Over the last couple years, a strong notion has developed among many TV/film lovers - Streaming has become identical to what it used to be the alternative for; Cable/Satellite TV.
A decade ago, Netflix reigned supreme over the streaming market, a growing industry at the time, with traditional cable television still a dominant form of watching films or TV series. To many people, Netflix simply had everything on it, all for £5.99. What more could you want? There was little need to pirate a show anymore when it was very likely on Netflix, along with a huge library of other things you may be interested in, for such a cheap price - It was an absolute bargain.
Fast forward to today, and many media companies have long since jumped off the Netflix ship, purging their catalogues from Netflix and starting their own service in hopes to replicate Netflix's successful model, leading to a fragmentation in the availability of content; A series could have only one season available on, say Netflix, and another only available on HBO Max.
This has generated immense discourse plus disillusionment, and coupled with the ever-increasing prices for subscriptions, many people have simply given up on legal streaming altogether, just like people gave up cable TV for on-demand streaming all those years ago.
Why pay >£10 a piece for tens of services for a subpar library of content, when you can visit an endless supply of websites that stream everything for free? The convenience that streaming once had is no more, and piracy more than fills that void. With unlimited access to unlimited content and laughably easy accessibility - The choice becomes obvious.
The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.
Piracy will continue to face scrutiny, but if it is to truly be discouraged then ultimately companies should be aiming to provide access to content that can at least compete with the ease of accessibility of piracy for that same content. It's not just piracy that is making a return either, many people proudly claim to be buying more physical media such as DVDs due to the volatile and temporary nature of streaming nowadays, but that is arguably its own discussion to be had.
To return to the opening question, while it is debatable if we are currently in a "golden age" of media piracy of sorts, we are undeniably seeing a growing distaste for streaming, which has lead to a sharp rise in illegally sourcing content. If the state of the streaming world does not change, we may well be lead back into piracy's golden age.
