I'm not saying that torrented .mkv files "just work". But the point is, if there are problems, they can be diagnosed and solved. Netflix (and Amazon etc.) is literally just "computer says no", better luck next time!
Now each distributor, or sufficiently large rightsholder wants to capture as much of that value as possible by both restricting catalog access and demanding ownership of the relationship with the end user, without any sort of federation across services (with a few exceptions like Apple TV that have used market dominance to assert the ability to search across content subscriptions). The end result has been a rapidly accellerating decline in the quality of the user experience for accessing streaming content. Couple that with a shift away from series releases to weekly releases (better for customer retention as customers won't subscribe for a month to binge a series when it drops, and increasing 'user engagement' on platforms for however each platform collects those metrics)
The response has been an increase in piracy, and vilification of users who are frustrated because we had an awesome era of rich content libraries, but a bunch of accountants and MBAs focused on short term profit increases have destroyed the good will that the entire industry built with the emergence of streaming.
(Or, what rhn_mk1 said more eloquently and briefly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29352027 .)