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Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

torrentfreak.com

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Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#51

Post by mirimir »

latchkey wrote: post #50
mirimir wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, TFA says: > "Specifically, Polo used sophisticated computer programming to [get pirated stuff] and then make the shows and movies available on servers in Canada," officials said. So the fact that they were in the US is irrelevant. But I'm sure that they got caught because they didn't know how to stay anonymous. Or were too lazy. Or got too greedy. I mean, there are far better hosting alternatives than Canada. I…

I disagree on irrelevant. The fact that they stayed in the US definitely makes it harder to be anonymous (friends, relatives, language, police presence, etc)... it also makes it easier to be caught.

There's no way to know what happened in their case.

But I suspect that it was a "loose lips" thing. Exacerbated, probably, by developing the project gradually. Being sloppy at first, because it was just playing around. Also bragging, and living large. That's a common set of fails. It played a major role in DPR's takedown. Also Sabu, who had been indiscreet on IRC, years before. And Artem Vaulin of KickassTorrents, who registered a key domain in his own name.

There's also the difficulty of accepting and accessing money anonymously. The Sheep Marketplace founder pwned himself when he cashed out. It's very hard to route around KYC law. The safest bet is collecting payments as Bitcon, Monero, etc And leaving everything except operating expenses in cryptocurrency, until it's time to expatriate to a safe jurisdiction, and cash out some of that good wealth.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#52

Post by PeterStuer »

close04 wrote: post #43
PeterStuer wrote: post #36

Services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video would be a lot more successful if only their catalogs in regions outside of the US would be comparable to their home turf. If US clients would have the tiny tiny catalogs they offer e.g. in most of Europe, you would also be scratching your head how this could ever justify the subscription cost.

The major difference is that the EU does not behave like a unified body when it comes to purchasing the distribution rights. So Netflix negotiates with each country individually. Unless you share it with family so more people get value out of it, it is indeed hard to justify the subscription for many people. Edit: > make the shows and movies available on servers in Canada Is this a real protection against getting cau…

Archaic distribution rights are indeed to blame. But this still leaves most of the world in an impasse with regards to a credible legal media streaming option for film and television.

(I am a Youtube Premium and an Amazon Prime subscriber btw)

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#53

Post by kgwxd »

PeterStuer wrote: post #36

Services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video would be a lot more successful if only their catalogs in regions outside of the US would be comparable to their home turf. If US clients would have the tiny tiny catalogs they offer e.g. in most of Europe, you would also be scratching your head how this could ever justify the subscription cost.

Is the price cheaper in regions where the catalog is slim?

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#54

Post by zaroth »

mapleoin wrote: post #2

So two programmers ran a streaming website bigger than Netflix from their garage?

The article has been updated to reflect that they had more content not more subscribers.

> “Polo pitched his service to potential clients by pointing out that it offered more content than competing legal services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime.”

Total revenue was less than a couple million dollars.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#55

Post by vorpalhex »

qwerty1234599 wrote: post #14
slykar wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess Netflix needs their developers for all the random UI changes nobody is asking for and some "unrelated recommendations" engine.

Have you used any pirate streaming websites? They're pure garbage, bad UX, bad image quality, choppy video. The only reason anybody uses them is the price or lack of legal options

I've obviously never committed piracy - but most of the websites I've been on are better than Hulu or many of the other streaming services because they're focused on user features and not what a product manager thinks is pretty and "modern".

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#56

Post by Pigo »

haunter wrote: post #13

It's cable TV all over again. The current streaming scene is not any better at all.

My mind is blown that these sites were actually getting paid subscribers. I thought the beauty of piracy is the whole "not paying for it" thing.

I refuse to pay for more than one subscription service, I'm not going to end up paying more than I did for cable tv. Hulu still wins for me because it has the live/local tv, and I'm not giving Disney anymore money.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#57

Post by utopian3 »

slykar wrote: post #9
mapleoin wrote: post #2

So two programmers ran a streaming website bigger than Netflix from their garage?

I guess Netflix needs their developers for all the random UI changes nobody is asking for and some "unrelated recommendations" engine.

Agreed. And what frustrates me to no-end is that they constantly move the last thing I watched away from a single click when I return to the app.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#58

Post by Dirlewanger »

firefoxd wrote: post #4

This might be a naive question but, why is the FBI the office in charge of enforcing copyright? Especially when it comes to entertainment. Why do we get an FBI warning on a cartoon's dvd?

Think of the FBI as the police for the federal government. Roughly, as soon as your typical crime goes across state lines, they can get involved (because a state's jurisdiction ends at their borders).

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#59

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

jalla wrote: post #27
kd5bjo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright and patent authority is explicitly granted to the Federal government by Art. I, Sec. 8 of the US constitution: The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; As such, state courts and police forces have no jurisdiction over copyright issues; they mus…

Why didn't FBI get involved against Napster?

I assume it's because Napster was the first to really take file-sharing global and at such an accessible scale. And maybe the laws and enforcement procedures hadn't really caught up. But keep in mind, that Napsters defense was that they were just acting as an intermediary, they never actively distributed and held the content unlike our heroes at JetFlix.

Re: Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case

#60

Post by x86_64Ubuntu »

mirimir wrote: post #51
latchkey wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on irrelevant. The fact that they stayed in the US definitely makes it harder to be anonymous (friends, relatives, language, police presence, etc)... it also makes it easier to be caught.

There's no way to know what happened in their case. But I suspect that it was a "loose lips" thing. Exacerbated, probably, by developing the project gradually. Being sloppy at first, because it was just playing around. Also bragging, and living large. That's a common set of fails. It played a major role in DPR's takedown. Also Sabu, who had been indiscreet on IRC, years before. And Artem Vaulin of KickassTorrents, wh…

It also seems like when you start working with money, you cross into a whole different level of having a bad day by the Feds. If they had run something that had been ad based, they might have been able to stay off the FBI's shitlist. But when you have subscribers, and bank accounts and money transfers you are raising the governments ire.
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