For years, streaming was the great promise of entertainment: all the movies, all the series, and all the music available at the click of a button. No schedules, no ads, and at an affordable price. What seemed like a bright future soon became a fragmented, expensive, and increasingly frustrating experience. Today, millions of users are taking a path that Hollywood thought was buried: digital piracy.
The rise of streaming and the illusion of unlimited access
When Netflix was leading the streaming revolution, the idea was simple: pay around $8 a month and enjoy a nearly endless catalog. Fox series, Warner films, Paramount classics, and National Geographic documentaries—everything was in one place.
The comparison to cable TV left no room for doubt. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on unattractive channel packages, streaming offered exactly what users wanted, without interruptions or schedules. It was so compelling that millions of people canceled their cable subscriptions and migrated to these platforms.
However, that scenario did not last long.
How market fragmentation opened the door to piracy
The major studios quickly realized they were handing over their most valuable content to competitors who were capturing audiences and revenue. The response was to create their own services: Disney+ pulled its productions from Netflix, Warner launched HBO Max, Paramount introduced Paramount+, and so on.
The result was a saturated market. What used to cost $8 can now easily exceed $100 if you want to cover all platforms. Added to this are the introduction of ads, image quality restrictions, and extra charges for features that were previously included.
Users stopped receiving convenience and began paying more for less. In this fertile ground, piracy re-emerged as a logical alternative.
Why users are returning to digital piracy
Piracy had lost ground because streaming was more convenient, secure, and affordable. However, today the experience is quite the opposite:
- Extreme fragmentation: One series can be on Disney+, another on Netflix, and another exclusive to Amazon Prime.
- Content rotation: What’s available today may disappear next month due to licensing changes.
- Rising prices: Monthly spending skyrocketed due to the need for multiple subscriptions.
- Intrusive advertising: Services that once promised ad-free entertainment now charge more to remove them.
In this context, users aren’t looking to break the law, but rather to access what they already had: convenience, accessibility, and a fair price.
How financial interests influence the collapse of streaming
A little-discussed factor behind this decline is the shift in control of the entertainment industry. Previously, studios were led by creative producers; today, investment funds and private equity are setting the pace.
The case of MGM in 2004 is illustrative: acquired by financial conglomerates, burdened with debt, and stripped of its infrastructure, it ended up fragmented and resold. This same pattern is repeated in movie theater chains, talent agencies, and streaming platforms.
The result is clear: less innovation, more cuts, and generic content designed to fill catalogs, not to mark an era.
Lessons from other industries: the example of video games
While streaming falls into predictable pitfalls, the video game industry is showing a different path. Steam, Valve’s platform, managed to reduce piracy not by punishing users, but by offering a better service:
- Extensive catalog in one place.
- No arbitrary regional blocks.
- Games that remain in the user’s library.
- Affordable prices and constant offers.
Valve CEO Gabe Newell sums it up best: “Piracy isn’t a technical problem, it’s a service problem.”
That’s precisely the lesson streaming platforms seem to be ignoring.
Consequences for the future of the internet and entertainment
The return of piracy is not an isolated event. It is connected to a larger phenomenon: the financialization and concentration of media, along with new regulations that erode trust in the internet.
Examples like the UK’s Online Safety Act , which requires invasive age verification, have driven widespread use of VPNs. At the same time, media outlets are replacing newsrooms with automated content and filling their pages with ads and paywalls, making the digital experience more frustrating.
The pattern is clear: short-term decisions that prioritize immediate benefits and sacrifice quality, accessibility, and trust.
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What platforms can do to regain trust
Although the outlook seems complicated, there are clear strategies to prevent piracy from continuing to grow:
- Unification of catalogs through agreements between studios and platforms.
- Reasonable and transparent prices , with flexible family plans.
- Remove unnecessary restrictions , such as regional blocks that confuse the user.
- Maintaining catalog stability , ensuring that content doesn’t disappear overnight.
- Recovering creative vision , investing in original projects instead of just recycling franchises.
These measures would not only attract users back, but could also prevent a further collapse of the industry.
Digital piracy is just a reflection of a system that has stopped listening to consumers. The streaming industry still has the opportunity to correct its course: to offer a better, more accessible, and more reliable service. The real question is whether they’ll be able to watch it before it’s too late.
