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Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#101
post #6

The common supposition about video is that convenience makes the price worth it versus piracy. It'll be very interesting to see this unfold. Not only are streaming services in direct competition with a free option, but they'll have actual, real, not-market-inevitable competition for their "exclusively-negotiated" tv.

Piracy has evolved too; You only need to look at how automated piracy can become; whether its the end of the people buying access to plex, or the automation offered by users of the Servarr stacks /Sonarr/Radarr etc Netflix invgestment in UX has lead to theUX being valued around piracy, rather than just downloading files from some website.

[deleted]

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#102
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course this is 100% the correct reasoning. When I was a broke college kid I pirated all the things, and at the time wished, when I could afford it, I’d rather just pay. When I could, I did, for years. Now we’re back at the path-of-least-resistance is pirating.

This is HACKER news, our central ethos is (should be) all information wants to be free. Sad to see the desire to pay for content is getting upvoted.

Free as in libre, I agree. Free as in beer, I do not. The marginal cost of copying information may approach zero, but that's only relevant after the costs of creation are covered.

The problem is: how does one make something "free as in libre" without affecting the "not free as in beer".

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using the age old argument of “I wouldn’t have bought it anyway, so they won’t get anything from me either way” This is just a roundabout way of excusing stealing. If the creator of something says “if you want to view my work, you must pay me a dollar”, then yes it is stealing (immoral) if you view it without paying. The context around it as to whether you would’ve watched it anyway is irrelevant. Apply the s…

I would be curious to know what percentage of pirated movies are actually watched. I think a lot of people download things because they are available and might look interesting, but then never watch it. Does the steeling happen when the content is acquired or consumed? If someone isn’t going to watch it, even when it was free, did they steal anything? With a chocolate bar there is a physical good that could have been…

It doesn't matter how many times you can sell the same item. If someone spent time and money producing something, no matter how small, and they dictate they want $x for you to own/consume it, then you are stealing if you don't give them $x for it.

In terms of "when" it's stolen re downloading vs watching, I would say when you download it personally as you now have access to the content without paying.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#104

What are non-tech-savvy people actually using for piracy these days? Torrents require you to own a PC (there's no way to torrent on a phone or smart TV AFAIK), Usenet requires you to have some tech knowledge, same goes for Plex / Jellyfin. I feel like piracy nowadays is a lot harder for an average Joe than it used to be. People now expect that they can turn on their TV, open an app, enter a title in the search box an…

All the non-tech-savvy people I know talk about wishing they knew how to do the stuff, but instead they pay for streaming services while complaining about how much they suck.

I haven’t used them, but I think there are pirate sites that work just like steaming services. I don’t know a lot of details, but I think it’s still BT on the backend, and relies on a fast download and maybe it can prioritize chunks to get the start of the movie first? Not totally sure. But it seems a VPN would be important for that. I would say using a VPN requires some degree of savvy, but at the same time, it seems every other YouTuber out there is pushing a VPN app.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#105
post #6

The common supposition about video is that convenience makes the price worth it versus piracy. It'll be very interesting to see this unfold. Not only are streaming services in direct competition with a free option, but they'll have actual, real, not-market-inevitable competition for their "exclusively-negotiated" tv.

Piracy has evolved too; You only need to look at how automated piracy can become; whether its the end of the people buying access to plex, or the automation offered by users of the Servarr stacks /Sonarr/Radarr etc Netflix invgestment in UX has lead to theUX being valued around piracy, rather than just downloading files from some website.

Yes, this is exactly what I mean—media distribution is inherently a losing war against the internet.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't online streaming profitable? Does it absolutely need ads and granular channel subscriptions to be profitable?

They have to be continually profitable every quarter, and they have to show growth quarter over quarter or the value of the company will take a major hit, which will impact how much capital they can loan for future projects.

Which us fucking asinine.

You can thank shareholders and the stock market in general with their lunatic "perpetual growth" bullshit for the enshittification of everything.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#108
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is HACKER news, our central ethos is (should be) all information wants to be free. Sad to see the desire to pay for content is getting upvoted.

I’ve never equated “hacker == free” ever. In that save vein, no, all information should NOT be free. I sincerely reject your entire premise.

I think information should be free as in freedom, but have a cost that should be paid (in time, money...), is this a better for you? (I disagree with GP BTW).

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#109

I sometimes wonder if more piracy will lead to more product placement directly in content and other insidious advertising strategies that would make up for the content being scooped up for free. It's still millions of eyes, after all.

I’m not sure if it’s still the case, but Subway used to be big on doing product placements with shows on their last leg. They probably got it for a steal, and they made it really, really obvious. For example, the episode of Community where Subway is a person. Chuck did a lot of obvious Subway stuff at the end too. I remember Zachary Levi (Chuck) posting on Twitter to buy Subway for the finale in hopes that it would boost Subway sales enough to get them to pay to renew it for another season.

I’ve actually been surprised the more subtle product placement isn’t more common. There are always prop bags of chips, boxes of cereal, etc. you’d think it would cost basically nothing to swap it out for a similar soundless bag with a Lays label on it and get some money. Everyone knows what Lets chips are really trying to be. Maybe syndication presents issues. Does the company pay every time the episode runs, in perpetuity, or just once to get the episode made? With a one time payment, getting a spot in a show like The Office would be like winning the advertising lottery. If they have to pay for each viewing, it could turn into a real problem.

Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

#110
At this point it would be cheaper to buy a media pc and a few big drives and simply rip all your media to them, then buy all the movies you want and rip them.

The break even point with the cost of streaming these days is really not that long.

And you don’t have to pirate anything - buy the dvds used on EBay or something. Streaming is no longer cheap for some bs reason.

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