[thinkloop]

The reason things like steam can "best" piracy is because piracy is so crippled by anti-piracy. Between sites disappearing, spotty content, abusive ads, viruses, malware, and risk of prosecution, it's not hard being better. Imagine if that weren't the case and the free experience were seamless.

[scaladev]

If your definition of "piracy" are crappy streaming websites and shoddy warez dumps full of links to rapidshare, they are the same they were 15 years ago: full of malware and questionable ads.

BitTorrent trackers are more alive and popular than ever, and you always get what's advertised thanks to relatively high quality moderation (if you visit the right places, of course, sites like TPB don't count)

[katbyte]

Are you kidding? Piracy has never been easier lol, gb internet and torrents for every popular show and movie on public trackers. The pirate bay is still around and going strong. I just don’t want my Goverment to waste money trying to stop the internet stoppable

[thinkloop]

It's a lot simpler than that. If one team has to pay artists, and another team does not, ceterus paribus the second team will win. Only by constraining the second team does the first team have a chance to play. If government didn't "waste" money constraining pirates then pirates will necessarily have an outsized presence in the space given their unfair advantage.

[katbyte]

silly. spotify killed music piracy not any government. Steam killed game piracy not any government. Netflix had killed movie piracy but with all streaming services making it annoying again piracy is back - despite all their efforts. notice how the government fails to move the needle at all?

[salawat]

As soon as you build a business model capable of delivering a quality experience, the necessary logistical entanglements that facilitate your business are now directly targetable by legal systems everywhere.

This is the soft power of the market at work. Short of refusing to create business presence or monetize, you'll never be able to get much of anything done.

If anything is to be done to force providers to raise the bar above a compelling, high quality piracy alternative, it quite literally has to be out of the goodness of contributor's hearts. Which means it must be so easy to build, people don't mind spending leisure time on it.

And assholes would still screw it up and ruin a good thing for everyone else. That won't ever change.