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

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

#451

Post by kerng » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 8:31 AM UTC

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 poster is upset about DRM, not paying money. It should be easy to pay and own the content, but nowadays it's not easy.

In past I paid for some content multiple times for instance, because one company decides to shut down their DRM servers, and then I had to buy it again from elsewhere. Yeah, just like that - I was frankly very upset.

Also, piracy is different to stealing. Both are wrong in my opinion, but still very, very different things!

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

#452

Post by Debugreality » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 8:59 AM UTC

This article keeps describing how much password sharing and piracy cost but is only proposing a solution for password sharing without talking about which issue is bigger. For all we know piracy might be 99% of the problem.

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

#453

Post by Mindwipe » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

kerng wrote: post #451

comeondude wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 poster is upset about DRM, not paying money. It should be easy to pay and own the content, but nowadays it's not easy. In past I paid for some content multiple times for instance, because one company decides to shut down their DRM servers, and then I had to buy it again from elsewhere. Yeah, just like that - I was frankly very upset. Also, piracy is different to stealing. Both are wrong in my opinion, but…

No, they just like stealing, and we're not really going to solve this issue until people like them are imprisoned.

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

#454

Post by mantoto » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

kempbellt wrote: post #176

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #131

No worries, I'll just use the torrent sharers. I bet those will give me a constant 4K quality on all my devices, no ridiculous DRM, get to keep them once I terminate my "subscription", etc. Oh and it's free, not 10-15$ USD for each service.

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…

You did something wrong if that cost you 400$ a month

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

#455

Post by Mindwipe » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #382

comeondude wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

> There's a reason iTunes switched to DRM-free formats early on.

iTunes has spent the last five years very aggressively moving away from that to subscription revenue because it makes no money.

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

#456

Post by Mindwipe » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

washadjeffmad wrote: post #442

manigandham wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's unauthorized distribution. You don't get in trouble for copying a licensed work, you get in trouble for making it available to others without permission from the current rights holder (or more likely, their hired thugs or your ISP). How would Fair Use and libraries work if copying alone were illegal?

> How would Fair Use and libraries work if copying alone were illegal?

Libraries pay content owners in virtually every country in the world.

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

#457

Post by mantoto » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:34 AM UTC

kempbellt wrote: post #291

sorenjan wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$400/month and multiple cloud instances sounds like overkill though. The same could probably be achieved with a Raspberry Pi or Intel NUC on your home network. Maybe an RPi wouldn't be great for multiple reencodings, but I don't think that's really needed. How often do you really want to watch low resolution TV-series on your mobile data connection? One feature I haven't seen on any commercial service is the ability…

Transcoding video won't work on a Raspi (in any realistic sense), and video streaming is pretty I/O intensive if you have multiple clients. You can certainly get a similar thing working on a Raspi, but you'll likely notice buffering issues. Especially if you try to stream different content to different clients.

Keep the hot stuff on a nvme.

Your archive on bigger drives next to it. Problem solved.

If that's not enough use zfs with a nvme cache and add a few more sticks of ram I to it.

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

#458

Post by mantoto » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:38 AM UTC

I'm right now notperfectly happy about the streaming situation but it is much better then ever before.

I don't cancel Netflix because I don't mind anymore. There have and still are a few really good shows which would have cost me much more money what Netflix costs me.

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

#459

Post by gdhbcc » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:48 AM UTC

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…

>Dude ...

>This comes off as incredibly self-entitled and arrogant.

>That ~~piece of art~~ bag of Rice? It takes years and tremendous amount of people hours to bring these ~~films~~ grains of rice into existence your enjoyment. I grew up in ~~Hollywood~~ a farm, in family of ~~filmmakers~~ farmers. My friends are ~~actors, producers~~ farmer, harvesters, 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 videos”~~ bags of rice

>Yes. The system isn’t perfect, but ... what you’re doing is quite frankly, stealing. It’s offensive. We’re entitled to our livelihoods as much as you are.

>Show some gratitude please.

Now that I have changed the object that is "being protected", do you see how unreasonable and senseless your argument is?

Those arguments you used could be used exactly as they are to argue for any monopoly whatsoever, and then we would all be worse off.

Of course you're entitled to try to make a living, but if you making a living requires the state to subsidize and enforce your business model, then maybe you should change your business model.

There have been artists, writers and inventors for millenia, and for the vast majority of time they haven't needed an intellectual monopoly l, so why do you ?

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

#460

Post by pergadad » Sat, Nov 09, 2019, 9:53 AM UTC

ripdog wrote: post #425

remotecool wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than theft. When you steal a car, only that car is lost. When you infringe copyright on a massive scale, it dilutes the value of the original work and reduces the value of all future copies. This can be seen with music today. Rampant sharing made it so you can't really sell albums anymore. If you want to make a living, you almost have to go with a big label. It's also why most software companies have now h…

Absolute rubbish - and quite sadly I note that you're just parroting industry talking points. >This can be seen with music today. Rampant sharing made it so you can't really sell albums anymore. If you want to make a living, you almost have to go with a big label. This didn't happen due to piracy. Music piracy is dramatically down compared to the lofty heights of the late 00's. The culprit is music streaming platform…

You really and honestly believe that the 'exposure' artists get from piracy is balancing/used to balance out the lost revenue from sales?

Yes sure a few made it. But for the vast majority of small artists there's just no venue to sell their music anymore because no one buys music anymore. Streaming definitely helped accelerate this process but to believe that piracy only helps creators and did not already erode the market for anyone but those with big names and marketing budgets is really just self-delusion.