There’s been some buzz about a recent research report claiming that streaming services are popular. There have been a few such reports, and there’s not much surprising in them. They basically point out that if people can stream certain content, that’s often easier than firing up a non-user-friendly file sharing service to get the same content. But, does that necessarily lead to the conclusion pushed by many in the industry and the press that “streaming kills piracy”? Not at all. As the folks at Freakbits note, this particular study didn’t even bother to separate out authorized streaming services and unauthorized streaming services — and includes YouTube in the calculations, which (as Hollywood keeps trying to let us know) often has a fair amount of unauthorized content. So, perhaps, people are suggesting that if the content is just “streamed” it doesn’t count as “piracy.” And, as someone who doesn’t like the term “piracy” in the first place, perhaps that makes sense. But it does not appear that this is what’s being argued. Instead, people are just assuming that all streaming is authorized, when that’s hardly the case.
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