Too Many Video Streaming Choices May Drive Users Back To Piracy

If I were to "pirate" an entertainment file, I would not alter my self-image to believe that I am now "a thief", just because you're quoting dictionary definitions at me. I may still feel vaguely guilty about it, but nowhere near the level of guilt I might feel by walking over to my neighbor's driveway and stealing their car, even though the open-market value of the car may be only $5k, and the open-market value of the recording may be $5M.

This difference arises because when I copy something, I do not deprive the person in possession of the use of it. If I steal, I do. The concept of dispossession is fundamental to the concept of theft. When I take your thing, you no longer have it. When I copy your thing, we both have it. If you are then put out because I am no longer motivated to rent your thing, that's the result of your improper assumption that the idea of the thing belonged to you exclusively.

When "theft" moves from the physical to the intangible, it becomes plagiarism or counterfeiting. It is a greater sin to cut out the credit scroll from the end of a movie than to copy it without paying. It is a greater sin to copy the maker's mark than to copy the design it marks.

I am not the sort to lie to myself to influence my own state of mind. Things are what they are, and if that state cannot be conveyed effectively with words, then the language is at fault. The words must change, rather than my mental model of reality. If you cannot separate in your mind the definition of "piracy" that concerns intangible property from the definition of "stealing" that concerns tangible objects, I would suggest using instead a term that is more descriptive, and not quite so ambiguous, such as "copyright infringement". If one cannot be a "pirate" without being a thief, then copyright infringers will simply cease to be "pirates".

You can't change reality by altering the description of reality. If you perfectly duplicate a copyright-protected file in a manner not allowed by fair use or by an implicit or explicit license granted by the privileged holder of the copyright, the holder is neither dispossessed of their file, nor deprived of any reputation benefit which may be associated with their control of the copyright. Copyright infringement is therefore not theft. If we cannot agree on what words mean, we cannot meaningfully communicate. And if someone is changing the meanings of their words mid-conversation, that might be perceived as dishonest communication.

The choice people have now is to pay $200/month at the big box store for a pre-loaded shopping cart of channels, with maximum ads, or to pay $10/month, a dozen different times, to go all over town picking up one channel at a time from little niche stores that only sell that channel, some that come with ads, and some that don't.

Multiple streaming marketplaces that all have the capability to connect all the same vendors to the marketplace customers would satisfy the consumer demand. But right now, everybody is taking their content back to put in their factory-direct exclusive content stores.

In the physical goods world, someone could buy at the factory store, ship at their own expense to the common marketplace, and resell at their own risk with a markup. Consumers would pay the markup as the cost of convenience. But in the digital world, you can't necessarily resell anything, even if you bought the right to use it yourself.

So we have still never received what we have repeatedly asked for. Netflix-by-shipped-disks approached it, because it could buy the disks at retail, and mail them around at its own expense, without getting any further permission. Netflix-by-download cannot, because the streaming rights are revocable, time-limited, and subject to constant haggling and renegotiation by the sellers every time the contracts expire.

Fragmentation is not ordering from the a la carte menu; it's getting fries from McDonald's, a shake from Wendys, sandwich bread from Panera, meat from Arbys, lettuce from Taco Bell, tomato from Subway, and spending three hours in the car just to get your lunch. A la carte means you can order your whole lunch at one place, getting just what you want, and not getting something that you don't want means you pay less overall for your meal.

Not to mention it greatly simplifies other matters. If you drop a bunch of movies onto your kids tablet, you no longer have to worry about being away from a cell tower or wifi AP. Furthermore, concerning this very article, there is the matter of too many streaming platforms existing. Maybe you only need Disney because you don't let your kids consume any other brand. But probably more likely, there are numerous desirable movies that are on one streaming platform but not another, or on none at all. And a movie that might be on a platform one year could be gone the next. A harddrive full of movies avoids all of this mess. Subscribe to two or three services a year and you'll be spending a lot more than $8 a month. Maybe it still seems trivial to you with an inflated tech salary, but I know a lot of people who think a single netflix subscription is too expensive so they share an account with other friends/family. This is pretty common.

> HN users seem to be way out of touch with the average user.

I am certainly not out of touch with my own friends and family!

Pending you don't want to watch something in Dolby Vision.

I can either have Dolby Atmos come from the shield and a HDR video, or Dolby Vision through the TV and compressed AC3 audio of some kind from the TV.

Asking for both is apparently too much...

Just like I said....