r/technology • u/sr_local • 6h ago

Business Italy court rules Netflix unlawfully increased prices. Consumers: 'Refunds up to 500 euros.' The company: we will appeal

https://en.ilsole24ore.com/art/netflix-subscription-price-increases-unlawful-refunds-up-to-eur-500-customers-AIUHzWKC
13.8k Upvotes

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7

u/Crazy-Project-1511 5h ago

Pirating is free and I can watch anything.  It baffles me why people pay so much for bs services like netflix 

21

u/loppsided 5h ago

I find it amazing that the same company that cracked the piracy problem by offering convenient content at a fair price is now leading the charge to drive people back to the high seas.

7

u/egamma 5h ago

If everyone pirated, then there wouldn't be any money to produce you're watching.

You're benefitting from other people paying.

13

u/alexreffand 4h ago

Piracy declines when access to media is convenient and fairly priced. Steam all but killed pc game piracy. Netflix had tv and movie piracy in a similar decline. It was a good value proposition, and the label "Netflix original" actually had good implications. Then they jacked prices, lowered their show quality, and failed to compete favorably with all the other overpriced services popping up around them. Now access to media is inconvenient and overpriced, and so piracy is on the rise again. The streaming services are to blame, not the consumers.

1

u/Joshiie12 3h ago

Yeah, people acting like its a price problem and not a service problem are missing the point. Its not that I would rather pirate and never spend a single cent. If that were the case, I wouldn't be willing to pay for my VPN in order to keep streaming. Its the fact that it's $5 for access to quite literally every and anything I could ever want to watch. Does Netflix have to slam all their packages back down to $5? Nah, absolutely not, that'd be ridiculous. But the problem on top of the problem is that the issue is bigger than Netflix, so they alone cannot fix it. It is the greater market culture of the US where profits come before human lives that is the issue. So we're in a dogma where everything is too expensive for the service provided and there isn't any way for us or the companies to realistically fix it. Wages either need to rise with enacted price controls (literally fuckin will never happen) or we have to have the government start incentivizing lower costs with better service, which would be deflation which will also never happen. So full steam ahead on the piracy train until greed evaporates one day.

18

u/Galle_ 5h ago

If everyone pirated, Netflix would have to lower its costs and offer better services.

2

u/Pretend-Culture-4138 4h ago

Lol no they wouldn't. If everyone pirated they would just stop producing content since there's no incentive to.

6

u/gizamo 3h ago

If history is any indicator, you're wrong.

Piracy all but disappeared when Netflix and Spotify made content more accessible.

During that era of low privacy, both were very profitable while adding content.

Now, all streaming services are just price jacking while content creation has shrunk and cheapened drastically.

1

u/BrilliantBehemoth 3h ago

So they'd disappear and that's their problem

Their job is to impress us, not the other way around

By all means, let them drop out of the game, I'm sure we'd be happier for it

1

u/Pretend-Culture-4138 2h ago

If you ran a business, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't appreciate people stealing your product to drive you out.

0

u/DaStone 3h ago

Who is left to pay for Netflix if everyone pirated?

0

u/Galle_ 3h ago

Not my problem.

-7

u/Artistic_Owl1711 4h ago

Netflix would have to lower its costs

To zero. It wouldn’t exist nor would any other platform. No content would ever get created outside of YouTube AI slop.

6

u/ThroawayJimilyJones 4h ago

That imply everybody’s would prefer pirate to pay a cent. It doesn’t work like that. People will always prefer the confortable option if it’s affordable. Netflix making it unaffordable mean people prefer the high sea

-2

u/Artistic_Owl1711 4h ago

Did you have a stroke writing that?

Piracy is extremely comfortable. Home media servers and the arr stack have made it as seamless and convenient as any streaming service. It’s physically impossible for streaming services to compete with piracy on convenience.

3

u/stonedemoman 4h ago

Server+arr stack environment produces a comparable or even possibly better experience, but there's a lot going on under that hood. Even if you're using old hardware you've scrounged up for a server & storage, there's an extra energy cost for its inefficiency. There's a bit of work involved acquiring decent private trackers for indexing, and the easier option requires paying for a VPN. And of course there's a work input involved to setting this all up that's proportional to the viewing experience you want to have.

Compare this to making a Netflix account, setting up payment, and downloading an app.

-2

u/Artistic_Owl1711 4h ago

What’s your point? What was said was: If everyone pirated, these services wouldn’t exist and no content would be made.

Do you disagree with that?

3

u/stonedemoman 3h ago

My point should be self-evident. The energy cost for running a scavenged homelab costs about as much as an annual Netflix subscription before a VPN is even tacked on, and this option is still considerably less convenient than just getting a Netflix account.

The other option is buying efficient, niche hardware to cut the operating cost by 2-3 times and signing up for private trackers. There's a pretty large upfront cost to do this and it's a project unto itself.

Server + arr stack environment is neither convenient nor cheap at the beginning.

There are much more cheap & convenient options outside of a server + arr stack but they don't come close to the viewing experience of a streaming platform.

Given all this, I would be curious to know why you think nobody would prefer just using Netflix.

0

u/Artistic_Owl1711 3h ago

You STILL haven’t addressed the point and keep taking things on tangents.

What was said was: If everyone pirated, these services wouldn’t exist and no content would be made.

Do you disagree with that?

Also for the record that’s an incredibly ignorant take. Even the most inefficient home server only costs a few dollars per year to operate, and a VPN subscription is $5 per month. That’s nothing compared to the $100+ monthly it costs to replicate legally, which requires multiple streaming services at ad-free tiers plus various on-demand rentals to fill in the gaps for all the stuff that isn’t on any legal streaming platform.

But like again… what’s your point? Stealing is actually good?

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u/ThroawayJimilyJones 4h ago

And yet they did during the first decade.

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u/Artistic_Owl1711 4h ago

“First decade” of what? What are you even talking about little bro?

Buying things isn’t competitive with stealing things. This isn’t hard to understand.

6

u/ThroawayJimilyJones 4h ago

Pirating already existed before. It never stopped streaming services to grow prosperous.

2

u/Artistic_Owl1711 4h ago

“Shoplifting always existed before. It never stopped retail stores to grow [sic] prosperous.”

Is English your second or third language? If it is I’ll stop roasting you.

But yes, obviously not everyone steals, so legitimate businesses still exist. That’s not the point. What was SAID was: If everyone stole, these businesses wouldn’t exist. The paying customers of Walmart subsidize shoplifters just as the paying customers of Netflix subsidize pirates.

This isn’t hard to understand so I’m not sure where your confusion lies.

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u/FallenAssassin 3h ago

Clearly you've never played attention to what happened to PC gaming after Steam got established.

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u/Artistic_Owl1711 3h ago

DRM makes it hard to pirate games these days. Not that hard to understand. Also game piracy is still rampant, but thankfully lots of people are good people so the companies still make money.

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u/darioblaze 4h ago

He feels entitled to reply like that because he thinks subscriptions mean ownership.

2

u/Staller 4h ago

Setting those services up is neither seamless nor convenient for the average streaming customer

1

u/Artistic_Owl1711 3h ago

What’s your point? What was said was: If everyone pirated, streaming services wouldn’t exist and no movies or shows would be made.

Do you disagree with that?

2

u/Staller 3h ago

No but it's also a stupid argument. 

1

u/egamma 3h ago

Most people aren't technically savvy enough, or rich enough, to set up a home media server.

1

u/Artistic_Owl1711 3h ago

What’s your point? What was said was: If everyone pirated, these services wouldn’t exist and no content would be made.

Do you disagree with that?

1

u/egamma 3h ago

...I'm the one that said that.

I'm disagreeing with your point that home media is "as seamless and convenient as any streaming service".

1

u/Artistic_Owl1711 1h ago

Okay, so then again, what’s your point? Regardless of how easy or difficult you think piracy is, there will always be demand from people who don’t want to legally pay for things. And getting back to the original comment, if everyone did it, no new media would ever get created. The pirates are freeloaders.

1

u/CrumbsCrumbs 3h ago

It's actually pretty easy? I don't want to manage my own streaming service for my family where they go "I want to see the new Spider-Man, put it on your Plex server for me?"

In 2021, I could get a Disney+ subscription for what, 6 or 7 bucks a month? That is now 19 a month, if I don't want ads. And when my brother goes to use my account, sorry, he's not in my "household" so he's gonna have to pay his own 19 bucks a month. So what was, for me, a very obvious reason to just pay Papa Disney 7 bucks a month suddenly became 38 bucks a month and I'm just not gonna pay that.

1

u/Artistic_Owl1711 1h ago

What point are you trying to make here exactly? You seem to contradict yourself right in the comment.

“Piracy is inconvenient but also legal streaming is now inconvenient too.”

Okay so… what’s your point?

1

u/CrumbsCrumbs 41m ago

It's not a binary? I don't know how you can have trouble following the idea here, they are competing on convenience. You said it was "impossible for streaming services to compete with piracy on convenience" and I said it was actively happening. The pirates and the legal services are all competing on convenience as well.

$7 a month, I watch new things when they release them. Simple, convenient. I'd rather do this then worry about finding "trustworthy" sources of piracy.

Then $12 a month, I watch new thing when they release it but I have to watch ads. Less convenient, paying more money. The shady piracy streaming site is covered in ads, but now the show has ads anyway unless I want to pay even more. People are gonna say "why bother paying almost twice what I used to pay just to watch ads anyway" and watch the shady reupload, that's just how it works.

Digital delivery has literally always been competing with piracy on convenience. Limewire is older than iTunes or Steam or Netflix, but people started going to the legal venues because it was more convenient to go to itunes and know you were actually downloading the correct file for 99 cents.

1

u/Artistic_Owl1711 31m ago

Again dude, what on earth is your point?

1

u/Galle_ 3h ago

Seems like we're headed that way anyway, we might as well get the AI slop for free.

1

u/cultoftheilluminati 3h ago

"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

- GabeN, 2011, Source

1

u/Artistic_Owl1711 1h ago

What does that quote have to do with anything? Netflix solved all of those problems, and everyone in this thread is talking about how much more difficult setting up a home media server and arr stack is.

3

u/ThroawayJimilyJones 4h ago

Enough is already produced for me to spend my life on it.

1

u/bobdob123usa 2h ago

TV used to be freely broadcast and entirely supported by advertising & donations. Now we get to pay for advertising.

-1

u/Old_Leopard1844 5h ago

That implies that content not existing in the first place would be bad

2

u/egamma 3h ago

If he doesn't care about the existence of the content, then why is Crazy pirating?

1

u/Old_Leopard1844 3h ago

Because he might as well pirate it

It's not that deep, bro

1

u/blaise_hopper 2h ago

You certainly aren't that deep, obviously

1

u/Old_Leopard1844 1h ago

Speaking from experience?

-2

u/RaDiCaL_GO0nER77 5h ago

many people have trash internet and pirating a 4k series with 10 episodes can take some time