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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#121
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think copyright is a good thing, as it allows for artists to actually get paid for their work

Totally. Which is why it ends with the author's death. OH WAIT. But it's totally necessary; back before it existed no one ever made any money for their creative works, so with no incentive no one ever made anything creative before copyright law. OH WAIT.

What if the author is a company? Like Disney.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#122

What's more interesting to me is using BitTorrent not for pirated movies but as a content distribution system enabling more free services like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a super heavily visited website, so must pay a lot for hosting. They manage to pay for it all with donations, but other sites can't. For example: What if Open Access journals used peer to peer for nearly-free content distribution? That'd allow the open…

> What's more interesting to me is using BitTorrent not for pirated movies but as a content distribution system enabling more free services like Wikipedia. That should be much higher in Wikimedia's TODO list, IMHO. There is a browser extension called WikipediaP2P for chrome, but if I'm not mistaken the author is not affiliated with the Wikimedia foundation and it's only for chrome. I donated money once to the foundat…

Wikipedia has cancer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#123

The reason why for me, someone with a netflix and amazon prime account in Germany, bittorrent is neither dead nor declining (for movies and TV shows): a) Being on time. If you want to take part in the online discussion about tv shows, you have to watch them on time. For a ton of shows I can't even buy episodes on the day they come out. Torrenting is still the far superior choice. b) Languages. Yes netflix, I know tha…

> b) Languages.

I wrote above about why this is, and you're right, it is artificial, but it has nothing to do with technology.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360889

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#124

The reason why for me, someone with a netflix and amazon prime account in Germany, bittorrent is neither dead nor declining (for movies and TV shows): a) Being on time. If you want to take part in the online discussion about tv shows, you have to watch them on time. For a ton of shows I can't even buy episodes on the day they come out. Torrenting is still the far superior choice. b) Languages. Yes netflix, I know tha…

Is German Netflix that bad? In the USA, I can choose the audio and subtitle language pretty easily; it's even supported on their Plex app and so forth. Example: I just watched "Dark" and it defaulted to English dub, but it just took a second to switch it to German with English subtitles.

We are using Netflix in Germany and it works fine. Though we primarily use it for Netflix originals now, they usually come with English and German subtitles, as well as English and German audio.

(Being Dutch, I am used to having subtitles, so for some reason I prefer English subtitles over audio only. I guess that I have to concentrate less with subtitles.)

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#125
post #62

I can't read the article because the website is down. But I have something to say about torrenting movies. Late last year, my old parents who don't speak English came to visit me for a couple of months in the US. I'm just a graduate student with a limited budget, and my mom is car sick so we couldn't go out every night. I didn't want them to waste time on Facebook after dinner until we went to bed, so I had to think…

This is a major issue with streaming services. Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! At least with DVDs you could rip it and add subtitles yourself if needed.

Netflix and their subtitles is so strange. I have an account but the subtitle selection is so limited. The rip of a Netflix show, especially recently, will have upwards of twenty subtitles, I assume from every region they're allowed to show the movie. In the actual app, you're lucky to have more than four, with two of those being English and English for the hearing impaired.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#126
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the EU want to do a new trade deal with the US, and the US decides it wants to co-opt your legal framework to enforce its commercial appropriation of European culture, history and stories through Disney and Hollywood. And then you'll be getting lots of enforcement. The whole copyright thing is just a US export thing, as soon as it becomes a problem for them, they'll force the EU to make it a problem for you too…

this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think copyright is a good thing, as it allows for artists to actually get paid for their work

Problems:

- Company hires a bunch of artists to make something, pays them one time, keeps gathering checks decades after the artists are dead, and even longer after they're getting any payment for the work.

- Artist collects money from their work, dies, and the estate continues collecting for decades.

The purpose of copyright should be to encourage artists to create works for the enrichment of society as a whole, by giving them a monopoly on sale of those works for a limited time, followed by a release of the work into the public domain.

Instead, we've got constantly-extending terms, slim-to-no chance of something still being culturally relevant by the time its copyright expires, and people besides the artists receiving the most benefit, in many cases.

Copyright itself can be a good thing, but the current U.S. implementation of it sucks.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#127

The reason why for me, someone with a netflix and amazon prime account in Germany, bittorrent is neither dead nor declining (for movies and TV shows): a) Being on time. If you want to take part in the online discussion about tv shows, you have to watch them on time. For a ton of shows I can't even buy episodes on the day they come out. Torrenting is still the far superior choice. b) Languages. Yes netflix, I know tha…

a) Being on time. If you want to take part in the online discussion about tv shows, you have to watch them on time. For a ton of shows I can't even buy episodes on the day they come out. Torrenting is still the far superior choice.

I generally found that buying a season pass on iTunes typically gives you episodes as soon as they come out. They often offer shows in the original version and with German subtitles/audio. In original versions, the shows get released in parallel with the US. And if there's something missing, I use an US iTunes account (Apple TV 4 permits quick account switching).

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#128

What's more interesting to me is using BitTorrent not for pirated movies but as a content distribution system enabling more free services like Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a super heavily visited website, so must pay a lot for hosting. They manage to pay for it all with donations, but other sites can't. For example: What if Open Access journals used peer to peer for nearly-free content distribution? That'd allow the open…

> What's more interesting to me is using BitTorrent not for pirated movies but as a content distribution system enabling more free services like Wikipedia. That should be much higher in Wikimedia's TODO list, IMHO. There is a browser extension called WikipediaP2P for chrome, but if I'm not mistaken the author is not affiliated with the Wikimedia foundation and it's only for chrome. I donated money once to the foundat…

But do note that hosting is actually only a very small percentage of where money goes.

In 2017, Wikimedia received ~87M in donations while only ~2M were spent on hosting. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/d/da/Wikim...

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#129

The reason why for me, someone with a netflix and amazon prime account in Germany, bittorrent is neither dead nor declining (for movies and TV shows): a) Being on time. If you want to take part in the online discussion about tv shows, you have to watch them on time. For a ton of shows I can't even buy episodes on the day they come out. Torrenting is still the far superior choice. b) Languages. Yes netflix, I know tha…

> b) Languages. I wrote above about why this is, and you're right, it is artificial, but it has nothing to do with technology. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16360889

Yeah, I know about that. It's why I said there is no technological reason for any of these.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix and Amazon rarely show ads, normally just a short 30 second recommendation at that. All streaming in HD in about 5 seconds.

I think he wasn't talking about legal streaming sites as that was kinda the point of my original post. > All streaming in HD in about 5 seconds. Yeah, until it's not. I mean sure, 20 seconds of low quality is not the end of the world. But there is no reason it should be that crappy. And they are competing against easy and free, having only "moral high ground" as the competitive advantage. So at the very least, they s…

Yeah, until it's not. I mean sure, 20 seconds of low quality is not the end of the world.

I literally never have 20 seconds of low quality on Netflix et al. It is sharp HD from the moment that I start streaming (UnityMedia with 200 MBit/s downstream).

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