Piracy is just the excuse. What they're saying is that Amazon will allow a collection of corporations (including Amazon) to decide what you're allowed to do with the hardware they pretended to let you buy.
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The movie/TV companies sell their show to the SVOD platform that offers the most in the territory. Or it's developed by the service themselves. So if you have to subscribe to a handful of services to watch everything your friends recommend.
Most of us can afford one music service. If you're forced into 5 streaming services a lot of people will just pirate. And even for those that do pay - the "we'll show this in the UK a week later than the US" means unless you pirate it, it's spoiled on social media within a few days.
If music piracy hadn't essentially died, how would you know?
You can go to several different streaming services right now and listen to the music of your choice. They'll send you the file and you pinky-swear that you aren't saving a local copy. But if you do save a local copy, that will look identical to you not saving one.
So we have several things going on:
1. You can purchase DRM-free mp3s from major vendors;
2. You can stream the music in a notionally non-lasting way, also from major vendors, for free;
3. If you pirate music directly from the major streaming platforms, that doesn't show up in the piracy statistics.
I suggest that points (2) and (3) are more significant than point (1). Point (2) depresses piracy because the benefit of having a copy of your music is lower when you can use someone else's copy for free whenever you want. Point (3) artifactually depresses piracy by not counting it when it happens.
Point (1)... doesn't do much to depress piracy.
The economics work out just fine: the net result would be paying the entertainment industry less, which may be what people want.
But all the complaints I see are about not wanting to pay more for more content.
similarly I used to be able to download my kindle books and read them on non-kindle readers. Now you can't do it anymore. And some books seem to have further restrictions. I have had several phones and the kindle reader app has complained that I have reached sort of limit on the number of downloads some books have.
It was new+exciting, I was discovering lots of new music. But at that point, casual piracy over slow connections (low-bitrate often-poorly-encoded MP3s) wasn't quite good enough to replace real CDs. And back then, MP3 was still a 'nerdy computer thing' and CD players were everywhere - and by far the most convenient way to play music on a proper hi-fi, in a car, etc.
But these days, there isn't really the same upgrade path from a lower-quality pirated copy to an authentic copy. Especially with TV/movies, now tied to subscription services and encumbered by increasing levels of ads.
But you can't get the same subscription with movies/TV shows. You get a fraction of content with each subscription. When there will be a reasonably priced subscription for most of the video content - it will change the situation.
So in my opinion, it's not about DRM. It's about convenience.
The trend is towards locked down devices where a corporation decides what you're allowed to do with it, using excuses like piracy, safety, security, privacy, etc. The unfortunate thing is that most people don't mind, and keep purchasing them.
And for video it wouldn't have to be $15. People easily pay $50-80 for cable channel packages. A comprehensive streaming service could cost similar. The willingness to pay is there. I'm just really sick of this shit paying for tons of different services.
When Netflix was the only game in town I subscribed to it. And prime later. But now I've dropped all my subs and gone back to the jolly roger. As have many people I know.
We have a saying in Holland: he who looks too deep in the can gets the lid on his nose. It's a bit akin to the American saying of having your cake and eat it. But the thing is there's lucky so many profits you can extract especially if you're competing with free but more hassle.
If you want to argue about copyright infringement, do, but don't equate it to theft. That's an old and tired argument that isn't useful for setting policy.
I'm sure you'd feel this way about someone stealing your identity, right? After all, your SSN can be copied exactly without taking away the original. Just ignore all externalities to the specific act of copying.
Plagiarism is another thing that's super cool under this strictly "immediate and physical" worldview of morality. There's no reason anyone would ever want to stop it, since it isn't tangibly destructive and we don't think of secondary effects when setting policy.
I know it's because you personally get something out of it, but I cannot even fathom trying to say this trite with a straight face. At least be a grown up and just say you want free stuff and don't care if it hurts upstream, like the rest of us. I really can't stand this new-age moral grandstanding piracy where you pretend you aren't a petty thief.