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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

#601

Post by jasonfarnon »

cess11 wrote: post #573
SilverElfin wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does one safely pirate these days to avoid authorities

I'm not going to name any names but depending on your budget and jurisdiction you can probably figure out a setup where you either torrent, possibly through a reputable VPN, from an invite based tracker, or you pay to play with one or two Usenet accounts. If you are willing to spend a bit of money you can get what's called a seedbox in a suitable jurisdiction and do rather innocous seeming tunneling between your home…

Usenet? Is the alt.binaries hierarchy really still around? how active is it?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#602

Post by irthomasthomas »

qrios wrote: post #411
imoverclocked wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until recently, 3. (poor connection) has been a huge issue for me and streaming services. When there is a download/watch later, I sigh with relief. 7. is only sort-of an issue, IMHO. Anything that is pirated is usually fairly benign content and I don't care if someone knows how many times I've watched Idiocracy. I just wish I could know how many times I've watched it too. I would add: Piracy offers the ability to rem…

> I don't care if someone knows how many times I've watched Idiocracy. I come from Germany, from East Germany. And some people there wanted to know if you had seen certain films and how often. And ‘Idiocracy’ would have been very high up on their list. Not all films were banned right from the start (‘The Legend of Paul and Paula’ [1]), but right from the beginning the Stasi found it very interesting who had watched t…

Interesting. There isn't one sentence in that article (English) which describes the political controversy of that movie. A single sentence mentions the film almost being banned for its 'political overtones'.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#603

Post by qingcharles »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #332
chongli wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the time of the work's original release. Arguably higher. For example, fans of Star Wars have scanned the original 1977 theatrical release with very high quality film scanners and created a 4K release complete with film grain and the original scenes intact which is not available through approved channels.

There’s also a number of movies where the best quality publicly available is a pirated rip of an HDTV broadcast from a Malaysian TV network or something similarly odd because the rights holders never released a BD and the official DVD release was a transfer from a crappy VHS or similar. In cases of TV shows, fans have gone to the lengths of producing the best quality release possible by patching together video, audio…

Yeah, IIRC NHK broadcast some movies, like 2001, in 8K scans that are hard to find even on the high seas.

And there are one or two movies that have leaked in DCP 4K, which look absolutely stunning if you have the hardware to play them.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#604

Post by DrNosferatu »

ryandrake wrote: post #153

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…

And your personal data won’t be sold off!

A Netflix presentation to invite advertisers actually boasted how well they could target you for adds.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#605

Post by qingcharles »

l72 wrote: post #201
hbn wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Ugh, the music licensing issue is horrible. I sold a movie to Netflix many years ago and they "couldn't afford" the awesome soundtrack so they switched it out with garbage which makes a so-so movie into a total turd.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#606

Post by qingcharles »

exe34 wrote: post #293
macNchz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was so surprised and bummed when I discovered this was a thing. My wife and I started watching the original Beverly Hills 90210—a sort of ridiculous snapshot of American pop culture in the early 1990s—on some streaming service, and after a few episodes I noticed the music was just...super wrong. Reading online, I learned that a lot of the original music had been licensed only for the original run of the show, so ev…

I hate that kind of destruction of what I think should ultimately be considered property of humanity. When you create something, you're free to destroy or ruin it. Once you share it with somebody else, you should need their consent to destroy it.

That's the thing: I don't feel like the studios really own something once it is released. It almost becomes the property of the viewers. Things like changing Star Wars is horrifying to most. It's almost as if the public should have to vote on any changes (e.g. I'd probably be willing to vote to remove some flubs, like a mic dangling in frame).

When the Bobs sold Back to the Future they put a clause in the contract that the movies could not be remade or altered in any way without their approval. They nixed the 3D versions that Universal was planned when 3D TVs were in vogue.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#610

Post by marcus_holmes »

dylan604 wrote: post #576
marcus_holmes wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this is how the "unofficial" streaming services make money, basically. They don't have the production costs, obviously, so there are some numbers to crunch there. And I don't have answers to any of your questions, because I am not in the industry. I suspect these are a whole bunch of trade-offs, as in most technical questions, and there is a version of these trade-offs that are economically viable. But people ar…

I am in the industry, and I'm giving you a simplified formula which answers why more titles are not available. You just don't want to accept the reality of it from the content owner's perspective and only see if from the "I deserve to see anything I want anytime I want" perspective.

Yeah, fair point.

I counter that I can go and see anything I want, if I'm prepared to accept a bit of risk and some morally dubious justifications.

The reality that the content owners face is that there are people making money off their work because they're not giving the paying customer what they want, and those other people are. That's a viable business that they're not profiting from. That's the reality. I'm not sure why it's not visible from the content owner's perspective.

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