Live data from Hacker News

Netflix: Piracy is difficult to compete against and growing rapidly

torrentfreak.com

501–510 of 940 posts

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

#501
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why this restriction? It depends on how secure your device is able to keep the decoded contents. The better the security the higher the quality they are willing to allow.

So Chrome on MacOS is more secure than Edge or Firefox on the same OS and gets 1080p while the other two don't. But it is not as secure as Chrome on Linux? I don't get it. What is Chrome on MacOS doing differently from Chrome on Linux? What is possible on Linux that wouldn't also be possible on MacOS?

It looks like 1.5 years ago desktop Chrome got a new CDM designed to support L1 DRM on platforms (I'm not sure why Opera wouldn't have it though and a couple years ago chrome was 720p too). There doesn't seem to be much information about it, but it may not support general hardware on Linux yet. With all sorts of hardware and driver configurations it can be hard to support especially since the desktop Linux community hasn't invested too much into building protected content paths that could be easily used by a CDM.

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

#502

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…

> when you can just have one service for free

Most of the time piracy isn't even free. You got a server running for downloads which is an investment and uses power (24-7 sometimes), hard disks for storage aren't free. Indexers and newsgroups are paid (good ones at least). Comparing that to a monthly subscription of what used to be €10,- to Netflix and which had it all, makes it nonsense to pirate.

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

#504

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,…

*Using whatever hardware, OS, and browser I want.

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

#505

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…

I was paying for Netflix 10 years ago in France for a short while, wanted some English subtitles for my wife for some US shows but there were only subtitles in French so had to download the same show elsewhere if you know what I'm saying... with English subtitles readily available. I also remember watching some shows like the first two seasons but then only to find out the third season was licensed by another streami…

This has also bugged me, they must have access to every language, yet they just don't. I'm sure it's licensing issues.

At least normally they have have the original audio versions, but just recently I saw that in Switzerland, they released Suicide squad but the german dubbed version only, why??

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

#506
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…

To netflix's credit, i think they're aware of this. They're in the business of providing content in exchange for money. for the content that they actually own the rights to, they do let people watch it.

the problem is all the other rights holders, who seem to not want to let people watch their content in exchange for money.

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

#507

Music piracy used to be a big problem. I am not sure if it still is or not? Anyway, it feels like music piracy isn't close to what it was at its peak and that they figured out how to make it work. Is there a reason that video is so much different?

Perhaps because streaming services like Spotify pay artists a pittance compared to what they would get from CDs. Artists have to tour to make a living now.

There is no live version of a film.

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

#508

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…

FRAND licensing is a thing. And forcefully splitting playback/delivery and content creation would create a much healthier market where content companies have interested in distributing their content to as many streaming services as possible to get revenue - e.g. see the situation with audio playback. With Spotify/YTM/Tidal being separate from music labels, there's much MUCH less of this exclusivity BS.

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

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to watch Rick and Morty season 6 here in Australia, only to find that half of it was on one streaming service, a quarter on another, and the rest not available at all. They make it impractical to obtain legitimately and then complain when we pirate.

Every episode is on Netflix in Australia, not sure what you were looking at

These things change every day. No reason why both statements can't be true.

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

#510

Earlier 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…

I think a lot of that will be answered with even more aggressive lockouts, DRM and "protections". Platform like Apple's iOS really play into this because they're designed to not allow users to bypass the money extraction and vote with their wallets.
Post reply on HN