BAYSTREAM: PIRATE BAY ENTERS STREAMING WARS WITH ‘ILLEGAL NETFLIX’
Piracy expert warns rise of Apple TV+, Disney+ and Britbox means people ‘will inevitably turn to unlicensed platforms’
The Pirate Bay has launched a new streaming service that gives people instant access to thousands of pirated movies and TV shows.
The BayStream feature offers high-quality streams that rival legitimate platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+.
It appears as a ‘B’ button below film and show titles, alongside familiar options to download content through torrent software.
BayStream is not the first time the infamous peer-to-peer site has experimented with streaming, having briefly tested a ‘Stream It! button in 2016 through a plugin called Torrents Time.
The latest venture from The Pirate Bay, described as an “illegal Netflix”, comes despite countless takedown attempts by law enforcement agencies around the world since it launched in 2003.
The rapid rise in streaming services in recent years has led some industry experts to warn of a new appetite for piracy.
Global piracy authority Muso said an increasingly fragmented streaming services landscape had led to content saturation among users, which has only been made worse by the launch of new platforms from Apple, Disney and BritBox in 2019.
Research published by Muso earlier this year revealed that UK audiences made over 5.7 billion visits to piracy sites in 2018 – a figure that will likely increase this year. The research also found that more than 80 per cent of people believed they were paying too much for content streaming.
“Expecting consumers to pay almost £100 a month for access to content may well be a challenge. So much of it is siloed off and exclusive across so many different paid-for platforms, that it’s difficult for consumers to subscribe to everything they want,” said Andy Chatterley, CEO of Muso.
“This research shows that people will inevitably seek it elsewhere via unlicensed platforms.”
Others believe that there is still room for growth within the streaming market and that competition will continue as new technology and platforms emerge.
Bill Demas, CEO of streaming analytics firm Conviva, said the State of the Streaming TV Industry report in August proved the industry is “nowhere near saturation point”, as online viewing figures continue to increase each year.
“Despite extraordinary growth, streaming is still a nascent market. As the data shows, audience appetites for content are on the rise with more ways to consume than ever before,” he said.
“It’s imperative that both established players and new entrants recognise that every stream matters and take steps to address all dimensions of their streaming media business.”
