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Title: Impoverished Streaming Services Are Driving Viewers Back to Piracy

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/14/21582...

Rising subscription costs, shrinking content libraries, and regional
restrictions are pushing viewers back toward piracy. Once seen as nearly
dead, piracy has resurged through illicit streaming platforms as the
fractured, ad-laden streaming market struggles to deliver convenience and
value. The Guardian reports: 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 (PDF). Piracy reached a low
in 2020, with 130bn website visits. But by 2024 that number had risen to
216bn (PDF). In Sweden, 25% of people surveyed (PDF) reported pirating in
2024, a trend mostly driven by those aged 15 to 24. Piracy is back, just
sailing under a different flag. "Piracy is not a pricing issue," Gabe Newell,
the co-founder of Valve, the company behind the world's largest PC gaming
platform, Steam, observed in 2011. "It's a service issue." Today, the crisis
in streaming makes this clearer than ever. With titles scattered, prices on
the rise, and bitrates throttled depending on your browser, it is little
wonder some viewers are raising the jolly roger again. Studios carve out
fiefdoms, build walls and levy tolls for those who wish to visit. The result
is artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance. Whether
piracy today is rebellion or resignation is almost irrelevant; the sails are
hoisted either way. As the streaming landscape fractures into feudal
territories, more viewers are turning to the high seas. The Medici understood
the value linked to access. [The 2016 historical drama series tells of the
rise of the powerful Florentine banking dynasty, and with it, the story of
the Renaissance.] A client could travel from Rome to London and still draw on
their credit, thanks to a network built on trust and interoperability. If
today's studios want to survive the storm, they may need to rediscover that
truth.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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