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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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

#331

Post by thomastjeffery »

Nition wrote: post #276
ehsankia wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh the other hand, if it's on iTunes it's almost an instant piracy. Not only you can't buy it without installing a huge application, you can't even preview it either.

Can anyone speculate on why Apple has never made iTunes purchasing available as an online store? It's the prospect of installing iTunes that keeps me away as well. I've used Google Play when I couldn't find something on Bandcamp because it lets me purchase and download the album in a browser. But even then you have to have an account.

It's all part of their one-size-fits-all approach.

They want to make sure everyone uses their software that runs on their overpriced hardware, and DRM is yet another way to enforce that.

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

#332

Post by PhasmaFelis »

jimmies wrote: 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…

I have zero moral qualms about pirating things that the copyright holder refuses to sell at any price. If they don't want my money, I'm under no obligation to give them any.

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

#334

Post by chx »

bdz wrote: post #16

At least where I live, Hungary, torrenting was decriminalized some years ago as long as someone isn't doing it for profit. It's still illegal but they stopped going after end users. The biggest private tracker has 770k users atm with an exceptional 1452% seed to leech ratio. Basically almost everyone (ie daily internet users) is using it in the country. Also they introduced a "blank media" tax on everything (CD, DVD,…

You are probably right that individual users won't be pursued but that's more of a political issue than a legal one -- torrenting via such a big site is certainly not legal. Even though the new 2013 criminal law indeed allows for downloading and uploading (this part is new) if no income is generated -- but you are missing some very important words which are there ("indirectly" and "income" -- not profit!) and some which are not. Be very careful with legal texts, the wording carefully and deliberately omits mentioning whose income it is -- the tracker site you are using generates income via ads and donations.

How do I know it's deliberate? Because some twenty years ago it was me who informed the Hungarian public about downloading being legal if no income was generated -- even if upload was not --- in a series of articles in Chip Magazin after a very long interview with Artisjus (the Hungarian collective rights management agency) and they have had at least a significant role in wording the copyright law then (if you would want to be a less careful journalist you would even accuse them writing it) and I'd bet anything they have had ... some ... input into the current law as well.

Do note the tracker sites themselves are illegal, this has been established last summer by the highest court in the EU. http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc... (change the doclang argument to HU to read it in Hungarian).

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

#335

Post by caf »

icebraining wrote: post #275
8draco8 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law/studio deals have to change. Netflix offers great movies and they lock it down to certain countries. For example I am big fan of Back To The Future. I can watch may favourite movie every month when I'm in UK but when I am in Poland then no luck. Same goes in other direction. While being in Poland I downloaded via Netflix National Lampoon Animal House to watch on plane. I watched half of it on plane then tried…

I don't understand what is the profit for movie companies in narrowing down their own market. The movie company sold the rights to show that movie in the UK to some other company instead of Netflix, probably for more money than Netflix offered them. Also, you're paying a fixed monthly fee, and unless you're part of the small minority that travels a lot, you're not likely to drop Netflix over not being able to watch c…

While only a small minority might travel (across country borders) a lot in the US, I imagine in Europe it's a much higher proportion of the population that regularly travels to other countries.

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

#337

Post by zanny »

falcor84 wrote: post #137
azangru wrote: post #71

The article concludes that: > The internet is now dominated by legitimate choices for video streaming. I really, really would love that to be the case, so that copyright holders stop freaking out about their presumed losses due to pirated content, and would just leave the pirates be.

I absolutely agree. I personally really love the patron model (e.g. Patreon) where people who have the money and care about something can promote it for all of humanity. As a (relatively) poor kid I pirated a lot because I didn't have a good alternative. But now that I'm better off, I'm really happy to pay and support content creators while allowing others who are not as lucky as me to get it for free.

Patreon has been getting worse over time as people have explored what it is capable of (both on the corporate and user side).

At first, it was just a recurring paypal where subscription got you access to a private forum.

Then creators started putting development materials and bloopers on it.

Then extras and previews.

Now a lot of patreons are just turning into paysites. All the content is on patreon, all of it behind tiered paywalls. Its no different than technology we had in abundance in 2004.

The difference is that with paysites the owners of the site handled the payment processor. Now those creators have forfeited their autonomy for the (probably worthwhile as web centralization has shown) increased exposure and convenience of being on THE recurring payments site. Now one corporate entity can arbitrarily kill someones business on their own whims while taking a cut of all their fans contributions.

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

#338

Post by xxs »

drchickensalad wrote: post #326
gsich wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always reads like an excuse. They don't have to enforce it as strictly. Content owners don't specify the exact technical details Netflix has to deploy. If the deal says "no access for users outside country x", Netflix could just ask the user from which country they are from. Then, depending on the answer either show it or not. On another note, some companies like this. Take Valve with Steam. They are definitly i…

You're free to think that, and possibly some less important companies could get away with it. However, in reality, the content owners really aren't that dumb and incompetent. There are very punishing legal implications to breaking the contracts, especially your relationship with others. And the content owners don't just do nothing; there's quite detailed questions and requirements they give when you renew their conte…

>You're free to think that, and possibly some less important companies could get away with it.

In the EU most people have identity documents... and enough services that provide identity verification. The said verification is mandatory in some industries like online gambling.

There is no intrinsic hurdle to remove the retarded IP block. Using VPN to bypass it is just yet another step away but again, why bother with VPN when I can get it via torrent?

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

#339

Post by onli »

zanny wrote: post #322
wang_li wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are they going to get microprocessors and hard drives?

Considering most microprocessors are manufactured in Taiwan and Korea and a lot of hard drives come from Singapore and Thailand, the EU doesn't even have anything to worry about on that front.

I first wanted to write something in that direction, but realized that is not true. Since the common cpus are all produced by US-american firms, they'd indeed be affected by something like this. Though you are of course correct afaik, the real production happens in Asia.

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

#340

Post by petre »

khedoros1 wrote: post #145
petre wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the author is a company? Like Disney.

I disagree with the premise that the company could be an author. It's the employer of the authors, commissioning them to create something. I'd call Disney the copyright holder.

Walt Disney was an actual person and one of the founders of what became The Walt Disney Company.
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