It would be nice if we had substantial public funding of the arts and the results were free to copy.
The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
451–460 of 546 posts
Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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...
It's amazing how much they can spend on doing everything other than delivering their sole product... Wikipedia.
Honestly ask yourself: Can you think of any product or service the Wikimedia Foundation has done other than deliver wikis? And if so, do they account for even 0.01% of the impact as they main product?
That'd be like Gillette spending 90% of it's money on cups. We all know they're making razors. If they spent on their money on something else, leaving a mere fraction for razors, we'd think they were run by stupid, or insane people.
Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
But let's be honest, 99.99% of Kodi and Plex use is purely for pirated content. Otherwise, I'm not sure where everyone is getting all these non DRM digital downloads. And most aren't using special plugins with Kodi, they just use Kodi to play their content they get from torrents and Usenet.
I would ask that unless you have solid statistics, please do not assume this. I feel it is incredibly disrespectful to the developers who put out a great product that is legal and people legally use. Like other comments, I use Plex to format shift my legally purchased DVDs and CDs onto a media server. I also use it to legally DVR OTA TV. There are also countries outside of the USA in which format shifting DVDs is exp…
Granted, it's a guess. And 99.99 is hyperbole. But if I had to make a real guess, I'd say more than 90% of kodi installs are used for piracy.
Sure, there is a contingent of people using it to rip their own movies, but if that was really a core usage of Kodi, it would be a core feature. But it isn't. If you rip DVDs or bluerays, you have to integrate third party software.
What is a core feature of Kodi? Grokking large numbers of video files that use usenet/torrent naming standards as well as a nice API that virtually all torrent clients integrate with.
Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
Present Most publicly available pirated content is terrible quality anyway. If there are shows and movies you really love it's worth it to make yourself a high quality rip. Emby/Plex are super convenient, especially playlists. Who wouldn't want their own private streaming service with all the content they love. The discs sit in the basement as disaster recovery.
I don't know where you are looking, but I have no problem getting fully digital rips of current run TV shows in 720p/1080p that are wonderful - excelled only by BluRay rips from the box-sets when they come out.
Most have no problem getting "remux" versions of movies too. Which is the raw digital copy from the Blueray, so of equal quality.
Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
Licensing a movie in such a way that it can be played in France but not Poland seems as ridiculous as licensing it such that it can be played in Pennsylvania but not Minnesota. When will this Stone Age practice go away?
Are you saying it shouldn’t be legal? Or that the business practice doesn’t make sense? Let’s say you’re a French movie distributor. You know the French market, you know which movies will sell, you know how to market to French audiences. Because of this you can bid more on the rights to distribute movies in France than a global company that doesn’t have any specific knowledge about the French market (your return is l…
> What’s your proposed solution? Tell the studio they can only sign deals with global distributors? Tell them to accept less money?
Stop signing exclusive deals with regional distributors. If you're going to put something on Netflix, put it on Netflix world-wide. That doesn't mean you can't also put it on a streaming service based in France that concentrates on French language movies -- do both. Let them each pay you for non-exclusive global rights.
You get paid more per service for an exclusive deal, but you also get paid by fewer services. Which is increasingly looking like a bad deal as the many different services proliferate. Having a hundred buyers is more profitable than having only one buyer that pays ten times as much.
It's the same game they're playing with regional exclusivity to begin with -- get more buyers by dividing up the rights. Rights in one country aren't worth as much as rights world-wide but you can sell them to more people.
The difference is that regional exclusivity makes customers angry and non-exclusive licensing makes customers happy.
Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if you habitually use a VPN depends on the VPN... if you mean 'commercial vpn service', then probably yes. if you mean 'routing it through some other machine you own', 'your access to ' then probably no.. vpn != commercial vpn service
I was running my own Netflix VPN service (admittedly on a low cost VPS), and was blocked within a day when Netflix introduced their new policy.
Try from a residential IP block; off a simple raspberry at home for example.
Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
Netflix isn't locking it down, the company they are buying the media from is locking it down.
Netflix is enforcing it. They do the actual technical action of blocking access.
Yeah but what would you expect Netflix to do? Just illegally stream it anyway? They'd get in trouble...
Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my case, my life is spent between France and China where Netflix is inexistant. I won't cancel the subscription since my family in France is using it, but it would be almost pointless to keep paying only for myself. I don't understand this practice as well, when you are paying for a DVD or a VOD service which allow you to download the file, you can still watch it anywhere. Is it illegal to bring a DVD abroad? Why…
Well.. region codes (do those still exist?) certainly make (made?) it difficult to watch DVD's from abroad on many players.
Unless for some odd reason your going to buy a Sony or Panasonic DVD player then most DVD players work for all regions, infact if I went to the local supermarket in Thailand I think I would struggle to find a DVD player that still embraced region restrictions. Don't forget the gold plated HDMI cables
Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love bandcamp. It only takes 10% to 15%, unlike Apple/Google/Amazon which take >= 30% from artists. Really I prefer buying CDs at shows. Artists usually get to buy CDs from their own labels for $1 each, where if you buy it on Amazon/iTunes, they have to pay their label back for the recording costs, so they get like $0 until they hit some number (usually a few thousand). So if I buy a CD for $12, they're probably ge…
To be fair, most bands I but from don't have the "problem" of having a label to worry about ;)
I'm so tired of this evil label narrative. It's unfair to reduce them to those 5 major labels.
Particularly on Bandcamp there are countless small, honest labels that act as a curator and really help to develop their artists while taking a fair cut. Being featured on one of them is a huge opportunity for most artists.
Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)
#460The 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're currently in Austria and my daughter likes to watch "Mia and Me" which she used to watch back in England, in Austria the only option is for German dubbed audio, English is the source audio, I've no idea why it isn't available here.