Piracy in the UK: the failed war on illegal content

https://www.huckmag.com/article/piracy-in-the-uk-the-failed-war-on-illegal-content

by LocutusOfBorges

27 comments

  2. Piracy was almost done in by Netflix, well for me anyway. I stopped sailing the seas, then more streaming services started appearing, and Netflix both put their prices up, and had less, and worse content. Also they removed that episode of Community, that was the final straw.

  3. People will always choose piracy when it’s the most convenient option. For a long time Netflix made things better in this regard but it’s gone downhill rapidly in recent years and every provider has their own streaming service they want you to sign up to – naturally everyone gets a Plex/Emby/Jellyfin server for £10 a month instead.

    Same with sports, when you can’t get certain games in the UK because of antiquated rules around certain time kick offs or around certain competitions not being broadcast but I can get it on IPTV/streams then of course I’m going to do so.

    Also worth mentioning sport channels are riddled with ad breaks and the content is becoming less and less. I’m happy not paying to watch relentless gambling adverts thrown in my face every chance they get.

  4. The ‘war’ on piracy is as futile as the war on drugs. There is too much demand for it, and the additional cost of having to subscribe to multiple services to watch what you want only drives it up further.

  5. If its not on Netflix or Prime then it’s not getting paid for.

  6. The way football is distributed and charged to the fans is absolutely criminal itself.

  7. no shit because companies had made their prices up and those pc games used to be on physical media but during the 2010s they stopped producing physical pc games and force everyone to buy games to not own. i want physical pc games back as its the real way to own games and preserve them. companies should stop whinning about the rise of game and software piracy because consumers dont wanna lose access to them overtime for so much money they paid and the way they dont own a digital copy unless pirate it. someone needs to bring back the option for physical pc games and pc software it doesnt has to be on disc it can be on some game card that a slot can be put on future computers and thats one way to bring back phyisical media.

  8. Laws always contain a sort of balance, protecting one person or group at the expense of limiting another. IMO breaking minor laws we don’t agree with is a very british thing to do and it just shifts the balance a bit when someone shifts it too far. Good examples are underage drinking, pub locking and speeding.

    In the case of piracy, the law allows the content owners to do whatever they want with the content. When what they were doing was basically fair and sensible then that was fine, but now the law is protecting a bunch of selfish content companies who created too many streaming platforms and are trying to use exclusive access to content to force people to chose their platform over others. That’s pretty unbalanced – even when we had sky and cable competing you could get all of the content on both platforms. This sort of law breaking is just the british way to address this sort of law which has an unfair effect.

    I have seen my children watching things on pirate websites which they have access to on legit streaming services. Why? There are so many they have lost track and they just find it easier to watch everything on the one platform now.

    The way to fix this is to syndicate content onto each others platforms and use something else to compete with one another.

  9. Before sport became so commercialized it used to be on terrestrial TV.

    We had a lot of football, there was formula 1, rally, touring cars, cricket, snooker, golf, tennis. You name it all the sports were shown on terrestrial TV. I remember being mad as a kid because the Simpsons used to get missed if there was a cricket match on.

    Your mum would be fuming if Corrie had to get rescheduled because the football went to penalties.

    Nowadays it’s all monthly subscriptions or pay per view.

  10. Companies spend millions if not billions cumulatively per annum lying to people about the quality of their products. Try before you buy is just good business sense.

  11. Piracy will always remain a go to when region locked and overpriced streaming services exist. It existed before them, it’ll exist long after they’re replaced with a new content delivery method.

  12. Piracy was essentially dead with Netflix but greedy media companies wanted their own platform and subscriptions which fragmented everything and forced people back to the old ways.

    Simply make it affordable and easy, people will pay for it, music piracy is dead because Apple Music and Spotify made it cheap and simple.

    Streaming wars are essentially going into their final phase with Netflix and Disney+ owning the space.

    Sky are losing subscribers daily as they desperately try to remain relevant.

  13. >According to estimates from the IPO, online copyright infringement – which includes piracy – costs the UK economy £9bn and creates 80,500 job losses each year.

    I hate it when people say shit like this because it’s obviously disingenuous, every time a film, movie, book or TV series is pirated it isn’t a lost sale. There is no guarantee these people would have purchased the product if piracy wasn’t available.

    You can’t swap out the number of people willing to access something for free for those willing to pay for it, they’re not the same.

  14. Not surprising. Content has splintered to the point where you either sub to a dozen services where you don’t care about 99% of the content or type ‘watch [program] online’ into google. 

  15. I wanted to watch V for Vendetta the other day, as my Dad had never seen it.

    It’s £3.50 to rent it, or £9.99 to buy it on youtube. It’s not on any streaming sites.
    I could buy the actual bluray, physical copy, for £7 off Amazon, or..

    or I could pirate it, and watch it within ten minutes.

    At a certain point, it’s the best option.

  16. To share similar thoughts, I had everything at my fingertips through a subscription. Then Paramount plus, Disney Plus, Discovery plus, Apple TV etc came in.

    I have just done a rough cost of multiple subscriptions and I’m already at £50 a month.

  17. “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” – Gabe N, creator of the Steam digital game store

  18. I don’t buy pirated films anymore now that I’ve discovered the Pirate Bay. It’s hard to go back to paying for stuff.

  19. Cant believe that the 3:00 blackout is still a thing with the amount of money involved in football. Like, even if you were willing to pay legally, you cant watch your team play on a Saturday afternoon, but everwhere else can. It is forcing you into piracy. And then when you have a dodgy stick, you dont really need Sky to watch the other games. The Sky model is dead, just a matter of time until it is pay per view for the specific game you want to watch.

  20. The Game of Thrones makers had it right, it read the most pirated series ever and they were fine with it, it read more eyes on the show and that translated to disc sales down the road.

  21. As long as some movies/TV Shows are unavailable in to stream or watch legally in the UK then people are going to pirate

  23. If purchasing isn’t owning then pirating isn’t stealing .

  24. With the online safety act law coming soon next year, One consequence of that is because lots of people will start using VPNs (if they haven’t already) it’s going to make piracy a little easier as a result.

    Websites like the Pirate Bay recommend using a VPN to avoid getting caught by your Internet service provider when downloading torrents from their website.

    Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t make it impossible for you to get tracked down as they can find you if they do try hard enough but it does make it a little bit harder for ISPs to find out if you’ve been pirating stuff.

  25. I pay for Paramount to watch the Star Trek content but I refuse to wait a day to watch new Lower Decks and SNW episodes. Who thought that was a good idea to force UK viewers (and presumably EU viewers) to wait ?

  26. A digital rights license. You pay £25~ per month and you can access everything, the providers can sort out their share. No more fucking about with multiple platforms. If only 🙄

  27. Once again have to point out that digital piracy, aka copyright infringement, is **not** stealing.

    Theft removes the original, piracy makes a copy.

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