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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> people will slowly turn back to piracy.

Wait, when did the people who turned to piracy in the first place turn away so that they could “slowly turn back”?

I think its more “the pirate subculture will slowly update its rationalizations”.

No. People get older, get more income, and prefer the convenience of a service to piracy and eventually stop doing it. But with a proliferation of services now, many are not willing to subscribe to them all, and when their child wants to watch that one movie that all their classmates have seen, and is on the service they don't subscribe to, they go back to firing up the old VPN and torrent client they haven't touched in years.

Speaking from experience here. And it's not an isolated experience.

My experience is the same. Used to pirate music, then spotify was good enough not to bother anymore. Used to pirate movies and TV, now I only do it occasionally for titles I want to watch, but aren't being streamed on any service I'm subscribed to.

I'm still pissed at Disney for canceling Gina Carano, so I might pirate the next season of the mandalorian if I still care by then.

This, the narrative of the evil people pirating stuff because they just don't want to pay for anything is for the most part a myth planted by corporations. Valve realized this [1] when it came to games, Apple and Spotify realized this when it came to music. And there was the study financed by the EU [2] that came to the conclusion that for games, books and music there is "no robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online piracy."

So I too subscribe to the evidence and personal experience that the choice between piracy and purchase is a choice of convenience and availability. There are many cases in which the pirates just offer better service and distribution.

[1]: https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...

[2]: https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_s...

Absolutely.

Renting a movie from YouTube on Linux devices does not provide a 4K or even 1080p stream on my Linux devices due to content protection.

And my ideal TV/movie watching experience is using VR, and Disney+ does not have a VR app (and using the browser causes a very annoying flashing/flickering left eye issue for everybody using that service).

For content I care about, piracy provides the highest quality viewing experience by far.

For casual content where suboptimal resolutions and very annoying flickering issues aren't as important I use Disney+ in a VR browser.

It really sucks that piracy provides a better experience.

> they go back to firing up the old VPN and torrent client they haven't touched in years.

95%+ people are not capable and/or bothered to do this. Even in my circle of friends from engineering school, where everyone pirated in college, we’re in our 30s now and I don’t know anyone who still does.

Absolutely agree. I am all for competition but the fragmentation currently is disturbing.

In the end it probably is caused by the stupid subscription models where you pay for everything (and you don't want 99% of it). Similar to all-you-can-eat it basically promotes mass consumption without too much depth.

I quit Netflix because there were only a few shows I really liked and the rest was just garbage. I really prefer buying single seasons on Amazon if that is possible. I hope this will be the future but i doubt it.

I stopped music and tv piracy once netflix and spotify took off. Spotify is still a good service but we now have netflix, disney plus, and amazon prime to contend with and still can't find some of the content we want due to the stupid turf wars going on. The situation is becoming what turned me on to piracy in the first instance - Sky TV in NZ had a monopoly on distribution for some content which meant it was otherwise unavailable, and they made it impossible to get the bits you wanted without paying for all the crap. Except now instead of having to pay one provider a large monthly fee, it's 3 or 4 of them.

When it became easy and affordable to actually consume content when we wanted to. Speaking for myself, obviously, but when it became easier to subscribe to one or two services and actually have all the stuff I wanted whenever I wanted it rather than invest my time and money in custom storage and streaming solutions and (not to mention finding what I want to download), then it was suddenly not worth it. Now, if I have to spend an equal amount of time figuring out which of the now dozens of streaming platforms a single movie might be on, only to find out that studio A is currently arguing with vendor B, all while I’m paying for each service, then yeah piracy suddenly sounds appealing again.

Except not really because I’m far too lazy to put in that effort again.

its just not worth my time to torrent anymore. It makes more sense for me to pay $10 then spend 5 minutes torrenting something.

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