[mhss]

> Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc).

I think you overestimate how "easy" piracy is for the average user. Netflix revenue keeps growing (and subscribers), despite the "crackdown" on password sharing that many predicted would cause massive cancellations.

[mike_d]

> I think you overestimate how "easy" piracy is for the average user.

You overestimate your view of piracy. The average person isn't curating libraries of lossless music collections and carefully re-encoding Anime dubs to match their sound system.

People are Googling for the hundreds of sites that will stream a feed of a DirecTV box somewhere showing an NFL game, or show grandma how to connect to the Plex server their cousin runs.

[mhss]

My comment was explicitly replying to an argument about how streaming services would "suffer" because of how piracy is much easier today. There's no signs of that. Just because Netflix mentions that risk in their SEC filings. The article admits as much, it's their responsibility and of course if there were no other alternatives it'd be better for Netflix, but is hardly something that has changed significantly to make a dent in their business. As I said, subscriptions and revenue keeps growing, there's no evidence of them "suffering" because of the alternative (viable to many) that piracy provides.

[selcuka]

> I think you overestimate how "easy" piracy is for the average user. Netflix revenue keeps growing [...]

According to TFA piracy is also growing rapidly, so it's apparently easy enough.

You may be thinking of usenet, torrenting, seedboxes etc. when it comes to piracy, but there are also (ad supported) public web sites where you can watch almost any content, or IPTV providers where you can pay a yearly fee and watch most things streaming providers offer once set up.

[inversetelecine]

The number of 'normies' who talk about torrenting casually is a decent amount. Most at least know what it is. If not, they "have a guy" they get media from.

[mhss]

People that cannot afford Netflix will go to great lengths to get the content they want. They're also not mutually exclusive. Piracy growing doesn't mean Netflix isn't. People pay for Netflix AND download pirated movies all the time.

[Loughla]

My parents found free sports online when their team was playing a team that wasn't shown locally.

They're completely inept at technology.

It's very easy these days.

[mhss]

It's the lack of content availability that pushed them over the edge. Sports are a special case, notoriously hard that is super stupid and pushing people to piracy. I tried paying many times to watch a game my kid wanted and either the dumb apps or websites would not work on my TV. Make it easy to pay for the content and most people will take the easy route rather than search online for ad-ridded or dubious websites (unless they can't really afford it and then is not a real loss for the company anyway).

[NoPedantsThanks]

They talk about piracy "services," which is not your normal torrent user presumably. I guess it's Popcorn Time and the like, which makes it somewhat easier for the general populace.

[mhss]

Yeah, still, it's easier, but not as easy nor convenient or widely available (e.g there's no Popcorn app in that TV you just bought. Defaults matter a lot.

[blibble]

googling "watch X online free" is hard?

[shermantanktop]

It's clicking on the links in the search results that requires a difficult leap of faith.

[xethos]

Apple has spent years teaching people that if it runs without modification, it's safe. End of story. It came from the App Store, or it's allowed by Safari, so it's good to go.

Couple that with malware getting more subtle [0], and Windows Defender getting better, and most people will assume they're virus free and have been for years (even if they're not).

[0] think cryptominers in the background and data exfiltration vs so many browser toolbars you get 3" of any given webpage at a time, and pop-ups on pop-ups