TV series on the other hand I still pirate to this day (if they aren't on the couple of streaming services I sub to), because buying them is way too complicated (even impossible with a large portion of shows that aren't current, and a fair number of current shows too).
Movies are a mixed bag - grabbing cheap dvds or blu rays of pretty much anything is easy online so I usually do that, but I imagine if I preferred digital media or watched enough movies for my physical collection to be unwieldy I'd resort to piracy because buying digital copies of movies is just as complicated as TV.
Give me "Steam for Movies and TV" or a streaming service that aggregates licenses from everyone, and doesn't only host the content that they think will be most popular and I'll probably stop pirating those too.
With streaming, who knows? Maybe Netflix loses the rights and it disappears. Maybe their encode is garbage and it ruins the dark scenes. So, I still pay for streaming services but anything I actually care about I download and archive.
That is interesting because it happened to me in the most annoying way possible:
I was watching Donnie Darko, a rather obscure movie that requires (or at least for me required) a bit of brainpower to watch. So I watched the first half of it and planned to watch the remainder the next day. Come the next day, and where is the movie? Nowhere to be found.
(By the way, I know this doesn't actually happen, but I swear Netflix sticks in my bookmarks movies and shows I never bookmarked!)
https://www.radiotimes.com/news/on-demand/2020-07-14/derry-g...
At least, until Steam goes offline, or maybe your account gets lost. I for one still use Steam, but I do wonder if I'll be able to play my favorite games in 20 years.
A plain EXE from itch, GOG, or some other source will work as long as compatible hardware lives on.
if this is somehow "too complicated" for the average user, just make the default an "auto" setting that does whatever it does now and bury it in a menu somewhere.
Admittedly some services, like RedBox, are more frustrating than torrenting though.
That danger is almost exclusive to software piracy. The probability of being infected by an evil pdf, mp3 or mp4 is really low if you know what you're doing (i.e. updating and using decent software).
This included RDR2. Totally worth it.
> One could even argue that it is pro consumer
One really couldn't. It punishes buyers with encumbered software while merely delaying pirates a short while. Pirates end up with the better experience, so...
you might be surprised at how obscure torrents have become outside of tech circles. when I graduated college (2017), basically no one outside of the comp sci department understood how to use torrents (or even knew what they were). this would have been unthinkable when I was in high school. everyone and their mother seemed to be torrenting music and movies.
I even tried explaining how to use them to people, but they would object that the school would catch them anyway. when I explained how VPNs work, they complained that $6/month was too expensive for a poor college student. nevermind that they're already paying for prime, netflix, and hulu subscriptions every month.
I think there are two main reasons for this. a lot of people have laptops with the base storage option, often a 256GB or even 128GB ssd. phones have even less storage. this makes it unappealing to keep a local library of music and especially movies (plus now that everyone has a phone and a laptop, syncing your collection becomes annoying). second, I think video and especially music streaming services have actually succeeded in making their products just convenient enough that people don't feel like figuring out how to use torrent trackers and clients.
Blocked in Europe, China, Australia, ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_blocking_access_to_T...
exaggerating slightly but you know what I mean
The base knowledge here is people who know how to install and play pretty complex games. These people go to impossible lengths to install video drivers and troubleshoot problems with their computers; I'm sure they won't find this particular task very difficult.
One could even argue that it is pro consumer by making sure the revenue will go back to paying consumers in the form of additional content, instead of paying for players who didn't buy it.