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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

#431

Post by zaphirplane »

comeondude wrote: post #372
kempbellt wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dude ... This comes off as incredibly self-entitled and arrogant. That piece of art? It takes years and tremendous amount of people hours to bring these films into existence your enjoyment. I grew up in Hollywood, in family of filmmakers. My friends are actors, producers, and well anybody else who is involved in the business - and we all dedicate unbelievable hours of love and labor into the “non copyrighted cat vide…

I think the bragging here is “I beat the man”

At a complete guess i would say most people (with ok paying jobs) that pirate do so because they think the charges are so high they amount to theft + the whole stealing from a thief is ok

Look at how much Tom cruise or the rock have made from movies or the upper layer of studio cucumber water,egg white omelette employee. There is a massive amount of profiteering on movies. Of course indie and a whole lot of roles are done by people getting normal wages. If the rock took a 50,000,000 pay cut and the studio cut their extravagance the steaming cost will come down, but they choose to profiteer because they can pushing up streaming costs

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

#432

Post by LeoNatan25 »

scarface74 wrote: post #426
LeoNatan25 wrote: post #187

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.

You should be able to buy and watch 4K Movies on the Vudu app, tie your iTunes account to the Movies Anywhere apps and your movie purchases will transfer to your iTunes library (but not in 4K). You can also link your Amazon Prime and Google Play accounts.

I live in Israel. None of these options is available to me. But the torrents work.

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

#433

Post by sp332 »

LanceH wrote: post #389
sp332 wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that you can't make money. It's that this particular business model doesn't jibe with reality. There's a reason iTunes switched to DRM-free formats early on. For video games, piracy can actually increase profits, because people really like a try-before-you-buy model. (Piracy is not as helpful for movies.) It's possible, actually not super difficult, to make money for "bringing films into existence" without t…

Or, you could just not watch what you haven't paid for.

That's one option among several. For example, don't take money for content the user hasn't experienced yet.

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

#434

Post by manigandham »

ripdog wrote: post #413
comeondude wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still stealing. The dude above is freely admitting to grabbing movies wholesale and distributing them in a glib manner. And I’m addressing him, because it’s wrong. I’m the guy on the other end of the economic equation. End of the day it’s a choice to do the right thing and respect the artists behind the work you enjoy regardless what the “reality” is.

Not even remotely close to stealing. Stealing causes an actual loss to the victim - they owned an item which is worth money, and now they don't. Copyright infringement, OTOH, causes a potential loss to the 'victim'. The copyright industry's propaganda about 'piracy = theft' is based on the frankly absurd concept that anyone who pirates media would have paid for it had piracy not been an option. This claim doesn't hol…

It's not stealing but it is illegal copying. You're gaining the same experience as someone who did pay for it.

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

#435

Post by BLKNSLVR »

floatingatoll wrote: post #341

Imagine how all these comments glorifying "let's steal paid content and share it for free because content should be free" must read to a YCombinator founder who is misled into thinking that it's okay to sell content for money. What is even the point of starting a startup that offers content of any kind if people are going to do everything in their power to rip you off, share your value everyone they know for free, an…

"Blocking ads and Torrenting" shouldn't be conflated, in the same way that "Torrenting and Containers" shouldn't be conflated, into a single argument. HN is a technical crowd and that's really the only connector between the two things you've mentioned; the technical knowledge of how to actually do it.

I adblock because of the cesspool digital advertising has become, and my conscience is clear in this decision.

Those who don't block ads probably would if it was easy. Ability is the barrier to entry that must be cleared in order to earn the 'reward' of a safer, less intrusive, less privacy-invading, bandwidth-wasting, and potentially harmful Internet browsing experience - which is a sad indictment on the current state of the Internet.

Ad-blocking isn't illegal; isn't intellectual property theft, which is another reason it shouldn't be mixed up with the discussion of torrenting.

Torrenting of copyrighted content is a different beast. There's, of course, the technical ability barrier to entry, but there's also the knowledge that it IS illegal and it is intellectual property infringement, and there's a specific value of the item to purchase legitimately. Where it gets all kinds of blurry is pretty much all ideological arguments that surround 'the products of creativity':

  Who the money actually goes to
  Availability / Geo-fencing
  Restrictions of format
  Restrictions of devices
  Restrictions of platforms
  The concept of 'ownership' versus 'licensing'
  The cost vs. value of the item
  The history of the Hollywood's inception
  Payola
  Cultural participation
  Terms of copyright
  Open source complications (related to devices and platforms)
Each of the above points could have a thesis written about them, and each and every consumer has individually varying levels of emotional response to each of them. None of that, however, changes the fact that it's illegal (copyright infringement) to download the 'product' without paying for it. But, for those whose emotional response to the arguments is extreme enough, and has cleared the barrier to entry, has the opportunity to feel that they're squaring the ledger to some extent, and therefore feel justified in their actions.

It's not a black and white argument by any means whatsoever.

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

#436

Post by floatingatoll »

sp332 wrote: post #427
briandear wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people are pirating out of altruism or because they want to steal content. You didn’t pay for the right to the content — it isn’t yours. It’s stealing no matter how you justify it. The creator and financer of the content isn’t getting paid when you steal. And GoT was popular which is why it was pirated, not the other way around.

"Our experience is, it all leads to more penetration, more paying subs, more health for HBO, less reliance on having to do paid advertising… If you go around the world, I think you’re right, Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world. Well, you know, that’s better than an Emmy." - Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/04/15/game-of-t... Multiple studies in various countri…

Would Netflix users pay an extra $5/user/month to give valid legal credentials to their friends? Your reasoning, that pirates pay extra versus non-pirates, implies yes - but upthread given the attempt to justify pirating one or another service based on cost of service and value perceived for that cost, I seem correct to think otherwise.

I would buy a Netflix sub for a year for someone with a gift card before I would share my credentials, because I want Netflix to continue existing, and if everyone gave away credentials instead of buying gift subs, that’s much less likely to happen.

(ps. “Sharing Netflix credentials isn’t pirating”: Incorrect. It’s not torrenting. Historical usage of “pirating” as in “pirating cable TV pay channels through splices and illegal decoders” had nothing to do with recording it and sharing recordings. I see no case made that Netflix credentials sharing is any different than buying an illegal Showtime decoder box, nor its impact on revenue.)

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

#437

Post by s1artibartfast »

moate wrote: post #159
basch wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix pricing was always temporary. Content owners werent ready to destroy their old business models, they temporarily rented licensing rights to Netflix while they figured out how they were going to handle shifts in consumption. It's almost the same thing as Uber prices being VC subsidized. And now Disney is following the same playbook, sell Disney+ at or below cost for a while until they can inflate MAU enough th…

>>We are also talking about a generation who is saying "I wont pay $7-$15 four times, thats too expensive" but while growing up, who's parents were paying $150/m to Comcast or DirecTV. Yea I'm part of the group of millenials killing everything. Here's my honest to god thoughts: I don't care if piracy is killing the industry, or if these people aren't able to keep operating. Let the whole thing burn to the ground. We'…

I can understand but disagree with folks who don't believe in creative rights, but don't really understand your argument.

If the entertainment industry has gotten gross and stagnant, it seems like the solution is to not consume it, not pirate it.

This just seems like a thin excuse to steal.

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

#438

Post by AYBABTME »

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.

I do but in modern society as a party to an exchange with a faceless entity, I have very little opportunity to change terms in a way that I feel is more fair to my circumstances. If I believe in good faith that my detraction from the terms is not unfair, detrimental or damaging to the counterparties, considering the imbalance in power at play, then I feel that I'm well within the bounds of ethical behaviour.

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

#439

Post by s1artibartfast »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #319
papln wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you entitled to get anything not sold on Amazon for free, because it's inconvenient ot go to more than one store? Can I dine and dash from Ruth Chris Steakhouse becuse they charge more than McDonald's? Can I at least grab the broccoli for free since McDonald's doesn't offer that?

Doesn't it get exhausting to constantly make the same false equivalence for 15 years with slightly different physical products?

If people don't believe in digital copyrights, why don't they just say that instead of going on about pricing and bundles.

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

#440

Post by AYBABTME »

tomnipotent wrote: post #396
spookthesunset wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> “if everybody did it, what would happen”? People would stop producing content because there's no money in it. So yeah, it's harmful.

People wouldn't stop producing content because regional restrictions became something that customers don't want to pay for anymore. Any entity that refuses to change those restrictions would leave the market open for another entity who's willing to do business without imposing these terms.

The demand for the fundamental content would remain and if some suppliers are unwilling to provide for the demand, other suppliers would arise.

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