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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

#671

Post by GoblinSlayer »

alkonaut wrote: post #614
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…

I think the key thing it misses though (usually) is that you usually have to go grab things. I'm not willing to go download something in order to view it. Not even spending a few minutes time grabbing a whole season of a series and then storing it somewhere, even if viewing it takes many hours. Spotify's convenience killed the mp3, and Netflix is hyper convenient compared to most piracy. No one (to a rounding error,…

RSS doesn't support such aggregation?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#672

Post by dotancohen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #589
dotancohen wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were responding to a comment about piracy not self-centering extant works. I could see where the comment does sequitur, just barely. Perhaps he is pushing an agenda, perhaps he was making conversation. I can see far further OT comments all up and down this post.

My issue is less with taking a tangent but the way the comment is framed as if it's a justification for what services are doing. Maybe one south park episode can be half-justified that way, and basically nothing else.

I see what you're saying now. I'm not familiar with the South Park episode but I think I understand you.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#673

Post by matwood »

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…

#4 is huge. I happily paid for all the streaming services, then I moved out of the US, and most stopped working even on VPN. Most things I’ve just stopped watching, but it’s annoying where I’m trying to pay and still can’t access.

Cost was/is a non-factor.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#674

Post by CornishPasty »

nativeit wrote: post #399
singingwolfboy wrote: post #117

https://archive.ph/Q9lvm

I like the principled archive link, despite The Guardian having no paywalls.

The guardian does have a semi-paywall in that you can either share your personal data with them or pay. Which in my opinion is a breach of the GDPR but apparently the UK ICO has said it’s fine. Yet another toothless/useless organisation

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#676

Post by jonvk »

crote wrote: post #266
galleywest200 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical media offers the first three, but not option four. I, too, would pay per show/movie to download and save DRM-free videos to my own drives.

So how come you can't (legally) watch Blue-Rays using a Linux computer, or when viewing it on an ancient CRT using an HDMI-to-analog converter? A lot of effort has gone into making physical media work only with pre-approved devices.

And driving the price up for the consumer for the anti-consumer tech licencing fees.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#677

Post by cess11 »

jasonfarnon wrote: post #601
cess11 wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you pick decent indexers and buy enough traffic it's absurdly good. Especially if you're into less than mainstream material or tend to try many things out before you settle on a binge, because if it's in the search result it's almost sure to be on your disk within minutes and you don't need to keep a cache for days or weeks because of hit'n'run rules.

Politically I prefer torrenting, due to the social character and openness and so on, but Usenet has none of the fuss beyond a bit of setup and configuration.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#678

Post by account42 »

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…

It's really infuriating how many TV series are only (legally) available as horribly over-compressed and interlaced DVDs outside of streaming platforms.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#679

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #602
qrios wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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'.

The English article is incomplete. The banner is there. I guess I could try to complete it but it’s highly my work would be struck out by an angry editor feeling territorial for a reason or another so maybe not.

The French article is a bit better - I don’t understand German sadly.

The controversy stems from the protagonists values. They put their love for each other and their search for fulfilment above other commitments which was seen as dangerously non communist. The film was cleared by the head of East Germany but the censors still imposed a tragic ending.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#680

Post by benjiro »

godelski wrote: post #366
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…

Piracy also offers: 0. Ability to watch offline! 1. Ability to fix subtitle issues with minimal tweeks like change size or moving location. 1.2 Ability to get subtitles if they aren't offered (or offered in your language) 2. Ability to normalize audio. 3. Ability to buffer videos when on a poor connection. 4. Ability to create collections, organize, and track your movie as you wish 5. Arbitrary number of user account…

> With $1k you can build a pretty good system

1. The hardware you buy for these activities, has still residual value after 1, 2, 3 year. Unlike the streaming service you pay for.

2. Its cheap to upgrade / expand over time (if its not a all in one solution)

3. It opens a door to not just store movies/music/images, but as emulator, streaming service, or game streaming to one or multiple.

4. The content will not arbitrarily vanish.

5. Your bookmarks / last viewed / ... will not arbitrarily vanish. Do not get me started on this and how annoying it can be when a services removes content!

6. It serves not only as a device for "linux isos" or other gray zones but also as a legit backup of your own personal data.

7. Saves you from needing "cloud" storage or other cloud services.

8. Can be enhanced with programs that offer image conversion, pdf conversion etc, all private!

9. Run your own chat server for the family, no US/EU "we want to know what you are saying" issues.

10. Can act like your own VPN, to route data from your phone or other devices outside your home.

11. Provides service if you are in area's with horrible internet connection with its ability to "cache isos" at night slowly.

12. Your control over the media means you can stream 4k to your PC. Netflix kuch kuch ... No, its not 4k.

13. You can gain the FULL bitrate of the media. You do not get a washed down version of the supposed media based upon how busy a streaming service their servers are or other limitations.

14. It can be used for so many other activities like programming.

15. Did i mention home automatization?

And so much more ... People are probably doing things with NAS setups that i can not even think about.

Your not investing into a machine for "illegal" stuff, your investing into a machine that frees you as the end user from all those cloud, streaming, and other services their lackluster service. And then provides all the added benefits on top, that a 24/7 running PC can provide.

Lets also not forget the future where LLM's are a thing. Having your own open source LLM that runs at home, can be a major benefit.

But ... it does require more knowledge, especially as you step up beyond simple storage. So that is the real downside, not the money, the time and knowledge buildup.

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