How Streaming Tried to Kill Digital Piracy, and Why Piracy Won

Growing Up With Streaming

I’m 20, which means I grew up watching the entire streaming revolution unfold in real time. I was seven when Netflix launched their UK streaming service in 2012, old enough to remember the "golden age" promise but young enough to watch it crumble before I'd even properly entered adulthood.

Streaming Natives, Streaming Orphans

Here’s the thing about my generation: we were supposed to be the streaming natives, the ones who’d never need to understand torrents or VPNs because everything would just work. The corporations promised us convenience, affordability, and access to everything we wanted to watch. They lied.

Cracks in the System

Now, I should clarify – I wasn't exactly a tech wizard back then. My proper technical knowledge didn't really develop until the 2020s, but the seeds were planted around 2014 when I started noticing the cracks in the system. Even as a kid, I could tell something was off when the film I wanted to watch was available in America but not here, or when shows just vanished from platforms without explanation.

The Golden Age That Never Was

2013–2016: The Shiny Years

For a brief, shining moment around 2013–2016, it actually seemed like streaming might deliver on its promises. Netflix had a massive catalogue, Amazon Prime was starting to compete , and the message was clear: "Why pirate when you can have it all for £7.99 a month?"

I remember being genuinely excited about this as a kid. The promise was simple: no more dodgy download sites, no more waiting hours for a film to download on whatever broadband connection my family could afford. Just click and watch. It felt like the future.

Warning Signs We Ignored

But even then, there were warning signs that I didn't fully understand at the time. Geo-blocking meant that half the Netflix US catalogue wasn't available in the UK. Films would vanish without warning due to licensing deals. I didn't know the technical reasons why this was happening back then – that understanding came much later – but I could feel that something was fundamentally unfair about the whole system.

The Great Fragmentation

The Office, Friends, and the Licensing Shuffle

What we have now isn't a solution to piracy – it's a recreation of the exact problem piracy was solving in the first place.

Want to watch The Office? That's Netflix. But wait, now it's on Amazon Prime. Actually, no, it's moved to NOW TV . Oh, they've lost the rights entirely? Check BBC iPlayer . Not there either? Tough luck.

Want to catch up on Friends? Hope you've got a Sky subscription. Fancy some Disney films? That'll be Disney+ on top of everything else. Interested in HBO shows? Sky Atlantic for some, NOW TV for others, and some are just not available legally in the UK at all.

I currently have access to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and BBC iPlayer through family accounts. That's already more than many people can afford, and I still can't legally watch half the content I want to see.

The £3.49 Anomaly

What really crystallised my frustration was when An American Werewolf in London got pulled from ITVX – where it was free – and locked behind a rental paywall on Amazon Prime Video. This is a 44-year-old film that should be part of our shared cultural heritage, and they're still trying to squeeze every penny out of it. I was planning to watch it, had it bookmarked, and suddenly it was gone. Moved from free access to £3.49 to rent. For a film from 1981.

That's when I realised the system wasn't just broken – it was actively hostile to viewers.

The Convenience Paradox

Piracy Feels Easier

Here's what's particularly maddening: piracy is now perceived as more convenient than legal streaming, and I understand why in ways I couldn't as a teenager. Back then, I just knew it was frustrating when I couldn't find what I wanted to watch. Now I understand the technical and economic forces that create this frustration.

People say they can find almost anything in thirty seconds on piracy sites. Whether or not you do that yourself, the fact this perception exists is telling: it highlights just how badly legal services have failed in comparison. It’s about predictability, availability, and simplicity – things streaming was supposed to get right but often doesn’t.

Who Actually Gets Paid?

And here's the kicker: the people getting rich off the current system aren't the creators. It's the same gerontocracy of executives and shareholders who've been extracting value from creative work for decades. Even Spotify, which I praised earlier for solving music fragmentation, pays artists absolute pennies while enriching board rooms. The moral argument against piracy falls apart when you realise you're not "stealing" from artists – you're refusing to participate in a system designed to exploit them.

I say this not just as a consumer but as a creator myself. I’ve written 180 poems – all unpublished, all private – and I actually like copyright as a principle. It exists to protect the integrity of creative work, and I can see the value in that. But I only like it when it’s fair. That’s why I release everything I write under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-ND-NC 4.0) – people can share it, pass it around, even remix it for non-commercial use, but they can’t lock it behind a paywall or profit off it without asking. That balance feels right to me: creators retain control, but art still circulates freely. Compare that to the streaming model, where corporations cling to exclusivity and squeeze viewers at every turn, and it becomes obvious that the system isn’t about protecting creativity – it’s about gatekeeping access for profit.

That said, the conversation around piracy isn't totally black and white. It's easy to frame piracy as a rebellion against corporate greed (and honestly, most of the time, it is), but it can hurt smaller creators who don’t have the cushion of billion-dollar studios. That doesn’t absolve the platforms, though – it just makes the moral landscape more complicated. The real issue is misaligned incentives: studios want to monetise every possible window, platforms want exclusive hooks to keep subscribers locked in, and viewers just want easy access. Until those competing priorities are reconciled, the whole system will keep frustrating everyone.

The Day-to-Day Headaches of Legal Streaming

Meanwhile, legal streaming means:

Remembering which platform has what content

Dealing with different interfaces and search functions

Accepting that stuff just vanishes sometimes

Paying multiple subscriptions for partial access

Wrestling with geo-blocking when travelling

Putting up with increasingly intrusive advertising

When piracy is easier than the legal alternative, you've fundamentally misunderstood the problem you're trying to solve.

The Generational Divide

Why Parents Accept It

What's fascinating is how this plays out across age groups. My parents' generation often just accepts the fragmentation – they'll pay for Sky, Netflix, and Amazon because that's what's needed. They remember when getting this much content required satellite dishes and cable boxes, so streaming still feels like progress.

Why Gen Z Rejects It

But for my generation? We grew up expecting everything to be accessible, searchable, and available on demand. We don't have patience for corporate licensing games. If your legal service is more complicated than clicking a magnet link, you've lost us.

It’s not that young people actively want piracy – it’s that when legal alternatives feel deliberately worse, many inevitably turn to it. And there’s also something political here: we’re the generation facing climate change , housing crises , and economic uncertainty while corporations post record profits. The moral weight of "stealing" from Netflix or Disney isn't exactly keeping us awake at night.

Looking Forward: The Inevitable Collapse

Too Many Platforms, Too Few Wallets

The current streaming model isn't sustainable. The market can't support a dozen major platforms all demanding £10+ per month. Eventually, consolidation will happen, either through mergers or through platforms failing entirely.

My Prediction

We'll end up with 2–3 major platforms that have learned to compete on user experience rather than exclusive libraries. But that consolidation will happen because the current model fails consumers, not because the industry suddenly develops a conscience.

Until then, piracy will continue to provide what many people see as a better service than the legal alternatives. The streaming companies had their chance to kill piracy through superior convenience and reasonable pricing. They chose corporate greed instead.

A Personal Note

Not an Endorsement

To be clear, I don’t condone piracy. This post is a critique of the streaming industry, not an endorsement of illegal behaviour. My point is that piracy thrives because companies made streaming worse, not because people inherently want to break the law.

The Real Fix

The promise was that legal streaming would be better than piracy in every way that mattered. That promise was broken by executives who cared more about shareholder value than user experience.

The solution isn’t to normalise piracy – it’s to finally build a streaming model that values access, fairness, and creators equally. Until then, piracy will remain a symptom, not the disease.

My generation doesn’t see piracy as rebellion or immorality – we see it as the inevitable by-product of a system that refuses to serve its users. Fix that, and you’ll fix piracy. Until then, the high seas will continue to offer calmer waters than the streaming wars.

The irony of posting this on a platform that values data ownership and user control isn't lost on me. Sometimes the decentralised, user-controlled alternative really is better than the corporate offering. Funny how that works.