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Something that shocked me when I left the USA a few years ago was how aggressively region locked everything is outside of the states.

More than half the times I’ve tried to find something it’s “oh, this isn’t available in your region”. “Oh, this is available in your region but you need a credit card from this region”. “Oh, this is available in your region but your email address is tied to an account in a different region”. “Oh, this is available in your region but only in low quality”. The unholy combo of “oh, this is available in your account’s region, and it’s available in the region you’re visiting, but in this region we can only show the content to people from this region”.

It’s no surprise that piracy/vpns are still widespread - streaming companies (really media producers) are blocking people from purchasing their services!!!

This is particularly annoying for people who've moved around in Europe. It is not unusual to live in Denmark but want to watch e.g. a French film with English subtitles, or a French film with German dubbing, but many streaming services only provide subtitles/dubbing in the film's original language plus the local language.

For some reason the EC seems to have allowed this [1], but it seems an obvious failure to create a single market.

[1] https://www.euronews.com/2015/05/17/ec-to-make-exceptions-fo...

So much media comes from the US, and the default position of US media companies seems to be to broadcast in the US first and think about their international strategy later.

Show comes out, becomes a big hit in the US, everyone else thinks it looks good and wants to watch, the only place it's available is via pirating. And then TV companies are shocked at the level of piracy. What did they expect?

A good example is Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which is only available on Sky Showtime in my country. I actually have a subscription to Sky Showtime but I still have to get it from an alternative source as Sky Showtime in my country only has it in 1080p SDR, no 4k or HDR support at all on their service.

Who the hell launches a brand new streaming service in 2022 without 4k or HDR support?

Heh, that's my experience as a tech adopter too. every single announcement is "we're launching in the US first". For whatever reason the rest of the world does not make a compelling target.

Even companies from outside the US go for "US first" from time to time...

I'm surprised nobody is making a point of the culture loss either.

Like, my children are bilingual (italian, english), we live in Canada. One of the key things about this is being able to watch tv, read books and play videogames in native language.

It is really hard. A show is available in italy on Netflix, but in netflix canada is available in english and not italian. Disney+ has this problem with many of their classics!

Videogames are way better,this problem usually doesn't exist.

Books are the worst of all: italian companies don't sell online to non italian credit cards more often than not, if they sell at all. Buying an italian paperbook is usually challenging and of course I'd prefer paper over digital.

Just a disaster.

Try watching Dutch television in the USA

Your bubble is watching USA content outside the USA and noticing it's made unavailable, but it's not like others don't region lock

And 100% of Danes, Swedes and Norwegians, regardless age, pay pre-emptive "copying fees" on every piece of storage medium they buy no matter what they intend to use it for. You should never feel guilty for downloading some MP3s or whatever.

A little bit of extra information in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36756675

Same for Switzerland, the "blank storage fee": https://www.suisa.ch/en/Kunden/Weitere-Tarife/Herstellung--I...
I find your comment interesting, but I don't know what this is referring to. Any chance you can expand on this point? or link to something that explains it?
Wait what? Really? In that case why not pirate your content? You already paid for it.
In a reasonable world, if you've paid the copying fee, then downloading content would be legal. But no, the content corporations want to take a double dip.
No. What you shouldn't feel guilty about is storing legally obtained material on a purchased storage medium, like from a friend or the radio/TV. That is what the tax covers.

We can argue whether that's fair and appropriate, and I suspect we share an opinion there, but saying that never paying any artist in the world is fine because your local copyright authority was paid... that's quite dubious

There is an equivalent tax in France where you pay for every hard drive, USB key, memory card, blank CD, blank DVD, smartphone, and tablet. Since this law was introduced, I stopped having any guilt when I download something.

I still buy albums on Bandcamp because they deserve it, but the rest is free as I already paid for it without my consent.

In Finland the copying fees are taken directly out of the state budget, so 100% of the (tax-paying) populace is paying for it.
There's an analogy to the Danegeld in there somewhere. But who is doing the raiding in this case?
French too.
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” -Gabe Newell
I can relate to this. I get my music from Bandcamp, it is easy to get non DRM'ed files. Same for games which I buy on GoG, comes also with easy to download non DRM'ed files. I never illegally download games and music because of this.

When it comes to series though;

They are either not available anywhere legally, not in my region, only available with some streaming service subscription were the rest of the catalog doesn't interest me. Disappear from the catalog etc. etc. etc.

I might've downloaded series because of it.

Give me a service were I can legally download .mkv files and I certainly will pay for it. Right now illegally downloading it is just far superior.

Content creators and studios really need to get this quote through their heads. While price may be a factor, people also choose piracy because it actually provides the product they want, rather than the product that the corporations want to sell.

If there was a movie service that offered simply a paid download where I could browse a list of all movies ever made, buy a single file (let's say MKV) that contained the movie, my choice of audio stream(s), my choice of subs, that could be downloaded once and played any number of times, in any region, on any hardware, running any software, then you have my business! Figure that out, and then we can talk about price. Bandcamp mostly figured this out for music (except for the "all music ever made" part). How is it so hard for movies?

Also really tired of hearing the vague "licensing" excuses, too. "Oh, we can't do that because licenses!" This is an industry self-inflicted wound--one that they could fix if they really thought it was important.

True. I pay for steam, I pay for music I listen to, I pay for films (theater), and I download TV shows. I only watch 2-3 a year, and I can't justify paying 100€/month for at most 3 TV shows.
This is very similar to the sentiment of Steve Jobs' open letter "Thoughts on Music" where he called upon record companies to allow him to abolish DRM in the iTunes music store.
On the other hand Steam is probably the most common antipiracy technology around.
What are the alternatives now?

Streaming services have crippled themselves (collectively) by hoarding content; you now need to sign up for several if you want access to everything.

And pay-per-movie (eg itunes) is just ridiculously expensive, $10/movie, that's a whole day's salary in poorer countries.

The industry needs to stop bleating about ordinary people 'stealing' from them, and come up with better business models/practices that match what people are willing to pay.

I think we used to rent VHS videos for 7.50 dutch guilders in 1999 (3.40 EUR, 5.37 EUR in 2022), which translates to $6... so $10/movie seems quite expensive indeed.

I was going to say I thought it sounds cheap, but when doing the calculations it turns out it has actually increased in price quite a lot.

-And pay-per-movie (eg itunes) is just ridiculously expensive, $10/movie, that's a whole day's salary in poorer countries. I don't think this is relevant for Denmark, bc their salaries are much bigger. But it's imo expensive anyways
"Over 50% of young Danes admit to streaming or downloading content illegally"
Yeah, I figured that was extremely low. But maybe it's because content is much more easily available legally now. You can basically never run out of Netflix.

If you're asking the millennial generation however, the numbers should be near 100%.

Or possibly are aware they stream or download content illegally. Copyright infringement is so incredibly routine that people don’t even realize that’s what they’re doing.
Surprised it's only 50%, but also surprised it is 50% in the era of streaming services and walled garden that is a smartphone.

Reminds me of the time the prime minister of Sweden on TV said "well we can't prosecute an entire generation" when he was asked about his stance towards illegal downloading, about 16-20 years ago, when there was not a single soul among the youngs that hadn't downloaded (or watch someone else download for them) movie/music illegally.

Hell, most people bought a PC/connected to internet specifically to download illegally. Internet didn't have much else to offer to the non-techy person, except Wikipedia for cheating on home assignments

I wonder how much of this is due to there being too many streaming services and/or them being geo-locked.
The industry has really snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Netflix and Spotify had younger generations paying for content, but the fragmentation will surely break them out of the habit.
Netflix was great but it got more crowded due to everyone wanting a piece of the cake. Now there are few shows or bunch of movies interesting to me that are either distributed evenly on multiple services or not available at my location at all. I’d be okay to pay as I go if there was at least one central way to access all content without ads and on demand but no one seems to be interested in that.
At this point, paying for Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV, and HBO Max comes out to about the same price as cable for me. So yeah the inventive is there...
Back when films were distrubuted on physical reels of film, making copies of the film was very expensive. The solution was to make enough copies for the cinemas in America, and once American cinemas were done with them, move them on to other countries. Films were given internationally staggered releases in order to control distribution costs.

Once Internet advertising made marketing campaigns international, this suddenly ran into problems. Australia - usually amongst the last English-speaking countries to see Hollywood films - suddenly saw what Americans were seeing, and what they wouldn't see for the best part of a year. Many films went to DVD in America - and therefore the piracy networks - before getting to Australian cinemas.

This specific problem has been solved now that films are distributed on optical media and hard disk drives, but torrenting remains very popular in Australia.

When we talk of protecting copyright holders, the film studios are often blamed. However, this distribution system was set up by a network of separate distribution companies. A century ago, they provided the solution to a genuine logistical problem; now, they seek rent for solving a problem that no longer exists.

Huh. I'm a millennial. We scored a perfect 100%. Beat that zoomers.
unrelated, but 100% of young Nigerians (and Africans, I presume) have streamed or downloaded content illegally. You have less bandwidth to worry about copyright when you can't afford it and your compliance can't be enforced.
I mean what do you expect when you as an industry give paying customers a more shit service then you get by literally JUST downloading a video file.
I know people debate whether it's really "stealing" but my opinion is that if you won't pay then just don't watch. I don't care if I'm downvoted for this but people do not have a right to listen to music or watch movies.

People seem to be united in their condemnation of wage theft where businesses don't pay their workers properly. And most people think restaurants should pay their waiters properly instead of relying on tips. I just think it's really analogous that if an artist makes some content then you should pay them for it.

(And don't complain to me about the corrupt film or music industry. It's a simple moral choice by the individual)

Only 50%? I'm disappointed.
Something that falls through the cracks is content that isn't available on streaming or VOD.

Like take Northern Exposure, a huge hit TV show in the early 90's. It's not available anywhere except out of print DVDs because it features a lot of music, and the license for that music needs to be renegotiated. So it's lost to time basically. This is just one example, there's countless others.

Not to mention all the older films/tv shows that no streaming company wants because they don't think it would attract anyone.

Piracy is actually keeping this content alive... It's nuts.

Some people just don't watch TV shows, and only TV shows needs alternate, less legal means. That's why illegal download isn't as prevalent as when Winamp was the only way to listen to any music.

In the meantime, I just paid 200€ in sales taxes to Universal/Disney for my ssd where I only store VM images.

If I get bored before this sting less (unlikely, but still), I'll just pay 10 euros/month to set up a seedbox with real storage and write an interface for my family to use it at will, by pure pettiness.

I would imagine this means everyone has watched pirated content. Not everyone is comfortable navigating a piracy site, but everyone knows someone who knows how to do it, and I've never run into anyone who has a problem with watching a pirated movie, anywhere.

Tbh it's often easier to find what you want in pirated form than streaming. Your services might have taken off the thing you want to watch, or you might not have the service that has the thing you want.

I would have guessed nearly 100%.
Lets put all of them into prisons for multiple years, at the wish of the copyright owners. Does Europe have enough prisons?
Honestly, I just stopped caring about movies and tv altogether. The Pandy push of trash content and everyone and their brother having a terrible and overpriced streaming service made me stop caring.

I'll go spend my time and money on industry or products that don't actively hate their customers.

Streaming is not illegal though is it? The article dances around this saying stuff like “lots of people stream; but they wouldn’t steal content; survey responders agree sharing content is like stealing”.
My colleague has not paid for media content in over ten years. He pirates everything. I'm surprised the percentage is not much higher. Perhaps it is a technology understanding gap?