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The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

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Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#371

Post by tekknik »

xxs wrote: post #338
drchickensalad wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're free to think that, and possibly some less important companies could get away with it. However, in reality, the content owners really aren't that dumb and incompetent. There are very punishing legal implications to breaking the contracts, especially your relationship with others. And the content owners don't just do nothing; there's quite detailed questions and requirements they give when you renew their conte…

>You're free to think that, and possibly some less important companies could get away with it. In the EU most people have identity documents... and enough services that provide identity verification. The said verification is mandatory in some industries like online gambling. There is no intrinsic hurdle to remove the retarded IP block. Using VPN to bypass it is just yet another step away but again, why bother with VP…

That’s just the EU though, no such service exists on the US side. Also again these restrictions are put in place by the content owners, not netflix. It is very feasible to remove said checks but the content owners want them in place for their reasons. One can argue all day about how inconvenient this is but until they make more money without the geographic restrictions they will remain in place.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#373

Post by cheeze »

samfriedman wrote: post #206

While it's true that BitTorrent as a protocol has significantly fallen out of favor as the go-to technology for John Q. Pirate's needs, there are still many niche torrent sites that stay alive by differentiating on quality and community. Most of these sites are invite-only, and each tend to specialize in a specific type of media. One site might accept only movies, another TV shows, a third comic book scans, and a fou…

These communities are my favorite on the internet. One of the most insane things is how active the userbase is (granted, inactives are pruned.) But on my favorite trackers, it's common to see 33% of users logged in within 24h, something like 50-60% in the past week, and ~75% in the past month.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#374

Post by ekianjo »

jimmies wrote: post #62

I can't read the article because the website is down. But I have something to say about torrenting movies. Late last year, my old parents who don't speak English came to visit me for a couple of months in the US. I'm just a graduate student with a limited budget, and my mom is car sick so we couldn't go out every night. I didn't want them to waste time on Facebook after dinner until we went to bed, so I had to think…

Open solutions are by nature more flexible.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#375

Post by JustSomeNobody »

gsich wrote: post #284
lotsofpulp wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix isn't locking it down, the company they are buying the media from is locking it down.

Netflix is enforcing it. They do the actual technical action of blocking access.

Surely because they have to if they want to continue to have access to content.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#376

Post by khedoros1 »

petre wrote: post #340
khedoros1 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the premise that the company could be an author. It's the employer of the authors, commissioning them to create something. I'd call Disney the copyright holder.

Walt Disney was an actual person and one of the founders of what became The Walt Disney Company.

Yes? Companies are made up of people and have founders who are "actual people". He also acted as an artist in various positions within his company (producer, actor, director, writer, animator). On the whole, his copyrights were owned by the company, though. He died in 1966, and that has no bearing on when copyrights owned by the Walt Disney Company will expire.

Who, specifically, is that 1928 copyright still encouraging to create new media? How does it benefit society more to have insanely-long copyright terms than it would to free up creations earlier for riffs, remixes, and so on?

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#377

Post by IkmoIkmo »

That having been said, torrenting in some ways seems healthier than ever. On a median retail connection I can download an entire season in 30 minutes while I'm getting ready some food, or the first episode in 5 minutes and get started watching. When I was a kid and still used torrents regularly, it wasn't like that. Much of that has to do with better connections and cheap bandwidth, but it's a fact of use nonetheless.

In short, I'd have killed 5 or 10 or 15 years ago for the torrent speed/quality/content that's available today. That says something.

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#378

Post by airstrike »

8draco8 wrote: post #230
phil248 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torrenting for me has always been about convenience, not money. I recently wanted to watch a new show called A.P. Bio. It's free on NBC's website. But after struggling through one episode with lags and ads with no volume control, I gave up and just torrented the show. Until they master such exotic technologies as "streaming video" and "volume control" they're going to keep driving people to torrenting. Netflix figure…

The law/studio deals have to change. Netflix offers great movies and they lock it down to certain countries. For example I am big fan of Back To The Future. I can watch may favourite movie every month when I'm in UK but when I am in Poland then no luck. Same goes in other direction. While being in Poland I downloaded via Netflix National Lampoon Animal House to watch on plane. I watched half of it on plane then tried…

Do you really watch the same movie every month?

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#379

Post by [deleted] »

protomikron wrote: post #355
ghaff wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although, now you can download Netflix (and Amazon) shows for later viewing. (I only do that for travel though. Even with a fairly modest Internet connection, I rarely have issues.)

> Although, now you can download Netflix (and Amazon) shows for later viewing. Incredible, that this is worth mentioning. But here we are (no offense to parent, it's just funny that downloading a movie is a feature). Think about how incredibly less complex Netflix's tech stack would be, if it's just a big fat file server offering all shows or seeding torrents.

[deleted]

Re: The Long, Slow Decline of BitTorrent (2017)

#380

Post by ekianjo »

wpietri wrote: post #289
kbenson wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Netflix, a Californian company, simply couldn't fathom that some people might understand English and Spanish. Or they just decided the path that serves the most people without complicating matters is to assume you want subtitles for any language not selected as the primary audio language. I think the relevant question here is how would you design a control panel that allowed you to define which of the many language…

Yes, exactly. Netflix is militantly opposed to feature bloat. That means picking the case that works well for most people. And I'd add that what to subtitle is an artistic choice; directors carefully decide what languages to use and what they want to subtitle or leave untranslated. Plus Netflix have to deal with source material from hundreds of companies. Creating clever subtitle features quickly gets out into very d…

> That means picking the case that works well for most people.

On the web, you can serve customized content to every single client, because the tech enables it. It's just wrong to go for "one size fits all".

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