Can’t pay: streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

[CatCage]

Can’t pay, won’t pay: impoverished streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

 

With a trip to Florence booked, all I want is to rewatch Medici. The 2016 historical drama series tells of the rise of the powerful Florentine banking dynasty, and with it, the story of the Renaissance. Until recently, I could simply have gone to Netflix and found it there, alongside a wide array of award-winning and obscure titles. But when I Google the show in 2025, the Netflix link only takes me to a blank page.

 

I don’t see it on HBO Max, Disney+, Apple TV+, or any of the smaller streaming platforms. On Amazon Prime I am required to buy each of the three seasons or 24 episodes separately, whereupon they would be stored in a library subject to overnight deletion. Raised in the land of The Pirate Bay, the Swedish torrent index, I feel, for the first time in a decade, a nostalgia for the high seas of digital piracy. And I am not alone.

 

For my teenage self in the 00s, torrenting was the norm. Need the new Coldplay album on your iPod? The Pirate Bay. The 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet? The Pirate Bay. Whatever you needed was accessible with just a couple of clicks. But as smartphones proliferated, so did Spotify, the music streaming platform that is also headquartered in Sweden. The same Scandinavian country had become a hub of illegal torrenting and simultaneously conjured forth its solution.

 

More:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/aug/14/cant-pay-wont-pay-impoverished-streaming-services-are-driving-viewers-back-to-piracy

[AlexRRR]

Yep was thinking this the other day when my Aussie subscription for Netflix went up $2 to just over 20 a month, and you know I search and search for something to watch then get tired and turn the telly off, My AFL team will be crap next season so I can save about $250 for AFL Watch and just use my pirate streaming box to watch live, AFL is a bit fast for this slow box but it will do, then they want 7700 B to stream the NFL this season....I guess I will pay but Netflix is on shaky ground...