Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

torrentfreak.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 62 posts

Re: Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

#21

Post by ksk »

bigbubba wrote: post #13

We should let their obsolete business models fail instead of writing new laws in defiance of the reality of digital communication.

They're like any other industry, struggling in an increasingly digital, on-demand world and competing with 'free' YouTube entertainment. There is no quick fix here. Its a supertanker that takes ages to correct course. People need to vote with their eyeballs and ears. Folks need to take some personal hits and avoid popular big-studio content. Its hard, if not impossible to make an amicable deal when only one side has to compromise.

Re: Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

#23

Post by major505 »

qppo wrote: post #3

They pose a threat to the efficacy of region blocking

REgion block sucks. I live and Brazil. I have a few hundred DVDs. I can't watch them, because my main way of watching was my videogame. My ps3 died, and I was planing on using my Xbox one for that. But my Xbox one is an Us made model, so to watch my dvds, I have to rip them using Handbreak.

Re: Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

#24

Post by ajvs »

noodlesUK wrote: post #10

Has anyone actually ever succeeded in streaming anything over tor? It’s usually so slow that ordinary html pages take several seconds. I can’t imagine streaming would work...

https://webtorrent.io is pretty good if you have a decent internet connection

Re: Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

#25

Post by blackbear_ »

Industries that rely on TV are a cancer refusing to die. People here are forced by law to pay more than 200 EUR per year to the national TV broadcaster even when they don't own a TV. The reason? They still receive the signal, thus they could watch TV if they wanted. BS. /rant

Re: Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

#26

Post by marcosdumay »

josephcsible wrote: post #2

Movie industry: we're not going to give a bunch of people any way to pay us for our content. Also movie industry: why are so many people watching our content without paying us for it?

Hum... It's about VPN and TOR, not piracy, so no it's:

Movie Industry: Those criminals are breaking the Law and paying us to watch our content in ways that we really do not want them to!

Re: Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

#27

Post by solatic »

MzHN wrote: post #16

Honest question, why does region locking exist? Usually it's all about money, but what is such a strong incentive that makes it sensible to decline getting money from customers? Laziness? Local laws? Some complicated scheme where it costs more money than it makes?

Basically because of the division between publishers and distributors.

Publishers make deals with different distributors in different countries, and some (many) of these distribution deals are exclusive. For example, Universal signs a deal with a UK channel that includes the exclusive right to distribute in the UK. These exclusivity deals are mutually beneficial - Universal has less deal-signing overhead in dealing with fewer distributors overall, besides the additional exclusivity royalties paid to Universal, and the distributor benefits because exclusivity makes their platform more attractive to end-consumers, who are now forced to deal with that distributor in order to watch that film.

Meanwhile, a streaming distributor (i.e. Hulu) comes to Universal and shows interest in distributing the film as well. Universal tells Hulu, that it'll sign a distribution deal, but this deal must not violate any of the other dozens or hundreds of distribution deals that Universal already signed, so that Universal won't violate its preexisting agreements. Streaming distributors need to figure out exactly which films can be distributed exactly where; for many films from many distributors with non-standard agreements in many regions, this is a non-trivial problem to solve.

Many distributors - like Hulu - make the business decision not to solve it at all. Hence, region locking.

Re: Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

#28

Post by citizenkeen »

majormajor wrote: post #19
ravenstine wrote: post #8

Well hey, that's what happens when you turn streaming into cable . I had Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu subscriptions last year. Today, I have none of those, except for one or two video purchases I made on Amazon. Now I'm supposed to have Disney+, CBS All Access, HBO Max, Peacock, etc., and that list will probably grow. And we're at a low point in what we consider entertainment. It's bread and circuses up the wazoo. And n…

"A la carte" was proposed for a long time as "here's what's wrong with cable" and overall it's definitely better now. I pay less for a few services, and can switch them in and out, than I did for cable. But people got unrealistic expectations of total price from the first few years of Netflix and Hulu prices + library. That stuff was always gonna get more expensive as the market moved to streaming.

Thank you! I've been saying this for years.

I will admit that the request for a la carte assumed channel theming along the lines of cable, which isn't materializing in streaming. If I want just high quality sci-fi, which streaming service do I subscribe to? If I want feel good family movies? Etc.

But it was always going to be a dozen streaming services. Anybody who thought otherwise was either delusional or didn't understand how money worked.

Re: Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

#29

Post by qz2 »

ravenstine wrote: post #8

Well hey, that's what happens when you turn streaming into cable . I had Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu subscriptions last year. Today, I have none of those, except for one or two video purchases I made on Amazon. Now I'm supposed to have Disney+, CBS All Access, HBO Max, Peacock, etc., and that list will probably grow. And we're at a low point in what we consider entertainment. It's bread and circuses up the wazoo. And n…

Comparing it cable is unfair. At least cable worked properly with my television unlike the HDCP infested upgrade nightmare that streaming turned into.

I started just pirating the content I was subscribed to because it was easier. Then they made it harder with all the fragmentation so I stopped paying for it full stop.

Movie industry has to do the leg work to get my attention and that is very fragile. They choose not to so no cash from me.

Re: Movie Industry: VPNs and Tor Pose a Threat to Legitimate Streaming Platforms

#30

Post by dewey »

ajvs wrote: post #24
noodlesUK wrote: post #10

Has anyone actually ever succeeded in streaming anything over tor? It’s usually so slow that ordinary html pages take several seconds. I can’t imagine streaming would work...

https://webtorrent.io is pretty good if you have a decent internet connection

But the question was about Tor, how would torrents solve the low bandwidth problem?
Post reply on HN