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Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

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Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#191

Post by Feritiuuu »

300bps wrote: post #132
philistine wrote: post #103

What you’re describing is data hoarding. I pirate a ton too, but you know what I do with a movie or TV show after I’ve watched it? I delete it. Poof, gone. But it’s still in the most important dataset I have. My memory. To help with the metadata of my own memory, I write down a list of the films I’ve seen. I only keep the movies I really love and want to rewatch (Robocop). That TV show I just finished that was great…

I rewatch things all the time. If I’m doing side work at night and just want something on the background I’ll put on a movie or show that I’ve seen before. Beyond that, hard drives are cheap! I have a single 18 TB disk in my main computer that runs Plex. It lets me and my kids watch content from anywhere with an Internet connection. 18 TB hard drives are about $300.

After 4tb dlof data I started to get weirded out by running too big disks.

Resilvering might take ages. So long that raid2 might be mandatory.

I haven't calculated the right risk factor but I still only use 4tb disks

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#192

Post by Freeboots »

philistine wrote: post #103

What you’re describing is data hoarding. I pirate a ton too, but you know what I do with a movie or TV show after I’ve watched it? I delete it. Poof, gone. But it’s still in the most important dataset I have. My memory. To help with the metadata of my own memory, I write down a list of the films I’ve seen. I only keep the movies I really love and want to rewatch (Robocop). That TV show I just finished that was great…

Same. I keep the previous episode of a show until i get the next, to remind me what shows im watching and where im up to, but typically dont hang onto anything. These days the cost of downloading something again is less than the cost of hanging onto it just in case i maybe want to rewatch (usually years later).

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#193

Post by pirate-Loo6uoDu »

idkyall wrote: post #181
pirate-Loo6uoDu wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That server does a lot of other stuff. Controls zigbee devices, runs a small intranet search, handles internet archiving workloads... The hard drives are the main power cost though.

How many drives do you have in your server? Or do you just have very high power costs? I thought drives consume ~7-9w unless they're very high RPM. Maybe consider upgrading to a few high density drives? Hard drive costs have corrected recently after the Chia craze last year.

My estimate is that it's idling at ~250w. I'm admittedly fudging the details a bit, right now archive-team-warrior is using a lot of CPU because it's archiving telegram, and that's pushing the number up.

Calculating it again the actual number is a bit lower than that, and it wasn't in US dollars.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#194

Post by NikolaNovak »

gaspard234 wrote: post #178
NikolaNovak wrote: post #139

I've quit pirating content a decade ago - combination of time, safety, priorities, and availability of legit content. I've considered getting back into it occasionally. Why: Convenience and access. From having everything on Netflix a decade ago, to now having almost as many subscriptions as I used to have cable channels, it's a pain (let alone a cost) to install dozen apps on my phone tablet TV roku etc. Their qualit…

My NAS has a torrent downloading software and an app for my Samsung TV. I just visit my local network web address, add the torrent in the NAS dashboard, and am able to play it from the TV within a few minutes. Most content is great, occasionally there are audio issues or missing subtitles.

Right, but there are I think a few assumptions there:

1. You need to set up NAS and downloading software - that is not as trivial or common as HN audience assumes :)

2. You need a reliable and safe source of torrents. They may be paid or invite only, or may be super scammy and unrealiable and mine crypto etc etc

3. How safe do you feel in your jurisdiction/location at running plain torrents. Here you get notices and sometimes strikes / actions pretty quickly, so now we are talking at least a VPN, which is next layer of setup, configuration, possibly price, possibly its own threat vector as commercial VPNs are scammy, your own VPN is non-trivial to setup correctly.

etc etc etc :)

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#195

Post by lowercased »

irrational wrote: post #108
BatteryMountain wrote: post #9

Piracy and data-hoarding are two different hobbies. One cost next to nothing, the cost of the other one you are quite familiar with.. Jokes aside, would you consider deleting your entire collection and then also cancel subscriptions and possibly give away or sell any tech equipment you do not use for work? And then find something else to do with the newly-freed time? Can you do it for 6 or 12 months? If not, why not?…

Hoarding does seem to be the issue. We aren’t on dial up connections anymore. I can grab a movie torrent and it will download within a minute or so.

Much of what we grab via torrent often takes a long time - generally slightly obscure stuff, so we 'hoard' a bit. No more than maybe high single digit terabytes, but... we can't always get some of this (older shows/movies, foreign stuff, etc).

The upside is that we have a lot to share with folks (mostly family) who've not necessarily seen this stuff (and can't typically find it on services in our area).

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#196

Post by kgwxd »

fxtentacle wrote: post #115
hotpotamus wrote: post #25

Welcome to Hacker News where everyone makes $500k/year and nobody pays for content. Or at least it feels that way sometimes. I don't make that much money but I also don't pay for content.

I buy all my stuff on iTunes. But that alone won't allow me to put a 4K HDR movie on a USB stick to watch it offline on my TV. In my opinion, the most practical solution is to buy things (for the ethics) and then crack the DRM anyway (for usability).

Rewarding consumer-hostile business models and middle-men that only add negative value to the products they're selling is, in my opinion, unethical.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#197

Post by brk »

pmoriarty wrote: post #127
brk wrote: post #96

I'm guessing you may be a bit older than the average demographic here, from a time when owning movies was expensive and thus the content was implied as being very exclusive and valuable. In others, I have seen this lead to the digital hoarding tendencies, wanting to keep all that content on hand. Though I am from the same era, I don't generally find many movies or TV series that I really want to watch more than once.…

"I don't generally find many movies or TV series that I really want to watch more than once. I have no desire to keep a large library of movies, they have almost zero value after the first watch" I used to almost never rewatch movies, but I have kept track of what my favorite movies were, and when I've made friends with someone who was interested in seeing some of the movies that I liked then I'd find myself rewatchi…

Sure, there are some movies we like to re-watch, but my point is that they all fit in a relatively small amount of space, a portable SSD for example. My costs to keep them available are almost nil. Much different than storing a local copy of all content we've ever viewed just because we technically can.

Also, a lot of content is online for long periods of time, if you downloaded it once, you can probably download it again. Free online storage basically ;)

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#198

Post by pbhjpbhj »

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #102
Hamuko wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you can't even buy (or rent) the content because of georestrictions. At least I often encounter TV shows and movies that are available in some US streaming service, but are not available in our version of the same service, or the entire service is not available.

You can purchase abroad and ship to your country. Amazon for example has country local stuff. Use the .xy for whichever country you want to search in (.com for US, .de for Germany, etc) and see if they have what you want. They may also ship to you internationally.

If Amazon.differentcc sells something that Amazon.yourcc doesn't why wouldn't Amazon the global org set you up with an international sale. Surely that would make them lots of €¥$£ more?

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#199

Post by bedast »

oceanplexian wrote: post #101
bedast wrote: post #79

I think there should be a distinction between data hoarding and piracy. One can consume pirated content without keeping it around, effectively looking a bit like just paying for a streaming service, since that's effectively what you get. One could also buy blurays and rip them, keeping the result around, and having the same cost to "hoard" that content on top of paying for the content itself. For a while, I was in th…

It's not only onerous, but streaming services just suck. It's all hot garbage in AV1 or VP9 at a 10Mbps bitrate, which looks like crap. I know because I worked in this industry, how management would literally wet themselves over a slightly more efficient codec, so that they could dial down bitrates further while distracting people from terrible video compression artifacts. They also have problems keeping their servic…

There is actually an argument to be made for trying to deliver high quality content at the lowest acceptable bitrates. First, most people won't know the difference (ie: my parents), and second it seems like high speed internet is still the exception in many places.

In my old apartment, if I were to try to stream something 10mbit, I'd be hurting anything else trying to use my internet connection. I spent about a year trying to get office staff to work with the ISP they had an exclusive agreement with, and the end result was apartment staff didn't want to put in the effort and expense to upgrade the building. When I moved out, I made sure to move to a house with access to gigabit internet, and it was amazingly difficult to get. I don't live in a podunk town. I live in a major metropolitan area.

Poor quality was one of the reasons I, myself, opted to buy and rip. I paid for the lifetime Plex long ago and used that until Plex got too annoying and started requiring internet to function. I still keep a Jellyfin service up for content that I want but can't get streaming.

Re: Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content

#200

Post by liotier »

gkop wrote: post #169
philistine wrote: post #103

What you’re describing is data hoarding. I pirate a ton too, but you know what I do with a movie or TV show after I’ve watched it? I delete it. Poof, gone. But it’s still in the most important dataset I have. My memory. To help with the metadata of my own memory, I write down a list of the films I’ve seen. I only keep the movies I really love and want to rewatch (Robocop). That TV show I just finished that was great…

The data is currency though, in the pirate economy.

Sharing content you enjoy feels good - piracy reinforce social bonds !
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