Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games • Hacker News Board

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#281

Post by lzol » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 12:48 PM UTC

dlkf wrote: post #269

csa wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I think it's as least as likely that they are maximizing profits the way we'd expect a rational business operator to do I think you grossly overestimate the ability of most large businesses to behave rationally form an organizational profit maximization perspective. It would just as likely or even more likely be something like personal wealth maximization by an employee or group of employees, personal relations…

> It would just as likely or even more likely be something like personal wealth maximization by an employee or group of employees, personal relationship improvement, ego gratification, maintaining/improving social standing, effort minimization, etc. Do you have any evidence for this? > I think you grossly overestimate the ability of most large businesses to behave rationally form an organizational profit maximization…

People and businesses don't behave rationally. They behave with bounded rationality [0]. That is, they make the most rational decisions with information available to them. No one is working with perfect information. This leaves plenty of room for them to leave money on the table.

With that said, I have no guarantee that these companies are leaving money on the table. We also have no guarantee that they aren't. The best you are going to be able to do is create a model. Models are not reality. Models use assumptions. You're making two huge assumptions. One, that the models assumptions are correct. Two, the people interpreting the model are doing it correctly. Humans are imperfect, we make imperfect models, those models are interpreted by other imperfect humans. Making concrete statements either way is silly in my opinion.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bounded_rationality

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#282

Post by CaptainZapp » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 12:57 PM UTC

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #181

kelnos wrote: post #119

This has the same solution as any other story around copyright infringement. If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means. I'm not saying these bars are correct to resort to illegal streaming, but a wise businessperson would see this as a signal that their product…

>If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means. I think the problem with your statement is "for a price they find reasonable." Because the price some find reasonable is much lower than others (the very reason why demand curves are downward sloping is they there are…

Since La Liga can't price discriminate easily

Sports broadcasts are massively price discriminated, however, which is probably the whole point of this bruhaha.

Pubs in the UK, for example, pay a much higher fee (something like 15'000£ a year[1]) than households (which I believe is in the 50Quid range a month) for the right to publicly broadcast the games.

It's probably such shenanigans (using a home subscription to show in the pub) that they're trying to fight. Not that I agree with the methods, mind you.

This, btw, explains why you see a beer glass in the corner of sports broadcasts in English pubs[2]. At least the ones that are properly licensed.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechno...

[2] https://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2016/12/13/game-theory-ap...

e: spello

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#283

Post by latexr » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 1:10 PM UTC

dwild wrote: post #280

kelnos wrote: post #119

This has the same solution as any other story around copyright infringement. If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means. I'm not saying these bars are correct to resort to illegal streaming, but a wise businessperson would see this as a signal that their product…

> the overall legal experience good enough that most people wouldn't need to resort to illegality This fail when the content is the product. Sure you can improve the delivery method, but at the end of the day, you got to pay for both content and the delivery method, while the illegal market only has to pay for the delivery method. The VPN market is flourishing, many people pay to get into private torrent trackers and…

> The VPN market is flourishing, many people pay to get into private torrent trackers and rent seedbox to makes sure they can seed as much as they need to stay there.

If there was a legal method which worked as well as the illegal one (including quantity and offline capabilities) and cost the same as the VPN / seedbox, I doubt most would stay with the illegal content.

Many would never switch because they stick with the illegal content for ideological reasons (“information wants to be free”, “I don’t want to give money to The Man”), but those you’ll never get money from either way.

> I believed that argument for far too long, that illegal content would happen less if a good enough service would exist. Netflix happened, it did happen, but then they increased the price just a tiny bit, others subscriptions based content appeared, still freakinly cheap, and more and more people got back to illegal content.

Netflix worked to reduce piracy because you felt they had everything. Now they don’t, and everything is split across several streaming services which you have to pay for individually. For many ex-pirates, it’s gotten to the point where consuming content legally has devolved (again) to be more cumbersome than doing so illegally.

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#284

Post by icebraining » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 1:19 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #120

bhelkey wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should it be legal to create a drive-in that plays movies off of Netflix?

Unpopular opinion, but I would say yes. It doesn’t cost Netflix any more money whether one person or 10 people are watching a particular subscription. I’d say the major appeal of the drive-in is the venue and all the accessories (big screen, sound, etc) - otherwise you’d just pay for Netflix yourself and watch it at home.

> otherwise you’d just pay for Netflix

Yes, that's the point: if not for the drive-in, you'd pay for Netflix.

A more interesting question is: why can't one create that drive-in, as long as only Netflix subscribers can enter? If "it's a license, not a product" like these companies shout, trying to prevent legitimate ownership rights, the license should work anywhere.

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#285

Post by Konnstann » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 1:21 PM UTC

FollowSteph3 wrote: post #279

stornetn wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a wise businessperson would see this as a signal that their product offering doesn't actually match demand, and work to fill that demand This is not necessarily true. It depends entirely on the shape of demand. By way of simplified example, imagine that there are two types of consumers equally distributed: those willing to pay $1000 and those willing to pay $100. Unless you can distinguish at time of payment betwee…

Everyone would be willing to buy a Laptop for $5 but pricing one at $500 doesn’t mean demand isn’t matched or the business model is flawed. It costs more than $5 to make a laptop. This is an extreme case but often I see the argument that it’s ok to pirate because it’s too expensive is a flawed argument. Lots of people want things that are cheaper but it isn’t always possible. That being said some companies abuse this…

The piracy argument is different to stealing because of the simple fact that there is an infinite supply of digital goods. If I steal a laptop, there is a real cost to the supplier, because they have 1 less laptop to sell. If I pirate a piece of software, they only lose out if I would have bought the software had piracy not been an option. "lost sales" are hard to quantify.

Disclaimer: I don't pirate, and I sure as hell don't steal.

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#286

Post by borumpilot » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 1:51 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #45

Tangentially related: there is a cool app called Tunity that "shazams" a muted TV, e.g. at a bar, finds the game and lets you play the audio from your phone - syncing it perfectly to the video picture that you shazamed. So you can sit at a bar or waiting room or somewhere with muted TVs, and listen to the audio of the game.

...when the venue has a hearTV device installed and you are connected to their network... But cool nevertheless.

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#287

Post by corrius » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #94

Sky Sports use a far simpler solution that doesn't violate anyone's privacy. The satellite feed that's licensed for public venues has a small beer glass logo burned in to the image. The amount of beer in the glass changes every day on a pseudorandom basis. An inspector can check whether a pub has the right license simply by looking at the screen - if the glass is missing or contains the wrong amount of beer, it's an…

LaLiga already does this, they display a "B" on the corner and every few minutes a code that can be checked against the subscription, but this doesn't seem to be enough...

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#288

Post by squarefoot » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 3:23 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #119

This has the same solution as any other story around copyright infringement. If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means. I'm not saying these bars are correct to resort to illegal streaming, but a wise businessperson would see this as a signal that their product…

"If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means."

This is absolutely true, but also absolutely incompatible with our current universally accepted way of doing business which is the pursuit of maximum profits with zero consideration on moral issues. They will rather shovel money on clunky inferior but restrictive technologies, plus lawyers, if doing so would allow them to sell the product at a higher price most won't find reasonable, de facto encouraging piracy.

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#289

Post by cruano » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

carlmr wrote: post #260

dorian-graph wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you provide people with easy, convenient, legal methods to consume the content in a way that works for them, for a price they find reasonable, then they overwhelmingly won't resort to illegal means. I've never liked this sort of argument because it makes it sound like people simply have to view this content, by whatever means necessary, like their life depends on (excuse my slight exaggeration). You don't have t…

I'm not watching game of thrones, but I can't quite see the connection here. The argument doesn't really depend on people finding they have to view something. They want to view it, so they look at the offering, which is illegal with bad customer experience or legal with better customer experience. They weigh their options according to their preferences, illegal VS legal, ad riddled pages vs smooth experience, having…

I mean but say for example I want a promotion but my boss is deciding between two people. I could work harder and expect that he chooses me or I could go and murder the other person. I weight my options and turns out murdering him is the easy way out so I choose that. You can't say it's not a moral argument when one option is breaking the law

Re: Shazam-like technology used to identify bars illegally streaming soccer games

#290

Post by wolco » Thu, Jun 13, 2019, 3:35 PM UTC

goto11 wrote: post #239

wolco wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He pays for a copy and then streams it so everyone at the bar can see it. Similiar to how he pays for cable and everyone at the bar can see it on all of their tvs. I understand the soccer people want more money. But cost to create and produce is paid for by the subscription already or they couldn't afford to offer the service in the first place. The hardship doesn't exist on the producer's side. We could debate wheth…

> But cost to create and produce is paid for by the subscription already or they couldn't afford to offer the service in the first place. That logic only holds if the majority of the consumers are paying though.

It goes both ways. I get the soccer game through cable but would never watch it. It is part of a bundled package.

If I walk into a bar I may get a partial view of a screen / sometimes sound. That isn't worth the cost of a monthly subcription. Pro rated if the account is worth 10 dollars a month I would expect the actual usage to be around 10 cents per person. Not to discount the added ad revenue/tsheet sales/increased individual subscriptions/increased ticket buying.

It's hard to make the case that this revenue is critical to the survival of the game. I would say the opposite is true, the more bars offering the game the bigger and more valuable the game becomes. It's free advertising and if you could get my local little league into all of these bars on single subscriptions I would be the next unicorn.