Media piracy and copyright

I was listening to a film podcast where a director was bemoaning the fact that one of his films had been removed from distribution by the studio. When asked by the interviewer where his film could be viewed the director said to pirate it. In fact he went on to say that people had his explicit permission to pirate it since he wanted people to see it and that was the only way it could be seen. 

It has recently come to light that may streaming services have removed a large amount of content from streaming services and stopped producing the physical media. Apparently this is a "tax write off", which means that they don't have to pay royalties on the removed content. Not entirely sure how that works but it seems that they are happy to permanently remove content that is not "profitable enough". It seems that they promise of watching whatever you want whenever you want it was indeed a pipe dream. 

Even accessing available content is horrendously expensive. To access all of the streaming services is hundreds of dollars a month and rising rapidly. Every content owner is launching their own service so it is just getting more expensive.

So what is the solution. When I was in a job where I was procuring software for a corporation I was trying to purchase licences for a software package. It transpired that the software was no longer being sold. There was (and still may be) a provision in the software copyright law that if software was no longer being sold that it was free to use. I contacted the company that did provide the software and they provided a document stating that the software was no longer sold and that we could freely use it without license. It would be nice to see similar legislation applied to other media. If a movie or TV series is no longer available on any medium then the only option is to pirate it. Of course you can buy second hand physical media but that is not always possible, or reliable. (Also note that physical media often has a note saying that the ownership of the media is not transferable.) It is hardly fair to claim loss of revenue if the owner is not making the content available. It can only be considered a loss if the content is available to consume, otherwise the point is moot.

If the owners of content were serious about copyright infringement then they would make the content available to rent or purchase for a reasonable cost to those who wish to consume it. While they are playing a dog in the manger then of course people will seek other means to obtain it.