this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2023
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Everyone's 'okay' with it until it's $5 more. Then another $5. Then another $5.
This is what's happening with all of these streaming services. They're all doing the gradual boiling water trick. They know if they turned the dial all the way to hot to make the water boiling, metaphorically speaking, that nobody in their right mind would want to jump in. But if they just turn the dial slowly, let the temperature build up by hiking these prices bit by bit, it wouldn't cause that much of a stir and people will be complacent with it.
And when someone is short on money or just too tired of keeping track of which services having what media and switching chairs all the time ? remember there is always the way of Jack Sparrow, and go sailing to the 7 seas. ARRRGH!
I agree with you, but this site is full of people who hate the idea of companies having to make money and just steal shit all the time. It's a lame attitude to have I think, they believe they are entitled to others work because they don't like the distribution model.
It's the quality of service that they offer, I don't mind paying £60-70 a month for all my tv/movies but when the services don't even work well, have terrible experiences and constant caveats to using them it's just not worth it. Go spend the money on a self-hosted solution for a better experience and be done with it. It's not exactly cheaper either it's just less of a headache.
If i was in a righteous mood, i would say :
1 - Paying for consuming media older than 30 years is a perversion of the intellectual property idea, of supporting artists for a short window of time by artificial restriction of the right to culture and knowledge, and then to release the works to the public domain for the enjoyment of society. That the capitalists extended said window to be the death of the autour + 70 years, and then invented the idea of owning the art-invention-etc made by worker-artists is the real robbery of the situation. The current phase of studios trying to leverage AI tools (and AI tools that are essentially industrial scale pirates AND plagiarists) to make even more exploitation of artists is not surprising to me.
I forgot to add: the original north american idea was 14 years + 14 years, if the artist made a request for extension to get the 2nd period. Imagine if we had 14 years copyright now, everything made 14 years ago would be released and available to watch or even to make derivative works...
2 - I am not north american, i am third worlder (Brazil). So, since i have the money and time to spend, i prefer to spend money on domestic artists and domestic works to benefit my nation, which is a lot poorer than western artists and populations, and with much less famous cultural works. Instead of giving (more) money to Disney, i can go on music shows or theater here, or sign up one of the local streamers, and pirate the foreigner's content i want. Brazilian artists, that really need the money and attention, i try to pay whenever possible (if it is even available). For films made by disney (and equivalents) ... they will make enough money from cinema release here and from their foreign rich country, no need to give then a monthly transfer on top. The book Open Veins of Latin America is something of a reference in this type of reasoning.
Some of us have very good reasons for pirating, I was paying for every service under the sun in the UK last year and I dropped them all simply because the moment I went on holiday practically none of them worked. At that point, I realised that they just weren't worth it and I could build something out and self-host a far better service.
So I spent something like 2 grand doing that knowing at least I'll never have that issue again, Piracy is always a service issue first and foremost and most of these services are crap. Netflix still at least has a reasonable interface and a good experience across every device but Prime video is atrocious, P+ is likewise terrible and don't ever get me started on NowTV.
Easier to just use torrents.
It's what the software industry calls dumping. Microsoft got in trouble for doing it with IE. They give something away for free or cheaper than the competition, basically subsidizing the cost with another lucrative division of the business. We make a bunch of money selling Windows, so we can afford to give away IE for free. And eventually we'll put the competition out of business, then we can increase the price once we no longer have any competition.