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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

#771

Post by Night_Thastus »

In a related vein, Ebooks. I have a Kobo e-reader that is fantastic.

I just ran into a situation where I really wanted to buy two e-books. Unfortunately, both are on Amazon. Amazon doesn't let you just download them to your computer anymore, you need to transfer them to a Kindle. A kindle I do not have.

I tried to find any possible workaround, but they've totally locked it down. So, I didn't buy either book. I really struggle to see how this is helpful to anyone. Does Amazon seriously make enough profit off of each Kindle to be worth it like this? Ugh.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#772

Post by LeonardoTolstoy »

bkettle wrote: post #172
parpfish wrote: post #108

i wish we could go back to a pre-streaming version of netflix. the near-infinite library and lack of algorithmic nudging resulted in an era where i had healthy view habits. reasonable levels of screentime and VERY diverse content. i add so many movies to my queue with the best intentions of watching them someday, but always put them off because something about staring at that endless scroll of options makes me crave…

I was wondering recently whether someone could conceivably start a disk-in-the-mail Netflix again, now that streaming sucks so much and every publisher seems to want their own streaming service. My understanding (possibly wrong, I'm not an expert) is that it's perfectly legal to lend out physical media without any special permission from the publisher under the first-sale doctrine, so it seems like the only way to bu…

Library. I order DVDs to my local library all the time. Maybe your library system is terrible, but if it isn't you certainly can do this. There are hundreds a big wide release films with, effectively, are only available on DVD from a library (legally).

Bonus when I go I can still get that browsing the aisle experience like in an old video store (but in this case I am lucky, my local library has a large DVD / Blu-ray collection to browse)

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#773

Post by anal_reactor »

lackoftactics wrote: post #94

It's no longer as convenient with dozens of streaming services; the streaming bitrate is also subpar, and audio is compressed to the point it feels flat. If you want to be mindful about what you are watching, it will be really hard with Netflix, Prime, and Disney compared to your own media server. When I had a streaming subscription, I was constantly shocked by what was popular in Poland and what people were watching…

> When I had a streaming subscription, I was constantly shocked by what was popular in Poland and what people were watching. It took me some time to accept that I am not their target audience.

Now I'm genuinely curious

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#774

Post by hehetrthrthrjn »

wltr wrote: post #165

Oh, I have a question to all of the people who pirate but live in a country where that’s illegal and punished (with huge fines, I assume). I’m very interested in listening to some stories of how it’s technically done (vpn, a seedbox, or you just keep things simple and don’t care). E.g. I’ve been trying sophisticated backlists of IPs, but I have no idea whether they work. But even more I am interested in a legal aspec…

I don't even know what the law says in my own country, instead I use a country where is it not illegal to download (but is to upload) and has excellent global connectivity and got a VPS there. I installed Transmission, disabled uploads, and a few other tools and now I just click the magnet link on a torrent site and the media shows up in my download folder after a few minutes or sometimes hours. For anything a bit popular I get 300Mbps downloads on average.

The country in question is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#775

Post by vidyesh »

ramon156 wrote: post #770

While obviously this isn't realistic, I wonder if it were possible to start a streaming service on pirated media. The infra is there already, just charge 5 bucks for high quality streaming. I'd gladly pay for that!

There are a few for $15-$20/month. Dig through torrentfreak news and you will find some services which are supposedly shutdown but they aren't.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#776

Post by anal_reactor »

the_cramer wrote: post #723
risico wrote: post #720

Coming from a country where piracy was the norm, I was very happy when Spotify and Netflix finally arrived. I even went through the trouble of accessing them via VPN just so I could pay for them. Unfortunately, that excitement didn't last long. Shows started disappearing from Netflix, so we signed up for another service, then another, and so on. Prices kept going up, and I eventually realized I was paying a lot of mo…

I assume you are using torrent based services? I was always wondering about how this approach could provide "instant playback". This is the one feature that keeps me ensnared to the big streaming services TBH. It's hard to get into the matter if one does not have much time to scoop information from the web.

If your internet isn't delivered in literal buckets then the movie will download before you're done peeing. At 100MB/s you can download 30GB in five minutes, which is almost full Blu-Ray rip.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#777

Post by ninetyninenine »

the_af wrote: post #753
ninetyninenine wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The entire games and movie industry exists because a segment of people don’t pirate. All the technology created to support those two industries mentioned above are supported by people who paid for their shit. Your view point twists reality because the financial realities don’t pan out. Who the fuck pays for a triple A video game if it’s morally right to pirate things? If you pirate you benefit off of millions of…

> Call it what you want. If it’s not theft then it’s not theft. But the gravity of the moral infraction is equivalent to theft so I don’t see the point of the word play here. No. As I said, we had this debate decades ago and your side lost. This is settled ground; you can shout into the void but you already lost . You might pirate because you're a "cheap ass" (your words, not mine), but many others don't. They've exp…

If you pirate you used someone’s work without their permission and you caused them to foot the bill for the creation of your product. That is fundamentally immoral. It is logistically impossible to support any industry with your logic here.

That is why axiomatically your justifications are wrong. It’s just not sustainable. On the other hand the owner of a certain IP can make his product as inaccessible as possible and EVEN then if he gets money and the infrastructure is sustainable then the system works and that’s what points to a system that is not morally ambiguous.

I’m capable of admitting my own faults and seeing my own immoral tendencies. Unlike you. I think in your eyes you must be morally perfect because even piracy isn’t wrong to you.

Why the fuck are you so afraid of being accused of pirating? Why do you have to justify to yourself by buying games and then pirating occasionally? I pirate every fucking IP I own. I don’t give a shit. Call me what you want but I’m also not blind to what I do.

People like You pay for all my games and movies. Thank you. If you feel piracy is moral then what I do is moral to you. Thanks for paying for my shit. I don’t think you’re making a smart move for doing that but to each their own… if you think it’s moral it’s not my problem.

Does that make your blood boil? That geniuses like you pay for me to enjoy all my entertainment for free because it’s moral? Then maybe pirates like me should be arrested. Or maybe pirating should only be legal for people who do it if it’s convenient and illegal for me.

Piracy is legal when convenient! Well it’s convenient for me to live a life where you pay for my shit. So why arrest me? We need to define convenient. Or maybe it’s just wrong all together? How about that? What do you think makes the most sense? Obviously all rhetorical questions.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#778

Post by pessimizer »

dylan604 wrote: post #314
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…

Back in the 90s, people just had no concept of today's media offerings. Content was edited specifically to work with the only home media they new of at the time, and that was interlaced TV at frame rates of 29.97 or 25. There was no concept for progressive displays. The only home video format that was in wide use was VHS, and TV shows just didn't find their way there. That was something for theatrical releases. TV sh…

Everybody knows all of this, and nobody thinks the companies doing it are doing it "maliciously." The point is that it is stupid, harmful and unnecessary, not a consumer complaint.

Of course these people did not want to sell a broken product; they sold a lot fewer copies because they were forced to by goofy laws and their financial circumstances.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#779

Post by pessimizer »

viraptor wrote: post #738
john01dav wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't notice the removal and therefore don't have a reason to look elsewhere, it has the same effect

But that's unrelated to why tech. People advertising one version instead of another does not have a technical solution. The only thing tech can provide is the ability to keep copying the old version, regardless of what the original creator/distributor thinks.

You don't understand, it's terrible to censor movies but absolutely vital to make sure people can't make movies I disagree with.

edit: It's funny, I wouldn't be happy about a version of the old HBO series Rome reedited with anything gay taken out, but I'd be absolutely excited to watch a version of Queer As Folk with all the gay stuff edited out.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#780

Post by nostrademons »

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…

Also the trust that your favorite music will still be available to you if the streaming service goes bankrupt or cancels its content licensing deal or decides to jack up prices unaffordably or makes its player incompatible with your OS or introduces a service-ending software bug.
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