How the dream of cheap streaming television became a pricey, complicated mess
After a marked decrease, piracy appears to be on the rise again [1]. The timing coincides with the peak content availability of Netflix, and then the fragmentation as every studio decided they needed to build their own streaming service.<p>It&#x27;s kind of frustrating to see how close things came to actually getting to the ideal (imho, anyway): any show, streamed on demand, on any device, for a reasonable fee. Instead, the studios are going to try to compete on content - which is not really competition. I don&#x27;t care what studio makes funny_show (either when deciding what to subscribe to, or when trying to figure out what app to launch to watch it), I just want to watch it. I don&#x27;t want to watch similar_but_not_as_good_knock_off on another service.<p>What&#x27;s crazy is the seemingly unstoppable train wreck the industry is currently involved in. It&#x27;s bad enough to not only see what the music industry was forced into (which is basically ideal for consumers, at least without dismantling the entire way music is produced), but the movie industry already went through this a half century ago, when theaters used to be owned by the studios and only show their own exclusive movies [2].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.maketecheasier.com&#x2F;internet-piracy-is-on-the-rise&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.maketecheasier.com&#x2F;internet-piracy-is-on-the-ris...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;United_States_v._Paramount_P...</a>.