I find the arguments about pirating interesting; they often go into arguments about "intellectual property", but what we're really talking about here are differ

I find the arguments about pirating interesting; they often go into arguments about "intellectual property", but what we're really talking about here are different publishing methods. BitTorrent is one fairly effective publisher that does offer content for free, but it does require a consumer to take on some costs: risk of going to a sketchy site and risk to their computer (viruses). If a streaming service is good enough and cheap enough, it can offer enough value to a consumer that the consumer will choose the streaming service over BitTorrent. Considering that this is going to require streaming services to really reduce the cost to the consumer, how can the streaming services have a sustainable business model over the long term to support themselves? The subscription model is one way, but the gaming industry may be ahead here: charge for each individual item, but make it really cheap. For example, a consumer might scoff at paying $3 per episode of GoT, but $1 or $.50 might be pretty nice... add that up for a season, and your streaming service has made almost as much as a subscription would have made. Of course, this requires streaming services to continue to offer new, good content to continue to entice consumers, which they might not like having to do.