Netflix, HBO and Cable Giants Are Coming for Password Sharers • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by spookthesunset » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:05 AM UTC

tomnipotent wrote: post #359

AYBABTME wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I pay for streaming service Z but don't like their streaming tech or the geofraphical restrictions they put on show Y that I was watching while traveling, I feel that there's no ethical harm happening if I obtain a copy of Y for private storage. It might not be legal or might be in violation of ToS, but personally I wouldn't call this theft. Would you agree?

> no ethical harm According to whom? If region enforcement is in place, it's because of legal obligations. So yes, there's ethical harm involved when you do something like this because you're intentionally circumventing a business's legal obligations to their partners.

One thing in ethics you might ask is “if everybody did it, what would happen”?

If everybody pirated their videos, maybe media companies would get a clue and make a better product. Nobody pirates music anymore—it is much easier to just pay a small amount to Spotify and the like and get access to almost any song you’d want on basically all your devices.

If anything, perhaps it is more ethical to hard pirate video than it is to let media companies shoot them selves in the foot...

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

#362

Post by zamadatix » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:07 AM UTC

wilg wrote: post #277

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #211

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.

I think there is a world of difference between stealing a bicycle and making a copy of it without paying for the design. The same holds true in content. Taking a blu ray off the shelf is theft, downloading the movie via torrent is software piracy.

Personally I have 4 streaming subscriptions but I watch none of them, I pirate it all anyways. Nobody is at a great loss because I didn't walk over to my TV to watch Netflix in 4k. Netflix is actually saving money by having me torrent it to watch in 4k on my PC. There are extremely large groups of people that feel "entitled" to a usable product in this sense, whether it be on the go watching, quality on their devices, the rampant "bundling" issues getting worse with fragmentation, or other reasons.

People don't feel entitled to content for free it's just becoming harder to pay for it via streaming the same as it was after a while on cable. Either way people aren't stealing content, at worst a fraction of the people copying it aren't paying when they would have otherwise.

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

#363

Post by tomnipotent » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

magduf wrote: post #263

thephyber wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I know the point you are making, but... They use that number to put political pressure on the DoJ, FBI, and DHS to enforce their IP ownership claims. I get that 100% of their claimed loss would never be 100% of a potential revenue, but AFAIK there is no standard alternative way to calculate those "losses". From what I know, all companies use the same method when describing losses/damages due to hack/cyberatta…

>but AFAIK there is no standard alternative way to calculate those "losses" This isn't the problem at all. The problem is that they're calling them "losses", when they aren't losses at all. "Lose" is a plain English word with a very specific meaning: it means you no longer have something that you used to have. These companies never, ever "lost" anything at all due to "piracy". You can't use the word to describe "some…

> it means you no longer have something that you used to have

No it doesn't. It means you lost out on potential revenues because someone decided not to pay for it. That's a loss. If people are consuming your content and not paying you for it, you're losing something in the transaction.

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

#364

Post by acdha » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:10 AM UTC

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #347

kelnos wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But that's not what the parent is saying. They are saying that if piracy stopped dead cold, almost all pirates would just go and buy the content they were pirating. That's categorically not true, or at least not 100% true. People would probably buy stuff, but at a rate so low, the industry would be hard-pressed to notice the difference.

They didn’t say “almost all”, only that there were many people who would. That seems highly plausible given how many millions of people have pirated content: no, it wouldn’t be everyone buying everything they’ve downloaded but even a modest percentage would be a noticeable increase in sales.

There’s a widely accepted claim that Netflix entering a market correlated with piracy going down because many people are looking for something to watch at a reasonable price. The person who is looking for, say, the latest release or determined not to support certain large media companies is probably still going to hoist the Jolly Roger but that’s far from everyone.

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

#365

Post by throwaway122378 » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:11 AM UTC

Password share is today’s version of lending DVDs to friends and families.

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

#366

Post by LeoNatan25 » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:14 AM UTC

acdha wrote: post #364

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not what the parent is saying. They are saying that if piracy stopped dead cold, almost all pirates would just go and buy the content they were pirating. That's categorically not true, or at least not 100% true. People would probably buy stuff, but at a rate so low, the industry would be hard-pressed to notice the difference.

They didn’t say “almost all”, only that there were many people who would. That seems highly plausible given how many millions of people have pirated content: no, it wouldn’t be everyone buying everything they’ve downloaded but even a modest percentage would be a noticeable increase in sales. There’s a widely accepted claim that Netflix entering a market correlated with piracy going down because many people are lookin…

Yes, there are always people on the edges of the spectrum. But most people who can afford it, will prefer to pay some price for the most amount of content. For a time, that service was Netflix, but it is no longer the case (not necessarily Netflix' fault).

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

#367

Post by thewhitetulip » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:22 AM UTC

> The possible measures include requiring customers to change their passwords periodically or texting codes to subscribers’ phones that they would need to enter to keep watching, according to people familiar with the matter.

Hahaha and what makes them so sure that people won't share the new password/ the one time code?

These execs re seriously disconnected with reality.

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

#368

Post by wmorgan » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:33 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #258

wmorgan wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a timely question with the holidays coming up. A lot of people will be wanting to watch movies from the 1940's and 50's. Many of them don't realize those works are still under copyright. It's not just hypothetical. In our family we subscribe to 3 or 4 streaming services, but last year we still had to pay $5 to watch It's a Wonderful Life (1946), a movie that was literally in the public domain for 20 years. A C…

You think an ordinary person's expectation is that It's A Wonderful Life is public domain? I think the opposite thing is true, and that most Americans generally assume that any major motion picture or television show is copyrighted no matter when it was produced.

Why not? Lots of ordinary people were watching it in 1980's, when it actually was in the public domain. I don't think they realize it gets the same level of legal protection as new releases.

My point is there's plenty of good content people want that's 30-70 years old & they don't feel bad about pirating it. My dad by his principles would never download a new movie; nevertheless he's looking up the songs from his childhood on YouTube. He feels entitled to listen to them whenever and however he wants. I think that's a pretty common attitude toward the older stuff.

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

#369

Post by siproprio » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:39 AM UTC

Well, I used to pay for a Netflix subscription but I canceled it out of spite because they started forcing me to have animated video previews and trailers, with audio.

I did not share passwords, but I would also totally cancel purely out of spite and find something else to do.

I also starting to feel like they're scheming me out of my money.

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

#370

Post by awill » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 2:44 AM UTC

stock_toaster wrote: post #340

Hitton wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is not ready yet. I hope it one day can compete with Plex, but I wonder if a community OSS project like this will take off and create high quality native apps per platform.