Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Wow! It's almost as if greed and hubris caused all the media companies to split everything up so they wouldn't have to share with netflix and now no one can keep track of which services are hosting what shows in which countries.

So learning how to pirate things and paying for a VPN that won't snitch is easier than paying for a dozen different streaming services in addition to your internet connection.

MULLVAD! ProtonVPN! QBITTORRENT! POPCORN-TIME! KASPERSKY!

Sorry...I have Tourette's syndrome. FUCKING QUANTUM RESISTANT ENCRYPTION WITH MULLVAD! PORT FORWARDING OFF WITH PROTON! Sorry...I meant to say that piracy is immoral and wrong! How are billionaires supposed to afford their diamond studded, solid gold toilets or their giant mansions on huge plots of land if we pirate things?!

It really isn't because Netflix did it easily in the 2010s. But then, as always, capitalism got in the way and we are back to the cable era where even if you pay, you still have ads.

Make Netflix more convenient than my ARR setup and I'll happily come back.

Piracy isn't stealing if buying isn't owning.

Netflix: “Should I get short term profits by price gouging and forcing commercials on people (thereby driving people to piracy) or should I forgo year over year profit increases by continuing to provide decent tv with no commercials and no price increases and delivering consistent profits?”

Also Netflix:

CuriosityStream: “In light of the compelling consumer proposition, piracy services are subject to rapid global growth”

They really are just copying this statement lmao, I actually did try to find their content elsewhere since there's no way I'm paying for a streaming in USD, but couldn't, don't remember which documentary it was.

Jellyfin / self hosting is so great. You get the experience of a good streaming service and you can share with your friends and family, and there is no risk of a DMCA other than the initial seeding.

Unless you are friends or family with one of the Disney execs.

The likes of FMovies and movie-web offer a virtually unlimited catalogue that contains everything you could ever stream, for free. And their streaming quality is almost always at par with Netflix, if not more. There is zero rational reason why anyone would turn to those "legit" streaming platforms if they know about them.

The only thing separating is app support on smart TVs. It's Game Over once TVs start allowing PWAs and ad-blocking browsers (do they already? I don't know).

Honest question: could some of Netflix's enshittification be because of the media industry, and not their fault? The fragmentation of streaming was the opposite of what they wanted. So maybe his point is that it's impossible to compete because the industry is so powerful and greedy that they couldn't hold onto their monopoly. Spotify has been able to hold onto theirs because record labels hold less power and don't want to get into the streaming business.

Most of this sits squarely on Netflix's fault. I had stopped torrenting when I started with netflix, but their sheer stupidity between the password sharing and constantly taking down titles, not to mention the fact the rest of the industry is going copying them has pushed me to setup a plex server and share between my friends. Yarr... Ye gang be back me maytees!

EDIT: Fucking LOL, Hulu just emailed me this...

Good