> The success of p2p file sharing platforms rested on the fact that people like piracy and free stuff, it didn't compete on service quality. Which became evident when most content became cheap and people switched.

Nah, it was absolutely about service quality. Absodefinitelutely.

Back in the day it was either buying things on physical media and adjusting your living situation accordingly (having meters of shelves just to store it and media player(s) set up to play the media), OR sail the seas and have "your" entire media library stored away on a media server in the closet, easily accessible from the media center PC connected to your TV. Netflix before Netflix was a thing, essentially.

Now, finally, they caught on and do provide a similar (in some ways higher) level of service as the "homebrew Netflix" solution from "þe aulde" days, and people are prepared to pay for it. I gladly pay the price for the different streaming services because of the convenience of having everything easily accessible in a format that doesn't take up all the space at my home. If that disappears though, I'll grumpily re-build the server in the closet and expand the sails again.

There's still plenty of people who don't want or can't pay for the official service... but these days, >90% use illegal streaming portals instead of p2p services, because the service quality is so much higher. No need for a server closet, when these sites are basically "netflix but you don't need to log in and they actually have what you want".

Huh I see.

That makes me happy even though I'll still choose to pay, since I guess it will make it harder for the legal streaming providers to suddenly downgrade the experience.

It's sad that we need piracy to drive innovation and keep quality expectations up.

You're using yourself as the yardstick for "normal people", but there are other "normal people" elsewhere (e.g. unstable economies) who rely on cryptocurrencies for use cases you don't have to worry about.

Sounds a lot like projection.

Cryptocurrency is a platform for trade. Not a miracle investment. Media piracy is alive because many simply don't have access to it, otherwise.

When Netflix came to my area. Yesthankyouplease signed up for the ultra whatever 4k package within days. When they started removing content, pumping woke shit and increased the price, ye nah cya wouldn't wanna be ya. And back to piracy. Who is the idiot who pays for a garbage streaming service that has no content? Let alone multiple streaming services? Just read a book, instead.

No. Piracy and crypto aren't alive because of your delusions.

The last feature piracy has is enabling game demos (Thank fuck more companies are releasing demos again). How many times do companies expect to fool people into shilling out hard cash for what, effectively, is just an unrelated CGI video reel nicked named "trailer"? Many times these trailers don't even include gameplay. Other times they straight up lie about the content of the game and release it with dumbed down graphics. Or a much more barren world.

Nah, piracy enables demos and it doesn't "hUrT tHe GaMiNg iNdUsTrY". https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy...