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Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?

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Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?

#171

Post by bobdvb »

I'll stand out here, because I work for a major sports streaming service. So let me be heard about live streaming at least:

1) Content needs to get paid for, if you're watching an illegally restreamed match then you're not rewarding people like me for the hard work we've done to get that game to you. It's not just faceless corporations, we're people and it's really hard to make a profit in the streaming world, so every viewer counts.

2) We don't decide how much the rights cost and on top of that we spend millions getting it to our subscribers (e.g. cloud providers, CDNs, developers). We've got to pay our bills, again, no streaming service is scalping right now. Delivering Tbps of streams is hard!

3) Many live sports re-streaming services really are run by organised crime gangs. I have involvement in some revenue protection work, there's not just hacking, there's also money laundering, we've even encountered links to people trafficking in the same organisations. I'm sure you think it's an exaggeration, but it's real and it's not just some guy in his basement doing this stuff.

4) The companies that invest in technology for this stuff often invest in things like AV1, FFMPEG, Exoplayer, stuff that's available to the wider open-source community. We, as organisations, contribute back to the world in other less obvious ways. Hurting us hurts the community as well.

5) Lastly, I presume that most people here get paid for their work, or at least would like to be paid for what they do in the future. Put yourself in my shoes: how would you feel to have your work ripped off? Oh, and then someone else profits from it? Hmm, not cool. That app you work on? That website you support? Maybe you hate your employer enough that you don't care if they get ripped off, but most of the people I work with love their work, so consider that as well.

I am sure people will argue against all my points, but they stand none the less.

What I will say, unofficially, I sympathise with people who cannot watch our content because it's not available in their market and I also have some sympathy for those who are too poor to pay. But I'd assert that 99% of the people who pirate our content are not too poor and have ways of watching legally, they just choose to go to the dark side.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?

#172

Post by bluedino »

samwillis wrote: post #51

No, but we are at the point where we are going to start cancelling subscriptions. There is more content than we will ever watch. First of the chopping block is Netflix, there just isn't enough really good content to justify it anymore. What we are considering is subscribing for maybe 1-2 months a year, bundle the things we want to see on it then. From our perspective the two most valuable subscriptions are AppleTV+ a…

> What we are considering is subscribing for maybe 1-2 months a year, bundle the things we want to see on it then.

Do you see them stopping that ability at some point, and requiring a yearly subscription? I remember the cable companies wouldn't let you start and stop premium channels each month. You'd have to sign up for at least a year.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?

#174

Post by no_time »

The only 3 platforms that receive my money are Bandcamp, Itch.io and Steam.

The first two are pristine from an ethical standpoint.

I'm torn on Steam because it's not run as a typical USA corporation with all the anti consumer BS. The DRM they themselves provide is more of a suggestion instead of a real challenge. It can be broken with off the shelf tools or just stepping and dumping in x64dbg. However they did their fair share of damage in eroding what it means to own digital goods.

I also bought https://everycircuit.com/ because halfway through reversing the license checks I started feeling bad for the developers :(

I unapologetically pirate everything else.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?

#175

Post by Hamuko »

jesuscript wrote: post #52
version_five wrote: post #17

I see no moral problem with file sharing. Personally it's rarely worth the hassle, though I occasionally convert a youtube video to and mp3 for niche songs I can't find on spotify. I'd say it depends on how you value your time and how difficult it is to find what you want. "Piracy" is the legitimate competitor of streaming services. It seems like we have had a period where streaming offered a better product, but havi…

Well interestingly enough, it really is developers that can make a great piracy user experience. Why don’t we?

I find a lot of piracy to have better UX than the legitimate ways, although maybe not for the average user who doesn't know how to set up things. But I find Plex superior to all of the legitimate streaming services and their apps.

Biggest exception is probably gaming and specifically Steam. It's been a while since the last time I've pirated a game and even then it was probably like a retro ROM.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?

#176

Post by robotron »

bayindirh wrote: post #108

Actually, I kinda like the current way. I can listen whatever I want via Spotify. If I like the album that much, I can buy it via iTunes or their store, however finding lossless versions are hard. If I really love the album, I'll buy its vinyl. If I don't plan to buy the vinyl, and can't find the lossless version or a decent priced CD, I buy the album online and find the lossless version elsewhere. I'm a former orche…

> If I like the album that much, I can buy it via iTunes or their store, however finding lossless versions are hard.

Try Bandcamp.

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?

#178

Post by ghaff »

yardie wrote: post #133
100011_100001 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are missing an important thing. Netflix allowed a huge library of DVDs to be rented. You could have 3-4 DVDs on rotation for a rather cheap price. This happened when Blockbuster would charge you $5 per movie, and Netflix would charge $10.99 for unlimited DVDs, but you could only have 3 DVDs checked out. That's why Netflix was huge and killed Video Store rentals.

BTW, this is still the case. https://dvd.netflix.com/ Netflix has never dropped their DVD service even though they wanted to many times. There are still places in the US where broadband is unavailable. Also, due to first sale they don't have same license restrictions as they would on streaming. Once they buy the disc they can rent it as many times they want for as long as they want. I've considered re-adding the DVD…

I re-upped their DVD service for a while early in the pandemic. It's still worthwhile if you want to watch a lot of movies even if their back catalog availability has deteriorated quite of bit. It makes me shake my head a bit that so many people consider suggesting that the idea of just watching some things on physical media (whether Netflix disc by mail, library, or just buying a movie) makes you a weirdo. (Or for that matter, renting streaming a la carte.)

Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?

#180

Post by Sholmesy »

The incentives are misaligned.

Netflix, Amazon, Disney et al, aren't interested in showing me what I want to watch for a purchase price, they are after my attention, and to divert me to their most profitable revenue stream (Netflix in house creations etc).

My attention is not for sale, I'll buy content if it is sold in a manner that is attractive to me in a consumer friendly model, Louis CK selling his standup specials on his own website come to mind, otherwise I won't bother.

The problem is there's no end game for these companies, if you agree to buy something, they'll stop selling it and sell you a subscription instead. If you buy the subscription, they'll chuck ads in front of the subscribed service, and then periodically cut off access to certain content in an effort to maximize their own profit. There's no way to manage you're own library, you're subject to whatever the shareholders think they can keep squeezing out of you. On top of that, even if I yield to them completely, I still have to run their DRM blobs on my computing devices for the priviledge.

It's "amoral" to pirate in my worldview, but these companies are equally amoral. I still want to participate in the collective modern culture of tv, movies, etc, so somethings got to give.

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