What's the scene like for music piracy nowadays? It seems like it was mostly gone. I've looked in a few different places and finding music released in the last 10 years is somewhat difficult. Do you just have to know where to look or is music piracy just dead/dying?
Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
441–450 of 641 posts
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#442I'm not going to speak about my personal practices, but I find the current landscape of streaming services unusable and unsustainable from a customer perspective. I share a Netflix and Prime account with my parents, and support for that is soon going to end. I don't feel like either of those services provide enough value to me to consider paying for them entirely by myself. The content is mediocre at best, finding an…
I pay for Netflix and Prime Video.
I pirate stuff when it's somewhere else or when it's not available anywhere (surprisingly that's 50% of cases, but maybe that's just my country). So the spread availability is one of the problems, but not having a chance to watch something legally is another.
The same problem is with videogames. Some of them can't be bought anymore (excluding used physical copies on CD/DVD, but that's not something I prefer).
Pirating movies is even legal in my coutry - it's legal to download a movie that's already shared - I just can't share it. So at least they can't jail me for this sporadic crime.
Do I feel bad? Partially. I'd prefer to pay, I love paying for stuff that's even free (donations), but I don't want to feel like I'm an animal that predators want to lacerate.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am concerned with the channels attempts to front and center homosexuality targeted at kids This is the first I've heard this complaint. Could you share some examples of this type of content and why it's concerning to you? I don't have Disney+ or kids.
There have been several times, generally during pride month where gay focused shows have been the top items displayed on my kids accounts when they login. Adult accounts are fine. They are animated and kid friendly shows so they encourage children to click on them. Really don't want my kids watching an animated show telling them how to come out. Another is a large number of recent Disney movies feature LGBTQ main cha…
I know I'm not going to change your mind, but this viewpoint just seems so strange and morbidly fascinating. What exactly does "exposure to homosexuality" even mean? These shows and movies aren't depicting gay sex. They aren't trying to convince straight kids that they are gay. They aren't even advocating politics. What specific content do you object to? My kid is Disney movie aged, and we've watched em all--it's exhausting. But, I've never seen anything even remotely objectionable. "Gays exist" is about as far as any of them go. Is that really what's objectionable?
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
So why does Paramount+ feel like it was put together by attention-deficit badgers relative to YouTube? Just age of software and years spent on polish? Because there's basic fit-and-finish crap in that player that drives me positively bananas (things like "Doesn't remember your close-captioning setting" and "Doesn't let you change the setting when ads are playing"). And that's disregarding the 1 out of 50 times it fai…
I agree. But those are mostly standard UX issues not underlying video streaming issues. But ChromeCast overall I’ve found to be crappy technology.
> Chromecast... crappy technology.
Absolutely 100% agree. Like Bluetooth and USB, it's built to work with a whole pile of stuff out in the real world that the devs didn't have access to for testing / didn't exist yet when it was standardized, so it's got some grabasstical corner cases.
... problem is, it's also got like 36 million users, so it's incumbent upon anything that claims to be a "streaming service" to account for those quirks to work in 36 million living rooms (in the same sense that it's not Bluetooth's "fault" when the new car or headphones on the market don't pair with already-existing popular brands of mobile phone).
If we had one streaming app to rule them all, it could consolidate the quirks fixes and we'd be all good. The fact that market competition means everyone has to solve for those quirks individually and is disincentivized to share solutions is a PITA for end users.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#445Pirate movie streaming sites are better now than in the old days. The recommended content is more relevant. There are no agenda driven promotions. The related content is related to the content, not some politicized algorithm trained on other people's tastes. There's no geotargetting garbage. I've never seen, "Content not available in your country" on a piracy site. And since when did I own an entire country?
Whatever gets the most clicks generally makes it to the home page. You can also search or browse by actor, genre and other data they've imported from IMDB.
No need to sign up or sign in. Just start watching the movies you want for free. Unless you feel obligated to pay, I'm not sure why you wouldn't?
Pop-unders if you even see them on your system are still a lesser evil than ads mid stream in DRM content or dark patterns pressuring you to install some horribly bloated app. Just click and they are gone.
You can usually download the video directly over and watch it later from these streaming sites. Opening a video file in the video player of your choice and watching it whenever you like, however you like. It is almost like you own the computer and can do whatever you please with the data contained within. Imagine that.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#446> “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and m…
GabeN hit the nail on the head. If you make paying for a service/content impossible or hard, people who want it will find other ways to get it. Regional DRM/content licensing is one annoying culprit.. Consumers want something instant, and if you instantly tell them "this is not available in your region," they're obviously not going to go out of their way to figure out where, whom, and how to pay for it.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#447I like buying physical discs and then bringing the media I'm bored of watching to a friend swap. I get rid of movies/music I won't watch again soon, and I get movies/music I want to try!
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering how frecuently movies (and third party shows) disappear from one platform to appear in other that seems hellish. It's easier to pirate stuff.
My experience is that the learning curve for piracy has increased quite a bit. IIUC you need some private tracker to reliably source things, something that takes time and connections most people don't have. Despite being strongly motivated to find and watch things that are inexplicably unavailable to me (especially new foreign cinema) I usually just wait, and then sign up for a trial of whatever service has it a year…
> My experience is that the learning curve for piracy has increased quite a bit. IIUC you need some private tracker to reliably source things, something that takes time and connections most people don't have.
Only if you want rare and older stuff (and even then, only sometimes). Anything mainstream, a public tracker is more than enough.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#449> I just feel like if we’re at peak monetization. We're really not. If anything there's more content (for lack of a better word) available for token amounts of money than there ever has been. I don't know how old you are but back in the distant past of the 90s you had two choices if you wanted to watch a film, you could go to a shop and buy a copy, probably for more money than you'd pay for a monthly Netflix subscrip…
Well, you also don't have a god-given right to get paid for something you made, if there are a million copies of it out there free for the taking.
Re: Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?
#450100%, and I have hulu, netflix, hbo max etc. I pay for YouTube premium because the amount of savings I've made from it is 10 fold higher than the cost. It's software that has switched from pay one time per version to subscription only that causes me to feel this way too. And let's not forget what TurboTax has done to the US.
How do you save on YouTube Premium? Is it accounting for the money value of time that you save on ads, replacing another music service, or the value of listening to the videos in background?
I have learned everything from changing brakes, engine work, generators, pond building, house repair, etc. without YouTube I would have spent thousands on various things so the investment in premium is a drop in the bucket. And those who have ads get some money from me being a premium user.