The Guardian reports that piracy has resurged in 2023 as streaming services face challenges like rising subscription costs, limited content libraries, and regional restrictions. Piracy accounted for 96% of TV and film piracy, with unlicensed streaming sites seeing a surge in website visits from 130bn in 2020 to 216bn in 2024. In Sweden, 25% of people reported pirating in 2024, driven largely by younger audiences.
“Piracy is not a pricing issue,” Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, observed in 2011. “It’s a service issue.” Today, the crisis in streaming makes this clearer than ever. With titles scattered, prices on the rise, and bitrates throttled depending on your browser, it is little wonder some viewers are raising the jolly roger again. Studios carve out fiefdoms, build walls and levy tolls for those who wish to visit. The result is artificial scarcity in a digital world that promised abundance.
Whether piracy today is rebellion or resignation is almost irrelevant; the sails are hoisted either way. As the streaming landscape fractures into feudal territories, more viewers are turning to the high seas. The Medici understood the value linked to access. [The 2016 historical drama series tells of the rise of the powerful Florentine banking dynasty, and with it, the story of the Renaissance.] A client could travel from Rome to London and still draw on their credit, thanks to a network built on trust and interoperability. If today’s studios want to survive the storm, they may need to rediscover that truth.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.