<story><title>How the dream of cheap streaming television became a pricey, complicated mess</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/13/how-dream-cheap-streaming-television-became-pricey-complicated-mess/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gambiting</author><text>What would you call it then? Otherwise it&amp;#x27;s just entitlement to something because you can&amp;#x27;t buy it - &amp;quot;oh look, this movie is not available to purchase in my country, I guess I&amp;#x27;m getting it for free!&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s not anyone&amp;#x27;s god-given right to be able to get every media ever released - if it&amp;#x27;s not available in your market then either import it, or....don&amp;#x27;t get it?</text></item><item><author>TheSpiceIsLife</author><text>Without some very disingenuous mental gymnastics it can&amp;#x27;t possible count as piracy if you were never able to purchase the media in the first place.</text></item><item><author>kyriakos</author><text>Piracy is also fueled by availability. As long as licensing agreements prohibit a uniform release schedule for movies and TV series Worldwide people will try to pirate.&lt;p&gt;If I am not living in the US and want to watch a hulu series I have zero choice but to pirate it or use a shady vpn.</text></item><item><author>gregmac</author><text>After a marked decrease, piracy appears to be on the rise again [1]. The timing coincides with the peak content availability of Netflix, and then the fragmentation as every studio decided they needed to build their own streaming service.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s kind of frustrating to see how close things came to actually getting to the ideal (imho, anyway): any show, streamed on demand, on any device, for a reasonable fee. Instead, the studios are going to try to compete on content - which is not really competition. I don&amp;#x27;t care what studio makes funny_show (either when deciding what to subscribe to, or when trying to figure out what app to launch to watch it), I just want to watch it. I don&amp;#x27;t want to watch similar_but_not_as_good_knock_off on another service.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s crazy is the seemingly unstoppable train wreck the industry is currently involved in. It&amp;#x27;s bad enough to not only see what the music industry was forced into (which is basically ideal for consumers, at least without dismantling the entire way music is produced), but the movie industry already went through this a half century ago, when theaters used to be owned by the studios and only show their own exclusive movies [2].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.maketecheasier.com&amp;#x2F;internet-piracy-is-on-the-rise&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.maketecheasier.com&amp;#x2F;internet-piracy-is-on-the-ris...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;United_States_v._Paramount_P...&lt;/a&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DanBC</author><text>&amp;gt;  if it&amp;#x27;s not available in your market then either import it,&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re saying this is the moral and legal option, but the copyright holders lobbied hard to make this illegal. That&amp;#x27;s why there are no stores in my country offering imported DVDs for sale. It&amp;#x27;s illegal to import these if you&amp;#x27;re a business. I have to go to a foreign company and import the disc strictly for personal use.&lt;p&gt;So, I get a DVD &amp;#x2F; BluRay from a different region. How do I play this? The shop where I bought the player is forbidden, by law, from telling me how to convert my player into a multi-region player.&lt;p&gt;People aren&amp;#x27;t saying &amp;quot;I want this for free&amp;quot;. They&amp;#x27;re saying &amp;quot;allow me to pay for it&amp;quot;. They&amp;#x27;re also saying &amp;quot;the easier it is to pay for something the more people will pay for it&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>How the dream of cheap streaming television became a pricey, complicated mess</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/04/13/how-dream-cheap-streaming-television-became-pricey-complicated-mess/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gambiting</author><text>What would you call it then? Otherwise it&amp;#x27;s just entitlement to something because you can&amp;#x27;t buy it - &amp;quot;oh look, this movie is not available to purchase in my country, I guess I&amp;#x27;m getting it for free!&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s not anyone&amp;#x27;s god-given right to be able to get every media ever released - if it&amp;#x27;s not available in your market then either import it, or....don&amp;#x27;t get it?</text></item><item><author>TheSpiceIsLife</author><text>Without some very disingenuous mental gymnastics it can&amp;#x27;t possible count as piracy if you were never able to purchase the media in the first place.</text></item><item><author>kyriakos</author><text>Piracy is also fueled by availability. As long as licensing agreements prohibit a uniform release schedule for movies and TV series Worldwide people will try to pirate.&lt;p&gt;If I am not living in the US and want to watch a hulu series I have zero choice but to pirate it or use a shady vpn.</text></item><item><author>gregmac</author><text>After a marked decrease, piracy appears to be on the rise again [1]. The timing coincides with the peak content availability of Netflix, and then the fragmentation as every studio decided they needed to build their own streaming service.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s kind of frustrating to see how close things came to actually getting to the ideal (imho, anyway): any show, streamed on demand, on any device, for a reasonable fee. Instead, the studios are going to try to compete on content - which is not really competition. I don&amp;#x27;t care what studio makes funny_show (either when deciding what to subscribe to, or when trying to figure out what app to launch to watch it), I just want to watch it. I don&amp;#x27;t want to watch similar_but_not_as_good_knock_off on another service.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s crazy is the seemingly unstoppable train wreck the industry is currently involved in. It&amp;#x27;s bad enough to not only see what the music industry was forced into (which is basically ideal for consumers, at least without dismantling the entire way music is produced), but the movie industry already went through this a half century ago, when theaters used to be owned by the studios and only show their own exclusive movies [2].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.maketecheasier.com&amp;#x2F;internet-piracy-is-on-the-rise&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.maketecheasier.com&amp;#x2F;internet-piracy-is-on-the-ris...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;United_States_v._Paramount_P...&lt;/a&gt;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chii</author><text>&amp;gt; It&amp;#x27;s not anyone&amp;#x27;s god-given right to be able to get every media ever released&lt;p&gt;participating in culture is required by many, esp. the young. If they can&amp;#x27;t easily get it via a legitimate means, piracy is the default.&lt;p&gt;Not watching it is not an option.</text></comment>