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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#191

Post by r00fus »

jedberg wrote: post #120
distances wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a major issue with streaming services. Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! At least with DVDs you could rip it and add subtitles yourself if needed.

> Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! Sadly, this has nothing to do with streaming and everything to do with rightsholders (aka "Hollywood"). The rights on the subtitles are held by the company that makes them, are then sold to the company that distributes the movie, which are then resold to regional distributors, separately fr…

> Movie industry licensing and asset packaging are stuck in a time

Relevant quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair

Until they see disruption or increased profits, I don't expect they'll change. I expect them to actually be disrupted before seeing it coming.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#192

Post by ArlenBales »

It's still popular for anime. Sites like HorribleSubs or Nyaa make it a breeze to download and watch anime, without having to deal with crappy Flash players of anime streaming sites or having buffering hell because the site is having traffic problems. cough Crunchy Roll cough

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#193

Post by djsumdog »

sotojuan wrote: post #47
blt wrote: post #9

Saving movies to disk doesn't make much sense. The files are huge, and rewatching is not that common. BitTorrent is great for music, sadly we lost what.cd to law enforcement.

Saving movies to disk makes a lot of sense - I like not having to rely on either a big company's services or library nor some sketchy, slow illegal streaming site. Not to mention a vast number of movies are not available for streaming illegally or legally in a convenient way. If I download a movie I know it will always be available and work 100% of the time regardless of internet connection or money. If I delete it a…

I don't use streaming, and it's interesting how when I go to someone else's house, I'll be like "It should be on Netflix" and it's not .. but it was a few years ago.

I recently met up with an old roommate who still keeps a NAS with TV shows and movies and he had tons and tons of stuff on there that you simply can't find anywhere. Lot's of old kids shows for his daughter, old stuff that you could only get on MySpleen.

With everyone moving to streaming and not having the wall of DVDs/BluRays/VHS tapes, we have lost something, but stuff isn't on streaming forever. Things rotate out, and fewer people are actually buying media. Even with eBooks, you're paying for a license to see that media for a limited use.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#194

Post by kodt »

djsumdog wrote: post #178
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix seems to be pretty opinionated about subtitles. Try watching Narcos without subs, you can't. "Off" means the Spanish parts are subbed, and switching it to Spanish means the English parts are subbed! Netflix, a Californian company, simply couldn't fathom that some people might understand English and Spanish.

But that's the same for BluRay and DVDs. It's just a limited use case and probably just difficult to program for.

edit: never-mind I responded to the wrong post

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#195

Post by Semaphor »

djsumdog wrote: post #185
masklinn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PS: Mostly thanks to Bandcamp.com music torrenting is completely dead for me. Seconded. My music search these days is Find interesting band + | v not sure I can Is on bandcamp? +-no-> be arsed to even + check torrents | yes | v buy entire discography on bandcamp

I love bandcamp. It only takes 10% to 15%, unlike Apple/Google/Amazon which take >= 30% from artists. Really I prefer buying CDs at shows. Artists usually get to buy CDs from their own labels for $1 each, where if you buy it on Amazon/iTunes, they have to pay their label back for the recording costs, so they get like $0 until they hit some number (usually a few thousand). So if I buy a CD for $12, they're probably ge…

To be fair, most bands I but from don't have the "problem" of having a label to worry about ;)

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#196

Post by oelmekki »

distances wrote: post #108
jimmies wrote: post #62

I can't read the article because the website is down. But I have something to say about torrenting movies. Late last year, my old parents who don't speak English came to visit me for a couple of months in the US. I'm just a graduate student with a limited budget, and my mom is car sick so we couldn't go out every night. I didn't want them to waste time on Facebook after dinner until we went to bed, so I had to think…

This is a major issue with streaming services. Netflix usually doesn't offer even English subtitles to an English-speaking movie if you're in a non-English speaking country! At least with DVDs you could rip it and add subtitles yourself if needed.

It may depends on the country. I'm in France, and I almost always have english subtitles. On the rare occasions there is no english subtitles, I always have french subtitles. I never had to watch anything without subtitles on netflix (which btw, is one of the clear wins of netflix to me compared to pirate streaming).

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#197

Post by softawre »

remir wrote: post #110

P2P forced the industry to adapt and now we have good streaming services, but the content selection is nowhere as good as what you can find on torrent sites. What the Popcorn Time devs did was simply amazing. It had a Netflix-like interface plus a huge selection of content that you could watch right away. The industry should learn from these guys. Just make your content available, easy to obtain and people will pay f…

Netflix is trying and they are a huge business. If it was easy they would have been disrupted by now.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#198

Post by koonsolo »

I think the main takeway is that people not necessarily want it for free, they just want it convenient.

Why would I buy a game in the store when I can just illegally download it? Why would I pirate games when I can easily get them on Steam? Why would I download a series when I can watch it on Netflix? Why would I try hard to pay for my non-netflix series when I can just download it? Why would I go out and buy a CD when I can just illegally download it. Why would I download MP3's when all is available on Spotify anyway.

From this reasoning, I think the future might hold: why would I open a bank account and do slow wire transfers when I can just use cryptocurrency?

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#199

Post by [deleted] »

pmarreck wrote: post #150
k__ wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly use streaming sites instead of BT these days. Got burned once when my flatmate downloaded family guy and we got "mail" by an attorney of 20th century fox... But yes, I got Netflix and Amazon Prime too. They simply don't have everything in every language.

https://bitport.io/ or a VPN like https://speedify.com/ to get around that

[deleted]

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#200

Post by djsumdog »

rjvir wrote: post #53

This strikes me as an area where distributed apps on a blockchain could have a big impact. Currently, top piracy options like torrent websites and Kodi addons constantly get taken down by the government (through methods described in this article). But what happens if a distributed YouTube exists with every movie in pristine 1080p quality, that lives on a blockchain so the government can't shut it down or issue DMCA t…

You can't really put huge amounts of data on a Blockchain. That being said, I've wanted to start a distributed YouTube project, where every video you watch gets downloaded/cached and then reserved up. People running a browser plugin could stream movies off each other rather than from Google.

This would keep movies alive after take-down requests, but you'd need to ensure the video wasn't poisoned (someone broadcasting they have a video when it's actually something entirely different). You would need to hash the video and store the hash on the blockchain. If Youtube changes the video (removes audio) you'd need to keep multiple versions of that video on the chain and clients would vote to confirm that those hashes were legit for when that version was up.

You'd also want to have some system to let you know if videos you have are no longer on YouTube (incase you want to delete them or if they have illegal content) and videos could still disappear, but only after everyone who has a copy decides to stop hosting them.

It would totally violate YouTube's TOS, but it would be the start to a more robust, distributed and democratic video hosting ecosystem.

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