Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy • Hacker News Board

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#941

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 4:32 AM UTC

ninetyninenine wrote: post #930

matheusmoreira wrote: post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright abolitionists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_abolition I have no "pen pals" from this site. Anyone replying to you is doing so independently. Recognition of intellectual property is just an illusion. They have vested interests, of course they're going to recognize it. Doesn't change the underlying absurdity of the system. Doesn't change the fact they constantly run smack into reality on a daily ba…

The idea of exchanging paper for material goods is also absurd. There are also vested interests that rely on maintaining this illusion. They want people to believe that something like a tesla can actually be exchanged for worthless paper. None of this is real so there's endless fights against people who try to make illegal copies of the paper. It's an endless fight, because it's not actually real. The entire economy…

I don't even disagree with you there. Pretty much every human concept is made up by our own minds. The economy as a whole is an especially hilarious case since fiat money is backed by literally nothing since 1971.

However, I do draw a distinction between reasonable enforceable laws and schizophrenic unenforceable laws.

Most laws are pretty reasonable. The vast majority of people are peaceful. Relatively few people commit cold blooded murder. When one does happen, criminals are caught and imprisoned so that they are no longer part of society. It's a manageable problem.

Intellectual property is not like that. Infringement is as easy and normal as breathing. It happens every day at massive scales. It happens every time you download a nice photo from some website and send it to a friend. There are so many infringements taking place you cannot hope to ever punish them all. Often you cannot even catch perpetrators. The law is essentially unenforceable against the common man. There is no point.

In my country I've seen copyright infringement figures at over 80%. As in, 8 out every 10 people has infringed copyright at least once in their lifetimes. People talk about downloading music like it's nothing. Copy shops get set up literally next door to universities to help students copy entire books and course materials. Video game consoles are bought already modchipped straight from the stores. Every town has an informal market where copied media is sold cheaply, there's one less than 10 minutes away from me. Is this really a crime? Maybe it's actually a custom, already part of our culture.

Intellectual property is quite useful when used by corporations to attack other corporations. Companies are juicy targets for lawsuits. There are also less of them, their numbers are manageable. Leveraging intellectual property against normal folk though? That fight is unwinnable and I really wish they'd stop trying.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#942

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 4:47 AM UTC

ninetyninenine wrote: post #929

matheusmoreira wrote: post #885

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're against the very idea of ideas as property. And YES humanity chose the concept of IP. Humanity chose the fruits of intellectual property. More books. More movies. More music. More art. More inventions. More technology. More everything. Humanity chose wealth. Time limited monopolies were merely the means to bring about such wealth creation. Monopolies are universally understood to be a bad sign in every econo…

>By actually manufacturing and selling aircrafts to airlines? 747s are not infinitely copyable. Discussion has now shifted from ideas to tangible objects. The raw materials used to create a boeing 747 are not rare at all. They are easily accessible. The aggregate value of material cost of a 747 is significantly less than the actual value of the 747 itself meaning that much of the worth of the 747 is in the crystalliz…

> You just think that altruism could function just as well

Not at all. I'm no proponent of altruism.

I proposed crowdfunding as the alternative. As in, entire nations worth of people investing money to make something happen. Decentralized investors.

Once intellectual work is done, the value of the intangible product trends towards zero. Selling things that have infinite supply makes no economic sense. Society needs to find a way to pay creators before the work is done. Creations must be treated as investments rather than products.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#943

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 4:52 AM UTC

ninetyninenine wrote: post #911

matheusmoreira wrote: post #905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't refuse to participate in society. I refused to participate in activities I personally believe are wrong. I don't really plan to take advantage of monopolies if I can avoid it. Whatever privileges I have that allow me to make this choice, I hope I can maintain them indefinitely. I'm suffering nothing. There is no "blowback". I'm merely explaining to you why I don't believe in intellectual property. Because yo…

>I didn't refuse to participate in society. I refused to participate in activities I personally believe are wrong. I don't really plan to take advantage of monopolies if I can avoid it. Whatever privileges I have that allow me to make this choice, I hope I can maintain them indefinitely. If you refuse to participate in activities that you personally believe are wrong then based off of what you told me, you in actuali…

I don't think my lack of sponsorships are at all attributable to my personal views on intellectual property.

I think it's far more likely it's because I'm unknown, because my projects are unfinished, because my projects are bad or any number of other possible reasons.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#944

Post by biztos » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 7:12 AM UTC

lyu07282 wrote: post #408

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The criterion collection being the one noteable exception, and they have their own standalone streaming service that is pretty good: https://www.criterionchannel.com/browse

I'm a subscriber, but the Criterion apps do downloads right some of the time if you're lucky, the choice of subtitles is usually English or English, discovery is Netflix-level bad, they can't be bothered to create any interactive info, and most of the actual Collection is not available for streaming.

I still pay them every month because they have the goods but it's so frustrating that the people with the most film-buff oriented catalog and their hearts (presumably) in the right place have so little ability to deliver on UX.

(I used to subscribe to MUBI as well, which is stronger for new indie films, but didn't have time for both, and MUBI app was so bad it could have been a fork of the Criterion app.)

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#945

Post by account42 » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 7:55 AM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #724

account42 wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to expand? I assume the result is still 480p or have they actually done more than that?

All of the 90s Star Trek series were filmed on 35mm, but all of the post-production work (editing, SFX, etc) were done on tape, at 480p. There's no 35mm copy of the final result to scan and color-grade for a "normal" HD remaster. For the TNG remaster, what they actually did was re-do all of the post-production from the original 35mm negatives. VFX were re-composed, some were re-done in CG. They finished the TNG remas…

Ugh no thanks, AI upscales are exactly what I don't want and not something that should be mentioned in the context of fan projects like the 1977 star wars restoration which take great care to restore the original content instead of hallucinating higher resolutions.

My main problem is that the publicly available non-streaming releases are NOT 480p but 480i (actually even worse than that, partially interlaced and partially telecined) with horrible compression artifacts. With access to the production masters you could surely produce a better release than that.

Your "never" is also a needlessly strong word - people would also have said TOS and TNG remasters would "never" happen before they did. Also keep in mind that just because a company says something is not profitable it doesn't mean that they wouldn't make the money back - it could also mean that they just wouldn't make as much profit as they would doing something else. That means that even small changes to the equation or just someone pushing for it hard enough can sometimes tip the scales. Blu-ray sales declining are also not really an argument as streaming services didn't kill production of new series either. But we were also lucky that the trek remasters we got were faithful to the originals which is not guaranteed to be the case so maybe we are better off without more remasters in the current climate.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#946

Post by ratelimitsteve » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

MikeRichardson wrote: post #862

reverendsteveii wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're LOOKing for a MOVIE or a tv show 2 download and you don't want to mess with DOT TOrrent files then there are plenty of options but it's generally considered uncouth to link to them publicly and directly

I LOOKed at the MOVIE, and so did my friend DOT, and we came TO the same conclusion that it's not working as specified.

you had trouble and your friend had trouble 2?

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#947

Post by red-iron-pine » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 2:15 PM UTC

more_corn wrote: post #358

jrflowers wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What groups are you talking about

Publish a cartoon about the prophet Mohamed and some of the groups will make themselves known to you.

removing "fly me to the moon" from the end of NGE has nothing to do with Islam.

the Islamic prohibition on the Prophet isn't new, is something they take seriously and always have, and is not happening at the whim of the studio execs.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#948

Post by keeda » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 4:30 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #937

keeda wrote: post #914

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We've established nothing of the sort. Oh no we have. Your original these was based on the premise that "just copying numbers" is not "victimless". So now why is there even a concern that money is being transferred out of bank accounts or data being decrypted without consent? Aren't they "just numbers"? >The effort invested into creation of value is often completely irrelevant, even in copyright law. Many countries…

There are no contradictions. I don't think of passwords as my personal private property. They are merely secrets that I keep. I don't have a monopoly on them. Any number of people could have the same password as I do and I wouldn't even know or care. They are just random numbers of no particular value whatsoever. The copying of passwords does not cause direct harm. If it did, then the publishing of common password li…

> The copying of passwords does not cause direct harm. If it did, then the publishing of common password lists would be harmful and criminal. The real crime is the act of breaking into someone's bank accounts and draining their money which actually deprives them of real scarce resources. In other words, theft.

1. So now passwords (just numbers) and 2FA (just numbers) are "protecting" money (even more just numbers in a database) or your private data (yet more just numbers), the loss of control over which you clearly consider harmful.

2. When a bank account is drained, no "tangible good" is being "taken" but somehow NOW it is theft? ;-)

I think the key disagreement is the unwillingness to accept that numbers can have economic value because that undermines the premise that "just numbers being copied is victimless". Without that there will never be a resolution to this thread ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#949

Post by keeda » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 4:45 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #920

keeda wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I thought we decided we were using the word "theft" informally. Like all those examples I posted above and you agreed with. What is being "taken" in "wage theft" or "identity theft" or "joke theft"? > This conversation was settled, whether you like it or not. Ignoring salient points does not settle a conversation. I laid out the case point-by-point for why not returning fair value when taking something of value…

> Wait, I thought we decided we were using the word "theft" informally. Nope. We were discussing with someone else (before you chimed in) who argued it was exactly theft . When shown this was false, the person argued it was morally equivalent (this was also false). > Again, if you want to nitpick over the word "theft" look at the long list of examples I posted above I'm not nitpicking, you're factually wrong. Have yo…

All your arguments are assertions or appeals to authority with no logical reasoning supporting them.

I invite you again to pinpoint the flaw in this very brief 2-point reasoning (with a number of supporting links above) that nobody over the decades has (maybe you could find something in Lessig's works, but good luck with that):

- Society and commerce is based on exchange of value (again: goods and services)

- When one party gets the value from the other party without returning an acceptable value, it is considered immoral and wrong, and informally called "theft" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44917565)

Just two points. Very simple. Otherwise no point in continuing this thread.

Re: Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

#950

Post by jbirer » Mon, Aug 18, 2025, 5:02 PM UTC

platevoltage wrote: post #66

squigz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already came full circle some years ago when we started seeing new streaming services every year, and those companies pulling their content from other platforms to put on their own. Then you had to start thinking about what servces you need, whether you still want those services, etc. Just like cable! Absurd.

True, although I guess this is sort of understandable. It's the "you're paying us, but here are some ads" that really gets me. Either way, 5 bucks a month to Emby, a really easy to get membership to a large private torrent site, and a 16TB hard drive solves these problems for me, and will continue to.

Paying 5 bucks to pirate seems to be missing the point of pirating for me IMO.