Ok let's be honest here, we all have done piracy at some point in our lives.
There is a famous quote by Gabe Newel on piracy:
"Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem"
And it's true, we exchange our money for the convenience these services offer. Netflix was groundbreaking because it provided a one-stop destination for a vast array of content, eliminating the need to purchase individual DVDs for each movie or show. It seems like we've circled back to where we started.
Today's streaming service environment is a complete mess, if you wanna watch even one full show, the probability is very high that you would have to buy subscriptions for multiple streaming services. For example, if you want to watch Pokemon, you must hop on to 7-8 streaming services. I am not kidding, there is a whole guide on how to watch it across various platforms:
source: https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-episodes-movies
Dunkey( if you know him ) has highlighted this problem in his video very well:'
Malicious Practices in Digital Spaces
Even if someone is willing to go through all this mess, they are still being manipulated by these corporations..... There is a very nice video by Louis Rossmann in which he explains how Netflix pushes their closed-source application on closed-source platforms like smart TVs by intentionally reducing the video resolution and bitrate on the computers. It's bad because platforms like smart TVs have more control over your privacy. They sell your data to show personalized ads. Here is the link to the full video, I do recommend everyone to check this out:
Gaming...
Not only streaming services, the gaming industry has been the same in this regard. More and more companies are using Digital rights management (DRM) in their games.
DRM is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) like access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM technologies govern the use, modification, and distribution of copyrighted works (e.g. software, multimedia content) and of systems that enforce these policies within devices. DRM technologies include licensing agreements and encryption. -Wikipedia
DRMs are used to reduce piracy but they hurt the legitimate consumers who paid for the games. DRMs tend to impact the CPU, when you are playing the game you might experience lags and fewer framerates compared to a counterpart with no DRM.
Also, you get no control over what you paid for. If you are paying a whopping $60 for a piece of software, you should be able to own that copy.
The funny thing is when you buy a game on Steam, you don't own it. If you break the rules with Valve, they can shut down your account, and poof!! all of your games will be gone. But Valve has a good reputation in the gaming space and Steam is really good service, so people trust them.
Recently Ubisoft’s Director of Subscriptions Phillippe Tremblay said, “One of the things we saw is that gamers are used to, a little bit like DVD, having and owning their games. That’s the consumer shift that needs to happen.
“They got comfortable not owning their CD collection or DVD collection. That’s a transformation that’s been a bit slower to happen in games.”
There was an outrage in the gaming community about this statement especially because it's coming from goddamn "Ubisoft", the most hated corporation among gamers. But he is not entirely wrong since owning digital media is more convenient but you are losing all control to them.
A recent example is Funimation, a massive amine streaming platform announcing it will shut down all its services from April 2. Now, the good news is Funimation merged with Crunchyroll back in 2021 so most of the content you paid for will be transferred to your Crunchyroll account. Still, unfortunately, Crunchyroll will not preserve any digital copies (redeemed from DVD and Blu-ray codes) associated with your account.
So, all this stuff you paid for is gone, and if you don't own the physical copy, there is nothing you can do about it, except (cough, cough) accidentally pirate it.
Conclusion
When you pirate, you get better quality, you own the digital copy, and everything is in one place and complete, so better service. A big reason for people not pirating was that it was inconvenient but now "accidentally" going to a shady pirating site and "accidentally" downloading some unsafe shady files is less of a hassle than skimming through piles of streaming services or constantly getting lower frame rates on games.
Now I'm not advocating piracy here, most of the time it's unethical, people who worked so hard to produce these products deserve every single penny but on the other hand customer service is important too. Why should I pay for something worse than the stuff available for free? People don't mind paying for services, but they do mind paying for bad services.
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