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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

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of politics and DRM, Apple doesn't offer Disney movies in 4K, for example. I really don't give a rats behind about Hollywood politics. I would have purchased if I could get DRM free movies. Alas, this is not an option. So I go the "remux" way, where everything is free, quality is better than all streaming services and there is no DRM. It's up to Hollywood to make change.

> I would have purchased if I could get DRM free movies. I have a feeling this isn't true. I'm sure if they released DRM free movies you would simply balk at the cost and then use that as justification for not purchasing it.

Your feeling is wrong. I used to collect optical media for many years, until I got rid of all my optical drives. At which point, my only choice was to torrent movies. Optical wasn't DRM free, but at least I could rip those, which is what I usually ended up doing for ease of use.

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

#332
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

If I remember it increases the value of the most popular work. The content viewer creates a viral effect and shares feeling/opinions about the content.

I remember one video game ceo saying. We don't want you to pirate oir game but if you do choose to pirate we hope you choose our game over the other guy. Makes sense if everyone is playing WoW and talking about it you are more likely to buy said game.

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you are saying, no one implied everyone was in the reach of HBO. The parent was saying HBO was going to go after torrenters in the future, but they have been doing it for years.

I guess what I'm saying is that inevitably in these sorts of discussions, about legal repercussions, the assumption is that the torrenters are physically located in the US 50 states.

No one assumed that here, the parent said HBO would go after torrenters in the future and they have been for a long time already.

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

#334

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…

Mine has been happily running on a Synology 1019+ NAS. It has hardware encoding and can support multiple 4k streams.

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

#335

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.

I may (or may not) have built my own Netflix competitor. It had more content than all of the major providers combined. Legal buffer: I will not say what the content was. It may have all been non-copyrighted cat videos ;) The service was available cross region. Stored videos in multiple resolutions for streamability in low-bandwidth situations. No DRM bs. It cost me under $400/month to run the whole service, and I cou…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NinjaVideo

It did not end well for NinjaVideo for what it's worth so maybe it was good you lost interest.

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

#336
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

If I remember it increases the value of the most popular work. The content viewer creates a viral effect and shares feeling/opinions about the content. I remember one video game ceo saying. We don't want you to pirate oir game but if you do choose to pirate we hope you choose our game over the other guy. Makes sense if everyone is playing WoW and talking about it you are more likely to buy said game.

Seems like that might be the case.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy...

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

#337
post #269

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.

They might be shooting themselves in foot here. Part of the reason why Microsoft is so big and why there is a PC n every home is because many of us could pirate Windows and Office in early days. That reduced barrier to entry and enabled poor folks in India and elsewhere use computers and be familiar with all other MS technologies.

But then there is apple and ios where you can't really pirate the software effectively.

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

#338
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think we need new language around digital content. I'm not a lawyer but it seems intuitive to say "the reason theft is bad is because you're taking something from somebody else that they, then, no longer have" or "you did not compensate somebody for services that, had they provided those services to somebody else, they would otherwise be compensated for." With digital content this is just not the case. The o…

It’s a big assumption that you wouldn’t have purchased the product anyway. Sure, it’s often true, but there are clearly many people who dislike DRM and subscription fees who would nonetheless accept them if the alternative was to forego copyrighted entertainment altogether. The loss of the opportunity to sell to ‘you’ is not negligible.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. It's certainly true that while there are many people who would not pay for the content at any price, there are also many people who would stop pirating and instead pay, if they got the right price, format, terms, etc.

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

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do people only torrent, or is usenet still a thing? For the longest time, usenet providers would not log read access, only writes.

Usenet is still around, and there is content, but for archival purposes, torrents are still a lot more convenient. Years back, publishers started issuing take downs to Usenet provides on specific binary posts. So, as all cat&mouse games go, there were private NZB forums/sites which posted encrypted content and provided the key to members.

I'm actually much happier with my usenet setup than I ever was with torrents. I use tools like Sonarr and Radarr to subscribe to and automatically download content from usenet. Since it's automatic, it's easier to pick up content before DMCA take down notices. Especially because usenet will allow me to use my full bandwidth instead of relying on a trickle from peers.

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

#340
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the free version of plex. Only pain in the ass is having to pay the ~$5 to authorize for a new android device to use the app. It does everything I need to watch my...personal home videos. I'm sure I could use a completely FOSS setup, but plex is convenient especially paired with...other services.

If you want completely FOSS setup, check out Jellyfin [0], it keeps steadily improving. [0]: https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin

Is jellyfin any good yet?

Last time I looked they didn't really have much for client apps yet.

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