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Comment by dj_mc_merlin | Hacker News Reader

Effort of buying legally < effort of downloading illegally

Netflix did it (once upon a time. no, not the movie). I don't really care for reasons why this is hard for the industry or really anything else. As long as it doesn't economically make sense for me to give money to someone (doesn't reduce my own effort/time expenditure or provide something I can't have otherwise), I will not give money to someone. Morals be damned.

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You can rent on many of the streaming services for like $3, which blows a hole in the “it’s just effort” argument.

acquiring currency requires effort. Considerable effort, for some. One can click on a torrent link way faster than they can earn $3

Plus, this rental will not be available in all locales, for every video, etc

That's Amazon AFAIK, I don't know of any others. It's a step in the right direction but the price is still too high (it's usually $4-$5 in my experience). I only get to watch it once, not keep it, and I pay you double what I used to pay Blockbuster? No thanks.

Blockbuster new releases were $3 in 1990 dollars ($6.60 today). This was in a mid-sized town in the midwest, not Manhattan or LA. Blockbuster was also far less convenient.

Fair, I forgot about inflation.

You still have to find which service it's available on, enter payment information, download an app... And even then if you're not in the USA the selection is distributed across more apps, and lots of content isn't available easily even if you want to pay.

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