4 ms·

Piracy and media hoarding are also about control or at least the lack of control of streaming services. So, here in the UK, we more or less have to pay the BBC

Piracy and media hoarding are also about control or at least the lack of control of streaming services. So, here in the UK, we more or less have to pay the BBC license fee if we want to use a TV service, and so we pay for the BBC's programming and they put some of their stuff onto iPlayer (their streaming service). However, iPlayer often time limits programmes (30 days is common) and there's a lot of older stuff that isn't available on there, but is available on torrents or sometimes people upload old obscure stuff to YouTube. Once I've downloaded something away from the official BBC iPlayer service, I can keep it for as long as I like and it doesn't matter if it's obscure. With other streaming services, there's a focus on popularity and so less popular products either never get added or get removed. I worry that this is going to lead to the cultural disappearance of many older films and TV. That article is very poorly written or at least it just regurgitates the fallacies from the big media companies. Piracy is most definitely not "stealing" as copying doesn't deprive the owner of their copy. They just wish to impose artificial scarcity to increase their profits and to wield control over their customers e.g. region locking

spicyjpeg 3y ago
Lack of control and content constantly jumping to different services and/or disappearing due to licensing shenanigans certainly play a role, but the vast majority of people only watch the latest, most popular shows. The main factor at play here is simply that many people do not feel like they are getting their money's worth out of increasingly more expensive subscriptions to services from which they are only going to watch a handful of shows at best. During the pandemic, spending a few bucks on Netflix or Disney+ made sense if you had heaps of free time every day and could binge anything you wanted from their massive back catalogs. But the value proposition of $20 for a month of access to such catalogs changes when you only have an hour a day or less to dedicate to content consumption (and this is without taking into account price hikes, password sharing crackdowns and whatnot).
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Absolutely - most people are not interested in old horror films from the 1940s (I'm currently updating some of my horror collection to 1080p copies), and the streaming services definitely go for popular titles. As a long-time pirate, I'm encouraged to see the break-up of streaming services into different fiefdoms as it is enticing people back into piracy. I think that media companies (not just tv/film ones) have far too much power and influence over people and society, so I prefer to see them having to listen to their customers. I find the way that the big companies have bought their way into politics and legal areas to be very concerning (e.g. Sony Music vs Quad9). (In the interests of full disclosure, I also pirate and watch a lot of new popular stuff as well)

spicyjpeg 3y ago

Lack of control and content constantly jumping to different services and/or disappearing due to licensing shenanigans certainly play a role, but the vast majority of people only watch the latest, most popular shows. The main factor at play here is simply that many people do not feel like they are getting their money's worth out of increasingly more expensive subscriptions to services from which they are only going to watch a handful of shows at best. During the pandemic, spending a few bucks on Netflix or Disney+ made sense if you had heaps of free time every day and could binge anything you wanted from their massive back catalogs. But the value proposition of $20 for a month of access to such catalogs changes when you only have an hour a day or less to dedicate to content consumption (and this is without taking into account price hikes, password sharing crackdowns and whatnot).

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Absolutely - most people are not interested in old horror films from the 1940s (I'm currently updating some of my horror collection to 1080p copies), and the streaming services definitely go for popular titles. As a long-time pirate, I'm encouraged to see the break-up of streaming services into different fiefdoms as it is enticing people back into piracy. I think that media companies (not just tv/film ones) have far too much power and influence over people and society, so I prefer to see them having to listen to their customers. I find the way that the big companies have bought their way into politics and legal areas to be very concerning (e.g. Sony Music vs Quad9). (In the interests of full disclosure, I also pirate and watch a lot of new popular stuff as well)