Piracy has seen a dip in traffic in the last decade, in part, due to subscription based products. Bloomberg.com states that BitTorrent, a pirating website, has had a 60% decrease of internet traffic since 2003. Bloomberg also displayed a graph that projects internet piracy in comparison to online streaming like Netflix. According to the graph, online streaming services will grow as torrenting will fall out of relevancy.

The battle against online piracy has been around since the dawn of the internet. Many companies try to use anti-piracy programs to prevent this, but are always forced to update and change these programs to combat new pirating software. Eventually Apple invented the iPod and sold music individually through iTunes. At this time, music was not sold individually. One had to buy an entire album from an artist. Apple created a platform that was convenient and intuitive for a price. Their philosophy was to make a product so good that people don’t mind paying for it.

Now, music as has moved on to the subscription model with Spotify and Pandora. This took the fight in a new direction as customers now have access to millions of songs for a fraction of the price. Adobe has even adopted this model with their own products, such as Photoshop. This gives little incentive to pirate these products as they are more affordable and in a wider selection.

The emergence of Netflix has only furthered torrent sites’ decline. Not only does Netflix provide a platform for movies and tv shows, they also provide original content exclusive to Netflix subscribers. Companies are now putting more emphasis into a quality product, or platform in this case, that is worth its price point. Internet piracy will continue to dwindle, but it continues to benefit consumers by forcing companies to constantly do better. Whether that is improving an existing product or creatively inventing new platforms.