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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

#71

Post by thayne »

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.

I know it isn't quite as bad, but in the US, many European (or other foreign) are practically impossible to watch legally. Streaming services don't stream them, and dvds and blu rays are region-locked.

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

#72

Post by jedimastert »

zaroth wrote: post #54
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.

> Total revenue was less than a couple million dollars.

I think you mean that the revenue of a 2 guy company was over a million dollars.

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

#73

Post by jessaustin »

mywittyname wrote: post #67
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.

Could you imagine how great these services would be if copyrighted works fell into the public domain after 28 years instead of the nearly 100 years they are now?

Sure, but in that case most current films would never have been made... or at least I got that distinct impression from MPAA.

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

#74

Post by jessaustin »

utopian3 wrote: post #57
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.

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.

Yes it's as if they've never heard about anyone falling asleep while watching a film.

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

#75

Post by lotsofpulp »

jessaustin wrote: post #73
mywittyname wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you imagine how great these services would be if copyrighted works fell into the public domain after 28 years instead of the nearly 100 years they are now?

Sure, but in that case most current films would never have been made... or at least I got that distinct impression from MPAA.

It is in their benefit to claim that, regardless of the truth of the statement. Why would one trust a biased party such as MPAA?

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

#76

Post by jessaustin »

dmix wrote: post #30
55555 wrote: post #21

There is no way they had more paying subscribers than Netflix. Netflix has 160 million paying customers. These two guys had "more" and made only 1 million dollars total. What? Probably their total pageviews vs Netflix's total paying customers or something dumb like that.

Not to mention the infrastructure, even if they didn’t host the video content themselves (which I doubt?) just handling that many paying customers would be a major operation.

didn’t host the video content themselves

I guess you could host the most popular stuff, plus the first five minutes of everything Netflix and other streamers have, and then just redirect the rest of those streams...

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

#77

Post by behringer »

jessaustin wrote: post #73
mywittyname wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you imagine how great these services would be if copyrighted works fell into the public domain after 28 years instead of the nearly 100 years they are now?

Sure, but in that case most current films would never have been made... or at least I got that distinct impression from MPAA.

Which films exactly took 28 years to turn a profit?

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

#78

Post by lotsofpulp »

utopian3 wrote: post #57
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.

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.

It’s to “trick” people into thinking there is more content than there is, by having to scroll through it. I don’t know why they think people won’t wise up to the ruse after some point.

I opted to cancel rather than be inconvenienced.

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

#80

Post by Pigo »

mywittyname wrote: post #68
Pigo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The beauty of piracy is that you can watch/listen to what you want to, how you want to, when you want to. People are more than happy to pay reasonable prices for content, so long as they can use it how they want; see: Spotify. I'd pay $50/mo for a streaming service that had a significant number of movies and television shows that I want to watch. As it stands, I still need to pirate movies because they are not availa…

You're correct of course, because I have consistently paid for services when they have stuff I wanted at reasonable prices. It's worth it just to relieve myself from the hassle of downloading and filling up my hard drive with stuff. The entire King of the Hill can fill up a HD.

It's just been my experience that these 'popcorn time' services are janky and law enforcement magnets, it's surprising anyone would pay for it. But I suppose I live somewhere that doesn't have as many roadblocks as some places.

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