Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

511–520 of 641 posts

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

#511
post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Each of us is an inexperienced parent; we can all only do what we think is right. What I think is right may differ from you, and that's completely ok. My main objection to this really started when I saw the short "Out" listed prominently on my kids Disney+ account. Its an animated kid friendly short detailing how to come out to your family. While I don't think that watching a show like this will turn someone gay I do…

> My main objection to this really started when I saw the short "Out" listed prominently on my kids Disney+ account. Its an animated kid friendly short detailing how to come out to your family. I hate shit like this. It's just pandering to progressive parents who will sit and watch that with their kids. No kid under 9 or 10 is concerned with coming out (or at least they're a very tiny population), and in middle schoo…

"Or Disney employees who want to pack themselves on the back for being progressive enough"

I think this is the main driver of much of the fault in current society. Not Disney employees but people on the extreme of both political spectrums who are relatively few in number but very loud. They take over the conversation and speak so loudly that everyone else is afraid of objecting for fear of being cancelled or made fun of. Social media has made the issue 100x worse. The majority center who for the most part just want everyone to get along have lost power. Everyone wants to tell everyone else how to live and force their opinions on the public. I just want everyone to be able to live happy quiet lives. This is not a comment hearkening for the return to the "good ol days" as I know that being gay or black was a hundred times harder a few decades ago. Today its no longer ok to be not racist, we have to be radically anti-racist. Its not ok to be pro gay people having equal rights, we have to be be for openly advocating for transexuality in schools. Its all exhausting.

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

#513
post #167

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.

_Some_ of their books are DRM-free.

“But please note that eBooks.com uses Adobe DRM to protect most ebook files, so the device, or the software running on the device must be compatible with Adobe DRM. If you'd prefer to obtain your books without DRM, you can browse our DRM-free section.”

https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-gb/articles/214119286-Guide...

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

#514
post #317
post #301

I pirate everything. Haven't subscribed to a service like Spotify, Netflix, etc. in many years. I can listen to my music in CD-quality and bring it anywhere. Same with any movie, TV show, etc. And I know that no one is selling what I find interesting as analytics data. At the same time, I want to support creators, and I'll donate/use services like Bandcamp to directly support folks I appreciate. I have a $100/mo "don…

I channeled the money I was spending on YouTubeTV into a seedbox that has 0 personal information about me, paid for with Monero (XMR). Much better bang for the buck and completely removes all the potential adverse legal effects that you could have by torrenting on your home / work connection. I was happily paying a netflix and spotify sub for over a decade, but once we started getting greedy with Paramount+, AppleTV+…

Do you move the files from your seedbox to your home to watch or do you have Plex or something like it on your seedbox and just stream to your home?

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

#515

I have Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Prime TV. I will search through all of those before resorting to the high seas. If I didn't have a family though, I would cancel all of those services because it takes me less overall effort to download from torrents. It's amazing how ridiculously easy it is to pirate these days. I didn't know jack shit about anything other than a handful of torrent sites and qBittorrent until recen…

As I'm a complete 0 at IT, would you mind explaining how one gets started with this? I have VPN, I've torrented before.

How does Jellyfin work and what do I need? Does it sit locally on a laptop/PC (so takes up space) and if it uses the same WiFi as my TV I can play it? That's the bit I really don't understand...

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

#516
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…

> There have been many times where I've found DRM encumbered products inferior: trying to stream anime on Crunchyroll during primetime only to experience slowdowns; trying to screenshot something for a wallpaper only to get it blacked out; trying to download offline shows with subtitles, only to find subtitles didn't get downloaded with the video. Compound that with The Streaming Wars, I can't help but feel like a lo…

Besides the websites displaying less than friendly ads, what malware can even be found in downloading a video format? Sure, it could be an executable renamed to some video format, or something like that, but without a serious vulnerability in your video player which was very cleverly hacked for very low reward, what can even happen?

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

#517

> I just feel like if we’re at peak monetization. We're really not. If anything there's more content (for lack of a better word) available for token amounts of money than there ever has been. I don't know how old you are but back in the distant past of the 90s you had two choices if you wanted to watch a film, you could go to a shop and buy a copy, probably for more money than you'd pay for a monthly Netflix subscrip…

Well, here’s the thing. That is how the world works. You do get shit delivered to you within a day or two. You do get to watch whatever you want, either for free, or for a price. We do get to do those entitled things simply because we were deadly serious about being entitled fucks. So, with that said. I do want prices to a) drop b) services to consolidate and if they don’t, I will get all my shit for free. And so wil…

Loved the analogy, thanks!

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

#518
post #301

I pirate everything. Haven't subscribed to a service like Spotify, Netflix, etc. in many years. I can listen to my music in CD-quality and bring it anywhere. Same with any movie, TV show, etc. And I know that no one is selling what I find interesting as analytics data. At the same time, I want to support creators, and I'll donate/use services like Bandcamp to directly support folks I appreciate. I have a $100/mo "don…

The challenge with this is actually supporting creators for complex works that are published by these companies. Take a TV show for example - hundreds of people work on these things. There's no real way to support the show when you pirate something. TV shows don't have patreons or kickstarters. Piracy is quite attractive because of how hostile the copyright holders are to end users. Sticking it to the megacorps that…

I honestly don’t feel bad at all. I am fairly sure the actual creators barely get any compensations from plus 1 subscriber, so in effect one only hurts these streaming sites, which really should finally get the message sent by that.

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

#519
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst part for me is that even libraries, who want to promote openness and reading, are perfectly comfortable with delivering books using Adobe's horrible DRM delivery solution.

At least Adobe DRM is trivially easy to break. Right click in the Adobe software and it has a "open document storage location" option. Then drop that DRM loaded PDF into Calibre and you get a free and clear PDF in your library. At that point I go back to the library and hit the return button.

Why not get a DRM-free epub off the net in the first place?

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

#520
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This would be annoying for people whose credit card just happened to expire and who then have to deal with not having the service for a period, re-signing up, losing loyalty bonuses, etc.

Credit card expiry can have integrations where the merchant automatically gets the updated value
Post reply on HN