Sailing the Seven Seas Over Online Streams

Piracy — a word evoking one-eyed sailors, bone-crossed flags and swashbuckling theatrics. Yet today’s prevailing form of piracy isn’t carried out on the high seas, but on the much vaster waters of the internet.

Internet piracy refers to the illegal downloading and distribution of digital copyrighted material. Most commonly used for obtaining movies or television series, the rate of online piracy has increased with the rise of streaming services.

Since the early 2020s, streaming platforms have gradually overtaken cable and movie theaters as the dominant venue for entertainment. However, this network of online services is less an evolution past cable and more evocative of seedy clubs with entry fees.

Is it any wonder viewers prefer sneaking in the backdoor?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly every film studio has launched a service boasting their own back catalog. Disney+, Netflix, Max, Hulu, Paramount+, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock — and so on — all flaunt catalogs of the franchises and intellectual property in their possession.

Year after year, the maze of material has become denser and more factioned as services raise rates while cutting down the amount of content — like a web of pothole-laden roads that toll every 30 yards.

Beginning its streaming service in 2007, Netflix’s original hook was its promised lack of ads at $7.99 dollars a month. Now, the platform’s tiered subscription system only allows an ad-free experience at $17.99 dollars a month. Similar spikes have followed for Disney+ and Hulu, according to Forbes. 

If a user were to purchase the cheapest ad-free option for each aforementioned service, they would pay $98 dollars a month — nearly $1,200 dollars a year.

On the other hand, there’s the illicit, free alternative of pirating media on third-party websites.

With such lofty prices, users might expect streaming services to offer a full catalog of content to browse. This isn’t the case. 

In 2023, Disney removed dozens of shows from both Disney+ and Hulu to cut quarterly costs, according to Deadline. Many of the projects were made specifically for streaming, including “Willow” — a fantasy series budgeted at a $172 million dollars that is now legally inaccessible.

Also in 2023, Warner Bros axed 87 films and shows from Max, formerly known as HBO Max. Casualties included cult-followed animation “Infinity Train,” Ridley Scott’s series “Raised by Wolves” and five-time Emmy-winning drama “Westworld.” Today, these series can only be viewed by individually purchasing them on separate sites.

Compare that to the likes of privateering web pages, which house both every axed show from all three platforms along with their own full host of movies and shows.

Content rotation has become almost a hallmark of streaming services. NBC comedy series “The Office” found its second life on Netflix, according to Variety. At the height of its rebound, it was punted to NBC’s platform Peacock, forcing fans to obtain a second subscription for continued viewing.

Shuffling shows and movies between services happens so regularly it divides franchises. Despite having a “Spider-Man” collection on Disney+, the platform doesn’t offer the web-head’s most financially successful film, “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” or his most critically acclaimed cartoon, “The Spectacular Spider-Man.” Both are locked behind AppleTV+ paywalls.

And yet on freebooting forums a vandalous sailor could binge all things Spidey-related — and more — such as the 1977 series and TV films aired on CBS.

Piracy is a crime. Viewing content illicitly whilst it airs on TV or runs in theaters is against the law and deprives artists of compensation and recognition. Yet today, streaming executives make it a crawl through the mud to access media without it. Recent spikes of online piracy aren’t attempts to steal from artists, but to condemn studios treating creative work as slop for algorithms.

If studios plan to save costs by shirking residuals and burying content, pirates will continue to take the illegal, accessible alternative to locate and appreciate the buried treasure — whether land lover corporations like it or not.