Netflix has a problem that the front page is now filled with "B-rated" rather than "A-rated" content for more money than before. The amount of content that they spent money on in the past is hardly discoverable, genre search is barely exposed in the interface. You have to rely on 3rd party sites to find links to category selections, say Epic movies based on true events... good luck finding what they have in this cate…
Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
221–230 of 940 posts
Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
#222If, as a paying customer, I get an extremely low bitrate stream on Netflix because I'm watching it from Linux, then piracy is 200% justified.
Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the cable TV model was a mature business model for extracting the most amount of value possible from paying viewers before they choose to leave. Every streaming service will converge to what cable TV is like: paid channels, maximum amount of ads, additional premium content, attempts at lock-in, exclusive licensing of content, etc. Not adopting the cable business model is leaving billions of dollars on the tab…
I'm curious where the equilibrium is. There is some portion of people who will not torrent no matter what. Either because of lack of ability or moral views, or some other reason. There is a second set of the population that will never pay for media, or at least not more than very trivial amounts. Either because of lack of ability to pay, not thinking it's worth it, or not believing there is anything wrong with piracy…
This just shows that the availability of piracy is NOT the problem. It shouldn't matter to HBO whether I've pirated it or not: I could be a paying customer if their prices matched their catalog's value, but it doesn't, so they get nothing, piracy or no.
Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that means companies must sell for the marginal price of their website’s ergonomics, not for the marginal price of producing movies. (Which is not a big loss, because I can’t imagine producing the Netflix knockoffs be a hundredth the price of a 007).
Which could be rapidly eclipsed, my synology nas is capable of following RSS feeds for new content, torrenting that content, and serving that content through my plex with audio options, subtitles, descriptions, cover art, ratings, age restrictions etc. (All behind a vpn of course) If I invested a weekend (4 days, maybe 2-3 weekends...) I could probably figure it out, and never ever ever again deal with the BS streami…
Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try disabling hardware acceleration in your browser. It'll probably fix the black screen issue. The situation is still ridiculous though. Streaming is no longer easier than piracy.
Weird. Jellyfin doesn’t make me do that.
Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
#226Streaming became popular because it was easier than piracy and better than TV (watch anywhere, on demand, pickup where you left off etc). Streaming is no longer easier than piracy, why pay for 8 different services and have to waste your time figuring out whats on what when you can just have one service for free, even if its illegal, and have it all under one roof. The services have taken the piss and now they'll get…
Honestly if Apple integrated Netflix and all those other services into a unified UI for Apple TV that transparently lets you go between the apps without realizing it (they do own the OS...) it would be exactly what I want to see happen to these streaming services, that or they somehow share their content to the official Apple TV app itself, and let Apple TV query across all those other streaming apps, it would be gre…
Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
> because if you call this stealing you’d also have apply the stealing label to blocking ads/trackers on the web Yes that is quite literally also depriving them of revenue, and quite possibly their only source of revenue if they're a free website/app. >taking advantage of free trials for services without any intent of becoming a subscriber Yeah no, it's in the name...FREE TRIAL. It's literally given out for free. >co…
> Yes that is quite literally also depriving them of revenue, and quite possibly their only source of revenue if they're a free website/app. I think I made an error here by assuming that every reader of Hacker News would be at least somewhat pro-adblocking. So since you appear not to be, let me ask you: * Do you use any ad blocker at all? If yes, can you define precisely when ad blocking is stealing and when it is no…
No
With your second question:
Tracking - Tracking isn't stealing, that's a privacy question.
Building a Profile - I mean not stealing but also vague so not sure what's the point of trying to argue this one? Like if you keep going with this line of thinking you end up with "you looked at me funny which made me feel weird so you're stealing by stealing my joy". (Absurd example but trying to show how abstract arguments don't end up working) Then we would probably loop back to fallacy of composition.
Malware - Serving malware is a criminal act and you can block it, but you're also not usually going to CNN.com and expecting them to download a crypto miner on your hardware. You are, however, expecting advertisements, hence why you're using an adblocker.
Bogging down your resources/other garbage - I mean idk, case by case basis.
You keep trying to paint with broad strokes but that's not how these things usually work. In my original example, it works because it's a simple transaction the artist wanted. Pay me 1$ for my art and you can view it. They created it privately with the intent of selling, and by downloading it for free, you're breaking that intent and depriving them of potential revenue.
Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
#228even if you magically remove it one day, you lose yourself a bunch of free hype-advertisers and conversations with your title in it.
there's always somehow people who think its a net negative on them, that there's a zero-sum game involved with their product, that end up on the board of some important company and want to get rid of a good thing that they have no real perspective on.
Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
What fallacy did I commit? Please, name the fallacy and explain why it's an example of that fallacy, so I can learn from my mistakes. I simply took your argument, verbatim: > 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. And showed how it is a ridiculous argument with a simple example. I created a comment, and…
It's called a false equivalence fallacy[1] and more specifically it's called the fallacy of composition[2]. I don't know why I'm taking the time to do this but I'm going to assume you're genuine with wanting to learn so: Essentially the original argument I made is 1. Stealing (in this context) is depriving someone of their unearned revenue by duplicating or taking their work without their express consent and payment.…
Regardless, obviously my comment was tongue-in-cheek, and I do in fact grant a license to Hacker News to display my content for all to see per the terms of use. But I hoped my comment would help you think about the absurdity of your original argument and how you can arrive at some ridiculous situations without getting much more complex than a Hacker News comment.
For example: I create a webpage that says "By reading this page, you agree to pay me $1" and then include a Paypal or Stripe link just below that text. You visit the page, and you have a link right in front of you to pay me. Now are you stealing from me if you don't pay? It costs me money to host the page, and I hold the copyright on the content and I'm not posting it anywhere else.
Re: Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly
#230The streaming space desperately needs consolidation right now. Every rights holder having their own service has killed a lot of the convenience because you'll now need several different services to go through an entire TV show, for instance. And also because all services other than maybe Netflix have garbage software for your various devices. Because every service also has to support 8 different platforms. Video play…
Consolidation, or interoperability. Somehow any radio station can play any song they want (or seemingly any), for a standardized set of fees. And there is plenty of competition among radio stations. Couldn't we get the same setup for on-demand streaming of music and video?