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After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

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Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#91

Post by Grishnakh »

zamalek wrote: post #15

The same effect is occurring in South Africa. People I know are switching back to piracy because our Netflix catalog is probably in the region of 10% of America (for the same reasons, as well as others). After years of not being able to legally access some copyrighted content, with no discussion and no change, I honestly don't see the copyright holders backing down - strange considering that they are the only ones ac…

>Nobody deserves to have their hard work stolen

First off, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. No one's stealing their content, because the copyright holders still have it. Stealing is wrong because it deprives the owner of the use of that thing: if I steal your car, then you can't drive to work any more. If I sneakily scan your car with a tricorder and 3D-print a clone of it, you still have your car.

Semantics aside, I completely disagree about them deserving to have their hard work copied and not getting paid for it. They absolutely do deserve this. If someone works hard on some piece of art (music, movie, etc.) and makes it conveniently available to everyone at the same fair price, then I think they deserve to get paid for it. But if they're dicks and they use their dominant position and inertia to promote their works and make them popular and culturally relevant, but then they only make them available to some people and not to others because they're trying to figure out unethical ways of gaming the system to make more money, then fuck 'em. People in other regions where this stuff isn't available have every right to copy it without paying.

These copyright holders have been bitching for many years about "piracy". Then along came the iTunes Store, Netflix, etc., and they proved that people are willing to pay for this stuff as long as it's a fair price and is convenient. Now they want to dick with it, so predictably, people are going back to piracy. Personally, I'd rather not bother with piracy: it's a PITA to use BitTorrent, try to find good versions of stuff, hope there's enough seeders out there, wait forever for it to download (not a problem if it's extremely popular that day, but a big problem if it's not), etc. I'd much rather pay $8/month for Netflix and just select what I want to see, hit "play" and watch it. But if the copyright holders are going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg, then oh well...

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#92

Post by thrusong »

kejaed wrote: post #41
thrusong wrote: post #33

We're in Canada and have been cable cutters for almost five years now. We've gotten by on Netflix US and YouTube with the occasional pirated streaming site, but we're barely ever using Netflix anymore. We've turned to Kodi. We don't want to pirate, but it's hard to make a compelling argument against it when you get everything you want even easier than torrents. Add to that the abusive monopolies of Shaw and Bell, who…

What's wrong with Bell/Saw/Rogers having their own streaming services? I've found Bell's Crave TV to be pretty good, Shomi not as much.

It might just be my experience dealing with Bell when we had ExpressVu before becoming cable cutters, and Shaw's Internet service when I was growing up.

I also hate the things Bell has tried to do through the CRTC, like that whole Internet thing with smaller providers using its pipes.

I guess it's a principal thing.

EDIT: Another example... I used to always choose Famous Players for movies. I avoided Cineplex. Then Cplex gobbled up Famous and I started going to Landmark. I should be able to choose where I consume my content.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#93

Post by Grishnakh »

rhino369 wrote: post #47
themartorana wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never been well explained to me how this is a profitable model, especially considering the ease with which popular shows are pirated - in full HD and digital sound I might add. What do studios really stand to gain by keeping Germany et al from so much content?

Why is everyone assuming that greedy German companies aren't willing to sell? Is it also possible that Netflix isn't willing to pay the going rate or hasn't bothered to negotiate for the rights. Netflix launched globally without taking the time to negotiate content for most countries on earth. I'm not sure you can assume that Netflix is being diligent in trying to acquire content. Especially since even in the USA net…

>Why is everyone assuming that greedy German companies aren't willing to sell?

The OP isn't talking about greedy German companies, he's complaining about greedy American companies who won't let Netflix in Germany show American content to German viewers. Greedy German companies are a different issue.

This whole issue is mainly about greedy American companies, because if there's one thing that America produces that people around the world want, it's our movies and TV, and a lot of people outside the US were/are using VPNs and other such things to get access to a US-based Netflix account because the versions in their own countries didn't have all the content that the American version has, and now Netflix is restricting that access.

There aren't many people outside Germany/Austria who really want to see content from German media companies.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#94

Post by jamstruth »

themartorana wrote: post #27
sgift wrote: post #25

The only reason I subscribed to Netflix was that it was the best way to get Warehouse 13, which I really wanted to see at the time. For now Netflix still has enough content to satisfy me, but the idea that the library is so much smaller here in Germany than in the U.S. was never to my liking .. Greedy companies force Netflix to block customers, customers pirate content instead, all loose. One would think Hollywood le…

It's never been well explained to me how this is a profitable model, especially considering the ease with which popular shows are pirated - in full HD and digital sound I might add. What do studios really stand to gain by keeping Germany et al from so much content?

The companies get to sell the distribution rights more than once. Its more chances to get a good deal for the producers of the content.

Then they need to maintain this barrier so that the deal is good for both the Producer and Distributor involved. If they don't force Netflix to do this then the deals don't look as good to the distributors.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#95

Post by Grishnakh »

guiomie wrote: post #79
lostgame wrote: post #48

I ended up having the conversation with a co-worker...I live in Canada, and anyone who lives up here can back me up on the fact that this country is just awful with regards to its copyright litigation with regards to television, especially. It's far, far easier for me to pirate content than it is to legally buy it. Until that's the case, I'm not interested in forking over my money to be inconvenienced (and this is co…

Wait, you are justifying an illegal action of yours because it is easier than the legal route? Since when doing the right thing is and should always be easier... So, do you also not pay income tax because it is much easier to not do so? There are countless examples where being illegal is easier over legal, but as a society some of us understand that if the majority respect the law and order, we are much better off. I…

No, she doesn't understand why. Maybe you can enlighten us. She used to pay hard cash for access to Netflix (the US version), and watched US content legally. Now she's being prevented from that.

If the content creator doesn't want to sell access to the content for you, then you have every right to access it through other means. They never had to cut off access to these non-US customers: they were paying good money for this service, the same money as someone in America. Why shouldn't they be allowed access? Why is their money not as good as an American's money?

Don't forget, we have a Free Trade treaty between Canada and the US. They're not practicing free trade here as the treaty states, so she has every right to work around it.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#96

Post by qwertymaster »

After years of using netflix, since long before it was even available in Germany, I canceled my account the moment I couldn't access the US library anymore. The German library is just not worth it and titles were often missing English subtitles, even for movies which were available on US netflix with subtitles. As I usually watch shows with english subtitles (including shows in english) and original audio, this really bothered me and made the non-US experience even worse. Never really watched many of the German shows on there, maybe one or two.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#97

Post by [deleted] »

Grishnakh wrote: post #91
zamalek wrote: post #15

The same effect is occurring in South Africa. People I know are switching back to piracy because our Netflix catalog is probably in the region of 10% of America (for the same reasons, as well as others). After years of not being able to legally access some copyrighted content, with no discussion and no change, I honestly don't see the copyright holders backing down - strange considering that they are the only ones ac…

>Nobody deserves to have their hard work stolen First off, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement. No one's stealing their content, because the copyright holders still have it. Stealing is wrong because it deprives the owner of the use of that thing: if I steal your car, then you can't drive to work any more. If I sneakily scan your car with a tricorder and 3D-print a clone of it, you still have your car. Semant…

[deleted]

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#98

Post by djrogers »

Grishnakh wrote: post #87
planetjones wrote: post #35

I am an English person living in Switzerland. Netflix Switzerland is useless to me (no House of Cards, not enough focus on UK and USA content, etc.). Therefore I had a Netflix USA account, which I accessed via unblock-us. The clampdown by Netflix has been "successful" and I now can't access Netflix USA using unblock-us. This happened halfway through watching House of Cards. So my choice was either stop watching or do…

I'm not familiar with unblock-us. Would a VPN service work, or have they figured out how to block those too? I would imagine that to do that, they'd have to keep lists of IP addresses associated with the VPN services they want to block.

> they'd have to keep lists of IP addresses associated with the VPN services they want to block.

Yeah, that's probably what they're doing. It wouldn't be too hard for them to get the first 95% either - beyond ARIN/NIC registration searches etc, they could just look for IP addresses that often have a large number of subscribers behind them, especially a large number of non-us subscribers.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#99

Post by newscracker »

guiomie wrote: post #79
lostgame wrote: post #48

I ended up having the conversation with a co-worker...I live in Canada, and anyone who lives up here can back me up on the fact that this country is just awful with regards to its copyright litigation with regards to television, especially. It's far, far easier for me to pirate content than it is to legally buy it. Until that's the case, I'm not interested in forking over my money to be inconvenienced (and this is co…

Wait, you are justifying an illegal action of yours because it is easier than the legal route? Since when doing the right thing is and should always be easier... So, do you also not pay income tax because it is much easier to not do so? There are countless examples where being illegal is easier over legal, but as a society some of us understand that if the majority respect the law and order, we are much better off. I…

> I am amazed to read this under the caption of articles picture: "Netflix customer Susan Lorenz of Toronto doesn't understand why the company is suddenly shutting her out from the content she used to be able to see." ... Susan most certainly understands why.

Later on in the article, it says this:

~~~~~

Because she pays for the service and has been able to skirt the rules for so long, Lorenz doesn't understand why Netflix is suddenly shutting her out.

"I don't know why I can't have international access," she says. "That doesn't make sense to me."

~~~~~

Understanding why there are content restrictions across regions makes no sense to most people.

Re: After Netflix crackdown on border-hopping, Canadians ready to return to piracy

#100

Post by pessimizer »

zamalek wrote: post #15

The same effect is occurring in South Africa. People I know are switching back to piracy because our Netflix catalog is probably in the region of 10% of America (for the same reasons, as well as others). After years of not being able to legally access some copyrighted content, with no discussion and no change, I honestly don't see the copyright holders backing down - strange considering that they are the only ones ac…

The copyright owners aren't losing anything. They're trying to maximize profits, not sales.
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