Have you ever wanted to watch a brand new movie while keeping your bank account out of debt? While piracy, the act of unauthorized distribution or duplication of copyrighted films, is technically illegal, money-hungry corporations such as Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ are getting out of hand with their prices, becoming inaccessible for many students who like to binge watch movies and TV shows.
According to the National Archives, piracy has been around as long as the movie industry itself. It started with people illegally recording and selling footage from inside a movie theater, to hosting online movie streaming websites where movies were available for free. Though piracy provides benefits to the consumer, it can hurt the companies that produced the movie by reducing their sales by millions of dollars.
In my opinion, I think streaming services should lower their prices to avoid piracy. The Numbers made a diagram depicting movie ticket prices from 1995 until present, with prices having more than doubled since 1995, due to inflation. Since 2020, many people have resorted to watching movies from streaming services, not only due to COVID-19, but also because it was more convenient to watch your favorite movies and shows in the comfort of your own home. The downside is that many big streaming companies saw this opportunity to raise their prices, and many students who couldn’t afford these new prices resorted to piracy.
COVID-19 has sparked a new surge in prices for streaming services. Nasdaq states that many common subscription platforms such as Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ have steeply increased their prices since the pandemic, and their prices are only getting higher. This does not help with piracy, as according to Kearney and MUSO, visits to piracy websites have risen 12 percent higher in 2023 than in 2019, netting significant revenue loss for all main streaming services.
The rise in prices is not completely unexpected, as mainstream streaming companies were most likely trying to capitalize on the influx of new viewers in the past five years. However, if these streaming services were cheaper, it would bring in a wave of new consumers, especially those who turned away from these high prices in the past couple of years.
In conclusion, streaming services should be cheaper in order to bring back consumers who turned away from the high prices. More affordable prices will not only ensure that streaming service companies increase their number of consumers,but it will also reduce the act of pirating content illegally.