You are under no obligation to consume media. Even if you want to the library is free. Vote with your dollar; feel like a service is ripping you off, cancel it.
I don’t think this level of snark is exactly called for in his instance — it’s not some fundamental right to consume Netflix content. If I want to, I pay their price, simple as that.
People often talk about media consumption the way the left (rightfully so!) talk about housing or healthcare — as a fundamental human right.
I don’t know if that’s quite the right way to frame the complaints. I don’t think that having things to entertain you for free is necessarily a human right (even if paywalling all media is a bleak alternative), but I do think people have a right to be charged a reasonable amount for entertainment. There was a long time where you paid 8$ a month and got access to just about every single movie and tv show that had ever been made in the US.
It was wildly profitable for Netflix, who in turn paid licensing fees to all the owners of their content, and customers were happy, it was great. Then all the cable companies started their own streaming services, licensed media was reclaimed as the garden walls went up, and suddenly comprehensive access to media ballooned from 10$ a month to hundreds . The services themselves got worse, ads started getting inserted into paid accounts, and subscription prices steadily rose across the board.
I don’t think people are declaring that media should be free, but after Netflix almost killed piracy because most people are willing to pay a reasonable amount for reasonable access, a lot of people are understandably unhappy with the streaming industry going from an affordable revolution to cable 2.0 in a single decade.
Honestly its the perfect representation of the apathy that is allowing the greedy to take more and more. No need to get off your ass unless your fighting for free tv.
If I buy 10k seats of Netflix then I should be able to sell them individually for less than the person buying 1 seat directly for instance and still turn a profit
If I funnel that content through my own app then that should be allowed
There are anti-competitive practices in place where you have to sign onto a platform in order to access their content
And the amount on content which a given company holds is too high
You get this in every industry; if you go a state over and the companies all look the same then it means they have gotten too big to compete with and need to be broken up
I think the bigger gripe is less that there are subscriptions and more that they have gotten out of hand. In general the fragmentation of services as businesses try to get a piece of the pie. Monopolies aren’t great, but regulated monopolies have some benefits.
Some examples: Netflix used to have a wide variety of backlog material, they had a cheap subscription and replaced the video rental stores. As streaming and subscriptions became more of a thing businesses stopped allowing that content on Netflix because they wanted to do it themselves. Now you need 2-3 subscriptions for the same benefit that old Netflix had. I dropped all mine except for Amazon, I don’t want 3 streaming subscriptions.
Ubisoft and many other game companies decided to take their content off of Steam because they felt they weren’t getting enough from Valve. They split off and made their own equivalents, but the benefit of Steam is not having multiple launchers. I’d rather not play a game than have to have their brand specific launcher & account.
I don’t have a “right” to free content, but i still feel that the direction of the market has made the content and consumption of said content worse.
Well yes… that’s what I have done, the problem is the other 99% of the customer base who continues to be stupid. It’s like when people say “stop preordering games” before the release of the next AAA game, but then it has record preorder sales and hundreds of complaints about it being an unfinished piece of crap. The customer base at large is too stupid to stop feeding the problem.
You are under no obligation to consume media. Even if you want to the library is free. Vote with your dollar; feel like a service is ripping you off, cancel it.
I don’t think this level of snark is exactly called for in his instance — it’s not some fundamental right to consume Netflix content. If I want to, I pay their price, simple as that.
People often talk about media consumption the way the left (rightfully so!) talk about housing or healthcare — as a fundamental human right.
I don’t know if that’s quite the right way to frame the complaints. I don’t think that having things to entertain you for free is necessarily a human right (even if paywalling all media is a bleak alternative), but I do think people have a right to be charged a reasonable amount for entertainment. There was a long time where you paid 8$ a month and got access to just about every single movie and tv show that had ever been made in the US.
It was wildly profitable for Netflix, who in turn paid licensing fees to all the owners of their content, and customers were happy, it was great. Then all the cable companies started their own streaming services, licensed media was reclaimed as the garden walls went up, and suddenly comprehensive access to media ballooned from 10$ a month to hundreds . The services themselves got worse, ads started getting inserted into paid accounts, and subscription prices steadily rose across the board.
I don’t think people are declaring that media should be free, but after Netflix almost killed piracy because most people are willing to pay a reasonable amount for reasonable access, a lot of people are understandably unhappy with the streaming industry going from an affordable revolution to cable 2.0 in a single decade.
Honestly its the perfect representation of the apathy that is allowing the greedy to take more and more. No need to get off your ass unless your fighting for free tv.
It’s more of competing
If I buy 10k seats of Netflix then I should be able to sell them individually for less than the person buying 1 seat directly for instance and still turn a profit
If I funnel that content through my own app then that should be allowed
There are anti-competitive practices in place where you have to sign onto a platform in order to access their content
And the amount on content which a given company holds is too high
You get this in every industry; if you go a state over and the companies all look the same then it means they have gotten too big to compete with and need to be broken up
I don’t agree that free circus is “improving society”, but i guess my priorities are not everyones.
I think the bigger gripe is less that there are subscriptions and more that they have gotten out of hand. In general the fragmentation of services as businesses try to get a piece of the pie. Monopolies aren’t great, but regulated monopolies have some benefits.
Some examples: Netflix used to have a wide variety of backlog material, they had a cheap subscription and replaced the video rental stores. As streaming and subscriptions became more of a thing businesses stopped allowing that content on Netflix because they wanted to do it themselves. Now you need 2-3 subscriptions for the same benefit that old Netflix had. I dropped all mine except for Amazon, I don’t want 3 streaming subscriptions.
Ubisoft and many other game companies decided to take their content off of Steam because they felt they weren’t getting enough from Valve. They split off and made their own equivalents, but the benefit of Steam is not having multiple launchers. I’d rather not play a game than have to have their brand specific launcher & account.
I don’t have a “right” to free content, but i still feel that the direction of the market has made the content and consumption of said content worse.
Stop giving them money then. Vote with your dollar its your only real vote anyway. Don’t like the way a service is treating you, cancel it.
Well yes… that’s what I have done, the problem is the other 99% of the customer base who continues to be stupid. It’s like when people say “stop preordering games” before the release of the next AAA game, but then it has record preorder sales and hundreds of complaints about it being an unfinished piece of crap. The customer base at large is too stupid to stop feeding the problem.
Still doesn’t mean you have to pay for a subscription that pisses you off. There are no victims here, just suckers.