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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

#271

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

cyberax wrote: post #255
l72 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to have real options or people can’t make informed decisions. I have a background in city planning, and in the US, you’ll constantly hear about how trying to make cities more friendly to pedestrians, bicycles, or public transit is a waste because no one uses it. But the truth is, most people will end up using the system you design. If you build a system just for cars, people will use cars. If you build a cit…

> If you build a walkable city, people will walk. No, they won't. If you build a walkable city and then make it impossible to do anything else, then people will walk. It's a subtle difference, but it's there.

it's a welcome change from "if you build a driveable city and then make it impossible to do anything else, then people will drive".

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#272

Post by getcrunk »

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…

This might fall under 3/4 but to me the biggest issue is being able to watch without having to turn my vpn off! I had already accepted the rest

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#273

Post by bee_rider »

opan wrote: post #231
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".

Oh, that’s funny. Actually I feel a bit Stallman-y when I point this out.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#274

Post by daseiner1 »

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…

Plex is phenomenal software

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#275

Post by wiredpancake »

mxfh wrote: post #235
gjvc wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Now you are delving into small intricacies and "gotchas" which are just meaningless.

The problem is simple. People don't want to switch between 10 different streaming services, pay 10x a month, swap every second month, unsubscribe from X and re-subscribe to Y after going through a torturous process of unsubscribing. Different sites with different DRM, some might block Firefox, some might not work on an older MiniPC, some might not work or exist on the built in apps on my TV.

We as consumers shouldn't have to go through all these hoops just to watch stuff. Originally, I would buy a DVD (or even rent it) and then plop the DVD in the DVD player and it would work. It would work 10 years from now (assuming no disc-rot). It would work on my PC's DVD player, it would work on my TV. It wouldn't tell me my OS is out of date or that my internet connection is unstable. I could then go give you the DVD and you could watch it. It was simple.

For the sake of your argument, even if piracy was 100x harder and 10x more expensive than Subscriptions services (which its not), watching the entire series of Pokemon is still a pain and is still stupid and deserves to be called out for it.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#276

Post by zaptheimpaler »

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…

> 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release.

I paid for Disney+ to watch Andor at 4K, only to find out that you can't - Disney+ prohibits anything over 1K on computers whether you use the app or a browser. Went back to piracy very quickly after that. More fragmented experience is annoying, not even being able to get the highest quality as a paying customer is insane.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#277

Post by russellbeattie »

I am absolutely astounded by the pirate streaming sites for a bunch of reasons.

First, I'm amazed that they exist at all. I don't understand how they do it for both legal and monetary reasons. Serving thousands of gigabytes of video daily cannot be cheap! And their domains continue to stay active despite what I'm sure is legal barrage from rights holders.

Second, the UX of these sites is better than any commercial service, hands down (as long as you use an ad blocking browser or VPN). The GUIs are super clean and provide all the features you'd want: Sortable lists, the ability to search how you like, clickable links for actor, director, year, etc. to get a list of just those shows, links to Trailers on YouTube, constantly updated new releases carousel and more. And again, this is content that's streamed straight to your browser - no torrenting or external downloading, etc. Just tap and watch.

Third, as mentioned in the article, the pirate sites have a catalog of every video and TV show/series you can imagine. Just about anything that's ever been on physical media or streamed, it's there. Every time I read about how such and such show or movie is unavailable on any streaming platform because of licensing disputes or other reasons, I go check my preferred pirate streaming video site and it's always there.

Bonus: There are live streaming sites as well dedicated to sports. Everything from BBC Olympics coverage to subscription only Soccer/Baseball/NFL etc.

Bonus 2: If you're impatient or too broke to see a newly released movie in theaters, decent quality cam recordings always appear within a day or so, and are replaced when the original is published.

Seriously, if any company were to provide the same level of service, they could charge tons of cash for it and have millions of subscribers. They're that good.

Again though, how do these sites exist!? Where is the data stored? How is the bandwidth paid for? Who is updating the sites daily with new content? So many questions.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#278

Post by lordofgibbons »

WrongOnInternet wrote: post #143

I've always chosen piracy for the privacy. I don't need a bunch of services building a profile on my viewing habits and tastes, then sharing that data with other businesses and governments. If I want a recommendation, I'll ask a friend, not an algorithm.

I'm fine with recommendation algorithms if it was truly anonymous. The problem is that when you're paying for these streaming services, they have your identity, and most likely also sell your watching preference and habit data to data brokers.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#279

Post by wingworks »

piffey wrote: post #185
bkettle wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering recently whether someone could conceivably start a disk-in-the-mail Netflix again, now that streaming sucks so much and every publisher seems to want their own streaming service. My understanding (possibly wrong, I'm not an expert) is that it's perfectly legal to lend out physical media without any special permission from the publisher under the first-sale doctrine, so it seems like the only way to bu…

Scarecrow Video does this in Seattle. Their library is amazing. https://scarecrowvideo.org/rent-by-mail

We have these guys in NZ, they're amazing. + overnight delivery. https://www.aliceinvideoland.co.nz/

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#280

Post by vizzier »

amgutier wrote: post #227
greazy wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

4k80 was finally released last year as well. Some notes on why it took so long: https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/project-4k80/
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