Hmm, so far no streaming service has managed to stop piracy. It doesn’t necessarily matter how difficult they make it for an individual to rip content, since as long as there’s some scene group somewhere who successfully works around their protection, the resulting files get shared just as readily as they would have if they had come from a traditional physical source. It’s those piracy “end-users” I was referring to as getting the better deal - as it currently stands, they can just visit some site and get a permanent .mkv of the latest Mando episode within hours of airing. Meanwhile here in the UK we didn’t even start to get the first season of Mando until after the entire season finished in the US, which I’m still salty about…

If they do eventually start hiding some kind of unremovable trace of the identity of the user who rips the episode, it just begins an endless whack-a-mole for them.

There’s also the fanediting angle. I know Fanedit.org refuses to allow fanedits for anything without a physical release, but elsewhere there’s a lot of ROTS x TCW Siege of Mandalore edits, even though the Siege of Mandalore doesn’t have a physical release yet. Those faneditors could be buying and ripping their own discs if Disney would make that an option.