Netflix: Piracy is Difficult to Compete Against and Growing Rapidly

redcalcium@lemmy.institute to Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com – 898 points –
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Everyone is blaming Netflix, but it’s not their fault.

It’s the fault of the content owners. Disney, fox, paramount etc…..

Rather than make a little money off of Netflix, they decided they could scam more money by launching their own competing service

They all collectively and individually enshittified until it became worthwhile to pirate again.

They can point fingers all they want, or change their attitudes for longer-term gain.

The problem is, of course, their shareholders who are pushing for maximizing short-term profits, and then shareholder primacy, meaning they are legally obligated to obey their shareholders, even at the cost of business collapse.

Let them die.

Being first does not make you the legitimate proprietor of a flawed system.

The greatest flaw in the system is the fragmentation and consequential cost - when things were consolidated under Netflix, things weren't perfect but it can't be said that they weren't far better.

The true underlying flaw is capitalism, but isn't it always?

Netflix has become as bad as any of the others. Its all shit. ⚓

It's the fault of copyright. Restricting what shows you can stream to your users instead of, for example, being required to pay a royalty, inevitably leads to this situation. Netflix being the sole company allowed to stream every show and film would result in a monopoly that would be bad for everyone as they progressively sought to increase profits year over year. One company having all that power would not be a good thing for anyone, including content holders.

The solution is simple: every streaming service should be allowed to stream every show/film in every country. Then, piracy can only compete on price. That requires significant copyright reform, however, and is very unlikely to happen.

It’s a branding issue, ultimately. If I make a product, I should be able to choose where I sell that product and the brands I associate with. Now imagine I sell a pen with a special ink only

Uniball and Pilot make ink, but that they weren’t really using it so sold it to me at a discount. Everyone starts using my pens and the ink shows up everywhere. As a consequence, the ink industry slowly starts pulling their ink from my pens and raising prices. With everyone now selling the fancy ink pens and me without the original ink, it’s no longer just a branding issue, it leans to common carrier provisions. The ink is like the network, it is common currency in the market, like laid infrastructure. Treating it like a brand now will reduce competition and stagnant the market.

The ink is also the streaming content. Prevent companies from preventing fair use and you fix the issue. What stops Disney from making 5 “competing” streaming services and “licensing” to itself and blocking others? It’s a media creating monopoly, you can’t let that slide.

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