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Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

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Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#31

Post by mark_l_watson »

koolba wrote: post #5

> But taking more aggressive measures poses risks. The people using services for free — especially younger consumers — may never agree to sign up for a subscription, no matter how many hassles they endure. That means companies would mostly just be alienating paying customers, who could get frustrated and stop using an app or cancel their service. In other words, there’s plenty of downside and possibly little upside.…

re checking request IP address block: is this what NetFlix does, they don’t work through VPNs, even when I set VPN server to USA location. I always turn off my VPN before trying to watch Netflix.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#32

Post by mrkstu »

ghaff wrote: post #21
magashna wrote: post #9

> “I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” Tom Rutledge, the chief executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., said during an earnings call last month. “It’s just too easy to get the product without paying for it.” Boo hoo. All these companies thinking they can split all their content up and get people to pay for every single service are in for a (totally expected) surprise. I'll share my plex server…

I thought everyone wanted content to be split up when it was bundled as a cable package.

If they all follow Disney's pricing model, that would work, but everyone wants too big a slice of the pie.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#33

Post by ghaff »

koolba wrote: post #5

> But taking more aggressive measures poses risks. The people using services for free — especially younger consumers — may never agree to sign up for a subscription, no matter how many hassles they endure. That means companies would mostly just be alienating paying customers, who could get frustrated and stop using an app or cancel their service. In other words, there’s plenty of downside and possibly little upside.…

>I’m also surprised they haven’t cracked down on the source IP addresses. It’d be trivial to look at the net bandwidth and see that the usage is at a totally different physical address (and not just a mobile phone).

I regularly use these services when I'm traveling. If any of them start restricting me to my home IP (which isn't static anyway) or otherwise start making it harder for me to use their service, I'll be dropping them in a hurry. There's a lot of content out there and not really any that I must have.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#34

Post by robcohen »

criley2 wrote: post #12
magashna wrote: post #9

> “I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” Tom Rutledge, the chief executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., said during an earnings call last month. “It’s just too easy to get the product without paying for it.” Boo hoo. All these companies thinking they can split all their content up and get people to pay for every single service are in for a (totally expected) surprise. I'll share my plex server…

The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. Especially on this board. I understand a lot of reddit is younger and irresponsible so piracy-as-the-norm is a popular trope, but among the engineers whose livelihoods depend on subscription models, we still promote service theft without so much as a hint of shame? If the economics of a service don't make sense to you, then do not subscribe. But to turn aroun…

I think the issue here is that culture should on some level be free. This is why libraries are free.

Personally, I want to financially support media creators, but every time I get a forced prereel commercial, or Hulu inserts ads in a service I pay for, I make a mental note to care a little less. Every time I’m region restricted, I make a mental note. Every time my browser widevine plugin breaks and I can’t watch something, I make a mental note.

Essentially every time I witness a dark pattern, I realize this is about control. Not fairness.

Fuck them. If they wanna play games, I’ll play games. And I’ll win, because I’m better at it than they are.

I would be happy to pay some cryptocurrency directly to an artist for the production of media. I could care less about the distributors though.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#35

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

basch wrote: post #15
magashna wrote: post #9

> “I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” Tom Rutledge, the chief executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., said during an earnings call last month. “It’s just too easy to get the product without paying for it.” Boo hoo. All these companies thinking they can split all their content up and get people to pay for every single service are in for a (totally expected) surprise. I'll share my plex server…

I think the bigger issue than paying for multiple services is duplicate licensing. If I sign up for DirecTV, Amazon Prime, and CBS how many shows am I triple licensing? If all these companies want me to sign up for multiple services, there needs to be a way for them to pass "already licensed" information to each other, and pro-rate their bills accordingly. ATT, Comcast, Disney, CBS already own almost all the historic…

While I see your point, that's never been how media is served up - you're not given license to shows, you're gaining access to what they want you to have from their license. Your cable bill was never reduced because the same show was playing on two channels at once.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#36

Post by tonyjstark »

usrusr wrote: post #8

Tolerating a small group of users on a single account is a soft power to keep subscription hopping in check. Rotating subscriptions is so much easier when you don't have to create consensus amongst loved ones. It's a magic brand loyalty machine.

I couldn't agree more. There is always one friend still using the service while you're already saturated and because of that the subscription is kept instead of cancelled. Once cancelled, a service can have a hard time to win a user back.

But it seems the industry does not want to learn: don't make it harder to use your service for the honest users. They're worth it to keep happy!

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#37

Post by rayiner »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #29
rayiner wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you feel entitled to get the product of other peoples work for free?

It’s easy to shirk copyright law without moral consideration when it’s become so draconian against citizens. Is denying a faceless corporation profit from finding some bits elsewhere theft? It seems the public consensus is no. This is the digital content market seeking equilibrium. Competing against free is hard, but possible! Don’t whine as a CEO that your job is hard, it’s supposed to be hard.

I feel like that’s a cop-out. I agree that draconian criminal enforcement of what is a civil tort is unwarranted. But do people really see it as a form of civil disobedience, or do they just feel entitled to stuff for free? And if it’s civil disobedience, why not do it in a principled way? Download and share but don’t watch it.

I’d liken it more to the looting and vandalism in response to police brutality. More opportunism than civil disobedience.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#38

Post by joshstrange »

criley2 wrote: post #12
magashna wrote: post #9

> “I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” Tom Rutledge, the chief executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., said during an earnings call last month. “It’s just too easy to get the product without paying for it.” Boo hoo. All these companies thinking they can split all their content up and get people to pay for every single service are in for a (totally expected) surprise. I'll share my plex server…

The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. Especially on this board. I understand a lot of reddit is younger and irresponsible so piracy-as-the-norm is a popular trope, but among the engineers whose livelihoods depend on subscription models, we still promote service theft without so much as a hint of shame? If the economics of a service don't make sense to you, then do not subscribe. But to turn aroun…

As much as corporate America likes to whine, bitch, and moan about piracy I'm willing to bet no engineer has LEGITIMATELY lost their job due to too much of the content on the service they support being pirated. Stop painting this as if people who pirate/account-share are reaching into the "poor" engineer's pockets, it's disingenuous and simply untrue. This is the rich wanting to get richer and trying to create a false dichotomy of either "Steal content" or "Pay for content" is an effective way to do it, too bad it's not based in reality/truth when there is a 3rd option "Don't watch it".

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#40

Post by reaperducer »

maxsilver wrote: post #26
criley2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. Especially on this board. I understand a lot of reddit is younger and irresponsible so piracy-as-the-norm is a popular trope, but among the engineers whose livelihoods depend on subscription models, we still promote service theft without so much as a hint of shame? If the economics of a service don't make sense to you, then do not subscribe. But to turn aroun…

> The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. It's not stealing when you already paid in full . Sharing my Netflix password with my wife and/or child is not stealing , I paid in full for that account, and have now for many many years. My Plex server is full of DVDs and BluRays I paid full retail price for (that's $20 to $30 USD each), it's not stealing to use it, and it's not stealing to let some frien…

Wife and child is one thing. But the problem the problem is that people are sharing with people who aren't relatives. Old college roommates from 15 years ago who live on the other side of the country. Coworkers. People they meet in bars. None of these are legitimate.

I get the attraction of getting content for free. I used to pirate software when I was young and broke. But I'm an adult now and I do adult things, meaning I pay for what I consume.

Amazingly, people can survive without consuming other people's content. You don't have to watch a streaming service. There are other things in life to do.

Much like I think people who don't vote forfeit the right to complain about politicians, I think people who steal content don't get to complain about the quality of the available content.

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