What was the first series you downloaded to watch week by week? Your answer is most likely ‘Lost’, but it could be ‘Desperate Housewives’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ or even some anime. It was a different time: in 2002 there were a total of 182 series broadcast in the United Statesof which perhaps twenty stood out. In 2021 a total of 559 were made only in the United States, not counting children’s series or international hits such as ‘The Squid Game’ or ‘The Paper House’. An atrocity.
This is a totally different world from twenty years ago, in which we were clear about the series that had to be seen because there weren’t that many. Now we all have pending series for eons and an eternal overbooking caused by the “series of the year of the week” effect and the new (and essential) proposal of a new streaming service that you don’t have. From ‘Ted Lasso’ to ‘Sandman’ through ‘The House of the Dragon’ or ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’, the offer is absolutely overwhelming, uncontrollable, impossible. And the proposal of many is, in my opinion, even more overwhelming: return to piracy.
Patch, wooden leg, blanket and series
Surely you have seen the comic strip: a boy keeps his pirate hat in a drawer because Netflix has arrived, but before the profusion of streaming platforms he decides to take it out and say “Hello, old friend!”. The return to piracy is the new posturing, the empty threat, the less interesting approach before the panorama that is upon us: many people who promulgate their return to the Torrent, as well as the general public, he hasn’t the faintest idea where to download the series right now… nor the intention of looking for subtitles and relearn how to watch it on television. We have accommodated ourselves, and it is not bad, but part of an evolution.
We have become accustomed to televisions having the streaming services we use integrated. In one click we have many more series and movies, only in the monthly news, of which we could see dedicating the rest of our lives exclusively to it. And that’s why, as much as we get angry at the bad practices of streamers (price hikes, unfair cancellations and even series erased from existence), there comes a vital moment when there is neither time nor desire to spend time hacking.
You may be reading this while downloading ‘Succession’ and thinking this article is cheap morality about piracy, but it is not like that: no one judges anyone. Go ahead with yours. It is undeniable that streaming services are stretching the blanket and forcing the machine (with the exception, for now, of Filmin and Apple TV +) and the anger, as well as the subsequent punishment, is more than justified. But when you come home from work tired and just want to watch the latest episode of that series you’re so hyped for, the last thing you want to do is spend five minutes waiting for the file to download when you could be watching it from your couch for a cheaper price. or less modest. The death of piracy did not come from our good intentions, but from the exaltation of cyber laziness.
More series, it’s war (of streaming)
Do you remember the season 4 finale of ‘Stranger Things’? A month and a half passes very quickly, and in between we have had ‘Better call Saul’, ‘Sandman’, ‘Atlanta’, ‘Resident evil’, ‘The final list’, ‘Primal’, ‘Locked up with the devil’, ‘I I’m Groot’, ‘I never’, ‘Locke and Key’, ‘The big fudge: Woodstock 1999’, ‘They hit the jackpot’… And these are just the news! ‘Parks and recreation’, ‘Hanging in Philly’ or ‘Alf’ have also become available again, and we haven’t even started talking about the movies. The problem is not that there are too many platforms and therefore you have to hack: it is that there is too much quality content in all of them and we would not reach everything in a thousand lives.
Having access to everything, absolutely everything, including linear television reality shows like ‘Survivor’ or products from all decades, at a time when some 15 weekly series are released, not the brightest idea to calm your anxiety, but simply to unleash your accumulative spirit and once again have hard drives full of things you will never see. Really. It’s like having a free buffet with eight hundred different dishes at your disposal when you can’t take it anymore in the room. The greater the fan, the greater the burden. And most people want to be made easy: that’s why algorithms, no matter how hard they drive us, will continue to exist and dominate the roost.
It is difficult to convince the bulk of the public that the best of Netflix or Prime Video is beyond the initial suggestions and that worth investigating in the catalog and discover titles like ‘Why don’t you leave?’ o ‘Invincible’: trying to convince them to return to piracy is, directly, an impossible mission. Cast does not mean that the trend is not coming back, albeit marginally… not that it is, in all cases, reprehensible.
And the bottle of rum
Surely you are thinking that you and your friends know a website and everyone should know it because it is very easy to see everything there, or that those ten minutes a day downloading things at home in exchange for not paying a monthly payment are worth it. And yes, you are right in your prejudice: I am not in favor of piracy and it causes me ethical problems download a series the same day it premieres. But, at the same time, it is impossible not to recognize that there are nuances and that this is the only safe way to preserve audiovisual gems that companies don’t want to launch (not even physically), either because of the moral problems it would cause or because of its age, belonging to a niche, having a new version or the money it would cost to renew musical rights.
The proof of the impunity that we have before the platforms is in HBO Max, which has tried to make series like ‘Infinity train’ disappear from the mapavoiding even the sale in physical format: it is a move that may make sense from a financial point of view, but it is an absolute disaster of image and a danger for the future of cinema and television, which may die alongside streaming services when their time comes (or, apparently, even earlier). As bad or unpleasant as a series is, it is always better that it can be seen than that it be lost for a take away those rights from me there.
I believe that piracy, like the great digital library of Alexandria, has more sense and future than as a selfish and cumulative well to fall into as a punishment for streaming services. A new stage opens before us in which, after the boom of recent years, the time has come for streaming to be lowered until its subsequent balance. There will be strange movements, unexpected mergers, (even more) unfair cancellations, but they will have something in common: the general public will continue without unsubscribing to navigate the rough waters of P2P. By conviction? For legality? Of course not: for simple, plain, humble and very normal comfort.