[Svenskunganka]

People don't torrent because they want free stuff, people torrent because the legal alternatives are shit. Take Netflix for example, any non-US citizen who actually pay equally much as a US-citizen gets treated with geo-blocking, geo-restriction and generally just discriminated against because so many content creators are either stupid and gives away their copyright to a studio for... I don't even know what, greed perhaps, or they are stuck in an old-school mindset from VHS-era that doesn't play well with the internet.

And for those that don't believe me, just look at Spotify. The day Spotify was released was the day music torrenting was defeated. You just have to offer your customers a deal they can't say no to.

Game piracy and video piracy is still high. That's because these industries hasn't evolved with the internet like music has. Games are doing fine, thanks to Steam, but there are cases like Battlefield 1 for example. If you would want everything in that game, you'd have to pay $140 + $20 / month (Game + DLCs + Premium). How about I just pay $20-30/month for Steam and I can play all games in their library and the money gets split between games depending on how much I play them?

Hollywood is shit, Netflix is trying but the copyright holders are being stupid. They expect that regular people are going to subscribe to 6 different services just because they can't play ball with each other, only to get geo-restricted and even lower quality than what torrents offer. The result is people pirating and the copyright holders pouring billions into anti-piracy (extortion) companies, probably making less money than if they'd play ball.

[s73ver]

"Game piracy and video piracy is still high. That's because these industries hasn't evolved with the internet like music has. Games are doing fine, thanks to Steam, but there are cases like Battlefield 1 for example. If you would want everything in that game, you'd have to pay $140 + $20 / month (Game + DLCs + Premium). How about I just pay $20-30/month for Steam and I can play all games in their library and the money gets split between games depending on how much I play them?"

They can charge that because people will pay it. If you're not willing to pay it, that's fine, but that means you don't get everything. Which is just like everything else in life.

I'm sorry, but you're just not entitled to games. If you don't like the pricing, that's fair, but don't pretend that gives you some kind of license to just take it anyway.

[cr0sh]

I tend to wonder about entities like Steam (well, Valve) and Spotify - and their customer base.

I wonder "What will happen when one of these companies goes away?" (ie, go out of business or such)

You may think "well, that could never happen" - and you'd be right there next door to the pioneer on the prairie, standing at the railway station waiting for his shipment of a plow direct from Sears.

...been paying attention to what is happening with Sears lately?

Or what about Radio Shack?

Companies come and go - and usually when they go, if they are a company publishing or selling IP in some manner, that IP goes away with them, or it becomes "locked away" (technically) because the owners of the IP (that is, those who may have bought it in the fire-sale when the company tanked, or afterward) don't know what to do with it (or even that it may be worth something) - and so it sits (and maybe, just maybe, one day we'll see it again - but in most cases, its gone forever).

I can point to any number of distributors of music, magazines, and books where it is impossible to get a copy of what they distributed; if you're lucky, archive.org may have a copy - but in many cases, those copies are long lost (ever seen the magazine called "Horseless Carriage"? It was one of the early precursors to magazines like "Car and Driver" today, covering a new-fangled invention. Good luck finding all of the issues which were published. Good luck finding the proofs or whatever was used back then, either. All of that IP, which many would love a copy of - myself included - gone, with the exception a what you can still find that has been scanned in).

One of these days, Valve or Spotify will go under. Will you still be able to play your music catalog? Will you be able to pass it down to your heirs when you pass away? What about your games that you "bought"? Will you still be able to play them (what happens when the servers go away?) or pass them or...

No - it hasn't happened yet, and probably won't happen tomorrow. But I expect to see it happen, sometime. The results probably will get ugly.