David Zaslav doesn’t care if you pirate. He won’t say it out loud, but every price hike and every disappearing show makes it obvious. The Warner Bros. Discovery CEO is convinced HBO Max is “way underpriced” and thinks he’s got room to squeeze more out of subscribers. He points to HBO’s prestige shows, the back catalog, the “value.” But outside the glass walls of the boardroom, audiences aren’t nodding along. They’re getting fed up. And when people get fed up, they don’t cancel one service and replace it with another. They go back to piracy.
What makes this funny—tragic funny, not sitcom funny—is that piracy was almost dead. On the verge of extinction. Streaming in its early years worked like a miracle cure. For ten bucks a month, you got nearly everything you wanted, ad-free, accessible, and cheap. Suddenly there was no point in risking malware and shady torrent sites. The Pirate Bay looked like a ghost town. For a hot second, Hollywood had actually cracked the code.
But greed doesn’t let miracles live long. Services splintered, libraries got carved up, and suddenly the average viewer needed half a dozen subscriptions just to keep track of shows. Then came the hikes. Netflix pushing its Premium plan to $25, Apple TV+ jumping 30%, YouTube TV ballooning to $83. Even little guys like Dropout bumped their rates. Meanwhile, your internet bill crept up another ten bucks, and the “promo rates” evaporated like smoke. One price jump might have been tolerated. Across the board, it feels like collusion.
And then there’s the disappearing act. Zaslav’s WBD has been pulling entire shows off HBO Max—Cartoon Network gems, Adult Swim cult favorites, whole runs wiped clean. Not just off streaming. Gone. Can’t even buy them. The supposed safety net of digital storefronts like Apple and Vudu? They’re not really selling you anything, just loaning you the rights until a contract expires. Then the title vanishes and you’re left with nothing but a receipt. At least when you bought a DVD, it didn’t evaporate in a tax write-off.
So piracy came back. With a vengeance. Like measles under RFK Jr. as Health and Human Services secretary, the thing everyone thought we’d stamped out has roared back to life. Visits to piracy sites shot from 130 billion in 2020 to 216 billion in 2024. Ninety-six percent of that is TV and film—the very content all these execs are locking behind higher walls. Gen Z and millennials don’t even flinch; most admit they pirate right alongside their legal subscriptions. Piracy is no longer the dirty secret of college dorms—it’s becoming the default for anyone tired of juggling logins and watching their bills rise.
Zaslav has to know this. He’s not dumb. He’s betting Wall Street will clap louder for higher ARPU and stricter password crackdowns than they will for happy customers. He thinks short-term revenue gains will offset the long-term fallout. But the math doesn’t add up. When access shrinks and costs balloon, people don’t suddenly value your product more. They look for another route. And piracy is faster, easier, and more reliable than ever.
Streaming was once the vaccine against piracy. It worked. People paid because it was easier than stealing. Now the industry is undoing its own cure, turning back the clock, and making piracy look attractive again. Not out of rebellion, but out of common sense. If the shows aren’t available legally, pirates will preserve them. If the prices keep climbing, pirates will undercut them. And if the industry keeps pretending this isn’t happening, the audience will slip away one torrent at a time.
Zaslav thinks HBO Max is underpriced. What he’s really done is overvalue loyalty. People aren’t cash machines. They’re viewers. And when you punish them with higher bills and fewer choices, they don’t reward you—they walk. Piracy didn’t just survive the streaming revolution. Thanks to Zaslav and his peers, it’s thriving all over again.
Hollywood After Dark 