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Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

theguardian.com

221–230 of 960 posts

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#221

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Subtitles is a big one for me. I can stream something in Japan, that I have seen other places has english subs, but due to licensing I cannot see them.

I know I could vpn around this, but why should I pay even more just for subtitles?

In the end I'm paying for Netflix, Disney and Amazon. My son uses those as he is bilingual, I just pirate what I want to watch personally.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#222

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Netflix and to some level spotify drowned piracy for a time. But then a lot of companies tried to rap the same "winings" splitting the ecosystem and trashing the user experience. - ¿could we watch x movie? - let me see. no, it in this other service beside the 3 we are paying.

In the beginning, Netflix was great. Then they became a media company and suddenly EVERYTHING they push on you is THEIR stuff. Gone are the days where you could remember a cool movie and pull it up on Netflix like Fandango or Corvette Summer. I remember going back and watching several seasons of the original Miami Vice back when nobody knew who Michael Mann was.

Not its exactly as you say, you want to watch something but its not on any of the streaming services you're already paying for. I've started to just think of a movie I want to watch, go out to Pirate Bay, download it and then stream it. When I'm done? Delete it.

Its good to know I'm not the only one who has gone back to downloading movies.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical media offers the first three, but not option four. I, too, would pay per show/movie to download and save DRM-free videos to my own drives.

It fails on all of them if it's not available to purchase, and none of them are of relevance if I want it right now vs having to wait 1-7 days to get hold of that physical copy and there's an easier alternative where I can have it right now.

The elder might remember a time where you could drive to a place and rent physical copies of a movie.

But of course, these places dried out a long time ago.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#225

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

This is kinda what netflix was for many peak for a brief moment in time. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty great, it had most of what you wanted to see. Then EVERY studio wanted their own meh streaming system, and fragmented the system again.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#226
post #215

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Also doesn’t track user and send a bunch of telemetry

Except for our ip address, timestamp and torrent metadata

https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#227
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. Arguably higher. For example, fans of Star Wars have scanned the original 1977 theatrical release with very high quality film scanners and created a 4K release complete with film grain and the original scenes intact which is not available through approved channels.

Wow. I thought it was impossible to watch the original release of star wars. I need to hunt this down.

"4k77" should get you to the right places

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#228
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. Arguably higher. For example, fans of Star Wars have scanned the original 1977 theatrical release with very high quality film scanners and created a 4K release complete with film grain and the original scenes intact which is not available through approved channels.

Wow. I thought it was impossible to watch the original release of star wars. I need to hunt this down.

There's also a DVD release of the theatrical versions. Usually goes for $50-75 for OG trilogy.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#229

When billion dollar companies, which are praised and supported by governments, download pirated material and do not pay, why should ordinary people restrain themselves and pay? I cannot see how one can make moral arguments against piracy now. It makes no sense to pay if others are not paying and not punished for it. People also have a right to train their real neural network for free without paying.

Plus the idea that if you pay someone to "purchase" and "own" (their terms!!) content, then it's yours forever. Unless, of course, they renegotiate something upstream and subsequently remove the content from your "library" or your device. Or perhaps they lock you out of those things altogether. This means it wasn't ownership, it was subscription. So as they say, “if buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing.” http…

Stealing is when you take something from him, and he no longer has the thing you took.

Piracy is when you see something for free that everyone else paid money for. You watching doesn't prevent anyone else from watching.

Piracy isn't stealing: piracy only deals in intangibles. Stealing is for finite goods.

There's a whole "how do we pay to make stuff if people can watch for free" problem around piracy, but it's fundamentally a different thing than stealing.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#230

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Also in any language. I am so tired of reading a list of audio/subtitles languages available, only to find out that they don’t work after purchase. Am all platforms. Good lord. Just tired of that bs
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