Will the oversupply of streaming series / movies make us go back to piracy?

What was the first series you downloaded to watch week by week? Most likely your answer is 'Lost', but it could be 'Desperate Housewives', 'Grey's Anatomy' or even some anime. It was a different era: in 2002 there were a total of 182 series aired in the United States, of which perhaps twenty stood out. In 2021 there were a total of 559 in the United States alone, not counting children's series or international hits like 'The Squid Game' or 'La casa de papel'. It's too much!

Nowadays it is a totally different world than twenty years ago, when we were clear about the series we had to watch because there were not so many of them. Now we all have series pending 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 'House of the Dragon' or '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: to go back to piracy.

I'm sure you've seen the comic strip: a guy keeps his pirate hat in a drawer because Netflix has arrived, but faced with the departure of other streaming platforms he decides to take it out and say a "Hello, old friend!". The return to piracy is the new pose, the empty threat, the least interesting approach in the face of the panorama that is coming our way: some people saying they're going back to Torrent, but most don't have the faintest idea where to download series right now... and relearn how to watch it on TV. We have become comfortable, and it's not bad, but part of an evolution.

We have become accustomed to televisions having integrated streaming services that we use. In one click we have many more series and movies, just in the monthly new releases, than we could watch dedicating the rest of our lives exclusively to it. And that's why, no matter how much we get angry with the bad practices of streamers (price hikes, unfair cancellations and even series deleted from existence), there comes a vital moment when there is neither time nor desire to pirate.

You may be reading this while downloading some series and thinking that this article is cheap moralizing about piracy, but it's not: no one is judging anyone. Go ahead and do your thing. It's undeniable that streaming services are stretching the blanket and straining the machine (with few exceptions like 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 hype about, the last thing you want to do is spend five minutes waiting for the file to download when you could be watching it from the couch for a more or less modest price. The death of piracy came not because of our good intentions, but because of our cyber laziness.

More series, it's the (streaming) war

Remember the season 4 finale of 'Stranger Things'? Month and a half goes by very fast, and in between we've had 'Better call Saul', 'Sandman', 'Atlanta', 'Resident evil', 'The final list', 'Primal', 'Locked up with the devil', 'I am Groot', 'I never', 'Locke and Key', 'A League of Their Own'... And these are just the new releases! 'Parks and recreation', 'Hanged in Philadelphia' or 'Alf' have also become available again, and we haven't even started talking about movies. The problem is not that there are too many platforms and therefore we have to pirate: it's that there is too much quality content on all of them and we wouldn't get to it all in a thousand lifetimes.

Having access to everything, absolutely everything, including linear TV reality shows like 'Survivor' or products from all decades, at a time when about 15 series a week are released, is not the brightest idea to calm your anxiety, but simply to give free rein to your accumulative spirit and go back to having hard drives full of things you will never see, really, it's like having at your disposal an open buffet with eight hundred different dishes when you in the fifth you can't do it anymore. The greater the range, the greater the overwhelm. And most people want to be made easy: that's why algorithms, however annoying they may be, will continue to exist and dominate the landscape.

It's hard to convince most of the public that the best of Netflix or Prime Video lies beyond the initial suggestions and that it's worth digging into the catalog and discovering titles like 'I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson' or 'Invincible', trying to convince them of the return to pirating is, straight up, mission impossible. And that doesn't mean that the trend isn't making a comeback, albeit a marginal one... nor that it is, in all cases, reprehensible.

I'm sure you're thinking that you and your friends know a website and everyone should know about it because it's so easy to watch everything there, or that it's worth those ten minutes a day downloading things at home in exchange for not paying a monthly fee. And yes, you're right in your prejudice: I'm not in favor of piracy and it causes me ethical problems to download a series on the same day of the premiere. But, at the same time, it is impossible not to recognize that there are nuances and that this is the only sure way to preserve audiovisual gems that companies do not want to release (not even in physical), 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 the music rights.

The proof of the impunity we have before the platforms is in HBO Max, which has tried to make series like 'Infinity train' disappear from the map, avoiding 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 film and television, which may die along with the streaming services when their time comes (or, apparently, even before). No matter how bad a series is, it is always better that it can be seen than that it is lost due to a rights issue.

I believe that piracy, as a great library of digital Alexandria, makes more sense and has a better future than as a selfish and cumulative pit to fall into as punishment for streaming services. A new stage is opening before us in which, after the boom of the last few years, comes the moment of streaming's descent to its subsequent swing. There will be strange movements, unexpected mergers, (even more) unfair cancellations, but there will be one thing in common: the general public will continue not to unsubscribe and will switch to navigate the murky waters of P2P. Because of conviction? Because of legality? Of course not: just for plain and simple convenience.