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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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

#351
post #339
post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Companies like IBM or Intel are international, not "US-american" in any meaningful sense.

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

#352

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…

>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.

This is being actively addressed by the EU:

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/copyright

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

#353
post #314
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very easy actually. Drag and Drop the subtitle onto the screen. MPC-HC and VLC do this. I would safely assume that Netflix could achieve such simplicity too. And even if it's for 10% of the users, people with hearing problems are more in percentage.

There's a lot more to it than that though, especially if you're targeting normal people and not the HN crowd. What if the subtitles are delayed? What if there are problems with the encoding and there are question marks all over the place? All of this is very solvable, but you can't just say "it's very easy actually, just drag and drop".

I can, because it is. Normal people can do that too. I would argue that VLC is mass-compatible.

Since using your own subtitle file, Netflix just doesn't have to do anything besides displaying them. Finding the correct subtitle is the users job, not Netflix. After all this would be called "use your own subtitle here" and I think Netflix can handle Unicode. Not everything has to be spoonfed for the dumbest user alive. Also, I don't think there is a reliable way to detect delays in the subtitle, especially if it's in a different language then the audio track. If you have a reference subtitle track, this might work, comparing time of first appearance. Any subsequent offset might be due to 25/23,976 which could be detected, but again, this is not Netflix's problem.

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

#354
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I started pirating things regularly many years ago, I'll admit that some of it was just the fun of having such a huge library of content available for free, combined with my "f * the RIAA/MPAA" attitude. I mostly grew out of that phase, and began pirating things mostly to discover new obscure content. What.cd was amazing for music discovery, and I definitely went to a handful of concerts and bought a handful of…

> But, at least for me, the industry has done a decent job of competing with piracy on convenience. It has, but the fragmentation that you mentioned is starting to seriously erode this progress. If the situation worsens on this front, I can definitely see a resurgence of piracy, again because of convenience.

That’s true. I should also say that I watch a lot less content than I did in college and before, so that’s another big contributing factor.

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

#355
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Netflix figured this out a decade ago, and I wonder how many people have ever "given up" on Netflix to go torrent a show? I can't imagine it's a lot. I did as Netflix had continuous problems with keeping high quality stream at all times. Playing local file I have guaranteed HQ content without stops to buffer more data. Even with 250 Mb/s connection (measured using Netflix's own fast.com).

Although, now you can download Netflix (and Amazon) shows for later viewing. (I only do that for travel though. Even with a fairly modest Internet connection, I rarely have issues.)

> Although, now you can download Netflix (and Amazon) shows for later viewing.

Incredible, that this is worth mentioning. But here we are (no offense to parent, it's just funny that downloading a movie is a feature).

Think about how incredibly less complex Netflix's tech stack would be, if it's just a big fat file server offering all shows or seeding torrents.

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

#356
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

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…

It's worth noting that the Copyright Term Extension Act (aka the Sonny Bono Act aka The Mickey Mouse Protection Act)[0] passed a bit over 20 years ago (and the term was extended by 20 years), so I think a certain amount of vigilance is warranted this year for (stealthy) attempts to retroactively extend copyrights.

But if that doesn't happen, then next January will finally see works start entering the public domain again, starting with ones from 1923.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/hollywood-says-i...

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

#357
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

When I started pirating things regularly many years ago, I'll admit that some of it was just the fun of having such a huge library of content available for free, combined with my "f * the RIAA/MPAA" attitude. I mostly grew out of that phase, and began pirating things mostly to discover new obscure content. What.cd was amazing for music discovery, and I definitely went to a handful of concerts and bought a handful of…

what.cd was amazing. Sad that it was shut down :(

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

#358
post #110

P2P forced the industry to adapt and now we have good streaming services, but the content selection is nowhere as good as what you can find on torrent sites. What the Popcorn Time devs did was simply amazing. It had a Netflix-like interface plus a huge selection of content that you could watch right away. The industry should learn from these guys. Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay f…

> Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay for it. It's that simple. No, that's just easy from a consumer perspective. But it's not simple at all from the business perspective. Making movies and TV is expensive and complicated. Getting them to break even means a lot of careful work to maximize revenue and profit from a variety of revenue streams. It means dealing with a lot of players that…

What if the correct licensing entity could receive the micropayment made by the viewer?

What hidden complexity am I missing on the delivery / payment side?

Not speaking of making content free, but making content easily accessible, at a nominal price.

The easily accessible part has been proven solveable, by hobbyists, already.

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

#359
From the article:

> The real problem here is that there’s no way to know just how much of VPN traffic is growing or how much of it is BitTorrent.

That's a show-stopper problem for the entire article. All of the claims made in the article hinge on the idea that BitTorrent use is undergoing a "Long, Slow Decline". But the author provides no way to back up that claim and buries the lede suggesting why: they don't have the data to back up the claim in their chosen title. The article is largely a joke, a collection of baseless speculation, propaganda (including uncritical use of "piracy", "Legitimate Alternatives")[1], no awareness of why people share data via BitTorrent, and nothing that indicates an awareness of how laws differ around the world (an American bias is unacceptable since the Internet, BitTorrent use, and alleged activity are all global). Sadly some of the feedback on this group echoes the same sentiment: claims about what most people do without posting any sources to back up the claims.

On top of all that, the article is hosted on a service that could use a more resilient underlying infrastructure. As one poster here pointed out, it's as if the article should have been hosted on a service that lets people pass around verbatim copies of the article.

[1] See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html on how these and other terms are unwise to use without explaining what you mean. One of the giant risks is conveying an undisclosed viewpoint that colors your take on everything else: "unauthorized copying" or "prohibited copying" could have been used instead of "piracy", for example. I'd add "legitimate" to that list of words for the same reason: the word implies that such copying is illegitimate where it is illegal. But as that gnu.org article also points out, "[L]aws don't define right and wrong. Laws, at their best, attempt to implement justice. If the laws (the implementation) don't fit our ideas of right and wrong (the spec), the laws are what should change.". If we're to have a reasonable discussion of this, we ought to admit to our views and speak of them clearly, not hide behind propaganda without ever explicitly coming to terms with their implications.

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

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see download option on my TV running Android. Is this only for PC? On the other hand video files work seamlessly (there is MX Player for Android TV). Sure, there is extra hassle for getting them in the first place but Netflix still has small library for my family (e.g. has Frozen but not Tangled).

It's only for films or shows produced or distributed by Netflix. The download option doesn't include shows/films that they license.

It’s probably only on mobile devices.
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