‘Expensive’ Streaming Services Are a Key Reason for Americans to ‘Pirate’

A new survey confirms that the high cost of online streaming services keeps piracy relevant. The findings suggest that one in three Americans have pirated a movie or TV series over the past year. Costs are a key motivator for these self-proclaimed pirates, with the number of legal subscription services and their price tags a key trigger.

For online media consumers, things have improved significantly over the years. More content is being made available on-demand than ever before.

Netflix set the tone a decade ago by offering movies and TV series online as a convenient alternative to piracy. This worked well, so well that more than a dozen other streaming services were launched, all with their own exclusive releases.

While this may sound positive, in some ways it made things worse for consumers. As it turns out, it’s quite costly to have more than a handful of subscriptions and fees may rise to the point where people feel justified to pirate some content to keep costs under control.

This revelation isn’t new. It’s been brought up several times over the years, dating back to at least 2017. And indeed, while most people gladly pay for streaming subscriptions, many use pirate sites and services ‘on the side’ to incidentally watch content from services they’re not already subscribed to.

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