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The Rise of Netflix Competitors Has Pushed Consumers Back Toward Piracy (vice.com)
A new study from network equipment company Sandvine finds that BitTorrent usage and piracy is increasing after years of declines. The reason appears to be due to "an increase in exclusivity deals that force subscribers to hunt and peck among a myriad of streaming services to actually find the content they're looking for," reports Motherboard. From the report: Sandvine's new Global Internet Phenomena report offers some interesting insight into user video habits and the internet, such as the fact that more than 50 percent of internet traffic is now encrypted, video now accounts for 58 percent of all global traffic, and Netflix alone now comprises 15 percent of all internet downstream data consumed. But there's another interesting tidbit buried in the firm's report: after years of steady decline, BitTorrent usage is once again growing.
According to Sandvine, file-sharing accounts for 3 percent of global downstream and 22 percent of upstream traffic, with 97% of that traffic in turn being BitTorrent. While BitTorrent is often used to distribute ordinary files, it remains the choice du jour for those looking to distribute and trade copyrighted content online, made easier via media PCs running Kodi and select plugins. Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent's share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent, largely thanks to the rise in quality, inexpensive streaming alternatives to piracy. But Sandvine notes that trend is now reversing slightly, with BitTorrent's traffic share once again growing worldwide. That's especially true in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, where BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of all upstream network traffic.
According to Sandvine, file-sharing accounts for 3 percent of global downstream and 22 percent of upstream traffic, with 97% of that traffic in turn being BitTorrent. While BitTorrent is often used to distribute ordinary files, it remains the choice du jour for those looking to distribute and trade copyrighted content online, made easier via media PCs running Kodi and select plugins. Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent's share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent, largely thanks to the rise in quality, inexpensive streaming alternatives to piracy. But Sandvine notes that trend is now reversing slightly, with BitTorrent's traffic share once again growing worldwide. That's especially true in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, where BitTorrent now accounts for 32% of all upstream network traffic.
>competitors
How generous.
They're not offering a competitive product. In fact, "exclusivity" means the product in question no longer exists. Even if you disregard the fragmentation, neftlix/streamers have become more finger-grubby, more "inform you of viewing opportunities you may be interested in", more metrics and number-mulling, more watch-as-you're-told and curating. And who can blame them, it's just optimal use of a sea of shallow dullards.
But I won't disregard it. Fragmentation isn't driven by "healthy market competition", this is kids taking their ball and going home. Kids trying to cut themself a bigger slice of a limited consumer pie.
Seriously, that pie isn't infinite. We heap out a trillion hours of viewsumption every year and they pick it clean apart. Everyone wants their pile to be given more. A billion eyeballs live in screens and the attention economy claws for more, big or small.
Oh wait, actual TFS is just eagerly interpreting a relative increase of torrenting in the upstreams. "97% of file-sharing is torrents" is like announcing 97% of typing is being done with fingers. It's not like we, being raised as consumer cattle, do much in the upstream anyway.
If you make viewers work to find their shows by making them have to subscribe and pay for each network individually, they will just put that work into finding the 'free' content instead. Providers and content producers still do not understand this.
The irony of it all is cable companies exactly fit the bill for this, except they basically worked themselves out of their own market by abusing customers and refusing to give them what they actually wanted. It's doubly so since most (nearly all?) cable TV is now an on-demand stream anyhow. Even 'normal' channels are still an IP video stream, just without the ability to select a start point.
I wonder if cable 2.0 will come and be an aggregator of streaming services. I hope not, since cable companies are still utter scum.
Some streaming services are getting smarter and allowing an offline mode. THAT will drive down piracy if it's robust enough. Well, that and ending this idiocy of exclusive movies and all. It's one thing if you (netflix, amazon, etc.) make your own shows that only you host...but playing that game with movies? Broadcast TV shows? Yah...cut that shit out.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
Back in 2011, Sandvine stated that BitTorrent accounted for 52.01% of upstream traffic on fixed broadband networks in North America. By 2015, BitTorrent's share of upstream traffic on these networks had dipped to 26.83 percent,
I suspect that Youtube/Facebook video uploads are a large portion of consumer uploads. Back in 2011, many more people were still using flip-phones that took 320x240 video. Now, most of those people have upgraded to phones that take 1080p or 4k video. The larger video file sizes makes Bittorrent data look smaller in comparison.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Every time this topic comes up people complain that "Well now I have to buy N number of services at the same time and that adds up to more than I used to pay for cable!". I call BS. Why don't you just subscribe to one (or two) services, exhaust all of their exclusive content that you're interested in, then cancel and move on to another service. Rinse and repeat. By the time you get back to the first service they should have a bunch of new content for you.
For the small handful of times that you need to watch a SPECIFIC movie or show RIGHT NOW you can temporarily subscribe to a service that has it, or buy the BlueRay or DVD.
Every time this topic comes up people complain that "Well now I have to buy N number of services at the same time and that adds up to more than I used to pay for cable!". I call BS. Why don't you just subscribe to one (or two) services, exhaust all of their exclusive content that you're interested in,
Because if I'm going to do the research to track down which streaming service has the content I want, I might as well make the extra click to download it.
Prior to Starz leaving, Netflix had a pretty decent catalog -- plenty of movies and TV shows I wanted to see. After that, their catalog has been getting steadily worse, except for Netflix produced content (some of which is really good). But when I want to watch something in particular, I don't want to have to go figure out which streaming provider it's on and then potentially have to sign up for that provider just for that content.
If it's easier to find content for free download than to purchase it legally, many people will chose to download it.
Every media company wants its own service so it can monopolize its own content and squeeze every penny from their customers. If they would remove their heads from their anuses they'd see that a few services offering everyone's content they'd make a killing. Micro transactions are where it's at. Ask the music and video game industries... Having to buy multiple services, navigate which content comes to which service and when will push consumers away. Make it brain dead simple and ubiquitously available and the money will pour in.
Nah.
The driving force behind Piracy is "ease of access", if I have to download a fucking app, then downloading a piracy app, or any app that "enables" piracy (such as Kodi) is just as easy. About a decade ago, people were downloading "unlimited cable" apps from sketchy people on eBay and all they did was skin VLC and use a playlist of the various "subscriber only" and "free to watch" websites directly, as media has no authentication control. That also mostly came to a crashing end as many of the same subscriber-only sites switched to proprietary apps (try watchig HBO or Disney outside the US, it's impossible, thus resorting to piracy is the only option if you're not willing to fork over $2400/yr to the local cable company.)
With Netflix, Netflix really has no reason to engage in content lockups, and doing so is because the content providers treat them as a cable channel so they can dip as many times with cable companies around the world. If a piece of content in the US is on Fox, Netflix generally has it world-wide... one season behind. That's perfectly fine, and they (Fox) can shoot their toes off if they want to do it that way. Everyone else who has no Fox affiliate (eg everyone who doesn't live in the US) has to resort to piracy. In Canada, only the CW doesn't exist as a local channel, but it's content is carried by CTV... except not all of it, and if I miss an episode, I have to pirate it, because the VOD service offered by the cable company is entirely useless when they decided to jump on their own crappy Netflix clone (Shomi(when went out of business) or CraveTV)
So if I have to subscribe, individually to no less than 3 "app"'s to get all the content I want, I'm right back up to $50/mo where the price of renting basic cable is. Fuck that noise, I'd rather pay for one (Netflix), and just outright ignore the other shows, and seeing how god awfully slow these other App's aren't making their content available outside the US, means they will have a hard time putting their content horses back in the barn after the pirates rip it off.
The sheer lack of 4K content (absolutely zero content is available in 4K outside of Netflix) is going to be the death for conventional Cable services. As pirates will be able to get 4K rips of films and TV shows much faster and more conveniently just like when DVD and Bluray's were the only way to watch that content. I own a bunch of 4K Bluerays, but do not have a player for them. Why not? The same reason the PS4/Pro doesn't support 4K Bluerays.... you need a specific drive to play it, and that's an additional tax that isn't worth paying until a 4K BD drive is $50.
I've used the Wii, Wii U and Xbox 360 for playing Netflix. Netflix just gets played on whatever I can plug into the second screen. That's all.
And that's the issue here. Physical media is an annoyance, and one would rather just plug in a USB stick with 100 movies on it, into any device (including the PS4 Pro, and most smart TV's) rather than have to fumble with yet more fucking apps and subscription services.
So Piracy is the unfortunate check on content creators greed. When they get too greedy, the pirates will go through the extra effort to ensure they can play that content on whatever the fuck they want, in perpetuity.
Competition is not what is bad.. competition is GOOD. Exclusivity is bad. Exclusivity is what leads to market fragmentation.
Trying to watch something calm like Mr. Rogers or Reading Rainbow with my son is frustrating on Prime when they stick a radioactive ad for their latest neon-colored jump-cut scream-fest abomination in front of it. I don't even understand - they're literally advertising things which I could watch on their service for free but am obviously choosing not to. Instead of getting ready to sing with Mr. Rogers or read with LeVar my son is changing his mind and wanting to whatever whatever the hell that was that I skipped as quickly as possible.
Now I pirate things I could watch with a service I pay for.
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/g...
All these different producers need to stop thinking that THEIR offer is the only thing anyone could ever want.
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The old adage is true, competition is good, but too much competition is bad and leads to market fragmentation.
That is wrong.
What is bad is exclusion, not competition.
The more companies manufacture a gadget, the more choice you have, the more they all are under pressure to improve efficiency (so they can offer lower prices) and to innovate (so they can offer new features), all in an effort to stand out from the crowd.
This works for smartphones, for cars, for almost all consumer gadgets, because all smartphones use the same carriers and WLAN and Bluetooth. All cars use the same roads and the same single-digit number of types of fuel. All electronic gadgets have the same power connectors. All washing machines take the same washing powders or liquids. You get the idea.
If you bring a smartphone that only communicates with other smartphones of the same type to the market, and somehow manage to get a double-digit percentage of consumers to buy it, and then two competitors do the same - then you have market fragmentation. But the cause is not that there are three competitors, the cause is that they are not interoperale.
The subscription service model is one of those business models that has market fragmentation at its core. It wants to be customer-hostile. Forcing as many people as possible to subscribe to your channel, perfectly well knowing that this will make them unsubscribe from competitors, is the business model.
From a consumer perspective, the only solution is to pressure those companies into abandoning a customer-hostile business model and force them into an interoperable model.
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