Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again? • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by kevincox » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:29 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #100

> “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and m…

> trying to screenshot something for a wallpaper only to get it blacked out

I found this out when I was going to send a screenshot of a funny scene to a friend. Ok, I guess they don't want free advertising.

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

#322

Post by patentatt » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:30 PM UTC

sidewndr46 wrote: post #18

terabytest wrote: post #10

I'm not going to speak about my personal practices, but I find the current landscape of streaming services unusable and unsustainable from a customer perspective. I share a Netflix and Prime account with my parents, and support for that is soon going to end. I don't feel like either of those services provide enough value to me to consider paying for them entirely by myself. The content is mediocre at best, finding an…

I have a Prime account, but I'll soon be cancelling it I feel. The same products can had on eBay for less money with no shipping charges added. Prime video is quite unique, but I'm very much past them putting pre-roll ads on the content I want to watch. It's universally an advert for their own craptastic, homegrown version of an existing well-defined format. If I was interested in watching Law & Order I can start fro…

I dropped Prime for the first time in many years just last month. 2-day shipping is pretty much standard now at Target and Walmart, there was nothing terribly compelling on Prime Video, and I never even used any other services. Why again have I been shoveling ~$12/month in perpetuity to Amazon?

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

#323

Post by 778hbff » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

__jem wrote: post #81

SamuelAdams wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My household has one streaming service at a time. We have lists (shared reminder lists in iOS) that we make for whenever a friend mentions a good movie - it goes on the Apple TV list, or Disney plus list, etc. then once enough films build up (can take 2-6 months sometimes) we purchase a subscription and watch all those shows for one month.

this sounds economical but also a major chore

Market opportunity!

A meta streaming service that dispatches you towars the service that has the show you want to watch. Of course it needs to work in colaboration with the actual streaming services and diatribute revenue proportional to services' use. It would create much more real-time competition.

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

#324

Post by dotancohen » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

rpigab wrote: post #186

yardie wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Funny, I'm not from the US, all I get from https://dvd.netflix.com/ is a 404 page not found error. Maybe that's the perfect use case for subscription-based VPNs, renting DVDs from an American IP address... Hope it fits through the IP tunnel.

Actually, though the page literally has the string "404" in the title, it returns an HTTP 200 and redirects via Javascript.

  $ curl -I https://dvd.netflix.com/
  ...
  HTTP/1.1 200 OK

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

#325

Post by Arrath » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

To be entirely honest I was never against pirating, I just found it to be more convenient to use streaming services in the early days. Now with the proliferation of services and the balkanization of content, sharing logins with friends is the only reasonable way to get access to a decent spread of stuff.

If these password sharing crackdowns get going in earnest, its back to torrents for me.

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

#326

Post by rileyphone » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

sidewndr46 wrote: post #18

terabytest wrote: post #10

I'm not going to speak about my personal practices, but I find the current landscape of streaming services unusable and unsustainable from a customer perspective. I share a Netflix and Prime account with my parents, and support for that is soon going to end. I don't feel like either of those services provide enough value to me to consider paying for them entirely by myself. The content is mediocre at best, finding an…

I have a Prime account, but I'll soon be cancelling it I feel. The same products can had on eBay for less money with no shipping charges added. Prime video is quite unique, but I'm very much past them putting pre-roll ads on the content I want to watch. It's universally an advert for their own craptastic, homegrown version of an existing well-defined format. If I was interested in watching Law & Order I can start fro…

You can turn off the previews in account settings. Still annoying though.

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

#327

Post by soco » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

neilv wrote: post #167

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ebooks are the worst offenders IMO. Most stores I’ve seen don’t even tell me the format or DRM, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be an open format

I've started buying from ebooks.com exclusively, because they tell me it's DRM-free EPUB and PDF. I end up paying a big premium in practice over Kindle DRM and discounted paperbacks, but I'm doing my part to convince publishers to offer DRM-free.

Speaking of buying DRM-free books, let me mention again The Humble Bundle. Not many books in there, but for a good cause: https://www.humblebundle.com/

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

#328

Post by kevincox » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

Sholmesy wrote: post #180

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 specia…

> they are after my attention, and to divert me to their most profitable revenue stream (Netflix in house creations etc).

They don't even really want your attention. In house creations aren't the most profitable because they make money, they are the most profitable because they cost the least. As long as you keep paying your subscription they are happy. The content is intended to keep you just happy enough to stay subscribed (or upgrade your plan) as well as to attract new subscribers.

Basically their income is subscriptions, their costs are largely video licensing (or creation). Serving content is probably a minor additional cost.

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

#329

Post by virtual_void » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #261

virtual_void wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding your last paragraph, could you expand a bit on why you believe that copying creative content does indeed remove something from the author? I guess the usual argument is that a copy of something cannot, by definition be theft. The author still has the object in question. Sometimes people counter by saying that a potential sale has been lost, but you can’t steal something that you didn’t have in the first pla…

Sure! These are my opinions of course. If I spend a lot of time, effort, or money creating something, I may have plans to try to make money on it. If many people copy it for free, they may not be stealing as physical object from me, but they are removing my ability to generate revenue from them based off of my time, effort, or money. And of course, taking it to the extreme, people simply will stop creating works. Or,…

I think, from an emotional perspective re works i create, i feel the same.

The bit i feel unsure about is if it really removes my ability to generate revenue. To make that claim I’d have to be sure the people that have copied would have otherwise paid. I’m not at all confident that i could assert that.

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

#330

Post by kevincox » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 3:35 PM UTC

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…

> without the free shipping we probably would cancel the video subscription.

Amazon has never made sense to me. Living in Toronto the regular free shipping usually arrives in 1-2 days anyways. Is this wildly different in other cities? My partner pays for prime and I usually just order on my account anyways since there is little difference. Even if there is I rarely need something urgently.