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

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

#741

Post by BLKNSLVR » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:16 PM UTC

spike021 wrote: post #125

I haven't pirated in a while. I was happy to pay for some platforms. The problem is that pretty much all of these services say you get 2 or 4 or however many screens and now they're tightening viewership to within the same household. If I'm one person I'll never need to use 4 screens at once, so why can't I share them with a few family members who live elsewhere? And on top of that, you get plans that never had ads b…

I downgraded from the 4-screen option to single screen when they cracked down on password sharing.

The downside is that level subscription is restricted to a maximum resolution of 720p, which doesn't bother me a great deal in terms of picture quality, it bothers me in that it's a technical limitation - maybe it's justified in terms of their costs to deliver 720p versus 1080p, but I feel like 1080p should be a baseline in 2024.

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

#742

Post by Levitating » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:17 PM 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…

Netflix doesn't allow 1080p streaming to Linux users. The DRM also doesn't allow you to take any screen captures while Netflix is visible. You can't download any content and even on Windows you'd have to watch it within 48 hours.

All these antipiracy measures only invite us to pirate.

Pirating allows us to choose a media player of our children, possibly with 4K upscaling, better compression standards and the ability to download our content.

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

#743

Post by ta1243 » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:17 PM UTC

jwells89 wrote: post #46

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…

Delayed availability also bolsters piracy. In the age of the internet, people don’t want to watch foreign shows weeks or months after they’ve aired in their country of origin, but within mere hours of original airing so they can ride the global wave of discussion after each episode. A six month delay for example will completely miss the bulk of the show’s online relevance and even a week is enough to seriously dampen…

> Delayed availability also bolsters piracy. In the age of the internet

That's been the case since the 1990s. I used to download episodes of Voyager and SG1 the morning they were broadcast in the US because of it

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

#744

Post by ta1243 » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:18 PM UTC

aljgz wrote: post #646

As someone who rarely watch movies/series, I was paying ~100$/month worth of subscriptions until I cancelled most recently. Why? Content fragmentation is mentioned by everyone, but to me, the main problem was that I could never get a proper watching experience even after finding what I wanted: 1- English subtitles only available with CC: I want subtitles because as a non-native English speaker I cannot understand som…

> Watching the matrix reloaded for the 10th time

You deserve everything you get

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

#745

Post by actualwitch » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:20 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #495

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…

Yeah, also pirated content has: - 4K HDR video, not whatever the heck the buggy client delivers. - Atmos/TrueHD audio track that actually works, not whatever the broken app delivers (I'm looking at you Sky and rest of the ilk that still deliver HBO content with stereo). - Subtitles for ALL the languages, not just one or two. And those languages don't disappear when I go on a vacation, leaving me stuck with german aud…

My personal pet peeve is that buggy client will also not start streaming at maximum available quality and most likely has no selector for it either. I sure enjoy watching pixel soup instead of what's happening in the story for minutes on gigabit connection while their player is considering if I am worthy of consuming Their Content in discernible quality /s

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

#746

Post by andrepd » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:20 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #527

chmod775 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they even stream 1080p to Linux devices by default now? I always had to use a browser extension to make it do that[1]. However the extension seems to be gone.[2] [1] https://github.com/vladikoff/netflix-1080p-firefox?tab=readm... [2] https://github.com/vladikoff/netflix-1080p-firefox/issues/28

720p for Linux. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/16yf3wi/why_do...

Lol. Why should I pay for aggressively hostile software that requires me to install spyware on my machine for the privilege of watching throttled content? No thanks, I'll download an mkv and watch it when I want, where I want, online or offline.

I could do so with DVD and blu-ray. You don't want to let me do so via the internet? Okay, I'll do it anyways.

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

#747

Post by Levitz » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:27 PM UTC

mgoetzke wrote: post #539

rekoil wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally find that Spotifys offline content has worked reliably over the years. You just gotta remember that when you get a new device you have to go to library and click download and then leave Spotify open for a few hours. Spotify is also a great example of how to beat piracy. I haven't downloaded an mp3 file since I got a Spotify Premium account in 2007. OK that's probably a slight overstatement, but it's near…

Apple Music and Youtube Music both suffer from the issue of vanishing content. I have playlist where a growing percentage of songs are grayed out, not available, while they do exist in the store, just as part of a different album now. Very frustrating. Does Spotify do that ?

Spotify has left me doubting my sanity a couple of times by removing albums I could have sworn I had listened to before in the platform.

And I had, but they removed them since, listing nothing in their place.

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

#748

Post by corethree » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:27 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #495

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…

Yeah, also pirated content has: - 4K HDR video, not whatever the heck the buggy client delivers. - Atmos/TrueHD audio track that actually works, not whatever the broken app delivers (I'm looking at you Sky and rest of the ilk that still deliver HBO content with stereo). - Subtitles for ALL the languages, not just one or two. And those languages don't disappear when I go on a vacation, leaving me stuck with german aud…

I too understand this logic and follow it to the T.

You know that indie filmmaker who spent his lifesaving filming a movie I now get to watch on his dime? Well guess what.

No 4k video and no international subtitles makes that guy deserve not seeing any money come back from his hard work.

I'm not a thief. The indie filmmaker is a thief. He stole my subtitles and 4k video.

In all seriousness, I pirate shit too. But am I going to walk around like a idiot justifying what I do? No. I don't lie to myself. I don't need to twist reality in order to explain human evil which is an intrinsic aspect of all of us.

I'm a bit like a psychopath because one other intrinsic aspect of humanity is that we lie to ourselves in order to justify our sins. I don't need to do that. I can pirate shit, and recognize the sin, and then continue pirating and screwing over that indie filmmaker. An ass hole never recognizes himself as the ass hole.

Like seriously the delusions are through the roof. The guy is literally pirating shit, and then calling the party he pirates shit from an "ass hole". If he just didn't buy their content he'd have justification, but he instead pirates the content and still calls them the "arse hole". Wake up. I hate corporations but we are the ones commiting the crime here.

We are the ass holes.

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

#749

Post by hasty_pudding » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:28 PM UTC

rightbyte wrote: post #726

jpsouth wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hope they go out of business because they bought the rights to some podcasts?

I have no clue who this Reagan guy is. But sometimes you don't want to support people. Music is usually considered art and you are a boring downer of you complain about artists political or personal controversies. That is another thing. And the artist always have the benefit of doubt of the protagonist in the song not being the artist himself.

Jon Reagan is one of the most famous podcasters lol

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

#750

Post by m000 » Mon, Feb 05, 2024, 1:29 PM UTC

holgerschurig wrote: post #621

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…

Agreed. I actually don't think that Piracy was difficult to compete against. Actually there was a time when video streaming platforms competed against it --- and very successful. For normal people, it was cheap enough to make a contract, and much simpler than going the piracy route. No one talked anymore about pirating. But then things went wrong: * you paid a monthly fee and STILL suddenly got advertisements force-f…

And at the bottom of all these issues, you will find the excessive copyright terms which create artificial scarcity.

Just require anything older than 25-30 years to be made available for a nominal fee to any platform that wants it, with no exclusivity agreements allowed. Suddenly, you have a ton of quality content on multiple platforms. And the platforms are incentivized to compete on quality new content.

Also, it shouldn't be allowed for the Film/Music industry want to have it both ways. First use "Hollywood accounting" [1] to avoid paying taxes and contributors because the film "had a loss". And then milk it off perpetually. If you declare a loss on something, it should be enforced to go on public domain in a much shorter timeframe (say 10 years vs. 25-30 for profitable productions).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting