[HN Gopher] HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry
___________________________________________________________________
HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry
Author : georgecmu
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-02-04 16:42 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| reaperducer wrote:
| It all goes back to not owning you media. When you rent
| ("subscribe") and stream, it's not yours, and can be taken away
| for any reason, or no reason at all.
|
| For the last decade I've been buying up old DVDs and CDs of films
| and TV shows that I like from fleaBay, Goodwill, and elsewhere
| and archiving them in my own NAS for my personal use. It's
| astounding how much quality media has never made it to streaming.
|
| In my estimation, probably 5% of what was released on DVD as ever
| made it to streaming services. And even then, there are huge gaps
| in DVDs. Probably half of VHS tapes made it to DVD.
|
| Recently, my wife wanted to watch all the movies of an important
| film star (Humphrey Bogart, or someone similar), and it turns out
| that it's not possible. Many of the films never made it to
| digital (DVD or streaming), and so can never be seen by the
| public short of flying to a city on another continent and
| attending an obscure film festival.
| flycaliguy wrote:
| My plan is to befriend a couple of you horders in 10 years.
| devmunchies wrote:
| you missed the part that says _" So, to date, a complete, uncut
| Hanna-Barbera collection has never been released on DVD in the
| US"_
| reaperducer wrote:
| _you missed the part that says "So, to date, a complete,
| uncut Hanna-Barbera collection has never been released on DVD
| in the US"_
|
| No, I didn't. You missed the part of my comment which stated:
| "And even then, there are huge gaps in DVDs. Probably half of
| VHS tapes made it to DVD."
| devmunchies wrote:
| But your solution was to own our media. But i have to buy
| old VHS to legally watch the censored episodes? That's not
| a solution.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I presented no solution. I lamented the current
| situation.
| hedora wrote:
| Similar shenanigans are the reason I cancelled Disney+.
|
| I'll pay a monthly fee for your _entire_ back library. Otherwise,
| no thanks.
|
| Also, what's the ethical issue with pirating content that is not
| for sale? I'd love to see a copyright overhaul that formalized
| abandonware and extended it to back catalogs of film and music.
|
| That way, people could legally torrent everything currently
| missing from these streaming platforms. (Offline-only
| distribution would count as "abandoned" in this regime.)
| jayrot wrote:
| Purely devil's advocate would be someone along the lines of --
| just because it isn't for sale now doesn't mean it might never
| be. Pirating it now deprives the owner of some amount of
| ability to make money from it in the future.
|
| Pretty flimsy, imo.
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I've upvoted you because this point needs to be countered and
| stopped.
|
| Something that was pirated does NOT equal a lost sale.
|
| I might enjoy Charlie Chaplin films, I would never pay for
| the ability to watch them. I don't feel it is worth my money.
| It doesn't matter if it becomes available at some-point in
| the future, I won't ever pay for it. If anti-piracy measures
| were 100% effective and reasonable and I couldn't get a copy
| of his material without paying for it. I will never pay for
| it.
|
| There are a lot of reasons that pirates use to justify their
| actions; some can be agreed with, others are self-serving
| rhetoric.
|
| Another good example of this "Piracy does not equal lost
| revenue"; music.
|
| Terrestrial radio stations do not pay for the music that they
| play (unlike internet based streaming services). *[edit:
| Another HN'er has corrected me, but they do pay a fee to the
| songwriter] So if I had the ability to hear the song on the
| radio, the artist did not receive a penny from my listening.
| They can continue to not receive any money if I play an .mp3
| of the same song.
| jfk13 wrote:
| If certain media is "not worth your money", why do you feel
| you're entitled to enjoy it anyway?
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| Radio broadcasts in US territories do not pay the
| performer, but they do pay a fee to the songwriter.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| > Something that was pirated does NOT equal a lost sale.
|
| This is a common argument, but I think it's more
| complicated than a blanket yes or no.
|
| If I sell 1000 copies of a novel (or a CD or a movie or
| whatever), then strictly speaking, my revenue isn't
| affected by how many pirated copies exist. I get paid for
| 1000 copies whether there are zero pirated copies or a
| million.
|
| However, that _doesn 't_ mean pirated copies aren't lost
| revenue in a real sense; it just means it's effectively
| impossible to _measure_ that lost revenue. Some of those
| people would never have paid for their copy at all; some
| might not have even been able to find it legally. Some,
| though, undoubtedly _did_ have the money and _did_ enjoy
| the work, they just decided it was cheaper not to pay for
| it. If enough people take that route, it _does_ affect my
| revenue, in that I am making less than I would if those
| people _were_ paying.
|
| And it's easy to talk ourselves into believing that's
| always okay, with what you called self-serving rhetoric:
| "really, this just hurts big companies, not little ones or
| individual creators"; "oh, there are enough other people
| paying for it, we can afford it"; "I enjoy this, just not
| enough to pay for it." When we're talking specifically
| about Charlie Chaplin, that latter seems like a pretty easy
| call, since the vast majority of his filmography is over 70
| years old and much of it is in the public domain. If,
| however, we say "I might enjoy Robert Downey Jr. films, but
| I would never pay for the ability to watch them," this may
| not seem so cut and tried.
|
| I wish we had a better term than "intellectual property",
| because I genuinely think "property" makes people focus on
| physical representation as the thing they are paying for:
| shoplifting a DVD and pirating a movie are obviously
| different, and many people who've done the latter would
| never think of doing the former. But in both cases, what
| you're really _interested_ in, what you 're actually paying
| for, is the _content._
|
| I get that there's lots of gray areas: the content may not
| be available legally in your area; it may not legally be
| available at _all_ ; you may already own the movie on Blu-
| Ray and find it easier to download a torrent of it to make
| a good digital copy than to go through the hassle of
| ripping it. But any argument which, at the end of the day,
| reduces to "I wanna have this content, I just don't wanna
| pay for it" is, well... pretty weak.
| fedorareis wrote:
| All radio stations do pay for the music they play. They are
| required to acquire public performance licenses and report
| the songs they played to the licensing groups so the
| licensing groups can collect the correct royalties from
| them and distribute them correctly.
|
| IIRC this is actually why Spotify's T&Cs don't allow usage
| for businesses or public gatherings because they don't pay
| out at the public performance licensing rate.
| fossuser wrote:
| This is hard to get into without context.
|
| Copyright (and patents) exist "To promote the Progress of
| Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to
| Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective
| Writings and Discoveries."
|
| The purpose is to promote the progress of science and useful
| arts for the public's benefit, the _means_ is a limited time
| monopoly.
|
| The limited time rights are intended to be the minimum
| necessary to incentivize people to create for the public's
| benefit. Originally this was 14yrs, required registration,
| and could be renewed once.
|
| The intent has been twisted by those with an interest in
| perpetuating copyright indefinitely (rights holders). Now
| copyright is 70yrs after the death of the creator or 95yrs
| after publication for contract work. [0]
|
| Why does someone need to be incentivized to create after
| they're dead? Why were these extensions retroactive since you
| can't incentivize someone to create something they've already
| created?
|
| This has been argued in the US courts, the end result of
| these extensions was because each one is still for a 'limited
| time' they're okay - even if they're repeatedly extended at
| each expiration. This isn't the original intent or spirit of
| copyright law.
|
| > "Pirating it now deprives the owner of some amount of
| ability to make money from it in the future."
|
| The rights holders have lobbied to twist the law for their
| own self-interest and then play victim - I have little
| sympathy for that.
|
| I think if we had something sane (5yrs, maybe special
| protections around certain types of adaptations, maybe longer
| time frame to reward authors specifically up to some dollar
| amount if adapted for-profit, restrictions on for-profit
| distribution by third parties?) the law would be more aligned
| with its original goals and there would be fewer issues.
|
| Today you can't even declare something 'public domain' if you
| want to since copyright is reserved by default. The best you
| can do is license it permissively.
|
| [0]: An aside, at one point it was until the author's death.
| This gave me an idea for a B-movie where a serial killer goes
| around taking out pop groups so their music goes into the
| public domain.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > Why does someone need to be incentivized to create after
| they're dead?
|
| That means if I spend a couple years writing a book,
| instead of spending more time with my family or working on
| something else, and get hit by a car and die the day after
| the release... my family is left with nothing?
|
| My incentive to create would be that my family would have
| some earning even after my death (if I'm older or sick, for
| example)
| fossuser wrote:
| A problem better solved by life insurance than copyright.
|
| That said, you'd still have the 5yr or whatever amount of
| time. I don't think tying it to the life of the author
| makes sense. It was just an example of how the spirit of
| the law got twisted from 'incentive to create' to 'rights
| holders should profit forever from their IP'.
| sputr wrote:
| A very good comment.
|
| I would like to point out to everyone that the correct
| expression to use in these discussions is _rights holder_
| NOT _author_.
|
| Anyone still imagining this as a fight between pirate and
| "author" is strongly misled. Most people will happily
| support the author - just look at youtube/patreon. But most
| are also aware that buying or pirating a book ... has very
| little to do with the author in either case.
| aequitas wrote:
| > Also, what's the ethical issue with pirating content...
|
| I'd first like to have the discussion about the ethics of the
| current decades long copyright laws that are creating
| artificial monopolies and a really crooked supply and demand
| market.
| chadash wrote:
| > _Also, what's the ethical issue with pirating content that is
| not for sale?... (Offline-only distribution would count as
| "abandoned" in this regime.)_
|
| Let's say I author a book and sell it as a paperback, but
| decide for whatever reason that I don't want to sell an e-book.
| Would you apply the same reasoning there? Is it ethical for you
| to torrent an unpaid for e-book copy because you've decided
| that's more convenient for you?
|
| I'd personally argue that it's not. However if you previously
| paid for the book and you want to read it on your kindle and i
| don't offer an ebook, that would be different in my mind. Same
| thing if you purchased the Tom and Jerry's DVDs and decided you
| prefer to stream.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| I'll pirate book if it's not available in DRM-free format for
| reasonable price.
| yters wrote:
| Do you have a right to everyone's IP who doesn't fit your
| expectations for reasonable access and price?
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Legally, no. Ethically...maybe? The United States does
| have a long tradition of allowing grey areas when
| rightsholders become unreasonable. Oftentimes these wind
| up being formalized as right-of-ways, easements, or other
| access rights.
|
| In the case of online streaming, its clear that the
| rightsholders are consolidated and engaged in
| monopolistic, anti-consumer behavior. Piracy is a natural
| response to that type of behavior, so is it really wrong
| for consumers to fight back?
| yters wrote:
| No one has a right to someone else's labor.
| danielrpa wrote:
| Intellectual property protections aren't self-evident or
| part of nature. They are a human creation that, in
| theory, exist to encourage innovation and increase
| prosperity. In almost all cases, intellectual property is
| based on previous intellectual property.
|
| Whenever you create a work of art, or work of intellect,
| you are using the work of "someone else". The vast
| majority of stories, for instance, use plot devices and
| elements invented by other humans. IP laws don't
| necessarily protect these elements - to a large extent
| because they can't in practice - but they are used
| nonetheless without special consideration to "someone
| else's" labor (the inventor of such elements/plot
| devices).
|
| Many of the arguments for extremely strong IP protections
| ignore that an enormous percentage of IP is acquired from
| elsewhere. While many authors add much value on top of
| these existing elements, we still have the problem of the
| appropriation of such elements without any
| authorization/compensation.
|
| Just because the law protects YOUR additions to the
| (unprotected) work of others, don't think that your
| additions are that special. The protections from the law,
| including extent, duration and penalties are arbitrary
| and, as I said, not part of nature.
|
| People do work based on ideas that are in the public
| domain. But the differentiation of public domain and non
| public domain is also a human creation. Why can't IP go
| into the public domain 15 minutes after they are created?
| The protection duration is arbitrary and in practice
| decided by large business lobbies (just see how they
| increased over time to the current unreasonable levels).
|
| So while a lot of what is being discussed is indeed
| ILLEGAL, it doesn't mean that it is IMMORAL. I recommend
| that advocates for strong IP protections examine how much
| of what they are trying to protect is, indeed, _uniquely_
| theirs and not traceable to previous work.
| yters wrote:
| Wouldn't that argument undermine all property protection?
| What if anything of ours is uniquely ours vs somewhat
| derivative? Tangible property is even more derivative,
| i.e. inheriting a house. Absolutely no creativity going
| on in that case, yet it is protected much more strongly
| than IP.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Likewise, the rightsholders don't have a right to extort
| the public for access. Since the companies producing
| these works rely on the public's attention and sentiment
| to make money, they can't have it both ways. Either make
| the works available at a consistent price to all
| distributors of content, or accept piracy as a cost of
| gatekeeping.
| 5560675260 wrote:
| Personally I don't think that anything intangible can be
| property. And whenever I purchase something digital I
| consider the act to be a donation and/or payment for a
| service of delivery.
| Veen wrote:
| It's an interesting attitude. Of course, if everyone
| thought that way most of the the things we buy digitally
| would never be made in the first place.
| 5560675260 wrote:
| It would be a very different world, for sure. Public
| funding and patronage would play a significantly larger
| role than they do now, works produced non-commercially
| would have bigger prominence. It's harder to say what
| would happen in absence of patent laws. Higher reliance
| on trade secrets? Non-competes in every employment
| contracts?
|
| Overall I don't think that we would be significantly
| worse off, especially now, when it's technically possible
| for general public to engage in croudfunding.
| yters wrote:
| I believe even technocratic communism would fail for the
| same reasons that agrarian and industrial communism
| failed. Lack of incentive to work hard, Goodhardt's law,
| destruction of those who try to retain property rights,
| etc. Even today's open source movement is very parasitic
| on the commercial sector. Without big tech companies OS
| would disappear.
| 5560675260 wrote:
| I don't thinks that lack of legal protections for IP is
| in any way an equivalent to communism. Money would still
| be on the table, it's just the way they are gained would
| be somewhat different. IP as a concept isn't even that
| old and our societies managed to exist, produce works of
| arts and various services just fine.
|
| As for the big tech firms - why wouldn't they exist?
| Would Google be disrupted if tomorrow all patents in the
| world became unenforceable? Or Amazon? Sure, MS might be
| in trouble, but what they are doing already feels like a
| gradual switch to a service/subscription based model.
| yters wrote:
| Everything intangible would not exist if someone didn't
| put in the effort to create it. As such they have a right
| to constrain the use of what they create, just as they
| have with tangible goods they create.
| me_me_me wrote:
| No, and so what?
|
| Maybe if you were smarter businessman I would buy it off
| you instead. But my other option is to get a copy for the
| 'internet'.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Is it ethical to sell a paperback and not an ebook in 2021
| knowing that you're making it inaccessible to people who need
| larger font sizes to read it? Ebook readers are great for
| book accessibility, but if someone won't sell you an ebook it
| doesn't do much good.
|
| EDIT - I forgot to get to my point, which is that I have no
| ethical issue with "pirating" content in a better format if
| the creator (or rights-holder) has decided to only make it
| available in worse formats. If I want to feel better about
| supporting the creator, I can buy the worse format before
| doing that, but then buying a paperback that I don't want
| feels unethical for other (environmental) reasons.
|
| If someone subscribes to HBO Max for a month and then watches
| a better pirated copy, I have a hard time finding a problem
| with anyone but HBO there. If anything, paying HBO for their
| screwed up version is an issue because it encourages them to
| keep screwing things up like that.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Is it ethical to sell a paperback book and an ebook in 2021
| and not provide a braille version, knowing that you're
| making it inaccessible to the blind?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Electronic text formats conveniently also work with
| screen readers and refreshable braille displays. The
| great thing about text data is you can display it in a
| whole bunch of different ways depending on a reader's
| needs, much more so than with a paperback.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| Some of the content actually isn't available for sale in any
| format. From the article:
|
| > _While there has never been a complete Hanna-Barbera DVD
| collection courtesy of Warner Bros._ in the US, both the Gene
| Deitch and Chuck Jones shorts have had complete DVD releases.
| In addition, the whole Deitch collection shows up on the
| other Warner streaming app, Boomerang. Because of this, it is
| baffling that HBO Max does not provide a complete collection
| of any one era, despite drawing on all three.
|
| (emphasis mine)
| me_me_me wrote:
| Ethics? I don't care too much if mouse company gets more
| money for their empire from me or not. Lets be real, that
| money more less goes to people that have nothing to do with
| people that create shows/content etc.
|
| But thats beside the point, I don't care much about it. I am
| adult, I earn money and at this point in my life my time IS
| worth money.
|
| If the effort/cost of watching a show it greater than firing
| up torrents, I will fire up torrents.
|
| Its not like pirating a show is free, there are hidden
| 'costs' involved (time == money). You have to manually track
| episodes you watch, and if interrupted, where you stopped mid
| episode. You have to get the right version/quality etc etc...
| All of it is some effort that you have to put in.
|
| When you are young or dont have much spare cash, that cost
| feels much smaller.
|
| Watching via Netflix et al. have none of those inconvenience
| 'costs'.
|
| Start netflix -> continue watching. Done. I am now watch it.
|
| However the moment that actual subscription costs and hassle
| of managing subscriptions exceedes 'cost of inconvinience' of
| piracy. I will pirate it. If I want to watch show X and
| netfix have only season 1-5 in EU and 1-7 in US, i will
| pirate it. I pay for netflix and I pirate its shows cuz for
| some reason even tho EU pays more for Netflix subscriptions
| we get reduced catalog!
|
| I am not sure why this seems so hard for business people to
| understand. You will never get all people to pay for the
| 'digital goods'. And thats ok.
|
| But the moment that you start throwing obstacles in the way
| of people willing to pay... well, thats just pushing your
| customers into BitTorrent arms.
|
| I myself only use Netflix at the moment, I am not going to
| buy disney+ just to watch mandalorian.
|
| Ethical/lawful or not, I don't care. I am a customer, you
| make an effort.
| codyb wrote:
| "Ethical/lawful or not I don't care" -me_me_me
|
| Parody? I'm not sure.
|
| Seems like an attitude I'm relatively happy isn't super
| common in society.
|
| If I make a book, I don't "owe you an effort" just cause
| you don't want to make it available in a format you'd like
| to consume.
|
| And that doesn't give you the right to steal it from me.
|
| Now certainly everyone should live under a set of
| guidelines, no one should be certain efforts that do need
| to be made, say for accessibility reasons, and we do that
| as a society for a common good.
|
| But if you want to use Betamax and it's going to be
| expensive for me to support it, I don't owe you that. And
| it doesn't make it okay for you to just take my work
| because you will only use your own format.
|
| Edit: Also... small creators things get stolen constantly
| on the internet. It's a big problem for a lot of content
| creators and probably discourages people from making more
| art.
| [deleted]
| fossuser wrote:
| The OPs argument is bad/stupid, but there is a real
| argument to be made here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26028392
| me_me_me wrote:
| Your comment is bad/stupid. You are bringing nothing to
| this discussion.
| fossuser wrote:
| I regret saying stupid, too abrasive and I didn't intend
| it as a personal attack. My comment links to my actual
| argument.
| me_me_me wrote:
| That's fine. But its a hijack of a thread.
|
| I admitted my reasoning is not moralistically ethical or
| law abiding.
|
| My argument is that piracy is there for a reason. There
| was a huge dip in torrent usage at the dawn of Netflix,
| for a reason. The convenience of Netflix outweighed
| 'cost' of piracy. Now piracy is back up, why?
|
| Thats the reality of the world we are living in.
|
| The argument you linked is great and it makes sense. And
| shows issues with copyright etc. that is my long time
| belief.
|
| But the reality is that I pirate things when its more
| convenient to me. As a lot of people too. Saying
| otherwise is lying. And arguing how CP is bad and
| damaging doesn't change anything, because disney and
| company will uphold it no matter what.
| fossuser wrote:
| Yeah I understand where you're coming from, I just find
| that argument doesn't really hold up to scrutiny.
|
| For example, if instead of piracy we were talking about
| stealing from a brick and mortar store it wouldn't be
| right to do it just because it's possible and easy to get
| away with it (or because the store didn't provide
| convenient service, etc.). File sharing is different for
| lots of reasons (digital goods are non-rival, the issue
| with copyright I mention in my comment) and it's those
| reasons that make the argument compelling (basically that
| modern copyright law is itself bad).
|
| I think just saying it's okay because you don't care
| about corporate profit actually _weakens_ the ability to
| persuade people with the underlying arguments which I
| think are good and I don 't think it's an ethical
| position that really holds up. Thoughtful people that see
| only those arguments (or worse 'information wants to be
| free') come away with a stronger defense of existing
| copyright law.
|
| I _do_ think that companies should take it into account
| for pragmatic reasons and recognize that it 's the real
| competition to not delivering high quality convenient
| service, but that's largely because it's not possible to
| enforce actual copyright law with the internet at scale -
| which is somewhat of a different issue.
|
| I don't think it's really hi-jacking the thread because I
| think the issue is so tightly coupled. I just didn't want
| to copy/paste my comment because that seemed like bad
| etiquette?
| me_me_me wrote:
| > For example, if instead of piracy we were talking about
| stealing from a brick and mortar store
|
| But we are not. That's shifting goalposts fallacy.
|
| What about buying used DVD is that piracy? After all two
| parties watch a movie but movie maker made one sale?
|
| > I think just saying it's okay because you don't care
| about corporate profit actually weakens the ability to
| persuade people with the underlying arguments which I
| think are good and I don't think it's an ethical position
| that really holds up. Thoughtful people that see only
| those arguments (or worse 'information wants to be free')
| come away with a stronger defense of existing copyright
| law.
|
| That is why the very first line I am admitting that my
| position is out of pure lazyness calculation.
|
| > I do think that companies should take it into account
| for pragmatic reasons and recognize that it's the real
| competition to not delivering high quality convenient
| service, but that's largely because it's not possible to
| enforce actual copyright law with the internet at scale -
| which is somewhat of a different issue.
|
| I am of belief that piracy is great equalizer. A force
| that curbs infinite appetite of corporate overlord that
| would bleed us dry if they could. It makes particularly
| movie industry more customer friendly and more
| competitive.
|
| > I don't think it's really hi-jacking the thread because
| I think the issue is so tightly coupled. I just didn't
| want to copy/paste my comment because that seemed like
| bad etiquette?
|
| Actually it was hi-jacking. Imagine two people talk and
| you overhead them you cut in. Completely disregarding the
| actual discussion and drop your opinion in without
| addressing what was previously said.
|
| Sure you could have dropped in that, but at least address
| why you think that is better argument and why you
| disagree with previous post. That is called a discussion
| and not stating your opinion. Hope that it make sense.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| (Copyright inf. is not stealing, it is another lesser
| thing.)
|
| But yes, if you think you can keep things off the
| internet just because you said so, you've signed up for a
| hopeless battle. It is up to IP holders to make good
| choices regarding making their content available
| conveniently at a fair price. If not, they've made their
| bed and have to lie in it.
| me_me_me wrote:
| > If I make a book, I don't "owe you an effort" just
| cause you don't want to make it available in a format
| you'd like to consume.
|
| Of course you don't.
|
| > And that doesn't give you the right to steal it from
| me.
|
| First of all I am not stealing, you haven't lost
| anything. Secondly you not making effort to distribute
| your book means you don't care too much about selling
| your book now do you?
|
| Anyhow, that's comparing apples to oranges. I support
| indie devs/book writers/music because I directly support
| the creator(s).
|
| This whole situation is bit different when we are talking
| about pirating a movie that made $1b in profits.
|
| > But if you want to use Betamax and it's going to be
| expensive for me to support it, I don't owe you that. And
| it doesn't make it okay for you to just take my work
| because you will only use your own format.
|
| But that completely not my argument. I want to have an
| easy access to what you make. If you only sell your book
| after I install an ad plugin into my browser then fuck
| you. If i care about reading it I will pirate.
|
| This is a case of an author actively working against
| access to the product for no reason. And the author is a
| multinational corporation raking in profits.
| bosie wrote:
| > First of all I am not stealing, you haven't lost
| anything.
|
| So in the future when he provides you with the format you
| pirated you will purchase it? Despite having pirated it
| before?
| me_me_me wrote:
| Yeah, well I have done similar thing.
|
| I bought a games that I pirated in the past.
|
| I am not saying piracy is great everyone should be doing
| it.
|
| My argument is: I am sometimes lazy and tired after a
| long day. I want to watch a movie i heard was good. I can
| spend 15 mins trying to figure out where to watch it or I
| can pirate it after it doesnt come up in netflix search.
|
| but i am not going to pay for 10 subscriptions just soo I
| can occasionally watch a show.
| realityking wrote:
| > I can spend 15 mins trying to figure out where to watch
| it or I can pirate it after it doesnt come up in netflix
| search.
|
| Almost any movie you care about will be available on
| iTunes and/or Amazon Video to rent or buy. Do you check
| those too or is that too much work?
|
| Ultimately, your attitude comes off as entitled. If
| everything you w
|
| Any to consume isn't available as part of one convince
| the subscription you rather pirate it. That devalues
| creation. It's unreasonable to expect all TV and movies
| ever created to be available for $20/month.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > Ethical/lawful or not, I don't care.
|
| As they'd say on reddit, "username checks out".
|
| While I can sympathise with plenty of your points, this
| statement is a huge red flag regarding your general
| attitude to the world. You're marking yourself as someone I
| don't think I'd care to do business with, or to have as a
| friend. (Not that I expect that matters to you. Just an
| observation.)
| danaris wrote:
| > I don't care too much if mouse company gets more money
|
| While these are, indeed, shorts featuring a cartoon mouse,
| I would guess that "mouse company" is intended to refer to
| Disney, which is _not_ , in fact, involved in this
| _particular_ back-catalog streaming fiasco.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| You are right that someone could buy the physical book and
| them torrent the digital version. But I would consider:
|
| 1 - You already forfeited you digital sales because you
| decided not to have an ebook release. If you make public that
| there are no plans for a digital release, and not the case
| that's just delayed compared to print.
|
| 2 - Digital books tend to be cheaper. Makes a huge difference
| for people that read 10 books a month.
|
| 3 - Print takes space, which many people might not have. I'm
| not going to buy a print book at a higher price, just to have
| to go straight to a used book store and sell it there, so I
| can torrent the ebook - which would be illegal anyway.
|
| Same goes for TV shows and movies. Having dozens of blu-
| ray+dvd combos is not feasible.
| mocheeze wrote:
| Libraries can solve issues 2 and 3 for those folks.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| Depending on where you live and how good is your library
| selection, yes, and I do encourage people to do that.
|
| Growing in up in Brazil though, didn't have much luck at
| that time, finding things that I wanted.
|
| Edit: this was for books in Brazilian Portuguese. When I
| started focusing on books in English - to prepare to move
| to Canada - I bought Kindle books because otherwise, I
| would have to pay for international shipping, buy for
| high price in a Brazilian bookseller, wait up to 2 months
| for bookdepository delivery...
| rbanffy wrote:
| If, say, create a book where the written content is not
| the whole experience I want to pass the reader, it's
| perfectly reasonable to withhold certain formats.
|
| If I want readers to experience the size, weight, texture
| and smell as integral parts of the book, it should be my
| right to prevent others from putting my name on lesser
| experiences.
| bitwize wrote:
| > Also, what's the ethical issue with pirating content that is
| not for sale? I'd love to see a copyright overhaul that
| formalized abandonware and extended it to back catalogs of film
| and music.
|
| Copyright is often closely tied with the broader concept of
| authors' rights in European law. An author's work is closely
| tied to their reputation. Therefore, the author has an inherent
| right to some degree of control over how their work is
| exhibited or distributed, because their reputation could be
| harmed if the work was presented in the wrong way.
|
| Just because these rights are not explicitly recognized by U.S.
| law doesn't mean they're not moral rights.
| wahern wrote:
| > Also, what's the ethical issue with pirating content that is
| not for sale?
|
| The ethical issue with piracy is that you can't expect to
| _change_ behaviors or the laws if you merely circumvent them,
| and circumvent them _without_ substantial risk of punishment.
|
| Take the Civil Rights movement, for example. They disobeyed
| unjust laws in protest, but they succeeded in their cause
| _because_ they were often punished for the disobedience. Being
| punished is a sine qua non of non-violent protest methods as
| pioneered by MLK, Ghandi, and Mandela. (Notably, all of whom
| started out believing in the necessity for _violent_ protest,
| AFAIU.) If there was never any serious threat of punishment,
| _especially_ _for_ _protesters_ (as opposed to authorities just
| letting it slide, and then reintroducing enforcement later)
| then we might still have many of the laws and norms the Civil
| Rights movement was working to rescind and change. It 's
| difficult to convince people to change unjust laws; much easier
| to convince them to change unjust _consequences_.
|
| In a way it comes back to what Socrates taught: you can't
| reasonably expect to make effectual changes in the law or
| politics without _subjecting_ yourself to the consequences. And
| if you 're a citizen, making effectual changes is an
| obligation.
|
| The self-righteous justification for surreptitiously violating
| copyright as some sort of protest really bothers me. I'm not
| going to claim that I haven't ever knowingly violated
| copyright, and I certainly am not going to defend our overbroad
| copyright protections, but I'm not going to delude myself about
| why I'm doing something--purely out of self-interest. Doing
| something out of self-interest isn't per se unethical, but
| there is something dissonant when you do it knowing that you're
| _technically_ violating a law that should be changed, and would
| be more likely to be changed, if everybody felt the pain,
| either through strict adherence to the law or open violation
| and consequent punishment.
| realityking wrote:
| A lot of content is not available as streaming flat rates but
| via various rental or purchase platforms (iTunes, Amazon Video,
| etc.)
|
| There's no (and there should be no) obligation to make things
| available for bargain dollars. If the publisher things the
| movie is worth a $15 dollar purchase or $8 rental, they can
| charge that. It's our right not to watch it if we don't think
| it's worth that.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| You're implicitly accepting the frame that copyright is an
| inherent right that should be granted, rather than a
| privilege extended to copyright holders on public policy
| grounds. If copyright owners do more rent-seeking and offer
| evermore complicated and user-hostile deals, it's well within
| the purview of our government to alter the terms of copyright
| extension for public policy purposes.
|
| In other words, there's an _implicit_ obligation to offer
| consumers deals that are better than the counterfactual in
| which copyrights are not enforced whatsoever. Otherwise, why
| should we have laws that make things worse for us just so
| that various copyright holders can maximize the rents they
| extract from us via intellectual property?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Arguably, there's no obligation to make things available _at
| all_.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| But there is demand, and in many times, social interest.
|
| I'very much in favor of some ruleset that compells the
| rights owner to either distribute something for reasonable
| prices[0], or make it available for redistribution and
| relinquish any distribution rights to it. This should apply
| to physical products as well - either sell it, or give
| blueprints to others.
|
| --
|
| [0] - reasonable meaning commensurate with other products
| in its category, and not e.g. $1,000,000 for a movie they
| want to suppress.
| realityking wrote:
| I disagree. I think copyright lasts too long today but I
| think it's completely fair if, for example, a
| photographer wants to not sell a certain picture until
| the copyright has expired.
| Lammy wrote:
| > Also, what's the ethical issue with pirating content that is
| not for sale?
|
| There isn't one and never has been :)
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| Anyone else annoyed with how buggy the HBO Max apple tv software
| is?
|
| vs binging on Netflix, the experience has way more weird UI bugs
| and hangs.
|
| Finding we're constantly restarting the app/apple tv because it
| keeps hanging or erroring out.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| My pet peeve is the Amazon Prime Video App. The UI is a mess,
| if I click on a recent tv show, it defaults to the latest
| season and it's very annoying to navigate back to the first
| season. They have great content but exploring the content
| available through the app is such a pain.
| e40 wrote:
| Early on it was buggy on Roku, but I haven't had crashes in a
| while. However, the UI is really sluggish and painful to use.
| Have a Roku Ultra.
| devmunchies wrote:
| Yes. I have spotty internet but Netflix and Prime do great at
| buffering (on smart TV), so not an issue. Max is terrible at
| buffering. I don't think it buffers more than a few seconds at
| a time. I had to keep an additional HBO channel activated on my
| Prime account just to watch some HBO stuff.
|
| I know I can save offline with an iPad and cast to the TV but
| too inconvenient. Will probably cancel soon.
| ssully wrote:
| I haven't had to restart it, but the app does seem flaky. My
| biggest issue is the UI; every time I use it I have to relearn
| how to find the section I am looking for. With that said, I do
| like how they curate and surface movies based on different
| themes.
|
| I'll be curious to see where it is 6 months or so from now.
| grillvogel wrote:
| yes, I have a regular profile and a kids profile and
| permissions get screwed up all the time when i switch between
| them to the point where i have to reboot the apple tv
| dbreunig wrote:
| Some wishful thinking here...
|
| > For one thing, the promise of being able to stream the ENTIRETY
| of the classic shorts could generate a tremendous amount of
| publicity for Max, in the process providing strong incentive for
| T&J collectors, animation fans, historians, and adults to
| subscribe to the new platform.
|
| That is a _very_ small audience compared to the very large
| audience of families who would be upset if the their kids auto-
| played into unexpected blackface.
|
| Yes these problems can be solved with UX, yes it would be nice if
| we can access everything as it existed forever... But the reality
| is unfettered yet contextualized access to archival Tom & Jerry
| episodes isn't going to be high on their backlog.
|
| For the purposes of access for historical archive purposes...why
| focus your complaints on streaming? Streaming is great for ease
| of access, cheaper price points (at least monthly), and breadth
| of selection. As a format, it's doesn't deliver well for archival
| purposes.
| function_seven wrote:
| > That is a very small audience compared to the very large
| audience of families who would be upset if the their kids auto-
| played into unexpected blackface.
|
| Your point is valid regarding the size of the niche here, but
| there are probably a thousand other niches that would combine--
| long tail fashion--into a good chuck of market share.
|
| As far as families being upset about their kids auto-playing
| into offensive content, HBO has already solved for this. They
| have _Sex and the City_ and _The Sopranos_ on that platform.
|
| Mark the naughty T&J episodes as "TV-MA", and a kid-filtered
| view won't show them, right? (I guess the question is whether
| they have this ability per-episode, or only at the series
| level)
| dbreunig wrote:
| You've hit on the key design challenge for mass market
| networks with massive content libraries: how can one build
| the best product for the largest audience without being
| boring to the niches. It's why Facebook uses algos to
| recommend content, which spurs another interesting question.
|
| If algos are the tool for recommending the best version of
| content, the idea of 'archive' and 'preservation' of original
| forms falls by the wayside. The FB feed you see is different
| than mine, as are your Google results for the same terms. How
| would we deal with your Tom & Jerry or other content being
| different? For the most part it would just be funny quirks
| (like film edits for airplanes or cable TV).
|
| This gets even crazier as contemporary tools for creation can
| capture and store countless takes that would usually be
| discarded on the cutting room floor. Now they're just waiting
| for an alternative cut.
|
| I wrote about this 9(!) years ago, but the issue has only
| accelerated:
| https://dbreunig.tumblr.com/post/13923466229/multisignal-
| too...
| imbnwa wrote:
| >Your point is valid regarding the size of the niche here,
| but there are probably a thousand other niches that would
| combine--long tail fashion--into a good chuck of market
| share.
|
| What niches would those be? Why is HBO Max responsible for
| all of them? Their parent company made committments to
| censorship before HBO Max even existed back to when DVDs were
| being introduced, as stated in the article. I don't even know
| why OP and yourself are going after HBO for this, apparently
| Warner Bros made this decision twenty years ago.
|
| > As far as families being upset about their kids auto-
| playing into offensive content, HBO has already solved for
| this. They have Sex and the City and The Sopranos on that
| platform.
|
| Dunno if you use HBO Max or not but, like Netflix, they
| separate UI and content by age group of the current user
|
| > Mark the naughty T&J episodes as "TV-MA", and a kid-
| filtered view won't show them, right? (I guess the question
| is whether they have this ability per-episode, or only at the
| series level)
|
| Or just not, and not deal with any further possible
| ramifications. All of these "historical"/"archival
| purposes/I'm a sensible adult" arguments for Tom and Jerry
| apply just as well to Amos & Andy since we're really talking
| about censoring jokes about Black people's physical
| appearance. Almost seems like a dog whistle if I had more
| evidence.
| function_seven wrote:
| > _What niches would those be?_
|
| I can't enumerate all niches that exist in a large back
| catalog of media. My point wasn't that HBO should cater to
| 1,000 different "I wanna see the racist stuff" niches.
| Rather, there are a thousand different subsets of their
| subscriber base that all have an outsized interest in
| something otherwise obscure. Or largely unpopular. I was
| responding the to general point about the tradeoff between
| serving those small subsets vs. avoiding the ire of the
| wider subscriber base.
|
| > _Why is HBO Max responsible for all of them_
|
| I didn't say they were. Just reframing it as a business
| decision that they could make. The long tail is a thing
| that has been traditionally hard to cater to, but is easier
| with the technology we have today. (i.e. Physical video
| stores don't have 1/10th the floorspace that would be
| required, but online streaming does. Once a title has been
| tagged and categorized, you let your software take care of
| the curation with 0 marginal cost)
|
| > _I don 't even know why OP and yourself are going after
| HBO for this._
|
| I'm not "going after them". I was responding to the
| parent's comment with my own ideas how the situation could
| be navigated. If HBO decides that, no, they'd rather just
| sidestep the whole issue, I don't blame them! Their math
| might work out different than mine. (Okay, maybe I "blame"
| them, but I get it. Can't say I'd be Mr. Principled
| Archivist in the same situation)
|
| As for OP, I figure he really loves Tom and Jerry, and
| would love to see all the episodes.
|
| > _Almost seems like a dog whistle if I had more evidence._
|
| No. The "I'm a sensible adult" is fine by me on its own
| merits. I don't need to whistle. Like I said, mark these
| episodes "TV-MA".
|
| I guess I'm frustrated because I wish streaming services
| weren't so ephemeral. The one that really got me was the
| episode of _Community_ where the group played D &D for the
| first time. It's one of the best episodes of that show, but
| it's no longer available to watch. But it's reasonable for
| me--a non-bigot--to like that episode, right?
| bitlevel wrote:
| Guys - you can get all 161 episodes (6.23GB and v.slow download)
| here:
|
| https://archive.org/details/126BuddiesThickerThanWater1962/
|
| Enjoy!
| paxys wrote:
| Not for long if this gets popular
| Miner49er wrote:
| If that goes down, you can always get 121 of the episodes off
| of the CIA's public archive of Osama Bin Laden's hard drives.
| garmaine wrote:
| Seriously?
| Miner49er wrote:
| Yes. https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-
| compound/index_video....
| albertshin wrote:
| Quuite unsettling to see listed videos of (alleged)
| bombing videos alongside Tom and Jerry though...
|
| I'm surprised these are made available with no lock or
| warning...
| paxys wrote:
| Well there are 3 prominent warnings on the top of that
| page
| jancsika wrote:
| I propose the following paradigm which I'll call "RickRoll UIs."
|
| The developer builds a beautiful interface for searching,
| curating, and organizing media in a given genre. Everything down
| to the moment of streaming works as you'd expect, at which point
| some boring public domain content is looped for the given
| duration of that stream.
|
| Users would get the benefit of having the curated data accessible
| through the GUI-- e.g., you could search all the Tom & Jerry
| cartoons, get/sort by metadata, etc. Perhaps even view a
| screenshot (not sure about Copyright law around that).
|
| Fringe benefit is that this creates a reference UI against all
| the streaming services may be judged, and gives new users some
| idea of what it was like to search and use "completist" services
| like what.cd, etc. Not to mention how thinking about the
| potential existence of such services can change the options we
| think we have for how to spend our time-- compare writing a blog
| in 2021 complaining about a commercial streaming service's faults
| vs. "completing" some private tracker's Tom and Jerry offerings
| with the missing cartoons from your own collection.
| chris11 wrote:
| That reminds me of trying to stream a tv show off of the
| channel's website a few years ago. I kept getting an error
| whenever I tried to stream the actual episode. The worst part
| was that the ads worked, so to retry I would have to watch a
| couple of ads just to find out the episode wouldn't play.
| paxys wrote:
| Building the interface itself is the trivial part of this
| exercise. How are you going to source the database of metadata
| of every media item produced in the last century?
| recuter wrote:
| what.cd did it just fine for music and that was a tiny
| community.
|
| There are a several longstanding open projects out there to
| compile metadata databases that are free to use like:
| https://musicbrainz.org/statistics (33 million tracks)
|
| Music is less than 100 million items, Movies fewer than 1
| million, TV somewhere in between and books are a few hundred
| million. I'm sure they all have mostly-complete metadata
| databases available already.
| Solocomplex wrote:
| TVDB and others have great APIs for this purpose.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| I think the article nails it, they seem to be filtering out
| anything that might offend contemporary leftest values. A lot of
| the stuff from the 40s would never be produced today i.e.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZkcsIb2l3A or even
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAELs42aZt4 but I'd say that
| censoring it is akin to denying the holocaust -- if you pretend
| it didn't happen then you don't learn the lesson.
|
| Nobody seems to censor the leprechauns or gangster characters.
| Disney seems to get a pass for an inventory of issues
| https://www.insider.com/moments-themes-in-disney-movies-that... -
| they would have nothing left if you filtered all their content
| for modern political correctness. What message does it send when
| Prince Charming always has to rescue the princess? And so on..
| grillvogel wrote:
| these seem like oddly specific complaints. personally i am
| impressed with the huge back catalog of old hanna barbera
| cartoons on the service
|
| it's pretty fun watching jetsons and seeing how far off some of
| their predictions were, but then other things are spot on.
| funemployed wrote:
| Totally agree, and I also generally find the article poorly
| written. I would reduce it to the following statements: 1. HBO
| is not showing the entire Tom and Jerry collection, which is
| bad because even though some episodes contain offensive
| stereotypes the show is culturally significant and unavailable
| elsewhere. 2. HBO streaming has bad UX.
|
| Most of the article seems devoted to 1 and focused on the
| 'cancel culture' reasons why HBO might not be showing the full
| catalog while also admitting that there is also a large amount
| of the catalog not on HBO that is not plausibly part of the
| several episodes that would be targeted for being cancelled.
| Seems like the premise of the article kind of falls apart at
| that point, a little self-refuting.
|
| Having the Jetsons and Flintstones on streaming has been a
| blast for me as well.
| Dirlewanger wrote:
| They're not specific complaints. Said complaints can even be
| attributed to several streaming services. Why even bother
| releasing collections of something when there's major gaps in
| content for no apparent reason? Omitting content, whether it be
| through sheer incompetence or the company volunteering as a
| censorship board, does the series a horrendous disservice to
| its legacy.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > these seem like oddly specific complaints. personally i am
| impressed with the huge back catalog of old hanna barbera
| cartoons on the service
|
| I think the difference is that you have sat down and watched it
| and liked it, while the article author has done this previously
| and wants to again, but half is missing.
|
| Is all the Jetsons present? Is Hanna Barbera all there?
| undefined1 wrote:
| will you still be impressed if they also censor(ed) episodes of
| the Jetsons?
| devmunchies wrote:
| Couldn't they just show trigger warnings for controversial
| content? Disney does this with old classics[1]. This is
| historical animation, I think it's worth showing an accurate
| snapshot of the past.
|
| [1]: https://imgur.com/dkMC6gd
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Couldn 't they just show trigger warnings_
|
| Or people could just grow up and realize that you can't judge
| people who lived a hundred years ago by today's standards.
|
| Imagine what ordinary things you do every day that people a
| hundred years from now will consider a social crime and want
| you banned or cancelled for.
| devmunchies wrote:
| I completely agree, but some parents might not want their
| kids to watch old stuff. A content advisory is a good middle
| ground, since it doesn't censor the past while giving the
| streaming service a free pass.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Or parents could pay more attention to what their children
| are watching. Just like when all we had was antenna TVs.
| watwut wrote:
| Parents prefer streaming services that don't expect them
| to watch kids shows in advance to make casw by case
| decision which boring show is ok or not.
|
| Like antenna TV programming used to be - guaranteed to be
| inoffesive so you don't have to watch crap kids like to
| watch.
| wayneftw wrote:
| HBO Max has the worst web video player UI of all the streaming
| services. The most annoying anti-feature is that skipping forward
| 15/30 seconds takes almost as long as just watching those
| seconds. I also had to install an extension just to be able to
| skip via keyboard!
|
| I really don't expect HBO to get anything right for streaming.
| Even Amazon has a better video player despite some of it's own
| major annoyances like constantly losing focus, so you can't use
| the keyboard. Both Netflix and Amazon skip forward almost
| instantly though.
| khazhoux wrote:
| _Mouse in Manhattan_ is a wonderful short. The storytelling, the
| pacing, and the orchestral score are magical.
|
| But there is the small issue of Jerry falling into a vial of shoe
| polish and then popping his head out -- in full blackface. Yup,
| that's not allowed today. I hope they just correct that (but
| without messing up the music) rather than outright ban it.
| reaperducer wrote:
| What is "correct" today will not be "correct" tomorrow.
|
| You don't reconcile history by pretending it didn't exist.
|
| 50 years from now, some young generation will decide that
| animal-sourced leather is a hate crime, and every movie you've
| ever seen will be banned to "correct" the social error of
| seeing shoes that aren't plastic.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Growing up, it was acceptable to shoot a Rodian before giving
| him a chance to shoot you.
|
| But blackface is clearly prohibited today. So there's two
| choices for art like this: edit it, or it doesn't get shown
| publicly again. I'm only arguing that I'd prefer the former
| to the latter.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| There's a third choice - just show it unedited. Put a
| disclaimer if needed. You can still buy a copy of mein
| kampf and read the loonery Hitler wrote.
|
| You don't learn from history by denying it's existence.
| devmunchies wrote:
| he accidentally falls in black dye though. Of course his face
| would be black. why is that bad?
| khazhoux wrote:
| Well it's clearly blackface, 100%. The lips, the wide smile.
| It's the typical cartoonish depiction of Black people at the
| time. That was the gag --> "Jerry falls into shoe dye and now
| he's a _negro_. "
|
| Incidentally, another favorite of mine from the 40s -- _The
| Spirit_ comics by Will Eisner-- also feature a character with
| the cartoon black face: huge lips, etc. Unfortunately, that
| limits the exposure the comics will get with modern
| audiences.
| psyc wrote:
| Yes, that's what happens causally. But the _gag_ is that the
| result looks like blackface. At least I 'm 90% certain that
| was the intention of the writer / animator.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| I'm going to assume that in this conversation you have not
| seen the original content and are responding to the text here
| in a vacuum. Here is the specific symbolism being used so
| that you may understand the context.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/X39LVNF.png
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Minstrel.
| ..
| eplanit wrote:
| "Correcting" seems just as dystopian as banning outright.
|
| Put a warning label on it and people can choose to not view it.
| sib wrote:
| So we're all going to go to the library and start removing
| (maybe burning??) all the books that are no longer proper?
| khazhoux wrote:
| We're not talking about libraries, but private streaming
| services like HBO Max and Disney+. They've made their choice.
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