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Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

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Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#151

Post by nitrogen »

paulcole wrote: post #100
dmix wrote: post #10

I for one thank our piracy overlords who endlessly work to make every form of content (optionally) freely available in high quality. I pay for plenty of subscription services that finally figured out how to make content as easy and accessible as piracy but there will forever exist legitimate gaps where “just pay for it” is simply insufficient (geo being #1, silly copyright owners #2, etc etc). The other article menti…

I’ll admit I don’t understand how people can ethically pirate content. I dislike a lot of business models but I just don’t feel right calling them “silly” and looking for ways to take things I know I don’t have the right to take.

I subscribe to some streaming services and that's all I use, but consider this: copyright grants ownership over a fraction of your mind without your consent. Once you've seen a show or heard a song, whether you chose to or not, those neurons are permanently allocated to that show or song. How is that ethical?

Moreover, the current state of copyright gives a few large corporations enormous power to shape our culture. The stories of our time should belong to us well before we're dead, but copyright lasts well past one human lifetime.

And as others have mentioned, sometimes there is no price you can pay to legally watch something, for reasons that are truly "silly" to anyone who isn't profiting from the international balkanization of distributors. Like the Great British Baking Show on Netflix: it's actually Great British Bake Off, and you can't watch the original in the US. Good luck finding anywhere to watch Grand Designs (from any locale) in the US without ads, no matter how much you'd be willing to pay. There are many examples of shows from UK, Australia, and New Zealand that aren't available in the US at all, and probably vice versa, let alone the rest of the world.

Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#152

Post by paulcole »

bo1024 wrote: post #146
paulcole wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll admit I don’t understand how people can ethically pirate content. I dislike a lot of business models but I just don’t feel right calling them “silly” and looking for ways to take things I know I don’t have the right to take.

Your use of the word "take" is probably related to the disconnect. In copyright violations, the crime is copying. Usually "taking" has a different connotation than copying. (I'd be mad if you took my bike, but if you copied it then I'd just be happy for you.)

If I’m describing an action I took as a “crime” I’m not going to feel good about it no matter how finely I choose to split the hairs.

Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#153

Post by dmix »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #136
dmix wrote: post #10

I for one thank our piracy overlords who endlessly work to make every form of content (optionally) freely available in high quality. I pay for plenty of subscription services that finally figured out how to make content as easy and accessible as piracy but there will forever exist legitimate gaps where “just pay for it” is simply insufficient (geo being #1, silly copyright owners #2, etc etc). The other article menti…

Remember when the Covenant Kodi plugin was thriving and the media companies hadn't waged legal-nuclear war against that sort of thing yet? It finally felt like the future: I could watch anything , in any language it was available in, right now, in my chosen quality, with automatic subtitle downloads if you want that sort of thing. I would pay good money for a service that could do that legitimately, but no, we can't…

I use Kodi on my android smart box with some 4K soc, almost daily. With some addons it’s like god tier piracy.

Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#154

Post by Underphil »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #122

The saturation in digital/streaming video is simply out of control now. I'm gonna buy Netflix, Amazon prime since it's free with prime anyway, and maybe just another one like Hulu on a subscription basis. But no, I'm not gonna throw my dollars on every little platform out there like Disney+, HBO, Vudu, Fandango, and other crappy services from other companies just because some content I needed exists only there. Guys,…

What really bothers me is that if I watch a non-English film on Netflix or Amazon Prime, the subtitles are often garbage. Sometimes even English films have spelling mistakes and poor attempts to condense the dialogue.

With piracy, I have a choice of multiple subtitle providers.

Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#155

Post by jancsika »

paulcole wrote: post #100
dmix wrote: post #10

I for one thank our piracy overlords who endlessly work to make every form of content (optionally) freely available in high quality. I pay for plenty of subscription services that finally figured out how to make content as easy and accessible as piracy but there will forever exist legitimate gaps where “just pay for it” is simply insufficient (geo being #1, silly copyright owners #2, etc etc). The other article menti…

I’ll admit I don’t understand how people can ethically pirate content. I dislike a lot of business models but I just don’t feel right calling them “silly” and looking for ways to take things I know I don’t have the right to take.

> I dislike a lot of business models but I just don’t feel right calling them “silly” and looking for ways to take things I know I don’t have the right to take.

How do you know if you have a right to take them?

If it's according to the law, then your ethical stance changes with the wind. E.g., you would believe you have a right to derive new music by taking a chord progression from your favorite song, but not by taking the melody. Worse, the rich history in the U.S. of building new songs out of old chord progressions was preferred to taking melodies chiefly because it was illegal to take copyrighted melodies and put new chord changes to them. So your ethical stance would change depending on whether you happen to be reading the notes that are stacked vertically on the page (i.e., a chord), or horizontally across it (a melody). That's ethically incoherent.

If it's according to your own ethical stance, you have to explain what that stance is. E.g., are you ethically opposed to circumventing a company's API to download content in a way they didn't intend? Are you opposed to someone accepting a flash drive from a friend that has their friend's favorite music on it? Someone pasting their big fat head on indy content and reposting as a "reaction video" to steal views? I happen to think these aren't all covered by the same ethical rule, but maybe they are.

Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#156

Post by rOOb85 »

bb88 wrote: post #75
naikrovek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macro block, a.k.a. MacroVision. as a child I knew a guy that knew how to make the recording VCR record those properly, though I don't know how it was done.

It had to do with screwing around with the vertical blanking interval. TV's had no issue with it, but VCR's would fail. Cable TV "scrambling" was similar back in the day as well. It wasn't so much that the signal was "encrypted" as it was "modified" in such a way it wouldn't play on a normal tv anymore. Over time they could modify the scrambling technique so that any box you did buy to descramble a signal would be wo…

My dad had a black box that worked awesome. It had a little dial in the back that you could twist to dial in a channel to be super clear.

Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#157

Post by EMIRELADERO »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #96
shp0ngle wrote: post #68

I never understand what pushes people to download Netflix/Disney media and share it on torrent sites. Don't get me wrong, I am glad they do. But, what is the positive for them? The negatives (angry copyright lawyers from one of the richest corporations) outweighs the positives (some clout on 1337x or Usenet or wherever these guys dump it)

>I never understand what pushes people to download Netflix/Disney media and share it on torrent sites. The challenge, kindness, compassion and the joy of sharing all come to mind. I also wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t a few state funded groups that do it for lulz.

> The challenge, kindness, compassion and the joy of sharing all come to mind.

I have been in some scene group chats and I can tell you that many "important" people there don't give a damn about the "spirit of sharing" and just do it for the fun of beating a challenge. They see the sharing of these tools/decryption keys as "throwing food scrapps to homeless people". Lots of ego-driven "I don't give a fuck about anyone" attitude in some groups.

Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#158

Post by throwaway984393 »

paulcole wrote: post #100
dmix wrote: post #10

I for one thank our piracy overlords who endlessly work to make every form of content (optionally) freely available in high quality. I pay for plenty of subscription services that finally figured out how to make content as easy and accessible as piracy but there will forever exist legitimate gaps where “just pay for it” is simply insufficient (geo being #1, silly copyright owners #2, etc etc). The other article menti…

I’ll admit I don’t understand how people can ethically pirate content. I dislike a lot of business models but I just don’t feel right calling them “silly” and looking for ways to take things I know I don’t have the right to take.

Maybe they're Utilitarianists.

Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#159

Post by Trex_Egg »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #31
dghughes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon and Apple lure you in but many shows it seems need to be rented or bought. How much disposable income do these companies think the average Joe has to spend? the answer seems to be $10 to $20 to rent or "buy" movies. Which you never own a physical copy of. They seem to be out of touch with reality.

People used to buy DVDs or blu-rays for $10-20. But of all the ones I have, there's probably only a handful that have been watched more than once. That's what the renting system is built off. The fact that most people only watch a film once. I couldn't care less about whether I own a copy of a movie. All I care is that I can watch it when I want to watch it. That's a different issue though, not one of disposable inco…

I agree with the points that you are making, which makes the high quality entertainment cheap or affordable at scale.

Re: Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

#160

Post by feupan »

_august wrote: post #95
madrox wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your case, the likely reason is because the DRM is done in software and not hardware, making it easier to crack, and Disney as a policy avoids their highest resolution content going through software decoding.

I get the technical reasoning, but as a policy it makes no sense because the pirates are getting 4K anyway, and a paying customer is getting a degraded experience.

The usual then. Pirates never have to deal with DRM and sometimes their games perform better — I recall a story about an anti-copy mechanism slowing the game down for people who purchased it. Good stuff.
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