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

461–470 of 940 posts

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

#461

Post by realusername »

Daz1 wrote: post #450
mdavidn wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stole" isn't the right word either. Pirating does not deprive any legal entity of ownership. It's merely copyright infringement. It also likely circumvented access controls, thereby running afoul of DMCA. But it is not theft. I'm speaking as someone who also never pirates. I'd rather not watch something and spend my time doing something else.

It is absolutely theft, nobody is falling for that semantics argument - you're depriving a rights holder of revenue that they would otherwise gained.

> you're depriving a rights holder of revenue that they would otherwise gained.

There's never been a single proof of a loss of revenue during research.

So no, while it's usually a talking point on the anti-piracy ads, it's an urban legend.

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

#462

Post by jug »

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…

Absolutely this. I pirate Apple TV+ stuff right now. I subscribe to like three services. This is my maximum.

I could maybe stretch to four but then the market needs to meet me there and do two things: 1. Make an effort in consolidating media rights and services to these four and 2. Work to lower the price to roughly $10 per service for at least high quality 1080p with no ads in high quality apps across the board. Bonus: Also work to standardize a media protocol so that you can see what you have access to in a common media library regardless what you use, or even in third party apps, as well as stream with whatever as long as you're a subscriber to the respective services.

Do all these things and I actually think they have a good chance against piracy. It's all about what they're willing to do. They can absolutely make some good money on movies and TV shows in a piracy world. I'm convinced of this. Piracy is not the problem; piracy is just the other weight of the scale showing just how anti-consumerist they can become.

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

#463

Post by galahad_ »

mr_toad wrote: post #345
philipov wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The money's not on the table if people can and will leave. That's the point of competition. Piracy is entirely in the spirit of free market capitalism: the equilibrium price of a good with infinite supply is 0.

It’s not an equilibrium price, because the average cost is higher than the marginal cost (which is indeed close to zero). Free markets don’t work unless the marginal cost (and the price) is higher than the average cost, for obvious reasons.

The average cost ist always higher than the marginal cost for digital products, for obvious reasons. So you are literally saying free markets don't work for digital products.

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

#464

Post by vineyardmike »

roenxi wrote: post #442
TheCapeGreek wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those numbers are not profit numbers.

I wouldn't want to be involved in a company that isn't turning a profit. But, in fairness, this is an industry that is adjacent to Hollywood. It is conceivable that they have some sort of weird profit-laundering scheme going to make sure not too much of the money goes back to the artists or something.

Profit and loss can be accounting fiction when needed (eg Amazon), but I think Spotify has the cartel curse. No matter how much money they make, it’s too easy for the labels to see the public finances of Spotify and decide they want to raise the price of licensing. Furthermore, the more people use Spotify, the less profitable the subscription becomes.

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

#465

Post by martindbp »

josephg wrote: post #447
martindbp wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The services have taken the piss and now they'll get the repercussions of it. Whose fault is it really that all content is not available on a single service? It's nobody's fault, it was inevitable given how things work. How could you "fix" it? You'd need legislation saying that all content must be made available for licensing at the same price for every service. But that's not enough, because why would HBO sell the…

There was a wonderful point made by Gabe Newell a few years ago on this. He said the only thing you need to do to “beat piracy” is provide a better service than piracy offers. And that’s pretty easy, for all manner of reasons. I thought he was way too optimistic at the time - but here I am years later with hundreds of games in my steam library. I haven’t pirated a video game in years. I think Gabe’s rule is like grav…

I think TV and games are meaningfully different. Most people tend to watch way more number of shows in a year than buying/playing video games. Video games have more replayability, so it's something you need to "own" rather than stream. Therefore, subscriptions for games are not a big thing yet (I doubt it will ever be). As it stands now, if a game I want is not on Steam, that's OK, I can just install another game store. It's a bit inconvenient but not too bad. The problem with TV is cost. I'm OK switching between Netflix, Disney, HBO, Youtube, whatever, but I'm not OK with paying $70 a month,

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

#466

Post by toast0 »

martindbp wrote: post #419
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…

> The services have taken the piss and now they'll get the repercussions of it. Whose fault is it really that all content is not available on a single service? It's nobody's fault, it was inevitable given how things work. How could you "fix" it? You'd need legislation saying that all content must be made available for licensing at the same price for every service. But that's not enough, because why would HBO sell the…

Music has compulsory licensing, and yet we have different radio stations, and multiple streaming services (only some of which is covered by compulsory licensing).

If compulsory licensing for tv and movies also implied the service was picking the episodes, you'd have potential for competition if service A just played all of the episodes in order and service B only played the good episodes. Etc.

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

#467

Post by bartread »

All right, so just off the top of my head we have:

- Netflix

- Amazon Prime

- Disney+

- HBO+

- Hulu

- YouTube Premium

- Apple TV

- Whatever Sky's offering is called

- At least a couple of others that I've forgotten

- Plus some kid-specific services that aren't necessarily included in the base subscription (looking at you, Amazon)

- And then I haven't even got into music streaming services like Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, etc.

You know, competition is a good thing, but overall I'm not that sympathetic.

It's just too damn hard, and unsustainably expensive, to be able to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it.

Then there's content duplication, content exclusives, and on top of that just this endless churn of huge quantities of content being thrown out that, frankly, isn't necessarily that great and feels like kind of a waste of time to watch.

This isn't really working for me. Let me say it again, I want to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it and with reasonable pricing. I'm happy to pay. I'm not happy to be bilked. And I'm not interested in the arguments about rights. I just want to watch what I want to watch when I want to watch it.

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

#468

Post by vonjuice »

api wrote: post #52
cocoa19 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low price and no ads were two of the main selling points to ditch cable (along with stream whenever you want). We reached the point were price is almost as high as cable was (with the standard 4-5 subscriptions), and we have ads. This is not a surprise to most though, the question has always been when would it happen.

We are no longer under zero interest rates. Things have to actually be profitable.

No they don't?

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

#469

Post by Kwpolska »

Mistletoe wrote: post #358
SurgeArrest wrote: post #63

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…

The funny thing is they want to have a tech company valuation and everything you are describing is a tech issue that is easily solvable but they won’t do it. They are a content creation company/studio now. Their price to earnings (PE) ratio is 45 for some reason and they are part of the FAANG acronym for some reason. I can’t even find anything I want to watch on there and we cancelled it until Stranger Things comes o…

The FAANG acronym was invented by a TV host of a stock market show based on their value to stock market grifters, not actual tech they're working on (which is why it has Netflix but no Microsoft).

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

#470

Post by defrost »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #456
defrost wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first site I checked has 317 pages of 50x 2160p listings per page going back seven years. The most recent entry is: How To Train Your Dragon The Hidden World (2019) 2160p 4K BluRay 5 1-LAMA Format : HEVC Width : 3 840 pixels Height : 1 634 pixels Display aspect ratio : 2.35:1 Near the top is a recent TV episode: True Detective S04E04 Night Country Part 4 2160p MAX WEB-DL DDP5 1 DoVi x265-NTb Format : HEVC Width :…

I think you agree with me? You overwhelmingly see 1280x720, 1920x1080, and 3840x2160, sometimes with a truncated height because of aspect ratio but usually advertised with the full height for consistency reasons. There's barely any 2560x1440. Anyone going above 1080p goes directly to 4k. Youtube is pretty much the only place I've ever seen 1440p encodes, and that's because they're super version-happy and make 20 diff…

Perhaps, I thought your complaint was not finding enough "4K" (not a term I like much).

If it's about finding 1440p that'd mainly be because it's not a common broadcast format to the best of my knowledge - I just don't see it about much.

Articles such as: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution

don't mention it as a broadcast format, and articles that are specific to 1440p: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1440p

have it as :

    As a graphics display resolution between 1080p and 4K, Quad HD is regularly used in smartphone displays, and for computer and console gaming.
Post reply on HN