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Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem. I have major doubts that price increases alone drive a significant number of people to piracy. Maybe a lot

by dangus 3y ago

Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem. I have major doubts that price increases alone drive a significant number of people to piracy. Maybe a lot of people on this forum, but that doesn’t mean much. Piracy used to compete with the complete inability to download TV shows and movies and conveniently watch them on a regular TV. That’s not the world of piracy as it stands today. You have to put significantly more effort into piracy than you do to subscribe (or unsubscribe) from a streaming service. You can’t just download stuff on BitTorrent without setting up a VPN, and the Usenet stack requires a whole bunch of technical knowledge to setup for yourself. Governments play whack-a-mole with tracker websites.

_fat_santa 3y ago
> Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem. I have a real life example of this from the other day. My friends and I were about to watch an NBA game. I pay for Youtube TV with all the requisite sports packages and my friend had Sling with the corresponding sports packages. We tried both services only to realize that the game was "blacked out" in our area. So we seeked out a pirate stream and watched the game that way. It's not that we don't want to pay for the service, no we are both more than happy to pay for it, there was simply no way to watch the game outside of a pirate stream. I get that there are contracts in place that require blackouts and probably other agreements in place that prevent X game from being streamed at Y location. But as a consumer who just wants to watch an NBA game, I really don't give a s**t.
- hedora 3y ago
  I never understood the rationale behind “We routed your tax dollars away from schools and roads and stuff to build an arena/stadium so you can’t watch this game” If anything, I’d expect the opposite: If your tax money didn’t directly subsidize one of the teams, then you pay extra. (Personally, I try my best to just ignore that corner of the industry as much as possible.)
Uehreka 3y ago
I think you’ve got it backwards: “Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem.” is the thing that people on this forum say. When I was a teenager in the late 00’s, I could totally rent “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” from Blockbuster, but I didn’t have any money. Once I got a job and had money, I started paying for streaming services because they were more convenient, and I’ll likely keep doing so. But my friends outside of tech who make less money are pissed off about the unbundling and rising prices of streaming services, and I won’t be surprised if some of them switch from paying multiple expensive streaming services to paying for one of the VPNs that advertise on every YouTube video everywhere.
bobdvb 3y ago
There's a stat that 20% of pirate users are "pay never", so I always challenge the idea that if streaming services had a better proposition then piracy would go away. Piracy exists because people inherently want to pay as little as possible, it's why people by knock off LV handbags and why people buy cheap TVs from the supermarket which have terrible picture quality. The other psychological thing is FOMO, or the idea that you have to watch these things, so if you can't justify the expense then you might as well pirate. Ultimately people don't need to watch those shows, but they want to and they just don't want to pay what's being asked. The frustration is that people think that the streaming services are scalping, when the reality is that streaming is not very profitable. It's hella expensive to get CDNs to deliver video in good quality and it's hella expensive to encode video at good quality.
fy20 3y ago
Outside the US that's not really true. In my country (EU) half the content I want to watch isn't available on streaming services here. It's often bought by cable providers, who want to show it first, then becomes available later. But who wants to wait 6+ months to watch a new TV show? So everyone torrents, as there is no other option. You used to be able to use a VPN to create a streaming account in the US, but now everyone has cracked down on that, so they are actually making less money from us. I feel like studios are shooting themselves in the foot with this kind of stuff.

by dangus 3y ago

_fat_santa 3y ago

> Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem. I have a real life example of this from the other day. My friends and I were about to watch an NBA game. I pay for Youtube TV with all the requisite sports packages and my friend had Sling with the corresponding sports packages. We tried both services only to realize that the game was "blacked out" in our area. So we seeked out a pirate stream and watched the game that way. It's not that we don't want to pay for the service, no we are both more than happy to pay for it, there was simply no way to watch the game outside of a pirate stream. I get that there are contracts in place that require blackouts and probably other agreements in place that prevent X game from being streamed at Y location. But as a consumer who just wants to watch an NBA game, I really don't give a s**t.

hedora 3y ago
I never understood the rationale behind “We routed your tax dollars away from schools and roads and stuff to build an arena/stadium so you can’t watch this game” If anything, I’d expect the opposite: If your tax money didn’t directly subsidize one of the teams, then you pay extra. (Personally, I try my best to just ignore that corner of the industry as much as possible.)

Uehreka 3y ago

I think you’ve got it backwards: “Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem.” is the thing that people on this forum say. When I was a teenager in the late 00’s, I could totally rent “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” from Blockbuster, but I didn’t have any money. Once I got a job and had money, I started paying for streaming services because they were more convenient, and I’ll likely keep doing so. But my friends outside of tech who make less money are pissed off about the unbundling and rising prices of streaming services, and I won’t be surprised if some of them switch from paying multiple expensive streaming services to paying for one of the VPNs that advertise on every YouTube video everywhere.

bobdvb 3y ago

There's a stat that 20% of pirate users are "pay never", so I always challenge the idea that if streaming services had a better proposition then piracy would go away. Piracy exists because people inherently want to pay as little as possible, it's why people by knock off LV handbags and why people buy cheap TVs from the supermarket which have terrible picture quality. The other psychological thing is FOMO, or the idea that you have to watch these things, so if you can't justify the expense then you might as well pirate. Ultimately people don't need to watch those shows, but they want to and they just don't want to pay what's being asked. The frustration is that people think that the streaming services are scalping, when the reality is that streaming is not very profitable. It's hella expensive to get CDNs to deliver video in good quality and it's hella expensive to encode video at good quality.

fy20 3y ago

Outside the US that's not really true. In my country (EU) half the content I want to watch isn't available on streaming services here. It's often bought by cable providers, who want to show it first, then becomes available later. But who wants to wait 6+ months to watch a new TV show? So everyone torrents, as there is no other option. You used to be able to use a VPN to create a streaming account in the US, but now everyone has cracked down on that, so they are actually making less money from us. I feel like studios are shooting themselves in the foot with this kind of stuff.