Not iPad – iPod. Apple's mythological music player, which first launched 24 years ago and whose sale was officially discontinued in 2022. Ultimately, these are still relatively small numbers, but behind them stands an entire industry: add-ons and upgrades that expand storage capacity, enable USB-C connections, and transform the iPod's appearance into something aesthetic and modern. Instructional videos on the subject have reached millions of views on YouTube.

But in a world where a subscription to a streaming service places all music within reach, in a universe where YouTube exists, and in an era when every person carries a technological marvel in their pocket that plays music at the highest quality available why would anyone want to walk around with an ancient, limited MP3 player in their pocket? The convenient explanation is that this is a vintage fashion trend. Gen Z, born into a world where nothing is needed except credit to listen to whatever music they want, enjoys playing in a reality where a dedicated device and computer files are required to reach their favorite song.

Except there's an alternative, more complex explanation. The major streaming services, led by Spotify, don't actually allow us to listen to all the music we might want. Periodically, albums or songs disappear due to conflicts or disputes with studios or artists, for political or geographical considerations. Just recently, we "earned" a reminder of this, with the artist boycott that removed entire catalogs from playability in Israel. Additionally, the algorithms of streaming services aren't really programmed to present us with new music that fits our taste, but rather to direct us toward what increases their bottom line.

The inconsistency in song availability and suspicion toward the algorithm add to the periodic tendency of streaming services to raise subscription prices. The last element is perhaps the most interesting: the only advantage of a player who can do just one thing is disconnection from the world. No notifications, no pushes, no feed, no social anxiety, no FOMO. It's just us and the music we chose for ourselves, cataloged and uploaded to the device. In other words, the iPod's technological disadvantage turned it into a kind of therapy.

This exact phenomenon occurred a quarter-century earlier, for the previous generation. Napster, the mother of all pirate file-sharing software, solved a particularly frustrating market failure: in the 1990s, greedy music studios reached record profits at the expense of artists and consumers, who were required to pay an average of $17 for a disc where not all the songs were worth the investment. Music collecting has become an expensive business for teenagers, unlike for their parents' generation.

Napster offered a revolution: all the music in the world in one pirate place, in friendly and convenient search - but with a big question mark regarding its legality and morality. At its peak, about 80 million users were registered, sharing about 1.5 billion music files among themselves. The pirates changed the face of the industry and led to the birth of iTunes, and after it, Spotify and its like. And what the music companies understood first came to the television industry very quickly as well.

The fate of "Gozelan" and "Sdarot"

"The word 'piracy' doesn't exist in copyright laws, even though creators use it," says Dr. Carmel Weissman, a digital culture researcher from Tel Aviv University. "It's a word created by corporations to establish the criminalization of copyright infringement in popular culture. The thing is, the metaphor is murky. Piracy isn't good or bad in an absolute sense, it's a matter of perspective. And therefore the image the corporations chose itself became a debate."

Until just over a decade ago, the battle between the pirates and the establishment was waged with intensity across platforms like Kazaa, eMule, and others. At the center stood a market failure: the television industry's business model relied on cable companies, which offered giant packages of countless channels, too little quality content, and prices that never stopped rising. Those who wanted to watch other high-quality content, assuming it was even available in their area, were required to pay premium prices for HBO, Showtime, and other premium networks responsible for the golden age of television in the early millennium.

The inflated content budgets and rise of multiplex cinema complexes turned going to a movie into an experience whose price can reach hundreds of shekels for a family. This is how it happened that viewers chose the freedom and convenience of pirate viewing at home, despite the legal and moral problematic nature.

In Israel, the struggle focused on sites for pirate viewing. The largest and most famous of them was the "Sdarot" site, established in 2011, which offered a wide variety of movies and series for direct viewing (streaming) with built-in Hebrew translation. About 975,000 users were registered on the site, and of them about 10,000 paid a subscription fee of about 50 shekels ($14) per month for access to fast servers that enabled continuous viewing. It was considered at the time one of the most popular sites in Israel, with millions of visits per average month. ZIRA (the umbrella organization representing major media bodies in Israel on copyright issues), led the lawsuit that brought about its final closure in January 2024 (and subsequently required its founder to pay compensation of 5 million shekels, or $1.4 million).

Another prominent case was the "Gozelan" site, which offered pirate content for direct viewing and was closed in 2016 after half a year of activity, during which it climbed into the list of 100 most popular sites in Israel. The court ordered internet service providers to block access to the site, after it accepted ZIRA's claim about copyright infringement that took place on it. Both the "Gozelan" people and the "Sdarot" people, for their part, claimed that their activity was "a necessity of reality against media companies, which exploit the public and the creators."

Israel's copyright law is based on similar laws from other countries, which are anchored in international conventions. According to Attorney Yaakov Lashchinsky, a copyright expert, the law grants only the rights holders the authority to authorize copying and/or make them available to the public for the public's benefit, and any action that takes this authority away from them constitutes a violation of their rights. The initial maximum compensation for copyright infringement, even before proving damages, stands at 100,000 shekels ($28,000) and can grow significantly if it reaches trial.

Although much of the preoccupation with piracy in recent years focuses on the television worlds, the situation in the cinema field was no different. The inflated content budgets and rise of large multiplex cinema complexes turned going to a movie into an experience whose price can reach hundreds of shekels for a family. This is how it happened that viewers chose the freedom and convenience of pirate viewing at home, despite the legal and moral problematic nature, while the corporations conducted a battle to close one pirate platform – only to discover that a host of alternatives arose the day after.

And then Netflix arrived. "In its first years, Netflix was the place to find everything," explains Ido Yeshayahu, a television critic and founder of the "Coffee+Television" blog. "It purchased everything from everyone, and offered this selection in one place for a few dollars. In parallel, it released its series not in weekly broadcast, but all at once, and that was significant. Within a few years, a whole generation grew up for whom this was their way of consuming television, devouring entire seasons within a few days. Suddenly, piracy became irrelevant."

Attorney Yaakov Lashchinsky: "There will always be those who choose to consume pirate content and clean their conscience by tying crowns of 'freedom fighters' and 'heroes.' At the end of the day, the technological revolution happening around us does good for everyone: content prices are laughable compared to the past."

This model was good for Netflix and consumers – but the large entertainment corporations, the third side of the triangle, didn't benefit. Suddenly, Netflix became the place where their series gained popularity. The decision to fight the new queen by building competing services will lead us to the chaos we're immersed in today.

Not ready even for free

The annual report of MUSO, the company specializing in monitoring and measuring pirate downloads, reveals the ongoing tension between consumers and large entertainment corporations. At the beginning of the current decade, a moment before the inflation in streaming services, piracy data reached a low. From a situation where almost a quarter of world internet traffic was used for file sharing, with the rise of Spotify and Netflix there was a decline to single-digit percentages. While piracy didn't become extinct, the trend was consistent: in North America, Western Europe, and the Nordic countries there was a significant decline in pirate content consumption.

Data collection regarding the phenomenon in Israel is very sparse, but the trend is clear: many consume illegal content to one degree or another, even though it's a questionable activity. "The shaming campaign for downloaders is an American cultural thing, which succeeded in creating the symmetry between downloading and theft - and even there it didn't catch on for long," explains Dr. Weissman. "In the rest of the world, piracy is a non-issue, also because very many contents aren't available in them, and in the East it's almost a state enterprise. The story with Netflix and Spotify was a precise, specific answer to changing consumption patterns. If everything is convenient, in one place, and at a sane price – then the problem stops being a problem. People were willing to pay the 'Sdarot' site despite it offering pirate content, because it simply offered a solution."

The great streaming war that broke out at the beginning of the decade led to enormous inflation of competing services: Disney Plus, Apple TV Plus, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max, Peacock, and more. All produce original content available exclusively to the platform, all charge monthly subscription fees that keep growing – and in the middle are the consumers. A subscription to three-four streaming services reaches the peak prices paid in the past to cable companies. All this, at a time when works disappear and appear on another service on a regular basis, some aren't available in some regions, and in other cases they're perceived as not justifying the money charged for them - exactly like at the beginning of the 2000s with the music industry, and at the beginning of the previous decade with the television and cinema industry.

The "solution" came in the form of a new and improved wave of pirate services. No longer complicated software requiring basic technological understanding and dealing with downloading subtitles and matching them. Services like Stremio look and feel like Netflix's feed: organized lists of series and movies by category, with official posters, a quick and convenient search, and, especially, the availability of all content in one place.

"It's clear there's weight also to the insane cost of living in Israel," explains Yeshayahu, "but I get the impression that many people choose piracy because they don't want to search for where what they want to watch is broadcast. We're also a piracy-loving nation from always, so when a convenient app arrives – it conquers the Israeli audience."

ZIRA, which represents major media bodies in Israel on copyright issues: "We see a sharp transition to decentralized piracy, the kind that isn't through public internet sites, but rather through illegal converters and additional services 'under the radar' of the public internet."

MUSO data reinforces the feeling that the piracy rate worldwide has jumped to an all-time high in recent years. 230 billion visits were recorded on pirate sites in 2023 - almost double the number recorded just three years earlier. In the US, Europe (especially in the East), Asia, Latin America, and even in the Middle East, the piracy rate jumped significantly. In 2024 a slight moderation was recorded, but not because of a return to good behavior: the researchers claim the reason is a decline in content that justifies pirate consumption. In other words, viewers aren't interested in the new content, even when it comes free.

The striking difference is that the current wave of piracy is led by a new generation of young people, Gen Z, which champions values and worldviews different from those of the previous generation. So how is it that they, too, chose the same method?

A process of "enshittification"

One of the recurring concepts in recent years when it comes to services of large technology companies is "enshittification" – from "shit" – which author and blogger Cory Doctorow coined. The concept describes the pattern of operation of platforms competing for our attention: initially they place user experience at the center, to attract more and more subscribers; then they exploit the huge user base to adapt the platform to attracting advertisers and business clients, with the goal of increasing their profit balance; and finally, they trap users and subscribers in a situation where they're dependent on the platform, which serves only them, without motivation to preserve the quality standard. This, in a nutshell, is one of the main reasons for the growing buds of the new rebellion.

"In the days of the British Empire, in many cases the empire would hire pirates to attack the Spanish enemy for it and disrupt its trade – without having to bear responsibility," explains Dr. Weissman. "In this analogy we're the Spanish. Not infrequently, the large companies use piracy to expose products to the public and create buzz around them, and in parallel they try to make the action criminal. But if we're sailing in a sea of enshittification, then the pirates are floating too. So we've made a full circle and returned to the nineties."

Attorney Lashchinsky opposes this determination: "What we're seeing here is Israeli greed. There will always be those who choose to consume pirate content and clean their conscience by tying crowns of 'freedom fighters' and 'heroes.' At the end of the day, the technological revolution happening around us does good for everyone: content prices are laughable compared to what was customary in the past." However, Lashchinsky clarifies that the key lesson from past battles against piracy is to fight the platforms and bodies that enable it, not consumers themselves.

If, in the past, piracy was practical despite its inherent problems, now it's already wearing an ideological cloak. In Sweden, for example, piracy has become "Kopimism" – an official religion protected by law, based on belief in freedom of information and file sharing as a way of life. This is one of the reasons why Pirate Bay, the world's largest torrent site (a method where files are broken into many "puzzle pieces," and thus it's possible to download them from a large number of users), remained active against repeated attempts to close it - because it operates from within the country. The struggle against media companies has become activism in which piracy is not only not shameful but also a utopian fight against corporations and a defense of fairness.

Ido Yeshayahu, television critic: "It's clear there's weight also to the insane cost of living in Israel, but many people choose piracy because of the convenience issue. We're also a piracy-loving nation, so when a convenient app arrives - it conquers the Israeli audience"

"The story of buying iPods by itself is currently a marginal phenomenon, but there's a broad message in it," claims Weissman. "The message is that streaming companies exploit the artists, and also the users. So we, as users, will take it upon ourselves to balance. It's a fairness problem, not a price problem, and this connects very much to the ethos of this generation. There's recognition that piracy can sometimes be perceived as a moral action, a 'Robin Hood' ethos."

The current status quo is problematic for both sides. The intriguing question arising from it is: is there a chance to return to the balance that Netflix and Spotify brought with them at their beginning? "In recent years there's been talk about bundles (combining several services into one subscription, which allows lowering costs; I.K.), but something that will concentrate everything in one place isn't exactly on the horizon," explains Yeshayahu. "A lot of ego of the various companies is involved in this, and it's likely the regulator won't rush to approve such moves either. What is certain is that we'll see acquisitions and mergers. It's not implausible to assume that by the end of the decade we'll see much fewer streaming services, which also means much fewer opportunities for niche works, like in the good days of Netflix."

Dr. Weissman actually believes the coming storm will lead to better results in the future. "Piracy is a tool that challenges power structures that don't serve consumer expectations. The enshittification brought this feeling to a new peak." According to her, the niche phenomena at this stage, of young people completely disconnecting from social networks or choosing to purchase a "dumb phone," may reach the level of a real counter-movement to the current technological reality.

"It's interesting to look at the hypocrisy of defining piracy from the AI direction. After all, what is that if not piracy? An attempt to use copyrights to train technology that serves the corporation. AI is not our liberator - it's the pirate serving the Queen of England. It could be that we'll need to reach some extremism, for example, a significant decline in consumer demand, to lead to change. At the end of the day, these phenomena occur in waves, and those who survive will be those who adapt the products to our need."

Piracy on steroids

ZIRA responded: "Piracy hasn't disappeared, it simply changed form. After years when pirate viewing was conducted on large streaming sites, like 'Sdarot,' today we see a sharp transition to decentralized piracy, the kind that isn't through public internet sites, but rather through illegal converters and additional services 'under the radar' of the public internet. All of these are aggressively marketed on social networks and other communication channels. This formula creates 'digital piracy on steroids': piracy that's faster, more accessible, and at the same time less visible to the eye. The additional disturbing change is the involvement of content giants in providing a stage for enabling and marketing the new digital piracy.

"Piracy constitutes a direct threat to the existence of a diverse and competitive communications market in Israel, and the damage that pirate viewing causes to the content industry in Israel reaches enormous dimensions, estimated at hundreds of millions of shekels per year. This damage cascades through the entire 'food chain' of the industry. Rights holders, broadcast and content bodies, workers in the industry, directors, screenwriters, actors, lighting technicians, editors, musicians, production people, designers, makeup artists, casting directors, graphic designers, and holders of additional roles in this valuable and important industry.

"ZIRA continues in a constant war to eradicate the pirate viewing phenomenon against the entire distribution chain, from the sites and platforms that enable publication or that make the content itself accessible."

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