Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:18 AM UTC

nerdix wrote: post #209

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming 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…

Also, H265 encoded 1080p is hitting the sweet spot between quality and file size. About 500-ish MB per hour of content for decent quality. Its sort of like when VBR encoded MP3s became the standard in the privacy scene in the early 00s. The quality is good enough for most folks plus the reduced file size means that it downloads really fast on average connections and isn't prohibitively expensive to store so you can c…

If we're looking at the storage cost, I'd say the 10x decrease in flash price is doing a lot more than the maybe-2x decrease in file size.

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

#262

Post by WWLink » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:21 AM UTC

PlutoIsAPlanet wrote: post #9

Streaming 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…

It's even stupider than that. Streaming does not always use standard interfaces. It doesn't always work on every device. (See Roku, Apple TV, Android TV boxes, Smart TVs themselves, etc). There's always some jackass service that decides "we're not partners so I'm not supporting your devices" - leaving customers out of the loop since the people paying the monthly fee don't actually matter to them lol.

There's all the petty "ecosystem" bullshit. Stuff like how Apple used to only let siri control Apple Music instead of spotify or tidal or whatever.

And platform updates. And then the software stops supporting your device because it was made more than 3 years ago or whatever. Or they blocked taking screenshots (hello Crunchyroll, fuck you for making it harder to share random meme moments with my discord buddies!).

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

#263

Post by ESTheComposer » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:21 AM UTC

angoragoats wrote: post #251

ESTheComposer wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> primarily because you had to change/add more premises to your argument as part of your explanation. I did no such thing, I was putting the argument into logical form[1]. When you do that you express the original argument in specifically semantic terms. I've been saying the same thing since the beginning, piracy is stealing, and by stealing I mean experiencing their work without paying. Putting it into specific term…

> I did no such thing, I was putting the argument into logical form[1]. When you do that you express the original argument in specifically semantic terms. I've been saying the same thing since the beginning, piracy is stealing, and by stealing I mean experiencing their work without paying. Putting it into specific terms is not changing my meaning. I understand logical fallacies, and my point is that your original arg…

> I understand logical fallacies, and my point is that your original argument as stated way up the thread is materially different from the one you put into logical form.

I mean it's literally not, I state the same thing but shortened further up.

>So you don't get to accuse me of a logical fallacy when you're referring to an argument that you haven't articulated yet.

Ok first off, no one is "accusing" anyone of anything, I'm pointing out a literal fallacy you made. If you're wearing a blue shirt and I point out you're wearing a blue shirt, I'm not accusing you of wearing a blue shirt. And I've articulated my argument many times, including in it's literal formal argument form.

>I'm not sure if you have specific legal experience in this area but all of these claims are questionable to me; my understanding is that most of these things have little if any legal precedent and are a grey area at best. I'd be interested to see sources for these claims, since as I said, I don't know too much about this.

Yeah I'm not going to go trolling through the internet to find examples of this (if there are any, I would wager there aren't since I don't think people would be dumb enough to perform the situation you tried to use as an example) for someone who clearly is just getting angry and not even arguing in good faith.

You're going on about how I'm accusing you and how my argument isn't the same, and you've said I committed a fallacy (which you never even articulated btw), so I don't think there's any point in furthering this conversation. Seems like a waste of time.

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

#264

Post by superasn » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:22 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #10

> Piracy also threatens to damage our business, as its fundamental proposition to consumers is so compelling and difficult to compete against: virtually all content for free,” Netflix writes. People emphasize the "free" part, but it really is the "all content" part that makes piracy wins. Especially if you are not in the USA, often specific content isn't available at any price. Even if it is, its split across 5 billi…

Also for me it's far more customisable. Want to watch a video at 2x speed, want to add audio normalizer, want to tweak the gamma, etc. Yes vlc does all that and more. Their crummy app won't even play the video with proper scrubbing.

It's like the app vs browser thing for videos too, where you are restricted by the app's player vs using players like vlc that are just awesome!

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

#265

Post by angoragoats » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:23 AM UTC

ESTheComposer wrote: post #254

angoragoats wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I absolutely expect CNN, Google, and any other website to serve me malware. You can find many historical examples of the largest ad networks serving up malware on just abou…

> I absolutely expect CNN, Google, and any other website to serve me malware. You can find many historical examples of the largest ad networks serving up malware on just about any site in existence. I would love to see a source of a large company like CNN knowingly serving malware in the guise of ads. I've never heard of that but I'm all ears; I feel like it would be big news if CNN knowingly put a crypto miner on yo…

Wow, aren't you the fallacy guy. Please, give me more fallacies! I should just change my username to fallaciousgoats.

How about this: I didn't use the word "knowingly" anywhere in my statement, and in fact I have no earthly idea whether the countless examples [1][2][3][4] of malware being served via ad networks on major websites was done knowingly. My guess is it wasn't?

So you've got the beginnings of a straw man fallacy here, questioning an argument that I never actually made.

If you'd like to learn more about why malware shows up on cross-site ad networks, there's a good quick read available at [5].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17550808

[2] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-abuse...

[3] https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/01/18/google-ads-increa...

[4] https://blog.fox-it.com/2014/01/03/malicious-advertisements-...

[5] https://theconversation.com/why-bad-ads-appear-on-good-websi...

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

#266

Post by ncallaway » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:25 AM UTC

jackson1442 wrote: post #225

9991 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird. Jellyfin doesn’t make me do that.

It’s a Widevine DRM thing, not a browser video thing.

I think that was the point of the previous comment.

The UX of DRM-laden services breaks. You don’t have that problem with Jellyfin.

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

#267

Post by angoragoats » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:26 AM UTC

ESTheComposer wrote: post #263

angoragoats wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did no such thing, I was putting the argument into logical form[1]. When you do that you express the original argument in specifically semantic terms. I've been saying the same thing since the beginning, piracy is stealing, and by stealing I mean experiencing their work without paying. Putting it into specific terms is not changing my meaning. I understand logical fallacies, and my point is that your original arg…

> I understand logical fallacies, and my point is that your original argument as stated way up the thread is materially different from the one you put into logical form. I mean it's literally not, I state the same thing but shortened further up. >So you don't get to accuse me of a logical fallacy when you're referring to an argument that you haven't articulated yet. Ok first off, no one is "accusing" anyone of anythi…

> I don't think there's any point in furthering this conversation. Seems like a waste of time.

I agree, if we're going to argue about the meaning of the word "accuse."

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

#268

Post by rpmisms » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:27 AM UTC

CommanderData wrote: post #98

aqme28 wrote: post #8

I have found myself pirating more and more. Netflix and co aren't just losing on the available content and the price, the actual browsing experience is far better on the illegal streaming site I use.

I'd like to compare yours to all streaming sites I've used, which are riddled with ads and deceptive clicks.

Yeah, but it's obvious. Obvious malicious design is easier to filter out than dark pattern design.

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

#269

Post by inversetelecine » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:28 AM UTC

data-ottawa wrote: post #260

al_borland wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about an individual website, it’s about the industry. It’s not that Netflix, or any other service, is hard to use on its own. It’s the fragmentation of the content that makes it hard to use. This was solved for with music where pretty much every service has pretty much every song. People don’t need multiple music services, they just pick the one that best fits their style and needs. This is what the movie an…

I had Prime Video, and when searching for content I would get told to subscribe to some channel within Prime. Now Crave (in Canada) does the same thing. Netflix doesn't bother integrating with Apple TV's search or aggregation features to try and drive you into the app. The end result is searching for legitimate content is a terrible experience. If it's a result from Prime, I just pass. If it's from Crave, I pass. If…

And now prime wants another $2.99 to stream without ads. Something I had previously included. Nickle and diming also drives customers away.

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

#270

Post by WWLink » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 3:28 AM UTC

feoren wrote: post #223

MostlyStable wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're missing a 4th group: people who would enjoy watching content X, but simply won't bother if it's too annoying. The alternative isn't piracy, it's just doing something else with your time. There's not that many shows or movies that I care enough about to keep one subscription open for it. I had an HBO subscription for Game of Thrones, but I also enjoyed Succession, Last Week Tonight, and some other random stuff.…

I support your move, it's better than piracy.

The problem with piracy is if you become a fan of a series and gossip with your friends about it, now you're marketing that company's crappy service. It's a weird way to go about things.