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Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

movies.io

301–310 of 509 posts

Re: Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

#301
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone worked really hard to make something, then you take it without permission. You want others to live for your sake. That makes you a parasite.

You clearly lack perspective: try to reverse the point of view and apply the same logic. An employer wants others to live for his sake, does that make him a parasite? No. (The analogy fails to go any further, but your point is nonetheless invalid.) Plus, if you had some intuition, you'd realized that 1) we too, have worked really hard on movies.io (and still are), and 2) we would love to work towards a legal solution…

If you want to argue the case then you'll need to find better analogies. The employer/employee relationship is entered into mutually and both parties gain from it.

Lets really put the shoe on the other foot. How would you feel if someone came along, took all of your source code for movies.io and hosted it on movies2.io. Not only that, but they now had way more users than you (for whatever reason). How would that make you feel? Would you consider them freeloaders? Parasites even?

Re: Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

#302
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone worked really hard to make something, then you take it without permission. You want others to live for your sake. That makes you a parasite.

You clearly lack perspective: try to reverse the point of view and apply the same logic. An employer wants others to live for his sake, does that make him a parasite? No. (The analogy fails to go any further, but your point is nonetheless invalid.) Plus, if you had some intuition, you'd realized that 1) we too, have worked really hard on movies.io (and still are), and 2) we would love to work towards a legal solution…

An employer wants to pay employees for their labour. It's a trade.

As to your second point, I mean, thieves work really hard on their heists... I don't think that's the strongest argument to put forward to be honest.

Re: Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

#304
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the film-industry should be inspired by this. If they offered something which is as easy to use and as good-looking as this, piracy will certainly decrease. Just put a "Pay here"-button before giving the user their download-link. Skip the DRM and the restrictions for different parts of the world and they'd have a killer-platform for selling their products. I am not saying that piracy isn't "unethical", but th…

There are plenty of easy ways to legally buy and download movies - certainly a lot easier than torrenting. See Netflix, iTunes, Google Play etc. It would be both nice and pragmatic if they would drop the DRM that is clearly doing nothing to combat piracy. This is not going to achieve that.

> There are plenty of easy ways to legally buy and

> download movies - certainly a lot easier than

> torrenting.

The Oatmeal disagrees: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones

Re: Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

#305
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. Why do you think this "clearly unethical"? I don't think it's clear at all. Everyone I know pirates movies, TV shows, and music. Everyone I know also jaywalks. I also know people who use drugs illegally, as well as participate in or facilitate underage drinking, and I don't have a problem with any of it. Are these unethical? Someone clearly thought so. Do I care? You know what the truth is, for me, and eve…

Using drugs, "facilitating underage drinking" and even jaywalking are quite a bit different than stealing. You say you "don't steal (physical things)" as if that makes it ok, but you are stealing. It's a different form of stealing, but you do steal, you lack empathy for the act, and you are usually hurting the creators of that material in one way or another. Even today, there are societies where it is "socially accep…

You make one good point, but I think you overall misunderstand my stance. Firstly,

You say you "don't steal (physical things)" as if that makes it ok...

I don't think not stealing makes piracy ok, and I didn't say so. What I mean, and what I tried to say, was that I haven't decided whether I think piracy is ethical or not, and I care little enough that I probably won't decide for the forseeable future.

...but you are stealing. It's a different form of stealing, but you do steal...and you are usually hurting the creators of that material in one way or another. ... You do steal, and you do hurt people.

In my eyes (and maybe this is unreasonable of me, anyone else?), you lose credibility when you state, as fact, your own opinions that you know other people disagree on. The fact that everyone agrees on, is that you believe pirating is stealing, and that it hurts creators. Whether your belief is true or not, is not a fact that the participants of this discussion all agree on or stipulate too.

...you lack empathy for the act...

Minor point, but I don't think this makes sense, as a statement. My understanding of empathy is that it's possible to have empathy and do harm, if you don't realize you're doing harm and hence even though you would empathize, you don't. So I'm not lacking empathy "for the act", whatever you mean by that, but rather I think you mean that I don't realize I'm hurting people, as you say in the next part of your sentence.

Saying "it's wrong" and going no further than that makes you thoughtless, not humble.

I had trouble phrasing this, since I had two things to say about me saying "it's wrong": I wanted to both contrast with saying "clearly unethical", and explain how I would go further. To clarify, I definitely did not mean I would "go no further", in fact I later went further, and said I'd say it's wrong because it's hurtful, and I don't like being hurt.

Now, the one good point you made:

Even today, there are societies where it is "socially acceptable" to beat and murder women, to stone people for being heretics, etc. etc. "Socially acceptable" does not provide justification for unethical acts. [...] You just don't care, because people around you are doing the same.

Well, yes and no. Would I ever beat and murder women if it were "socially acceptable" to? I want to think I wouldn't, but I don't know that, and you don't know that you wouldn't. A couple decades ago, in some of those United States, bus drivers made anyone who was visibly of African-American descent sit in the back. Was that unethical? I think we all agree it was. Was the bus driver an unethical person? Well, we sure don't punish everyone who ever engaged in acts that we now consider unethical but engaged in them simply because it was socially acceptable at the time, like these bus drivers.

I want to believe that everything I do that's socially acceptable is ethical in some absolute sense, and that all those things that are socially acceptable that I don't think we should do (and don't do) are unethical in some absolute sense, but both of those things are almost certainly false. For those things that are unethical but I don't realize and do anyway because they're socially acceptable, how is "socially acceptable" not a justification? Surely it's unreasonable to expect me to know what is absolutely ethical and what isn't.

Re: Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, I guess I'll postpone that flight to NY. No intentions to profit from this, except for the experience, the friends (and enemies) we make, and the excitement.

I am surprised you are taking this so lightly. Are you sure this can not get you into trouble in France / the EU?

Thankfully France is not the only french-speaking country.

Don't be surprised: I'm taking this "fuck it, we need to do something" approach. We've been trying to get heard by content owners for years but nothing has worked. If this is the only thing we can do, I'll do it.

I'm more curious than anything to see if this will get me into any real legal trouble. I believe what we do is legal, I also wish we didn't need to do it at all.

As mentioned previously, if I could have simply built a good front-end that calls an API to license content, I'd have very happily done it.

Coming from the music industry, when I hear the excuse "but it's hard to create a worldwide licensing system like you ask", I say bullshit. Both the movie and music industry are waaaaaaaaay behind in terms of technology, and everything is so inefficient.

Ever tried to obtain the rights to (legally) burn a CD compilation of your favorite songs? You'll have to send snail mail, make phone calls, wait weeks for confirmation (while you pay, of course), if you're very lucky you'll be done in 6 months with a lot of work. This is not the way it should happen.

Some start-ups (say, http://official.fm/) are working towards resolving the situation on the music side: providing a friendly licensing platforms for content owners is a good start. But that only works for small to middle content creators/owners. The big will never bow to that, they'll always go for their own, often crappier, solution.

So, I'm willing to work on their own terms: you give me an API key, a doc, and you decide the pricing. That's all I ask. Then we can all get busy building apps around content, which is what is dear to my heart.

Hope this helps.

Re: Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

#307
post #255
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not hurting them - I would never have bought what they are selling. I'm just letting them benefit me, and thus increasing the level of happiness in this world.

You're saying that if tomorrow you could no longer download movies, music and tv shows for free, you would simply stop consuming all of these things?

Most, yes. We would still have YouTube, though. Actually, I bought 1 CD this year, Parov Stelar's Princess, that I would have bought regardless, but that's about it.

Re: Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

#308
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't upload movies, we don't run a tracker, we don't belong to > any release groups: that's how not interested in piracy we are. That's like saying "We don't sell crystal meth, we're not distributors for crystal meth, we don't belong to any drug production groups, but our site helps kids obtain crystal meth from those who do: that's how not interested in crystal meth we are."

Your analogy is paired because both piracy and meth are illegal in the USA. However, the pairing lacks equivalence in my view because crystal meth is clearly (and by nature, not by law) harmful to the user, while piracy is not. A better analogy might be a website that helps others circumvent the Great Firewall of China. It is illegal in one particular country, but circumvention does not harm individuals (only the soc…

"crystal meth is clearly (and by nature, not by law) harmful to the user, while piracy is not"

Methamphetamine is helpful for hyperactivity, obesity, and narcolepsy.

I am having trouble constructing parameters in which your statement is true, but does not apply to nearly everything. For example, Tylenol (APAP) is clearly harmful to a user's liver.

Re: Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

#309
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it is - I don't like waiting for ages when I want to watch a move right now.

Well, but here's the problem: If I want to watch a movie right the hell now , torrents aren't a good solution, because the pieces you get are random. You can't start watching the movie immediately, you have to wait until it's loaded completely. There are some experimental p2p streaming protocols, but there isn't anything really good on the market just yet. Sure, I'm on an awesome tracker, and I can download an HD mov…

Vuze (Azureus) has a 'Media Server' plug-in which works very nicely, even with 1080p movies.

They intentionally bury it, though, because 'play now' is their premium offering (a shady business model imho). You have to go to the torrent's files, right click the .avi/.mkv/.mp4, go to 'Media server' -> 'Copy stream URI to clipboard', and then you can use that stream URI in any self-respecting player (VLC, mplayer).

That's terrible UX though :)

(Small note: in-order download is generally frowned upon in the torrent world, becaues it's bad for a torrent's health. However, Vuze manages this nicely by both prioritizing the pieces in order and still downloading/seeding random pieces at the same time. I think it's a very good compromise.)

Re: Show HN: movies.io — torrent search like it should be

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where do you draw the line?" is almost always a trivial rephrasing of the slippery slope fallacy. We live in a world where there are no lines, and we draw them in arbitrary places so that we can make the world work. If that bothers you, you are just going to have to adjust your worldview to be compatible with the reality you were born into.

Help me understand how your comment doesn't imply that all ethics are situational and relative?

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