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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

#171

Post by justinhj »

jsutton wrote: post #132
justinhj wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they screwing you? You pay for a Netflix sub in the country you live in, and you're paying only for the content they can license there. By making sure people can't watch whatever country they want easily, they make it easier to negotiate with license holders.

They're screwing you because, while everyone pays the same price for the same service, the library that you have access to depends entirely on what side of the border you're on. This makes absolutely no sense in a globally connected world.

Putting a wire or a signal across a border doesn't change content licensing between businesses operating in different countries. We wish it did but it doesn't.

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

#172

Post by mmanfrin »

kejaed wrote: post #41
thrusong wrote: post #33

We're in Canada and have been cable cutters for almost five years now. We've gotten by on Netflix US and YouTube with the occasional pirated streaming site, but we're barely ever using Netflix anymore. We've turned to Kodi. We don't want to pirate, but it's hard to make a compelling argument against it when you get everything you want even easier than torrents. Add to that the abusive monopolies of Shaw and Bell, who…

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.

Which highlights the same situation, but reversed for US watchers: CraveTV owns rights to some shows that don't appear in the US (Letterkenny), but there is no way to get it in the US. The only way to legally pay for Letterkenny is by VPNing (which would/could be considered illegal in the US as 'circumventing protection').

Media companies need to grow up.

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

#173

Post by atemerev »

deskamess wrote: post #108
ericfrederich wrote: post #74

Popcorn Time should publish some graphs of their traffic. I bet there will be a correlation between Netflix blocking proxies and downloads of Popcorn Time

I thought Popcorn Time had shut down?

The domain was shut down. Big deal.

The source code is still on Github, and new mirrors appear every once and then.

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

#174

Post by russdill »

rhino369 wrote: post #49
cdnsteve wrote: post #46

Content geofencing makes no sense. Until businesses realize this people will always find ways around it.

It makes a lot of sense for the world we live in now. Most revenue from TV is still captured by regular broadcast or cable viewership. Those means of distribution are typically geofenced. If you have an American show, Sky or BBC will pay more than Netflix will. Plus, people in developing countries can't and won't pay western prices for content. It makes sense to geofence and then sell it to them much cheaper.

But in most cases here, people are willing to pay the same price as the original country of origin of the content but are denied that option.

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

#175

Post by BonsaiDen »

sbarre wrote: post #137
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…

> People in other regions where this stuff isn't available have every right to copy it without paying. I think you've got this wrong. The people in other regions don't have "every right to copy it", they have "every right to not consume it". Don't like the rules? Don't play. It's their content, so they set the rules. That's kind of all there is to it. I absolutely agree that you can be pissed off about this and not l…

Point here is, all of this doesn't matter. The market doesn't care about "ethics" or whatever. The market only knows one thing: Demand.

And it will do whatever it takes to satisfy this demand. If this happens to be "subscribing to your awesome streaming service", well then good for you! If not, too bad, the market DOES NOT CARE about you.

So you can now either spend your money on lobbying to get these people into jail or try to expand your market and get the people's money into your pockets. The latter being obviously the better choice for both you and your future customers.

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

#176

Post by ukyrgf »

WA wrote: post #155
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 stre…

Before HBO Go people in the US had to wait and buy the DVD or Blu-ray too . You aren't forced to pirate something just because you need to watch it NOW.

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

#177

Post by JTon »

deskamess wrote: post #108
ericfrederich wrote: post #74

Popcorn Time should publish some graphs of their traffic. I bet there will be a correlation between Netflix blocking proxies and downloads of Popcorn Time

I thought Popcorn Time had shut down?

If I recall correctly the original project did close down and others picked up where it left off. Some good, some malicious.

I use this subreddit to find a trusted one: https://www.reddit.com/r/PopCornTime/

https://popcorntime.sh

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

#178

Post by rhino369 »

majormajor wrote: post #106
kennywinker wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This blows my mind. How on earth does Netflix not have the rights to show their own show in Switzerland? I understand their hands are sometimes tied in getting content from the studios, but they own House of Cards... I'm so confused how they could end up in that situation...

IIRC Netflix purchased the streaming rights for House of Cards from a studio, but the studio sold rights to others for medias/locations Netflix wasn't in at the time. E.g. you can buy House of Cards on disc from Sony, or on various on-demand services. Or possibly for streaming, Netflix had those rights but sublicensed them before expanding (oops, if that's the case).

Netflix doesn't even have an exclusive liscense for the USA. IIRC House of Cards S1 is on comcast xfinity streaming.

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

#179

Post by mbrock »

geodel wrote: post #153
mbrock wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Maybe, but I can't tell from the press release or the website whether it will be available internationally, and it seems likely that it will (at least initially) be a US-only deal.

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

#180

Post by WA »

ukyrgf wrote: post #176
WA wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stre…

Before HBO Go people in the US had to wait and buy the DVD or Blu-ray too . You aren't forced to pirate something just because you need to watch it NOW.

This is not about me being forced to pirate anything. It's about offering paying customers a way worse service than people who just download a copy illegaly.

It's not too hard to slap a PayPal or Stripe button in front of an HTML5 video with optional Flash fallback. But no, legal entities need to make sure that you won't rip them off with their digital rights nonsense.

I understand that this is mostly a legal requirement, but the technical implementation still sucks tremendously up to a point where I wonder, why a service that charges money can't afford better developers than a free service.

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