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Comment by franciscop | Hacker News Reader

IMHO not really, supply here is the limiting factor since the constrain is in licensing the work. The goal of the right holders is not to maximize access to the work or those stated by OP, but to maximize profit for the company, which when at odds with those other goals still prevails.

e.g. someone calculated/believes that having a big catalog from Disney at X/month is more worth more for Disney than sublicensing to Netflix at Y/month.

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I really wish we had laws that producers of content cannot also be distributors. That just creates perverse incentives to use content to lock people into their distribution platform.

If they had to be separate, that gives content producers the ability to cross license and those licenses to be better deals. We’d actually have competition in distribution companies as distribution providers would then be competing on price, quality, convenience, and other things that matter, not locking content away.

> I really wish we had laws that producers of content cannot also be distributors.

We have laws like that for beer and cars, and they're disasters in both cases.

Why would we want to implement an incredibly stupid idea a third time?

I think you're going to have to back that up with a bit more than "it's stupid"

Here's a much more relevant precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

Yes I considered the same but decided to keep the point simple.

And I still can’t help but think that if there really was a large market of people willing to pay a premium for a more permissive access model then we might already see trends in this direction. My hunch is the most folk don’t really care and price remains the dominant factor.

The essential point of the article was that it’s higher prices that’s pushing people towards piracy (either through price rises or fragmented subscriptions). It wasn’t that it is the restrictive streaming model that is pushing people towards piracy.

I’m fact it was precisely this restrictive streaming model that was the one to finally beat piracy. At low prices, that’s already been proven and it’s higher prices that is brining piracy back.

Unpopular opinion here but I wonder how much of the justification for piracy in this thread, broadly around what is perceived to be unfair business practices (“if only the terms were fairer and I would pay”), would actually stand up if the terms were actually fairer but the prices higher.

Or how much is really just the simple rational economic idea that piracy is better value for money.

I personally buy physical media (BluRays and/or DVDs). But I often feel too lazy to deal with the content ripping, so I just download it.

I like Youtube Premium and I'm gladly paying for it, although I'm considering switching to an alternative YouTube client because the official YT App is crap. But then the creators will lose income from my subscription.

Sigh. I wish content providers just gave us API to get the content in exchange for payment.

>> having a big catalog from Disney at X/month is more worth more for Disney than sublicensing to Netflix at Y/month.

But sometimes that leads to really stupid things. At one time all Star Trek TV shows were on Paramount while all the movies were only on Max. I believe they're all owned by Paramount, but apparently the shoes are the big draw (the new series "Picard" was exclusively on Paramount) and they could get more profit by putting the movies elsewhere and collecting a bit more than if it were all on their service. GAK!

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