Articles
“One in five Greeks illegally accesses sports content. According to the 2023 report of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), Greece ranks second in EU, in terms of illegal access to online sources for watching sports broadcasts. Beyond the economic impact on artists, creators, providers & the Greek state, not many people realise that pirated content is used as trap to steal personal data, bank information & other sensitive data from the users.” – source
Personally, I watch no TV, no sports, and have no Netflix or Spotify subscriptions, but this post by someone on LinkedIn makes me think that the media industry keeps making the same mistakes.
“One in five Greeks illegally accesses sports content”. Interesting. Should we get outraged? No, we should become curious.
Ask yourself
- why?
- how many of those accessing sports content illegally were actual customers with a willingness to pay for it, to begin with?
And no, I’m not justifying or advocating for piracy – however, we have seen this many times before, for all kinds of digital media. Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, ThePirateBay, Denuvo, DRM, etc.
Who still makes money hand over fist, regardless?
- Steam
- GOG.com
- Netflix
- Spotify
- Bandcamp
- Xbox Game Pass
- Nintendo Online
- PlayStation Now
Instead of trying to make “one in five” to “one in ten” or “one in twenty” through increasingly customer-hostile and costly technological solutions, try something else instead.
Try what all the companies on the list above did: make it affordable, make the UX desirable, and piracy will drop.
And still, you will never “end piracy”, because there is always the analog hole. Plus, the cost for completely eradicating piracy probably doesn’t justify the end result.
