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Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

theguardian.com

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Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#291

Post by crote »

yalogin wrote: post #286
codedokode wrote: post #107

When billion dollar companies, which are praised and supported by governments, download pirated material and do not pay, why should ordinary people restrain themselves and pay? I cannot see how one can make moral arguments against piracy now. It makes no sense to pay if others are not paying and not punished for it. People also have a right to train their real neural network for free without paying.

This is a good point. Stealing is a crime only for end users and not for companies. Why should end users feel any shame violating the DMCA when the government itself says it’s ok for companies to not honor it

You're not downloading a movie to watch, you are just "acquiring training material" and "reviewing" it to make sure you can use it to train a high-quality model.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#292

Post by izacus »

ryandrake wrote: post #153

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Also the content doesn't disappear on vacation, it has subtitles for all languages and audio track is actually high quality.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#293

Post by exe34 »

macNchz wrote: post #246
l72 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also often time have versions of old movies and shows that have been modified due to silly things like license agreements on music expiring! I have felt gaslighted when I rewatch and old movie and some scene isn’t how I remember.

I was so surprised and bummed when I discovered this was a thing. My wife and I started watching the original Beverly Hills 90210—a sort of ridiculous snapshot of American pop culture in the early 1990s—on some streaming service, and after a few episodes I noticed the music was just...super wrong. Reading online, I learned that a lot of the original music had been licensed only for the original run of the show, so ev…

I hate that kind of destruction of what I think should ultimately be considered property of humanity. When you create something, you're free to destroy or ruin it. Once you share it with somebody else, you should need their consent to destroy it.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#294

Post by anonymars »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #276
ryandrake wrote: post #153

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

> 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. I paid for Disney+ to watch Andor at 4K, only to find out that you can't - Disney+ prohibits anything over 1K on computers whether you use the app or a browser. Went back to piracy very quickly after that. More fragmented experience is annoying, not even being able to get the highest quality as a paying customer is…

I went down a similar rabbit hole when I bought my OLED monitor, finding that you can neither stream UHD nor play UHD Blu-Ray (it was possible on a few generations of Intel chips before SGX was deprecated because it was not in fact secure; 10th-gen was the latest)

Well, okay then -- chump don't want the money, chump don't get the money

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#295

Post by toomuchtodo »

cyberax wrote: post #255
l72 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to have real options or people can’t make informed decisions. I have a background in city planning, and in the US, you’ll constantly hear about how trying to make cities more friendly to pedestrians, bicycles, or public transit is a waste because no one uses it. But the truth is, most people will end up using the system you design. If you build a system just for cars, people will use cars. If you build a cit…

> If you build a walkable city, people will walk. No, they won't. If you build a walkable city and then make it impossible to do anything else, then people will walk. It's a subtle difference, but it's there.

Still good!

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#296

Post by ysavir »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #222
DHRicoF wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix and to some level spotify drowned piracy for a time. But then a lot of companies tried to rap the same "winings" splitting the ecosystem and trashing the user experience. - ¿could we watch x movie? - let me see. no, it in this other service beside the 3 we are paying.

In the beginning, Netflix was great. Then they became a media company and suddenly EVERYTHING they push on you is THEIR stuff. Gone are the days where you could remember a cool movie and pull it up on Netflix like Fandango or Corvette Summer. I remember going back and watching several seasons of the original Miami Vice back when nobody knew who Michael Mann was. Not its exactly as you say, you want to watch something…

My understanding is that this isn't Netflix's fault. They were king when they were the first major streaming service, and studios and networks were happy to get extra income from hosting their content on Netflix. But Netflix knew that any success it has would be mimicked by those same studios and networks, and that they would pull their own content to their own services as soon as they have them up and running, and so Netflix started making its own content in preparation for that day. And that bet paid off.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#297

Post by ak217 »

> Spotify

> “enshittification” of streaming

I've been a happy paying Spotify user since 2010 or so. I'm still mostly happy with what I get out of it... they did try to shove podcasts down people's throats, but backed off pretty quickly. One thing that recently infuriated me though, was something they call "smart shuffle". Like, you press shuffle on your playlist, it starts shuffling. You press it again, it should turn off the shuffle, and just keep playing in order, right? Not according to Spotify's amazing designer team. With Spotify it's a tri-state switch. If you press it again, it activates a "smart shuffle" which has nothing to do with shuffling, instead it adds extra suggestions to your playlist.

There is a way to turn this "feature" off on mobile, and they've been promising a way to turn it off on desktop for many months now. As a paying user, being treated like an idiot this way definitely makes me resentful and is the most enshittified thing I've seen Spotify do.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#298

Post by izacus »

wrasee wrote: post #161
ryandrake wrote: post #153

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Supply and demand might argue that if there was real demand for something like this that people were actually willing to pay a lot of money for, then the market would be all too happy to provide. I think the inconvenient truth here is that when anyone has got close to doing such a thing the price has been high enough that it turns out nobody actually turns up to pay for it, not at least outside a small niche.

Copyright is inherently monopolistic and violates basic rules of free market like supply and demand.

You can't talk about those rules when a single publisher corporation commands exclusivity deals and dictates pricing essentially forever.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#299

Post by artdigital »

bhaney wrote: post #157
dilDDoS wrote: post #82

I actually think pirating encourages a healthier approach to watching TV/movies. I've fully made the switch to pirating instead of subscribing to any streaming services, and it's led to me thinking more critically about what I want to spend time downloading and watching rather than just flipping mindlessly through endless amounts of readily available garbage on a streaming service. I do still have Kanopy though, whic…

Not always. Now I just flip mindlessly through endless amounts of readily available garbage on my jellyfin server instead.

Then don’t be a hoarder and only get what you want to watch

I have my watchlist hooked up to *arr so it pulls that stuff automatically. Once I watched it and it’s not something I want to show to others, I delete it.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#300

Post by anonymars »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #110
godzillabrennus wrote: post #45

I started buying Blu-ray discs and ripping them to my computer, where I run Plex. Why? I had a long-time subscription to HBO Max, but a few years ago, I went to watch Westworld, and it was gone from HBO. I ended up buying a season on Apple for the price of a monthly subscription to HBO. I cancelled my HBO subscription. I realized that second-hand Blu-ray discs of shows were selling for dirt cheap. I spent $40 to buy…

> I went to watch Westworld, and it was gone from HBO. Wait, isn't that their own IP? I get shows not running on 3rd party streaming services due to IP rights and stuff, but how/why would they be in a position to not stream their own IP?! That's like going to Netflix and not being able to see Stranger Things. It's insane!

From the geniuses who thought throwing away the HBO name in favor of "Max" was a way to unlock brand value
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