[mcphage]

That’s the same excuse that’s trotted out in every field with a piracy problem—up until someone finds a way to do it and it turns out it wasn’t an insurmountable problem after all. That’s how we got iTunes, Spotify, Steam, Netflix, and so on.

[DrBazza]

It's not really an excuse - it truly is convenient in such a way that you only have to go to one place to get the thing you want.

If I want Man in the High Castle, I have to pay for Amazon. But if I want Ozark, I need to pay for Netflix. If I want to watch Metropolis, or The Raven, or The Maltese Falcon, they're old and not any streaming service, even if the rights are owned by a studio. Where can I find them? Yup, bittorrent.

At least piracy more-or-less forced most music to be centralised onto a single service, i.e. in many cases you can get the same songs on Spotify and Apple music. It's a shame piracy didn't force Hollywood studios to sort their out, and allow you to just go to one or two sites. Just look at what Disney are trying to do.

You are of course right: "it wasn’t an insurmountable problem after all" - it's just that studios and publishers squabble. But I'm not holding my breath on Elsevier, MacGrawHill, AddisonWesley, OUP, SUP, etc. to come up with a commerical SciHub.

[sevensor]

The selection of movies on Netflix is beyond dismal. If it's not from the last 15 years, your chances of finding it are virtually nil. If it is from the last 15 years, your chances are merely terrible. The demise of video stores has left me with no idea how I'd (legally) watch an old movie short of purchasing the DVD. Strange that widespread access to classic movies only lasted about 20 years -- from the mid '80s to the mid '00s.

[mikec3010]

That's a false dichotomy that because there was a blockbuster nearby they automatically had every classic movie in stock. I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix's total active catalog size is much greater than what was in a blockbuster in 1999

[nylonstrung]

There are a number of alternative streaming services with a better selection. One that comes to mind is Filmstruck, which has the entire Criteron Collection but there was another successful one I can't remember the name of.

[njarboe]

If you are into classic movies I'd imagine that you would still subscribe to the Netflix DVD mail service. Millions of other do. I'd say that is widespread access to old movies, just not widespread interest.

[lsc]

If you must stream (if you are up for physical media, last I checked, Netflix was king, and has am incredibly broad catalogue ) try Amazon Prime.

You have to pay a rental fee of like three or four bucks per, just like blockbuster, but they have a much deeper pool of old movies than Netflix Streaming, I think.

[msla]

The working definition of "excuse" is "a reason I don't agree with".

[jstanley]

I think you're agreeing.

That many people stop pirating as soon as something more convenient comes along does not contradict the idea that people used to pirate because it was convenient.