Cost of streaming services is at an all time high, should students turn to pirating to afford entertainment?
Can you remember the dreadful times where one of the movies you absolutely wanted to watch was nowhere to be found? Or required subscriptions from two different streaming platforms?!
What did you do then? Reign the Sea, pirate!
I am sure many of you are familiar with pirating media, illegally downloading, or distributing copyrighted content such as movies, books, or music. Am I here to judge you? Maybe, maybe not. The real question is, do I resonate with you? ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.
The cost of (not) owning
As a student, I can understand why pirating media is so tempting. Now, to access three different movies, you need three different streaming services. How is anyone supposed to afford that? Let alone students with the tightest budgets?
Take Netflix- their lowest tier subscription in Canada costs $7.99 per month with ten bazillion ads. Is it worth watching something with ads every five minutes? I don’t know about you, but I don’t find ads to be very interesting. And now, with our generation’s notoriously short attention spans, yikes. It is a total dealbreaker.
If you want to skip the ads, the standard account costs $18.99 for Netflix. This is funny to me because it is a temporary luxury. The movie How To Lose a Guy in Ten Days, used to be available to watch on Netflix Canada until recently. Now, it is not.
You pay for a service that is actually not yours to keep!
I don’t know about you, but I don’t find ads to be very interesting. And now our generation’s notoriously short attention spans, yikes. It is a total dealbreaker. -Chanchal Mitruka
The ethics of the high sea
Pirating media is no doubt harmful to those who spend time to create the content, taking away from their hard-work and recognition.
So, I would say try to avoid it, since this is someone’s livelihood, but there should be a way to make these things affordable. Students, parents, or anyone should not be bending their backs to pay for multiple streaming accounts for entertainment.
The real question becomes, is it capitalism? Is it the nature of the entertainment industry? Why are we expected to pay so much for a streaming service that is fleeting?
Reddit vs. me
To justify my views, and make sure I had not totally lost it, I went to Reddit (an equally crazy conversational app/webpage).
As always and as expected, there are differing opinions on piracy. While some users argue that while the most of the profit goes to corporations, they are only being affected in the short-term, whereas the creators of the work are being punished in the long term.
Others argue that video games and movies are not things, but experiences. You don’t own a movie after buying a movie ticket.
I have my own take on that, watching a movie in a theatre vs. paying for a movie streaming service are not the same. Theatre is for the experience of cinema, while streaming service is for variety.
Pirating remains to be an iffy topic, but in all honesty, the answer to if I judge you is that, I don’t. Everyone has different circumstances, and student voices and wallets need to stick together.
