[HN Gopher] EU withheld a study that shows piracy doesn't hurt s...
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EU withheld a study that shows piracy doesn't hurt sales (2017)
Author : seesawtron
Score : 875 points
Date : 2021-07-11 06:37 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| jpalomaki wrote:
| I think software piracy hurts/benefits companies in complicated
| ways. When kids trade copies of Photoshop, Adobe benefits from
| this. This allows people to learn the tool and strenghtens
| Adobe's status. On the other hand more affordable options suffer.
| Why pay even $20 for the second best, if you can get the best for
| free.
| scaramanga wrote:
| "Would you ever imagine the manager of a firm making a statement
| publicly in opposition to his board of directors?" - Mario Savio,
| quoting UC President Clark Kerr
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The thing is: people have a budget, whether they want it or not.
| So, when they spend $50 to buy a video game, that's $50 less for
| theaters. It is all connected, so I think that in the end, free
| piracy (like torrenting) doesn't change much on the global scale.
| JohnStrangeII wrote:
| I have a bit of a stupid question related to the topic. I'm self-
| publishing German sci fi and fantasy novels, nothing special,
| just some good entertainment (if you like my writing style).
| Since you cannot have a readership without Amazon and do
| appreciate the pocket money, I sell them on Amazon. At the same
| time Amazon does not allow me to give them away for free.
|
| Is there a way I can give away my novels as "pirated ebooks" to a
| German audience without having to seed a torrent and without
| making this easily traceable back to me as the author?
|
| It would probably even boost sales and also help people with less
| money, I just don't know how to do it. :(
| ftruzzi wrote:
| You can just upload them on Library Genesis
| [deleted]
| sp332 wrote:
| Amazon doesn't let you give it away for free? Even as a
| promotional thing?
|
| You could upload it to the Internet Archive. Maybe ping Jason
| Scott @textfiles on Twitter and he'll make sure it gets sorted
| into the right categories so people can find it.
| ipaddr wrote:
| They allow you to give it away but you can't be signed up to
| the kdp program.
| taneq wrote:
| > Is there a way I can give away my novels as "pirated ebooks"
| to a German audience without having to seed a torrent and
| without making this easily traceable back to me as the author?
|
| A few well regarded authors (Charlie Stross, Cory Doctrow and
| Peter Watts spring to mind, I'm sure there are others) have
| been commercially successful despite (or because of) releasing
| some of their work for free download. Might be worth looking
| into how they approached it?
| afarviral wrote:
| There are other websites that allow you to do a static upload,
| under a pseudonym. Just have a look on somewhere like reddit
| for a name of such a site. Another option would be getting in
| touch with a popular uploader on one of these sites or a
| torrent tracker and have them upload and seed. If they are a
| member of a private tracker they may get some sort of reward
| for seeding, as an incentive.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Is there a way I can give away my novels as "pirated
| ebooks" to a German audience without having to seed a torrent
| and without making this easily traceable back to me as the
| author?_
|
| The big torrent alternative in the German warez scene are
| direct downloads from filehosters. Which means there is no real
| "central place" where you can just put it for widespread
| exposure because it's a whole bunch of different portals/forums
| with individual uploads.
|
| There's a couple of well known bigger forums, like Gulli,
| Boerse or Bloodsuckerz, and countless "blog style" ones often
| specialized on certain media, those can be found on the
| Raidrush Toplist.
|
| So in practice you would need to sign up to a whole lot of
| places and post the links to your filehosted books there.
| injidup wrote:
| So funny. An article on how piracy doesn't hurt sales followed by
| so many posts by people boasting how they would never pay for
| anything because they can download it for free.
| leadingthenet wrote:
| You're making the implicit assumption that they would've bought
| the thing either way, just chose not to because they could get
| it for free, which might not be the case.
| [deleted]
| bbarn wrote:
| To be fair, you're on a forum of largely highly technical
| people. If every one of us pirated movies and music, we still
| don't make a dent in the overall market.
| arpa wrote:
| piracy is the only answer when you get bullshit like this:
|
| https://watannetwork.com/tools/blocked/#url=oRqjVPljSGQ
| sharken wrote:
| It's worth noting that the EU-paid study was done in 2013, back
| when streaming and YouTube was on the rise. Billboard called
| streaming unignorable in 2013.
|
| https://www.billboard.com/amp/articles/business/8545169/2013...
|
| Still, there probably needs to be some legislation around piracy,
| even though it seems to not affect sales much.
| kebman wrote:
| I think there's something to be said about simply supplying a
| superior service. While I would watch more TV and movies
| before, now I simply watch YouTube or Odysee. And that's it. I
| don't really have a need for much more. I wonder if more people
| have the same experience. Of course, it could also be my age
| and my strange interests at play though.
| hulitu wrote:
| I cannot watch youtube. The quality of image and sound is
| just terrible. 4k videos with compression artifacts? Where
| you can see the how the image is divided for compression ?
| Best sound quality: opus 176 kbps ? Maybe my television and
| media proffessor was right: everything is negociated at the
| level of first telephony multiplexer: 64kbps.
| kebman wrote:
| I feel you! OTOH it seldom matters to me, because I mostly
| watch tech and docu stuff that do not require crystal clear
| or hifi video. Kind of like illustrated podcasts. I do see
| the need for a better experience when watching feature
| films, though, which you can also get on YouTube. But being
| a bit of a film buff (and one who's also shot film for
| cinema I might add), I don't even enjoy Netflix. Instead I
| try to watch films where they're supposed to be watched: At
| the movies. ;)
| Bancakes wrote:
| Piracy has only become a supposed problem because corporations
| expect every consumer to purchase the product separately. I can't
| buy a game or album off ebay - I _must_ buy the real thing.
|
| As far as videogames go, you can't blame piracy if your game
| doesn't have a demo version. No, I'm not paying Steam 100 euros
| for 2 hours that I may or may not get refunded.
| __m wrote:
| what's the point though? If you make it legal it will definitely
| hurt sales
| sp332 wrote:
| The point, as the article says later, is that piracy is used as
| an excuse to implement invasive surveillance of all file
| uploads. This just highlights that it's a pure power grab with
| no justification at all.
| JohnHaugeland wrote:
| It's weird how, when you read the study, or even the first
| concrete sentence they say about it, it actually says something
| very, very different
|
| > It concluded that one specific category, blockbuster movies, is
| negatively impacted by piracy, with ten downloads leading to
| about four fewer cinema visits. Overall, that reduced sales for
| certain films by about 4.4 percent on average.
| beezischillin wrote:
| I grew up poor in Eastern Europe. Very poor, in fact. Without
| piracy I probably wouldn't ever have been able to learn English,
| find my passion and make it in life. And not just for monetary
| reasons but due to access as well. Ironically enough the Internet
| never mattered too much because we were able to get what we
| wanted hand to hand. The 56k modem was completely useless when
| your friend had a zip drive with the games you drooled over. But
| it taught me to appreciate things. Even today I love physical
| copies of things, it is like a little trophy to the thing I love.
|
| My biggest problem nowadays is not that I can't afford the things
| I love but that there is hardly anything I actually want. But
| when I do I often get multiple copies, whether it is on different
| platforms or to share the joy with friends.
|
| That being said the effects of piracy are both severe and
| negligible due to the quality. While it probably doesn't affect
| big corporations at all, the small indie people sometimes suffer
| catastrophically from it.
| [deleted]
| marshallbananas wrote:
| As someone who grew up in Eastern Europe in the early 2000s, with
| a a taste for Western media, especially movies, and the Internet
| becoming a widespread thing, it was infuriating waiting for
| movies to come to theaters months behind the rest of the world.
| Not to mention the horrible country specific posters and
| advertising, limited availability and titles. Piracy was the only
| option.
|
| It felt like the Internet would solve all these problems, like
| you'd be able to experience culture from any part of the world
| however you liked and at the same time as the rest of the world.
| Sadly that never happened. It's much better now but it still
| feels like the media is crippled by old local distributor deals.
| The fact that e.g. Netflix offers different movies for every
| country is something that honestly does not make any sense yet
| everyone accepts it.
|
| When I got my first Kindle 12 years ago my Amazon account was
| registered with my local European address so the books available
| in store were all complete trash romance pulp novels. Once I
| simply changed my home address to some random location in New
| York I suddenly had access to hundreds of thousands more titles.
| The Internet never delivered on its promise.
| stavros wrote:
| > The Internet never delivered on its promise.
|
| The internet is what brought you piracy.
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| >> The Internet never delivered on its promise.
|
| >The internet is what brought you piracy.
|
| The BBS's I visited in 1986 might disagree with you.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The guy with a suitcase of tapes would also disagree, but
| the Internet enabled a huge increase in scale.
| nine_k wrote:
| While I see what you mean, a BBS was an inherently local
| thing, unless you fancied paying long-distance fees even if
| a distant BBS would accept LD calls at all. That might be
| acceptable for important texts and other very compact
| formats (small pictures, MIDI tracks), but for pirating
| music, let alone video, it was out of question.
| zorked wrote:
| The problem there is just technological: the problem with
| movies and video was the unavailability of good enough
| codecs/large enough media+bandwidth. Otherwise BBS would
| have been a hell of a party for those too.
|
| For software my local BBSs, very very far from any rich
| country, somehow managed to get every major software
| release a few days before launch day. Yes, before. It was
| all one huge global network already, just a bit
| asynchronous.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| people selling pirate movies and music on the street
| (pretty common in Italy at least) may disagree
| johnchristopher wrote:
| The BBB's from 1986 didn't bring piracy to this person in
| the 2000's. Internet did.
| elondaits wrote:
| Pfffff!! In Argentina you could go to brick and mortar
| computer stores with your box of blank floppies and ask them
| to copy whatever game you wanted from a long dot-matrix
| printed list in a binder.
|
| Years later, with CD writers, there was a website called "Ed
| Sullivan and his Cambodian slaves" [sic] with a long list of
| movies and TV shows you could have delivered home in a couple
| of days. Or just stroll to the park in the center of town
| where several stalls offered copies of all types of computer
| software, MP3 collections, games, movies, etc.
|
| ... There were also guys on trains, carrying a portable CD
| player, speakers and a battery, who sold music and movies.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Not quite, CD Projekt (the witcher company) is named like
| this because they were selling pirated CDs in Warsaw.
| hulitu wrote:
| > The internet is what brought you piracy.
|
| Piracy was brought by microsoft and MPAA. Microsoft had a lot
| to win and they used piracy to consolidate market share. They
| never went after people except in some rare cases for
| publicity. MPAA made sure that you cannot buy movies. In
| eastern europe they did not even had distributors but they
| were screaming bloody murder.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Not quite, but it's sure vastly more efficient than swapping
| floppy disks.
| Xelbair wrote:
| the naivete.
|
| Piracy was widespread over here before internet was a thing.
|
| Copied audio tapes(prior to cassettes!), or movies etc.
| speeder wrote:
| Where I live piracy is people on the street selling media
| with pirated content (currently, DVD-R and all... but there
| was a time when it was diskette or even tape too).
|
| Sometimes they sell it for MORE than the original, so why
| people buy the pirated one?
|
| Because the pirated one is often: easier to
| pay (just hand over the cash instead of international wire).
| better support (often the piracy dealers double as tech
| support!) better patches (often pirated content is
| patched with fan patches, DRM removal, and whatnot)
| better translation (often pirated content include fan
| translation).
| iso1210 wrote:
| My first 'piracy' would have been the copy of windows +
| office that my dad had at work and brought home to install on
| the home computer, well before I'd ever heard of the
| internet.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| Reminds me of something similar. My local library loans out
| ebooks, which are loaned out, reserved, and returned just like
| physical books. An ebook someone wanted had all its "copies"
| checked out, and there was a long wait list. But the physical
| book was available, so they just went with that instead.
|
| We have the means to sidestep these physical impediments, yet
| we just recreate them digitally. And in the case above, the
| physical actually turned out to be the solution to the digital
| impediment. It's just too funny. The greatest barriers in this
| world aren't technological - they're social, economic, and
| political; always have been.
|
| Just another reminder that we're living in clown world.
| blooalien wrote:
| So much _truth_ to your entire comment!
| CRConrad wrote:
| > grew up in Eastern Europe in the early 2000s ... it was
| infuriating waiting for movies to come to theaters months
| behind the rest of the world.
|
| "Months"... Muahahaha! Sheesh, kids nowadays: Spoiled rotten,
| but don't even know it, so think they have something to whine
| about.
|
| In my youth -- in a _Western_ European country -- it was
| _years._
| fnord123 wrote:
| >The fact that e.g. Netflix offers different movies for every
| country is something that honestly does not make any sense yet
| everyone accepts it.
|
| Do they accept it?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Like with most things related to technology, they have no
| choice :). People can only choose from what's available on
| the market.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I do. It makes sense. Sell rights regionally so you get the
| highest price available in each location. The US will pay
| billions more for the olympics than Malta but they both watch
| the same events.
|
| That allows Netflix India to sell netflix for a dollar and
| charge 15 for Americans.
| fnord123 wrote:
| I'm sure there's a diversity of opinion. But for many
| people if it's not on the streaming service(s) they decided
| to pay for, they will just pirate it. Especially HBO Max
| which has top tier content but don't exist in most
| locations.
|
| >The US will pay billions more for the olympics than Malta
| but they both watch the same events.
|
| I can't let this tangent go even if it's not either of our
| points... The Olympic coverage in the US is infamous
| worldwide for being absolutely terrible. And being a live
| event it's harder to pirate using magnet links.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I'm a big fan of piracy. The more taking part the better
| the torrent strength.
|
| My comment was in terms of rights holders. I could see
| why they would want that. Netflix is caught in the
| middle.
| shaan7 wrote:
| And that is why pretty much any American movie you want to
| watch is not available on Netflix India :P
| bserge wrote:
| Think of entertainment as a hard drug (most of it actually is).
| And the distribuitors are the dealers. Some will be friendly or
| make deals with each other, others will keep everyone else off
| their turf or go to war.
| kome wrote:
| "Once I simply changed my home address to some random location
| in New York I suddenly had access to hundreds of thousands more
| titles. The Internet never delivered on its promise."
|
| You hate the market, not the internet.
| agilob wrote:
| Nothing has been solved because of corporational. Things are
| more complicated, Netflix made it more complicated, then
| HBO/Sky, Disney+, Amazon came and it's all nightmare again.
|
| Geolocking, lack of standardised translation service, very
| different pricing models per country. From all services I use
| or hear about, Steam is still the best value per money. Steam
| is 18 years old this year.
| mannerheim wrote:
| Netflix offering different movies to different countries is
| going to be inevitable with the protectionist legal landscape
| that's shoring up. Even if they own 100% of their content, it
| won't be tenable.
|
| The EU is requiring 30% of the content from streaming services
| to be from Europe. France requires 60%. They're discussing not
| counting UK films as part of this. It's certainly easier to
| geolock content than to produce extra content, but even if
| Netflix et al. produce more content, what happens if/when other
| countries follow suit? The Canadian senate may have killed Bill
| C-10 for now, but Trudeau still seems likely to win in the
| fall, so there's a good chance it still passes in the next
| couple of years. So France requires 60% in the EU, Canada
| requires 30% in Canada, and what happens if other countries get
| in the game? If those percentages add up to over 100%, there is
| no possible way to make all your content available in all
| countries, no matter how much content you produce in these
| countries. Geolocking is the only possibility.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I would easily pay 50eur/month if it meant I could easily
| select any movie or tv show I wanted as it's released.
|
| Right now there doesn't seem to be such experience provided
| anywhere and my Netflix subscription is basically running
| without me using it, because I rarely find anything worth
| watching where I live.
|
| So if I want to watch something I really want to watch I have
| no choice, but to select the piracy approach.
| strictfp wrote:
| Agree. The movie industry hasn't been disrupted in the same
| way that Spotify disrupted music distribution. The same
| balkanization used to happen with music licenses. Spotify
| disrupted that by simply pirating and offering the record
| companies a piece of the cake after the fact.
|
| Someone would need to pull something similar with the movie
| industry.
| [deleted]
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > The fact that e.g. Netflix offers different movies for every
| country is something that honestly does not make any sense yet
| everyone accepts it.
|
| It does make sense when you know distributors still have to
| strike deals with cable TV operators.
|
| > When I got my first Kindle 12 years ago my Amazon account was
| registered with my local European address so the books
| available in store were all complete trash romance pulp novels.
| Once I simply changed my home address to some random location
| in New York I suddenly had access to hundreds of thousands more
| titles. The Internet never delivered on its promise.
|
| At least it did since you have access to the books you want.
| Nitrolo wrote:
| Growing up in Italy around the same time my experience was very
| similar, movies would come out weeks or months later, and
| access to english media wasn't great until fairly recently.
|
| Piracy and torrents were amazing though. We could find any
| movie no matter how obscure, as well as books, comics and all
| kinds of stuff (my uncle gifted me a kobo e-reader many years
| ago, it was amazing and I loved it).
|
| I basically learned English that way, and I don't think I'm
| exaggerating when I say that that's the most important skill I
| have. So much access to information, travel, and relationships
| to other people just would not have been possible if I didn't
| speak English well.
|
| In a way piracy has improved my life tremendously, while not
| really hurting anybody (as if a kid in Italy without any money
| would have been able to buy all those movies even at a 90%
| discount).
| croes wrote:
| The internet is only a medium. It's just used by businesses and
| businesses are all about profit. Businesses want to be able to
| choose where they produce and where they pay taxes, but
| customers should be able to choose where they buy their goods.
| If you hear the term "free market" it's always about the
| companies not about the customer.
| wccrawford wrote:
| At least you get them eventually! Imagine _never_ getting them.
|
| I've been studying Japanese for about 15 years. Japanese media
| almost never comes to the US, and if it does, it's usually
| dubbed. Anything that isn't dubbed is _forced_ subtitled. The
| one exception is anime, but even that has _no_ JP subs. The
| best you can do is JP audio and no subs.
|
| But if I buy media from Japan (at a huge markup over their
| already-insane media prices) I can get JP audio and subs.
|
| And this is pretty much true for all foreign video, except
| certain British shows like Doctor Who. Even a lot of Canada-
| specific shows don't make it here (Canada's Worst Driver),
| though there are a lot of shows/movies produced in Canada with
| the US in mind from the start.
|
| It's ridiculous. Sell digital goods to anyone willing to buy
| them. Period.
| jbay808 wrote:
| I wanted to watch _Downtown Rocket_ with my family, but it 's
| just not available anywhere outside Japan. So I actually
| ordered the DVDs from Japan, but they don't have English
| subtitles so my family can't understand them. There are
| plenty of pirate sites that have the show subtitled, but I
| don't want to use them. So my family just never watched it.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Why not use them? There is nothing immoral about them.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| Netflix is pretty great for this. Most of the Japanese stuff
| they have has both Japanese audio and subtitles even outside
| Japan. It's pretty anime heavy though. Rakuten Viki has some
| too but it's done by fans and not always complete!
| CiceroCiceronis wrote:
| Japan and Japanese media is actually a very interesting
| example, because even pre-internet there were people xeroxing
| translated manga scripts and trading fansub tapes samizdat-
| style to spread Japanese popular culture to the US. Of
| course, manga/anime/JPTV have vastly greater presences in the
| Western world today (both legal and illegal, like
| scanlations). The internet was just a new and particularly
| effective conduit for pre-existing curiosity in a culture
| beyond the borders of the West.
| haunter wrote:
| At least there is now a dedicated japanese media torrent
| tracker and a lot of anime and tokusatsu have JP subtitles
| Boulth6 wrote:
| > The Internet never delivered on its promise.
|
| The commercial internet never did. Don't forget about Torrents
| and lib gen rus. They're part of the internet too.
|
| > The fact that e.g. Netflix offers different movies for every
| country is something that honestly does not make any sense yet
| everyone accepts it.
|
| People "accept" it because it's convenient and they are not
| aware that there are other options. How would you suggest
| people reject it?
| beardyw wrote:
| I got so many searches which said old film was on Netflix
| which turned into "not here mate" I unsubscribed. That's how.
| taneq wrote:
| > The commercial internet never did. Don't forget about
| Torrents [...]
|
| When you see the internet's "promise" as providing unlimited
| free content, it's a bit hard for the commercial internet to
| meet that expectation.
| Asooka wrote:
| The promise isn't for the content to be free, but for
| access to be unrestricted. I want to pay money and get a
| DRM-free file. Bandcamp delivers on that promise, so that's
| the only place I buy music from. Media you get via torrent
| is of higher quality and more useful than the DRM-
| encumbered media you get by paying. If you are even allowed
| to pay for it in the first place, that is.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| Purchased (not streaming) music has been DRM-free for
| ages even on iTunes and other major platforms. But most
| other content like movies and TV shows isn't.
| Liskni_si wrote:
| What other major platforms still sell music though? Since
| Google Play Music's demise, I haven't been able to find a
| single one selling music in my region (Czech Republic).
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| I have Netflix and Amazon prime in Sweden, but still need to
| get pirate content if I want to watch it in Italian (my mother
| language).
|
| It's not the Internet, it's copyright that has failed us.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > The Internet never delivered on its promise.
|
| Only if you look at the commercial offering.
| iso1210 wrote:
| As someone who grew up in the UK in the late 90s, with a taste
| for American media, especially scifi, and the Internet a
| widespread thing, it was infuriating waiting for TV shows to
| come to the screen months or even years behind the rest of the
| world.
|
| I do remember one site that allowed me to do download SG1
| episodes (about 128kbit, and this was probably cinepak or some
| form of mpeg1 compression) over a modem, and that was a
| lifeline.
|
| When I got to Uni in Oct 2000, I could use BitchX/IRC on the
| lab irix machine to use a massive 10 MEGA bit connection to get
| voyager episodes. Compared with downloading on a 33.6kbit
| connection over a phone line that cost at least PS2.40 (about
| $5-6 in today's money) that was an amazing experience.
|
| Even recently they decided not to bother releasing Lower Decks
| internationally. Had to get a Bittorrent client to watch it.
| That's not the case with things like Discovery and Picard which
| were released pretty much simultaneously.
|
| If a media company won't sell me what I want to watch, I'll go
| elsewhere. I paid $6 to my phone company to get a shocking
| quality copy of Voyager. For me, Piracy is not trying to avoid
| paying for it, it's about trying to get it.
|
| They've mostly cottoned on to the fact it's a global market now
| at least.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| in india, piracy is not seen as bad unless its some bigshot
| movie star who calls it a "heinous crime" that a user enjoys
| their movies and they arent getting paid. anyways, i have
| never paid for a windows license. maybe back in 98 days but
| never after that. we use cracks and it used to be sold for a
| dollar or less. get an iso, copy iso, copy crack and thats
| it.
|
| people here have a problem accepting foss because they see
| windows as free so what benefit is switching to ubuntu?
|
| about media. until few years ago, you could only watch movies
| in theaters or on cable tv. shops would resell torrented
| movies for few cents a pop because that is at most what
| people were willing to pay. i am not going to buy an original
| DVD 6 months after launch for $ 30 if i get screener for $0.2
| dollars next day of launch.
|
| its not about "robbing" the company, often purchasing parity
| means $10 is a days manual labour wages. paying $99 for a
| windows license used to make no sense when they already paid
| not more than $200-300 for an entire setup or a laptop.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "people here have a problem accepting foss because they
| see windows as free so what benefit is switching to
| ubuntu?"
|
| Because even if they gave you Windows free of cost, Windows
| has _never_ been free as in freedom, and probably never
| will be. That 's the thing people seem unable to wrap their
| brains around about FOSS is that it's about freedom, not
| cost. The fact that it's also cost-free is just added bonus
| that nobody in their right mind should complain about.
| fao_ wrote:
| How many times have you altered Firefox, though? Or
| Chromium? Or GIMP? Or any other large software project?
|
| Free as in freedom doesn't mean shit when codebases are
| so large as to be inscrutable and induplicable.
| userbinator wrote:
| Meanwhile, people have been patching and modding Windows
| despite the lack of source code.
| magicloop wrote:
| In those days Microsoft had a "curious" business strategy.
| They wanted Windows to be the dominant standard whilst
| trying to avoid monopoly litigation. So they'd charge
| everyone a license fee knowing that standard businesses
| would pay up, and those that wouldn't or couldn't were
| allowed to crack the software and use it. That portion of
| the market, the "piracy" sector wasn't in their view part
| of their market share numbers (they would say they weren't
| a monopoly). But having this in place meant it was harder
| for competitors to sub-divide the market into other
| Operating Systems and Enterprise productivity software. So
| it would end up as either Open Source or Windows. This is
| why they didn't reduce their prices for purchasing power
| parity purposes (to make it equally affordable in each
| market). The rich countries could drive their profits, and
| everyone else had a "free" ride just to shut the door on a
| competitor.
|
| Of course, the history of Microsoft and Anti-trust
| litigation is well documented. Things didn't entirely work
| out for them.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| In the 90s and early 00s, the pirated software was like
| weed. If police didn't find anything on you, they'll get
| your computer and charge you with piracy. That time
| everyone had something, Windows or Norton Commander etc.
| I read about people having counted each file as a
| separate charge, to make them look like big fish. There
| were instances they counted expired trials too...
| [deleted]
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| Every computer I bought had a windies license fee tacked
| on wether I used their operating system, or not.
|
| To this day, I try not to give Microsoft any money.
|
| I have never really cared for Gates, nor his nonprofit
| that gives less than 1 percent back to the country that
| allowed him to flourish.
| realityking wrote:
| > nor his nonprofit that gives less than 1 percent back
| to the country that allowed him to flourish.
|
| Do I understand you correctly, that your objection to the
| Gates foundation is, that they don't spend on projects in
| the US?
| riversflow wrote:
| Im gonna go out on a limb and say that, yes, that is
| their objection. Does that surprise you, or do you find
| it objectionable? Why? Im legitimately curious.
| CRConrad wrote:
| Is there any reason to think the money he made and is now
| giving away came mainly from the US? AFAICT there are a
| lot more users of Microsoft software outside the USA than
| within them. With that in mind: Yes, it seems rather
| ludicrous to demand that he use it for charity
| exclusively there.
|
| Another reason being that the US is one of the richest
| countries in the world -- and therefore, logically, among
| the least _in need_ of charity. (BTW, this shows the
| objection is ridiculous _even if_ his fortune came mainly
| from the USA: If he had made his money from selling some
| luxury article, say Rolls-Royce cars or something, and
| then decided to spend the money so earned on charity --
| should he have been expected to spend it only on helping
| the kind of people who buy Rolls-Royces?)
|
| Both screamingly obvious reasons IMO, so I find it
| somewhat surprising that anyone needed to be curious
| about this.
| mullingitover wrote:
| The Gates Foundation has done a _lot_ to save lives and
| reduce suffering in developing countries. It 's a bit
| tone-deaf to knock him on that point, and also pretty
| myopic. The US does not exist in a vacuum, and having
| third world countries develop faster because they're not
| getting hammered by easily preventable diseases actually
| can benefit the US. The people who are alive today (or
| maybe their descendants) might be buying products and
| services from the US down the road.
| blindmute wrote:
| Why would you choose to save lives and reduce suffering
| in a far off land when you could save lives and reduce
| suffering for your own country? That is what I have never
| understood about foreign aid charities.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Range of possible reasons -
|
| Maybe because issues in poor nations are straightforward
| to solve: if you resolve the issue with clean water for a
| village, that improves lives of hundreds. Issues that
| plague 'The west' don't have a known solution.
|
| Maybe because of most issues in poorest nations is lack
| of funs / tech, which he can provide, but cause of
| suffering in western world is usually political or
| mismanagement, which he cannot 'provide'
|
| Maybe because for the same resources deployed the choice
| is between saving 100 kids from disease in Africa vs
| helping social mobility of 1 kids in US
|
| Maybe you do not believe that from Alaska to Hawaii is
| 5,000 miles of "we", but 500 miles South from Texas it's
| "they". Nation-centric worldview is a relatively new idea
| that only existed for a couple hundred years, even today
| many people associate by faith, by town/province, by
| ethnicity or other things over nationality
| CRConrad wrote:
| Because there are more lives to save and suffering to
| reduce in that far off land than in your own country,
| perhaps?
|
| Are you, say, a man? Then why would you give anything to
| a charity that helps women? (Or vice versa.) Or are you
| perhaps white? Then why would you give anything to a
| charity that helps people of colour? (Or vice versa.)
| Etc, etc... Get the point yet? If not, I'll spell it out
| for you: "Charity" that only benefits copies of yourself
| isn't really charity.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Most fundamentally, a lot of us are humanists, not
| nationalists.
|
| But more narrowly: Gates Foundation focuses on
| straightforwardly preventable diseases. These are
| diseases of extreme poverty that are nearly or entirely
| absent in the US. The US's problems are of a different
| nature, largely stemming from inequality in access to
| healthcare which is a political problem.
|
| It seems rather ghoulish to look at one of the most
| effective charities in the world, that has no doubt had
| an impact on millions of people, and say "I want those $$
| to stay in the US instead" when we are the most wealthy
| and powerful nation in history. We need to fix our own
| political issues, not shame Gates for doing truly good
| things elsewhere. You want to help the US? Vote for
| people who want to help the most vulnerable among us vs
| the most powerful. Our government and society has the
| resources, they are simply being directed with deliberate
| inequities.
| jjk166 wrote:
| $4 in burkina faso will protect a family of 4 from
| malaria
|
| $4 in america will buy a latte.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Simple: The US is the wealthiest country in the history
| of the world and we don't have a lot of low hanging fruit
| in terms of easily preventable/treatable diseases.
| deadlyllama wrote:
| A lot, as long as it respects Western intellectual
| property "rights."
|
| Like persuading Oxford University to NOT give away the
| rights to its COVID-19 vaccine:
| https://khn.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-
| vaccine...
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| In those days?
|
| Right now it's even easier. You don't even have to crack
| it, just select "I'll do this later" when you have to
| fill in your license code.
| gambiting wrote:
| EUR3 keys off eBay work perfectly fine and are legal
| since reselling OEM software has been explicitly ruled to
| be legal several times in EU courts now.
| bobiny wrote:
| I've read that these cheap OEM licenses could be
| cancelled after some time. Dunno if true or not. Could
| you give a link for EU courts' rulings?
| numpad0 wrote:
| I know of a case where _payment_ got cancelled: eBay
| found the seller fraudulent and refunded either out of
| pocket or from insurance, probably the latter.
|
| That said, sometimes the licenses can indeed get
| cancelled. I've seen a really sketchy looking photocopied
| label that a guy "got" that didn't work. Depends on the
| channel perhaps.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I believe it's this ruling in a case involving Oracle: ht
| tps://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?docid=1
| 2...
|
| The ruling was appeal and a 2016 ruling in a higher court
| just confirmed that you can in fact resell software
| licenses.
| bobiny wrote:
| But isn't it a different license like consumer vs
| business? I mean when OEMs are used for pre-built PCs or
| when it's activated by end user.
| userbinator wrote:
| It's interesting how Windows went from "worth pirating"
| to "don't want even if the upgrade is free" for me ---
| the user- hostile attitude MS has started to adopt has
| been a huge turn-off.
| i0nutzb wrote:
| LPT: go to ebay, search for windows license. You can get
| one for 3-4$ or so. You can even find dedicated sites that
| sells cheap licenses of Windows or Office.
| Zenst wrote:
| > When I got to Uni in Oct 2000, I could use BitchX/IRC on
| the lab irix machine to use a massive 10 MEGA bit connection
| to get voyager episodes. Compared with downloading on a
| 33.6kbit connection over a phone line that cost at least
| PS2.40 (about $5-6 in today's money) that was an amazing
| experience.
|
| There was some way cheaper ISP offerings about in that
| time/era. Most ISP's used a local 0845 call charge number, so
| wasn't that bad, however there was also some 0800 ones.
|
| Was one that in the late 90's offered an 0800 to share
| holders and could get shares for sub PS20 mark, unsure how
| they did it and indeed didn't last long, was also able to use
| two accounts to do a bonded line (ISDN). Only downside was it
| would drop the line every 2 hours, but with me OpenBSD
| firewall/gateway I setup, easy scripted around. That was my
| favourite of the dialup era as paid total of sub PS40 for
| unlimited 128kbit internet and oh did I abuse that.
|
| Then in 2000 the cable companies arrived and the start of
| what I would call real internet, no dialup messing about or
| charges - if you was lucky to be in the catchment area that
| is and inside the M25 helped there, though even today there
| are parts of London inside the M25 that the cable companies
| don't cover (I know as I found such an address not in there
| coverage due to cost of laying a cable across the road).
|
| > I do remember one site that allowed me to do download SG1
| episodes (about 128kbit, and this was probably cinepak or
| some form of mpeg1 compression) over a modem, and that was a
| lifeline.
|
| I know exactly what you mean about TV shows back then and
| delays. For me southpark was the one that got that ball
| rolling, initially was realmedia encoded and ironically I
| watched every single episode almost religiously within an
| hour of it premiaring in America. Ironic as in 2003 I was in
| America when a new episode was out and fell asleep just
| before it came on and with that the first southpark episode I
| didn't watch within an hour or so of it airing was the only
| time I could of watched it live.
|
| These days, it's mostly dip into some streaming subscription
| for a month or two every now and then, flitting around the
| offerings, munching thru their offerings in that period and
| comming back to subbing them a year or so later once new
| things are there to make it worthwhile.
|
| But I'm not sure if it's age or my tastes, the enthusiasm and
| offerings just don't have me eagerly sitting in anticipation
| for the next episode or series these days as they did back
| then. Sure there are the odd gems that do that, but far less
| so than in the early days and a bit of choice/saturation
| overload perhaps, though mostly it's a case of many offerings
| just install a sense of ennui. With that, I would say the
| only TV show that has had me at the same enthusiasm level,
| would be the Mandalorian. beyond that, nothing jumps out at
| me really today and even South Park, I've become apathetic
| and not seen the last season (or maybe two).
|
| One change though, that I do approve of that many streaming
| serious releases do. Which is, they release the entire season
| at once, and that I love as you can keep your momentum going.
| Albeit you shift you wait from weekly episode releases
| towards yearly season releases, though that was always been
| the case.
| iso1210 wrote:
| about 97ish the best you could do was local call rates
| (either 0845, or just a local dial in number). At the
| weekend that was 1p per minute. Downloading a 40 minute
| episodes would take 4 hours, so PS2.40. That's PS4.50
| today, or $6.25.
| Zenst wrote:
| Reminded me of late 80's when I had an Amstrad PPC640DD
| which had a built in 2400 baud modem. Was in an Hotel and
| spent a couple of hours on a BBS...PS50 charges for phone
| when checking out for those two hours usage.
|
| Soon learned some tricks and list of outdials (ICL had
| some nice ones as did IBM, if you had the number, that
| was all you needed). Though doubt anybody wardials
| thesedays.
| Qahlel wrote:
| >>> I do remember one site that allowed me to do download SG1
| episodes (about 128kbit, and this was probably cinepak or
| some form of mpeg1 compression) over a modem, and that was a
| lifeline.
|
| sg1archive.com
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Funny, I'm torrenting SG1 literally right now because Netflix
| took the episodes down for no reason.
|
| A few months ago someone used one of those AI/ML based
| upscalers and now I have the torrents in 1080p resolution.
| Obviously it's not magic but there is a very clear noticeable
| difference in quality and texture detail and of course the
| higher resolution compared to the older torrents and even
| Netflix.
|
| Highly recommend!
| dylan604 wrote:
| > because Netflix took the episodes down for no reason.
|
| Wow, what an entitled viewpoint. There was a very simple
| reason on why the episodes were removed: their license for
| those episodes expired. The content owner only allowed
| Netflix to display that content for a certain amount of
| time known as a licensing window. That window is now
| closed. Now that there are several other streaming vendors,
| the content owner of SG1 is more than likely to hoping to
| get more money from someone else.
|
| So while you may be disappointed in you not getting what
| you want when you want it, you're ire is totally pointed at
| the wrong people. It is always the content owner, not the
| distributor. At least learn a little bit about what you are
| clearly passionate about.
| fao_ wrote:
| Both are at fault. The content owner wants to make money
| through Netflix and other distributors, without it they
| are limited by DVD sales which are dwindling. It would be
| very, very easy for all of the content distributors to
| band together into some sort of... 'union', that would
| help them strong-arm the owners and push back the
| incoherent decisions made by them.
|
| Also, who is this post aimed at? Netflix isn't going to
| care if someone badmouths them on some random corner of
| the internet. And anyone who works there isn't going to
| give a shit just because someone on hacker news couldn't
| get SG-1 available internationally. I'm struggling to
| figure out why you felt that this post was at all
| necessary.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why would any of the platforms join together? If all of
| the streamers had the same content, there'd be no point
| in having more than one streaming platform.
|
| Why would the content owners want to work with only one
| streaming platform? There'd be nobody to bid against each
| other.
|
| I want to see a show on Broadway, but I don't live in New
| York so I guess I should just find it on the pirate bay?
| No? How is it any different? I should start complaining
| on the internet? I want to see a concert in my town, but
| no promoter decided to bring that show to my town. I
| should again start complaining on the internet? A TV
| show/Film is not available in my available ways of
| viewing is totally acceptable to complain on the
| internet? So I go to the internet and complain, and then
| someone else has the gall to call me out on it? Please
| children, dad has a headache from the banality.
| fao_ wrote:
| > Why would any of the platforms join together? If all of
| the streamers had the same content, there'd be no point
| in having more than one streaming platform.
|
| I don't think you understand. A 'union' is simply a group
| of companies aligning and talking about common interests,
| one of which is exactly what I said -- the ability to
| strongarm content owners into making content available
| internationally, so that their bottom line can be
| stronger.
|
| It is not the same meaning as 'merger' -- you seem to
| have conflated the two? For the union I just proposed,
| there is historical precendece -- the International
| Intellectual Property Association and similar
| organizations put pressure on the US Government via
| lobbying to specifically 'protect' international
| copyright law (NB: I can't condone this organization, but
| it does exist). This is simply a different group of
| companies with different interests. It doesn't mean they
| stop competing with each other, it just means that they
| all agree to do one specific thing. In this case it might
| harm them all in the short term, but would be beneficial
| in the long term.
|
| Without sales to Netflix and other content distributors
| the revenue of the content owners would dry up -- movie
| sales are dwindling due to increasing prices, DVD sales
| are drying up, therefore the content distributors hold
| the cards here which allows them to unilaterally
| negotiate better terms -- but that only works if they all
| do it at once. If one company decides to not participate,
| that leaves an opening for the content owners to go to
| them.
|
| > I want to see a show on Broadway, but I don't live in
| New York so I guess I should just find it on the pirate
| bay? No? How is it any different? I should start
| complaining on the internet? I want to see a concert in
| my town, but no promoter decided to bring that show to my
| town. I should again start complaining on the internet? A
| TV show/Film is not available in my available ways of
| viewing is totally acceptable to complain on the
| internet? So I go to the internet and complain, and then
| someone else has the gall to call me out on it? Please
| children, dad has a headache from the banality.
|
| Well this is the most jumbled wall of text I've seen
| today. You seem to be saying that someone complaining on
| the internet is bad? You seem to also be trying to insult
| me? It's highly immature and petty, whatever it is.
|
| The original point was that the ire was directed at the
| wrong group of people, and I pointed out that it's not
| like the company is going to care that one single person
| is venting about them on the internet.
|
| I'm still not sure why it matters that someone on the
| internet deigned to complain about Netflix as opposed to
| the content owners. Can you clear up why that distinction
| is necessary here?
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Well this is the most jumbled wall of text I've seen
| today. You seem to be saying that someone complaining on
| the internet is bad? You seem to also be trying to insult
| me? It's highly immature and petty, whatever it is.
|
| If you feel insulted, then that's something you've read
| into that isn't there. My whole jumbled wall of text (no
| worries, I'm not insulted) was to show how ridiculous the
| concept of "I can't stream a show that I feel like I
| deserve to watch so I'll do whatever I want to see it".
| There will always be people that justify whatever they
| want to do whatever they want, but the rest of us can
| just roll our eyes at it. You want to complain about
| something as petty as not seeing a TV show, then you can
| expect some people to tell you how that logic just makes
| no sense.
|
| >I'm still not sure why it matters that someone on the
| internet deigned to complain about Netflix as opposed to
| the content owners. Can you clear up why that distinction
| is necessary here?
|
| Because it's okay to blame someone that's not at fault
| while not blaming the person that is at fault? How does
| it even come close to being acceptable? Netflix did not
| make the rules. They need content on their platform, so
| they make deals with the content owners. It confounds me
| that you are confused by this.
| stale2002 wrote:
| You seem to be the one complaining about other people's
| behavior.
|
| Yes, if content is not available to someone else, any
| they wouldn't be able to see it otherwise, then their is
| little harm in piracy.
|
| And you, not them, seem to be to most mad about other
| people doing things that doesn't really cause any harm.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| "I want to see a show on Broadway, but I don't live in
| New York so I guess I should just find it on the pirate
| bay? No?" I mean, honestly, why not. I will never drive
| to New york to see it. So they will never receive money
| from me. So they lose nothing by me watching it online.
| Victimless crime.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| This is actually where I've drawn the line.
|
| I am willing to pay to watch your movie/show/series, but
| if there is no way to do that then I will pirate the
| show.
|
| Only reason I got a month of Netflix was Inside
|
| Only reason I got a month of Disney+ was to check out
| Loki
|
| Neither will be renewed.
|
| I tried to search platform where I could watch the new
| Rick & Morty, but I wasn't able to find one in EU. I'm
| sure it exists, but if Google can't get me the answer
| within resonable time (like this time it failed to) I
| just downloaded the episodes (actually I was able to
| watch the S5E1 from AdultSwim's website) [BTW if someone
| knows EU streaming site where I can watch these as they
| get released I'd like to know so I can pay for couple
| months]
| shric wrote:
| Also, at least in my country (Australia), Rick and Morty
| was censored (bleeps every 15 seconds) on Netflix, so I
| pirated it for a better experience.
| LinAGKar wrote:
| Rick and Morty is available on HBO. It's also on Netflix,
| but they don't have season 5 yet for some reason.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > It would be very, very easy for all of the content
| distributors to band together into some sort of...
| 'union', that would help them strong-arm the owners and
| push back the incoherent decisions made by them.
|
| I think when competing firms form a 'union' like this
| it's called collusion.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| One person's collusion is another person's Motion Picture
| Association.
|
| _the MPA has advocated for the motion picture and
| television industry, with the goals of promoting
| effective copyright protection, reducing piracy, and
| expanding market access. It has long worked to curb
| copyright infringement, including recent attempts to
| limit the sharing of copyrighted works via peer-to-peer
| file sharing networks and by streaming from pirate
| sites._
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Associatio
| n
| mullingitover wrote:
| This is kind of apples and oranges though. The MPAA is
| more of a lobbying organization, it isn't an agreement
| between firms about how they will compete (or not
| compete) in the marketplace
| CRConrad wrote:
| Isn't it pretty much an agreement that they'll compete"
| (i.e. not compete) by all implementing basically the same
| shitty DRM?
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is how I was interpreting the suggestion to "join"
| together as well.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Why would it be an entitled viewpoint? He/she wants to
| watch a series on a service he/she pays for. It is
| entirely reasonable to expect said service to continue to
| serve previously available content - it was of course a
| legal way of operation that the owner didn't extend their
| license and that Netflix removed episodes. But gp has
| every right to be upset that netflix due to any reason
| didn't live up to expectations.
| sbuk wrote:
| When they signed up for said service, was there an
| implicit agreement in place that said they would show
| whatever show he/she wanted, when they wanted? While I
| agree that the GP has the right to be upset that _their_
| expectations weren't met, it doesn't make the
| unreasonable expectations right. I'd argue that Netflix,
| or whoever, not carrying a show or file for whatever
| reason, save them explicitly stating that they would do
| and failing to do so, _is_ unreasonable.
|
| That would be, to me, entitled.
| kaba0 wrote:
| It frankly, doesn't really matter whether it is a
| reasonable or an "entitled" reason a customer is upset.
| What matters is he/she is not happy with a service and
| thus will terminate his subscription.
| sbuk wrote:
| That's how commerce works...
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Netflix is a rental platform. Like the old DVD and VHS
| rental shops. And regularly some content gets pull off
| the shelves because they don't have the licensing fees.
| It's a pretty well known fact some movies and TV shows
| come and go on Netflix.
|
| And for what ? Pirating "culture" that is not available
| on Netflix ? Star Trek Voyager ? I am huge Trek fan but
| come on.
|
| This is entertainment we are talking about.
|
| > He/she wants to watch a series on a service he/she pays
| for.
|
| It's like complaining a vegan restaurant doesn't serve
| meat.
|
| Netflix has very few of the shows, movies and
| documentaries I can watch on ARTe. Do people complain
| that ARTe doesn't stream every Netflix shows and vice
| versa ?
|
| There are a lot of comments on HN when this topic comes
| up that feel like people want their cake and eat it too
| "or else I'll just pirate, there's a gun to my head, they
| give me no choice".
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > "It's like complaining a vegan restaurant doesn't serve
| meat."
|
| No, it's like complaining that a chain of restaurant
| randomly takes dishes off the menu, and it's different in
| every country. Eventually you get fed up with
| unpredictable menu and stop going there.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > No, it's like complaining that a chain of restaurant
| randomly takes dishes off the menu, and it's different in
| every country.
|
| Which is still ridiculous. Even McDonald's don't have the
| same menu everywhere.
|
| All restaurants I know have dishes that are taken off
| (because if's off season, because a new chef, because
| they try something else, etc.).
|
| Plus, the analogy is distorted, you can't complain about
| a different menu in another country, it's not like you
| can hop from countries to countries 20 times per evening
| to get your Mc Bulgogi Burger.
|
| > Eventually you get fed up with unpredictable menu and
| stop going there.
|
| Good, that's what competition is about between services.
| nextlevelwizard wrote:
| The food analogy is shitty because you know what I do
| when McDonalds takes burgers off of their menu? I go to
| the grill next door to get my burger.
|
| With movies/shows the problem is that there is no
| alternative. If I want to watch Startrek I can't just put
| on the Simpsons as an alternative and if I've purchaced a
| streaming service explicitly because of Startrek then I'm
| going to feel like I was cheated.
|
| You can argue until heat death of the universe whose
| fault it is, but in the mean time if there is no way of
| legaly watching the content piracy is the only way. (and
| importing expensive DVDs in an erra where literally none
| of my devices have optical bays is not actual option)
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > The food analogy is shitty because you know what I do
| when McDonalds takes burgers off of their menu? I go to
| the grill next door to get my burger.
|
| You don't pull a tantrum on an Internet forum about how
| you are now forced to hire an anon crew to get into a
| McDonald's warehouse to get your Mac Something ? Indeed
| you just go to another service provider to see if they
| have the Mac Something or something else to satisfy your
| palates. (sorry I kept the food analogy going).
|
| > and if I've purchaced a streaming service explicitly
| because of Startrek then I'm going to feel like I was
| cheated.
|
| Read the lines on the contract. No one is cheated.
| Especially for the price you are paying by the way.
| Netflix is still a rental service. (fun fact: Netflix
| doesn't even have full international rights on its own
| productions, see: orange is the new black, arrested
| development).
|
| > You can argue until heat death of the universe whose
| fault it is, but in the mean time if there is no way of
| legaly watching the content piracy is the only way.
|
| I will argue until heat death that SG1 content owners are
| not forcing people to pirate their content. It's just
| hard cold facts. You may not like it because you feel
| like you are entitled to it or that it doesn't matter
| much that no one gets hurt or it's stupid or whatever,
| that's not really the point. The point is that they are
| not forcing you. It's on you when you decide to go
| torrent hunting, launch a DCC+, get popcorn, whatever.
|
| > if there is no way of legaly watching the content
| piracy is the only way
|
| Doesn't mean you are entitled to it or that you are
| forced to do it. No one is forcing you to pirate SG1 or
| Star Trek Voyager. It's entirely on you, own up your
| actions.
|
| I am not saying you should or shouldn't, I am not
| questioning the morality of it. All I am saying is
| "nobody forced you".
|
| > (and importing expensive DVDs in an erra where
| literally none of my devices have optical bays is not
| actual option)
|
| Again, that's on you. Not content owner's fault that you
| don't have a DVD player.
|
| Now let's take a step forward. Imagine you pirated off
| those SG1 episodes. But then you get a letter from
| copyright holders and a fine from whatever judicial
| instances in your country manages these kind of things.
|
| You don't want to pay the fine, you go to courts.
|
| Do you believe for an instant arguments like "I pirated
| those episodes because they were not available anymore on
| Netflix, they basically forced my hand ; promised, once
| they are back up I'll subscribe again to Netflix" will
| fly ?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Which is still ridiculous. Even McDonald 's don't have
| the same menu everywhere._
|
| Except they mostly have. That's one of their huge selling
| points: wherever you go in the world, whatever weird
| cuisine they have going on there, if you can find a
| McDonald's, you can feel comfort in knowing you have a
| fallback - a place where you can find good food you
| already know.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > > Which is still ridiculous. Even McDonald's don't have
| the same menu everywhere.
|
| > Except they mostly have.
|
| Which means they don't
|
| So my point still stands.
|
| You know, the point.
|
| The one I made to demonstrate that even McDonald's don't
| have the same menu everywhere. Despite _one of their huge
| selling points: wherever you go in the world, whatever
| weird cuisine they have going on there, if you can find a
| McDonald 's, you can feel comfort in knowing you have a
| fallback - a place where you can find good food you
| already know._
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Which is still ridiculous. Even McDonald's don't have
| the same menu everywhere.
|
| That's why analogies never work.
|
| Here, it's simple:
|
| - that person is already paying Netflix, legally
|
| - SG1 was available on Netflix, so the money was going to
| whoever owns the right to SG1, too
|
| - Then SG1 was not made available (for whichever reason,
| in 99% of the cases blame the rights owner, and you'll be
| right)
|
| So now the rights owner earns exactly zero dollars for
| SG1 from people who are paying for Netflix.
|
| If those people chose to pirate SG1, literally nothing in
| the equation will change: the owners will keep not
| getting the money.
|
| And the only fault lies with the people who decided to
| pull SG1 (and other content) from Netflix.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > If those people chose to pirate SG1, literally nothing
| in the equation will change: the owners will keep not
| getting the money.
|
| Wrong. The owners won't get money from people who pirated
| content once they make their content available again.
|
| > And the only fault lies with the people who decided to
| pull SG1 (and other content) from Netflix.
|
| No. The only people responsible for pirating SG1 are the
| pirates. The owners of SG1 don't owe anything to Netflix
| viewers and they certainly didn't force the hands of
| anybody to pirate their content.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > The owners won't get money from people who pirated
| content once they make their content available again.
|
| 1. Their own fault
|
| 2. It has been proven, time and again, that piracy goes
| down, significantly, once content is available.
|
| So they will get their money _even from people who
| pirated this content previously_. Why? Because it 's much
| easier to just pay Netflix and watch or re-watch.
|
| > The only people responsible for pirating SG1 are the
| pirates. The owners of SG1 don't owe anything to Netflix
| viewers and they certainly didn't force the hands of
| anybody to pirate their content.
|
| Ah yes. The poor owners who didn't anything at all and
| now are suffering. Except they did: _they made their own
| content unavailable_.
|
| The person was willingly giving them money, legally. The
| owners made their content unavailable. Guess they didn't
| want money after all.
|
| Edit. Oatmeal's evergreen take on this:
| https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > > The owners won't get money from people who pirated
| content once they make their content available again.
|
| > 1. Their own fault
|
| Owners have made a bad commercial move but it doesn't
| force people to pirate their content. Nothing does. There
| are no pressure from SG1 owners to pirate their content,
| no incentives. On the contrary they will use digital
| rights laws to protect their assets. It's entirely their
| rights to do so and nothing in the commonwealth, US or
| European laws give the right to people to pirate SG1
| content when it's not available on a streaming platform.
|
| > 2. It has been proven, time and again, that piracy goes
| down, significantly, once content is available.
|
| So ? It doesn't make piracy of SG1 content legal in any
| way.
|
| > So they will get their money even from people who
| pirated this content previously. Why? Because it's much
| easier to just pay Netflix and watch or re-watch.
|
| > > The only people responsible for pirating SG1 are the
| pirates. The owners of SG1 don't owe anything to Netflix
| viewers and they certainly didn't force the hands of
| anybody to pirate their content.
|
| > Ah yes. The poor owners who didn't anything at all and
| now are suffering. Except they did: they made their own
| content unavailable.
|
| Which is their entire freaking right to do so. Just like
| maintainers of open source projects don't owe their users
| anything the SG1 content owners don't owe anything to
| Netflix users.
|
| > The person was willingly giving them money, legally.
| The owners made their content unavailable. Guess they
| didn't want money after all.
|
| No, the person was willingly giving money to a third-
| party, Netflix.
|
| > Guess they didn't want money after all.
|
| Or maybe Netflix got greedy or maybe the contract between
| them had limit in time and Netflix agreed to that time
| limit or maybe SG1 content owners have another contract
| with another platform and then the person is free to
| subscribe to it. Whatever it is, it's up to them to
| manage their content however they see fit.
|
| Whatever it is, the sole responsibility in pirating SG1
| content is on the pirates. There are no way around it, at
| no point were they forced to pirate it. They are free
| agents of this world, they decided to obtain something
| from someone and that someone clearly didn't want to sell
| it.
|
| I am pirating a lot of stuff but I am not hiding behind
| entitled justifications which don't make sense.
|
| Edit. Oatmeal's evergreen take on this:
| https://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
|
| I read it, I don't see new arguments in the comic ?
| dmitriid wrote:
| > It's entirely their rights to do so and nothing in the
| commonwealth
|
| Literally no one said it wasn't their right to do so
|
| > Which is their entire freaking right to do so. Just
| like maintainers of open source projects don't owe their
| users anything the SG1 content owners don't owe anything
| to Netflix users.
|
| Literally no one said it wasn't their right to do so
|
| > Whatever it is, it's up to them to manage their content
| however they see fit.
|
| Literally no one said it wasn't up to them
|
| > It doesn't make piracy of SG1 content legal in any way.
|
| Literally no one said that.
|
| Now. When you're ready to argue with what I'm saying, I
| will gladly continue this discussion. However, so far
| you're debating some points literally no one said.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Literally no one said that.
|
| I am not saying people said that. All those sentences you
| dismiss are arguments I make to explain why the idea that
| content owners forced anybody to steal their content is
| wrong (and dishonest).
|
| > Now. When you're ready to argue with what I'm saying, I
| will gladly continue this discussion. However, so far
| you're debating some points literally no one said.
|
| On the contrary, I am debating a point you literally
| made.
|
| Reminder, this is what you wrote and what I disagree
| with:
|
| > And the only fault lies with the people who decided to
| pull SG1 (and other content) from Netflix.
|
| So it is my understanding you are the one not arguing
| with what I am saying.
|
| With that being said:
|
| You don't say much besides "I am entitled to pirate any
| content I want if it's not available legally, content
| owners are forcing me to do it and it's their fault". And
| that is simply not true, they are not forcing you to do
| anything.
|
| edit: I'll play that card too:
|
| > Ah yes. The poor owners who didn't anything at all and
| now are suffering.
|
| Literaly no one said that.
|
| edit 2:
|
| > > Whatever it is, it's up to them to manage their
| content however they see fit.
|
| > Literally no one said it wasn't up to them
|
| Then stop fucking complaining about how they don't give
| you access to their content for god's sake.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >So now the rights owner earns exactly zero dollars for
| SG1 from people who are paying for Netflix.
|
| That's not how it works. Netflix pays the licensing fees
| to the content owners, and then hope to recover that
| money from subscribers. Maybe there's a clause that says
| they get extra money based on number of viewers, but very
| doubtful for some catalog title. The fees have to be paid
| upfront, and it's not a monthly pay as you go where if
| you miss a payment you get the license reposessed.
| kaba0 wrote:
| > All restaurants I know have dishes that are taken off
| (because if's off season, because a new chef, because
| they try something else, etc.).
|
| And it is perfectly okay to not spend money at that
| restaurant in the future when your favorite dish
| disappears.
|
| Except that the analogy breaks down since it is a
| subscription model, where you are not really "constantly
| evaluate" whether this other month is worth it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > But gp has every right to be upset that netflix due to
| any reason didn't live up to expectations.
|
| Those expectations are unrealistic, and quite frankly
| entitled. When did Netflix ever state that any content
| available now will be available for ever? It's the nature
| of the business that content is only made available for a
| set amount of time. What does complaining about it on the
| internet expect to do anyways?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "Those expectations ... entitled."
|
| He is the customer, Netflix is asking for his money
| abnry wrote:
| Right, he's the customer, but he violates the customer-
| supplier social contract by pirating.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| What's wrong with being entitled?
|
| We're entitled to our entertainment. If we don't get it,
| we torrent it.
| abnry wrote:
| You are not entitled to entertainment. If there is
| literally anything as petulant and first-world
| narcissistic it is the belief that one is entitled to
| entertainment.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| But... we are, because we can pirate it if it's not
| available to us.
|
| I suppose "entitled" isn't the correct word. Is there a
| word for "That's just the way it is"?
|
| Basically, there exists a way to acquire entertainment.
| It's up to businesses to provide that entertainment to us
| at a reasonable market value. If the market value exceeds
| the threshold of reasonableness, then we downshift into
| torrenting the entertainment.
|
| It's a business opportunity. The music industry learned
| this in 2008 or so.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >"That's just the way it is"?
|
| How many sins of the past have used that as an excuse?
| It's just a very immature way of looking at life.
|
| >It's up to businesses to provide that entertainment to
| us
|
| And that doesn't sound entitled??? Wow. Not that we are
| lucky for someone providing us entertainment (within the
| confines of how they choose to share it)?
|
| >The music industry learned this in 2008 or so.
|
| Did they though? Really learned it? Seems like they got
| what the wanted where nobody actually owns anything and
| is only able to rent the content from them.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| It's an interesting question. I think I'll meet you
| halfway and debate it.
|
| The central question here seems to be ethics. Is it moral
| to download entertainment when someone doesn't want you
| to?
|
| My view is, nobody is harmed. You could argue that there
| was financial harm to the original show -- in this case,
| Stargate SG-1. But I would say they've failed to give us
| a way to reasonably enjoy the show, when the best
| alternative is to simply torrent it.
|
| Suppose the show was made available for $2,000. Would you
| still argue that it's wrong to torrent it?
|
| If so, we'll have to agree to disagree; my view is that
| if nobody is harmed, then it's usually fine.
|
| If not, then there exists a price threshold beyond which
| it would become unreasonable to expect someone to pay.
| The person you were replying to was saying that they felt
| the show crossed that threshold.
| dylan604 wrote:
| An honest debate. I'm kind of shocked.
|
| I still come back to the fact that there is no
| right/expectation of anyone to be able to view anything.
| The fact that something exists and someone says they
| should be able to watch it is the entitled bit in my
| opinion. There is no "god given right" to entertainment.
| There is no "pursuit of entertainment" set out in the US
| Constitution. If someone graciously allows you to
| watch/view their work, then that's great and we hope you
| were entertained. The expectation one should be able to
| watch/view anything at anytime is a bit petty. If someone
| asks to be paid to view that entertainment but in a very
| controlled/restricted manner (ex: buying a ticket to a
| limited capacity venu), this seems to be accepted.
| However, once it was allowed to be broadcast/streamed
| with certain restrictions (for a limited 3 month period),
| people feel like this is not acceptable.
|
| At the end of the day, it is the content owner's
| discretion to allow/disallow as they see fit. People do
| not like calling it stealling because no physcial copy
| has been removed from the owner's possession, but the
| owner is still be wronged by not being allowed to control
| the thing they created. I do not know what to call that.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Funny, I'm torrenting SG1 literally right now because
| Netflix took the episodes down for no reason._
|
| They _had_ SG-1 on Netflix?! It never was available on
| _mine_ Netflix (which I keep subscribed to only because,
| and for as long as, they have the golden-era Star Trek
| series, i.e. TNG-ENT).
|
| Exclusive regional distribution rights are legacy bullshit
| for digital content. And the sad thing is, people
| responsible for maintaining those are going to make things
| _worse_ , because they now figured streaming is hot, and
| everyone is racing to create their own exclusive streaming
| platform.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Lower decks is on Amazon prime here in Spain. I have the
| service but I still download it because I hate all the
| restrictions. Also prime shows annoying trailers before every
| episode.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "For me, Piracy is not trying to avoid paying for it, it's
| about trying to get it."
|
| Sad thing is it's not even always about location exclusive
| dealings, either. It wasn't terribly long ago that I was
| prevented from _paying_ for access to content available on
| Amazon 's streaming services because my "platform isn't
| supported".
|
| (I use Linux, and whatever DRM they used at the time wasn't
| available on Linux, and before anyone tries to tell me "Just
| use Windows then", the answer is and always will be "NO!"
| Been there, done that, quit Windows for _very valid_ reasons,
| ain 't goin' back ever. Period, full stop, end of story.)
|
| So, yeah... Their "anti-piracy measures" actually _lost_ them
| a sale that _would_ have likely turned into a repeat
| customer, and as a consequence, they 're one of the streaming
| services I actively avoid even looking at.
|
| Instead of focusing on punishing those who will _never_ pay
| them, they should seriously think about _not_ punishing those
| who _would willingly pay_ (as DRM really only hurts the
| honest customer).
| phreack wrote:
| It's Gaben being proved right over and over and over again.
| Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem.
| billytetrud wrote:
| To be fair, I think it's both. They're over pricing pay
| per view content, which drives people to subscription
| services. The problem is that subscription services are
| filled with low quality content. They need to stop being
| tricky and just sell this stuff for what it's actually
| worth. Paying $4 to watch a single movie one time is
| absurd when you pay $10 to watch unlimited content in a
| month. Pricing is very out of proportion too.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Well, you get the crappy channel subsidized with adverts,
| otherwise it would either be too pricey or server just
| utter cheap worthless unwatchable trash (mostly).
|
| Would you like to pay say 1 dollar per movie and watch
| significant amount of ads during it?
| billytetrud wrote:
| > Would you like to pay say 1 dollar per movie and watch
| significant amount of ads during it?
|
| No I wouldn't.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| > When I got my first Kindle 12 years ago my Amazon account was
| registered with my local European address so the books
| available in store were all complete trash romance pulp novels.
| Once I simply changed my home address to some random location
| in New York I suddenly had access to hundreds of thousands more
| titles. The Internet never delivered on its promise.
|
| Sometimes I'll gift a kindle book to someone and then they'll
| message me back saying that Amazon won't let them claim the
| book, giving them an error message about it not being available
| in their country. They can't redeem it for anything else, so
| then I have to go talk to support and ask for a refund of the
| gift.
| grishka wrote:
| In Russia, piracy is still the default option for most people.
| It's literally easier to torrent something than to bother with
| Netflix or other streaming services. Like, you pay money and
| get a worse result, because there's DRM and other licensing-
| related restrictions -- why in your right mind would you even
| consider that? Some people do use Netflix though because they
| tell themselves "law is law" or "the creators need to be paid"
| or something similar.
|
| And all those news of people's "bought" content disappearing,
| or accounts getting banned without a way to appeal, aren't
| exactly doing any good to the "legal" entertainment services
| either.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Not just Russia. With every content owner building their own
| walled gardens piracy will be on the rise again everywhere.
| raspyberr wrote:
| Piracy allows us to live in the year 2100.
| bamboozled wrote:
| In hindsight, it seems like the fight against piracy, was
| really an effort to make it harder to access certain types of
| information and have people funneled to certain sources.
|
| The fact that it used to be easy to access all kinds of useful
| data, and now you can't isn't an accident, The Internet is
| still the same, the governance around it isn't.
|
| People believe they have access to free thought, speech and
| completely objective information. Really though, your world
| view became limited, bias, censored, crafted and curated.
|
| People who truly hold alternative views are often banned from
| the few places left Joe Sixpack would try find important,
| unbiased, real (sometimes controversial) information.
|
| The Internet was real freedom for a brief while, and it was
| fucking great!
| fao_ wrote:
| > People believe they have access to free thought, speech and
| completely objective information. Really though, your world
| view became limited, bias, censored, crafted and curated.
|
| Objective information is still there (google scholar, etc.)
| but what the last two decades have shown is that people do
| not have the training or the time in the day to read it. So
| you get people reading websites like Natural News (which
| while it sources scientific material, the actual article
| about it does not represent anything that's stated in the
| paper, and often states the exact opposite of what the paper
| claims), and getting drawn into it. Next thing you know,
| they're anti-vaxxers who believe that Bill Gates himself is
| putting microchips in their body as some kind of obscure
| cartoon-villain hive-mind scheme (I have literally seen this
| happen to multiple people around me, and it is just utterly
| depressing).
|
| > People who truly hold alternative views are often banned
| from the few places left Joe Sixpack would try find
| important, unbiased, real (sometimes controversial)
| information.
|
| IDK man, Alex Jones is raking in millions and he's said some
| downright ludicrous bullshit. Naziism and racism as a whole
| seems to be 'in-vogue' (Look at Joe Cox's killer and the
| whole UKIP thing). Alternative views seem to suck-ass aside
| from some transhumanism ones -- but even they are all
| "Torturing a guy for 60 years is ok if it stops dust specks
| getting into an impossibly large number of human eyes".
|
| Probably the best thing I ever did was find out I was trans
| -- since then I've met a lot of absolute geniuses. People
| like Micah Elizabeth Scott who have several contributions to
| "Proof of Concept or GTFO" that make people say "woah what
| the fuck!!!", one woman who made an antenna cane (A mobility
| aid that can also pick up WiFi from a distance), people
| taking photography and music to whole new places -- bona fide
| synthesizer witches and code sorcerers who perform stunning
| feats of artistry, and thousands of people biohacking their
| endocrine system based off the latest available scientific
| information, simply to get boobs and cure themselves of
| gender dysphoria.
|
| Now that's a REAL alternative movement / counterculture.
| lutoma wrote:
| And then even if you do pay, and the show you want is available
| on one of the services you're subscribed to, you often get a
| worse experience than with a torrent.
|
| I have a 4k screen, but Netflix's DRM only allows 4K in
| Microsoft Edge, on Linux I'm stuck with 720p which looks awful
| on that screen. Amazon Prime Video has ads (for their other
| shows, but still) and an awful user interface, and so on.
|
| I find it incomprehensible why Netflix still does that since
| clearly it does nothing to prevent piracy: Every new Netflix
| show is instantly available as 4K torrent.
| [deleted]
| beckman466 wrote:
| "Digital piracy and the digital copying of cultural products for
| private use is a refusal to pay rent-tribute to knowledge
| capitalists. Therefore, piracy is miss-naming of the phenomenon.
| The sea pirates take away by force others' properties. The
| digital "pirates" only use universal commons which have been
| artificially fenced off. They just remove fences, and by doing so
| they do not take away knowledge, because, knowledge cannot be
| taken away. They use something which by its nature belongs to the
| whole of humanity. The producer of knowledge uses knowledge, as
| "raw" material, which is part of the general intellect of
| humanity as a whole and the produced knowledge itself becomes
| immediately part of this general intellect. Therefore, the
| fencing of knowledge is, essentially, more similar to the
| traditional piracy. The knowledge capitalist fences off, with
| help of the force of law, universal commons that does not
| exclusively belong to her/him. Therefore, s/he robs commons.
|
| To put it bluntly, digital piracy takes back that which has been
| stolen from the public. Therefore, although illegal, it is
| morally and ethically justified. The very fact that public ethics
| and the bourgeois property rights contradict each other on this
| matter evidences that such rights are superfluous in our era of
| digital technology. In this way, the digital piracy and digital
| counterfeiting is an important economic-social movement of our
| time.
|
| This movement is expressed in various ways including the
| following. First millions of individuals around the world,
| understanding and believing that they are not involved in theft,
| copy things for individual uses. The historical, cultural and
| political significance of this practice can hardly be
| exaggerated. It undermines the moral and ethical legitimacy of
| the bourgeois intellectual property in the very pours and veins
| of everyday life. Digital piracy is a major force of the growth
| of knowledge and culture, on the one hand, and the self-
| improvement of the individual on the other. Second, "pirate"
| activists illegally copy fenced off knowledge and make it
| available for a global public on the net. A good example was
| Gigapedia digital library on the net, which was created by
| activists who scanned books. These activists are either from
| poorer countries or classes, or our era's Robin Hoods from
| privileged countries and classes. Aaron Swartz was one such Robin
| Hood. The very massive and online and offline protests against
| SOPA in the USA and ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement )
| in the European Union, and their temporary success, are evidence
| of the moral legitimacy of digital piracy and digital
| counterfeiting."
|
| - Professor Jakob Rigi
|
| https://triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/487/1146
| derriz wrote:
| I wish people could frame arguments without implied/covert
| vilification of the presumed opponents of your position - in
| this case introducing the argument with a reference to "rent-
| tribute to knowledge capitalists". If you accept the
| implication of this premise (the beneficiaries of copyright law
| are rent-seeking and capitalists) and your world view is
| already aligned with the author (capitalism is evil, rent-
| seeking is evil), then the rest of the pieces is almost
| superfluous.
|
| Arguments based on this technique generally do nothing to
| encourage others to think about their own beliefs and are
| attractive only as a form of confirmation bias. They rely on
| the vilification of "other people" (capitalists in this case)
| for their appeal and to me just contribute heat rather than
| light to any debate.
|
| It's nothing to do with my political orientation - I react
| similarly when a piece opens with some reference to "neo-
| marxists", "trump supporters" or "liberals", etc. - it's sucks
| out any enthusiasm I might have to follow the argument.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > I wish people could frame arguments without implied/covert
| vilification of the presumed opponents of your position
|
| I agree. I wish capitalists didn't call people who make a
| copy of things, pirates.
|
| Professor Rigi is pushing back against capitalist logic that
| tells us "You Wouldn't Steal a Car. Piracy, it's a crime"
| when workers make a copy of something that's an _artificially
| scarce_ good (by the capitalist property system) / non-rival
| good.
|
| Here's another quote you might enjoy:
|
| _"During the 1980s and 1990s I worked in many countries in
| eastern and southern Africa, and then for four years at the
| South Centre--2005-09. I can say from my experience that the
| industrialised countries of the North have been trying
| systematically to block all efforts by the countries of the
| South to industrialise. Their mega-corporations have tried--
| and, alas, succeeded--in privatising knowledge, and using it
| to promote corporate profits over the lives of people. "
|
| [...]
|
| "It is the seeds and pharmaceutical companies of the West
| that have pirated the knowledge of seeds and medicinal
| products from the South. But whereas in the South this
| knowledge was shared as a public asset, the Western
| companies, having learnt from the South, proceeded to claim
| it as their private property. They are guilty--morally guilty
| --for the avoidable deaths of millions of people in the South
| who cannot afford their 'patented' medicines against, for
| example, AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other killer
| diseases. It is a sordid story. But it is not all doom and
| gloom. Those who control the system (the global corporations
| and the international organisations that the West controls)
| do not get their own way entirely. Wars do not always end in
| the victory of the militarily or 'intellectually' powerful."
|
| [...]
|
| "The common heritage of humanity--including medical knowledge
| and the seeds for food--is turned into property under
| capitalism, to be bought and sold as 'IP.' [...] It has been
| a well-recognized fact throughout written history that
| knowledge shared is knowledge multiplied. A physical
| commodity that is consumed becomes extinct. I consume an
| apple and it is no more. But knowledge is metaphysical. It is
| enriched when it is 'consumed' by an ever-expanding circle of
| consumers. [...] The notion that without IP protection,
| innovation would be stifled is an ideological position
| created and propagated by those that benefit from the
| privatization of knowledge. I came to a diametrically
| opposite conclusion over two decades of work with farming
| communities in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and much of
| eastern and southern Africa. Ordinary peasants and workers
| are amazingly innovative and productive, until their
| resources and knowledge are appropriated and corporatized,
| and the people enslaved to earn profits for corporations."_
|
| - Professor Yash Tandon, Trade is War
| derriz wrote:
| > I agree. I wish capitalists didn't call people who make a
| copy of things, pirates.
|
| If you do agree, it's not with anything I wrote.
|
| Do you also wish the same of socialists by the way? Because
| plenty of socialist governments have been responsible for
| strong copyright laws also.
|
| The problem is that I don't identify with your tribe - the
| anti-capitalists - even though I don't identify with
| capitalists either. There are aspects of both capitalism
| and socialism I agree with.
|
| My point was that, if your argument is based on tribal
| allegiance, then it's pretty pointless in terms of
| provoking engagement or advancement of understanding.
|
| I get it; for many people, identity badges are important -
| while for me that only applies in my limited interest in
| sport. For politics or economics, I prefer arguments made
| based on rationality - I guess I'm pre-postmodern that way.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| Even so. Using the term "piracy" instead of "copyright
| infringement" was a pr-move designed to vilify and moralize.
|
| No matter where you stand on wether copyright is moral or
| not. It should be valid to argue against the term "piracy" as
| such using equally moralizing and vilifying terms. If nothing
| else than as a form of satire.
| TchoBeer wrote:
| What about when someone pirates the game of an Indie developer?
| Is that also a refusal to pay rent tribute to knowledge
| capitalists?
| beckman466 wrote:
| Unfortunately yes - although in many cases of course they are
| much more fragile than the bigger studios. Indie game
| developers are a part of the labor aristocracy - they still
| create artificial scarcity where none need be.
|
| Overall I see our world as a black box hellworld. I don't
| think most hardware and software are high quality at all.
| Proprietary tech is a straightjacket. I believe we can
| definitely escape it though. Some even say overcoming
| proprietary tech is essential if we want to make it out of
| global warming:
|
| _" The current political economy is based on a false idea of
| "immaterial scarcity."
|
| It believes that an exaggerated set of intellectual property
| monopolies - for copyrights, trademarks and patents - should
| restrain the sharing of scientific, social and economic
| innovations. Hence the system discourages human cooperation,
| excludes many people from benefiting from innovation and
| slows the collective learning of humanity.
|
| In an age of grave global challenges, the political economy
| keeps many practical alternatives sequestered behind private
| firewalls or unfunded if they cannot generate adequate
| profits."_
|
| In other words, the problem lies with our outdated capitalist
| property and money systems, and the way proprietary tech
| slows and even stops the development of science and
| technology. Today we do not evenly distribute those things
| that belongs to all of us.
|
| I am excited by both Valueflo.ws and Holochain as proposals
| for the new economy and system: they are the backbones of an
| agent-centric, mutually sovereign, non-black box architecture
| for the distributed web.
|
| Using it we can 1) de-commoditize knowledge and
| science/technology (since thanks to digital tech knowledge is
| now already a non-rivalrous good as it has a zero marginal
| cost of reproduction) and 2) kickstart the use of transparent
| p2p supply chain protocols as prototyped by Mikorizal and
| Sensorica (they call them Open Value Networks), which can end
| the rentierism of money
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCegQVljdY) and give us
| novel new democratically governable tools and systems to
| measure, follow and steward material and immaterial value
| flows.
| fleaaaaa wrote:
| I don't know much about other medium but I know some folks who's
| sharing shit tons of library on soulseek are spending much more
| money on local music scene than average. Kinda make sense..
| aneutron wrote:
| I was born and raised in an African country. My father had a
| salary of 500$ a month. I could never afford a 50$ book about
| resiliency engineering or about Java Concurrency when I was 17
| years old, neither could my father.
|
| The reason I love computer science and tech and excel at some
| parts of it, is simply because I could access any book, pirated.
| I have a huge will to learn, and piracy was quite literally the
| only means to learn. Once I worked and got on my feet, I started
| buying a lot of the books that marked my learning (because
| nostalgia and also great resources), and if and when I can, I
| always buys the books.
|
| Let's not talk about movies. My town STILL has no cinema. Nearest
| one is 100Km away, and costs about 15$ for a ticket. So if it
| wasn't for piracy, I would've probably never watched Iron Man,
| and never dreamed of having my own Jarvis, and hence never taking
| up speech recognition and deep learning. Again, now that I can, I
| had periods where I watched 3 to 5 movies a week in the cinema,
| because I have the means to.
|
| I believe people are more likely to buy books/movies when they
| can. But for those who can't, I believe it's almost always a net
| positive to society to give them access to those resources.
| emerged wrote:
| I think the state of software and media piracy have been in
| somewhat of a sweet spot. It's technically illegal and not just
| every random person can easily find what they want. But those
| who are motivated enough to find the content and skirt the laws
| are able to do it.
|
| This way the industry is still able to monetize and those
| without the resources can still get access with some effort.
|
| I pirated like crazy growing up poor but internet savvy, but
| now that I'm a well paid professional it isn't necessary and
| isn't even worth the effort when I can just rent/buy.
| 838812052807016 wrote:
| Seems like a code smell, when breaking the rules is the most
| beneficial to society.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > It's technically illegal and not just every random person
| can easily find what they want. But those who are motivated
| enough to find the content and skirt the laws are able to do
| it.
|
| <<I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them
| tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I
| break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally
| responsible for everything I do.>> Robert A. Heinlein
| IgorPartola wrote:
| This has been my argument for a while now: people pirate content
| because they wouldn't be customers if they had to pay for it. In
| other words while RIAA/MPAA can argue that by torrenting the
| latest blockbuster you cost them $20 in rental fees or a movie
| ticket in reality you wouldn't have bought those things, to a
| first approximation.
| globular-toast wrote:
| > with ten downloads leading to about four fewer cinema visits.
|
| These things aren't equal, though. As someone who loves the
| cinema I find it very sad, but maybe people just want to watch
| these things at home on their small screens now? The cinema
| industry hasn't helped matters by essentially turning cinemas
| into giant, automated TV screens.
|
| If piracy actually _hurt_ movie sales, they simply wouldn 't do
| home media. They'd print film on reels making it very difficult
| to pirate (in high quality, at least). But they don't because
| home media makes them tons of money, despite the piracy.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I just can't believe this.
|
| Almost every single person I knew back in the day who installed
| Limewire/Kazaa/Bearshare, bought an R4 cartridge or modded their
| Wii went from buying at least a couple of pieces of genuine media
| each year to never buying one again.
|
| That being said, perhaps a more useful metric for calculating
| lost sales would be how many people acquired the technology used
| for piracy, rather than how many times they used it.
| sschueller wrote:
| How many people stopped pirating when Apple made it extremely
| easy to buy music for $1? Remember when you were forced the buy
| the whole album for just one song?
|
| The biggest issue is and always will be accessibility and ease
| of access and these two are hindered by outdated global
| licensing agreements.
|
| If you sell be a DVD with DRM that takes longer to start
| playing than a copy I downloaded. I will download it. If you
| force me to watch unskipable 10 year old ads before I can play
| my purchased DVD I will pirate that movie.
| alerighi wrote:
| Nowadays at least in my country is difficult to find music
| legally to download and burn on a CD. My car stereo only has
| CD, and I don't want to change a very good stereo (it sounds
| far better than the built in stereo of most new cars) just to
| put one with bluetooth so I can play Spotify, and I don't
| want even to use the AUX input, since the quality is not that
| great (it picks up a lot of noise) and most importantly I
| have to use the phone to change track (and that introduces a
| distraction, I prefer not to use my phone when I'm driving).
|
| Nowadays it's impossible to find mp3. I have a Spotify
| premium account, so I can download music, but not in a format
| that lets me burn it on a CD. So basically I pay 10 euro a
| month and I don't even have the freedom to listen to the
| music on whatever device I prefer.
|
| I miss the old days where you could find everything to
| pirate. These days thanks god there is Telegram that lets me
| download some mp3 in decent quality, otherwise I have to
| download YouTube videos and the audio quality is awful (but
| probably most people will not notice since they have crappy
| stereos in the first place).
| detaro wrote:
| What country is that? While the focus for sure has shifted
| to streaming, here in Germany e.g. Amazon will sell you
| files if you want.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > How many people stopped pirating when Apple made it
| extremely easy to buy music for $1?
|
| Apple does not allow you to "buy" music, only to rent it.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Why am I being downvoted for stating an undisputed fact? Do
| you feel good about yourself for promoting misinformation
| and downvoting factual corrections?
| emteycz wrote:
| It's easy to use web search and see that iTunes let you
| _buy_ music. The point of the statement you 're reacting
| to stands even if buying music from iTunes isn't possible
| anymore.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| sschueller wrote:
| "Back in the day" you did purchase music from Apple. This
| changed to a subscription now from what I understand
| similar to Spotify and Google.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Please provide source for your claim.
| detaro wrote:
| There is a wikipedia page for the iTunes Store which
| details the history of various ways the licensed/sold
| things over the years.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| Yes, I have looked at the Wikipedia page for the iTunes
| Store. It does not claim that, at any point in time,
| iTunes terms would have allowed you to buy a copy of a
| song. They only sold you the right to listen to a song
| for undetermined amount of time. If you have a source
| that claims the contrary, please link.
| detaro wrote:
| So they sold you a pure audio file with no DRM, but that
| somehow was only intended to be a totally unenforced
| "right to listen to a song" they had no mechanism to
| terminate?
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| I checked and it turns out that I was wrong. You are
| correct that iTunes did at one point in time offer the
| ability to download copies of songs without DRM and
| without (significant) contractual limitations regarding
| the usage of those copies.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20090106080722/http://www.app
| le....
|
| > (xii) iTunes Plus Products do not contain security
| technology that limits your usage of such Products, and
| Usage Rules (iii) - (vi) do not apply to iTunes Plus
| Products. You may copy, store and burn iTunes Plus
| Products as reasonably necessary for personal,
| noncommercial use.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| The same limits apply to a CD or DVD purchased. You own
| the song.
| [deleted]
| Krisando wrote:
| > How many people stopped pirating when Apple made it
| extremely easy to buy music for $1?
|
| I can't think of any that stopped honestly or even owned an
| Apple product. Apple products are expensive.
| freeflight wrote:
| That's not really relevant to the question asked there: You
| don't need to own an Apple product to buy music trough
| iTunes.
|
| If you wanted just that one song then iTunes was very much
| the most affordable, and accessible, way to legally buy
| digital music back then because it only charged you $1 for
| a song.
|
| The only other alternatives where, often legally rather
| obscure, flatrate subscription models or buying the
| physical full album, which would usually have cost you at
| least $20+
|
| Valve did something very similar with Steam: Very easy to
| use and it actually passed on the savings from digital
| distribution to the consumers by heavily discounting the
| prices of games.
| CRConrad wrote:
| I tried iTunes on Windows once. Horrendously clunky UI,
| not at all what one would have expected from the vaunted
| "intuitive" Apple.
| shaan7 wrote:
| Yep exactly! I personally don't find Apple products
| useful but man I love iTunes just because I can buy DRM-
| free music.
|
| I wish buying movies was this easy.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I used to buy a few CDs a year, $20 for one good song?? Then
| Napster came along, and I found all sorts of good stuff, and I
| started buying a few CDs/week because I knew they had good
| songs on them, and were better quality audio that the stuff on
| Napster. I bought a few hundred CDs at full Best Buy Retail
| prices!, then the record companies started suing their
| customers, and I've never bought a new CD since.
|
| I've given up on music in general. I'll listen to the radio in
| the car, but that's it. If I really want to here a song, its on
| Youtube somewhere.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| I bought a DS flashcard to play Pokemon Black with a
| translation patch early and then bought it day 1, don't
| remember using it for much more. I modded my Wii but still
| bought games like Skyward sword.
|
| How old were the people back in the day? In high school I
| pirated a lot more because I literally had no money.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| When I was a teenager I pirated every single song and PC video
| game. And yet, I haven't pirated one ever since I got my own
| bank account, Steam, and Spotify.
|
| It's really a convenience and accessibility issue.
| gscott wrote:
| At some point you get old enough to not want to bother with
| piracy because of the hassle if you have a decent first world
| income.
| [deleted]
| besse wrote:
| This is my experience. As a teenager I pirated about half the
| media I consumed. Now that I have a modest income I legally
| consume almost all my media (books, music and games), except
| for uni text books and scientific articles that aren't
| available through any of my libraries.
|
| I tried following my linear algebra course using freely
| available materials and/or 2nd hand text books, but constant
| "new" editions and access to online study portals made 2nd
| hand books impractical.
| murgindrag wrote:
| That's my experience too.
|
| As a student, I didn't really buy the "piracy increases
| sales" studies, since I went from buying one thing a year to
| zero. Clearly, sales were lost.
|
| As an adult, I can casually swipe my credit card and buy
| similar things on a whim. How much less I bought as a student
| is a rounding error.
|
| Most people or organizations are either rich enough to not
| bother with piracy, or poor enough not to buy especially much
| in the first place.
|
| I'll mention this is doubly true with industrial software.
| Ain't no way an individual will drop $5k on a CAD program. On
| the other hand, ain't no way a serious business will pirate a
| $5k CAD program. Having people know how to use your tools,
| though, drives sales.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| > At some point you get old enough to not want to bother with
| piracy because of the hassle if you have a decent first world
| income.
|
| Partially disagree. For things like music and tv series,
| there's more hassle when acquiring the product via "official"
| channels. For example, when I want to download a music video,
| I can just go on youtube and I can download the video with
| one click (using "unofficial" software). If I wanted to use
| "official" channels to purchase a copy of the music video, I
| would have to spend a lot of time just finding out which
| service sells it, then figure out if they actually sell this
| piece of music or merely rent it out, then figure out a
| method to register and pay, etc. In the end I have no idea if
| I will even acquire a mp4 file or some kind of DRM time bomb.
|
| I can't fathom why anybody would feel like buying music is
| less of a hassle than downloading music without buying it.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| As an adult, I tend to pirate or buy knockoff goods precisely
| when it becomes more of a hassle than buying the real thing.
|
| For example, having to go through every streaming app to work
| out which one has the show you want, or buying a piece of
| hardware sold by an American that hasn't even thought about
| logistics to any country that isn't the USA.
| 12ian34 wrote:
| Side note: in case you didn't know, Google TV kind of
| solves the problem of having to go through every streaming
| app to find which one has the desired programme with a
| universal search. I just got it and find it useful.
| happymellon wrote:
| But then multiple services, like NowTV for example, don't
| support Google TV but do support Amazom Fire for some
| reason.
|
| Piracy for convenience happens again.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| That's handy. Hopefully it stays universal - if they
| started charging a fee to streaming services to be
| included in the search we'd be back to square one.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, it's just Google Search underneath
| but with telly included. I doubt they'll charge for
| inclusion but do expect ads.
| kebman wrote:
| There's several factors at play here. Some people view piracy
| as the opportunity to "try something out" before buying. This
| means they only buy the thing they actually liked. On the other
| hand, services such as Steam--which has made getting games both
| cheaper and easier--is probably capturing a lot of those guys
| who would previously do piracy, simply because it's a lot less
| hassle to just buy it on there. And also the price isn't
| horrible either, unless the game is brand new (though the
| matter of ownership is still an issue, though not very relevant
| to this discussion). Also, I know more than one person who
| resorted to piracy, simply because the thing wasn't available
| in their country yet, or because the site that sells the
| authorized thing either has a prohibitively expensive price, or
| because the service is just prohibitively bad, thus making it
| comparably more easy to simply pirate the thing.
| kqr wrote:
| Convenient "return" policies also make buying easier. I have
| frequently bought things both on Steam and for my Kindle only
| to try them out. Fifteen minutes later I know whether to keep
| or "return" them.
|
| I would never have made many of my purchases without that
| option.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >Some people view piracy as the opportunity to "try something
| out" before buying.
|
| I have met precisely one person in real life who does this,
| and he was far enough on the Autism spectrum to receive a
| government-funded integration aide for the first 6 years of
| school.
|
| Every other person I know pirates because it's easier than
| acquiring the real product, they can get a pirated version
| before the official version is released, or they just simply
| want to save money.
|
| I personally pirate because I can't be bothered looking
| through 6 different streaming apps to see which one has
| Terminator 2 on it. Apparently I'm not alone in this regard;
| piracy has started to rise again since everybody pulled their
| content from Netflix.
|
| Yes, it's just anecdata, but I would be shocked if more than
| 5% of pirates intended to purchase genuine copies of the
| media they actually liked.
| stavros wrote:
| I do this and I haven't received any aid.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >I haven't received any aid
|
| Maybe because Greece is broke? :P
|
| But seriously, I wasn't trying to imply that everybody
| who uses piracy to demo things need help - it's just
| extremely uncommon/unusual to buy a piece of genuine
| media when you already having a working pirate copy.
| stavros wrote:
| > Maybe because Greece is broke? :P
|
| I cannot help but laugh at this original and non-facile
| joke I have definitely not heard a million times before.
|
| > it's just extremely uncommon/unusual to buy a piece of
| genuine media when you already having a working pirate
| copy.
|
| Probably, but in my case I don't play games often, so if
| I buy something I'll end up ignoring it after a few
| minutes 99% of the time. Pirating and buying after I
| finish is a good way to tell for sure if I'll like it
| before I buy.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >I cannot help but laugh at this original and non-facile
| joke I have definitely not heard a million times before.
|
| Well, shit. There's another comment to recall at random
| intervals for the next 10 years and blush with
| embarrassment even though nobody else is around.
| stavros wrote:
| Hahah, I can't say that wasn't my intention :P
| padthai wrote:
| > I would be shocked if more than 5% of pirates intended to
| purchase genuine copies of the media they actually liked
|
| I agree, but I think this actually depends on the media. I
| do buy my technical books ($50-$150/a piece), but I want to
| take a look at them first before purchasing.
| [deleted]
| handoflixue wrote:
| > I can't be bothered looking through 6 different streaming
| apps to see which one has Terminator 2 on it.
|
| justwatch.com will solve that for you, and covers quite a
| few countries. Between Netflix, Hulu, and "Rent for $4 on
| Amazon" I can almost always find an option unless it's a
| Disney+ / Showtime / whatever exclusive.
|
| $25-40/mo (depending on how often I have to invoke the
| "rent" option) seems pretty reasonable compared to cable.
| kuschku wrote:
| I'm in Germany. I've got Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime
| Video.
|
| And yet, a significant proportion of shows isn't
| available for me on either of these, and requires
| maxdome, sky, whatever other bullshit which I'll never
| subscribe to. I'm spending enough money each month on
| streaming that, if something isn't on there, I'll just
| pirate it.
| happymellon wrote:
| I'm in the UK and i have a similar issue with services,
| like NowTV, not being available via Android TV for some
| reason.
|
| At one point i dumped Amazon Fire because all the
| services didnt support it and only seemed to support
| Google. Now its switched, I'm not buying all new hardware
| again.
| shaan7 wrote:
| > I'm in Germany. I've got Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime
| Video.
|
| Damn. Let me know if you ever host movie nights, I'll
| come over :3
| CRConrad wrote:
| Weird smiley. What's it supposed to depict, "eyes
| directly above scrotum"? Or "...above buttocks"?
| happymellon wrote:
| They generally don't help as I'll get a referral to a
| service which then isn't actually available in my
| country, like Hulu.
| freeflight wrote:
| Prepare to be shocked [0]
|
| [0] https://torrentfreak.com/0-more-on-content-than-honest-
| consu...
| irtigor wrote:
| So it is 9% and not 5%. "Justifying Infringers" as they
| were called in your link.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| That 9% of people also included a group that believed
| they were justified but didn't actually buy a genuine
| product.
| syshum wrote:
| True story, I just recently bought a DVD box set for a old
| TV Show from my teen years, that was not found on any
| streaming service, or on any unoffical download source....
|
| I had forgotten what a pain in the ass it is to transfer a
| DVD to something usable in modern times like Plex or Emby,
| it is something like a 8 dvd box set I think I have gotten
| like 2 of the DVD ripped at this point
| elondaits wrote:
| I pay for Letterboxd to filter my "watchlist" based on the
| streaming services I have (it uses the JustWatch API and
| supports several countries and obscure streaming services).
|
| I personally prefer paying because I can decide what to
| watch on a whim, on 4k, without keeping a stash with
| several TB of movies I might never end up watching (like I
| did before Netflix) which I then have to copy or stream
| from another computer to my Apple TV to watch. Not even
| talking about the PITA of having to keep up with working
| tracker sites, mirrors, etc.
|
| I understand pirating because of the price, or
| availability, but in terms of comfort streaming has won me
| over some years ago.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Just adding my own anecdote here, so that you can add one
| more "person I know" (even though you don't know me, you
| might, after this post, know _of_ me as a person) to the
| list of those who have pirated specifically as a "try
| before you buy" method.
|
| I have been burned too many times by games that simply do
| not run on my hardware despite meeting the minimum specs
| for the game. Modern platforms like Steam may allow for
| refunds, but this is a relatively new thing. Shareware and
| demos are a fantastic thing for someone like me, but these
| mostly seem to have gone away in favor of Let's Play and
| other videos of gameplay, which does nothing to help me
| determine if I can actually play the game.
| croes wrote:
| And then came Spotify and they recognized people are willing to
| pay.
| Flimm wrote:
| Spotify's innovation and differentiator is that it offers
| music legally for free. Yes, they have a paid plan, but it's
| the free plan that is the bigger competition to piracy.
| furgooswft13 wrote:
| Spotify barely pays musicians anything. It's basically
| legalized piracy for music.
|
| This was even laid out explicitly in a recent leak from a
| former Spotify boss: https://www.businessinsider.com/taylor-
| swift-doesnt-need-str...
|
| > The problem was this: piracy and music distribution. The
| problem was to get artists' music out there. The problem was
| not to pay people money.
| [deleted]
| hulitu wrote:
| There are people who are willing to pay for spotify. The
| problem with Spotify and other streaming services is that
| they don't offer quality ( they offer opus). Want to hear a
| song ? If you're lucky you get mp3 (or opus) quality. Want to
| stream a movie ? Depends on your ISP, weather and other
| factors. All streaming services offer "up to". Nothing is
| guaranteed. I also have " gigabit " internet. If I'm lucky i
| get a couple (2-3) of hundred MB/s. Usually is 7-800 kB/s.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| Opus with good settings is fine. I seriously doubt you
| could tell the difference between lossless and Opus with a
| blind ABX test. Do it (you can do it at home!) and get back
| to me.
|
| What's often far more noticeable is all the ways that the
| music is altered during production. How it's recorded,
| mixed and mastered. You'd be surprised what kinds of
| sources still get used as part of the mix today. Someone
| using an unshielded quarter inch cable to record a guitar
| amp is far more likely to contribute noise than Opus. Or a
| producer using Abbey Road Vinyl or iZotope. Or whoever uses
| some "free sample pack" that originated from an MP3 re-
| encoding of a poor rip of Best Service Gigapack. It's all
| out there.
| CiceroCiceronis wrote:
| In addition to the commenters noting that Amazon/Apple
| Music offer lossless, Spotify is also planning to bring out
| Spotify HiFi soonish. Audio quality is finally catching
| up...
| oriolid wrote:
| The problem might be that you have a 7-8 mbit connection
| and the content providers use bandwidth scaling. I have an
| actual gigabit connection and Spotify is indistinguishable
| from uncompressed audio. Of course there's Tidal and
| probably some others that have lossless compression if you
| think you can hear the difference. Some sources claim that
| everyone else than Spotify pays the artists better, which
| might be also a reason use other services (unless you
| believe that the artists' work should be free).
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| > unless you believe that the artists' work should be
| free
|
| Interesting, "work" is kind of ambiguous in that
| sentence. Either it means the labor or it means the
| artistic creation.
|
| Anyways I want to think that there are a multitude of
| ways to allow global unfettered reach of the latter while
| ensuring the former has adequate funding.
|
| I mean everyone is free to buy practically any pizza, in
| practically any form, from practically anyone, and still
| people get paid to come up with novel recipes.
|
| For digital media I think YouTube and GitHub are the type
| of space to focus on. Compared to Spotify they are almost
| the kind of free services one could imagine a copyright
| free Netflix and Spotify could look like.
|
| You don't find many multi million dollar productions on
| the ad-financed YouTube. (You do on the completely free
| GitHub though). It would be interesting to find out if
| there are other models for YouTube-like media to get
| access to that kind of funds, pretty sure ads aren't it,
| and copyright seems to lead to the Netflix problem.
|
| Patreon and selling merch does it share to finance the
| channels I watch. But also seems limited in what can be
| expected.
|
| LWN has this interesting freemium model of keeping the
| latest edition for subscribers only (unless they share a
| link), it's kind of what Kickstarter things do too no?
| Some extra perks for those is provide t he funding.
|
| Personally I would be happy to pay for "premium" YouTube
| subscriptions for channels doing a LWN like thing. Would
| probably prefer to do that through a meta-subscription
| service (like patreon?) built into the consumption
| experience to lower the barrier.
|
| For music I see no reason these models shouldn't be
| adequate. Film could be a bit mor problematic, seems like
| those are being replaced with series anyways though, so
| perhaps a good pilot is enough to secure funding for
| subsequent episodes.
| oriolid wrote:
| > Interesting, "work" is kind of ambiguous in that
| sentence. Either it means the labor or it means the
| artistic creation.
|
| It is both. Just recording music involves lots of non-
| creative setup and editing work, and filming typically
| involves a lot of logistics, set building and other non-
| creative labor. Equipment isn't free either even if it's
| not as exclusive as it used to be.
|
| Soundcloud and Bandcamp kind of work for music, but
| somehow it seems that most of the artists who can get a
| traditional recording or distribution deal prefer going
| that way. I've understood that before copyright a rich
| patron was common way of funding art. I'm just not sure
| if I'd enjoy watching tech billionaires' pet projects.
| [deleted]
| salamandersauce wrote:
| That's changing. Apple Music offers Lossless and 24 bit as
| part of the normal subscription price now which caused
| Amazon Music to do the same. I personally find the quality
| of the AACs/MP3s fine. It's not like they are serving up
| 128kps files or something.
|
| Yeah, streaming Netflix doesn't look as good as a Bluray
| but it looks better than a DVD or cable TV which most
| people are still happy with.
| hulitu wrote:
| I do not know about apple lossless but amazon has "up
| to". "Up to" is not lossles. It only _could_ be. There is
| no indication what codec they use. So paying more for
| something "up to" makes no sense.
| salamandersauce wrote:
| It's not more. It's the same price as a normal sub. It's
| "up to" because not every song is available lossless.
| They indicate which are.
| EugeneOZ wrote:
| And my experience is 100% contrary. All my schoolmates were
| playing pirated games (there were no others in Russia, even if
| it's difficult for you to imagine that). But as soon as Steam
| appeared, we've switched to Steam and started buying games
| legally. I own 292 purchased games in Steam (I've just launched
| Steam to check this number), around 15 in Origin, 5 in GOG and
| around 10 bought in Epic.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Of course, they don't want to get in trouble with powerful
| American lobbyist groups. Same reason local authorities went
| after the Pirate Bay guys despite them not having broken any laws
| in Sweden.
| hulitu wrote:
| But they did brake laws. And even when they could not find
| anything they could have found somebody who was "raped". /s
| ipaddr wrote:
| Sweden has such a bad reputation as a place where the is
| corrupt. I wonder if the public feels that?
| CRConrad wrote:
| High praise for Sweden:
|
| > a place where the <<nothing>> is corrupt.
| varsketiz wrote:
| Piracy is showing that the business model for products being
| pirated is supposed to be freemium.
| sleavey wrote:
| The study mentioned in the article notes the only downside to
| piracy is for recently released blockbusters, where 10 pirated
| downloads leads to 4 fewer cinema visits. I wonder how much of
| that would be offset if streaming of blockbusters was available
| from day 1. No one would expect it to be included in Netflix
| subscriptions but available as an additional one-off purchase
| equivalent to say one month of subscription. The only losers here
| would be cinemas, but after decades of price gauging I think
| plenty would have little sympathy.
|
| It'd be interesting to find out of film companies have studied
| this idea. Presumably there is some limit where blockbuster
| "viewing parties" with N or more people would make less money for
| the film than some fraction of those N people going to the
| cinema. They can't (yet) DRM living rooms.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| When I was growing up I remember paying like $5 to see a movie.
| Used to see movies often. But as I grew up I became too busy
| with school to go. After I moved to Australia is went to see
| Avatar. The tickets in Sydney on the imax screen were $48
| each...
|
| Now I just rent them from iTunes when they are avaliable.
| croes wrote:
| Price gauging thanks to the movie companies that want an ever
| larger share.
| sleavey wrote:
| So cinemas are the Ticketmaster of movies?
| bbarn wrote:
| Cinemas and Movie theatres are going the way of drive-in
| theatres. The only ones that will survive are those offering
| some feeling of nostalgia, and small independent ones with
| incredibly low overhead.
|
| Outside of dating, why spend that much money if you can stream
| the entertainment you want on release?
| ketzu wrote:
| > No one would expect it to be included in Netflix
| subscriptions
|
| Wasn't a large reaction to disney doing this during the
| pandemic "I already paid for the service why should I pay
| again"?
| lampe3 wrote:
| I was born in Poland in the end of the 80s and lived from the 90s
| in Germany. Back then the only way to watch Polish Media in
| Germany was either via Satellite TV or VHS.
|
| Around the 00s I was into Polish Rap. Buying a CD in Germany from
| a polish Artist was something that you just couldn't do. So the
| only option I had was to download it.
|
| Later when I wanted to buy the CD I couldn't because either the
| store did not had it or it was sold out.
|
| If I wanted to watch polish tv shows or cartoons I either needed
| to later download them or my family needed to record them on VHS.
|
| In this regard the Internet helped when it comes to Music.
|
| But when it comes to tv shows and movies... Its a mess and you
| will end up with 10 subscriptions and hope that you find that
| show.
|
| I also think that with movies and tv shows, piracy and will come
| back because of that reason alone.
| deltron3030 wrote:
| Kinda funny how the overall interest in Photoshop tanked since
| they introduced their cloud service. (If you look it up on Google
| Trends you can clearly see a big dip from 2012 onwards).
| neycoda wrote:
| Well, stealing is bad, you know?
| hulitu wrote:
| From eastern europe: piracy cannot hurt sells when: 1. The title
| is not available in your country and 2. When the title is too
| expensive for the people to buy it. Piracy however helps sells.
| When i like some movie or music that i pirated, chances are big
| that i will buy it. When i don't know about it, the MPAA can keep
| it. Marketing failure all the way.
| agilob wrote:
| 3. Quality of service in your country is so bad that you
| wouldn't watch it legally for free.
|
| If I remember correctly, in some EU countries GoT was available
| only with reader - no native English and subtitles, all
| episodes destroyed by a reader. In another country GoT was
| available in max resolution 480p, in another... you had to be
| subscribed to one particular ISP AND have HBO subscription. GoT
| was the most pirated content on torrents for quite some time.
| josefx wrote:
| From western Europe: I pay for Netflix and Amazon. Getting
| titles on them seems easy until you run into localization,
| while Netflix seems to support dozens of languages with its own
| titles I still run into too many videos that only offer a
| subtitle instead of having the English language dub to fall
| back to.
|
| Can we please throw all copyright lawyers into an active
| volcano and try to set up a system that doesn't make it
| intentionally impossible to legally watch the English language
| version of a video hosted by Amazon while in a non English
| speaking country? Also throw the Amazon execs who signed those
| licensing agreements after them.
| wiradikusuma wrote:
| I played pirated games when I was a kid (actually I didn't know
| it was pirated, I bought them off CD shops).
|
| Growing up with more money to spend, I bought legit copies of
| those games (and more) from GOG just feeling nostalgic. Heck I
| don't even play them.
|
| Now I don't play pirated games, simply because the potential
| problems (virus etc) outweighs the cost (I usually wait for
| Steam/GOG/Epic sale anyway).
|
| Same thing for software.
|
| For books.. during uni time I usually borrow books from uni
| library, and make a copy for personal use (so I can highlight the
| pages). I guess that's piracy.
| 55555 wrote:
| I didn't read the article, and I agree with the premise, but
| don't get carried away. Ofcourse piracy _can_ detract from
| purchases. Pornography was a massive pay-for-content industry
| that was pretty much entirely decimated by the rise of tube
| sites.
| einpoklum wrote:
| EU rep: We couldn't help it, the study was stolen by pirates!
| [deleted]
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Why? Were they worried that releasing the study would increase
| piracy and hurt sales?
| rob74 wrote:
| What the article doesn't mention: Julia Reda, who "unearthed" the
| report, was an MEP for the Pirate Party at the time. She left the
| party in 2019 to protest against the nomination of a candidate
| who was under investigation for sexual harassment
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Reda).
| chalst wrote:
| She gave a good interview explaining why she left:
|
| https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/news/german-parliam...
| freeflight wrote:
| _> She left the party in 2019 to protest against the nomination
| of a candidate who was under investigation for sexual
| harassment_
|
| She tried to fire him before the investigation was even done,
| investigations based on two complaints, one of which was
| already rejected at that point.
|
| As much as I like hear work, I really do not understand what
| happened there and why she would do what she did there, like
| she did it.
|
| Her expertise and what the PP stands for are as relevant as
| ever, and its getting more relevant each day. Why would she
| just throw all that away for herself, but alongside that try to
| sabotage a whole political movement?
| antris wrote:
| Saying that a member of a party leaving is "throwing it all
| away" is ridiculous. She tried to address the problems
| internally, didn't get her way, so she left. Why would one
| have to continue being a member of a party that one disagrees
| with? Whether you agree with her reasons or not, people are
| and should be free to leave and join a political party as
| they want. Trying to cast people who leave as some sort of
| traitor to the cause is cult-like thinking.
| ipaddr wrote:
| She wanted some metoo spotlight.
|
| You will find the people who you think believe in your cause
| actually believe in their own cause which might be fame,
| power, money. They will quickly leave a cause that is fading
| in popularity to jump on the next bandwagon.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Why the scare quotes? She _did_ unearth it, through an FOI
| request. It _was_ buried. Tiny parts _were_ cherry-picked by
| commissioners, to support a conclusion diametrically opposed to
| the researchers ' conclusions.
| [deleted]
| sp332 wrote:
| Not all quotes are scare quotes.
| CRConrad wrote:
| But these sure seemed to be.
| sp332 wrote:
| It's not literal unearthing. So the quotes are to set of
| the figure of speech. Style guides say not to do it but
| it's a matter of style, not correctness. I guess that's
| as strong as you're going to get in colloquial English
| though :)
| nerbert wrote:
| That doesn't have anything to do with the subject: a
| uncomfortable report was buried.
| tasubotadas wrote:
| Can't help but think that this is Germany's influence - there are
| extremely strong IP groups that try to push ridiculous IP
| protection laws EU-wide and, obviously, this paper didn't help to
| push their discourse so it had to be buried.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Page didn't load for me, thankfully we have outline to the
| rescue:
|
| https://outline.com/6XShGU
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| I've read the whole study.
|
| TLDR: Correlation, not causation.
|
| Basically, they found that Customer A spent $100 on games, and
| consumed 50 units worth of Piracy.
|
| But Customer B spent only $30 on games, and consumed 10 units of
| piracy.
|
| They then concluded that piracy lead to more consumption.
|
| The obvious rebuttals are:
|
| 1. More voracious consumers of games will probably buy more and
| pirate more anyway
|
| 2. It sucks if you are one of the pirated games (eg.
| singleplayer, non-DRM), who loses out from this equation
|
| 3. Its great if you're eg. Fortnite or Steam, where pirated games
| serve as the enticement to join the ecosystem, and when customers
| do eventually spend, it comes to you given your huge size.
| anfogoat wrote:
| I wouldn't worry about this too much. The Commissioners they
| swear an oath you know. An oath to be wholly independent, so we
| can rule out this having been them serving special interests or
| anything of the sort.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| They are also unelected, because they are so virtuous there is
| no need for people to change them.
| zaik wrote:
| This is only half-true: "[...] candidates are chosen
| individually by the 27 national governments. Within the EU,
| the legitimacy of the commission is mainly drawn from the
| vote of approval that is required from the European
| Parliament, along with its power to dismiss the body."
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission
| intricatedetail wrote:
| This argument is boring. Like that pushy salesmen trying to
| tell you the product has the feature you want, but it
| doesn't. There are no European Commission elections.
| advanced-DnD wrote:
| EU Commission does has some democratic element in it. As
| though they are not elected by the Europeans directly,
| they are proxy voted by their respective government.
|
| This is not new. For example, there are also no ministry
| election or, yet the government of the day still put
| people onto that position. This is just one example, if
| you're coming from the US, you can even think of the even
| more examples of non-directly elected official making
| important policies.
|
| But judging by your two comments here, you have given
| this matter very little thought.
| sbuk wrote:
| What _is_ boring is having to explain this, time and
| again to people that clearly do not understand how their
| own system of goverment works.
|
| The European parliament works just like any other.
| Commissioner is synonymous with Minister. They are
| proposed by their member state and each state get to
| nominate a single commissioner. They are elected by the
| European Parliament, _the body that is elected by the
| general populace_. This is arguably more democratic than
| being apointed by the Prime Minsiter, where appointments
| are made because they are the PM 's political buddy, in
| the way they are in the UK.
|
| Paliament members vote on issues and elect the President,
| Vice Presidents and Commissions _on behalf of the people
| that elected them_. This is literally how parliamentary
| systems work.
|
| The people that work in the Commission are civil
| servants, like the ones that work in Whitehall. _They_
| are unelected, again, like the ones in Whitehall. These
| are the people that write laws, and keep the wheels of
| government moving, in Whitehall 's case, as slowly as
| possible - see Yes, (Prime)Minister.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| Wow the mental gymnastics in this one. You cannot vote
| for those people. Come back until I can.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Yeah. To be fair. The people who pirate were likely never going
| to buy it in the first place.
|
| Like FIFA games. I've never bought one even though Ive been
| playing for years. But I grew up with no money to buy them amd
| when I did have the money, the game was all about
| microtransactions. So its still a no.
| freeflight wrote:
| _> Yeah. To be fair. The people who pirate were likely never
| going to buy it in the first place._
|
| That's a tad bit too simplified. There have by now been several
| studies/reports [0] [1] that found people pirating a certain
| media, are also spending most of their disposable income on
| said media.
|
| Sure, there's also the "I don't want to waste my money on
| possible garbage" curiosity/test-drive piracy.
|
| But a very large chunk are just people who enjoy the medium so
| much that they can't get enough of it. So they will spend all
| their monthly disposable income on it, and when that's gone,
| they will pirate because of the FOMO created by marketing hype
| around the newest release getting thrown at them.
|
| It's very much a manifestation of the consumerism that gets
| glorified in most modern societies.
|
| [0] https://torrentfreak.com/0-more-on-content-than-honest-
| consu...
|
| [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/evkmz7/study-again-shows-
| pir...
| lesquivemeau wrote:
| Well, it seems everybody is different. Personally I bought a
| lot of games I pirated when I was younger and I'm glad because
| I wouldn't have bought them in the first place If I hadn't the
| option of trying it beforehand
| [deleted]
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