Can’t pay, won’t pay: impoverished streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy | Piracy
WA trip to Florence is booked, everything I want can be seen again Medici. The historical drama series 2016 tells of the rise of the mighty Florentine banking dynasty and thus the history of the Renaissance. Until recently, I could have just went to Netflix and found it there in addition to a variety of award -winning and dark titles. However, when I google the show in 2025, the Netflix link only leads me to an empty side. I don't see it on HBO Max, Disney+, Apple TV+or one of the smaller streaming platforms. At Amazon Prime I have to buy each of the three seasons or 24 episodes separately, whereupon you would be kept in a library that is subject to Accommodation deletion. I grew up in the country of Pirate Bay, the Swedish torrent index, a nostalgia for the high lake of digital piracy for the first time in a decade. And I'm not alone.
Torrenting was the norm for my youth even in the 00s. Do you need the new Coldplay album on your iPod? The Pirate bay. The adaptation of Romeo and Julia from 1968? The pirate bay. Whatever they needed was accessible with just a few clicks. But when smartphones increased, Spotify was also the music streaming platform that also has in Sweden. The same Scandinavian country had become a center of illegal torrenting and at the same time conjured up its solution.
“Spotify would never have seen the light of day without pirate bay,” according to the sundin, the then managing director of Universal Music Sweden, reflected in 2011. But Music Torrening died out when we all either listened to ads or paid the subscription. And when Netflix started in Sweden at the end of 2012, open lecture about Torrenting stopped moving pictures. Most big shows and a great collection of award -winning films could be found for only 79 seconds (£ 6) per month. In the meantime, the three founders of the pirate bay were arrested and finally detained. In the history books, as far as I concern it.
One and a half decades away The Pirate Bay TrialThe winds have started to change. On an unusually warm summer day, I sit down with other film critics in the old town harbor, once a dealer for retailers and rumors, smugglers. Cold Bigstrongs In the hand (called Pints up here), they start to bleed over them.ENSHITITICATION“Of streaming – Enshittification is the process that worsens their services through the platforms and ultimately die in the persecution of profit. Netflix now costs more than 199 seconds (£ 15), and you need more and more subscriptions to see the same shows you have used to find the most platforms in one place. Subscribers to force subscribers.
A film critic entrusts anonymously: “I never stopped roughening pirated copies, and my partner does not find the exact edition he is looking for on DVD.” While some people have never given up piracy, others admit that they have recently returned – this time to unofficial streaming platforms. A frequently used app is legal, but can channel illegal streams through community add-ons. “Downloading is too difficult. I don't know where to start,” says a film viewer. “The shady streams may bomb me with ads, but at least I don't have to worry, hacked or caught.”
According to London piracy monitoring and content protection company Muso, the non -licensed streaming is the predominant source of television and film piracy. Consideration of 96% in 2023. Piracy reached a low in 2020. With 130 billion website visits. But until 2024 this number had increased to 216 billion. In Sweden, 25% of the people surveyed reported pirated copies in 2024A trend that is largely powered by 15 to 24 years. Piracy is back, only sailing under a different flag.
“Piracy is not a price problem”, Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, the company behind the world's largest PC gaming platform, Steam, observed in 2011. “It's a service problem.” Today the crisis in streaming makes this clearer than ever. With scattered titles, prices on the advance and Bitrats throttled depending on the browserIt is no wonder that some spectators resolve the funny Roger. Studios carve fiefs, build walls and increase of toll fees for those who want to visit. The result is artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance.
Whether piracy is a rebellion or resignation today is almost irrelevant. The sails are raised either way. While the flow landscape is breeding in feudal areas, more spectators turn to the Hohe Lake. The Medici understood the value linked to access. A customer could still travel from Rome to London and still use his credit thanks to a network based on trust and interoperability. If today's studios want to survive the storm, you may have to rediscover this truth.
