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by matheusmoreira·6y ago·view on hn ↗
Removing the reasons to infringe copyright is completely different from making it impossible to infringe someone's copyright.

Netflix is a convenient enough service that makes it easy for people to watch what they want to watch. Most people will just pay for it without thinking twice. It's easy enough that most people won't even consider infringing. Netflix's value isn't just in the content it serves, it's also in the fact it frees people from the non-trivial effort required to "pirate". Private torrent trackers have an economy of their own.

Making it impossible to infringe is extremely difficult. Movies and music are really just information. Extremely big numbers. It's trivial to make copies of this stuff and send those copies over the network. In previous centuries, you needed to be a major industry player and own big machines like printing presses in order to infringe on someone's copyright at scale. In the 21st century it's as easy as copy paste or forgetting to close the torrent client. People might not even realize they are doing it.

This is why a fragmented streaming market will push people towards copyright infringement. Instead of pooling their intellectual property and creating one single perfect streaming service with all the content, they are making it difficult and expensive for the consumer by competing with each other. At some point, people are going to wonder if there's a better way. That's when they'll find "piracy".