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

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

#241

Post by ddingus » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:35 PM UTC

vlunkr wrote: post #55

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…

Exactly, this has happened before, the entertainment industry needs to learn their lesson. Remember when Napster was huge and the music industry was in a big panic for a few years? They finally got it shut down, but by the time they did there were several alternatives out there. The thing that finally made a difference was iTunes downloads. It was a reasonable alternative to piracy and people appreciated that. Instea…

Oh, there is a much bigger lesson there.

Not only did they generate very serious incentive to create alternatives, but each one was an escalation of forces!

At the time Napster was running high, something like 40 plus million users were on the thing. Might have been more.

And this is in the dawn of broadband too! Nothing was as huge as Napster was, and it was spreading like wildfire too.

At one point, blanket licensing was discussed. Something like 2+ Billion annually, to be sourced by monthly subscriptions.

Add up that money from that time, and all the pain, etc... through today, and that's one hell of an opportunity cost, and for what?

Only to center in on streaming today? Yeah, that's working, but what did it cost to get there?

Had they taken that deal, much would be different today, and they would have a centeralized source for marketing, huge mindshare, and who knows what else?

iTunes was born out of the basic realizations you mention.

Nobody talks about the cost of actually getting there though.

Similar costs are happening right now for video. Painful.

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

#242

Post by ddingus » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:40 PM UTC

dorian-graph wrote: post #157

NovaS1X wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say this, more or less. Maybe when streaming services offer what I want to watch in better than current quality I'll consider stopping. Until then I'll be using Canadian Netflix for 10% of my viewing and other methods for the other 90% that I can't pay for because I happen to not live in the US. Copyright laws are killing the industry.

This question is for you and everyone else: why don't you simply not watch something if it's not legally available? It seems like almost all pro-piracy people act and talk as if there's some unwritten and unspoken right and need to consume all media.

There is more media produced than people CAN consume for one.

There is extreme pressure to consume for two.

For a ton of people, money is a problem, entertainment budgets are modest, and they lack options.

Those things said, yeah! I just don't consume much anymore. I could be coding, learning, talking (as I am right now), and doing any number of other things besides watching stories.

In fact, this is why I love audio. I can do lots of stuff and still be entertained, and for some drama type programs, will just listen to them rather than watch the video.

Truth is, the video content producers really don't want to start down this road, and are aggressive about it. For them, having this discussion is nothing but a loss as they then compete with people doing something else.

And nobody wants to talk about that very much, do they? Funny, how having rampant piracy keeps this stuff far more relevant than it would be other wise.

In that perfect, no piracy world, a whole lot more people would care a whole lot less about buying movies.

I made that commitment in the mid '00's. Just stopped. I rarely infringe, and the product of that and my entertainment budget means I really do consume a lot less, and I buy a lot less now.

It's hard to commit three hours to passive entertainment. So many other things to do.

Highly recommended BTW. But you won't see the content industry advocating that. They know better.

And that right there is a huge value proposition associated with piracy that is a really hard discussion.

Relevance and mindshare. They need both to maximize revenue. Being relevant is hard. Giving it away to improve relevance? Totally justified, and up thread I mentioned AMC and "Halt and catch fire" and how it's there for the taking.

I watched that one. They gave it to me, and I talked it up to a bunch of people, some who paid, some who pirated, some who watched on cable, etc...

If too many of us tune out, or really do consume according to their pricing, they are going to find out the pricing really isn't aligned with consumption and or ability / desire to consume.

Better to have massive consumption and focus on improving revenue, I suspect.

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

#243

Post by ohitsdom » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

ohitsdom wrote: post #216

camgunz wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah I mean, I'm not gonna write a dissertation on HN. I like to think the future is more Star Trek (do whatever you want, free food/shelter/awesomeness) than Star Wars (pretty much what we have now with some new toys and psychic powers). But I disagree that "there will need to be industry and incentive to create the income in the first place". I think people largely just do stuff because either they're coerced,…

I did immediately think "Star Wars" when I read your original comment. This is very off topic, but something I've been thinking about lately. Will basic needs ever be taken care of for everyone, so we can work on whatever we want? I get that economic incentive is the "cornerstone of modern society", but what about the society of the future? It's hard to imagine, but then again I also have a hard time imagining only 1…

Excuse me- Star Trek.

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

#244

Post by ddingus » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #145

kamaal wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>people are not going to pay for what they can always get at better quality for $0 This is precisely why I think Apple won't last much long in the mobile/watch battle. Android is like the Windows of the 90's and early 2000's. Available for free, with hardware largely being a commodity, and all Google caring about the traffic and market penetration. Apple will have to growingly fight to push their products into the m…

> Available for free Windows wasn't ever free (until very recently, and even that isn't exactly the whole story). A big reason for the sheer quantity of bloatware on Windows PCs even nowadays is because that bloatware subsidizes the cost of Windows. I know (and agree with) what you're getting at (that inexpensive commodity products dominate more easily than expensive niche products in a given industry), but comparing…

yes it was

One had to infringe to get it, but it was totally easy to get it for free.

Notice the improved licensing really didn't happen, until saturation did?

Being lax on licensing meant running Windows was possible for everybody, and that bought a lot of share.

If we were to return to that early era, and Windows had the licensing it does today, or even something potent, what do you think would have happened?

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

#245

Post by ddingus » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

xnull6guest wrote: post #92

madez wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to access any website to use Popcorn Time.

Is the idea that the program has a means to search, verify and download torrent files outside of centralized magnet/torrent websites? I did not get this from the article.

I think you should try Popcorn Time. You know, for research purposes. ;)

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

#246

Post by jameshart » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 2:59 PM UTC

ddingus wrote: post #238

jameshart wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest actors can't compete with people who ignore the law though - you acknowledge yourself that the competition here is unfair. Yes, by ignoring copyright and not compensating content creators at all, you can create a service that offers vast amounts of content for free. A legitimate business can't do that. Saying 'well, sorry, the market has spoken and the price they are willing to pay for your content is $0' is j…

They can. There are a few use cases here: 1. Massive pirate. Won't pay for anything. If we made it a perfect world, they would just mooch off other people in the extreme, never paying for anything. They won't be customers. Ever. But they do talk about stuff, make recommendations, etc... So they can be leveraged in that way. Show them an AD, or have them do some other minor league thing of value, and trade on that for…

Casual pirates and cord cutters aren't the same. At all. I don't get how you can erase the moral line between freeloading and just not being a customer.

Car rental companies don't look at people who just break into cars and steal them and think 'hey look - setting aside the hardcore boosting crews, and focusing on just casual car thieves, there's clearly a market for people who just want the convenience of taking any car they walk past for free! We need to compete with that on convenience and price!'

There's simply no excuse for being a casual pirate. I'm sorry, but it's just not right or fair to access the work of a content owner through a channel they don't endorse. Just because they haven't figured out a way to give you access on terms they agree to doesn't give you the right to take access on your terms.

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

#247

Post by ddingus » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:00 PM UTC

Crito wrote: post #29

mahouse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What better boycott than to pirate it?

I wonder if studios cite piracy numbers when negotiating product placement rates. If movie piracy became particularly common (I do not believe that it currently is, despite what the MPAA claims), I bet they would. Increased product placement to offset revenue lost in ticket sales.

A better framing would be product placement to better leverage infringing uses.

Not every download / view is a lost sale. In fact, the more we look at this, the more we find the majority of them are not lost sales. There aren't enough entertainment dollars out there to fund it all.

But they like the views. Who doesn't?

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

#248

Post by ddingus » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:09 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #246

ddingus wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can. There are a few use cases here: 1. Massive pirate. Won't pay for anything. If we made it a perfect world, they would just mooch off other people in the extreme, never paying for anything. They won't be customers. Ever. But they do talk about stuff, make recommendations, etc... So they can be leveraged in that way. Show them an AD, or have them do some other minor league thing of value, and trade on that for…

Casual pirates and cord cutters aren't the same. At all. I don't get how you can erase the moral line between freeloading and just not being a customer. Car rental companies don't look at people who just break into cars and steal them and think 'hey look - setting aside the hardcore boosting crews, and focusing on just casual car thieves, there's clearly a market for people who just want the convenience of taking any…

No, they aren't the same. But they are similar in that a lot of members of both will pay.

I lumped them in to the same bucket to highlight how mindshare can translate into value other than direct pay per view.

As for there being no excuse?

Sure there is. It's possible to do.

End game is really simple:

a. We make it a perfect, closed, trusted computing only world. That's draconian, and very likely not possible.

Suddenly, mindshare goes way down. People only get what they can actually pay for. What do you think happens with pricing, etc...?

b. We recognize that it's possible to do.

Mindshare stays high, and people compete for revenue, and or ways to leverage mindshare for value / revenue.

I'm in the latter camp, and am not judging people one way or the other, instead focused on getting the maximum value out of the activity and mindshare.

And here is the hard truth. They don't like infringing. Who does? But they absolutely do like the massive mindshare their work got them. So it's one or the other.

In the perfect world, getting mindshare might involve what? Say giving it away? Maybe allowing people to share it?

Interesting, isn't it?

Simple as that.

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

#249

Post by ddingus » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:19 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #246

ddingus wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can. There are a few use cases here: 1. Massive pirate. Won't pay for anything. If we made it a perfect world, they would just mooch off other people in the extreme, never paying for anything. They won't be customers. Ever. But they do talk about stuff, make recommendations, etc... So they can be leveraged in that way. Show them an AD, or have them do some other minor league thing of value, and trade on that for…

Casual pirates and cord cutters aren't the same. At all. I don't get how you can erase the moral line between freeloading and just not being a customer. Car rental companies don't look at people who just break into cars and steal them and think 'hey look - setting aside the hardcore boosting crews, and focusing on just casual car thieves, there's clearly a market for people who just want the convenience of taking any…

Secondly... your analogy to theft is part of the problem.

Up thread, I wrote this. It's infringing. It's not actually theft.

Theft based advocacy is understandable, but not inclusive enough for a productive discussion.

And in that is the moral line being blurred quite nicely.

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

#250

Post by tomjen3 » Tue, Apr 28, 2015, 3:19 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #178

tomjen3 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much is the Frozen franchise worth in terms of merchandise? Much more than the tickets, no doubt. For the normal movies, perhaps move to a prepay model.

Good grief you guys. How many films do you think make that kind of money? Billion dollar film franchises happen about as often as billion dollar startups - often enough to be something you might get lucky with, but the odds of that happening for you are staggeringly low. And even then, those films have as much or more spent on advertising as on the production, which is part of why it's such a high-risk business and m…

I was refering to what you call "unfashionable old TV show". Specifically I was hoping somehow to use this model to resurrect firefly...

That said if that model cannot sustain huge movies like we see them today, that may mean we end up with smaller movies.