Everyone is blaming Netflix, but it’s not their fault.
It’s the fault of the content owners. Disney, fox, paramount etc……
Rather than make a little money off of Netflix, they decided they could scam more money by launching their own competing service
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 also Netflix’s fault.
It’s less Netflix fault than others’ fault.
Please elaborate…
I probably wouldn’t have cancelled Netflix if it weren’t for their password policy change. That’s Netflix’s fault, but the content wasn’t great, so it made it easier to pull the plug.
Exactly same here. Even with the loss of content, I was happy to carry on as I wanted 4k so had to take 4 screens, but shared with my sister and mum. In exchange, my sister bought Disney plus so was a good arrangement. When they took away sharing, 4k was not worth it. What am I going to do with 4 screens when I don’t even have that many people in the house! Now we buy neither service and sail the seas. I’d rather pay for Usenet or Debrid than these jokers.
Also, it got annoying that half the decent TV shows ended after two seasons. You get invested and then bam, you’ll never see it again.
Both of these are purely Netflix’s decisions.
In the 90s, my cable company kept adding new channels but the price didn’t keep shooting up.
Yeah it did, they just weren’t upfront with you about it. They just billed you at a higher rate
Being first does not make you the legitimate proprietor of a flawed system.
The greatest flaw in the system is the fragmentation and consequential cost - when things were consolidated under Netflix, things weren’t perfect but it can’t be said that they weren’t far better.
The true underlying flaw is capitalism, but isn’t it always?
They all collectively and individually enshittified until it became worthwhile to pirate again.
They can point fingers all they want, or change their attitudes for longer-term gain.
The problem is, of course, their shareholders who are pushing for maximizing short-term profits, and then shareholder primacy, meaning they are legally obligated to obey their shareholders, even at the cost of business collapse.
Let them die.
Netflix has become as bad as any of the others. Its all shit. ⚓
Press releases like this are corporate signaling to US Congress that they would like some lawfare and are willing to pay for it.
Pirate streaming growth itself doesn’t ‘threaten legal services’ as TF suggests. Any threat that arises is created by industry’s market response. It comes back to margins. Netflix could decide overnight to invest in a long-term ‘hearts and minds’ approach that includes a quality platform user experience free of hostile design, non-discrimination amongst devices, relaxed household access rules, attentive customer service, commitment to finishing programming properly, improved stream quality, etc. Becoming the Valve of streaming represents an expenditure increase, though. You’re now a lower margin business with a very sticky and content customer base. That’s not a story industry wants to tell its investors, knowing they will respond with ‘you should be petitioning for bills that enable more market captivity’.
They do the right thing only as a last resort, because the right thing is expensive.
Weird, Netflix used to compete with piracy so well that many people stopped pirating altogether, by offering a more convenient service at a reasonable price that was hard for even the most stubborn of pirates to refuse and resulted in a massive boom for its own industry. I wonder what could have changed that caused the people to leave Netflix and return to piracy. Hmm. I wonder.
It’s a mystery! I’ll never understand why the week after yet another price hike, I quit because of the price hike. I guess I just act randomly in response to price hikes.
My issue was cutting out the sharing. I was paying for 4 screens at a time. Why should they care which 4 screens are being used?
Once I realized a decent VPN was $5/month, that I could get TV shows without the 35% time addition of commercials, and stop worrying about what I get going away, the issue wasn’t that Netflix was bad, it was just worse than the alternative.
edit: not that Netflix has commercials, but the fact one could get anything without them as well (like paying for cable…)
not that Netflix has commercials
There’s a tier with commercials for many countries now.
I fondly recall excitedly using Netflix on my PS3 all the fucking time in like 2011. It was cheap, there was an app right there on the device I already bought, and there was a pretty good selection of content that got updated frequently enough. I had friends who would pirate and I was interested in getting into that until Netflix came along and completely fulfilled the need for me. The incredible convenience made it worth it over the work to learn how to pirate and the time to safely find everything and the risk of getting caught, and then even after doing all of that it would be on a computer and not just a couple of button presses from my couch. I know piracy has gotten to a point now where it’s much more convenient, but back then it was a totally different beast. All of this was. YouTube was so much better for users and for certain classes of creators. Media and media platforms across the board are fucking terrible compared to back then. We used to chastise people for still having cable because Netflix was so fucking incredible in comparison. Idk what comes next, but these streaming companies are on the way out if they don’t figure it the fuck out. At this point, I’d rather go backwards to go to a goddamn Blockbuster these days.
Your local library probably has a better selection of movies and TV for free than any streaming service you might consider paying for. Let’s starve these beasts.
I miss my local movie store. Going to the movie store added a little adventure to movie night. Go out, browse a little. Get a stack of movies you have no clue about. Stop and get Chinese, maybe ice cream.
Ok, it doesn’t make sense anymore but I still miss it.
I think that still makes sense. Sometimes it feels like stuff like streaming and amazon orders have reduced our need to leave our homes. In general, this is largely a good thing, but I fear that people are becoming a little too isolated and aren’t being exposed to social interactions nearly as much. I don’t think people know how to respectfully disagree anymore, and I think that might lead to higher tension and make socializing even harder on people. I’m only 35, but it really does feel like most kids are having a more passive childhood than I remember having, and many adults today also live passively while feeling nostalgic for their more actively lived childhood. I don’t think people are particularly happy with life being this efficient and convenient.
So yeah, go out and get a movie and some Chinese food. Have a conversation with a stranger. I bet you’ll enjoy that more than doordash and scrolling through netflix.
I used to sail the seas like freakin Luffy, but Netflix and Steam (plus becoming a wage earning adult) got me on the straight and narrow for a good long while. Then when all the different services started to compete I started dipping my toes in the water again with some sense of guilt. But after various struggles getting Netflix running in different locations I frequent and my parents not being able to use my account anymore, I have no shame flying the Jolly Roger.
Everyone decided they wanted to have their own streaming and wanted a bigger piece of the pie. That fragmented where to watch and caused old shows and movies to cost way more for streaming rights.
Then Netflix cancels too many originals without proper endings, which passes people off. After that they got rid of password sharing which made it a pain to have a work and home type of viewing experience. Now they’re adding ads. They’ve become shit and now it’s making it a bit harder for themselves.
It was inevitable and that’s even why Netflix started making their own content. Honestly, they should have made deals with the cable companies explaining if they entered the space they would create a consumer hostile environment and destroy the market. They probably wouldn’t have listened but Netflix should have known their only product was convenience.
Is it more that the original pricing model was unsustainable though? Like they were making a loss, or being funded continuously to capture the market and then raise prices?
Obviously it doesn’t help that all the shareholders want their cut and thus the money has to come from somewhere.
2015 - 2018 I pirated very, very little. Didn’t need to. Between Netflix, Hulu, and HBO, I wanted for nothing. Then, every time I went to the bathroom, someone was creating their own streaming service. Suddenly everyone was pulling their IP from Netflix and Hulu. Netflix wouldn’t stop raising their prices. Their original shows are ok, but their movies are terrible.
dear netflix: may i interest you in the concept of not raising prices every year, not cancelling every queer show you put out, and not catering to transphobic bigot comedians?
Being someone who is less sensitive to those signals I wonder if it’s that they are being phobic or if it’s a situation where those issues and associated audiences are easier to marginalize… oh shit, had another revelation in the white, 35 and up market over here. Those systems roll hard.
Guys! If you are part of a group that has a month things might not be going well.
All jokes aside. Thanks for pointing this out as something I can be aware of. I’m pretty pro-human but things skip through the cracks. Good luck out there friend.
I’ve never seen a magnet link respond with “this is not available in your country”.
Since spotify was increasing the price AGAIN, I was willing to give Apple music a chance. Guess what, many of the soundtracks I listen to are not available in my country. Like why would you block it I already pay for the thing just let me listen to it. But I guess they just know better. And now I’m gonna selfhost my music just like I selfhost movies and tv shows.
They won’t even let you watch stuff like anime with subtitles if it’s not dubbed in your language. Like why?
I know very little about this topic, do not take this as fact. One possible reason is licensing issues. It’s a mess. Not an unsolvable one, but one that pirates usually don’t have to deal with.
Might be licensing but I think it’s actually just that they will hide everything that’s not dubbed in the language you speak because I didn’t find anything on Netflix (back when I had it) that wasn’t dubbed in German
My bad, I misunderstood your previous comment as saying you could only watch in your native language.
Searching a bit, I found an old blogpost explaining how to filter Netflix content so it only showed stuff available in English. So I assume it isn’t (or at least wasn’t) that they only show content dubbed in your language.
However, from my understanding, dubbing is quite popular. Especially so in Germany, or so say my 10 minutes of superficial research into the topic.
Netflix may simply noticed that dubbed was the more popular option by a significant margin and accordingly decided to invest a lot into making shows available with dubs, or not “waste” money making them available at all.
For most things that’s true but 99% of anime aren’t dubbed in any language other than Japanese. I still wanted to watch them tho, I always watch those in the original language with subtitles anyway. Was one of the main reasons I stopped using Netflix.
It’s just US managers who cannot imagine people speaking more than one language
In Disney+, in order to watch anything in French, you have to change the language of the entire interface to French for the option to appear. And then you lose most other languages.
The only reason I have a Disney+ subscription is because it’s hard to find kids’ shows in languages other than English in the high seas. And they make it so friggin’ difficult for no reason.
Finding stuff in German is also really hard. Wish I had a torrent tracker or usenet indexer/provider that had more German stuff.
Do you mean actual German shows/movies or German dubs of shows/movies?
I was raised in the Netherlands and I’m fairly sure that German Society is so braindead because they never had to indulge in foreign languages. Just teach your kid English, it’ll be good for everyone. Kids absorb other languages like a sponge.
I mean German dubs. Also, there’s a lot of immigrants here so a lot of people speak more than just German and English and we do learn other languages like French or Spanish in school but it’s mostly optional or only if you continue school after 10th grade. Calling us all braindead because we’re not forced to learn languages that we’ll never use is not very nice.
I have lived in Germany for over 30 years now. I just saw the difference between the Netherlands and Denmark vs Germany. It’s kind of sad how we shut ourselves into our own little language bubble, yet the world has so much to offer. I prefer watching movies in French/Spanish/Japanese/whatever with subtitles. I believe that a huge portion of the trade that is acting is conveyed through language. By overdubbing these movies a lot of the actual appeal is lost.
Attention, upon reviewing this user’s timeline, I regret to inform you that they appear to be a supporter of far-right parties (AfD), and extra caution is advised when engaging with them. Let’s stand together against ignorance!
Try SceneNZBs, they have tons of German content!
I want this as a sticker for my laptop.
t-shirt for me
Mug
Guess they should give up and shut down.
The likes of FMovies and movie-web offer a virtually unlimited catalogue that contains everything you could ever stream, for free. And their streaming quality is almost always at par with Netflix, if not more. There is zero rational reason why anyone would turn to those “legit” streaming platforms if they know about them.
The only thing separating is app support on smart TVs. It’s Game Over once TVs start allowing PWAs and ad-blocking browsers (do they already? I don’t know).
Well my smart TV does, oh shit, I added a laptop with a dead screen to the TV because the smarts were dumb and slow and didn’t do what I wanted
What a mystery this is
It’s not like I dropped Netflix and opted to pirate their content instead because of their password sharing restrictions or anything. Nah, can’t be that.
Jellyfin / self hosting is so great. You get the experience of a good streaming service and you can share with your friends and family, and there is no risk of a DMCA other than the initial seeding.
Unless you are friends or family with one of the Disney execs.
Most of this sits squarely on Netflix’s fault. I had stopped torrenting when I started with netflix, but their sheer stupidity between the password sharing and constantly taking down titles, not to mention the fact the rest of the industry is going copying them has pushed me to setup a plex server and share between my friends. Yarr… Ye gang be back me maytees!
EDIT: Fucking LOL, Hulu just emailed me this…
Once, not so long ago, streaming was more convenient than pirating. But, as expected the commercial services went through their Standard Cycle of Enshittification and now we either let ourselves get flogged by 50 competing predatory services or just take the easy way and sail the high seas.
The choice is not that hard. Yarr.
Of course this returns us to the state where the streaming companies who have literally “enshitted their own beds” now turn to legislators and policymakers (who they hated, just couple of weeks ago) to ask them to provide some “law and order” to this unruly mob and to defend the corporations right to put thumbscrews on the population for ever increasing profits.
And so it goes.
Fully agree. I‘m shocked though that corpo shills are not all over this post as they are in every other community. They probably stay out of this community or get banned quickly.
I‘m getting blasted regularly on memes and other communities.
I’d love some kind of federated streaming service. So that different content providers can sell their stuff, you pay once monthly into a pool, and you can choose different clients to access all content services. Then the money gets distributed depending on your viewing habits.
Legislators could just offer a very easy solution. They could simply mandate copyright holders to offer the copyright to all interested parties at a fair price. If content ist held back or only exclusively distributed through one party it should go public domain, as the holder of the rights clearly does not intend to profit in a legitimate way from.
The intend of copyright is to make sure, that the holder of the right can get a fair compensation. It is not the intend that his work is abused to manipulate the markets.
Edit: quick research is looking like I’m entirely misremembering and entirely wrong. Quoting my original comment for posterity
If I’m remembering my history correctly, they actually had a similar problem in the early 20th century with movie theaters and movie studios. Studios would strong arm theatres into restrictive contracts for what they could screen, and when it looked too much like a federal law would drop restricting their behavior the industry instead opted to self-regulate and formed a private regulatory body
I came to the exact same conclusion as you. The way copyright currently works creates monopolies. Just allow anyone to distribute the media while paying the copyright holder their fair share and don’t give the copyright holder complete control over who can distribute it and the issue is fixed.
Cry less, make better service more.
Wow! It’s almost as if greed and hubris caused all the media companies to split everything up so they wouldn’t have to share with netflix and now no one can keep track of which services are hosting what shows in which countries.
So learning how to pirate things and paying for a VPN that won’t snitch is easier than paying for a dozen different streaming services in addition to your internet connection.
MULLVAD! ProtonVPN! QBITTORRENT! POPCORN-TIME! KASPERSKY!
Sorry…I have Tourette’s syndrome. FUCKING QUANTUM RESISTANT ENCRYPTION WITH MULLVAD! PORT FORWARDING OFF ON PROTON! Sorry…I meant to say that piracy is immoral and wrong! How are billionaires supposed to afford their diamond studded, solid gold toilets or their giant mansions on huge plots of land if we pirate things?!
Try making a decent product again then, that seemed to limit piracy quite a bit
