I think pirates are winning.
Gabe Newell put forward his thoughts on piracy and the success of Steam as a digital content platform about a decade ago now, saying “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. ... It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.” And for a couple of years, I think streaming services achieved that. Netflix and Hulu really did seem to capture the market in paid services because they were so convenient. But as the market fractures into smaller and smaller services, I think a lot of people are going to turn back to piracy.
The day streaming providers allow downloading high quality, DRM free video files to watch for later, I'll happily pay 3 bucks per movie.
As it stands, I can't play anything >720p because of DRMs. If you're willing to prevent paying customers from watching what they're paying for, just for the sake of reassuring your shareholders that you're combatting piracy (though failing miserably), then I have no remorse torrenting your content.
Should be able to play 4k via the official Netflix app on Windows, assuming you have the relevant chain of DRM protection (ie. TPM might be required, along with HDCP cables and monitors).
> (though failing miserably),
I'd argue that they're winning, actually - torrenting these days requires some upfront costs (hard drives and a media server) and an initial time investment (dedicate $xx hours to learning and managing a media server + media library software). It's much easier to punch in your credit card to the 3 streaming services you want to use that month.
This is on top of the fact that most media giants contract out a service to automatically send DMCA takedown requests to the ISP of every torrent peer. If you're in the U.S. doing this, you're most likely going to get a letter from your ISP asking you to stop torrenting illegal content. Xfinity in particular has a 3 (or 6?) strike system for DMCAs, after which they'll terminate your service. Any torrenting effectively must be accompanied by a VPN that is torrent-friendly and ignores DMCAs.
Eh? I'm pretty sure at least 80% of pirates just delete the movie/show from their PC/laptop when they're done watching it, maybe casting it to a TV in the process.
Load of bollocks. The requirements are difficult to figure out and hard to fulfil. The standards in the ecosystem do not help at all either. Cables or monitors shouldn't be certified HDMI-compatible when they don't do HDCP for example.
The "just try and find out, and hope the situation won't change" approach is so customer-hostile I have no sympathy when someone moans about pirates yet again.
Not like I have any other choice anyway when some stuff is just geolocked from me (Disney+, some HBO stuff, etc).
I subscribe to Netflix, HBO, and Disney. If what I want to watch isn't on either of those three, it's getting pirated.
This particular behavior should really be banned by App Store guidelines, as it generates no revenue for Apple, and I can't imagine a single provider willing to forgo ad revenue from iOS users as a whole over such a rule.
Show commercials, if you must, but trying to force me to pay attention to commercials via technological means is where I draw the line.
Instead of actually bothering to pirate the show, however, I generally just do something else.
I'm honestly curious why (AFAIK) major content producers haven't looked beyond existing revenue streams and experimented with freemium (or at least "low-costium") models, along the lines of Microsoft studios releasing current AAA titles through Game Pass — which, while not free, is arguably inexpensive — but charging extra for optional in-game purchases and DLC.
In other words, make base versions of shows available for free or at a low cost, then charge a few bucks per season for premium features like early access to episodes, 4K/HDR, and bonus content. For major franchises, at least, I imagine there are at least enough fans willing to pay, say, $10-20 per season for such features to make such a venture worthwhile.