Some companies, most notably Google, have regional specific pricing for their products. So for example, YouTube will be significantly cheaper in India, let’s say, than in the US because former’s purchasing power is much lower.

However, not all companies do so and that is a prime motivator towards piracy, even for customers who want to go the legal route. There are many examples from niche ones like the streaming app History Hit to mainstream newspapers like New York Times.

I would like to focus on the latter. It’s no secret that it’s news app in moddable form is easily available though the games section is still off limits, I think. Still, I went to see how much their legit variant cost in my country, India. For first year, it was INR 1000, not bad, considering that rival newspapers in my country have a similar structure. The small thing is that after first year, it will jump eight fold. So, a subscription to a newspaper will cost annually more than any streaming service I can think of(and Atleast streaming services have to offload the Full HD streams from servers, news articles have a much lower bandwidth cost) and almost the price of an entry level smartphone per year.

It’s almost as if NYT deserves to be pirated. It is almost as if they don’t wish to take users money, even for those willing to pay. For a subscription, that is Twice more than Play Pass, YouTube Premium, Disney combined, it is almost laughable.