It still amazes me that these kind of 'illegal business models' usually have a far better customer support than legal business models :)
I purchased a cracked Adobe product DVD there (Disclaimer: I actually had a license at the time, but didn't have it installed on that particular laptop). I had trouble installing it, so I went back. I got my money back and help installing an alternative on my laptop. Best service!
PS: Also, Odessa is very beautiful, and I say that as someone who has lived in some beautiful places. -- https://youtu.be/G-BkuEOFGKI (Odessa Walking Tour - Ukraine's Most Beautiful City in 4K -- and this is still missing the many wonderful inner courtyards, and the entire long wonderful beach and park, which would be another equally long video)
That reminds me of the time I had moved to another city. I still had my old apartment but had brought most of my things and was more or less officially moved and moved-in. Of the stuff that I did still have at the old place was a lot of food (non-perishables, oil, eggs) because it had been better to leave it there for the time being instead of moving it all (because food). When I was back in my old city to take care of some business there and showed up to my old apartment in the late morning one Sunday, I decided to make a big brunch to use up a lot of the consumables. I needed a measuring cup, though, and I no longer had one there. (It happens that the one I did have at my new apartment was also cracked (in the physical sense) from moving, so it actually wouldn't have been any help, because even though I was going to fix it, I hadn't gotten around to it.)
I went to the store and lifted one (same brand), since I knew I had once already paid for one once.
I also, again already having paid for the original license years before, got a cracked Warcraft III Russian edition (offline only, no BattleNet, obviously), so if you want to tell more stories to show what a bad person I am, here is one more to add.
I did watch a lot of movies in my life that I never paid for though, so there is that. If they ever have one reasonable ad-free subscription that covers them all (also across borders, like Asian anime) I promise to sign up for that. Haven't watched anything at all in over a decade though, except for the occasional Twitch or Youtube. I don't even have a TV.
I guess for some people making sure everybody follows the rules is more important than anything else. I admit that I am the occasional rule breaker, including as a pedestrian crossing a red light when I feel stopping all traffic just for little me when there are plenty of large gaps in traffic is more reasonable.
So yes, thanks for pointing that out, I'm not a model citizen. I don't even feel bad about it. Also, physical goods are obviously exactly the same, so your made-up story is totally relevant, and nobody asks the question why you changed it from a virtual to a physical good when you had complete artistic freedom. Maybe your story would not be as convincing?
I'd imagine if we had a market where every service had access to every piece of content, so no exclusivity, this problem would go away. Then they'd compete on the quality of service rather than their selection of content they've held hostage. But as long as individual services can opt to not never share their content with anybody else, they can just hold their customers hostage, since they cannot get their good from anywhere else, so the only options are buy or don't buy.
Each streaming service has their own exclusive deals with publishers and offer a completely different catalog of music/movies.
This is why pirate sites are far superior, because they don't have those artificial limits on the product catalog offered.
What? If a piece of music is on one streaming service, it's on all of them.
In the US, this song is unavailable on Spotify where I found it, but available on YT music. Preface by Man Without Country. Given another 5 minutes, I could also find a song that is not listed on one but available on another.
https://music.you tube.com/watch?v=bvWjybBBFYs
The ones that aren’t available on Spotify tend to be self-released but otherwise there isn’t much of a pattern. Albums not on Bandcamp, though, tend to be mediocre at best.
And that’s not even mentioning bands that are pulling their music from Spotify in protest…
"Piracy is a service problem" -- Gabe Newell
But the video streaming platforms haven't gotten that memo yet and prefer to dig themselves into a larger and larger hole, both as far as normal Netflix style on-demand streaming, and IPTV style streams for sports and such. Hence why piracy of both are growing, with torrents on one side and IPTV pirate streams on the other.
Even the big unions have failed to put an end to this unholy mess.
My GF's Spotify makes great playlists, but they deleted my account twice and I'd never go back. So in that sense I'm willing to pay extra for customer service, which many of them don't care for. That's an interesting differentiator.
What would stop much larger companies, with more resources, to just keep taking anything good from smaller companies/startup?
This idea would last in the short-term, and once money dried up, result in a nonexistent market.
Piracy sites are competing with other piracy sites and the only differing factor is support.
Tell that to the music industry. That is not without its fault, but the products on offer are much better than the movie industry has. The market is smaller than it once was, i.e. there's less money flowing through the system, because the consumer isn't being squeezed from every side. The customer is being provided a better product for less money. That's a good thing in my opinion. Having the market be artificially inflated because everyone's got their own small realm no-one else is allowed to touch without paying a hefty licence fee is not a good thing in my opinion.
> This idea would last in the short-term, and once money dried up, result in a nonexistent market.
You never know if your search is get you what you want, bring up a pop-up of HotLonelyBabes4U (when you're looking for kids cartoons), or take you to a scam site that wants you to download a "helper."
Aside from that, the experience is rarely terrible - like the trad video streaming sites that give you endless horizontal scrolling lists sorted very broadly by topic, kind of, with an entertaining randomness about the categories.
To be fair, a good adblock is MANDATORY on these streaming sites.
You can't build a playbook for friendliness, and people have bad days which they certainly can drag into work. I am guilty of this, too. The proceeding week after my mom died I was rather terse, and have some uncomfortable memories of being short and not living up to my own standards. I went so far as to tell the person my situation and they told me that because I'm providing a service I have to do better. This user in particular was relatively new. If I recall correctly, he churned.
IMHO that's an asshole and not somebody you want as a customer anyway.