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Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

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Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how pervasive the act of trying to fit into rules for a Chinese audience is, but the fact that all of cape-movies are made to fit in gave me some tangible reason to say why I find them so empty and lame (and you should to!). It's also really strange given how much the opposite web content is becoming. With patreon, we're starting to get some seriously fringe content, and the streaming services don't seem…

I don't think it's just the "rules" for a Chinese audience (though that doesn't help); I think it's the economics of making movies primarily for a global audience, rather than a particular language, culture, or even sub-culture. This was an "aha" moment in realizing why so many movies over the last decade contain seemingly lazy, blunt dialogue, lacking subtlety or subtext: the meaning needs to come across clearly in…

It's quite simple: mass market content is made for the lowest common denominator. See also, Jack of all trades, master of none.

It's not a phenomena unique to movies, or the modern international economy, it's a pattern that pops up all over the place. Look at multi-tool pocket knives: capable of doing many things, but mediocre at everything.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. As @diminoten mentions, legality is questionable here, so I do not recommend. If you do dabble, restrict access, and encrypt everything so that if you lose your keys, they only option is to destroy the stack and start over. Cloud provider of your choice Plex media server running on a high-throughput instance, with cloud storage mounted locally for reading. (Redundantly created in multiple regions depending on w…

$400/month and multiple cloud instances sounds like overkill though. The same could probably be achieved with a Raspberry Pi or Intel NUC on your home network. Maybe an RPi wouldn't be great for multiple reencodings, but I don't think that's really needed. How often do you really want to watch low resolution TV-series on your mobile data connection? One feature I haven't seen on any commercial service is the ability…

You can rent a Hetzner server for ~€25 bucks (has local storage and a good Intel CPU for live transcoding streams if needed), get infinite cloud storage for ~€10 and Plex Pass for ~€5 bucks. Add in a private domain for ~€5 per year and you're done.

Total cost ~€40.50 per month. Hetzner gives you infinite ingress and a few TB egress bandwidth per month. As long as you only give access to your box to family/close friends you'll never hit that cap. And all they need is a Plex account. Then you just invite them and the setup is done, zero technical finnicking for them.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convenience does not justify theft. You don't have an entitlement to consume specific content.

I mean most of this in a devil's-advocate sense: The proper economic arrangement for those who wish to make a living with creative works is patronage. Someone asks you to make something, you make it for them, then you get paid. You then don't get paid until you make another work. Thus content creators shouldn't have an automatic entitlement to get paid each time someone reads/listens to/watches a work. If you work on…

Similarly, the proper economic arrangement for those who wish to consume art is patronage. If you want to view someone's creative work, you must hire them, come to an agreement about the subject to be depicted and materials to be used, and commit to paying the full amount upon delivery.

The idea of reproduction of artistic works from all over the world and from any time in the past? It makes everything too complicated to analyze in terms of what's fair!

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#284
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bigger issue than paying for multiple services is duplicate licensing. If I sign up for DirecTV, Amazon Prime, and CBS how many shows am I triple licensing? If all these companies want me to sign up for multiple services, there needs to be a way for them to pass "already licensed" information to each other, and pro-rate their bills accordingly. ATT, Comcast, Disney, CBS already own almost all the historic…

While I see your point, that's never been how media is served up - you're not given license to shows, you're gaining access to what they want you to have from their license. Your cable bill was never reduced because the same show was playing on two channels at once.

Shouldn’t it be the way that media is served up though? The status quo serves the interests of copyright conglomerates, not consumers. Surely there must be a more efficient way to channel money from consumers to producers, without forcing them to pay, sometimes more than once, for shit they don’t want. Why hasn’t the market achieved that outcome?

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. As @diminoten mentions, legality is questionable here, so I do not recommend. If you do dabble, restrict access, and encrypt everything so that if you lose your keys, they only option is to destroy the stack and start over. Cloud provider of your choice Plex media server running on a high-throughput instance, with cloud storage mounted locally for reading. (Redundantly created in multiple regions depending on w…

$400/month and multiple cloud instances sounds like overkill though. The same could probably be achieved with a Raspberry Pi or Intel NUC on your home network. Maybe an RPi wouldn't be great for multiple reencodings, but I don't think that's really needed. How often do you really want to watch low resolution TV-series on your mobile data connection? One feature I haven't seen on any commercial service is the ability…

Flexget, flexget.com, can help with the ability to download your IMDB watchlist.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#287
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you presenting a straw man and making people seem entitled based on that straw man? That's not at all the issue and has never been. In the channel subscription days, people wanted to be able to select certain channels, like let's say Discovery Channel and History Channel, without having to pay $X base + $Y for the package that has both of those channels. In that case, you're also paying for channels you'll ne…

It's fine to want those things, but I think the "entitlement" idea comes from people who believe it is okay to have those things without paying for them. It is analogous (or maybe identical) to stealing something you don't need because you think the price is too high. The appropriate response is not to steal it and also not to buy it.

The entitlement idea comes from the fact that bundling undermines market mechanisms and is sometimes illegal. Consumers are not entitled to free products, but nor are vendors entitled to unlimited discretion in the way they sell their products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tying_(commerce)

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#288

No worries, I'll just use the torrent sharers. I bet those will give me a constant 4K quality on all my devices, no ridiculous DRM, get to keep them once I terminate my "subscription", etc. Oh and it's free, not 10-15$ USD for each service.

Ah yes, this comment. Whenever a story pops up here about a media company having the temerity to try and get people to pay for their product, I count the seconds until someone's inb4 with some pithy response invoking BitTorrent, the immorality of paywalls and DRM, and the supposed right that we all enjoy to freely consume content that costs billions of dollars to create. Love it.

Came here expecting to find it, was not disappointed. In some sense, anyways.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#289
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Convenience does not justify theft. You don't have an entitlement to consume specific content.

There are valid arguments for whether it is right nor wrong, but it is most certainly not "theft". Call it copyright infringement or piracy or whatever else.

It's worse than theft. When you steal a car, only that car is lost. When you infringe copyright on a massive scale, it dilutes the value of the original work and reduces the value of all future copies.

This can be seen with music today. Rampant sharing made it so you can't really sell albums anymore. If you want to make a living, you almost have to go with a big label.

It's also why most software companies have now have SAAS and we now are renting software by the month instead of being able to buy a copy.

All of those people I remember a decade ago who claimed they were sharing music to help the indy artist are nowhere to be found and their actions have only hurt any chances of an Indy artist to make a living.

Re: Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers

#290
post #265

Huh? You don't need password resets or thumb prints... that sounds ridiculous. Just limit playing to one device at a time. Spotify does this and it works great, and the instant sync/control actually makes it seem like a feature rather than a limitation. Most people watch in the evening at around the same time, so problem solved real quick. Or pay an additional fee for a family plan to allow a set number of multiple u…

Netflix already limit the number of simultaneous devices playing and you can already pay more for more devices.

Then I don't know what they are talking about. People is already paying for those extra users.
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