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.
Also, I don't quite know my feelings on this yet, but there is something real about some shows and movies being part of the milieu. Something doesn't sit quite right about repeatedly increasing the pricing via anti-consumer acquisitions on products that are contributing a substantial part of how the society collectively feels and thinks. It feels like you have to make more money to live in the same society.
> that are contributing a substantial part of how the society collectively feels and thinks
First of all, I straight-up don't believe this. I had very little exposure to TV/movies/books/the internet growing up, and yet I feel virtually no disconnect with my friends and co-workers - even when I don't understand a particular cultural reference they make, they either explain it and we engage in a fun tangent about it, or we just laugh and move on.
Second, even if that were true - then the problem is that culture is being built off of copyrighted works in the first place. Solve that. Doing otherwise shows that this is just a convenient excuse to secure access to personal entertainment.
Copyright anarchy and copyright abolition are absolutely coherent moral frameworks.
I have a magnet link. It brings me information. You don't want me to have that information? Up yours.
Oh you made it did you? Should've thought about my BATNA before deciding how to put it on the market.
For the record, I'm quite a bit more moderate than this would imply. But copyright is a weird wrinkle to "encourage the useful arts and sciences", it's has no basis in natural rights, the opposite in fact: the State intervenes in my natural right to do things with my own computer and the Internet connection I pay for, in order to encourage the making of more cinema and so on.
Being totally opposed to copyright and also choosing to consume content that was only made in the expectation of copyright-enabled paid business models is where it breaks down, in my mind. There's a vast world of freely available content out there, as there would be in a no-copyright world, but if that's not enough for you, or you find benefits from consuming the content produced by the commercial industry enabled by copyright law, how consistent is your belief that copyright should be abolished? Seems like you just want to freely enjoy the benefits without upholding your side of the bargain in that case. I have not seen a case that the budgets to produce those things would be there in a "everything is free for everyone" world.
Other people's expectations are none of my business.
CostCo gives me free samples with the expectation that I'll buy something. That's on them, whether I buy something is on me.
A guy writes a poem. It's in the expectation that his lover will choose him and not his rival.
That's not his paramour's responsibility. She can do what she wants.
A guy writes a TV show, in the expectation that I'll subscribe for ten bucks a month to get it, and with the legal arm of the law to threaten me if I watch it any other way.
First off: Fuck that guy, and second, still not my responsibility what the person who created something expected.