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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?

#361

Post by sleepybrett »

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…

IMO Disney plus as a product is conceived as 'a library of disney properties' not as a general streaming service that might license movies from other studios. Anything that is licensed externally for disney+ is an exception. Netflix, originally conceived and operated as a blockbuster in the cloud is certainly going through a transition to more in-house product.

Other services are going the same way. Netflix being a first mover was able to license a lot of content for what must have been more favorable rates, now that it's much easier for a studio to spin up their OWN streaming service (there are vendors out there that will sell you, essentially, a streaming service in a box) they are experimenting with increasing their rates for licensing and simultaneously running their own service.

This is all region dependent of course. Often you'll see stuff available only on the studio's streaming service in north america, but licensed to more general streaming services overseas.

We'll see how this shakes out. Perhaps someone like paramount determines that their in-house streaming service just isn't profitable and move back to a licensed model.

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

#362

Post by azangru »

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…

> It's "amoral" to pirate in my worldview, but these companies are equally amoral.

Amoral or immoral? Companies (being legal entities) are amoral; and I am fine with being amoral in return; but many would complain that it's immoral :-)

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

#363

Post by vt85 »

Ingaz wrote: post #216

Let me share my perspective on piracy as a citizen of Russian Federation who don't think about relocation. I was a youtube/Spotify/last.fm/[smth other I don't remember] subscriber before 2022. Actually it was kind of pride in younger population in Russia for games: "I pay for all games I like". My son, my friends has hundreds of games bought on Steam. That was a big step actually. How sanctions worked? For me: - yout…

[dead]

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

#364

Post by Izkata »

pizza234 wrote: post #307

DRM problems are very different depending on the medium. I do buy many games, mainstream and not, and actually play them. In the big picture, DRM is not as not as bad as depicted; the vast majority of games rely only on Steam DRM, which isn't problematic. Vocal game DRM opponents actually refer to a small section of the games landscape (AAA with Denuvo, mostly), so it's really something players love to hate. I defini…

> Vocal game DRM opponents actually refer to a small section of the games landscape (AAA with Denuvo, mostly), so it's really something players love to hate.

It's not even that so much as "what the fuck is wrong with these companies?"

For example, I got the cracked version of Spore back when it was released because the official disk's DRM installed something that bricked Windows. Had to wipe it and start over.

From what I've heard this was an outlier (Spore's DRM being worse than most), but invasive DRM on PC games like that has always been about as bad as it can get. I've never heard of anything remotely like that from book/tv/movie DRM.

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

#365

Post by squeaky-clean »

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…

> If I was interested in watching Law & Order I can start from Season 1, not from their knockoff version of it.

Actually you cannot. Only Law & Order SVU is available on streaming. The original series and the other spinoffs only have the most recent season available online.

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

#366

Post by danuker »

lbotos wrote: post #23

A few weeks ago I rented the Alien: Covenant movie on youtube because I didn't even know it existed. About 2 minutes in I noticed it was playing at 480p. I paid the extra dollar for HD rental. Lo and behold, if you want to watch rented youtube movies in HD (which you paid for) you can't do it in chrome browser on mac but hilariously safari did let me watch it in HD on the same computer... Those 15 minutes of debuggin…

I suspect it's because of DRM.

Funnily enough Firefox can apparently use Google Widevine on MacOS: https://www.drm.cloud/platform-compatibility/

I am puzzled at these ridiculous restrictions but I am happy with their effect: a million papercuts driving viewers away.

https://www.defectivebydesign.org/

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

#367

Post by chimprich »

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…

> The problem is there's no end game for these companies

It's our whole economic system. Everything is set up for the expectation of endless growth. Every company is expected to increase their revenue and share price and employee compensation.

This is a bit of a problem for global tech companies because when you already have a big chunk of the world's population as your customers then growing your numbers becomes difficult. The only way to get more cash then is to extract more cash from your existing users.

Even (or especially) if you're already making vast sums of cash, the expectation is that you'll produce increasing amounts of it year on year. As a result you almost have to give your users a worse experience each year.

No one seems terribly keen on the actual effects of this, but individual decision makers' performance is generally measured on how well they impel users to give up more cash.

I don't see how this situation improves without some rethinking of our whole economic system.

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

#369

Post by mikestew »

BonoboIO wrote: post #297
eduction wrote: post #96

It’s funny, I’m more sympathetic than ever to pirates, given how frequently creative works are disappeared or moved these days - pulled from streaming for political/social norms reasons (1984 style), “purchased” items removed from libraries for licensing reasons or because a platform outright closes, and then the garden variety shuffling of content between platforms in what seems like a hypermodern version of IP musi…

I was astounded when HBO said they would remove Westworld from their streaming catalog. WTF. Why even subscribe in the first place. Absolutely ridiculous.

The wife went to bed early last night, so I figured I'd finally finish off S4 of Westworld. "Oh, no you won't.", said whoever owns HBO this week. I've had that HBO streaming sub since it came out. I guess it's time to turn it off until the next season of $WHATEVER_SHOW and raise the sails for some Westworld episodes.

I'm seriously astounded that someone thought this was a good idea.

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

#370

Post by irrational »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #117
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…

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

Are you aware of Calibre?
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