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?

#531

Post by drewcoo » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

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.

When clever people start creating their own personal systems to deal with it, movie streaming has a serious problem. What about the rest of us who aren't so clever?

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

#532

Post by ajb » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:09 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #487

ajb wrote: 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…

> 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…

Zipcar tried to do it to me once. But it may depend on your jurisdiction as well.

I had a colleague who used to get monthly calls from a cable co. He was divorced from his wife, who had set up the cable contract, so they wouldn't let him cancel it but were still convinced that he was liable for the money because it was supplying his house.

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

#533

Post by Mezzie » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:10 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #511

Mezzie wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Both filter bubbles suck. Being a mid-30 something lesbian is great. I either get to hang out in spaces that yell at me for being a degenerate or ones that yell at me because there are aspects of gender theory I think are bunk.

On the left, it's not just that you have to be anti-racist, you have to be anti-racist in the right way. On the right, you can't just be anti-taxation; you have to be all in on Trump and ranting about illegals and drag queens. They both have really offputting authoritarian strands, and a large portion of them get angry if you leave the bubble.

It's tempting to lay all the blame on social media's feet, but I spent a couple of years immersing myself in legal theory for work and I think we're letting Congress and our politicians off too lightly. They're all playing to it and lending it legitimacy because it's easier than actually helping their constituents, in the same way it's easier to focus all their energy on getting elected instead of governing.

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

#534

Post by sebastiansm » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #475

Arainach wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are content owner letters/lawsuits still a thing? Piracy was cool(tm) when I was a broke high school student, but now that I have assets worth being sued over (and now that if my ISP cut me off I couldn't just move to a different apartment at a moment's notice) I'll just pay for the Bluray or for a month of Hulu or whatever, it's far simpler. I have a significant legitimate media library (>1TB), I have the Plex/Kodi…

Depends on your country. In Germany: Extremely. Probably a few seconds of uploading (of a movie or porn, don’t think they care much for other things) will get you a letter (edit: C&D + damages, courts see it as commercial distribution, so the letter blackmails you to pay 300-500 € instead). Or you can use a VPN. As I said in another post, I like to pay when given the option and I don’t have to jump through tons of ho…

Interesting. Here in Chile we can do almost everything with our Intenert connection.

I dont know now that we signed the TPP11 how things are going to change.

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

#535

Post by wonderwonder » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

Mezzie wrote: post #524

wonderwonder wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your personal experience actually captures my concern: "Or something like my sister who thought she was bi for a while because I was the only decent role model she had and I was gay" Kids are very malleable at a young age and they build themselves based on the rolemodels and influences they are exposed to. I take this into consideration when deciding what they can watch. As to your question on do I apply the…

That's a very fair approach. One thing I will also note is - and I do mean this in a gentle way - that placing pressure on your child to have children of his own might not just backfire if he's gay. Half of my family is conservative (the other half is progressive) and very Catholic, and my cousin who is infertile has had a terrible time of it. Or if your straight son's wife is infertile. Or if your child ends up disa…

What you say is a fair caution. I have not openly told my kid that I expect them to have kids, its just an internal hope. The only thing I really pressure them on currently is trying their best at school and whatever sports they choose to play (the what is up to them except I make them take boxing). If they try their best and still don't do well then its on me for not sitting down with them to explain things they were having an issue with or it just is what it is, no blame. As far as conservative leanings, I'm not religious and prior to reaching my current age was actually fairly liberal (but not the crazy kind). I think getting older and having kids has tempered that and given me more of a conservative political bent but hopefully not the crazy kind :)

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

#536

Post by y-c-o-m-b » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:19 PM UTC

kjerzyk wrote: post #515

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #492

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...

I'm only using it in the most basic form (streaming to my roku from my PC), so hopefully someone with more experience with it can chime in here, but I'll do my best.

I saw the software mentioned on reddit a while back, and then I just Googled each product to learn more or download/install it. They are all pretty straight-forward click and launch products with minimal configuration for which you can find guides by a quick search.

Honestly if you already have the content downloaded or don't want to tinker with other software too much, you only need Jellyfin to serve that content. Jellyfin server runs as a service on the device housing your content. This server has a URL that you will provide to whatever device is connecting to it. For me, my home PC is my server. In its most basic form, yes, it uses the same WiFi as your TV. Most home WiFi routers allow communicating with other devices on the WiFi (typically referred to as your "local network") easily.

Serving Jellyfin outside of your local network (e.g. if you wanted to share with extended family across the internet) requires configuring your router for it and that can be a bit more tricky (and poses security risks), but there's a bunch of guides out there that help you do this safely without compromising your local network's security.

When you install Jellyfin, you're presented with a screen asking you to create an admin login. You can then create additional user logins in the software (which launches its UI in your default browser), so you can use it when connecting to it on your network. The way you "consume" it on your TV is through the Jellyfin client software. They have software available for the popular OSes like Windows and macOS as well as phone software for Android and iOS, but also Roku, Android TV, FireTV, etc. Lots of options on how you consume it. My Roku was able to automatically detected it running on my network, so all I had to do was input login info.

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

#537

Post by lgregg » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:21 PM UTC

I've cancelled everything but YouTube Premium and Apple TV and share for everything else I'm interested in.

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

#538

Post by inkcapmushroom » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #122

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…

Netflix is the same. You can only watch HD netflix on the netflix app or on edge.

Thanks for this, I was wondering why my show had massive artifacting even after I changed settings which supposedly should have made the picture quality better. I'll have to try another browser.

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

#539

Post by gremlinsinc » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:25 PM UTC

twobitshifter wrote: post #505

luxcem wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m now using virtual disposable card for any subscription to a service I'm not sure to use more than one month. If I forget it that means I don't use it and the subscription will end itself. If I somehow still need it after the first month, I usually get a email reminder or a message about payment processing failure and I can fix that with a non-disposable card.

what do you use for the disposable card?

I have a capital one credit card that allows unlimited virt cards that basically can only be used at one online merchant. I use this card exclusively for subscriptions, then pay it off every month.

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

#540

Post by jsmith45 » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 7:29 PM UTC

wonderwonder wrote: post #485

jsmith45 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I do agree that far too many people treat public pride events as kink events, which is really f'ed up.

The most important rule about kink is not to involve unwilling participants. This even includes things like dont go around wearing your gimp mask in public. At a kink convention, sure, i guess that sort of think might be acceptable.

Unfortunately, pride events are in an awkward spot where many have long been associated with queer kink communities, and when organizers or reasonable members of the community try to reign this crap in, they get a lot of pushback from people who don't want to lose the event where they can be kinky in public.

Many pride events would really benefit from either becoming a properly family friend event, possibly with a a contained 18+ area for the kink stuff, or become a fully 18+ event, and setting up so as to minimize exposure to the general public. Sadly not all of them are doing so...