Coming from a country where media consumption used the be expensive, the reason people pirated entertainment was mainly due to cost. Not because it was inconvenient to see an ad.
Streaming will still be miles more convenient than piracy. All I have to do is turn on my apple tv, grab the remote and watch whatever I want, whenever I want. I don’t have to dig through some torrent sites, download it, then stream it to the tv.
You don't have to do that these days, either. There's software out there that will happily keep tabs on your favorite shows and films and download them as soon as they're available via torrent/newsgroup/etc., and then drop it directly into Plex, Kodi, or wherever, automagically.
Just like streaming, but without the cost.
So I can avoid them, of course.
This is not the reality of piracy in 2022.
I'm fairly certain Comcast's cable package they keep spamming me costs less than those combined
Media consumption is expensive again. All we've done is move from the cable bundle with terrible content to a different set of un-/re-bundled channels where the slightly better content lives.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/10/hbo-max-d...
But it is on demand now, which is a great improvement.
And people can also pick and choose. I can buy individual episodes or seasons, or I can pay for one service per month and then cancel and pay for another next month. Or people can pay for everything all at once if they want. Or they can watch YouTube for free or pay to have fewer ad breaks.
I see lots of improvement compared to the previous situation.
I would not be surprised to see this go away. Some services have shows released regularly one episode at a time, which mimics broadcast TV (although that doesn't really bother me, and can be a good thing).
But I would be willing to bet that they begin restricting access to these shows based on subscription length or something (can only see a show with a 1 year subscription or something).
The goal is 100% to retake control from the consumer (well, it is to make money, but they will do that via controlling what a consumer can see).
Can you, though? By this I mean, what does "buying" an episode/season look like? Have you simply paid for a license to watch the content via the provider you subscribe to as long as the provider continues to hold onto it's agreement with the rights holder that allows them to host the content, and you continue to pay said provider a monthly access fee? Or do you possess a physical copy, or a digital file, of the episode/season, un-DRM'd, on a device that you own?
The great thing is the unnecessary middleman that used to restrict how sellers can sell is now out of the picture. Or in Comcast’s case, merged into one entity.
But that is a separate problem of government not designating fiber internet as a utility.