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Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

theguardian.com

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Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#511
post #177

Piracy offers: 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies, music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by opaque "licensing deals" between various companies. 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations. 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with sufficient bandwidth. I d…

Don't forget censorship-free I swore off streaming services when they started pulling episodes of comedy shows and editing out scenes because they were worried someone might be offended

This was what made me cancel Netflix 10 years ago.

They decided to remove stuff that cost them nothing to have in their library like Gone with the Wind. I'd never watch it but it was clear then they had decided they would be gatekeepers of what people can and cant watch.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a bad reason to swear off streaming services. Do you not shop at stores because they don’t carry offensive clothing?

That’s a bad analogy. It works against your point. It seems entirely, entirely reasonable to avoid a clothing store that refuses to stock hip styles simply because they’re “offensive”. For an example using the cliche, many people find a naked ankle to be completely acceptable.

Yours is wrong. Yours would work if you liked all the clothes there but then one day they stopped selling Kanye West’s Nazi shirt that you liked because people found it offensive. And then you stopped shopping there because of that.

The analogy requires you giving up what you want because they stopped carrying something others find offensive. Not that they don’t sell what you like all up. In which case it makes perfect sense not to shop there.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#513

When billion dollar companies, which are praised and supported by governments, download pirated material and do not pay, why should ordinary people restrain themselves and pay? I cannot see how one can make moral arguments against piracy now. It makes no sense to pay if others are not paying and not punished for it. People also have a right to train their real neural network for free without paying.

This is a good point. Stealing is a crime only for end users and not for companies. Why should end users feel any shame violating the DMCA when the government itself says it’s ok for companies to not honor it

Hold on. There are current lawsuits over this. The companies haven’t been exonerated yet

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#514
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing OP, that is just ridiculous, makes cable looks like a sane option.

With cable you didn’t get this fragmentation cause you also didn’t get many options. Watch at 8am or at 6pm, whatever episode airs that day, probably a rerun or a skipped.

Different cable providers each had their own bundles and individual paid channels, so you kinda got a choice, with a lot of fragmentation.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#515
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also often time have versions of old movies and shows that have been modified due to silly things like license agreements on music expiring! I have felt gaslighted when I rewatch and old movie and some scene isn’t how I remember.

the DVD/streaming releases of Daria suffer from this. i used to have old TV rips of the show with the original contemporary MTV soundtrack but i'm not sure what happened to them. the stock music just doesn't carry the weight of the times.

Mission Hill as well. If you want the original one, with tracks by Moby, Looper, the Toasters, and more, the only option is a fan made restoration project

If you want 4k, that fan restoration project is also the only way to get it

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#516

When billion dollar companies, which are praised and supported by governments, download pirated material and do not pay, why should ordinary people restrain themselves and pay? I cannot see how one can make moral arguments against piracy now. It makes no sense to pay if others are not paying and not punished for it. People also have a right to train their real neural network for free without paying.

This is a good point. Stealing is a crime only for end users and not for companies. Why should end users feel any shame violating the DMCA when the government itself says it’s ok for companies to not honor it

If only pirating a CBS show somehow meant getting back at OpenAI.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subtitles is a big one for me. I can stream something in Japan, that I have seen other places has english subs, but due to licensing I cannot see them. I know I could vpn around this, but why should I pay even more just for subtitles? In the end I'm paying for Netflix, Disney and Amazon. My son uses those as he is bilingual, I just pirate what I want to watch personally.

It’s frustrating when languages are locked behind regional restrictions or selective availability, and it borders on being an accessibility issue. That said, things have improved compared to the past, at least when it comes to consuming foreign media from outside its home country. In my case, that means accessing Japanese content while outside Japan. In most cases, I suspect the limitation isn’t the fault of the stre…

You're correct (in the things I have checked) when viewing Japanese content outside Japan. But inside? No, it's never licenced (or available, I'm not sure).

I live in Japan, so we'll fuck me otherwise, right? xD

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#518
post #235
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

with a sample size of one, there is no obvious problem. presumably any given household wants to watch more than just pokemon, though and this is where things become unstuck. suddenly, to satisfy the demand for the range of things people in the household want to watch they are forced to make subscriptions to multiple services, perhaps sometimes for one-offs. scale this up, and you have a population forced to make mult…

That's not how streaming worked, ever. You had to deal with what Netflix had to offer and that was it. These were the happy monopoly days. It was simply the lack of choice and nobody felt left out at watercooler talks. The paradox now, is that if you're FOMO inclined you feel the need to subscribe to multiple ones at all times to satify all needs in a household. You don't have to. You can keep baseline Disney if you…

read the page carefully

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#520
post #439
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not downloading a movie to watch, you are just "acquiring training material" and "reviewing" it to make sure you can use it to train a high-quality model.

This is/would be a fun point, but the illegality isn’t around watching the pirated media. When I torrent a copy of Terminator, the illegal act is acquiring the material, not my watching of it. I’m not a lawyer so I’m sure there is more to this definition.

Not a lawyer but the de facto law has always appeared to only care about uploading.

Torrenting gets you in trouble because uploading at least a little bit is inherent to how it (and some other P2P) is supposed to work, and that's enough for a case.

Cases against people just downloading have always appeared to be very rare/non-existent, at least from when I used to follow the news on this stuff more. I don't think I've ever seen a case of someone threatened for solely downloading off direct download services, for example.

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