281–290 of 940 posts
It's amusing watching streaming turn into cable, but somehow worse. At least we got some public access programming out of cable. Piracy is a service problem. Valve proved digital piracy can be beaten by commercial solutions. The problem is the media cartels being intransigent with digital delivery, not piracy.
Airbnb turned into hotels, buts worse.
This is "disruption."
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.
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…
We never stole (cute word pirated) anything. We became cordcutters (OTA and streaming) because we felt we weren't using but maybe $20 of the $180 monthly we were paying to cable. We became cordcutters in 2013. We never stole (cute word pirated) anything.
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…
While I directionally agree, I don't know how to reconcile this with antitrust. I wouldn't want Netflix to be the one company with all the content, with no competition. I guess what would be better is if all content was available on all the streaming providers, and then they'd compete on platform quality and price.
That way users only have to pay one streaming service, the content is available in every country, the rightsholders are paid fairly by the content consumed instead of these never-ending monthly fees for one show and ignoring the rest of the library.
If they don't do this, piracy again becomes the best option and media companies will only ever get stupid disengaged customers and that's a bad business model because those people eventually leave.
The time of predatory streaming service bullshit is over. Provide a service which puts customers first or they'll all go back to piracy. They already are.
> 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't know any of that stuff, thanks for sharing. Casinos and betting literally disgust me, but given that in a handful of years, every person on the planet will have his own personal stock and bond market, i wonder how one can differentiate betting from investing. A saying i usually repeat to people, is that in the future, i.e. in a handful of years, everyone will be a billionaire for fifteen minutes.
> every person on the planet will have his own personal stock and bond market I have no idea what you're talking about. > i wonder how one can differentiate betting from investing The biggest clue is how long you're going to hold ownership. If it's years, then it's almost certainly investing. > A saying i usually repeat to people, is that in the future, i.e. in a handful of years, everyone will be a billionaire for f…
Along the same lines what's the purpose of investing? It captures ownership of a company, for some time, or indefinitely. The presupposition is that said company, will be valuable in a year or 10 years.
Well as technology advances, everything becomes easier to produce, including movies, songs even car companies. The saying means that everyone will be able to produce something, which will gain big traction for a small amount of time. At that point he will be a billionaire, but someone else will produce something very similar, in fifteen minutes, and his ownership will go to nothing very quickly.
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 wonder if mandating content licenses being non-exclusive and separating media distributors from producers would help.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
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…
Anyway, I think the article hits it on the nose why this is becoming a problem again:
> Netflix amassed hundreds of millions of subscribers, some of whom left their piracy habits behind. However, as the ‘streaming wars’ turned legal and convenient streaming platforms into isolated and pricey content silos, momentum started to shift.
I've been frustrated with this, too. When I first subscribed to Netflix, I was happy and satisfied, and rarely (if ever) need to turn to less-savory sources. Their app and website were both polished, snappy, and worked well. I picked up Hulu and HBO subscriptions too (apps not as good, but decent enough), and I considered those three to be a reasonable amount to pay to watch what I wanted to watch. And I was also pleased that, when watching TV shows, I'd be counted as a viewer for the purposes of allowing the studios to decide if a show I like is popular enough to get renewed.
But now... to watch all the shows I want to watch, I have to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, Max, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Paramount+, and Apple TV+. That's a lot! Not to mention all these services are considerably more expensive than they were during the period of streaming when I was happy with the services. At this point I might as well just get a cable subscription again, which would probably be cheaper (ok, not remotely serious about that, but...). On top of all that, the streaming quality seems to be worse than it used to be; I expect the illegal sources are of better quality.
As much as I'm generally against corporate consolidation, I think this is a case where that might actually be better for consumers (and for the content owners too). Or perhaps a regime of compulsory licensing under RAND terms would allow all the various streaming services to compete on price, quality of experience, recommendations, etc. Ultimately that sort of thing might result in consolidation too, but at least that would be more fair, maybe.
Beyond all that, seems like most of the streaming services have turned their base tier into an ad-supported tier, and have aggressively bumped up the cost of the ad-free tiers. I refuse to subject myself to gross psychological manipulation whenever it's possible to avoid it, so add that to the cost. And for people who are more cost-conscious, their experience gets much worse.