For journal articles, absolutely. For software, never. For movies and tv shows, I'd prefer not to but some content is simply unavailable now except maybe on ebay in the form of used discs. As far as there being too many streaming services, life is short and I don't want to spend too much of it watching content so it's easy to do without if some individual show is the only thing a particular service has on it that I'm interested in.
Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
381–390 of 641 posts
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#382again?
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#383Let me share my perspective on piracy as a citizen of Russian Federation who don't think about relocation. I was a youtube/Spotify/last.fm/[smth other I don't remember] subscriber before 2022. Actually it was kind of pride in younger population in Russia for games: "I pay for all games I like". My son, my friends has hundreds of games bought on Steam. That was a big step actually. How sanctions worked? For me: - yout…
I get the financial thing but it's a bit stupid to cut off a country from shows. This is lost soft power, and gives more space for Putin's shows. Russia no longer being able to watch shows demonstrates what 'content' is now about : 'content' that consumers pay for. They're no longer about meaning, meant to be provocative, influential, spark a discussion, or anything. They are meant to be sold, not actually viewed.
The stupidest thing was that a lot of youtube channels in Russia were not monetized by views, they relied on subscriptions.
WH40K channels particularly: they don't have large audience, it's a hobby not for everybody but board-games fans usually earn more than average.
So "sanc you" hit the most on those absolutely apolitical guys.
They were apolitical before, they're apolitical even more now.
What was changed: - every significant channel is still alive - youtube lost their fraction of paymenents - now everything goes without them - channel owners .. I suppose they lost a bit of income. Now they rely on online donations more than it was previously
I don't understand what was the idea behind all that.
>> Russia no longer being able to watch shows demonstrates what 'content' is now about : 'content' that consumers pay for. I suppose that you did not understood: I'm able to watch *everything* now and it's the same as before. Nothing changed for me.
The real problem today is to find something interesting. Something that worth it's time to see. It's not a lot in 2022 - 5 fingers enough to count
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#384[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#385honestly I never stopped pirating video content (either series or movies), but as I rarely watch anything (like an handful of movies each year), any kind of subscription is a pretty bad deal and I never tried buying movies anyway.
I (nearly) stopped with video games, since I've gotten way more used to buying games (mostly on Steam) and there's enough added value in buying game vs piracy that I'm willing to pay.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
They also have a tendency to edit, remove episodes, etc. And it does not even need to be for political correctness either. It could be licensing rights to music in shows. They will sometimes edit a show to remove the music or remove the episode altogether. (This happened with Scrubs.) They will remove content that involves people talking about suicide. They will remove content that is offensive. They have even gone b…
Peep Show, 30 Rock, Community. Modern classics, editing out "offensive" material, that was actually making a point about how offensive it is.
What's edited out of peep show?
The swastika post-it?
How would you even edit that out? If I recall correctly it puts the whole character of Sophie in a different, much more naive, light. It's one of the first times we actually get anything longer than a small transactional interaction from her and it deconstructs some of the character that has been built up from Mark's (imagined, infatuated) head.
I might be misremembering the early series though, it's been a while since I've watched it.
This is a bit of a tangent but the scene as a whole also shows one of the key differentiations between UK and US tv is that UK tv doesn't have the apparently uncontrollable need to make the central couple seem desirable (and restrict them to "oh so human" flaws which aren't really flaws). This is also very obviously evident to anyone who has seen The Office then tries to watch The Office (US) where the Tim and Lucy characters are warped into star-crossed lovers who are destined to end up together. The US programme can't help but have an every-man character for the audience to root for rather than a more pathetic self-sabotaging character who kneecaps their own career progression for the sake of pursuing a romance that hasn't actually progressed further than the confines of his head.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#387I pirate everything. Haven't subscribed to a service like Spotify, Netflix, etc. in many years. I can listen to my music in CD-quality and bring it anywhere. Same with any movie, TV show, etc. And I know that no one is selling what I find interesting as analytics data. At the same time, I want to support creators, and I'll donate/use services like Bandcamp to directly support folks I appreciate. I have a $100/mo "don…
How do you view that content? Plex, Roku, TVs, and related are definitely spying on what you watch, even if it's locally hosted.
Do those devices have cell network access?
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#388No, but we are at the point where we are going to start cancelling subscriptions. There is more content than we will ever watch. First of the chopping block is Netflix, there just isn't enough really good content to justify it anymore. What we are considering is subscribing for maybe 1-2 months a year, bundle the things we want to see on it then. From our perspective the two most valuable subscriptions are AppleTV+ a…
Apple TV was my first attempt at trying a streaming service outright (instead of a bundled service like Amazon video or using a friend's parent's account they signed into once on my TV)
The experience is awful. They have a similar experience as Amazon video where they pretend to have a lot of content and when you find something you want to watch they throw up a pay gate. If you have to do research online ahead of time to figure out which shows are on the service you can spend that same time finding it elsewhere.
There's also plenty of annoying quirks with the UI like assumptions that you only watch a show on your account and never anywhere else so navigating to seasons is a pain.
The original shows are pretty good (they seem to have a weird Disney+ aversion to any nudity but violence is fine) but it was an easy choice to cancel before any free trial periods ended.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd love a website I could enter my account info for these streaming sites and turn each one on, one month at a time, with a click of a button. This would attract the ire of streaming companies though.
This would be a fun idea. Especially if this was combined with your watchlist. The website could decide you have most stuff on your wishlist for service X, automatically cancel/subscribe, and send you an e-mail with a summary of what you can watch in the upcoming month.
This is what Plex has branched into, kinda, although there's no automatic subscription management since no service wants to give up control of cancellations and whatnot.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#390> “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and m…
Even license holders benefit from using the pirated versions of games: > Denuvo DRM Outage Leads to Major Games Being Unplayable [0] https://gamerant.com/denuvo-drm-outage-major-games-unplayabl... > The cracked version of Resident Evil Village runs better, testing confirms [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/resident-evil-village-drm-denuvo-stu... > Shadow of the Tomb Raider Reportedly Runs Better Now That Denuvo Has Been Re…
That RE:Village one was wild - those stutters looked frustrating