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Discussion Netflix Eating Into The "Marketshare" of Torrents

Wheen

Wheen

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We know that Netflix has been killing it in new subscriber counts quarter after quarter, but that might be having some unexpected consequences. According to TorrentFreak, the increasing prevalence of Netflix is having a negative effect on US-based BitTorrent piracy. Apparently, if you give people a good deal on content, a lot of them will stop pirating movies.

TorrentFreak is not about to call time of death on torrents. There are no hard numbers on the effect, but they note, "We have some preliminary stats which show that the number of absolute US [Torrent] downloaders slightly decreased over the last year." Netflix has made a name for itself streaming a large catalog of films and television for a low price. Torrents were previously one of the few ways to get the same content for a low price (in its case, free).

Make no mistake, Netflix isn't going to totally stop piracy. But this trend could show that many consumers would like to pay for their content, they just lacked a viable option until recently. Do you think content owners should take this as a sign, and go with the streaming flow?

Source - Maximum PC

Honestly, I don't find this hard to believe. I personally purchase items that I illegally download, if I enjoy them enough to justify the cost, and have heard from many people that they do too. If the cost shrinks to the point that I can justify it, I will.
 
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TigerBlood

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I would pay for stuff too, if I had the money. For example, I downloaded Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 the other day. Now, if I actually would use it, and had 12,000 dollars to drop on it, I would buy it, but I only downloaded it because I felt like trying to learn. My opinion on piracy is that, since they don't lose money by me not buying it since I wouldn't buy it if I didn't have the option of obtaining it for free, it's not wrong. If I had genuine need for it, and had the money to afford it, and still obtained it for free, that'd be wrong. I can see where these numbers are coming from, and I would buy my software/music/movies if I had the money.
 
Calamity

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When I was younger without money, I always pirated for the fact, I didn't have money (well I had little enough to buy discs/memberships, but that's about it). Now, I have money, movies I like I wouldn't mind buying, games I buy as well (although I do pirate SOME just to see what it's like first).

I think it's great what Netflix is doing, seems like more people are using them every day.
 
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