Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop • Hacker News Board

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#201

Post by lmm » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 10:58 AM UTC

sroerick wrote: post #114

bbcbasic wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being pedantic: CC works still have copyright. Depending on your country I think it may be impossible as a creator of something to give up your copyright. Based on what I have read here on HN before. But CC comes with permissive licensing, which I guess is what you are filtering-in with your boycott.

This is a good point. I guess my issue is creators (or more often, studios and labels) who are using copyright to restrict modern tech. Isn't a CC-0 license the equivalent to a public domain dedication, though?

More or less, yes. But most CC-licensed works are not CC0.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#202

Post by furyg3 » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 10:58 AM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #78

lvs wrote: post #12

There would be less incentive toward this kind of piracy if content producers and distributors could get their collective acts together with more liberal licensing. Popcorn Time is winning because it's easier to use and find content than any pay service. Like anything, you compete by making a better product/service -- not by complaining that your competitors are unfair. Of course, they are certainly unfair here, but…

I call bullshit. Absolute bullshit. If I gave you a credit card that gave you unlimited access to digital content you probably wouldn't be complaining. Certainly not if you live in the US or much of Europe. If you have a $69 AppleTV then iTunes is a spectacular user experience. Search for almost anything you want and hit play. If it didn't cost $5 to rent a movie it's superior to torrents. This is where someone chime…

Selfish greed is also the reason why people buy movies instead of donating their money to charity or using that time to plant a tree. People want stuff, and they want it to be a) good and b) cheap. And you're totally dismissing the first category.

You exclude a whole lot of use cases to make your point. It's a disaster for Europeans to do many of the same things. Netflix and Apple have different libraries depending on where you are. Many people don't have credit cards and these services often don't link up with foreign banks. I'm in the train every day and there are always many people within eyesight watching movies (I don't know how they get their content, but it's not Netflix).

A lot of people in Holland pay for Spotify. A lot pay for Netflix. A WHOLE lot pay for cable television. And yet many of these people still use Popcorn Time or torrent. Why? Clearly they're willing to pay for stuff. Netflix is cheap but cable television is not... so they're even will to pay quite a lot for content!

It's sad that content providers have to compete with free, but the genie's out of the bottle. And it's partially the fault of the content provider's not being able to compete on other areas (quality, convenience).

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#203

Post by hueving » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 11:00 AM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #158

yellowapple wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or because your opinion that iTunes is "easy to use" and "extremely high quality" is just that - an opinion - and is not an opinion which is universally shared among all people or even a significant majority of them (myself included). Now, with that said, between Amazon Prime and Netflix I haven't found many reasons to pirate things, but right now that involves jumping back and forth between two different marketplace…

High quality isn't really an opinion. Their encoding is fantastic. Better than blu-ray re-encodes which were the primary torrent source just a few years ago. They're encoding off raw source so it's exceptionally good. Easy to use is pretty factual in a relative sense. A mere 15 years ago you had to drive out to store to rent a disc and then take it back. Those asshole rental stores made all their money through exorbi…

>It's literally never been easier in the history of time to legally acquire content.

So? It's never been easier to 'illegally' acquire it as well.

It's interesting that you're happy to call users selfish twats but you don't seem to bat an eye at the exorbitant prices on iTunes to rent things. Why is it that redbox is like 1/4th of the price and that involves a physical disc?

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#204

Post by lmm » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 11:04 AM UTC

forrestthewoods wrote: post #78

lvs wrote: post #12

There would be less incentive toward this kind of piracy if content producers and distributors could get their collective acts together with more liberal licensing. Popcorn Time is winning because it's easier to use and find content than any pay service. Like anything, you compete by making a better product/service -- not by complaining that your competitors are unfair. Of course, they are certainly unfair here, but…

I call bullshit. Absolute bullshit. If I gave you a credit card that gave you unlimited access to digital content you probably wouldn't be complaining. Certainly not if you live in the US or much of Europe. If you have a $69 AppleTV then iTunes is a spectacular user experience. Search for almost anything you want and hit play. If it didn't cost $5 to rent a movie it's superior to torrents. This is where someone chime…

Sample size 1, but: I don't pirate music, I don't pirate ebooks, I do pirate videos. It's not like I can't find music/ebooks (and indeed I do pirate books that aren't available for Kindle), it's simply that the paid UX is great: I can find anything I want on Amazon, pay for it easily, have it easily on my (non-Apple) computer and phone, and play/read offline.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#205

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 11:06 AM UTC

MichaelGG wrote: post #134

rhino369 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why are so many Steam games pirated? I'm not doubting that service can be a cause. But I think it's crazy to pretend getting something for nothing isn't a good motivation.

I'd play a pirated version of a game before using the Steam version. Steam implements DRM and is generally obnoxious, trying to force itself all over games (popups), showing sdverts, etc. It just shows how terrible things are in game-buying-land. Look at the Xbox 360. A marketplace UI so laggy, you wonder how they technically able to make it that slow.

I'm surprised. Steam has been quite successful because for most people the intrusion is acceptable, the portability/redownloadability useful, the social side works acceptably, and they regularly offer big discounts.

It never ceases to amaze me how slow the steam store browser is, though.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#206

Post by pjc50 » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 11:07 AM UTC

lvs wrote: post #12

There would be less incentive toward this kind of piracy if content producers and distributors could get their collective acts together with more liberal licensing. Popcorn Time is winning because it's easier to use and find content than any pay service. Like anything, you compete by making a better product/service -- not by complaining that your competitors are unfair. Of course, they are certainly unfair here, but…

This is a slight tangent to the usual piracy discussion, but I seem to be the last person watching (well, recording) broadcast TV and I'm at the point where I have far more recorded than I'm able to watch. I'd need to make a serious commitment to watching 3+ hours of TV every night for months just to clear the backlog.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#207

Post by bloat » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 11:16 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #206

lvs wrote: post #12

There would be less incentive toward this kind of piracy if content producers and distributors could get their collective acts together with more liberal licensing. Popcorn Time is winning because it's easier to use and find content than any pay service. Like anything, you compete by making a better product/service -- not by complaining that your competitors are unfair. Of course, they are certainly unfair here, but…

This is a slight tangent to the usual piracy discussion, but I seem to be the last person watching (well, recording) broadcast TV and I'm at the point where I have far more recorded than I'm able to watch. I'd need to make a serious commitment to watching 3+ hours of TV every night for months just to clear the backlog.

I'm with you. I don't have time to watch anything else. I have a PVR connected to a satellite dish with only free to air channels. I tape more movies than I can ever get around to watching - all you have to do is wait and everything appears. A new free channel just started showing Breaking Bad a couple of weeks ago. I didn't have to search any torrent site for it, I was just patient.

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#208

Post by sbarre » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 11:18 AM UTC

smoe wrote: post #192

nlawalker wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's easy to say when the products you sell aren't as easy to pirate as movies and music. Let's say a content provider created the perfect media service, exactly to your specifications - super easy, DRM free, etc. etc. Done and done; the service issue is gone. Tomorrow, you want a new movie. On one hand, you have Provider X's new service, and on the other, you have piracy, which gives you pretty much the same conte…

I would say its both, a value and a service issue. I used to pirate a lot of music, but nowadays i rarely do it. Because in my opinion, it's just so much easier to quickly buy them. With only 3 accounts – Bandcamp, Soundcloud and Spotify – I can cover almost all my needs in this regard. This wasn't possible only a few years ago. Compare that to the state of tv series. I wanted to watch some HBO content recently an ty…

Agreed!

There will always be people who will go to any length to pirate content, and there is nothing you can do about them. They are not, and never will be, your customers.

But for others, it is absolutely a service issue, and I am one of those people. I pay monthly for Spotify and I spend money on Bandcamp and iTunes because it's convenient and value-priced.

And it's actually easier than piracy, which is probably more important than the price..

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#209

Post by Ntrails » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 11:18 AM UTC

rbritton wrote: post #54

natdempk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true to the point where you can barely believe services release the products they do. The experience on Popcorn Time vs HBO GO isn't even comparable. HBO GO serves their content through a laggy flash player that you can't even force to play HD. Why would anyone watch non-HD content in a terrible browser player that wastes additional battery when they can open Popcorn Time in the time that it takes for the HBO…

I feel the same applies to physical media releases too. Trying to watch a DVD is an absolutely miserable experience with menus and restricted actions. It's for this reason that I have the majority of the content I own ripped and stored in an iTunes library where I can access it quickly from my Apple TV.

And ripping is actually more effort (in my limited experience) than just torrenting the damned thing even if you own the physical DVD.

It's magic

Re: Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

#210

Post by sbarre » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 11:24 AM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #108

giancarlostoro wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of what Gabe Newell said about piracy: It's not a pricing issue, but a service issue.

Then why are so many Steam games pirated? I'm not doubting that service can be a cause. But I think it's crazy to pretend getting something for nothing isn't a good motivation.

There will always be people who will pirate no matter what. You can't do anything about that, and they will never be your customers. And for games, the percentage of the audience is probably higher than elsewhere because it is a mostly young and tech-savvy audience.

But the explosion of indie and smaller games on Steam should be evidence that their platform works, and that it makes economic sense to distribute digitally in that fashion because there are tons of us who want it, even with the ongoing piracy (that has been around since floppy disks and will never go away).

My Steam library has over 100 titles in it. I mostly buy during sales and via Humble Bundles mostly, but I also occasionally buy full-priced launch games that I really want to play. I can't remember the last time I bought a boxed game for PC.. Probably 2006? And before Steam I bought maybe 4-5 games per year? The service absolutely works.

One last thing: games piracy also has the added layer of protection cracking, which is pretty much a social contest in itself that incentivizes the activity (and leads to distribution as a measure of recognition etc).