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Can’t pay, won’t pay: impoverished streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago by cm0002@piefed.world to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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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.

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[-] theangriestbird@beehaw.org 19 points 1 day ago

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?

[-] hsr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 hour ago

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.

[-] theangriestbird@beehaw.org 1 points 21 minutes ago

That makes a lot of sense actually.

[-] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 18 hours ago

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.

[-] Pringles@sopuli.xyz 13 points 1 day ago

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.

[-] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 18 hours ago

Especially since a good ad blocker gets rid of all those ads.

[-] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 8 points 23 hours ago

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

[-] metaStatic@kbin.earth 5 points 19 hours ago

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.

[-] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 18 hours ago

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.

[-] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 12 hours ago

thats what i did last decade, have adblock oner full b

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 21 hours ago

I'd add to that that even less know how to securely set up a (remotely accessible) seedbox resistant to getting hacked

[-] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 18 hours ago

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.