As Gabe Newell said, piracy is a service problem. It was said in the context of video games, but I believe it very much well applies to other parts of the entertainment industry.
If people are pirating content, then consuming that content is not worth the hassle to obtain.
> If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.
In that way, stamping out piracy is trying to address the symptoms, not the cause, and even if you are ultimately successful in eradicating piracy, then you'll likely still end up with a bunch of non-customers.
Anecdotally, the popularization of Netflix definitely greatly reduced piracy among my demographic, up until the point where every publisher decided to roll their own, often subpar, streaming service, each with different region-locking rules.
If people are pirating content, then consuming that content is not worth the hassle to obtain.
> If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.
In that way, stamping out piracy is trying to address the symptoms, not the cause, and even if you are ultimately successful in eradicating piracy, then you'll likely still end up with a bunch of non-customers.
Anecdotally, the popularization of Netflix definitely greatly reduced piracy among my demographic, up until the point where every publisher decided to roll their own, often subpar, streaming service, each with different region-locking rules.