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Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

torrentfreak.com

91–100 of 138 posts

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#91

Awesome. Now we can see if the movie and media industry experience a correlated rise in profits and settle this question whether "piracy" damages these industries once and for all.

At what point have people become so entitled that they think they should be able to consume all the content they want for free because they are slightly inconvenienced by price or availability. If you don't feel like paying, don't watch it. If you don't feel like finding out what service a show is on, don't watch it. If you don't like the fact that you need to subscribe to multiple streaming networks to watch the sho…

This argument is all over the place. "People are so entitled that they don't even know they're helping companies by pirating their content."

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not blaming you as you aren't the one to set them in the first place, but the goal posts keep moving! Two decades post-Napster we finally have what everyone wanted all along: an easy, cheap way to watch almost every movie without leaving the couch / listen to almost every song from almost any device. But now it's not good enough unless it's literally every piece of content from a single origin 0_0

"almost" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, as is the word "cheap". Paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max and still not coming close to "almost every" movie isn't cheap. And, yes, we want it from a single origin. It's not our fault that the movie/tv industry is a dumpster fire.

Amen. I pay for at least a dozen services and still have dozens of shows and movies from the past decade that I can't get. >10x going further back. Many are only available on the grey secondhand market. For example: Combat!

I'll start considering rights holders arguments when they're not capriciously gating or scalping on content, and are not limiting their content to their service du jour. The music industry has solved about 60-80% of this problem depending on what you like. The movie and series side has regressed to become worse and more expensive than blockbuster was. Shame!

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At what point have people become so entitled that they think they should be able to consume all the content they want for free because they are slightly inconvenienced by price or availability. If you don't feel like paying, don't watch it. If you don't feel like finding out what service a show is on, don't watch it. If you don't like the fact that you need to subscribe to multiple streaming networks to watch the sho…

This argument is all over the place. "People are so entitled that they don't even know they're helping companies by pirating their content."

My argument is far more cogent than any argument in favor of piracy. I can boil down every one one of those arguments, no matter how erudite, to "if I can get something for free, why shouldn't I".

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#94
post #27

It's much easier to pirate the content and have a single source of media than trying to figure out which pay service a show/movie is available on. 'Piracy' of tv/movies won't go away until that problem is solved.

I think that problem has been solved for the most part. https://reelgood.com/ and other services are excellent for it. To me, the real issue is finding movies/tv shows where you cannot buy or rent them. Amazingly, it is still an issue in this world. I would love to see The Bob Mathias Story from 1954. It was created by Allied Artists that has been bought and sold a few times ending up at ViacomCBS. Through many weeks…

This is not unilateral, and not the terminal answer. Due to the bundling going on right now, many shows are getting pushed behind absurd paywalls. For example, if I would like to watch Season 11 of RuPaul Drag Race, I would need to get a subscription to FuboTV, a "live sports and TV" service with 100+ standard cable channels. The best price they can do to include this content is $65 / mo. For a single show I care about!

After some checking around, I did find it for $20 / season on Amazon, which comes with the following license agreement:

> Offers and pricing for subscriptions (also referred to at times as memberships), the subscription services, the extent of available Subscription Digital Content, and the specific titles available through subscription services, may change over time and by location without notice (except as may be required by applicable law).

So... I can give them $20 for them to stream it to me for however long they'd like.

It is impossible to buy the series on DVD.

This is not an isolated incident. As with the late what.cd, at some point these torrent services also serve as an archive of secondary and rare work. This particular example does not fall into that category, but it is not hard to find others, such as the classic Max Headroom, that do (https://reelgood.com/show/max-headroom-1987).

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#95

What would people consider the ideal realistic system? Something fair to content creators, distributors, and consumers. I, personally, would like to be able to purchase one time "unlimited" licenses (like buying a book or a DVD) that can be easily validated by the publisher's web API and enable non-subscription content to be served by netflix/hulu/amazon/etc. To enable (for example) streaming an amazon show through n…

Rights holders get paid sane cost per use that diminish over time and are rather opaque because of distributors flat rates.

Distributors compete on service quality not library. If I need 2, or more service subscriptions, including my isp, that's too many for me and I will actively seek out solutions that provide better functionality without paying a tax for worse service.

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#96
post #21

It's much easier to pirate the content and have a single source of media than trying to figure out which pay service a show/movie is available on. 'Piracy' of tv/movies won't go away until that problem is solved.

Piracy is a service issue.

Hardly, piracy exists because people can't resist getting something for free when the consequences are non-existent. It's fundamentally a moral issue, but practitioners are dexterous at avoiding that line of thinking.

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#97
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't new arguments, really... but when I steal a cookie from the cookie jar, there's one less cookie in the cookie jar. When I steal a movie on a torrent site, the copyright owner didn't lose a copy of the movie. One can argue that it represents an economic loss insofar as the person who stole it isn't going to buy a copy now, but a response you often hear to that is relatively few who pirate content would ha…

What if you sneak into a movie theater to sit in a near-empty auditorium for a 2pm Tuesday matinee. Nobody has "lost" anything, as in your cookie jar example. Does that make it OK?

I have actually long-wondered how theaters would fare if they pro-rated seats based on demand. Charging just a dollar or two for a Tuesday matinee seat otherwise expected to be empty would certainly drive ticket sales, and with them concession sales. What does the theater have to lose?

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is all over the place. "People are so entitled that they don't even know they're helping companies by pirating their content."

My argument is far more cogent than any argument in favor of piracy. I can boil down every one one of those arguments, no matter how erudite, to "if I can get something for free, why shouldn't I".

First, your edits

>Regardless, ask yourself how you'd feel if the film, video game, or book you pirate was made by a close friend. Would you tell them you pirated their product? And if so, why?

Yes. They didn't create it to brag about how good their ratings were, and pirating their content doesn't mean they aren't getting anything from me, as you yourself mentioned.

>As a video game creator whose digital games cost nothing to copy and distribute, I can assure you that piracy directly affects my ability to continue making games

No, you can't assure me of that. You can say things but would be unable to provide any proof.

>"if I can get something for free, why shouldn't I"

Any time anyone buys something they've previously pirated, this argument falls apart. Not that it needs to wait until then, "why am I paying $20 to be advertised to" breaks it too.

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#99

It's much easier to pirate the content and have a single source of media than trying to figure out which pay service a show/movie is available on. 'Piracy' of tv/movies won't go away until that problem is solved.

I'm not blaming you as you aren't the one to set them in the first place, but the goal posts keep moving! Two decades post-Napster we finally have what everyone wanted all along: an easy, cheap way to watch almost every movie without leaving the couch / listen to almost every song from almost any device. But now it's not good enough unless it's literally every piece of content from a single origin 0_0

> almost every movie

Your kidding yourself. We could limit to movies released in U.S. theaters in the past 20 years and you'd still be completely wrong.

Re: Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases

#100

Awesome. Now we can see if the movie and media industry experience a correlated rise in profits and settle this question whether "piracy" damages these industries once and for all.

I wonder if we'll ever know, with all the Hollywood accounting that goes on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Hollywood accounting reminds me of condominium developers and property developers that form a shell LLC for a single project, so that if something goes terribly wrong with the build quality and new-property-warranty lawsuits and such, the entity created for the project has no assets to give up when sued.
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