Pride and Piracy: What the Numbers Really Show
Piracy never really went away, but it has returned in force, and it looks nothing like the shadowy corners of the internet you might remember. Today, piracy sites look professional, polished, and trustworthy. They offer clean interfaces, movie poster grids, and user ratings that rival Netflix itself.
And consumers, especially young ones, are flocking to them.
A staggering 76% of Gen-Z admits to pirating content even while paying for subscriptions. They’re not dropping streaming altogether. Instead, they’re using both systems, legal and illegal, to get what they want. It’s not fringe behavior. It’s mainstream rebellion.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Piracy is no longer a niche activity. It’s a mass migration.
Global surge: In 2020, piracy visits hit historic lows at 130 billion. By 2024, that number had exploded to 216.3 billion; a 66% increase in just four years.
Generational driver: Gen-Z and Millennials are leading this shift, openly admitting they pirate even while paying subscriptions.
Mainstream scale: Across North America, Europe, and Asia, 24% of all website traffic now goes to piracy platforms. That isn’t a corner of the internet. That’s the internet.
Financial impact: The streaming industry is projected to lose $113 billion to piracy by 2027. In the U.S. alone, losses range from $29B–$71B annually; the equivalent of a mid-sized state’s entire economy vanishing into the void.
If these numbers feel familiar, it’s because we’ve seen this movie before.
Why Consumers Are Rebelling
1. Price Fatigue
The golden age of streaming promised savings compared to cable. Instead, costs ballooned. To access the full range of content today, consumers need multiple subscriptions; Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Apple TV+, and more.
The average American now spends $508 per year on streaming services. Car insurance can cost less. What was once a convenience is now perceived as a financial burden, exacerbated by the awareness that after spending all that every year, nothing is kept.
2. Password Crackdowns
Netflix’s 2017 tweet “Love is sharing a password” has aged like milk. By 2023, the company flipped the script, calling 100 million households “thieves” and introducing strict address verification rules.
Students at college found themselves locked out of their parents’ accounts. Adults traveling for work couldn’t access their own subscriptions. The message was clear: streaming platforms no longer trusted their customers.
Disney+ and HBO Max quickly followed suit. Overnight, an industry that once sold itself on community and accessibility became hostile to its own paying base. That paying base is now resentful in response. The golden goose is turning on the farmer.
3. Content Erasure: “Content Impairment”
The betrayal didn’t end with passwords. Platforms began quietly erasing content, not because audiences didn’t want it, but because corporations didn’t want to pay for it.
Take Westworld. HBO Max spent millions producing it, branded it their Game of Thrones successor, and built prestige around its Emmy-winning success. Then, in a shocking move, Warner Bros. deleted it entirely. The reason? Avoiding residual payments to actors, writers, and staff. HBO increased its value as a platform because of Westworld, then decided it wasn’t in their best interest to share that value with those who created that value in the first place. Again, farmer…goose.
In February 2025, HBO Max escalated further, removing 80 shows in a single day, including Cartoon Network classics beloved by families. Parents who hoped to share their childhood favorites with their kids discovered they were gone.
This strategy has a name: Content Impairment. Translation? Destroy art to save money.
Disney soon joined in, removing entire series mid-season without warning. The result: consumers no longer trust streaming services to preserve the very culture they promised to deliver.
4. User Experience
Here’s the irony: piracy sites are now winning on user experience.
They’re faster. Cleaner. More complete. They offer stability and permanence, two qualities streaming platforms have systematically eroded. Consumers aren’t just pirating for free access; they’re pirating because it feels more reliable than paying.
A Familiar Story: Napster and Spotify
This dynamic isn’t new. The music industry lived through it in the late 1990s.
Back then, CDs cost $18–$20, singles were disappearing, and digital downloads weren’t widely available. Consumers wanted instant, cheap access, and Napster delivered. Its peer-to-peer service made it easy to find virtually any song for free.
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued Napster in 1999 for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. By 2002, the courts had forced it to shut down. But piracy didn’t stop. It migrated to LimeWire, BitTorrent, and beyond.
The industry tried fighting back with DRM-protected downloads, but piracy remained rampant throughout the 2000s because it was still easier and cheaper than the legal alternatives.
Then came Spotify.
Spotify became a monopoly not by suing or restricting, not by “disrupting” the iTunes store, but by being better than piracy. It offered on-demand access to millions of songs, without viruses, faster than torrenting, across all devices. Crucially, it struck licensing deals that made the experience legal and universal.
The result? Music piracy plummeted. In some countries, rates fell by 79% by 2013. Spotify didn’t just save the music industry, it redefined it.
Today’s Napster Moment for Video
The parallels are impossible to ignore.
Napster then = YTS/1337X now.
Music piracy then = content piracy today.
Spotify then = the opportunity waiting to be seized now.
Piracy sites are proving the demand: consumers want stability, reliability, and permanent access. Streaming platforms are proving the failure: consumers don’t trust them to keep libraries intact or respect the customer relationship.
The industry is bleeding. Consumers are rebelling. The stage is set for a new model to emerge; one that, like Spotify, is simply better than piracy.
The Bigger Picture
Piracy is not the disease; it’s a symptom.
It reflects broken trust, unsustainable pricing, and a system that values short-term cost-cutting over long-term cultural stewardship. Consumers aren’t irrational. They’re signaling what they want: permanence, fairness, and usability.
The question isn’t whether piracy will decline. History shows it will once a legal alternative matches or exceeds its value. The real question is: who will build it?
