In a Guardian article on 14th August, it was reported that a London based piracy monitoring and content protection firm, recorded a massive rise in piracy. While the article attributes this phenomenon to poor service, and significant price increases. I suspect another issue may also be contributing to piracy.
After the success of Netflix, all the major content creators decided to start their own streaming services. Which in theory should have given us more choice, better content and cheaper prices. But instead it only managed to fragment our accessibility to content, forcing us to subscribe to more streaming services, which in turn increased our costs.
For example if we take Star Trek, which initially was available on Netflix. When Paramount started its streaming service, it moved all Star Trek content to Paramount Plus. However here in the UK, Netflix still streams shows like Star Trek Prodigy. So in order to watch all Star Trek content, we now need to pay for both Netflix and Paramount Plus.
So rather than having to have multiple streaming services, in order to watch the shows I like, and because there is no guarantee that a show will permanently remain on the streaming service I subscribe to. It make’s more sense to simply buy a series. However, it turns out that when you buy a digital copy of something. You don’t actually own it.
A lawsuit over digital the purchase of movies and TV shows
As reported in the Guardian, there is a new lawsuit against Amazon which accuses the streaming giant of misleading their customers, when they purchase on Prime Video. With the main crux of the issue being that when you buy a movie or TV show. You are merely buying a license to watch it.
So because Amazon also does not own the film or show, but instead license’s it, if the contract ends with the license holder. The content that someone thinks they own, will no longer be viewable as they never really owned it.
Sure lawyers will argue that this arrangement is in the terms of agreement, but who other than lawyers read the terms of agreement? So US customers are starting to realise that owning a digital copy of something does not really mean anything at all.
Luckily for us in the UK, Amazon can’t just remove digital content we have purchased, without refunding us. So to my way of thinking this is less a financial issue, and more a question of historical preservation and ownership rights.
But this got me thinking. Buying movies and TV shows on-line while convenient, is generally a bad idea. As unlike a physical disk, we can’t resell them, lend them to a friend or give them away. So where does that leave us?
The declining sale of physical disc players.
In 2024 LG announced that it would no longer be making Blue-ray players. Which was a reaction to the declining sales of DVD’s, Blue-rays, HD and 4K disks. So it looks like the trend for physically owning content is coming to an end, which if we don’t own the digital content we purchase from companies like Google and Amazon. Will only leave us with streaming services as the legal option for watching films and TV shows.
But as we have already seen, the problem with streaming services is that there are to many of them. Their range of content is often very limited, and over time they start to become very expensive. For example if you wanted to watch a classic or very obscure movie where would you actually go?
As an example I can’t find a streaming service that is offering 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sure I can buy or rent a digital copy, but then we return to the issue of only owning a license. So overtime there will be no guarantee it will still be available.
The streaming death spiral
Which probably does not bode well for streaming services, as to my eyes they all look like they have started to enter a death spiral. For example if you don’t own your content when you buy it and you can’t find it on any streaming service, or more importantly you can’t afford to have multiple streaming services. How many people will actively start to use piracy?
This in turn will lead streaming services to increase their prices, as there will be less funds for making new content. Which will then send more people down the piracy route. Which then has a further knock on effect to content creators, which then sees more streaming services fail or merge, that then leads to further increased prices… And so the spiral continues.
But why do I suspect a possible death spiral? Well Disney plus, had a decline in subscribers in the first quarter of 2025, had people in the US cancel their subscriptions over Jimmy Kimmel suspension, and just announce that Disney plus is to have yet another price increase to their annual subscription. Also Paramount plus released second quarter earnings for 2025 which saw a 1.3 million decline in subscribers. And Apple is subsidising Apple TV to the tune of $1 billion a year.
So. in the end we may just end up with one or two streaming services, very little choice and rampant piracy. But what do you think?
Content we will be releasing in October
This month we’re going to try something new. So at the beginning of the month we will be starting a series of videos that look at the key features of Microsoft Word. Kicking off with a look at how you can customise the Word user interface to make it less cluttered and more tailored to the way you work.
Then after that, we will be releasing the first video for another new series called ‘What’s in my tech toolbox’. The aim being to give you ideas as to what tools might be useful to you. So as this is our first video we are going to take a look at a USB cable tester.
After that we will be releasing another new series that looks at a key feature of Microsoft Excel. So for our first video we will be looking at how you remove the Start up screen in Excel. Something that is a little annoying if you just want to start with a blank workbook.
Finally at the end of the month, we will be releasing the next video in our BeeStation series, which looks at how you make a backup of a Synology BeeStation. We will then take a look at all the restore options available, including undelete and Hyper Backup Explorer.
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