Long ago, in an internet not far away, there lived a giant beast: Netflix. It was the only one who could satisfy our addictions.

For years, nothing changed. The beast never changed. The beast’s treatment of us never changed. Our addiction never changed.

And the beast knew that.

It knew we were satisfied. We had shows to binge-watch, and that was all we needed. So why change? Why bother treating us better if we were already happy? That money could go to “better” places.

Places like advertisements, shows no one will watch, and the creation of new shows, including ones targeted at pedophiles. See the article CUTIES IN COURT Netflix charged over controversial Cuties film for promoting ‘lewd’ depiction of kids for more details.

When all hope of change seemed lost, several hunters appeared before the beast: Hulu, HBO Go, Disney+, Crunchyroll, and Amazon Prime Video. They fought the beast, wounded it, and raided its hoard.

Finally, Netflix’s tyrannical reign over us was over.

…

If only it were that simple.

The hunters never wanted to be our heroes. They did not fight to free us, but to profit alongside the beast. We were their true prey. Prey of not one, but many beasts.

Rather than building troughs, they threw our media all over the floor. And we happily stuffed our snouts. They profit off of our hard-earned money while ignoring us.

In 2011, we complained to Crunchyroll about not having a buffer bar using their own forum. Years later, they pretended to listen. And locked it behind an extra “beta features” paywall, forcing even those who pay a subscription to spend more money.

But why must we follow their scripts; why must we be pawns in their games? We are not prey; we are hunters. We need to believe in our skills and hunt down these monopolistic beasts. Together, we can weaken them.

We need to trim their claws by shortening the duration of Intellectual Property. Copyright currently lasts until death plus 70 years. Several masterpieces have been locked in limbo due to this. A shorter duration would free many of these masterpieces, and massively increase the availability of older movies and TV shows.

Share their hoards by outlawing exclusive licenses. Services pay the creators a licensing fee to host their content. But as they do so, they pay a little bit extra to make it an exclusive license, ensuring that their competitors can’t do the same. Instead of needing to buy both Netflix and Amazon Video, we should be able to buy one or the other and not miss out on anything.

Breed new beasts through that non-exclusivity. With the current laws, it is incredibly difficult for new competitors to join the streaming industry. Without money to buy exclusive licenses or ownership of their own licenses, start-ups will have no content. No one will pay for a service with no content.

Once these steps have been taken, we will finally be free of this tyranny.