[stdbrouw]

Before Netflix was a thing, I sometimes tried to have conversations with people about "gee, it's a bit annoying that my only options to watch a movie is to buy an expensive dvd that I will watch once, or to pirate it" and the most common response was complete befuddlement, they simply could not comprehend that someone might not want to pirate things if they could, they could not comprehend that besides being illegal it was also just... wrong. Not absolutely evil, for sure, but still something that maybe you might want to avoid doing. Now that you can just pay 10-20 euro for a streaming service, most of them have switched over, so, yeah, service does matter, but a lack of risk or consequences on the one hand and vague notions about actors and directors (and soccer players) already being rich enough as it is, were enough to convince very many people that piracy was a victimless crime.

[kgwgk]

> my only options to watch a movie is to buy an expensive dvd that I will watch once, or to pirate it"

There were no movie-rental businesses in your country?

[quacked]

> Now that you can just pay 10-20 euro for a streaming service,

The nice thing about piracy is that you can find what you want immediately. You don't have to go to an aggregator site to find out where it's available, and then log on to the streaming platform site to find that the aggregator site is lagging the real availability, or find that certain content isn't available in your country, or that the content is available but only on the special extra++ cost plan instead of the basic plan.

If you want to watch content legally, the workflow looks like this:

Search content -> go to aggregator site -> select streaming site -> enter electronic contact and payment info and physical address (for payment) -> confirm email account -> watch content -> dig around on site to find deliberately hidden unsubscribe workflow -> pass all the "are you sure you want to leave" screens -> monitor your card payment the next month to make sure you actually cancelled

The illegal workflow looks like this:

Search content -> click 1-3 sketchy sites, closing 15 pop up ads -> watch content -> forget about it

[necovek]

I strongly believe the fact that media companies struggle to accept payments worldwide and region-lock their content when you do pay is why their services ultimately suck for customers.

Eg. for my HBO GO subscription provided by my cable operator to continue working, I had to disable load balancing/failover between my other ISP for HBO addresses at home or it'd just stop working when it detects I've been switched to a different network. And then you travel and can't access it anymore either. It is completely bonkers.

As a sibling comment said, Netflix won (at that point) because they made service easy and converted a bunch of customers over.

[xenocratus]

> Now that you can just pay 10-20 euro for a streaming service

Now that you can just pay 10-20 euros for each of 124293507239841524352 services, one of which _might_ show what you want...

Fixed it for you.