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Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

theguardian.com

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Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#231

Post by opan »

bee_rider wrote: post #133

I know this is pedantic but it is so annoying: downloading shows is not piracy. It is totally nuts to conflate unauthorized copying and sharing with the violent act of going on somebody’s boat and killing/threatening them until you loot their stuff. Calling it piracy was funny during the early Internet when it was all pirate and ninja memes. But really letting them conflate this very minor crime with violence was a b…

Agreed. I do my part to avoid using the word at least since seeing it on gnu's words-to-avoid page several years ago.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy

I don't usually get too many weird looks with "unauthorized copying".

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#232

Post by zamadatix »

This mirrors my experience as well. I used to pirate everything, it was relatively inconvenient to get the exact thing you wanted on physical media. Then streaming, Steam, and app stores came about. I pivoted 100%, it was sooo much more convenient than trying to find legitimate and quality copies of content and managing a set up to do so.

Then the streaming side started to fragment a bit, but I just grabbed all of the subscriptions (HBO, Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, etc). It was getting a bit iffy on value, but at least it was still convenient. Now it's just ridiculously _in_convenient. Search around to see which service might have the thing you're actually trying to watch and use this device with this app to get a decent quality version of the content delivered, all while hoping it doesn't force automatic quality "for your benefit". With Steam it's a bit less severe, but it did reach the "and the games you want are split across 5 services in exclusivity" and "DRM is getting to be an extreme pain on some of these" stages.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#233

Post by Waterluvian »

Now more than ever before, for me, it’s exclusively because of UX and not price.

The most recent example: every Star Trek (TNG, Voyager, etc) on Netflix simply doesn’t work on my Chromecast.

After a minute the video goes all screwy, split 1/3 across the screen and loses half its colour. But this doesn’t happen with Plex.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#234

Post by area51org »

CivBase wrote: post #202
sneak wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah; copyright is a monopoly on specific media/titles. It breaks all of the “market willing to provide” mechanics because there is no free market for Star Wars, it’s Disney or FOAD. Pray they do not alter it further.

Bingo. When distributors get exclusive rights to media, there is no competition anymore. You either do whatever the publisher wants, pirate, or go without.

The aggravating part about this: that was not the intention of the copyright clause. "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Authors and inventors. Authors and inventors.

Not companies. Not entities, or even individuals, who purchased the "rights" and now "own" works. That has nothing to do with the intent here, which was to encourage actual authors and inventors to make more stuff. Walt Disney has been gone for more than half a century; he's not going to be able to come up with another Mickey Mouse.

"Intellectual property" is an oxymoron. Pray, tell me, which part of my brain does Disney own? Do they own the part that knows what Mickey Mouse looks like?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#235

Post by mxfh »

gjvc wrote: post #145
mxfh wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with that exactly? Legacy catalogs having some incomplete coverage? That the Pokemon Company can't make a good list if pressed? These are all not new or streaming Problems The gist is here, that the complete first four season are on YouTube for free and the 5th is being added as we speak? (200+ episodes) https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialPoke%CC%81monTV/playlists There was nether the expectation wit…

with a sample size of one, there is no obvious problem. presumably any given household wants to watch more than just pokemon, though and this is where things become unstuck. suddenly, to satisfy the demand for the range of things people in the household want to watch they are forced to make subscriptions to multiple services, perhaps sometimes for one-offs. scale this up, and you have a population forced to make mult…

That's not how streaming worked, ever. You had to deal with what Netflix had to offer and that was it. These were the happy monopoly days. It was simply the lack of choice and nobody felt left out at watercooler talks.

The paradox now, is that if you're FOMO inclined you feel the need to subscribe to multiple ones at all times to satify all needs in a household. You don't have to. You can keep baseline Disney if you really have to, but everything else can be easily rotated or just cought up on for a month or three on the usual discounted offers. The social pressure was not some invention of the streaming companies.

Also pirating has a hardware and energy cost, that's not trivial and mostly subsidized by parents. On a ROI basis of adults with disposable income "buying" (aka personal licenses, ideally shareable with some other accounts what some might call a family) 4-5 movies for like 5 dollars on platforms like Apple TV each a month is actually cheaper than pirating. Streaming is not everything. And don`t kid yourself that your DVD or Bluray collection is worth something or usable in 20+ years. That's a niche hobby. Go visit a flea market. People are that lazy when it comes to couch and home entertainment stuff.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#236

Post by tstrimple »

yunwal wrote: post #176
galleywest200 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not purchase the discs and copy them yourself? At least artists can get paid that way.

Most shows don't get a dvd release anymore.

And then sometimes you have to deal with a bunch of bullshit changes because of music licensing or something.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#237

Post by interestica »

testing22321 wrote: post #207
vhanda wrote: post #6

All streaming services should have a pay per minute system as an alternative to the fixed monthly subscription. That way, I'd happily use any service to watch whatever cause it would be convenient, instead of piracy. And it would be a reason for them to really improve their recommendation systems.

Idea for a service. The service effectively rebroadcasts all the streaming services to provide exactly what you suggest. It’s still paying the streaming services, and users pay it. Better not set it up in the US .

This is like cable with extra steps ;)

I think we are already seeing some packaged stream services and we will probably see more. It’s a lot of overhead to maintain a separate service to do the exact same thing (with only a different library and branding).

I think the NHL uses the streaming backend developed by MLB Advanced Media (they adapted it in 2015, not sure if still the case).

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/a-closer-look-at-nhls-pa...

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#238

Post by Levitz »

wrasee wrote: post #161
ryandrake wrote: post #153

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…

Supply and demand might argue that if there was real demand for something like this that people were actually willing to pay a lot of money for, then the market would be all too happy to provide. I think the inconvenient truth here is that when anyone has got close to doing such a thing the price has been high enough that it turns out nobody actually turns up to pay for it, not at least outside a small niche.

Supply and demand rules go out the window when the product is infinitely replicable.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#239

Post by Yokolos »

maxglute wrote: post #72

I spent last few days chasing down a Bravo/peacock show from outside the US trying to watch legally, only to find it on watchseries and realize how good the experience has gotten. It's not even released on torrents or nzb. Watchseries UI is kind of peak now. Nuts. Does anyone know how Watchseries manage to stay up?

It's been taken down plenty of times. They just host a mirror somewhere else under a new TLD.
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