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Groups like the MPAA will never get a handle on piracy, because focusing on shutting down things is just playing whack a mole. Without something like the great firewall of china, this is impossible to do. You cannot police the entire internet, which is global, because even in a maximalist approach from the MPAA, their reach doesn't extend everywhere.

However, it turns out most people are more willing to go the route of easiest access; when content becomes more easily available, piracy declines. We have data to prove this. If you make it easier to get content, people will go the path of least resistance.

Unfortunately, the sheer amount of streaming services has made getting content harder, and less affordable, and so the path of least resistance slides back. Ultimately, they will probably still try to play whack-a-mole, the way they did when sharing became most common in the beginning of the 2000s, and probably make themselves out to be the villain, because people don't like throwing people in jail on behalf of faceless corporations.

The solution would be to make streaming cheaper and easier. They'll probably go the more expensive route.

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Actually even with the great firewall, piracy still thrives in China lol. From my personal experience it's even more widely accepted to pirate movies in China because there's genuinely no legitimate way to access them. Or in some instances paying for content legally will only get you a heavily censored version of it. (e.g. TV shows like Game of Thrones that contains a lot of nudity, sex, and violence) For most Chinese people it's not "legal movie" vs "illegal movie", but "illegal movie" vs "no movie at all".

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founding

Piracy was coming down as content was made easily available.

Now that it's getting more difficult, piracy is rising again.

This isn't difficult.

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Great that y'all got a handle on this criminal activity. Now i wish someone address the fragmentation of the industry which means we can't possibly afford all the subscriptions. Or copyrights extending over generations, stifling creativity. Or small-time YouTubers getting demonetized just for snippets of ambient music. Etc., you know, the system that just somehow happens to keep all the money going to the big studios, the megacorps, the elites, and the already-stars.

Also next episode maybe can we hear about the massive surveillance machine necessary for this level of enforcement?

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Yeah they really don't want to accept that going to route of maximum enforcement means creating something akin to the great firewall of china, where AIs and algorithms track and collect everyone's data in order to then prosecute them.

Or, it's not that they don't want to accept that, it's that they don't want to be seen accepting that. They absolutely would love a great firewall of America.

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