octopus_ink, 1 year ago (edited 4 months ago)

Dunno. Less than what things cost now? I think knocking down the geographic restrictions and letting people watch it on any device or OS that can connect are likely bigger fights than pricing, if the industry actually cared to solve the problem.

It’s not as if we don’t have examples of this. Yes, some people still pirate music. Roughly 20 years ago, almost literally everyone with the knowhow was pirating music. (And with services like kazaa, emule, etc, it took very little knowhow)

You know what didn’t solve it? Prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM.

What solved it was when Apple started selling legit music for 99 cents per track, and keeping album costs reasonable. (Much as I hate to give apple any credit.) Spotify, amazon, etc all got on board, and now almost no one pirates music. (I pre-apologize for whatever detail I misremembered there - that was a long time ago.)

Am I saying that exact model will apply to video streaming services? No, but what’s not going to do it is prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM. We have decades of proof of this.

People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.

Some people will pirate no matter what. You can worry about them, or you can worry about everybody else. At some point (and I suspect we’re well past it) the return on investment has got to start looking pretty bad for all the money and technology they have tried to throw at piracy.