[gundamdoubleO]

I'm always reminded of Gabe Newell's quote on piracy[1]:

>Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem

And by in large I still agree with it. For me I've only ever turned to piracy when the legitimate service has become a complete mess of red tape and user frustration.

[1] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/valves-gabe-newell-says-pir...

[josteink]

> And by in large I still agree with it. For me I've only ever turned to piracy when the legitimate service has become a complete mess of red tape and user frustration.

I think service quality is an issue too, at least for me.

Recently I wanted to rewatch Twin Peaks on TV. I found out I can stream it on Sky Showtime, which also has an AppleTV app. Sounds great!

I sign up, pay the cash and start watching.

And they are sending me a 1080p video stream with stereo audio.

This show has 5.1 and 7.1 DTS-MA audio-mixes on Blu-ray, so official surround-mixes definitely exists.

It would have perhaps cost Showtime 200kbps extra to offer me a 5.1 AC3 track?

But instead they will nickel and dime me to save some measly amounts of bandwidth and only give me a 128kbps stereo-track.

I’ll be honest and admit I went out and downloaded a “proper” release for this instead, and the subscription is now cancelled.

Because the service quality was not on par with a pirated alternative.

[vincentkriek]

I think this is true for the majority of people, and I think music streaming is the example of this. I know almost no people who still pirate music, everyone has spotify. The competition between services (tidal, deezer) seems to be fought over music quality and some minor exclusives but the majority of the music collection is shared over services.

[black_puppydog]

> some minor exclusives but the majority of the music collection is shared over services

Actually I had that impression some 7-8 years ago, but since then the experience on Spotify (France) continually deteriorated, with sometimes entire playlists (not even from a single artist, but e.g. one of my fav chiptune compilations) becoming entirely unplayable (greyed out) over night. I have the impression that this situation is getting more and more similar to the madness in video streaming. Every freaking time I want to watch a specific movie (vs just taking whatever they propose right now) I end up with zero hits on the streaming platforms in the house. (But in my family's defense, they only have amazon prime, netflix, and disney+... /s)

I don't participate in either of these shit-shows any longer. If this mode of operation of "one walled garden against the other" centering around exclusive content at the front of the distribution, with so much disregard for the long tail, is what streaming breeds, then streaming is no improvement over pirating. (and that doesn't even go into the economics of the system, i.e. who really makes money in it)

[magic_hamster]

I don't have Spotify. And I never will. I don't like depending on subscription services. There are satisfactory alternatives (I find pre-compiled YouTube sets to work well) but having a local copy has always been a priority for me, and I don't see it changing any time soon.

[zirgs]

Also these days with ransomware, crypto miners, botnets and other crap like that it's insane to run random *.exe files on your computer. Especially if you also doing stuff like online banking on it.

It's simply not worth the risk. And games that I want will be on sale sooner or later anyway.

[fsflover]

I have no problem running random executables on my Qubes OS (in a hardware-virtualized, disposable VM).

[sytelus]

This is very First world view sans min wage population. In developing countries, it is always a pricing problem and people don’t care about convenience. When you have only just barely enough money for food and rent, you are not thinking about great service vs zero price trade off.

[gleenn]

Honest question, what's the difference between a pricing and service problem?

[scambier]

"Piracy is a service problem" means that most people pirate because they don't have access (or difficult access) to the product/service they want. They would gladly pay for it, but they can't, or can't be hassled to.

I don't know if it's been backed up by real data, but services like Steam and Spotify tend to confirm this intuition.

[mindcrime]

Here's an example:

I believe in supporting those who create media, and don't mind at all paying for streaming services that provide quality content for a fair price. As such, I happily subscribe to Amazon Prime (with several "add on" channels), Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max. Then one day I decided, "hell, I think Peacock TV has some stuff I might want to watch." So I signed up for a paid account, like any other good law-abiding citizen might.

A couple of days later I finally got around to logging in and trying to watch something, only to be met by some bizarre error message. Which led me to find out that Peacock doesn't support playback on Linux. Which sent me down a rabbit-hole of trying to find some kind of way to make it work nonetheless. After a couple of days of futzing around with everything I could think of short of running Windows in a VM (and including going as far as running Android in a VM) I gave up and cancelled my paid account.

What makes it all the more galling is how their support lines lie and say "We're always working to add support for more platforms" when the reality is, there have (from online accounts I've read) at times in the past been workarounds that let Peacock work on Linux... and they have systematically identified and blocked all of them. It would be one thing if any other major streaming service had a similar policy, or if Peacock had a position of "we don't officially support Linux, so it might work or it might not". But this is different. It's an active, hostile, intentional effort to block Linux users.

Anyway, that's what I'd call a "service problem". As far as I can tell, there is no amount of money I can pay Peacock that will let me use their service. So not a "pricing problem".

In conclusion, I will now return to using Bittorrent or other mechanisms to pirate any Peacock content I find interesting. Fuck 'em, I tried to pay the fuckers and they didn't want to play ball.

[f1refly]

A service problem is when the media mafia refuses to sell me files that I can keep. I'd like to open some website and pay 15 bucks for a movie (the same as I'd buy for a recent bluray in a store) where I'm then allowed to just download a .mkv that I can throw on my nas. Major streaming sites refuse to serve me content with resolution higher that 480p (I think?) because my computer obeys me and not them. Sure looks great on the big screen in my living room.

[gorbachev]

For me pirating "services" (torrent trackers, Usenet, etc.) simply offer better choices.

For mainstream content it's available around the globe, in all kinds of different formats / bitrates, with community sourced subtitles, usable on any device (hw performance limitations notwithstanding) and in my possession forever after downloading should I choose to keep the content.

Another service improvement on piracy is better availability of more obscure content. Live shows, foreign movies/music or anything out of the mainstream is usually accessible better when you're pirating content.

The only content class traditional media companies and online streaming offers a better service for is live broadcasting, and even then geographical restrictions f*ck you over depending on the licensing agreements.

[vincentkriek]

Pricing means you pirate media because you dont want to pay for it.

Service problems means you pirate stuff because it's too inconvenient to do it legally, and easier to pirate stuff.

[manholio]

For many people the "free" price of piracy still will not justify the hassle of finding torrent sites, going through fake releases and warez. They would just pay some number of dollars if that process is frictionless and gets them what they want.

But when paying for it and maintaining access for what you paid becomes more complex than pirating, then you have a service problem that can't be solved by pricing.

[amadvance]

People pirates because it's the simplest way to obtain what they want, and not because it's the cheapest.

[tobinfekkes]

Basically, that people aren't nudged to pirate content because they don't want to pay or the price is too high, but rather because the quality of service for trying to be legitimate is so poor.

[nighthawk454]

Simple - a service problem can't be fixed with more money

e.g. a lot of times no assortment of streaming subscriptions will get you access to certain shows/films/games. sometimes they may be out of print on disc as well. there may be no actual legal way to access that content. but piratebay is right there...

[nlnn]

A pricing problem would be where media/subscription costs are higher than people are willing/able to pay.

A service problem would be where the service or app is too complex or time consuming to use, or has a lot of friction during use (as was the case in the original post).

[donmcronald]

> Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.

It’s both. I can go on Steam and find a fun looking game that can range from $0 to $100. There’s no minimum spend. I spend hundreds of dollars a year on “cheap” games and nothing on movies or music.