Netflix was in competition with piracy. They competed mostly on two parameters: price and convenience, but catalog is also a secondary or tertiary parameter.

Piracy is kinda free unless you pay for newsgroups, seedbox or straight up membership. It’s also inconvenient for most people. The catalog is basically unlimited if you know where to look.

Paid streaming or digital purchases wins on convenience, but at a greater price and with a limited catalog.

With older content constantly being bounced around different services, aggressive anti-shsring measures and continually rising prices, paid streaming is becoming less and less attractive, as we’re slowly sliding back to the times of cable TV, albeit video on-demand this time around.

Competition is the answer, though. The problem is companies ended up competing the wrong way. If I could watch “The Office” on any streaming platform, suddenly they’re all in competition to create a better platform (quicker loads, different pricing models, integration with different devices, etc). By limiting shows to only certain platforms, sure, you’re creating an easy way to differentiate between platforms, but you’re letting the competition stagnate as you just create cable TV with extra steps: minimal choice, minimal ease of use, minimal cost upside.

Why should we care if corporations find the ‘answer to piracy’?

What’s better for them is worse for us. Are you invested with them? If not, then you would be a textbook useful idiot to lower your standards so they can have even more.