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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?

#481

Post by sam_lowry_ »

neilv wrote: post #352
soco wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I bought a DRM-free Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" from a Humble Bundle, and got a virtual pile of other interesting books at the same time.

Schneier's last book, Data and Goliath IIRC, was also available as an audiobook, so I bought it, listened...until it ended abruptly at 1/3 of the full length.

How could he do this to readers, old fart!?

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

#482

Post by albrewer »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #48
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…

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.

The JustWatch app can sort-of do this. It aggregates the library index of all the streaming services so you can see what movies are where.

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

#483

Post by sam_lowry_ »

dml2135 wrote: post #429
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…

The pirating user experience is incredible right now. Gone are the days of hunting around different torrent trackers and sketchy websites for what you want. You can set up a server with the *arrs and download anything with the click of a button, and then have it automatically added to something like Plex or Jellyfin to watch. And then you hold on to the media to rewatch it whenever you like, forever.

*arrs?

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

#484

Post by kyorochan »

Freebytes wrote: post #196
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 also have a tendency to edit, remove episodes, etc. And it does not even need to be for political correctness either. It could be licensing rights to music in shows. They will sometimes edit a show to remove the music or remove the episode altogether. (This happened with Scrubs.) They will remove content that involves people talking about suicide. They will remove content that is offensive. They have even gone b…

Do you know where I could read more about this (specifically suicide/offensive stuff). A cursory search only showed a scene being cut from 13 Reasons Why, but I would be very interested in learning more.

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

#485

Post by wonderwonder »

jsmith45 wrote: post #460
ryandrake wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know I'm not going to change your mind, but this viewpoint just seems so strange and morbidly fascinating. What exactly does "exposure to homosexuality" even mean? These shows and movies aren't depicting gay sex. They aren't trying to convince straight kids that they are gay. They aren't even advocating politics. What specific content do you object to? My kid is Disney movie aged, and we've watched em all--it's exh…

While I cannot speak for OP, I have noticed that some people seem to view non-straight orientations as inherently sexual. To those people any reference to having a same sex spouse (or that you date members of the same sex, etc.) is equivalent to mentioning that you engage in BDSM. I do think most people would be weirded about about a kids show having characters that mention they are into BDSM would be weird and inapp…

I agree with this to a point but I think a lot of this has to do with the overt sexualization of pro gay demonstrations. Pride parades contain a lot of heightened sexuality. One of the drivers of my point of view (which for me is relatively new) and my aversion to letting my kids watch gay shows was I accidentally drove passed a pride parade with my young kid a while ago and he saw several men walking with their rear ends sexually exposed. Sex vs romantic intentions is often associated with homosexuality but its not only the fault of the people wishing to limit exposure of their kids to it, its also the fault of those advocating for it. I am 100% for adults doing whatever they want sexually in the privacy of their homes, I just disagree with pulling bystanders into it. This is different that romantic displays, if a couple of gay dudes want to walk down the street dressed in a tshirt and jeans holding hands, more power to them.

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

#486

Post by whythre »

ghaff wrote: post #422
whythre wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HBO max makes me mad. A bunch of good old movies had their rights purchased so if I want to watch the Thin Man, a movie from the 30s, I need to get HBO max. No thank you.

Or you can rent it a la carte. (Or very possibly borrow it from your local library whether they have it or can get it from inter-library loan.)

Or instantly access it via the internet for free because everyone who made it is long since dead.

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

#487

Post by prepend »

ajb wrote: post #275
lordswork wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto-expiring temporary credit card numbers can help automate cancellations after N months, but figuring what shows are on what services and signing up for them as needed is still a major chore.

The problem with that is that legally, the contract to pay a provider, and the instruction to your credit-card company to pay a recurring amount, are two separate things. Some companies will send threatening letters, dept collectors etc after you if you just cancel the CC instruction. It's different on the apple store, where Apple forced providers to agree that a subscription could be unilaterally cancelled via the s…

> Some companies will send threatening letters, dept collectors etc after you if you just cancel the CC instruction.

What companies do this in practice. I think I’ve “ghosted” 300 companies and never had a single even send a threatening letter, much less do anything. Usually I get an email of “error processing your card, please fix or we turn off.”

I can’t imagine it is ever economical to pursue in courts over an $11.99/month contract.

The exception is gyms that do seem to go to ends of the earth to collect.

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

#488

Post by denton-scratch »

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…

> It's just absurd.

It is.

What's needed is some kind of aggregator; a firm that will sublicence content from the major providers, and sell it to consumers. I'm not going to set up a Netflix account to watch one show.

Of course, the big content providers won't sublicence; they'll have to be forced to. But I would watch more of their content if I could pay for just what I want to watch, without subscribing to a mess of bundles containing mainly dross content.

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

#489

Post by yardie »

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.

They probably don't have DVD rental at all in your country. Netflix in the US/CA and Lovefilm in the UK were the only DVD/Bluray mailing service that I'm aware of. Once they were able to offer streaming internationally, setting up mailorder service probably wasn't even considered.

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

#490

Post by zeendo »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #483
dml2135 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pirating user experience is incredible right now. Gone are the days of hunting around different torrent trackers and sketchy websites for what you want. You can set up a server with the *arrs and download anything with the click of a button, and then have it automatically added to something like Plex or Jellyfin to watch. And then you hold on to the media to rewatch it whenever you like, forever.

*arrs?

Readarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr (and others)

Modern versions of CouchPotato or SabNZB if you were familiar with those

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