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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

#281
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.

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

DVDs are 480i, the parent comment described far higher quality than DVD.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, although I guess this is sort of understandable. It's the "you're paying us, but here are some ads" that really gets me. Either way, 5 bucks a month to Emby, a really easy to get membership to a large private torrent site, and a 16TB hard drive solves these problems for me, and will continue to.

Thanks for the tips! Could you explain how can one get about "getting a membership to a large private torrent site"? Also, why Emby rather than, say, Jellyfin or Plex?

I was a Plex user, but gave up on it when it started to suck. This was years ago. Emby was the other option at the time and I'm a big fan of it. I've never tried jellyfin. If you want to, email me and I can get you an invite.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#283
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were never any good moral arguments against digital 'piracy' to begin with.

[flagged]

Your inability to provide a single example, which would immediately disprove my point, is the evidence.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At some point I'm willing to just pay a few dollars for a movie. But even then you cant get them all in one place! And they like to charge a premium for some. Im not paying a premium for anything I've already seen a while back.

The particular service that has the movie may not last or they may lose access to the movie. With a streaming service you aren't "buying" much.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#285
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#286

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.

This is a good point. Stealing is a crime only for end users and not for companies. Why should end users feel any shame violating the DMCA when the government itself says it’s ok for companies to not honor it

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And it has only gotten worse since then. A copyright for a decade or two is completely reasonable, but "life of author, plus 70 years" benefits only large companies. Someone is violating your rights? Good luck suing them if you are an indie creator! Want to create a parody, which is totally legal? Sorry, you can't upload it anywhere - all the hosting companies decided to apply Copyright 2.0 instead!

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#288
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You think pirating videos will raise your electric bill by $25 / month?

Storage isn't free. running a 50 Watt anything 24/7 costs like 10 Dollars a month in Europe already if you don't want to be an anti-social leacher or want the convenience of an netflix-like media server.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#289
There are a couple different streaming services that I subscribe to for different reasons but it gets harder to keep doing it.

CBC Gem - free public broadcaster, but I want to remove ads

Shudder - $50/year, cheap as chips

Netflix - cheapest way to watch WWE pay-per-views live

Crave - got a year for 50% off on a Black Friday deal. I don't know if I'll renew

TSN - only during hockey and football season

AppleTV - wouldn't subscribe separately, but they throw it in with my Apple One family plan

Honestly my Jellyfin server sees more action than any of them. The biggest reason to pay for streaming is live events, which I believe is why Netflix is pushing to get more into them. And I've been increasingly annoyed at how many things I want to watch are simply not available at all, or not available without subscribing to yet another service in the hopes they might have it. I'm planning a Sergio Leone spaghetti western binge. The only place I found what I wanted was usenet.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#290

i wish we could go back to a pre-streaming version of netflix. the near-infinite library and lack of algorithmic nudging resulted in an era where i had healthy view habits. reasonable levels of screentime and VERY diverse content. i add so many movies to my queue with the best intentions of watching them someday, but always put them off because something about staring at that endless scroll of options makes me crave…

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…

The pirates version of blockbuster is still alive and well at your local library.
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