this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
447 points (99.6% liked)

Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

63684 readers
941 users here now

⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.

Rules • Full Version

1. Posts must be related to the discussion of digital piracy

2. Don't request invites, trade, sell, or self-promote

3. Don't request or link to specific pirated titles, including DMs

4. Don't submit low-quality posts, be entitled, or harass others



Loot, Pillage, & Plunder

📜 c/Piracy Wiki (Community Edition):

🏴‍☠️ Other communities

FUCK ADOBE!

Torrenting/P2P:

Gaming:


💰 Please help cover server costs.

Ko-Fi Liberapay
Ko-fi Liberapay

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 140 points 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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 1 week 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

[–] TheFogan@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago

People DON’T want to pay for loads of small channels, they want to pay someone once and get everything they want.

That varries a bit, yes they want to pay someone once for everything they want. But they really hate seeing their bill go up more and more each year, while getting less of what they want every year. When their bill goes up from 120 to 150, and all they see happen is adding a bunch of channels they don't want, they start feeling like the bulk of their money is going into things they don't want.

I agree, the 2 options are a fairly low price that includes EVERYTHING including what they want... or extremely low prices but at least some confirmation that what they are paying for is actually what they want.

Agreed netflix as it was when streaming picked up but before everyone and their grandmother started their own streaming channel was pretty ideal, low cost and had just about everything.

but yeah once everything was evenly distributed among Netflix, Hulu, Apple, paramount, amazon etc... those days are gone. But the concept still applies that the real pet peve for users that want to get their own, is they'd want to pay one low cost to get the shows that they want. But no matter what your tastes are... odds are what you want is perfectly evenly spaced among the competing channels, and would easily cost well over 100 a month to actually get it.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] salacious_coaster@infosec.pub 19 points 1 week ago (4 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.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] eRac@lemmings.world 16 points 1 week 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 1 week 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.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 week ago

Further, the studios saw how Apple cornered the market selling songs for a dollar and didn't want any one company (Netflix) to have that kind of control again. And it happened the same way: the record industry didn't take the iTunes Store as anything that could be a huge success and gave Apple a sweetheart deal that they later regretted for leaving money on the table.

The lesson they didn't learn is that it takes competitive pricing to wipe out (most of) piracy. The desire to squeeze every last drop of profit leads to its resurgence.

Good riddance to studios opening a bajillion streaming services. Sail the high seas and be merry.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone 77 points 1 week ago (2 children)

impoverished streaming services

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

[–] ugo@feddit.it 48 points 1 week 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

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com 49 points 1 week 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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Zephorah@discuss.online 39 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] Bronzie@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Spot on!

The moment music starts being split up between companies is the day I start pirating music again too.
My NAS and media NUC have soon paid for themselves from saving on streaming services. Adding music to it won't cost me a dime.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 34 points 1 week 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 9 points 1 week 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 1 week 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 8 points 1 week 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.

[–] altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 week 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.

[–] QueenHawlSera@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 week 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 16 points 1 week ago

The balkanization of video streaming.

[–] theangriestbird@beehaw.org 25 points 1 week ago (6 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?

[–] Pringles@sopuli.xyz 16 points 1 week 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.

Especially since a good ad blocker gets rid of all those ads.

[–] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 10 points 1 week ago (2 children)

That’s because a lot of people in this community are techies, most people don’t have the skills to setup a seed box so it’s much easier to just go to a streaming site in their phone browser

[–] metaStatic@kbin.earth 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

that would legitimately blow my mind because every single streaming site I've ever found was significantly more difficult to find in the first place than downloading a torrent program and ultimately transient because they're a single point of failure that will get taken down.

[–] ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No, really. That's what most people do.

You know how most people would think you are a hacker if you started running commands in terminal/CLI? Same thing with torrenting. Torrenting is this scary program that hackers use to put malware on your computer.

My wife was raised by an IT guy and uses firefox for everything, and she is also scared by torrenting. She's more educated on it, sure, but she's still scared of it because she thinks the FBI will arrest her for downloading pirated software. She's much more comfortable going to one of those sketchy streaming sites behind the protection of a good adblocker.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] hsr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 week ago

That's why private torrent sites & Usenet Indexers are mostly ignored by law enforcement. There's bigger fish to catch than going after a minority who goes through the trouble of downloading first and then watching it. Not to mention the even smaller part who automates their downloading through the likes of *arr.

I'd argue torrent streaming (Streamio) is a major reason why many public torrent sites died over the last few years: Streaming and the big amount of users coming for the convenience paints a much bigger target on sites.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip 23 points 1 week ago (5 children)

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

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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

load more comments (2 replies)

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

[–] SaneMartigan@aussie.zone 18 points 1 week 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 1 week 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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Trihilis@ani.social 18 points 1 week 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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Zink@programming.dev 16 points 1 week 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.

[–] Chana@hexbear.net 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can only have 4K if you use fully approved hardware, filthy pirate. Or if you pirate.

[–] Chana@hexbear.net 1 points 1 day ago

I don't stream 4k through Netflix. I was expecting to get 720p or 1080p.

[–] BudgetBandit@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 week ago (2 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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] TheObviousSolution@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 week ago

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

[–] harambe69@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 week ago

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

load more comments
view more: next ›