Trying to shut down piracy is playing whack-a-mole with one hammer, 10,000 moles and 100,000,000 holes.
> The legal actions against free streaming sites
The only people using those are people too scared or lacking in knowledge of how to download.
That's most people.
Also, most laws aren't perfectly enforced; part of the reason for disproportionately high penalties is to create that fear.
That aside though, there isn't any chance of stopping piracy with the way the current internet is. SO all they do is spend disproportionate amounts of money, i.e. throw that money down the drain, just to take down a website here and there, and maybe, comparatively rarely, get a few people thrown in jail here and there.
That isn't deterring anything, not remotely, so it just seems like revenge.
Sometimes it does feel like the pirates did lose. At the very least it seems almost impossible to casually pirate something like you used to in the late 2000s. Now it feels like you don’t have a homelab setup with plex/jellyfin/arr/arr/arr and a network of private trackers and god knows what else the. You’re not really going to be able to find much.
It feels like piracy morphed from being like stealing a pack of gum at a gas station to being more of a time and equipment intensive hobby.
I believe this is not mainly due to big companies and/or governments cracking down on piracy, but a massive loss in knowledge and shift in perspective about piracy, especially in younger generations.
It's true that piracy numbers have been declining, but this largely comes as a result of "piracy is dangerous, don't do it! you'll get viruses!!1!"
Spotify did the same for music piracy. I just stopped bothering with files.
I think as others have said, the increased balkanisation of the tv streaming world might change that.
I'm about to pick up piracy again so I can watch good shows that I like
Now with 10+ streaming services gatekeeping their content piracy is likely to be back on the rise
Streaming has reduced the need for piracy a lot, and that's probably a good thing, but it hasn't made it completely obsolete, because of silly models that media companies still enforce.
It is funny listening to podcasts with billionaires who have unlimited financial resources but can’t watch a show recommended to them because they haven’t downloaded or subscribed to a particular streaming service.
