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Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

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Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#101

Post by dddddaviddddd »

jmcs wrote: post #47
wp381640 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DOJ presser said the site was "larger" than Netflix, Hulu and Amazon combined in terms of available content - some media reports have misreported it as larger by subscriber count

That goes without saying, content providers are shooting themselves in the foot with an atomic shotgun with the current fragmentation and lots of content is not legally available anywhere.

A tragedy of the commons among the content providers -- exclusive content is an edge that they can't resist individually, but damages them collectively.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#102

Post by mannanj »

paule89 wrote: post #5

Its like in the beginning of torrenting. Nobody willing to offer a service for everyone, for a fair price. Everybody gatekeeping selling only their stuff. And if you want everything pay this atrocious sum of money. I tell you this will happen more often and people are willing to pay. But not pay for everything. Good thing they had going. Well it was still illegal, but hey it will happen again i tell you.

One thing that might have happened to me earlier this year is I had a use case come up where I could not access my paid subscription service in the environment where I needed/wanted it most.

The (this is imaginary and made up for legal reasons) use case was I was in a limited network environment, trying to watch game of thrones when I paid for an HBO subscription. The HBO subscription offered my access through the app on my phone, but only streaming it, and with a horribly designed buffering system. It would only buffer a small portion after the current part of the video, so basically, and I could not download it to my phone through their app, so it was impossible to watch game of thrones when I wanted on release date and risk possibly running into spoilers the next day.

I would have had to resort to downloading it illegally over torrent because the subscription systems "say they solve your problems" and offer a completely legal way to watch your episodes, but miss the use cases for the small few of people who want to watch in limited internet situations. I am not a common user, I am power user, and I have not just had this type of situation happen once.

So my question now is, why even pay for the subscription service when it doesn't work when I need it most?

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#103

Post by kleer001 »

No doubt they weren't cryptography and security nerds. I wonder how a team with great operational security would have done.

I bet that it's possible with a dedicated team with good clean opsec and intelligently placed servers it'd be possible to fly under the radar for decades.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#104

Post by umvi »

behringer wrote: post #88
umvi wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the point. Valve turned a huge profit on Portal 2. Yet they refuse to make Portal 3. Why? Because compared to Steam, Portal 2 generates a tiny ROI by comparison. Option A: invest $1 in Steam and get $10 back Option B: invest $1 in Portal 3 and get $2 back which do you do? Same goes for movie industry. A movie promises returns for decades as it is milked and re-released in various formats. If the movie can…

May I offer an alternative reason why Valve did not make Portal 3? It's because when you rehash the same game, people get sick of it. Sometimes a product needs to stand on it's own. Why harm the Portal franchise by being to quick to release, release, release? Seems like hollywood is already on board with this. What do they need Ghostbusters to have a 100 year copyright on when they could just release a new Ghostbuste…

If you don't plan on making Portal 3, don't tease Portal 3 with easter eggs like the Borealis.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#105

Post by criddell »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #97
criddell wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think being not available through legal means should be a defense (something like fair-use) for any copyright infringement claim.

Unfortunately this either makes law or the notion of private property meaningless.

Do the existing fair use defenses also make those concepts meaningless?

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#106

Post by Pigo »

lghh wrote: post #82
Pigo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mind is blown that these sites were actually getting paid subscribers. I thought the beauty of piracy is the whole "not paying for it" thing. I refuse to pay for more than one subscription service, I'm not going to end up paying more than I did for cable tv. Hulu still wins for me because it has the live/local tv, and I'm not giving Disney anymore money.

Disney owns Hulu [1] :(. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/media/disney-buys-comcast-hul...

Oh that sucks, thanks for the heads up. I wonder if this means Hulu will be getting phased out? I'm definitely not in love with it, it has some really awful original programming, but it gets the Orville and King of the Hill.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#107

Post by thomasahle »

jedimastert wrote: post #72
zaroth wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article has been updated to reflect that they had more content not more subscribers. > “Polo pitched his service to potential clients by pointing out that it offered more content than competing legal services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime.” Total revenue was less than a couple million dollars.

> Total revenue was less than a couple million dollars. I think you mean that the revenue of a 2 guy company was over a million dollars.

> > Total revenue was less than a couple million dollars.

> I think you mean that the revenue of a 2 guy company was _over a million dollars_.

No. It is meant as a comparison with Netflix which has a revenue of 15.79 billion dollars.

"They have more content, but make less money," works, but "they have more content, but make _over a million dollars_," doesn't work as well.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#108

Post by behringer »

umvi wrote: post #104
behringer wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I offer an alternative reason why Valve did not make Portal 3? It's because when you rehash the same game, people get sick of it. Sometimes a product needs to stand on it's own. Why harm the Portal franchise by being to quick to release, release, release? Seems like hollywood is already on board with this. What do they need Ghostbusters to have a 100 year copyright on when they could just release a new Ghostbuste…

If you don't plan on making Portal 3, don't tease Portal 3 with easter eggs like the Borealis.

Like I made mention before, just because they don't want to release it now doesn't mean they won't want to do another one in 20-30 years after technologies and ideas have had enough time to mature to put a new twist on things.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#109

Post by blacksmith_tb »

thayne wrote: post #71
PeterStuer wrote: post #36

Services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video would be a lot more successful if only their catalogs in regions outside of the US would be comparable to their home turf. If US clients would have the tiny tiny catalogs they offer e.g. in most of Europe, you would also be scratching your head how this could ever justify the subscription cost.

I know it isn't quite as bad, but in the US, many European (or other foreign) are practically impossible to watch legally. Streaming services don't stream them, and dvds and blu rays are region-locked.

Your local public library system may provide you with access to Kanopy[1] which has a good catalog of European films, along with other interesting titles not found on the paid services.

1: https://www.kanopy.com/

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#110

Post by colejohnson66 »

vkou wrote: post #100
colejohnson66 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you’re “stealing” from?

You want to give them the power to subpoena, the power to issue search warrants, and while we're at it, the power of pit and gallows? Or are you trying to make copyright of consumer media unenforcible? This isn't Billy downloading a movie. (Which is not a criminal offense.) This is two chaps running what is essentially a counterfitting ring. This is a problem for police to solve, not a civil issue.

Did I say any of that? No. I said they should sue them themselves. Use the discovery process like anyone else can.
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