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After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

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Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#151

Post by upofadown »

xufi wrote: post #2

Atleast you can download : for personal use in Canada last I read.

I think that you could argue that as long as you download to a medium that has had the copy levy applied then it is OK. That would only work for audio downloaded to things like audio CD-Rs and the like.

Interestingly up to a few years ago it was pretty much legal to put stuff up on the internet and let others download it. The Canadian government had to pass a law to specifically address that. The funny thing was that during the period before the law there was an internet legend that downloading was OK and uploading was illegal when in fact it was the opposite.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_sharing_in_Canada

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#152

Post by uremog »

harmonicon wrote: post #125
zamalek wrote: post #15

The same effect is occurring in South Africa. People I know are switching back to piracy because our Netflix catalog is probably in the region of 10% of America (for the same reasons, as well as others). After years of not being able to legally access some copyrighted content, with no discussion and no change, I honestly don't see the copyright holders backing down - strange considering that they are the only ones ac…

Same as you, not condoning piracy. However, in my opinion it is very unlikely we are paying for "the persons who worked hard on creating this content". Sure we are paying for them, but I think most of the money goes to the person whose capital "worked hard on creating this content".

I think it's more like you create demand for them. I doubt any of your bill actually goes to the creator directly in most licensing setups. Or is that wrong?

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#153

Post by geodel »

mbrock wrote: post #127
Grishnakh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Nobody deserves to have their hard work stolen First off, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. No one's stealing their content, because the copyright holders still have it. Stealing is wrong because it deprives the owner of the use of that thing: if I steal your car, then you can't drive to work any more. If I sneakily scan your car with a tricorder and 3D-print a clone of it, you still have your car. Semant…

The problem with Netflix, to me, is that relying on it means that I restrict myself to their very limited selection. The only place I know where I can reliably find copies of high-quality cinema is a private torrent tracker... and some public libraries, but I don't own a DVD unit (and don't want one). Sure, there might be some legal way to gain semi-convenient access to the library of cinematic culture, but I don't k…

Perhaps this might be useful when it is available: http://filmstruck.com/

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#154

Post by anExcitedBeast »

kinofcain wrote: post #144

But violating the license terms by border hopping is piracy. Not saying I agree with geo restrictions, or any of the other silliness (I don't, and thankfully we're rapidly moving away from that sort of thing), but using VPNs or foreign credit cards to subscribe to a service that isn't available to you because the company selling it doesn't have a license to do so is still, technically, piracy.

Sure, but piracy where everyone gets paid.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#155

Post by WA »

planetjones wrote: post #35

I am an English person living in Switzerland. Netflix Switzerland is useless to me (no House of Cards, not enough focus on UK and USA content, etc.). Therefore I had a Netflix USA account, which I accessed via unblock-us. The clampdown by Netflix has been "successful" and I now can't access Netflix USA using unblock-us. This happened halfway through watching House of Cards. So my choice was either stop watching or do…

This time, I wanted to watch Game of Thrones legally – from Germany. The rights are with Sky Online, a 10 bucks a month subscription service. Sounds good in theory. I signed up and then:

    - I had to wait 25 minutes for the activation email
    - I activated my account, but it wouldn’t let me access my account settings for another 25 minutes
    - then I had to install Silverlight (I’m on OS X)
    - then I tried to start the stream, which resulted in an OS freeze and something like the OS X blue screen, which I have never seen ever before
    - then I rebooted and tried again, which failed with the *authentication* step
    - the web inspector showed a bunch of JS and/or Silverlight errors
    - I gave up and installed Silverlight on my wife’s Win 10 machine
    - the stream would load, but it has hard-coded German subtitles for signs and Dothraki scenes, which is annoying.
    - it has no optional English subtitles
    - it is only HD, not Full HD
    - stream was kind of laggy
So, now compare this to the pirated process:

    - downloads very fast
    - usually there are subtitles
    - superb quality
    - I can watch whenever I want with the player I want
    - no browser plugins, no errors, no nothing.
    - it just works

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#156

Post by Johnny555 »

kinofcain wrote: post #144

But violating the license terms by border hopping is piracy. Not saying I agree with geo restrictions, or any of the other silliness (I don't, and thankfully we're rapidly moving away from that sort of thing), but using VPNs or foreign credit cards to subscribe to a service that isn't available to you because the company selling it doesn't have a license to do so is still, technically, piracy.

That is certainly an ethical gray area -- an strong argument could be made that paying for content (even when you pay extra to view out-of-area content by using a VPN) is not piracy at all since the content owner is still getting paid for his content. (you're still paying a fair price for the content even though the content owner might have gotten more (or less) money for his content had you viewed it in your own country). It may be against the law in your country (or the country that hosts the content), but that doesn't neccessarily mean it's piracy)

Much like how visiting Canada to purchase much cheaper prescription drugs is not "stealing" drugs even though it means that drug manufacturers are getting less revenue than if you bought the drugs in the USA. (I'll admit being guilty of that one when my mother was on an expensive prescription drug that was not covered under her insurance plan. I helped her source the same drug for 20% of the cost at a Canadian Pharmacy, otherwise she couldn't have afforded it and would have had to use a less effective substitute (with more side effects) that was covered under insurance.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#158

Post by blue_dinner »

We can say the same about taxes and regulations: if it's too high, individuals will just go elsewhere. For some reason, we always try to punish the individuals that do this.

Piracy will only continue to make it more difficult for small and mid-sized companies to compete. The multi-national corporations will always have the resources to wait out the slaughter.

The end result will be the same as what we have with the music industry: huge companies owning all of the media.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#159

Post by kstenerud »

gshulegaard wrote: post #157

A lot of people seem angry about the geo-blocking, and I would agree with the sentiment, but can anyone tell me why Netflix is geo-blocking so heavily? Companies don't do things for no reason...

Because content producers are threatening to remove their support of Netflix.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#160

Post by yuhong »

thrusong wrote: post #92
kejaed wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with Bell/Saw/Rogers having their own streaming services? I've found Bell's Crave TV to be pretty good, Shomi not as much.

It might just be my experience dealing with Bell when we had ExpressVu before becoming cable cutters, and Shaw's Internet service when I was growing up. I also hate the things Bell has tried to do through the CRTC, like that whole Internet thing with smaller providers using its pipes. I guess it's a principal thing. EDIT: Another example... I used to always choose Famous Players for movies. I avoided Cineplex. Then C…

Yea, the CRTC is much better than what it was years ago. They are pushing for channel unbundling for example now.
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