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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

#891

Post by wltr »

MikeRichardson wrote: post #859
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…

Minimize seeding on torrents. I've still gotten a few strikes from various ISPs though. Some ISPs seem to care more than others, in my experience.

In practice, what do these strikes mean? Was it some fine? Or rather just a warning?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#892

Post by wltr »

tstrimple wrote: post #840
wltr wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about torrents and Tor? Moral aspects aside. (Personally, I’d not do it, out of respect for the network.) Just curious about it theoretically, how this technology and its ‘moderation’ (let’s call it that) works.

Torrents and Tor aren't related. BitTorrent (the protocol) is about peer to peer file sharing and the metadata that enables it. Tor is a network overlay that helps prevent an actor from seeing both where a connection is coming from and where it is going to at the same time. If you're using Tor your ISP can see that you're using it, but not what sites you visit. Other agencies could see that Tor traffic is going to we…

Yeah, I know, and that’s why I mentioned that personally I won’t use tor network for downloading huge amounts of data, out of the respect for the network. It’s meaningful for countries where Internet is censored, and wasn’t invented for piracy, rather for censoring circumvention. But theoretically it’s possible to move your traffic through the network, that way nobody can tell you are torrenting, I assume. (Or at least what you’re torrenting.)

Personally, I know just one person who does that. We’re not close for me to ask him anything, though (a friend of a friend of a friend). For the context, he lives in Germany.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#893

Post by matheusmoreira »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #871
matheusmoreira wrote: post #835

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who the fuck pays for a triple A video game if it’s morally right to pirate things? Yours truly. I have been a proud Steam customer for over 20 years. I have licensed over 200 games on Steam alone. I own multiple video game consoles from multiple generations and have quite the collection of titles for them. Not a single person can accuse me of not supporting creators. > The fact of the matter is your “morality” her…

>Yours truly. What is this? Did you drop the mic? Think about what you just admitted. It's morally right to pirate. So instead of doing the moral thing, you pay extra money for No fucking reason. Congratulations. >Not a single person can accuse me of not supporting creators. But people still can accuse you of being stupid. Not saying that you are stupid, but it's open season in this area. Make sure your arguments are…

> So instead of doing the moral thing, you pay extra money for No fucking reason.

"No fucking reason" is false. I wrote about the reasons why I pay for games on Steam.

> But people still can accuse you of being stupid.

I'm okay with that.

> Make sure your arguments are legit.

Testing my world views is the reason why I come here.

> How many billions of dollars and jobs just went down the drain?

Not a factor. Jobs that depend on intolerable monopolies shouldn't exist in the first place. Society will adapt. It must.

> But then why stop at creators? Why not make the entire economy based off of patronage?

Because we're talking about artificial scarcity of ideas, not tangible goods which follow natural economic principles. None of this applies to car manufacturing or food production.

> Your work should be OPEN source and free! You program right? So all you're doing is creating ideas.

I don't even disagree with you. That's why I barely even bother with licensing. I just pick AGPLv3 to maximize freedom and leverage.

I'm more radical than Stallman in this area. Stallman believes in and relies on copyright. I don't.

> The company shouldn't pay you fuck shit, and the only people who can pay you are people who sign up as patrons.

It's not that easy.

I work on my own projects because I personally care about them. They are rarely aligned with and might even be opposed to company interests.

I get to do whatever I want, however I want, whenever I want. I also get to walk away at any point for any reason, including no reason.

I'm not an employee. I have no boss. I have no deadlines. I have no obligations to anyone, least of all corporations.

If companies want developers to work on their stuff on a regular basis, they have to pay for it. Why would anyone care otherwise?

> Here's a genius idea. If you stand by your ideas so much, why don't you start executing on them right now!

I don't work in the software industry. My aversion to intellectual property is one of the reasons why.

I do have a GitHub Sponsors. For about a year, I had exactly one sponsor. Now I have zero.

I am also opposed to advertising in general. I try very hard not to talk about my own projects unless it is socially acceptable to do so. Others have independently submitted my work here and on other sites. I was also invited to post about one of them on reddit once.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#894

Post by matheusmoreira »

keeda wrote: post #854
the_af wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is not theft. We already had this debate decades ago, and your side of the debate lost. It's not "theft" by any reasonable interpretation of the word. It may not be legal, and it may be many other things, but it's not theft. As to why "people justify it", what's the point of even asking when the article and many comments here explain the reasons? You may disagree with the reasons, but they exist and they are c…

> We already had this debate decades ago, and your side of the debate lost. It's not "theft" by any reasonable interpretation of the word. That's only true when you ignore many, many common usages of the word "theft". I would hazard a guess that your interpretations are along the dictionary lines of "depriving a person of their property." However, here are some commonly used forms of the word (supported by wikipedia…

The proper legal term is copyright infringement. Robbery and theft cover real property, not intellectual property.

"Common usages" of a word are irrelevant. We can't discuss legal concepts without precise terminology. Only the correct words and their precise meanings matter.

Equation of copyright infringement to theft and piracy is propaganda. People do this deliberately in order to draw on the negative connotations of the words. Good faith cannot be assumed if people insist on using these words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

> Theft, meanwhile, emphasizes the potential commercial harm of infringement to copyright holders.

> However, copyright is a type of intellectual property, an area of law distinct from that which covers robbery or theft, offenses related only to tangible property.

> Not all copyright infringement results in commercial loss

> the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that infringement does not easily equate with theft

> Judge Kathleen M. Williams granted a motion to deny the MPAA the usage of words whose appearance was primarily "pejorative"

> This list included the word "piracy", the use of which, the motion by the defense stated, serves no court purpose but to misguide and inflame the jury

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#895

Post by helsinkiandrew »

imoverclocked wrote: post #620
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell me, does the original cast get any of that or is it just adding pocket change to Google's coffers? Google will have negotiated with the “owner” (in this case I think Disney) for a wholesale price and then adds its retail markup (eg 20%). Disney pay the industry standard SAG/DGA union negotiated residual agreements to cast, writers and directors

I find myself wishing for a lower-overhead approach to this. 20% already gets the price from $14.99 to $12.49. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the cast gets less than 50% and lawyers get more than 40% of that. If true, that's less than $6.25 to the folks that actually made the movie and $8.75 (or more) of pure, unadulterated overhead. Finally, clicking on "where to watch" shows prices within $0.20 of each other. It…

The actor residuals are much less than 50%, but the remaining goes to the studio/funders who own the rights, not lawyers.

Wholesale/retail makes more sense if you think of google having to deal with consumers, providing a website/apps, advertising, collecting payments etc. whilst the movie company makes the content and negotiates deals with broadcasters and streaming companies around the world.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#896

Post by matheusmoreira »

keeda wrote: post #880
the_af wrote: post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I said, we already had this conversation ages ago and your side lost. Shout until you're blue in the face, and you'll be just as wrong. I've already stated my position, and "because you can get away with it" is no part of it. You must be confusing me with someone else in this conversation. Half your examples fail to make the point you intend, and are not at all analogous to watching a pirated TV show. A lot of the…

> As I said, we already had this conversation ages ago and your side lost. Repeating that does not make it true. > A lot of the rest use an informal (not legal, and highly subjective) definition of the word "theft" -- but you knew this. Yes, all the examples I gave are exactly of that. I think we are in violent agreement here. > It's exhausting to keep repeating this. I do agree it's exhausting, because neither you n…

> So when someone takes something of value

> it is essentially taking something of value

Intellectual property is not "taken". It is not a tangible good that can change hands. Copies are made instead.

Copyright refers to the right to make copies.

Having a copyright means having the right to make copies.

To infringe someone's copyright is to make copies despite the right to make copies belonging to someone else.

The words are self-explanatory.

Real property logic and words do not apply to intellectual property. Insisting on their use is bad faith argumentation. It is an attempt to convince others by shock and manipulation. Virtually nobody is moved by such a nebulous crime as copyright infringement, so the words theft and piracy are substituted in its place for greater impact.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#897

Post by allarm »

cyberax wrote: post #587
II2II wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a "walkable city". By walkable, I mean the old parts of the city that predated the automobile (and weren't destroyed in the name of modernization) are walkable. New parts of the city are completely unwalkable. If you came here, you would notice that massive numbers of people walk in the old parts of the city. Even the people who drive into the old parts of the city tend to walk once they are there. In the n…

> By walkable, I mean the old parts of the city that predated the automobile (and weren't destroyed in the name of modernization) are walkable. OK. Here's my question: is it possible and feasible to NOT walk? Because when the answer is "yes", people tend to not walk.

In many places where I’ve lived people walk just for fun, because it’s enjoyable activity.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#898

Post by risico »

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.

Torrents yes, if you have access to ... certain websites, usually invite only (or some premium torrent caching services) and obviously, have a decent internet connection combined with the ability to choose where to stream the torrent from (beginning), the movie/tv plays as the information comes in sequentially.

Now I have everything automated, I use Plex as the player, then I have a simple script that listens to when I add a movie to the watch list, in the background it searches for that title and puts it in the download queue, then usually in 1-5 seconds I can hit play.

Biggest problem I encounter is with subtitles, they can be hit or miss, no problem for english shows but can be annoying for non-english ones.

And again, no difference between this and something like Netflix (other than the subs ofc), I can stream 4K, all my family members have access to it, I can stream on my phone, I can download things for offline use, yet I would still pay for this if there was a viable alternative out there.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#899

Post by rgblambda »

layer8 wrote: post #147
rgblambda wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix found that while it was a nice advertising tool to boast about the broadness of its catalogue, most customers rarely ordered the more niche stuff so it wasn't particularly profitable.

We don’t have that problem with books for the most part, why do we have it with TV shows and movies?

I suspect if book sellers were as data driven as Netflix, then we would have that problem.

I suspect they're (like Netflix used to) creating an illusion of choice of a wide range of options as you walk to the big shelf in the middle of the shop that has 100 copies of the book that's currently selling well.

Also the fact that physical book shops are still somehow a thing helps. I guess people like the experience.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#900

Post by ninetyninenine »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #893
ninetyninenine wrote: post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yours truly. What is this? Did you drop the mic? Think about what you just admitted. It's morally right to pirate. So instead of doing the moral thing, you pay extra money for No fucking reason. Congratulations. >Not a single person can accuse me of not supporting creators. But people still can accuse you of being stupid. Not saying that you are stupid, but it's open season in this area. Make sure your arguments are…

> So instead of doing the moral thing, you pay extra money for No fucking reason. "No fucking reason" is false. I wrote about the reasons why I pay for games on Steam. > But people still can accuse you of being stupid. I'm okay with that. > Make sure your arguments are legit. Testing my world views is the reason why I come here. > How many billions of dollars and jobs just went down the drain? Not a factor. Jobs that…

Well you’re an outlier. Your refusal to participate in society makes almost everyone on earth disagree with you.

You’re suffering from the blowback of your own choices. If society adopted your philosophies, then society would be the one suffering.

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