A decade and a half on from the Pirate Bay trial, the winds have begun to shift. On an unusually warm summer’s day, I sit with fellow film critics by the old city harbour, once a haven for merchants and, rumour has it, smugglers. Cold bigstrongs in hand (that’s what they call pints up here), they start venting about the “enshittification” of streaming – enshittification being the process by which platforms degrade their services and ultimately die in the pursuit of profit. Netflix now costs upwards of 199 SEK (£15), and you need more and more subscriptions to watch the same shows you used to find in one place. Most platforms now offer plans that, despite the fee, force advertisements on subscribers. Regional restrictions often compel users to use VPNs to access the full selection of available content. The average European household now spends close to €700 (£600) a year on three or more VOD subscriptions. People pay more and get less.
According to London‑based piracy monitoring and content‑protection firm MUSO, unlicensed streaming is the predominant source of TV and film piracy, accounting for 96% in 2023. Piracy reached a low in 2020, with 130bn website visits. But by 2024 that number had risen to 216bn. In Sweden, 25% of people surveyed reported pirating in 2024, a trend mostly driven by those aged 15 to 24. Piracy is back, just sailing under a different flag.
The thing that drives me to piracy is the fact that you can buy something online, and if that platform loses the right, they just take it from you. You paid for it, and they can just take it away with no refund. Fuck that shit
Yeah if i want something forever i buy it physical. I hate it when things only release on dvd though, then you’re just making the best way to experience it is through piracy. It’s kinda like with heavy drm on single player games. The pirates get to play the best version of the game without the drm and without needing to buy it. It’s backwards. If you pay for something you should have the best version.
The constant desire for growth inherent in capitalism fucking ruins everything. You’ve got near trillion dollar companies still pushing for growth. Everything just turns to shit as they pursue every last dime.
Now they have to remove civil rights to keep going and taking everything. Trump has created marshal law is the US capitol. He is planning the resources to do it in any US city in case of protest, which is a constitutional right.
Okay bit, hear me out: what if we call for reform, and hit you with a stick a cpuple times to see if anything shiny like old fashioned filling or whatever comes out?
See! Ol capitalism still bad a few food tricks up iys sleeve to innovate with!
They keep charging more and more for less and less content.
They keep inflating over promises that never arrive no matter how many people you kill for in “exchange” for selling your sole. If you still think any of that made you busy, your forgot Ness,
How much does a sole go for in today’s market anyway?
There is no such actual and real ability to remove any such from a person. It is a myth, used to create the delusuon of it being done. Gangs all the way up to the Military do a real, modern honest or at least candid (which is currently attempting the former from what the current change is to) rendition of what the old middle “evil” aged misunderstood original naming. More or less, an attempt to draw what ended up delusional. Current is much better and more accurate but the old end is attempting to be done again.
Money is as real as any soul leaving a person. Force can push in dimensions unseen but every soul can be stronger than every other dimension.
There’s more but, meh…
“Markets” are the apex of the delusion that will destroy all life here soon.
So, I will not answer that with but the best rendition of reality I have thus far practiced to iterate well enough to build better understanding of the “matter.”
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never go full retard
Remember when everyone just put their shit on Netflix? Good times, I knew this was gonna happen the second Disney said “Maybe we make our own service?”
The balkanization of video streaming.
Any CEO that thinks a user should roll over and accept having 12 separate accounts to stream everything they want, is either monumentally fucking stupid, or just a disingenuous, greedy fuck. I’ll stick to Stremio + RD and they can rot while their stock plunges. I do not care.
any ceo who (…) Is wither monumentally fuvking stupid
Almost uniformly, yes. Thats like half of what business school is for.
a disingenuous greedy lying fuck
Also yes. That’s the other half.
I think this stems from everyone on the board at these corporations having so much money that they drop hundreds of dollars on a whim basically everyday. They have no conception of a tight budget not accommodating another $20 a month.
I always have to remind myself of how disconnected these people are from our reality.
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“The average European household now spends close to €700 (£600) a year on three or more VOD subscriptions. People pay more and get less.”
Lol, not me.
I’m proudly bellow average.
Covid hungover. Everyone saw these numbers on web services, streaming, gaming, etc and thought they miss an opportunity to milk it for double, or that their product is just too essential now to quit. That confidence just sped up the degradation.
Can we talk about the article saying that 96% of TV and film piracy is streaming?? That one blows me away. We all talk here about downloading our own files and then self-hosting, but apparently all of us account for less than 5% of all piracy? Tf?
I know several people who watch everything on some iptv website for free. It’s one of those that bombard you with a dozen popup ads and ad overlays. It doesn’t require any technical knowledge to (eventually) get it to play and you can watch what you want to. 96% seems a bit high, but it is really common. Most people aren’t as tech savvy as the average lemmy user.
Especially since a good ad blocker gets rid of all those ads.
Consider pirate sport streams which by their nature are usually watched live and not downloaded. I have no idea about numbers, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they made up a significant part of that 96%, because sports are freaking huge.
That makes a lot of sense actually.
That’s because a lot of people in this community are techies, most people don’t have the skills to setup a seed box so it’s much easier to just go to a streaming site in their phone browser
that would legitimately blow my mind because every single streaming site I’ve ever found was significantly more difficult to find in the first place than downloading a torrent program and ultimately transient because they’re a single point of failure that will get taken down.
No, really. That’s what most people do.
You know how most people would think you are a hacker if you started running commands in terminal/CLI? Same thing with torrenting. Torrenting is this scary program that hackers use to put malware on your computer.
My wife was raised by an IT guy and uses firefox for everything, and she is also scared by torrenting. She’s more educated on it, sure, but she’s still scared of it because she thinks the FBI will arrest her for downloading pirated software. She’s much more comfortable going to one of those sketchy streaming sites behind the protection of a good adblocker.
thats what i did last decade, have adblock oner full b
I’d add to that that even less know how to securely set up a (remotely accessible) seedbox resistant to getting hacked
That’s why private torrent sites & Usenet Indexers are mostly ignored by law enforcement. There’s bigger fish to catch than going after a minority who goes through the trouble of downloading first and then watching it. Not to mention the even smaller part who automates their downloading through the likes of *arr.
I’d argue torrent streaming (Streamio) is a major reason why many public torrent sites died over the last few years: Streaming and the big amount of users coming for the convenience paints a much bigger target on sites.
It’s what I do. I know for myself that torrenting would be my personal rubicon. I wouldnt be able to do it, morally speaking, without reseeding, and then I would have to start investing in a home server and get really stuck-in. I’m just not ready to do that until I’m willing to fully commit.
I just got a mal from Spotify that they increase the prices from €17 to €21 (family) I don’t want to pay 25% more for that AI-slob filled garbage.
The changes apply to existing accounts in 3 months. Then, I will rip all my hearted songs and playlists.
Do they check for your actual region? I currently have Ukrainian IP address, so it shows me $7.99/month for family plan.
They can get your actual region off your billing details for subscription pricing. The content availability might vary by IP, but the pricing is going to go off your billing address. That’s why I pay taxes on some of my subscription services is because my state has a tax on that while other states don’t. When signing up for a new service, it doesn’t show me the total with tax until I enter my address.
Please, threaten me with more exclusives. Please, put more excerpts for shows to promote your network exclusives, and see what I do.
Been sailing the seven seas for forever, never suffered a drop in quality, availability, or quantity. Never gonna give it up.
unlicensed streaming is the predominant source of TV and film piracy, accounting for 96%
96% from streaming? Wow, really? That’s almost nothing being contributed by boring old-fashioned downloaded media from things like bittorrent and that other one that’s totally not worth talking about.
You guys might as well just ignore those ancient, decrepit download services. What a total waste of your valuable resources! There are so many people out there with jailbroken Fire Sticks! It would be such a waste of your time going on a wild goose chase after imaginary evil communist nerds who buy mechanical hard drives and download “free” software that’s been pre-approved by their communal repository authorities.
I never left piracy. Had a friends Netflix for a while but didn’t use it because the browser sucks. Got a few free Prime memberships, again piracy is easier.
I have Netflix, Hulu, and D+
Wife watches random stuff on them all, but I still rip the stuff we enjoy to keep a copy.
I don’t mind paying the piper, but fuck off I’m gonna let them decide when to pull the rug on shit I’m watching.
No but see not letting them take it from you is bad for the artists
Nah, when they lose the license on it and let it go back It’s not like they’re putting it some other place where I’m going to jump ship and buy it. They’ve absolutely ruined the market, No money lost, I’m not chasing TV shows around the internet with my money.
I’m paying for three services and basic cable. They’re not getting any more money out of me. And the artist got fucked the second they canceled the contract, that has nothing to do with me.
So obviously the solution is to threaten and punish absolutely everyone until it’s fixed, only punishment. God im brilliant for thinking of that.
Keep jacking up prices in a recession, see what happens.
They’re just keeping up with inflation like any rational actor would do. Why isn’t your wage doing the same?
I wonder
Hi, yes its me, I am a won’t pay-er. Canceled Netflix the 2nd time in a year they jacked rates. Canceled Spotify the 2nd time in a year that they jacked rates. Canceling Hulu and D+ at the end of this month. I used to torrent everything before Netflix and when Hulu was free, started paying because it was cheap and easy to see all the shows I wanted. Now streaming is just as bad and cable plans used to be so I am setting up my new seedbox now and its cheaper to pay for the premium seedbox + stream from Jellyfin and I can get back to seeing all my shows that fractured off in to streaming services I didn’t pay for.
Honestly I am impressed at how far seedbox services have come, they are almost totally plug and play, very little configurations needed
Pretty much only pay for realdebrid and apple music
