New research published in the Journal of Cultural Economics documents how the COVID-19 pandemic created a surge in “new pirates”. Contrary to simple narratives, increased online piracy during the pandemic isn’t always associated with less legal consumption. In fact, the relationship between piracy and legal markets is far from straightforward.
Covid didn’t make people pirate, the studios did. When it was just Netflix and it had everything and it was a reasonable price, piracy went down because Netflix was easier, affordable, and a “fair” price.
Then every studio started taking their stuff off Netflix so they could make their own streaming service, and all of a sudden the streaming world became a very expensive spiderweb of who makes what, what service is it on in my country, is every season on there if it’s a show, etc.
Then everyone just started raising prices like crazy so you’re paying significantly more every single year (sometimes multiple times a year), while giving you less content. It was a match made in heaven for piracy to explode once again.
People appreciated affordable, reasonably priced access to movies and content via Netflix. That was taken away. No surprise what happened next.
Oh and don’t forget making certain content only available in certain regions (star trek for example).
Yup perfectly sums it up.