Remember everyone, media piracy is in the spirit of a tv show about a post-scarcity socialist utopian future.
People still stream considering how insane the whole ecosystem is?
Wtf why did a parrot land on my shoulder
Do you have a sudden urge to sing sea shanties?
It’s a mystery!
So here’s an unpopular opinion, but this isn’t a bad thing. It’s just not enough.
The biggest reason that legal, paid Streaming is so shitty these days, the reason people miss old Netflix, is that everything is spread across so many different platforms now. Back in the day, just having Netflix meant you had just about everything, and if you wanted more still you could get Hulu… and that was it. One, maybe two subscriptions, and you’re set. But now? Now you need half a dozen subscriptions and you’re still picking what things you won’t get. If content was more centralized again, that wouldn’t be a problem.
And if content was more centralized, that centralized platform would have PLENTY of subscribers, they wouldn’t need to add commercials and hike prices just to stay afloat. I mean… they’d do it anyway because capitalism enshittifies everything, but it wouldn’t be a do or fail situation for them.
The only thing I ever used the Paramount streaming for was Trek. I wouldn’t complain if Trek, ALL Trek, migrated to somewhere else that has other things I like, too.
We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.
-Gabe NewellIt’s odd that people are against monopolies, generally speaking, but for streaming services we would prefer if there were a few giant companies which owned it all.
I’m not disagreeing with the above, just thought it was curious.
People aren’t clamoring for a monopoly, they are asking for interoperability. I didn’t need a single VHS rental store to be the only place I could get Ernest Scared Stupid, but I did need to be able to get Ernest Goes to Jail at every VHS rental store.
All we’d really need to do that is just make it a law that contracts aren’t exclusive.
If shows were sold to multiple streaming services legally, then those services would compete based on the actual service they offer, and not the content they have.
In other words, make streaming services the customers for shows, instead of individuals, and then let people be their customers.
As it is, a streaming service is pretty comparable to a car dealership.
That’s not all we’d need to do though. Too many cases of the content rights holders also owning a streaming service means they’d just not sign any contracts. Disney, paramount, NBC, hell even Netflix owns content. We need to also break up so that right holders can’t also control the means of distribution.
I think two or three viable platforms was kind of the sweet spot. It’s not all dominated by one, but I also don’t have to shop around and subscribe to five different things if I want to get what I want legally. But you’re right that it’s a sticky issue that just doesn’t seem to have a good answer.
The solution is mandatory licensing at fixed rates for media that is no longer under production. Make it so the only way to have exclusive content is to commit to continuing that content.
So you’re saying you want a media company that has a monopoly?
Streaming services should compete on quality of the platform, pricing and features, not exclusives. If every tv series and movie were available on every platforms, prices would drop and quality would increase, as the platforms try and be the best, it’s the contrary of monopoly because people can freely choose. Now they don’t care about being the best, they try and get exclusive rights for something you like watching so you have no other (legal) way to do it, right now it’s already a monopoly, a segregated one, but still a monopoly, because you have no choice.
Why on earth would capitalist companies do that though? That would guarantee most companies would not realize shareholder value.
Who gives a shit what they do? Piracy has never been easier or better than it is right now. Instead of being annoyed at their stupidity start teaching people you know how to use vpns and torrents.
Media companies used to be terrified of torrents. Now they don’t care anymore. It would nice to get that back
How much money does Netflix spend on trash series just to hope to get some exclusive? And how much money does Paramount+ spend on a broken platform full of issues?
Maybe if netflix spent those money on acquiring more IP, and producers like Paramount gave their IP to different streaming, they would make more money? I don’t have an answer to this question because it’s of course very complicated, what I’m saying is it doesn’t have to be like this.
How platforms are now is after a continuous growth over half a decade, it’s probably not sistainable to keep the same price with the same business model, so somwthing will have to change eventually
I’m not criticizing your rationale or anything. I’m just trying to get across how far from what you think things “should” be like and how they really are.
Imagine the infuriating arguments you have with boomer/geriatric family at Thanksgiving. except they’re in charge and have all the money and you’re constantly fighting their shortsighted thinking, racist bias, greed and ignorance…
That’s how decisions are made for these platforms.
We’re absolutely going ro see more and more ads on for-pay platforms because one of these geriatric greed monsters saw that another of their cohort made their hoard bigger last quarter so now they want that. Like a toddler who failed the marshmallow test. They don’t about your arguments. They have all the money so their clearly know much more than you.
I certainly won’t claim special insider knowledge as some anon on the Internet… but if you knew someone in the Industry you’d get similar stories.
I can listen to pretty much any song I want on Spotify. Does Spotify have a monopoly?
I think there are a ton of valid arguments that they have far too much control of the music streaming market. At least enough power to affect the licensing costs and artist incomes.
There have been more than a few anti trust claims made against them.
Do I think they’re too big and have an outsized influence? Yes. Definitely.
At the moment at lot of what they’ve done have benefited consumers though, but that doesn’t mean that will always be true.
Never trust a profit driven business to work in your best interest.
This is why I own most of star trek on dvd. Cant take that away from me.
Its also very difficult to find complete torrent for the series. Just too much content that nobody wants to host the wild file sizes
This is why I own most of star trek on dvd. Cant take that away from me.
I was so disappointed when the HD remasters stopped. I snapped up TOS, Animated, TNG, and all the movies on Blu-ray (replacing DVDs in the case of the movies and TNG) despite them being available on Netflix at the time. I was really looking forward to catching up with DS9 and Voyager the same way since I was only able to catch them sporadically when they were airing… but no, it seems these are doomed to remain in SD purgatory.
There is a group has who completed an upscaling remaster of DS9. It’s very very well done (though could be better with better source material from the producers).
They are working on Voyager now that DS9 is done. They’ve completed season 1 of voyager so far.
If there a way to download that version?
They have instructions in Discord (https://discord.gg/qceXKtsM)
That’s okay I’ll just watch it on Netfli…WHAT!? Since almost two years ago you say? Because of late-stage capitalism you say?
I really miss old Netflix. Even had Disney movies 😭
The worst part is, Netflix didn’t even mess up. All the content owners decided to pull their licenses and make their own Netflix. Now we have 200 streaming services.
So I joined the party and made my own netflix. And not to toot my own horn, but it’s the best one.
Well, they did mess up. That mistake was to make content of their own. This angered the other studios so they pulled content and here we are.
I think the issue started long before that. Netflix always had issues with content owners licensing it for one country but not for others, or asking huge fees to license for multiple countries. They’d also limit which shows Netflix could have at any time.
This meant Netflix had to manage many different catalogues for different regions and constantly cycle shows on and off just to make the content owners happy
Once content owners started realising they could milk Netflix for all it had, Netflix really had to start making content to reduce its risk and dependence on other studios
The issue is and always was corporate greed, on every level
They’re getting some Disney content back. I’m not sure if this was intentional by the OP or not, but Archer is one of those. Also How I Met Your Mother, Horn Improvement, Lost, other stuff.
Still nowhere near old Netflix, but it could be the start of a trend.
Maximum monetization will see a rotation of content between platforms. People mostly watch stuff when it is new on the platform and then after that it’s just a trickle unless some news comes out about it.
By licensing their bullshit to different providers they take a little bit of revenue from other platforms and the other platforms get more engagement. They basically have to play nice or spend a ton of cash constantly making more shows- which we’ve seen fail again and again despite huge budgets.
Well it’s also a somewhat natural reaction of the market. We went from basically just one service provider with many different publishers, to almost 1:1. I’ve seen some speculation that some of these services may collapse. It may be wishful thinking, but if for example Peacock fails and CBS just licenses their properties out that seems like an improvement.
What I really would love to see is the end of exclusive content. I want to see service providers compete more on the quality of their service than the content of their libraries. A variety of tiers that allow different numbers of simultaneous screen watching, different quality levels, the ability to download and view offline, better UI’s, different content sorting, filtering, and recommendation options. Different pricing structures: maybe pay-per-view, ad supported, and of course monthly and annual subscriptions. Maybe even partner with low to mid-budget content creators like Nebula. Steam and Epic can have the same games on different platforms: why can’t Netflix and Hulu have the same shows?
I’m also tired of seeing stuff completely vanish. Disney’s “vault” has always felt like a flaw in copyright law. If it’s not available for the public to consume, that should qualify as failure to defend IP and automatically become public domain. But that’s a whole other issue
What did they do?
Paramount removed all the Star Trek movies from their own streaming service, and gave them to HBO MAX. They have always billed their streaming service as “All things trek”, but now they don’t allow you to stream their own properties on their own streaming service.
That and hiking their prices like the rest of the streaming services while having a fraction of the new content.
it’s like 5.99 to watch 45 minute shows with 5+ 120 second ad breaks. I instantly canceled and went an alternate route
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