this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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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.