Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

torrentfreak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 940 posts

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

#301

Post by vineyardmike »

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.…

The 4th group is important because they didn’t compete well throughout most of Cable’s tenure. Now, YouTube, TikTok, etc eat away at people’s video diet. Video games are now fully mainstream too. Normal social media (Twitter, Reddit, Meta) take even more.

I’m in group 4. I’ll pay for streaming services to avoid ads, but never linear TV. TV is largely superior content - it’s professionally made and generally high quality. But if I get sick of jumping through hoops, I have plenty of other things to do.

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

#302

Post by worthless-trash »

paulddraper wrote: post #214
kylebenzle wrote: post #78

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.

"hacker" = "free information" ?? I've never heard that definition.

Not OP, but this spawned from Woz mentioning this on a video ( https://www.gettyimages.in/detail/video/at-the-first-hackers... ) in the hackers conference.

You may be too young (not an insult) or in a different geography to have been seen this, however it was definitely a thing.

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

#303

Post by Animats »

> “In light of the compelling consumer proposition, piracy services are subject to rapid global growth” > We don’t know where these references originate.

Search for that phrase. It has a rather large number of hits, in filings from multiple streaming services. Wonder where that phrase was pirated from? And whether this indicates a degree of coordination which suggests the need for antitrust action.

Mainland China has good movies now. There's been progress since "Sky Hunter" (2017), produced by the film unit of the People's Liberation Army Air Force. (You can watch that for free. It's heavy-handed propaganda.) If you like period costume dramas, there are many from China, because the political levels don't care about those. The writers thus have more freedom. "Princess Agents" is probably the best of that genre.

Stuff set in the present day will have clear signs of being forced to follow the party line. There are lots of cop shows. They're about as good, or bad, as American cop shows. There's a good version of "The Three Body Problem", but it's rather slow-paced, following the books closely. There's also a genre we don't see much in the US - business drama.

The US film industry has been eaten by superhero sequels. Just not much worth watching. There's a Hunger Games prequel out, if anybody cares. If you're willing to look outside the heavily promoted stuff, there's plenty to watch.

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

#304

Post by jMyles »

jMyles wrote: post #14

...it's difficult to compete against even when you have the state willing to make threats of violence on your behalf if they utilize the competing model. It seems like this says more about the future of so-called "intellectual property" than it does about these particular companies or these particular practices.

(re-reading: this reads like a rant against Netflix, which is mostly isn't meant to be: I honor Netflix's attempt to beat the competing no-IP model by being easy-to-use and comprehensive. Unfortunately for basically everyone, it seems that such a combination can never be sustained under the IP industrial complex.)

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

#305

Post by kelnos »

liotier wrote: post #126
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…

> The killer feature of piracy is thar it just works, not that it is free Especially as piracy has its own costs: VPN (French authorities do detect bittorrent), storage, some Jellyfin or Kodi host, some time to manage the whole *arr setup. The moment legal access to a whole world's worth of movies becomes cheaper and easier than that, piracy becomes unattractive. That was the way Netflix was perceived in its golden a…

Right, it's not like piracy is literally free. There are still monetary costs, software maintenance work that needs to be done, and risks involved.

In that 'golden age' of Netflix, getting a Netflix subscription was a much better choice for loads of people. But now it seems to be swinging back the other way again. It's just so frustrating, because all these content owners actually had a good-enough solution to most piracy, and they ruined it with their own greed.

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

#306

Post by worthless-trash »

DoughnutHole wrote: post #19
jerjerjer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming also had no ads which is now gated behind even more pricey plans.

Even an “ad-free” Netflix plan is infested with promotion of their in-house productions.

Yeah, this grinds my gears too.

If i wanted to watch the other productions, i'd be watching the other production. I can see what is available on the 'trending now' list on the exact screen just before starting this video.

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

#307

Post by nkurz »

dgfitz wrote: post #138
orwin wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Many hearts, I am the GP.

Others use it differently, but I think he was using "GP" to mean "grandparent", as in the comment you would get to if you clicked on "parent" twice starting at his comment. In that system, you would be the "OP", not the "GP", although this too is not fully standardized.

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

#308

Post by vineyardmike »

al_borland wrote: post #77
eastbound wrote: post #43

Earlier 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).

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…

Let’s not forget that “music solved this” ignores the fact that Spotify is not profitable, and may never be due to the record labels cut. Apple Music, Amazon Music and YouTube Music may or may not be profitable but are undoubtedly subsidized by their corporate parents.

Not sure if Tidal is profitable but they aren’t popular and are much more expensive than people are generally willing to spend. It’s also potentially subsidized by a corporate parent.

There’s also a trail of unprofitable or tiny businesses like SoundCloud and Bandcamp that may or may not survive quarter to quarter.

It’s not a solved problem.

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

#309

Post by TeMPOraL »

WWLink wrote: post #270
feoren wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's weird because TV is also culture. Game of Thrones isn't just some random piece of personal, single-player entertainment: it was, and is, an important cultural phenomenon for at least half of the planet.

That's what makes the dynamics so weird: it's not just, or even primarily, about your personal entertainment - there are social aspects involved, from wanting to belong with your peer group (e.g. talk about latest GoT episode with your cow-orkers at the water cooler), to all kinds of rituals (e.g. watching romantic comedies with a date/spouse).

Same applies to books and musics, to a lesser degree to magazines/news media. For some reason, it mostly doesn't apply to videogames; I used to think it was because they're a new thing, but these days, I think it's rather because the experience is much more individualized and requires much more effort (and time), making it a poor social object.

Post reply on HN