And most importantly, those few randoms don't have a flood of other data being scraped from your phone, social media, credit card transactions etc. to cross-correlate your viewing with. They don't see that you paused the movie when the main character put on some Nikes and went online shopping for a pair of Nikes for yourself. They don't see that you have friends over. They don't see what brand of microwave popcorn you watch with your movies. They don't care.
> when we pause video, for how long, which bits we rewind back to, when we consume the content during the time, where (GPS-wise), how often we play them
is entirely hidden. What model gives that up, but keeps the identity of the video you're watching private?
I agree about streaming services.
But any peer on the torrent you downloaded knows your IP address. Content holders often do this, they monitor the IP addresses that download their shows and send the user a letter via their ISP to cease and desist.
You think I'm only talking about Netflix? What about the data giant Spotify?
https://libraryfreedom.chat/t/extraordinary-amount-of-teleme...
And as for the one company you mention, Netflix, here's some info which simply proves your claim wrong:
https://www.reddit.com/r/netflix/comments/2uffl9/how_much_da...
They'll share their data with the NSA when they come knocking, just like all the other large corporations. In fact, they probably already _are_ sharing it.
Now said president discovers that a few people he considered trustworthy seem to be secretly having qualms about his increasing powergrabs. He manufactures a few roadblocks in their careers and within a year and a half they have all been cleaned out.
With them gone he is able to go ever further and more brazen. One day he proclaims himself dictator, and all branches cheer and celebrate.
Ever heard of Max Schrems? He did exactly this (use GDPR to obtain his records) for Facebook.
Not sure why you think Netflix would never go through the same hullabaloo - they operate in the EU as well.
Privacy.
Streaming services have increasingly terrifying and inescapable telemetry. Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Google - all of them collect extremely telling things about us due to when we pause video, for how long, which bits we rewind back to, when we consume the content during the time, where (GPS-wise), how often we play them, the collective profiling of us based on what we download in general...and many other things we don't even know about.
After listening to Shoshana Zuboff's audiobook 'The Age of Surveillance Capitalism' - the most important book I have ever read on technology - I am very aware of this. The data companies don't want us to be aware of what they're doing to us.
I'm not condoning piracy, and I believe content creators should be fairly compensated for their hard work - but unless there's a convenient way to be able to consume content in my own open-source local software such as MPV, all offline, and in full privacy without being spied on, I refuse to legitimise the alternative.
I realise there's still blu-ray and DVD, but not always - many releases are web only, now. I'd even pay a premium more for such non-DRM content...your move, Hollywood.
It was never natural to have people watch and profile us when we're already paying money to watch personal entertainment, on this massive global scale.