Netflix: Piracy Is Difficult to Compete Against and Growing Rapidly

Article note: The moderately priced, readily navigable, nearly one-stop-shop, largely ad-free option has fragmented into a bunch of overpriced rent-seeking entities with small and constantly shifting catalogs hidden behind wretched UX, with increasing ad penetration. The conditions that incentivized piracy returned, so piracy is ramping back up. Not a mystery. The media industry can build a large number of interchangeable distributors all of which can get to all the content via reasonable terms (like a retail or FRAND situation), or consolidate into a small number of services (studios produce content and sell via an independent distributor) or... try to squeeze and everyone goes back to piracy until the industry is forced to contract and reconsider, which seems to be the plan.