this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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A decade and a half on from the Pirate Bay trial, the winds have begun to shift. On an unusually warm summer’s day, I sit with fellow film critics by the old city harbour, once a haven for merchants and, rumour has it, smugglers. Cold bigstrongs in hand (that’s what they call pints up here), they start venting about the “enshittification” of streaming – enshittification being the process by which platforms degrade their services and ultimately die in the pursuit of profit. Netflix now costs upwards of 199 SEK (£15), and you need more and more subscriptions to watch the same shows you used to find in one place. Most platforms now offer plans that, despite the fee, force advertisements on subscribers. Regional restrictions often compel users to use VPNs to access the full selection of available content. The average European household now spends close to €700 (£600) a year on three or more VOD subscriptions. People pay more and get less.

According to London‑based piracy monitoring and content‑protection firm MUSO, unlicensed streaming is the predominant source of TV and film piracy, accounting for 96% in 2023. Piracy reached a low in 2020, with 130bn website visits. But by 2024 that number had risen to 216bn. In Sweden, 25% of people surveyed reported pirating in 2024, a trend mostly driven by those aged 15 to 24. Piracy is back, just sailing under a different flag.

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[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The thing that drives me to piracy is the fact that you can buy something online, and if that platform loses the right, they just take it from you. You paid for it, and they can just take it away with no refund. Fuck that shit

[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago

Yeah if i want something forever i buy it physical. I hate it when things only release on dvd though, then you're just making the best way to experience it is through piracy. It's kinda like with heavy drm on single player games. The pirates get to play the best version of the game without the drm and without needing to buy it. It's backwards. If you pay for something you should have the best version.

[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 21 points 2 days ago (5 children)

They keep charging more and more for less and less content.

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[–] ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 47 points 2 days ago (2 children)

The constant desire for growth inherent in capitalism fucking ruins everything. You've got near trillion dollar companies still pushing for growth. Everything just turns to shit as they pursue every last dime.

Now they have to remove civil rights to keep going and taking everything. Trump has created marshal law is the US capitol. He is planning the resources to do it in any US city in case of protest, which is a constitutional right.

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[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 135 points 3 days ago (5 children)

They chose to kill the golden goose by jacking up prices over and over and over. I don’t feel bad for greedy corporations who did this to themselves.

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 74 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It's not even that. It's the fact that each of them has so little content, any attempt to find what you want leads you skipping between like three apps, only to find that your only way to watch that 10 year old movie is to rent it from Amazon for £11.99.

And then you look up how to set up Jellyfin.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 2 days ago

rent it from Amazon for £11.99.

And then you check it, also on Amazon, and there it is, on DVD for £3 and BluRay (not UHD) for like £6.

Just checking an average movie I have in cart on UK Amazon (prices are in EUR because I buy them from Slovakia)

Passengers 2017 - New DVD: €3.40 ; New BluRay: €7.56 ; Used BluRay (Very Good condition): €2.08 ; YouTube High Definition: €8.99 (bruh...)

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 32 points 3 days ago (8 children)

IMO the biggest thing is in the fracturing they had the ability to do what everyone thought cable should do.

IE cable packages could have been made to work, if say they were actually split by genre or similar. But instead if you want a package for X, you pay for 500 channels you don't want.

IE if the streaming services split up by genre. Like off the top of my head discovery + was the only one that IMO did a cool thing, IE focused on purely giving a solid theme where if you like educational type programs, that's the one to get.

If there were like a sci fi focused streaming, or comedy etc... but rather than going focused, we've got 20 generalists. As a result if say you only like one type of show, you need to buy 6 streaming services, for the 6 good shows in that genre.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The cable bundles made sense because there was never going to be enough interest for many of the smaller channels to stay viable, even if they had dedicated fans who loved their content. Bundling something like Logo with E! TV and ESPN meant that cable companies could offer you Logo at a loss while collecting big bucks from the industry giants. People DON'T want to pay for loads of small channels, they want to pay someone once and get everything they want.

That's why Netflix was so popular 12 years ago. They had just about everything you wanted to watch all under ine tent for a fraction of a cable package. Now the content people want is scattered across various companies so people opt out

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[–] salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 18 points 3 days ago (3 children)

The golden goose (global society, habitable Earth, pick one) is already dead. They're just trying to eat as much of the corpse as they can so we can't have any.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You know, now that you said that, thanks to the "if you aren't growing you're dying" business culture our business owners and executives have become more like farmers of businesses rather than stakeholders and caretakers.

Enshittification is the harvest!

The goal is not to create a good business. The goal is to force feed and fatten it up until it is right at the point where its legs will break under its own weight the next time it stands up. Then you start to harvest, consume, or sell every bit of the grotesque thing you can before you either sell it cheap to some sucker up in the mountains or watch it die at your feet.

But to be fair, I do know actual small-time livestock farmers. Cows and horses. They care way WAY way more about their animals than sociopathic MBAs care about their organizations, employees, customers, human families, and so on.

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[–] eRac@lemmings.world 16 points 3 days ago (3 children)

My understanding is that rightsholders didn't take it seriously, so content was cheap to license in the early days of Netflix streaming. That's no longer the case.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 15 points 3 days ago

I think that’s fine, but now all the rights holders want 100% of the profit so you have to subscribe to umpteen services that are mostly paid and have unskippable ads.

They had a good thing going and were getting tons of free money from their back catalogs and the customer has never been happier.

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[–] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 22 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Remember when everyone just put their shit on Netflix? Good times, I knew this was gonna happen the second Disney said "Maybe we make our own service?"

[–] Chais@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 days ago

The balkanization of video streaming.

[–] harambe69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 2 days ago

Been sailing the seven seas for forever, never suffered a drop in quality, availability, or quantity. Never gonna give it up.

[–] Trihilis@ani.social 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

"The average European household now spends close to €700 (£600) a year on three or more VOD subscriptions. People pay more and get less."

Lol, not me.

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago

I'm proudly bellow average.

[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 74 points 3 days ago (2 children)

impoverished streaming services

won't someone pls think of the poor mega million dollar media companies

[–] ugo@feddit.it 46 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I think in this context the impoverishment is implied to be that of content, not liquidity.

I.e. poorer (quality) streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy.

But, yes, fuck them greedy fuckers.

oh fair point

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[–] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 days ago

Please, threaten me with more exclusives. Please, put more excerpts for shows to promote your network exclusives, and see what I do.

[–] BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I just got a mal from Spotify that they increase the prices from €17 to €21 (family) I don’t want to pay 25% more for that AI-slob filled garbage.

The changes apply to existing accounts in 3 months. Then, I will rip all my hearted songs and playlists.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Do they check for your actual region? I currently have Ukrainian IP address, so it shows me $7.99/month for family plan.

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[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 33 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Any CEO that thinks a user should roll over and accept having 12 separate accounts to stream everything they want, is either monumentally fucking stupid, or just a disingenuous, greedy fuck. I’ll stick to Stremio + RD and they can rot while their stock plunges. I do not care.

any ceo who (...) Is wither monumentally fuvking stupid

Almost uniformly, yes. Thats like half of what business school is for.

a disingenuous greedy lying fuck

Also yes. That's the other half.

[–] bear@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think this stems from everyone on the board at these corporations having so much money that they drop hundreds of dollars on a whim basically everyday. They have no conception of a tight budget not accommodating another $20 a month.

[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 3 points 2 days ago

I always have to remind myself of how disconnected these people are from our reality.

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[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 days ago

About to install Pi3 with Tailscale in my homeland to route Deluge traffic though because piracy is normality there

[–] Zink@programming.dev 15 points 2 days ago

unlicensed streaming is the predominant source of TV and film piracy, accounting for 96%

96% from streaming? Wow, really? That's almost nothing being contributed by boring old-fashioned downloaded media from things like bittorrent and that other one that's totally not worth talking about.

You guys might as well just ignore those ancient, decrepit download services. What a total waste of your valuable resources! There are so many people out there with jailbroken Fire Sticks! It would be such a waste of your time going on a wild goose chase after imaginary evil communist nerds who buy mechanical hard drives and download "free" software that's been pre-approved by their communal repository authorities.

[–] Zephorah@discuss.online 38 points 3 days ago (4 children)

It’s fine when there’s one or two high quality. The current setup is to bleed people dry.

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[–] theangriestbird@beehaw.org 23 points 3 days ago (9 children)

Can we talk about the article saying that 96% of TV and film piracy is streaming?? That one blows me away. We all talk here about downloading our own files and then self-hosting, but apparently all of us account for less than 5% of all piracy? Tf?

[–] hsr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Consider pirate sport streams which by their nature are usually watched live and not downloaded. I have no idea about numbers, but it wouldn't surprise me if they made up a significant part of that 96%, because sports are freaking huge.

[–] theangriestbird@beehaw.org 2 points 2 days ago

That makes a lot of sense actually.

[–] Pringles@sopuli.xyz 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I know several people who watch everything on some iptv website for free. It's one of those that bombard you with a dozen popup ads and ad overlays. It doesn't require any technical knowledge to (eventually) get it to play and you can watch what you want to. 96% seems a bit high, but it is really common. Most people aren't as tech savvy as the average lemmy user.

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[–] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 3 days ago

Covid hungover. Everyone saw these numbers on web services, streaming, gaming, etc and thought they miss an opportunity to milk it for double, or that their product is just too essential now to quit. That confidence just sped up the degradation.

[–] SaneMartigan@aussie.zone 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I never left piracy. Had a friends Netflix for a while but didn't use it because the browser sucks. Got a few free Prime memberships, again piracy is easier.

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I have Netflix, Hulu, and D+

Wife watches random stuff on them all, but I still rip the stuff we enjoy to keep a copy.

I don't mind paying the piper, but fuck off I'm gonna let them decide when to pull the rug on shit I'm watching.

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[–] Chana@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago

The last time I borrowed a Netflix account every show or movie would start at 1080p and then negotiate itself down to like 240p over 3-4 minutes. I have a very fast connection that can stream 4K just fine elsewhere and Netflix's settings were set to high quality. They are just cheapskates that throttle based on your account patterns.

[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Keep jacking up prices in a recession, see what happens.

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Hi, yes its me, I am a won't pay-er. Canceled Netflix the 2nd time in a year they jacked rates. Canceled Spotify the 2nd time in a year that they jacked rates. Canceling Hulu and D+ at the end of this month. I used to torrent everything before Netflix and when Hulu was free, started paying because it was cheap and easy to see all the shows I wanted. Now streaming is just as bad and cable plans used to be so I am setting up my new seedbox now and its cheaper to pay for the premium seedbox + stream from Jellyfin and I can get back to seeing all my shows that fractured off in to streaming services I didn't pay for.

Honestly I am impressed at how far seedbox services have come, they are almost totally plug and play, very little configurations needed

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