Back to Piracy

I distinctly recall when Napster was becoming popular. I was in 7th grade and people were downloading it onto the school computers in addition to their home computers. My school had a T1 line, whereas my home was on 56k. It was a convenient way to get songs and viruses from the comfort of whatever crappy office chair you had laying around. Then the RIAA hit. Rather then recognize that users just wanted a way to get a single song in a digital format without spending $18 for a CD that they then had to rip, the record industry decided to just sue everyone. Then, a wave of other file-sharing programs came about, in addition to a number of legitimate (albeit crappy) ways to get individual MP3 or protected WMA files for a low price. You could either gamble a virus and a lawsuit, or spend roughly $1 in order to get a song that you may someday lose the rights to (I'm looking at YOU, Wal-Mart). Users made their choices and lived with them, but it was clear that the best way for the record industry to continue to make money would be to sell individual tracks in a digital format. Like Blockbuster, they didn't see the wave coming.

A similar thing happened with the video industry. People were copying DVDs, downloading movies and TV and burning them to DVD, and eventually streaming online. Netflix got big into streaming, crushed Blockbuster, and now makes tons of cash by streaming based on a subscription service. This subscription model is not unlike the cable subscriptions that many had in the first place, only everything was on-demand and there was no contract. Most ISPs didn't have a data cap either, so you could stream as much as you liked without consequence. However, as more streaming services cropped up, an individual would need to subscribe to more and more services to watch the content they wanted to watch.

I currently have Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. That's three subscription services and I STILL don't have the content I want to see. I need History, A&E, HBO, and a few other channels. They all cost money. Now Disney is pulling content from existing streaming services and is launching its own streaming service, doing away with the Disney Vault, so you may never actually "own" a license to view certain content - just another "channel" in the streaming world. This is just like the bundled cable services that currently exist, and existed at the time of Napster. If you liked your local channels, you needed to get a package that includes it. If you want History, you need to upgrade. HBO is a separate charge. Oh, and if you want that all in digital HD, then you need to pay more for that. You went from paying $55/month for cable to paying $55/month for a bunch of streaming stuff, and you still have to pay your local ISP for service.

In the same way that people turned to piracy in the face of companies not embracing technology and gate-keeping content, I predict that people will (and already have) turn to piracy again. Why pay $10/month across four or five providers to watch the shows you want to see when you can just download them? Why continuously use data from your monthly allotment to re-watch a show like Friends or The Office when you can have your files downloaded and ready to watch as much as you want without risking your throughput cap?

In other words, the entertainment industry has only shifted to a dozen individual subscriptions instead of having the one cable subscription. Sure, it's all on-demand, but you're also paying an awful lot for very little. We all wanted just to be able to subscribe to a small number of cable channels that we actually watch, and we finally got it. Only, it's costing as much as it was before. So if I occasionally watched Fox Business or TruTV in addition to what I would normally watch on History or NBC, I could do so at the same price I was paying in the first place. Now, I either can watch it or not. Take it or leave it, as it were.

I'm already tiring of Netflix. At least twice per month I ask my wife why we still have a Netflix subscription. I would cancel it, but it's actually included with my cell phone service, so I'm kind of stuck. Besides, my daughter really likes Word Party and Pocoyo, and I know I can't get Word Party anywhere else. I like Hulu for the most part, but I think the interface needs some work. It did recommend and introduce me to my favorite sitcom The Goldbergs, and I can watch a lot of shows the day after they air. Amazon Prime Video is mostly trash. Not only does the selection suck out loud, but it plays these annoying previews of other shows before the show you actually want to watch. You can skip them, but it's a pain in the ass when it does it before a children's show and I've stepped away from the remote control. I also don't care at all about Prime original programming, because it's mostly garbage and I don't want to see the same idiotic preview before watching the content I want to see.

So already I'm subscribed to three streaming services and I'm still not satisfied. I'm also not seeing the content that I want to see. What if I want to re-watch Ghost Adventures season 1? I don't know where to find it with a service I'm already subscribed to. What about Game of Thrones? Out of the question. I can't even find Mickey Mouse Clubhouse anywhere! And what about the several years that passed without a way to watch King of the Hill? Why can't I watch the Spider-Man animated series from the 1990s? What exactly am I paying for? And now if I want to watch Disney content, I need to subscribe to the Disney service?

If my Netflix subscription is roughly $12, Hulu is also $12, and Amazon is about $8, then I'm paying $34 per month for video service, and I'm not getting the programming that I want. This is, incidentally, the most I've ever paid for TV service in my life! Factor in that my television lacks a tuner (making it a monitor and not a television), if I want to watch TV, I'm limited to streaming. Yes, I could buy a digital tuner, an antenna, and a DVR, but that comes with its own drawbacks.

If I were to subscribe to the Disney service, then one of my existing subscriptions would have to go. Considering I can't actually get rid of Netflix, even though I hardly find anything worth watching on it, it would have to be Hulu or Amazon Prime. I use Amazon shipping services, so that leaves Hulu, which is incidentally my favorite streaming service. Assuming the Disney service is $10/month, then that would bring my TV bill to $44/month - almost what I pay for in capped internet services.

One thing really needs to happen: deregulation of internet services in the USA. If communications lines can be deregulated in the USA, more competition would come in, which would lower prices and improve internet service. That's literally how economics works. Further regulating the internet, such as with "net neutrality" only makes things worse, not better. Always be suspicious when giant companies like Facebook and Google push for government regulation. I would love to have four or more cable internet providers, four or more DSL providers, four or more fiber optic providers, and so forth. Prices would drop, service would rise, and innovation would be fostered.

Another thing that needs to happen is to have a way to get the content I want without going back to the $55/month bundle of yore! I don't have a solution for this yet. Hulu is already a collaborative streaming platform, and Disney is pulling out. So if Hulu was no good for the companies involved (assuming this is the reason for the Disney pullout), then another collaborative platform may not cut it. I don't want to be nickel-and-dimed for each episode of a show I want to see. Can you imagine $0.10 per episode per stream? That would add up real fast.

Unfortunately for the entertainment industry, it's going to be more cost-effective and almost as convenient for current consumers to get a VPN and just use a bittorrent client to get all of their desired content. I think the wind is going to blow the way of piracy again, and it's going to have to result in yet another industry disruption. But that probably won't happen for a while. After all, these are the same people who decided to sue Napster users instead of servicing them the way they wanted to be serviced.

All images in this post are from Pixabay.