HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry • Hacker News Board

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#91

Post by gonehome » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

me_me_me wrote: post #87

gonehome wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regret saying stupid, too abrasive and I didn't intend it as a personal attack. My comment links to my actual argument.

That's fine. But its a hijack of a thread. I admitted my reasoning is not moralistically ethical or law abiding. My argument is that piracy is there for a reason. There was a huge dip in torrent usage at the dawn of Netflix, for a reason. The convenience of Netflix outweighed 'cost' of piracy. Now piracy is back up, why? Thats the reality of the world we are living in. The argument you linked is great and it makes se…

Yeah I understand where you're coming from, I just find that argument doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.

For example, if instead of piracy we were talking about stealing from a brick and mortar store it wouldn't be right to do it just because it's possible and easy to get away with it (or because the store didn't provide convenient service, etc.). File sharing is different for lots of reasons (digital goods are non-rival, the issue with copyright I mention in my comment) and it's those reasons that make the argument compelling (basically that modern copyright law is itself bad).

I think just saying it's okay because you don't care about corporate profit actually weakens the ability to persuade people with the underlying arguments which I think are good and I don't think it's an ethical position that really holds up. Thoughtful people that see only those arguments (or worse 'information wants to be free') come away with a stronger defense of existing copyright law.

I do think that companies should take it into account for pragmatic reasons and recognize that it's the real competition to not delivering high quality convenient service, but that's largely because it's not possible to enforce actual copyright law with the internet at scale - which is somewhat of a different issue.

I don't think it's really hi-jacking the thread because I think the issue is so tightly coupled. I just didn't want to copy/paste my comment because that seemed like bad etiquette?

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#92

Post by albertshin » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

Miner49er wrote: post #53

garmaine wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously?

Yes. https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/index_video....

Quuite unsettling to see listed videos of (alleged) bombing videos alongside Tom and Jerry though...

I'm surprised these are made available with no lock or warning...

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#93

Post by dbreunig » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #80

dbreunig wrote: post #51

Some wishful thinking here... > For one thing, the promise of being able to stream the ENTIRETY of the classic shorts could generate a tremendous amount of publicity for Max, in the process providing strong incentive for T&J collectors, animation fans, historians, and adults to subscribe to the new platform. That is a very small audience compared to the very large audience of families who would be upset if the their…

> That is a very small audience compared to the very large audience of families who would be upset if the their kids auto-played into unexpected blackface. Your point is valid regarding the size of the niche here, but there are probably a thousand other niches that would combine—long tail fashion—into a good chuck of market share. As far as families being upset about their kids auto-playing into offensive content, HB…

You've hit on the key design challenge for mass market networks with massive content libraries: how can one build the best product for the largest audience without being boring to the niches. It's why Facebook uses algos to recommend content, which spurs another interesting question.

If algos are the tool for recommending the best version of content, the idea of 'archive' and 'preservation' of original forms falls by the wayside. The FB feed you see is different than mine, as are your Google results for the same terms. How would we deal with your Tom & Jerry or other content being different? For the most part it would just be funny quirks (like film edits for airplanes or cable TV).

This gets even crazier as contemporary tools for creation can capture and store countless takes that would usually be discarded on the cutting room floor. Now they're just waiting for an alternative cut.

I wrote about this 9(!) years ago, but the issue has only accelerated: https://dbreunig.tumblr.com/post/13923466229/multisignal-too...

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#94

Post by paxys » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

albertshin wrote: post #92

Miner49er wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/index_video....

Quuite unsettling to see listed videos of (alleged) bombing videos alongside Tom and Jerry though... I'm surprised these are made available with no lock or warning...

Well there are 3 prominent warnings on the top of that page

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#95

Post by danaris » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:01 PM UTC

me_me_me wrote: post #26

chadash wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale?... (Offline-only distribution would count as “abandoned” in this regime.) Let's say I author a book and sell it as a paperback, but decide for whatever reason that I don't want to sell an e-book. Would you apply the same reasoning there? Is it ethical for you to torrent an unpaid for e-book copy because you've decided that's more convenient…

Ethics? I don't care too much if mouse company gets more money for their empire from me or not. Lets be real, that money more less goes to people that have nothing to do with people that create shows/content etc. But thats beside the point, I don't care much about it. I am adult, I earn money and at this point in my life my time IS worth money. If the effort/cost of watching a show it greater than firing up torrents,…

> I don't care too much if mouse company gets more money

While these are, indeed, shorts featuring a cartoon mouse, I would guess that "mouse company" is intended to refer to Disney, which is not, in fact, involved in this particular back-catalog streaming fiasco.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#96

Post by imbnwa » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

function_seven wrote: post #80

dbreunig wrote: post #51

Some wishful thinking here... > For one thing, the promise of being able to stream the ENTIRETY of the classic shorts could generate a tremendous amount of publicity for Max, in the process providing strong incentive for T&J collectors, animation fans, historians, and adults to subscribe to the new platform. That is a very small audience compared to the very large audience of families who would be upset if the their…

> That is a very small audience compared to the very large audience of families who would be upset if the their kids auto-played into unexpected blackface. Your point is valid regarding the size of the niche here, but there are probably a thousand other niches that would combine—long tail fashion—into a good chuck of market share. As far as families being upset about their kids auto-playing into offensive content, HB…

>Your point is valid regarding the size of the niche here, but there are probably a thousand other niches that would combine—long tail fashion—into a good chuck of market share.

What niches would those be? Why is HBO Max responsible for all of them? Their parent company made committments to censorship before HBO Max even existed back to when DVDs were being introduced, as stated in the article. I don't even know why OP and yourself are going after HBO for this, apparently Warner Bros made this decision twenty years ago.

> As far as families being upset about their kids auto-playing into offensive content, HBO has already solved for this. They have Sex and the City and The Sopranos on that platform.

Dunno if you use HBO Max or not but, like Netflix, they separate UI and content by age group of the current user

> Mark the naughty T&J episodes as "TV-MA", and a kid-filtered view won't show them, right? (I guess the question is whether they have this ability per-episode, or only at the series level)

Or just not, and not deal with any further possible ramifications. All of these "historical"/"archival purposes/I'm a sensible adult" arguments for Tom and Jerry apply just as well to Amos & Andy since we're really talking about censoring jokes about Black people's physical appearance. Almost seems like a dog whistle if I had more evidence.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#97

Post by mocheeze » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:17 PM UTC

FalconSensei wrote: post #71

chadash wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale?... (Offline-only distribution would count as “abandoned” in this regime.) Let's say I author a book and sell it as a paperback, but decide for whatever reason that I don't want to sell an e-book. Would you apply the same reasoning there? Is it ethical for you to torrent an unpaid for e-book copy because you've decided that's more convenient…

You are right that someone could buy the physical book and them torrent the digital version. But I would consider: 1 - You already forfeited you digital sales because you decided not to have an ebook release. If you make public that there are no plans for a digital release, and not the case that's just delayed compared to print. 2 - Digital books tend to be cheaper. Makes a huge difference for people that read 10 boo…

Libraries can solve issues 2 and 3 for those folks.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#98

Post by 5560675260 » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

yters wrote: post #89

5560675260 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a very different world, for sure. Public funding and patronage would play a significantly larger role than they do now, works produced non-commercially would have bigger prominence. It's harder to say what would happen in absence of patent laws. Higher reliance on trade secrets? Non-competes in every employment contracts? Overall I don't think that we would be significantly worse off, especially now, when…

I believe even technocratic communism would fail for the same reasons that agrarian and industrial communism failed. Lack of incentive to work hard, Goodhardt's law, destruction of those who try to retain property rights, etc. Even today's open source movement is very parasitic on the commercial sector. Without big tech companies OS would disappear.

I don't thinks that lack of legal protections for IP is in any way an equivalent to communism. Money would still be on the table, it's just the way they are gained would be somewhat different. IP as a concept isn't even that old and our societies managed to exist, produce works of arts and various services just fine.

As for the big tech firms - why wouldn't they exist? Would Google be disrupted if tomorrow all patents in the world became unenforceable? Or Amazon? Sure, MS might be in trouble, but what they are doing already feels like a gradual switch to a service/subscription based model.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#99

Post by FalconSensei » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:25 PM UTC

mocheeze wrote: post #97

FalconSensei wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that someone could buy the physical book and them torrent the digital version. But I would consider: 1 - You already forfeited you digital sales because you decided not to have an ebook release. If you make public that there are no plans for a digital release, and not the case that's just delayed compared to print. 2 - Digital books tend to be cheaper. Makes a huge difference for people that read 10 boo…

Libraries can solve issues 2 and 3 for those folks.

Depending on where you live and how good is your library selection, yes, and I do encourage people to do that.

Growing in up in Brazil though, didn't have much luck at that time, finding things that I wanted.

Edit: this was for books in Brazilian Portuguese. When I started focusing on books in English - to prepare to move to Canada - I bought Kindle books because otherwise, I would have to pay for international shipping, buy for high price in a Brazilian bookseller, wait up to 2 months for bookdepository delivery...

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#100

Post by function_seven » Thu, Feb 04, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

imbnwa wrote: post #96

function_seven wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is a very small audience compared to the very large audience of families who would be upset if the their kids auto-played into unexpected blackface. Your point is valid regarding the size of the niche here, but there are probably a thousand other niches that would combine—long tail fashion—into a good chuck of market share. As far as families being upset about their kids auto-playing into offensive content, HB…

>Your point is valid regarding the size of the niche here, but there are probably a thousand other niches that would combine—long tail fashion—into a good chuck of market share. What niches would those be? Why is HBO Max responsible for all of them? Their parent company made committments to censorship before HBO Max even existed back to when DVDs were being introduced, as stated in the article. I don't even know why…

> What niches would those be?

I can't enumerate all niches that exist in a large back catalog of media. My point wasn't that HBO should cater to 1,000 different "I wanna see the racist stuff" niches. Rather, there are a thousand different subsets of their subscriber base that all have an outsized interest in something otherwise obscure. Or largely unpopular. I was responding the to general point about the tradeoff between serving those small subsets vs. avoiding the ire of the wider subscriber base.

> Why is HBO Max responsible for all of them

I didn't say they were. Just reframing it as a business decision that they could make. The long tail is a thing that has been traditionally hard to cater to, but is easier with the technology we have today. (i.e. Physical video stores don't have 1/10th the floorspace that would be required, but online streaming does. Once a title has been tagged and categorized, you let your software take care of the curation with 0 marginal cost)

> I don't even know why OP and yourself are going after HBO for this.

I'm not "going after them". I was responding to the parent's comment with my own ideas how the situation could be navigated. If HBO decides that, no, they'd rather just sidestep the whole issue, I don't blame them! Their math might work out different than mine. (Okay, maybe I "blame" them, but I get it. Can't say I'd be Mr. Principled Archivist in the same situation)

As for OP, I figure he really loves Tom and Jerry, and would love to see all the episodes.

> Almost seems like a dog whistle if I had more evidence.

No. The "I'm a sensible adult" is fine by me on its own merits. I don't need to whistle. Like I said, mark these episodes "TV-MA".

I guess I'm frustrated because I wish streaming services weren't so ephemeral. The one that really got me was the episode of Community where the group played D&D for the first time. It's one of the best episodes of that show, but it's no longer available to watch. But it's reasonable for me—a non-bigot—to like that episode, right?