupp0r+T5
How accessible is piracy for the average person? I’ve had people in my circle of friends and acquaintances ask me how to pirate media safely. They are broadly aware that music and movies can be pirated, but they typically just visit some sketchy website that plays the content in the browser or they do not attempt to pirate anything because they are afraid of getting caught and/or sued.

Downloading a torrent client and VPN is seen as confusingly complicated for many of them. Once I help them get past that, I also have to train them to search safely and parse the file names of what they are trying to find. More than just informing them that a movie is not a 25 MB exe file, but that there is a convention around encoding/file type, bit rate, and how episodes/tracks are named.

It is understandable, but I think there is a huge mental barrier for most non-savvy computer users. I think that unless there is some friendly and non-sketchy all in one service to facilitate piracy there will not be some widespread upswell in piracy among the general public.

>>BuyMyB+Wd
Would a "widespread upswell in piracy amongst the general public" ultimately be a good thing? How much more accessible can it get? If A.) clicking through a software installer and B.) reading file names is too high a barrier of entry... Streaming services will gladly take your money.

A small-scale solution could be setting up a Jellyfin or similar server for all your friends + family members. Curate it with what they ask for, maybe give them access to a Sonarr instance so they can add content themselves. There are client apps for smart TVs, phones, and a web player. Maybe they'll like it so much they tell their friends, or want to set up their own :)

>>Liquix+Eh
There used to be an app called Popcorn Time which had a Netflix-like UI but was actually serving the videos from torrents. It would attempt to download the torrent data sequentially so you could stream the show/movie after about 10 seconds of buffering.