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Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy


As subscription costs rise and choice diminishes on legal sites, film and TV fans are turning to VPNs and illicit streamers, with Sweden – home of both Spotify and The Pirate Bay – leading the way

Raised in the land of The Pirate Bay, the Swedish torrent index, I feel, for the first time in a decade, a nostalgia for the high seas of digital piracy. A fellow film critic confides anonymously: “I never stopped pirating, and my partner also does it if he doesn’t find the precise edition he is looking for on DVD.” While some people never abandoned piracy, others admit they have recently returned – this time turning to unofficial streaming platforms. Photograph: FocusDigital/Alamy“Piracy is not a pricing issue,” Gabe Newell, the co-founder of Valve, the company behind the world’s largest PC gaming platform, Steam, observed in 2011.

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