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.