If/when Stadia and the like take off, and streaming-only games appear, we can forget about that too.

By the way, this is just one of the many reasons why I think that streamed games are very much an anti-consumer move and should not be paid for in any circumstance, to prevent normalization.

That could easily be extended to "streamed media" in general - or, more accurately, Media as a Service. Going further, Software as a Service - or at least the part that falls under FSF's "Service as a Software Substitute" (SaaSS) - is an anti-consumer move too. Related, the trend of tying physical products to Internet services in a blatant attempt to turn ownership into renting is a hugely popular and a hugely anti-consumer practice too.

Some anecdata to counter that idea: A significant part of German movie piracy is done through streaming as it allows the uploaders to monetize through ads.

Piracy as a service, so to say.

Hm, interesting. I always assumed people making money on these streaming services (through both ads and premium accounts) aren't the same people as those who upload movies to them (actually, to somewhere else; these services now aggregate links to players, mostly).

I believe they're more popular than Torrents because they shield from responsibility. At least over here at Poland, your legal problems only start when you're actually infringing copyright - reproducing the work, i.e. uploading - which makes Torrents risky, but HTTP streaming fully in the clear for the viewers.

I’ll lease you a thinclient for 2 years.