[HN Gopher] Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
___________________________________________________________________
Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
Author : nemoniac
Score : 276 points
Date : 2025-08-14 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| jbirer wrote:
| My main issue is that they're now slowly testing the waters to
| see if they can make you watch ads while still paying for the
| subscription, and at that point, might as well take advantage of
| Romania's lack of law enforcement and hit the torrent websites.
| platevoltage wrote:
| It's amazing how blurred the line is getting between streaming
| and cable TV.
| sunrunner wrote:
| It really doesn't seem like it has to be that complicated,
| yet somehow we've gone from channels with markedly anti-
| consumer fixed bundles to a massively fragmented ecosystem
| where it genuinely seems like the streaming services _don't_
| actually want you to subscribe by the amount of the effort
| that goes into making things hard to watch or doing
| everything that could make the streaming experience worse
| (region availability, paid tier ads, lower bitrate stream
| quality, and so on).
| squigz wrote:
| It already came full circle some years ago when we started
| seeing new streaming services every year, and those companies
| pulling their content from other platforms to put on their
| own. Then you had to start thinking about what servces you
| need, whether you still want those services, etc. Just like
| cable!
|
| Absurd.
| platevoltage wrote:
| True, although I guess this is sort of understandable. It's
| the "you're paying us, but here are some ads" that really
| gets me.
|
| Either way, 5 bucks a month to Emby, a really easy to get
| membership to a large private torrent site, and a 16TB hard
| drive solves these problems for me, and will continue to.
| dborzov wrote:
| Thanks for the tips! Could you explain how can one get
| about "getting a membership to a large private torrent
| site"? Also, why Emby rather than, say, Jellyfin or Plex?
| squigz wrote:
| The private trackers tend to be a pain in the butt to
| remain active enough on to keep your account, as they
| tend to require a certain amount of upload:download
| ratio. This can be difficult to achieve since so many
| members have high-speed seedboxes.
|
| Just use https://1337x.to/ or any other public tracker.
| You'll be able to find 99% of whatever you want.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| they are done testing the waters. its standard practice for the
| majority.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Thats what they said about cable too, pay for it so no ads.
| Then the ads came.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| About 10 years ago Netflix became available in the country where
| I was living back then. I was very excited about it, I was on
| their email list for years, waiting for the announcement. As I
| got the email that they are available, after work literally the
| first thing I did was to grab my credit card, and subscribe.
|
| I found 4-6 movies I wanted to watch, but when I saw that they
| had Godfather 1 and 3 without 2, I had a good laugh. Then I
| watched all the Archer episodes they had, and tried to find
| something interesting for 2 more days before I cancelled my
| (still trial) account.
|
| Though I stopped watching movies some years ago, until than I
| used to watch them on the same old pre-netflix way.
|
| Of course I have heard that they have spent many billions on
| content since then, I'm sure they have some interesting stuff...
| but that came way too late for me.
|
| Maybe I'm getting old, lol
| neves wrote:
| If a movie has a Netflix label in it, it is a sure signal of a
| bad movie with a boring script made based on data.
| geoffpado wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accolades_received_by_.
| ..
| margalabargala wrote:
| This includes movies "streamed or distributed" by Netflix.
| Like the parent mentioned, Netflix has streamed the
| Godfather.
|
| If you click through the movies on that list, you will find
| that almost none of them were actually produced by Netflix.
|
| Movies produced by Netflix are highly likely to be as
| described, with a small handful of exceptions.
| sunrunner wrote:
| I mean when your company has enough money to essentially
| bankroll the creation of a greater-than-average number of
| productions and simply pay the individuals involved in the
| production of these films whatever it takes to get them on
| board, isn't it sort of inevitable that you end up
| featuring in the list of awards a greater-than-average
| number of times?
| themafia wrote:
| Some of those are other networks shows that just happen to
| be distributed by Netflix. For example, Wallace & Gromit.
| This is not a useful set of data to draw conclusions from.
| Which is precisely the problem that Netflix has.
| ZiiS wrote:
| Yes, very damming considering their spend to not ever have
| won a best picture/actor/actress/screenplay.
| _0ffh wrote:
| The _Academy Awards_? Who the heck cares for _those_?
|
| The only thing they say is "the powers that be in Hollywood
| chose to highlight your product", but surely the
| information content regarding quality is as close to zero
| as it is possible to get.
| epolanski wrote:
| Based on data (and Twitter) part is true of any studio since
| a decade, in any case Netflix has produced or co-produced a
| good bunch of movies.
|
| Also, some excellent documentaries.
| zo1 wrote:
| We should coin a new term: "Straight to Netflix"
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted because you're
| absolutely right. I'd say for me Netflix movies have less
| than a 5% hit rate. They're an excellent place to start if
| you desire a suitably (and needlessly) racially and sexually
| diverse cast, the most bland cinematography and grading
| possible, and scripts explicitly designed for viewers who are
| paying more attention to their phones than the show[1].
|
| [1] https://comicbook.com/movies/news/netflix-reportedly-has-
| biz...
| LtWorf wrote:
| That has been my experience as well. When I see that logo
| it's a bad omen on how the film is going to be.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| All of these streaming services have started cracking down on
| family and friend account sharing to game their stock price.
| Turns out kicking off the broke college students doesn't lead to
| them signing up for ~$80/mo. smattering of streaming services.
| kotaKat wrote:
| It's also getting tiring of this massive fragmentation of
| streaming services as a whole combined with a weird game of
| rebundling various providers in either deals direct from the
| streaming platforms/their overlords, or rebundling all of these
| streaming services into "free" offers with other service
| providers and THEIR offerings.
|
| Even my goddamn cable company does this now offering me one of
| the streaming services? with my Spectrum plan. I don't even
| know which one(s).
|
| Quite frankly, I'm tired of my Verizon plan trying to cram
| Netflix and Hulu and Disney+ and crap down my throat, I'm tired
| of Walmart trying to cram Paramount+ at me with Walmart+.
| However, the market of 'average (dumb) people' seems to love
| this concept as "little extras" that eventually cause scope
| creep to their bill over time (and we all lose as a result).
| rkomorn wrote:
| There are services I already pay for that I'd likely save a
| handful of dollars on per month if I bundled them with my
| other services... but I can't bring myself to do it out of
| stubborn principle.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| It's on AppleTV+ but only if you also have the entity
| formerly known as paramount+ or for 3.99 (14 to own).
|
| Poob. Poob has it for you. [0]
|
| 0 https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/poob-has-it-for-you
| robotnikman wrote:
| >I'm tired of my Verizon plan trying to cram Netflix and Hulu
| and Disney+ and crap down my throat
|
| And of course when they do its never the ad-free versions.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| I mean netflix saw a pretty big jump in subscribers when they
| started doing this so maybe it actually does work?
| VanTheBrand wrote:
| Except that so far results have shown that it does lead to a
| net increase in signups:
|
| https://www.marketwatch.com/story/netflix-subscriber-boom-th...
| vhanda wrote:
| All streaming services should have a pay per minute system as an
| alternative to the fixed monthly subscription.
|
| That way, I'd happily use any service to watch whatever cause it
| would be convenient, instead of piracy.
|
| And it would be a reason for them to really improve their
| recommendation systems.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| A bundle of streaming services. That you can surf and choose
| one from and just watch. And a TV guide that tells you what's
| running where.
|
| Gee...sounds a lot like Cable TV.
|
| Sarcasm aside, the one problem folks had with Cable was the
| inability to upgrade without getting locked into another 2 year
| contract. Streaming solves that one problem while enshittifying
| all the other good things.
| rkomorn wrote:
| I thought the main complaint was "I'm paying for channels I
| don't watch!" while not realizing the channels they were
| watching were actually what they were paying for, and the
| rest of the stuff was just lumped in for nearly free to make
| the lineups look bigger and more appealing.
| sunrunner wrote:
| For some reason I always saw it in reverse, that I had to
| pay to subsidise a set of channels I'm _not_ interested in
| for the one I am.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Chances are that's not what was happening unless you were
| watching the channels nobody else watches.
|
| I haven't looked into cable pricing for a while but i
| remember a few of the contract disputes that caused some
| big channels to drop off big cable providers in the
| 2010s. The price-per-customer those channels were asking
| the cable companies were significant chunks of what a
| package would cost the customer (eg upwards for $1).
|
| Meanwhile some of the less common ones were a few cents
| per customer.
|
| That means that unless you weren't watching any of the
| $1+ ones, you were mostly actually "paying for what
| you're watching".
| nickthegreek wrote:
| I assure you that there are many people who do not need nor
| want ESPN and knew damn well they were directly paying it.
| rkomorn wrote:
| And those people were having part of their package
| subsidized by the people who were watching ESPN but not
| the other channels.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| > .. the one problem folks had with Cable was the i...
|
| and hardware rental fees
|
| ads on top of your service
|
| bundling a bunch of channels you didnt ask for and increase
| price
|
| outages
|
| the list goes on
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Gee...sounds a lot like Cable TV.
|
| Honestly, Cable companies could make a comeback by using
| their relationships with producers to actually be a "one stop
| shop" streaming services. There's definitely a pain point to
| having to be subscribed to so many different services just to
| cover the gamut of shows and movies
| sunrunner wrote:
| > pay per minute system
|
| And/or pay-per-episode, pay-per-season or pay-per-show. So I
| don't have to start thinking ahead too much about the _length_
| of something and can just enjoy the thing itself based on some
| pre-determined price.
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Pay per episode could be an ok granularity. Anything above
| that I'm not ok, there is too much garbage
| sunrunner wrote:
| Perhaps pay-per-episode with a discounted price for an
| entire series (and an option to buy the remainders taking
| that into account). It seems fair to be able to dip your
| toe into a series and try a few episodes before committing.
| On the other hand, that seems just a bit _too_ consumer-
| friendly...
| Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote:
| Would be fine with that. I want a demo before committing,
| essentially
| themafia wrote:
| Isn't this precisely what Amazon already does?
| sunrunner wrote:
| For the subset of Amazon-available content that isn't
| counted as Prime Video I think yes, but not for the rest
| of it. Apple TV+ possibly too, though they also have what
| feels like their own confusing model that shows some
| things as being available with the caveat that it's
| actually available through either a) a proxy with a
| subscription to a third party or b) a one-time purchase
| from them. I'd hate to be in the meetings where the
| details of these licensing agreements get hashed out.
| nicce wrote:
| Some Disney series are already 20mins about the show and
| 10mins credits/something else. Don't give them new ideas to
| reduce the actual content...
| vhanda wrote:
| I was thinking along the lines of how much I actually
| watch, if I only watched 10 minutes of your show, I only
| pay for 10 minutes, not the entire thing.
|
| You're also saving on bandwidth.
|
| Paradoxically, I'd still want to pay per minute of
| viewing time, if I'm watching the show on 2x the speed.
| sosborn wrote:
| Isn't this just renting, which is already offered by Amazon,
| Apple, Google ...
| duxup wrote:
| I think they know how many dead / inactive subscriptions they
| have.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| That would only suit a portion of their user base and
| completely ream people who use Netflix to entertain/occupy
| their kids, who use TV shows to fall asleep, etc. Not to
| mention throwing away valuable subscriber dollars from idle
| users like me who maintain a subscription but rarely watch
| anything (mostly because there's nothing good on the entire
| platform).
| 5555624 wrote:
| Sling TV now has a "day pass" option for $5. (A weekend for
| $10.) https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/sling-tv-
| off...
| mystraline wrote:
| What these companies would "sell" would be DRM crusty shit that
| wouldn't work on my devices. And the 'Authorization servers'
| would be decommissioned at some unstated future date. Hell,
| even Microsoft couldn't manage to maintain these DRM servers.
|
| If MS cant, why would I expect any company to properly maintain
| them?
|
| https://community.spiceworks.com/t/how-to-play-content-prote...
|
| So, unless these are MP4's or MKV's with correct subtitling and
| appropriate audio, I'm not going to pay a cent here.
| nicce wrote:
| Lets go back to old good CD/DVD era.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| That would incentivize services to make their shows longer.
| Maybe they play them back at 95% speed, maybe they add their
| own intro or credits to the end. maybe if they make their own
| shows like Netfliz does, they stretch them out.
| bawolff wrote:
| Maybe the incentives would be better, but i also dont really
| want to keep track of budgeting when watching TV. I'm here to
| relax. I dont want to stress about how much i watched this
| month and if im going to blow my entertainment budget.
| barbazoo wrote:
| For movies at least it's usually no problem to find them for
| "rent", i.e. 48h for an absurd amount of money.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Idea for a service.
|
| The service effectively rebroadcasts all the streaming services
| to provide exactly what you suggest. It's still paying the
| streaming services, and users pay it.
|
| Better not set it up in the US .
| interestica wrote:
| This is like cable with extra steps ;)
|
| I think we are already seeing some packaged stream services
| and we will probably see more. It's a lot of overhead to
| maintain a separate service to do the exact same thing (with
| only a different library and branding).
|
| I think the NHL uses the streaming backend developed by MLB
| Advanced Media (they adapted it in 2015, not sure if still
| the case).
|
| https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/a-closer-look-at-nhls-
| pa...
| testing22321 wrote:
| Na, not like cable. It's all on demand so you can watch
| what you want when you want. You don't pay a cent for stuff
| you don't watch.
|
| You can pay by minute, or episode, or season or whatever.
|
| Like Netflix but with the catalog of every streaming
| service in existence, better per-use pricing, no ads.
| neves wrote:
| For me worse than the can't pay is the lack of options. In the
| VHS time I had more good movie options than in the current
| streaming services. I remember when I bing watched Kurozawa or
| Mario Monicelli's movies. Now it's very hard to find non American
| cinema. The tech is there, but the System fail us.
| weeznerps wrote:
| Criterion Channel and Kanopy are very good (not perfect) for
| international films.
| epolanski wrote:
| Even many American movies are no shows on most streaming
| platforms. Sometimes I'm like: "Let's take the top 30 movies
| that critics loved the most in US in year X".
|
| As soon as it's earlier than 2005 you're gonna find less than
| half available across most streaming platforms, unless for
| renting/buying.
| whobre wrote:
| Yep. I swear I liked the old Netflix with DVDs better. I could
| rent pretty much any movie I wanted.
| rgblambda wrote:
| Netflix found that while it was a nice advertising tool to
| boast about the broadness of its catalogue, most customers
| rarely ordered the more niche stuff so it wasn't particularly
| profitable.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| That's what happens when you have a big library. The usage
| is going to be some 80:20 rule. A small slice drives the
| numbers. Yet it is nice to be able to consume some long
| tail content. Without the DVD catalog, access to the long
| tail has disappeared from mainstream providers.
| devilbunny wrote:
| > most customers rarely ordered the more niche stuff
|
| I'm sure that's true, but the flip side is that the niche
| stuff is what pulls in the hardcore film buffs. And guess
| who those of us who aren't big film buffs turn to when
| picking films and services? The hardcore film buffs we
| know.
|
| They may not generate a ton of revenue if you look only at
| "how many people request obscure movie X", but _having_
| those movies pulls in the people who will, in turn,
| influence others.
| layer8 wrote:
| We don't have that problem with books for the most part,
| why do we have it with TV shows and movies?
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Even after the DVDs, Netflix had a much bigger catalog before
| everyone else decided they needed to copy Netflix and launch
| their own service, then IP rights got restricted and
| redistributed.
|
| Streaming was great when I only needed to subscribe to a
| single service to watch most everything I wanted. It's not so
| great when I need to subscribe to 5+ services and still not
| have everything I want to watch.
|
| Yeah, monopolies are bad but the way IP is distributed right
| now across so many different services just ends up being
| worse for consumers.
| piva00 wrote:
| MUBI is a good option for the more high cinema stuff, one of
| the few subscriptions I'd feel sad canceling.
| crooked-v wrote:
| To really sum it all up in one place, check out the absurdity of
| the official guide on where to watch the Pokemon cartoon:
| https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-...
|
| And that doesn't even actually list the movies, which are even
| more fragmented.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I have seen this before, but I never realized that was an
| official product! Thought that started as a joke by a
| disgruntled fan.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing OP, that is just ridiculous, makes cable
| looks like a sane option.
| 6thbit wrote:
| With cable you didn't get this fragmentation cause you also
| didn't get many options.
|
| Watch at 8am or at 6pm, whatever episode airs that day,
| probably a rerun or a skipped.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Wow. It's like an advertisement for torrent sites... I had no
| idea it was that bad out there...
| devjab wrote:
| I wonder if they will eventually go the LEGO route and host
| their shows on youtube while also letting streaming services
| have them.
| sunrunner wrote:
| And I thought the problem was (just) limited to fragmentation
| of complete IPs between services. I'd love for someone in the
| know to explain how you get to this stage.
|
| It it some kind of hedging strategy by The Pokemon Company to
| account for the number of different streaming services (thereby
| actually making the problem worse)? Was there some kind of
| timed exclusivity deal that's forced them to put different
| things in different places? Did one of the streaming services
| come along at a later time to try to undercut the earlier ones
| but the earlier licencing deals haven't expired? Anything else?
| mxfh wrote:
| What's the problem with that exactly? Legacy catalogs having
| some incomplete coverage? That the Pokemon Company can't make a
| good list if pressed? These are all not new or streaming
| Problems
|
| The gist is here, that the complete first four season are on
| YouTube for free and the 5th is being added as we speak? (200+
| episodes)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialPoke%CC%81monTV/playlists
|
| There was nether the expectation with streaming that third
| party content doesn't rotate.
|
| If you want a bit more persistent access you can buy them on
| Apple TV (Season 1-5 and 10-25)
|
| Oh Boy, Pokemon is really not the example I would bring up
| here, when the aim is completeness on official channels:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_episodes_removed_...
| Gud wrote:
| It's pretty obvious that no one wants to subscribe and look
| for some content on 5 different platforms.
|
| While the pirate goes to his or her favourite torrent site
| and downloads it all, with the added bonus of having offline,
| permanent access.
| mxfh wrote:
| The pirate redownloads the same show in Divx, mp4, DVD-ISO
| and any remastered formats grabbed from streaming services
| any time a new release comes out. But never watches them.
| There is rarely such a thing as a definitive version for a
| show like Pokemon, even for pirates. They are limited by
| what's being released to the public too. The grass is not
| really greener over there, just more confusing and more
| FOMO. Then still needs to watch it in a convenient and
| organizable way. So you would need to run a server, which
| is not free either. Looking into 5 different platform seems
| to be the easier choice here at some point.
| gjvc wrote:
| with a sample size of one, there is no obvious problem.
|
| presumably any given household wants to watch more than just
| pokemon, though and this is where things become unstuck.
| suddenly, to satisfy the demand for the range of things
| people in the household want to watch they are forced to make
| subscriptions to multiple services, perhaps sometimes for
| one-offs.
|
| scale this up, and you have a population forced to make
| multiple subscriptions to multiple streaming providers to
| satisfy their demand for content.
|
| or people just choose a couple of them and that's that.
| either way it seems that there is a symbiotic relationship
| between the content authors and the streaming companies.
|
| but wait, read the page carefully, multiple seasons of the
| same thing spread across different streamers forcing
| consumers to subscribe to multiple streamers .... and now we
| are into Phoebus cartel territory.
| mxfh wrote:
| That's not how streaming worked, ever. You had to deal with
| what Netflix had to offer and that was it. These were the
| happy monopoly days. It was simply the lack of choice and
| nobody felt left out at watercooler talks.
|
| The paradox now, is that if you're FOMO inclined you feel
| the need to subscribe to multiple ones at all times to
| satify all needs in a household. You don't have to. You can
| keep baseline Disney if you really have to, but everything
| else can be easily rotated or just cought up on for a month
| or three on the usual discounted offers. The social
| pressure was not some invention of the streaming companies.
|
| Also pirating has a hardware and energy cost, that's not
| trivial and mostly subsidized by parents. On a ROI basis of
| adults with disposable income "buying" (aka personal
| licenses, ideally shareable with some other accounts what
| some might call a family) 4-5 movies for like 5 dollars on
| platforms like Apple TV each a month is actually cheaper
| than pirating. Streaming is not everything. And don`t kid
| yourself that your DVD or Bluray collection is worth
| something or usable in 20+ years. That's a niche hobby. Go
| visit a flea market. People are that lazy when it comes to
| couch and home entertainment stuff.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You think pirating videos will raise your electric bill
| by $25 / month?
| barbazoo wrote:
| And it doesn't even reflect availability outside the US it
| seems as my Netflix catalog does't have some of the seasons
| that list says it should.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Holy mother of God, that's insanity. How could someone come up
| with that and get it approved is beyond human understanding.
| SllX wrote:
| The problem with Pokemon isn't that it's fragmented across
| streaming services, it's the anime itself where by Advanced
| you're getting enough of the same formulaic bullshit it can
| drive even a kid crazy. I was that kid.
|
| Except for some slight deviations, such as the beginning of
| Best Wishes (Black & White), you can put on a sequence of any
| 10 episodes from any season and it doesn't matter what
| streaming service it's on. By the end of the episode, Team
| Rocket is blasting off again.
| kmac_ wrote:
| Well, "Gotta Subscribe 'Em All!"
| charcircuit wrote:
| >More fragmented Prime Video has it all which doesn't sound
| fragmented to me. It seems Prime Video is for old seasons and
| other services are fine for watching the current iteration of
| the show.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| My thing is that we are expected to pay in perpetuity for the
| privilege of accessing content. It's rent, and it is just
| tiresome.
|
| Yes I understand that we have content available on far more
| devices than 30 years ago, when all we had was the TV in the
| living room. But should I have to pay in perpetuity to show my
| kids Moana?
| massysett wrote:
| No. Go buy a Moana DVD. USD 9.99.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Moana-Ron-Clements/dp/B01MAZGH7Z/ref=...
| masfuerte wrote:
| In the UK you can get it second-hand, including postage, for
| PS2.07. And it's been expertly refurbished!
|
| https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/292095014239
| system2 wrote:
| It is easier to download from a torrent or illegally stream.
| massysett wrote:
| What a surprise, it's easier to steal than to pay content
| creators. (I know, someone will now chime in and say it
| isn't really stealing, etc etc.)
|
| Actually I disagree though. Software and UX for torrenting
| is a pain. It's easier to buy a $10 DVD.
| alt227 wrote:
| > What a surprise, it's easier to steal than to pay
| content creators.
|
| They make it this way.
|
| Buying a second hand DVD does not give any money to
| content creators, and I still get to watch the movie.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > Actually I disagree though. Software and UX for
| torrenting is a pain. It's easier to buy a $10 DVD.
|
| You probably haven't checked back in in the last 5-10
| year then. Honestly the UX is almost too good.
| beoberha wrote:
| Almost every digital movie provider has a rental option. Moana
| on Prime Video is 3.99 to rent.
| sunrunner wrote:
| "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing
| problem" -- Gabe Newell [1]
|
| And I think he was largely correct, although the term _service_
| seems like it now has to do a lot of heavy lifting as it now
| encompasses:
|
| - Availability by Company
|
| - Availability by Global Region
|
| - Stream Quality
|
| - Advert Policy (why does the lowest tier need to be ad
| supported? What am I paying for aside from being upsold?)
|
| - Quality and availability of captions, audio description and any
| other media accessibility options
|
| [1] https://www.escapistmagazine.com/valves-gabe-newell-says-
| pir...
| hungmung wrote:
| It's almost like the corporate culture of being a bunch of
| greedy control freaks will push customers away when they have
| an alternative.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > service problem and not a pricing problem
|
| Indeed. Recently we purchased season 1 of a reasonably popular
| U.S. produced show via Apple TV. When played, it is available
| only in dubbed French in our region (Canada.) None of the info
| available beforehand said anything about this. Guess where I
| obtained the subsequent seasons? I will pay for content but not
| if you lie, or make me jump through ridiculous hoops.
| netsharc wrote:
| That reminds me of some passengers I sat on a flight next to
| once.. they tried to watch something on their iPad, but
| because we were about to depart from a country foreign to
| theirs, it got region-blocked...
|
| Not that I pitied them, they were obnoxiously late and
| boarded with 5 bags (the stiff rectangular bags boutique
| stores have) of shopping...
| interestica wrote:
| In a weird quirk that must be a bug, you can watch the first
| season of the Good Place in French in the USA but not in
| Canada.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| That quote is literally in the article you didn't read.
| mattbee wrote:
| Absolutely right!
|
| A week ago I downloaded a couple of movies and shows from
| Netflix for my 6yo daughter, to watch on a 3hr flight. Worked
| nicely!
|
| Today we made the return flight. She opens Netflix, and 2/3
| of the films have now "expired" with no notice and she can't
| watch the one she wanted.
|
| For the next flight I'll remember to pirate!
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| Getting 'em started early. You arr a great dad!
| snailmailman wrote:
| I tried to download something from Netflix recently. The
| download wouldn't process. It got stuck partway. Not an
| issue, I'll just delete it and redownload.
|
| Nope. There's a limit to the number of downloads on some
| content. I wasted mine trying to get the download to even
| work.
| pi-rat wrote:
| I remember a few years ago when our niece came to visit. One
| evening, we started watching a movie on Netflix together.
|
| We only made it halfway before bedtime, but since she was
| coming back in two weeks, we decided to save the rest for her
| next visit.
|
| Two weeks later, she returned, bouncing with excitement to
| finally see how the story ended. We opened Netflix, ready to
| hit play - and lo and behold... the movie had vanished from
| the catalog.
|
| Be a cool uncle, be a pirate.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| Why make it complicated? Service means the user experience. If
| the user needs to do anything other than click pay click play,
| you done goofed, simple as that.
| ta1243 wrote:
| I cancelled prime when they told me they were putting adverts
| on
|
| Went to resubscribe, no option given for no adverts, no money
| from me.
| WD-42 wrote:
| This is what did it for me too. Why would I pay for a crappy
| UX and ads? But all these companies need numbers to keep
| going up, so they keep tightening the screws.
| 6thbit wrote:
| Love how this same quote was used in celebration of streaming
| back in Netflix's early days as the solution, and now to show
| the new industry found on those very same ideas as the problem.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Service problems are usually pricing problems. Advert policy is
| because people refuse to pay more so to make more money they
| put in ads. Fragmentation by content/region is also because
| each service is trying to spend as little as possible on
| content. If you want to watch unlock video content youd have to
| pay $100+ a month and people refuse to do that.
| cchance wrote:
| Yes but price has also become a huge part of it netflix raised
| prices like 5 times in 1 year lol
| JamesSwift wrote:
| Ehh, while I agree its 70% about having a way more user-
| friendly experience, theres still 30% which is that the content
| needs to justify the price. And HBO and Netflix have missed
| that mark in my opinion.
|
| I cancelled HBO after their price increase a year or two ago
| after being pretty happy with their service for a long time
| (though also the service quality had gotten worse). Too many
| people share my netflix for me to cancel it.
| nlawalker wrote:
| _> "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing
| problem"_
|
| Maybe so, but if media companies invested in fixing the service
| problems, the pricing problems would remain, and those keep
| people away just as effectively, so they're not going to do it.
|
| People don't want to pay what the media companies want to
| charge, at any level of service.
| area51org wrote:
| Not necessarily true, as the success of streaming shows. The
| problem comes when the unbounded greed of the billionaires in
| charge leads them to inflate prices beyond their customers'
| ability and willingness to pay.
| duxup wrote:
| I think a lot of the services competed themselves into a pricing
| corner with low subscription costs.
|
| Now the audience is used to that pricing and doesn't like pricing
| relative to the price of the content.
| crinkly wrote:
| Screw streaming. I bought a smart TV a few years back. Services
| discontinued within 3 years. No external commercial streaming
| boxes work because of HDCP issues. Back to piracy until the TV
| gives up. Streamers and smart TV people, you had your chance and
| you blew it. I'm not paying through the nose any more.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Yeah, because you pay for the thing and you _still_ can 't watch
| it!
|
| Last year they brought Andor to Hulu and every time I played it
| on my brand new LG TV, the video would be completely green while
| I could hear the audio underneath. It only happened to Andor
| because apparently they had some super special DRM, which
| ostensibly would restrict people who weren't authorized from
| viewing it, but had the effect of also preventing authorized
| people from viewing as well. So in the end, they can't even
| satisfy willing customers who have their wallets open. Of course
| they're going to turn to piracy.
|
| Of course, the rights holders got my money and as far as they're
| concerned, their DRM move was great for the bottom line.
| y-curious wrote:
| Fwiw the LG operating system kind of sucks. I got an Apple TV
| and it's been infinitely better. Paramount Plus was wholly
| unusable on the TV
| Marsymars wrote:
| I haven't bothered checking, but I assume the hardware sucks
| too - I'd expect the Apple TV SOC to be like an order of
| magnitude faster than any smart TV.
| buyucu wrote:
| Having multiple streaming accounts just to watch a couple of
| shows I like is such an unnecessary hassle. It's much more easier
| just to pirate.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| I started buying Blu-ray discs and ripping them to my computer,
| where I run Plex. Why? I had a long-time subscription to HBO Max,
| but a few years ago, I went to watch Westworld, and it was gone
| from HBO. I ended up buying a season on Apple for the price of a
| monthly subscription to HBO. I cancelled my HBO subscription. I
| realized that second-hand Blu-ray discs of shows were selling for
| dirt cheap. I spent $40 to buy the rest of the seasons of
| Westworld on Blu-ray.
|
| Clearly, new shows aren't getting Blu-ray releases, so this won't
| work for you if you care about new shows. My wife and I are so
| over the dystopian view from modern science fiction that we
| started focusing on shows from the late 1900s (80s/90s) to get
| more of a positive outlook from our entertainment. We are now
| going through Stargate SG-1.
| themafia wrote:
| Are you over 40?
|
| I ask because I'm over 40 and I've had enough of this too.
|
| Also check out cafedvd.com.
| turnsout wrote:
| Same. I'm 45 and lately I've been thinking about picking up a
| Blu-ray player. Not a drive to rip discs--a player to hook up
| to my TV. It's definitely an elder millennial thing, but I
| just want to own a physical copy of the movie and not have to
| worry about where it's streaming or whether the one I
| "bought" on iTunes has been quietly swapped for another
| version.
|
| The sad thing is, I don't think Blu-ray is long for this
| world. But I at least want plastic copies of the classic
| movies I know I'll go back to.
| zten wrote:
| Sucks that the Blu-ray experience is dreadful for 4K content.
| You've gotta find specific Blu-ray drives with specific
| firmware versions to do rips, or watch on a PlayStation or
| similar locked-down console. There isn't even a non-pirate way
| to watch on a laptop or desktop anymore since Intel SGX is
| dead.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| There are quite a few devices these days that'll allow you to
| capture streams by stripping HDCP so you can at least record it
| instead of having the service put it in "the vault," to appease
| some bozo in a suit.
|
| I have been trying to put my data hoarding data days behind me,
| but like the article, I'm being pushed back that direction.
| Doubly so since I use Linux and they restrict quality to 1080p.
| The only thing preventing me from it right now is a lack of a
| computer/server with ECC support (so I can run ZFS). Though
| encrypting a bunch of data and archiving it into Amazon Glacier
| seems more and more reasonable as time goes on.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > I went to watch Westworld, and it was gone from HBO.
|
| Wait, isn't that their own IP? I get shows not running on 3rd
| party streaming services due to IP rights and stuff, but
| how/why would they be in a position to not stream their own
| IP?! That's like going to Netflix and not being able to see
| Stranger Things. It's insane!
| o0banky0o wrote:
| A useful distinction is that upload is piracy and download is
| not.
| AndyKelley wrote:
| True pirates maintain > 1.0 ratio
| bee_rider wrote:
| Neither is piracy, it is just unauthorized copying and sharing.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > unauthorized copying and sharing
|
| Which is known in English as "piracy".
| aggregator-ios wrote:
| The streaming landscape is now terrible and no different than the
| incumbent CATV providers that it sought to replace. In 2011,
| streaming services were the hotness because CATV subscriptions
| were expensive. In 2011, people were subscribing to 1-2 or 2-3
| services because they were all less than $10USD/month. That was
| still 10x cheaper than the alternative.
|
| However, 15 years later, those numbers exceed or are the same as
| CATV costs combined with all the streaming/smart device
| headaches.
|
| All we did was change the pipe. The providers didn't change
| except for consolidation and erosion of policy, both of which
| lead to worse outcomes for consumers.
| monster_truck wrote:
| I was trying to watch The Big Short the other night, after
| checking 7 streaming websites I came to my senses and downloaded
| the 4k rip off the pirate bay
|
| I was trying to put on a show for background noise this morning.
| Just two nights ago I was able to sign in with my cable provider
| and watch it. Now it's telling me there's a network (as in the
| channel the network is on) authorization error, customer support
| can't tell me why it doesn't work and they are not authorized to
| issue me a credit.
|
| So I pirated that too.
|
| And what the fuck is up with Netflix? Why do I have to install a
| browser extension to hide the games? I don't want games I want to
| watch The Big Short.
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| Fantastic movie by the way. Worth rewatching a couple of times
| barbazoo wrote:
| They are innovating where no innovation is necessary. And in
| the process they are making everything more shitty. Why change
| the UI every couple of months. It's fine, it's a UI for a media
| catalog, it's not rocket science. Why not work with other
| companies to collaborate and create a unified way to search
| catalogs but no that would be good for the consumer. Greed is
| an ugly thing.
| maxglute wrote:
| I spent last few days chasing down a Bravo/peacock show from
| outside the US trying to watch legally, only to find it on
| watchseries and realize how good the experience has gotten. It's
| not even released on torrents or nzb. Watchseries UI is kind of
| peak now. Nuts. Does anyone know how Watchseries manage to stay
| up?
| Yokolos wrote:
| It's been taken down plenty of times. They just host a mirror
| somewhere else under a new TLD.
| taraindara wrote:
| I still have streaming services, mostly because my family uses
| them. I'm slowly getting back into the self hosted ways. But it's
| also pushing me to just stop watching altogether. I'm finding
| better ways to spend my time than in front of a tv. Or rather, I
| guess I'm spending it more behind a computer screen. Haha
| dilDDoS wrote:
| I actually think pirating encourages a healthier approach to
| watching TV/movies. I've fully made the switch to pirating
| instead of subscribing to any streaming services, and it's led to
| me thinking more critically about what I want to spend time
| downloading and watching rather than just flipping mindlessly
| through endless amounts of readily available garbage on a
| streaming service.
|
| I do still have Kanopy though, which is great for me but
| obviously depends on your library.
| bhaney wrote:
| Not always. Now I just flip mindlessly through endless amounts
| of readily available garbage on my jellyfin server instead.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Why not purchase the discs and copy them yourself? At least
| artists can get paid that way.
| yunwal wrote:
| Most shows don't get a dvd release anymore.
| tstrimple wrote:
| And then sometimes you have to deal with a bunch of
| bullshit changes because of music licensing or something.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Ehh sounds like an automation issue. Buy another hard-drive and
| just have everything new auto download.
| Akronymus wrote:
| For me, I only seek out media I plan to actually watch. Rather
| than flipping through what is available and choosing from
| there. Currently it is stargate sg1/atlantis what I am
| watching.
|
| Also, a lot of movies/series are only available dubbed here. (I
| really effing hate "Sie" in dubbed media. So much so, that it's
| one of the major reasons I go for subbed in english, at most)
| bawolff wrote:
| Black markets are usually the result of failed markets, and i
| think its no different here. Copyright is a monopoly so there is
| no competition. Sure different streaming services compete with
| each other, but they essentially sell different products. It'd be
| like if only one resturant was allowed to sell hamburgers. There
| might be other resturants but they arent really in direct
| competition.
| RajT88 wrote:
| The streaming services are relying on enforcement to preserve
| their business model.
|
| This only works as long as there's no other nations with
| significant digital infrastructure that can be used for VPN
| egress points who don't care a whole lot about US copyright
| enforcement (or copyright enforcement in general).
|
| Our government just pissed off a lot of other governments.
| Enforcement is good within the US, but not outside, even
| nations which the US has a lot of control over.
| lackoftactics wrote:
| It's no longer as convenient with dozens of streaming services;
| the streaming bitrate is also subpar, and audio is compressed to
| the point it feels flat. If you want to be mindful about what you
| are watching, it will be really hard with Netflix, Prime, and
| Disney compared to your own media server. When I had a streaming
| subscription, I was constantly shocked by what was popular in
| Poland and what people were watching. It took me some time to
| accept that I am not their target audience.
| eastbound wrote:
| The quality of shows is also subpar. And there aren't many
| shows on Netflix at a given time: Probably 80 things to watch,
| all categories included (with 70% of overlap in content).
| pmdr wrote:
| Is it? NFLX is at an all-time high right now.
| YesBox wrote:
| Tip: Watch Cartoons Online (search it)
|
| Great place to stream cartoons and anime for free, no account. It
| feels like they have almost everything, as I found anime as far
| back as the 1970s on there.
|
| When I discovered Food Wars was split between two streaming
| platforms, I hoisted the sails.
| dabber21 wrote:
| Instead of making their shows exclusive they should make them
| time exclusive (1 year?) then sell a license
| codedokode wrote:
| When billion dollar companies, which are praised and supported by
| governments, download pirated material and do not pay, why should
| ordinary people restrain themselves and pay? I cannot see how one
| can make moral arguments against piracy now. It makes no sense to
| pay if others are not paying and not punished for it. People also
| have a right to train their real neural network for free without
| paying.
| RajT88 wrote:
| The film and music industries really shot themselves in the
| foot when they got a tax on recordable media introduced in
| Canada.
|
| OK, CD-R's and flash memory cost a bunch more now. Streaming is
| legal, because customers already paid the record companies for
| their music they downloaded and put on that media.
|
| At least, someone explained this was the current state of
| Canadian law ~10 years back when I first visited.
| codedokode wrote:
| Tax on recordable media is unfair because honest people who
| don't pirate anything also have to pay. As with the case
| above, honest people get screwed the most.
| Gud wrote:
| Nothing dishonest with pirating. You wouldn't download a
| car? Well I would.
| wubrr wrote:
| I can't believe people still fall for the 'piracy bad'
| propaganda in 2025
| Levitz wrote:
| This is basically the case right now in Spain.
|
| We pay a tax on every piece of recordable media (don't think
| it's only SD cards or hard drives, it applies to phones,
| laptops, mp3 players, ebooks, even smartwatches). In
| exchange, sharing media for personal use is legal, and P2P is
| sharing media.
|
| Doesn't stop corporations from trying to scare people off and
| complaining about piracy though of course.
| imglorp wrote:
| Plus the idea that if you pay someone to "purchase" and "own"
| (their terms!!) content, then it's yours forever. Unless, of
| course, they renegotiate something upstream and subsequently
| remove the content from your "library" or your device. Or
| perhaps they lock you out of those things altogether. This
| means it wasn't ownership, it was subscription.
|
| So as they say, "if buying isn't owning, pirating isn't
| stealing."
|
| https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2023-12-08...
| bsimpson wrote:
| Stealing is when you take something from him, and he no
| longer has the thing you took.
|
| Piracy is when you see something for free that everyone else
| paid money for. You watching doesn't prevent anyone else from
| watching.
|
| Piracy isn't stealing: piracy only deals in intangibles.
| Stealing is for finite goods.
|
| There's a whole "how do we pay to make stuff if people can
| watch for free" argument around piracy, but it's
| fundamentally a different thing than stealing.
| wubrr wrote:
| There were never any good moral arguments against digital
| 'piracy' to begin with.
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| Your ignorance and weak dismissals aren't evidence of
| absence.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I was in film school in the 00s, when the media companies were
| in the news for trying to bankrupt the families of high
| schoolers to make a point that piracy is bad. This was the "you
| wouldn't download a car" era, when they tried to redefine
| "stealing" to include piracy.
|
| The executives of these companies would come speak to our class
| in the evenings. I didn't even bother counting the number of
| times one of them would be making elated chitchat before/after
| class about how he had just been on some flight and watched
| some series on his iPod. On the one hand, everyone is just
| people. The people at the heads of film studios are also out of
| touch grandparents whose grandkids show them how to use modern
| tech over the holidays.
|
| But it was pretty disgusting to see the people in charge of the
| companies that were trying to ruin people's lives over
| widespread behavior, themselves participating in that behavior,
| and with no sense of irony or remorse. It never occurred to
| them that the thing they were doing in their personal lives is
| the same thing they were vilifying in their professional ones.
| parpfish wrote:
| i wish we could go back to a pre-streaming version of netflix.
|
| the near-infinite library and lack of algorithmic nudging
| resulted in an era where i had healthy view habits. reasonable
| levels of screentime and VERY diverse content.
|
| i add so many movies to my queue with the best intentions of
| watching them someday, but always put them off because something
| about staring at that endless scroll of options makes me crave
| something light and simple.
|
| the disk-in-the-mail era was "remember that three-hour subtitled
| classic film you always said you should watch but haven't? well,
| today's the day you're watching it." and i always ended up being
| glad i did.
|
| the streaming era is "ugh, i don't have the mental bandwidth to
| watch that three hour thing that's been on my queue forever. lets
| just rewatch some background content to zone out" and i always
| lament wasting hours of my life in front of the screen.
| shoelessone wrote:
| I relate to this. Also, I am not the best person in the world,
| but recently this hit the point where I decided because of
| these very same thoughts + nudging from my much better partner
| to donate to NPR, to cancel Netflix and move that money to NPR.
| Now no more Netflix, which is sort of a relief in ways, and I
| have to be more intentional about what I download / consume.
| bkettle wrote:
| I was wondering recently whether someone could conceivably
| start a disk-in-the-mail Netflix again, now that streaming
| sucks so much and every publisher seems to want their own
| streaming service. My understanding (possibly wrong, I'm not an
| expert) is that it's perfectly legal to lend out physical media
| without any special permission from the publisher under the
| first-sale doctrine, so it seems like the only way to build a
| library that has content from many different publishers.
|
| (of course, this could only work as long as publishers keep
| producing physical media)
| piffey wrote:
| Scarecrow Video does this in Seattle. Their library is
| amazing.
|
| https://scarecrowvideo.org/rent-by-mail
| Animats wrote:
| We need to shorten copyright just so that the classics stay
| available online.
|
| 50 years from first publication. No more.
| loughnane wrote:
| I agree no more. If I had to pick a perfect number I'd probably
| go to 25 or 30
| interestica wrote:
| I think we have it backwards by attaching it to the life/death
| of the _creator_ (or the works' creation). People should be
| alive to experience the works they _consumed_ in new and open
| ways. Creation doesn't happen in a vacuum. It builds on the
| collective works. There's no point in a work becoming public
| domain if no one is alive from the time when it first had an
| impact on culture. Seniors should be freely able to listen to
| access the culture of their youth and experience it in new
| modified ways without restriction.
|
| 15 years or less from the date of first public consumption.
| _0ffh wrote:
| It's nice to see some good news now and then.
| singingwolfboy wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Q9lvm
| system2 wrote:
| Luckily search engines like Yandex.com provide the easiest way to
| find unusual streaming sites. Using AdBlock saves us from the
| pop-ups and weird ads. If Netflix goes back to $9 per month with
| every show in existence, I will reconsider them. Until then,
| these streaming sites will continue to exist and thrive.
| billy99k wrote:
| I suppose you can't really complain when big tech pirates your IP
| to be used with AI.
| hk1337 wrote:
| As with most things, I think we leaned in too hard to streaming
| services.
|
| Part of the appeal of streaming services back then was being able
| to cherry pick what you wanted so you only paid for what you
| actually wanted to watched.
|
| Because of how fragmented all the shows are, people sign up for
| multiple streaming services just to watch the shows the want to
| watch, and then wish for everything to be bundled
| together...again. Also, each streaming service charges a hefty
| premium compared to what you're actually getting, so it's not as
| worth the money.
| slybot wrote:
| Recently, I also switched to Jellyfin. I still have access to
| Netflix and Disney through family plan. The service problem was
| the quality issue. I have the Ultra plan's while Netflix keep
| pushing SD (due to Widevine certificates). Simply cannot stand
| watching 480p on WQHD+ screen. For the content I have legitimate
| access, but cannot get good service, I don't consider it
| pirating.
| tlogan wrote:
| I just want to give one more example. I wanted to watch "Just
| Beyond" (2021 Disney), but it's impossible to find anywhere. So
| what am I supposed to do?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I know this is pedantic but it is so annoying: downloading shows
| is not piracy. It is totally nuts to conflate unauthorized
| copying and sharing with the violent act of going on somebody's
| boat and killing/threatening them until you loot their stuff.
|
| Calling it piracy was funny during the early Internet when it was
| all pirate and ninja memes. But really letting them conflate this
| very minor crime with violence was a big propaganda loss.
| wrasee wrote:
| Some words are overload with more than one meaning. That's
| like, a thing in many languages.
| layer8 wrote:
| You are a couple of centuries late:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement#%22Pira...
| IshKebab wrote:
| You're not being pedantic, you're being wrong.
| opan wrote:
| Agreed. I do my part to avoid using the word at least since
| seeing it on gnu's words-to-avoid page several years ago.
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy
|
| I don't usually get too many weird looks with "unauthorized
| copying".
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| I pay for a pirate streaming site. It's nice, it has everything,
| it works, nothing ever gets memory-holed, I don't ever have to
| sign up for a different service to watch something because it got
| swapped in the middle of my binge, what I can watch doesn't
| depend on where they guess I am, I can access over a VPN, they
| have a support staff that actually listens to me and implements
| features users ask for, and I can download things to watch later
| drm-free. This isn't a money problem, as evidenced by the fact
| that I pay to steal. It's a product problem. I pay for this
| because their product is better and I want it to continue to
| exist.
| WrongOnInternet wrote:
| I've always chosen piracy for the privacy. I don't need a bunch
| of services building a profile on my viewing habits and tastes,
| then sharing that data with other businesses and governments. If
| I want a recommendation, I'll ask a friend, not an algorithm.
| loughnane wrote:
| This to me is the biggest feature I'd love to see in paid
| services. It skeeves me out to know that everything I watch or
| listen to is recorded.
|
| That and owning the media.
| seany wrote:
| Back?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Piracy offers:
|
| 1. Unrestricted access to an absolutely huge library of movies,
| music and TV shows, nearly unlimited. Certainly not limited by
| opaque "licensing deals" between various companies.
|
| 2. Highest resolution/bitrate/quality that was available at the
| time of the work's original release.
|
| 3. No arbitrary device/OS limitations.
|
| 4. Can watch/listen/download from any location on earth with
| sufficient bandwidth.
|
| I didn't even mention that it's free or that there are no ads,
| because that's pretty much the least important attribute to me.
| If any company came out with a service that offered those four
| points, I'd probably be willing to pay a lot for it. How much?
| Who knows, we don't know how much this is worth because nobody is
| even trying to offer it.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| Physical media offers the first three, but not option four.
|
| I, too, would pay per show/movie to download and save DRM-free
| videos to my own drives.
| yunwal wrote:
| Physical media has arbitrary device limitations.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| and arent' there retro-active device blocklists on bluray?
| I seem to recall sth of the sort. Sure, they can be
| circumvented, but then why bother buying in the first place
| if you're gonna be the bad guy anyhow?
| noselasd wrote:
| It fails on all of them if it's not available to purchase,
| and none of them are of relevance if I want it right now vs
| having to wait 1-7 days to get hold of that physical copy and
| there's an easier alternative where I can have it right now.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| The elder might remember a time where you could drive to a
| place and rent physical copies of a movie.
|
| But of course, these places dried out a long time ago.
| wingworks wrote:
| In NZ we have aliceinvideoland.co.nz which overnights you
| x DVDs. They have a pretty extensive library and a lot of
| lesser known and local content.
|
| I used them for a few years, they are great and I'm happy
| to see they're still around.
| wrasee wrote:
| Supply and demand might argue that if there was real demand for
| something like this that people were actually willing to pay a
| lot of money for, then the market would be all too happy to
| provide.
|
| I think the inconvenient truth here is that when anyone has got
| close to doing such a thing the price has been high enough that
| it turns out nobody actually turns up to pay for it, not at
| least outside a small niche.
| franciscop wrote:
| IMHO not really, supply here is the limiting factor since the
| constrain is in licensing the work. The goal of the right
| holders is not to maximize access to the work or those stated
| by OP, but to maximize profit for the company, which when at
| odds with those other goals still prevails.
|
| e.g. someone calculated/believes that having a big catalog
| from Disney at X/month is more worth more for Disney than
| sublicensing to Netflix at Y/month.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> having a big catalog from Disney at X/month is more
| worth more for Disney than sublicensing to Netflix at
| Y/month.
|
| But sometimes that leads to really stupid things. At one
| time all Star Trek TV shows were on Paramount while all the
| movies were only on Max. I believe they're all owned by
| Paramount, but apparently the shoes are the big draw (the
| new series "Picard" was exclusively on Paramount) and they
| could get more profit by putting the movies elsewhere and
| collecting a bit more than if it were all on their service.
| GAK!
| l72 wrote:
| I really wish we had laws that producers of content cannot
| also be distributors. That just creates perverse incentives
| to use content to lock people into their distribution
| platform.
|
| If they had to be separate, that gives content producers
| the ability to cross license and those licenses to be
| better deals. We'd actually have competition in
| distribution companies as distribution providers would then
| be competing on price, quality, convenience, and other
| things that matter, not locking content away.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I really wish we had laws that producers of content
| cannot also be distributors.
|
| We have laws like that for beer and cars, and they're
| disasters in both cases.
|
| Why would we want to implement an incredibly stupid idea
| a third time?
| wrasee wrote:
| Yes I considered the same but decided to keep the point
| simple.
|
| And I still can't help but think that if there really was a
| large market of people willing to pay a premium for a more
| permissive access model then we might already see trends in
| this direction. My hunch is the most folk don't really care
| and price remains the dominant factor.
|
| The essential point of the article was that it's higher
| prices that's pushing people towards piracy (either through
| price rises or fragmented subscriptions). It wasn't that it
| is the restrictive streaming model that is pushing people
| towards piracy.
|
| I'm fact it was precisely this restrictive streaming model
| that was the one to finally beat piracy. At low prices,
| that's already been proven and it's higher prices that is
| brining piracy back.
| wrasee wrote:
| Unpopular opinion here but I wonder how much of the
| justification for piracy in this thread, broadly around
| what is perceived to be unfair business practices ("if
| only the terms were fairer and I would pay"), would
| actually stand up if the terms were actually fairer but
| the prices higher.
|
| Or how much is really just the simple rational economic
| idea that piracy is better value for money.
| cyberax wrote:
| I personally buy physical media (BluRays and/or DVDs).
| But I often feel too lazy to deal with the content
| ripping, so I just download it.
|
| I like Youtube Premium and I'm gladly paying for it,
| although I'm considering switching to an alternative
| YouTube client because the official YT App is crap. But
| then the creators will lose income from my subscription.
|
| Sigh. I wish content providers just gave us API to get
| the content in exchange for payment.
| sneak wrote:
| Nah; copyright is a monopoly on specific media/titles. It
| breaks all of the "market willing to provide" mechanics
| because there is no free market for Star Wars, it's Disney or
| FOAD.
|
| Pray they do not alter it further.
| CivBase wrote:
| Bingo. When distributors get exclusive rights to media,
| there is no competition anymore. You either do whatever the
| publisher wants, pirate, or go without.
| area51org wrote:
| The aggravating part about this: that was not the
| intention of the copyright clause. "To promote the
| Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for
| limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive
| Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
|
| Authors and inventors. Authors and inventors.
|
| Not companies. Not entities, or even individuals, who
| purchased the "rights" and now "own" works. That has
| nothing to do with the intent here, which was to
| encourage actual authors and inventors to make more
| stuff. Walt Disney has been gone for more than half a
| century; he's not going to be able to come up with
| another Mickey Mouse.
|
| "Intellectual property" is an oxymoron. Pray, tell me,
| which part of my brain does Disney own? Do they own the
| part that knows what Mickey Mouse looks like?
| l72 wrote:
| You have to have real options or people can't make informed
| decisions.
|
| I have a background in city planning, and in the US, you'll
| constantly hear about how trying to make cities more friendly
| to pedestrians, bicycles, or public transit is a waste
| because no one uses it. But the truth is, most people will
| end up using the system you design. If you build a system
| just for cars, people will use cars. If you build a city
| around public transportation, people will happily use it. If
| you build a walkable city, people will walk.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Great analogy. I'm visiting a particularly car-centric city
| atm, and from the car driver's perspective, "nobody uses
| the bike lanes, I never see them, so why build them, it
| constrains traffic". Well ya, there's so much car traffic
| because it's car-first, and nobody wants to be around tons
| of cars, not even people in cars. It's like arguing that
| you never see cyclists on the freeway, therefore nobody
| likes biking and we should discourage it.
| cyberax wrote:
| > If you build a walkable city, people will walk.
|
| No, they won't. If you build a walkable city and then make
| it impossible to do anything else, then people will walk.
|
| It's a subtle difference, but it's there.
| hxtk wrote:
| Streaming services were great back when they were separate
| from content producers and IP holders.
|
| Once every media company became a streaming company and
| started using anticompetitive licensing practices in an
| attempt to drive viewership to their own platforms, the
| market fractured too much for it to be profitable.
|
| Something smells "prisoner's dilemma" about it: the best move
| for any individual streaming service is to have exclusive
| content (and the best-positioned players to do that are the
| studios), but when everyone does that, it decreases the
| overall profit available in the market more than it increases
| their slice of the pie.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| > more than it increases their slice of the pie.
|
| That's the part that might not be true, unfortunately. If
| each individual content producer sees more return on their
| own streaming service than they did sharing revenue from
| one of the independent services, then that's better for
| them, even if the total pie got smaller. If that wasn't the
| case, you'd think we'd see some of them shut their services
| down and go back to independent services once their income
| drops.
|
| Sacrificing a wide audience to extract more from the most
| dedicated portion of the fanbase isn't an entirely new
| concept, and it financially makes sense short-term (until
| you start losing some of those dedicated fans over time and
| don't have the mindshare outside your bubble to attract new
| ones).
| Levitz wrote:
| Supply and demand rules go out the window when the product is
| infinitely replicable.
| 8fingerlouie wrote:
| >I didn't even mention that it's free or that there are no ads
|
| It's free in the same way shoplifting is free, until you get
| caught. You are very much in violation of copyright laws if you
| pirate.
| kaliqt wrote:
| Only consequences, physically speaking the two are not the
| same at all.
|
| Copying of anything digital is not actual theft, nor will it
| ever be.
| ryandrake wrote:
| "You wouldn't download a car!"
|
| Wait, I absolutely would download a car if I could... or
| food... or clothing... I'd download the shit out of
| physical goods if the technology existed. Who wouldn't? You
| could solve scarcity. If we had Star Trek Replicators, we'd
| be living in a literal utopia.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Thanks to 3D printing this is starting to become reality
| and not just science fiction.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| The "download" catchphrase is a joke, it was originally
| "You wouldn't steal a car", which I'd argue is true for
| most people.
| robertoandred wrote:
| Do you sneak into concerts or hop turnstiles too?
| nh23423fefe wrote:
| no true scotsman
|
| wordsmithing on theft is the only defense thieves have
| hbn wrote:
| If buying things at the store was as painful as watching
| stuff on streaming services, and shoplifting was as low risk
| as torrenting, and my stealing an item didn't make that item
| disappear from the store, I'd probably do it there too.
| xyproto wrote:
| It's not comparable, because copying a bread with a bread
| copying machine should be completely fine.
| ted_bunny wrote:
| Thank god they overturned Butter Krust v. Jesus Christ!
| Levitz wrote:
| I can name at least one country in the European Union in
| which torrenting copyright content for personal use is legal,
| people still do very much use spotify and netflix.
|
| Gabe Newell got it right from the very start, piracy is a
| service problem.
| DHRicoF wrote:
| Netflix and to some level spotify drowned piracy for a time.
| But then a lot of companies tried to rap the same "winings"
| splitting the ecosystem and trashing the user experience.
|
| - ?could we watch x movie? - let me see. no, it in this other
| service beside the 3 we are paying.
| phkahler wrote:
| At some point I'm willing to just pay a few dollars for a
| movie. But even then you cant get them all in one place! And
| they like to charge a premium for some. Im not paying a
| premium for anything I've already seen a while back.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| In the beginning, Netflix was great. Then they became a media
| company and suddenly EVERYTHING they push on you is THEIR
| stuff. Gone are the days where you could remember a cool
| movie and pull it up on Netflix like Fandango or Corvette
| Summer. I remember going back and watching several seasons of
| the original Miami Vice back when nobody knew who Michael
| Mann was.
|
| Not its exactly as you say, you want to watch something but
| its not on any of the streaming services you're already
| paying for. I've started to just think of a movie I want to
| watch, go out to Pirate Bay, download it and then stream it.
| When I'm done? Delete it.
|
| Its good to know I'm not the only one who has gone back to
| downloading movies.
| hbn wrote:
| Don't forget censorship-free
|
| I swore off streaming services when they started pulling
| episodes of comedy shows and editing out scenes because they
| were worried someone might be offended
| ethersteeds wrote:
| Fair to be upset. Just noting that has been happening for
| about the whole history of televised comedy:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smothers_Brothers_Comedy.
| ..
| l72 wrote:
| They also often time have versions of old movies and shows
| that have been modified due to silly things like license
| agreements on music expiring! I have felt gaslighted when I
| rewatch and old movie and some scene isn't how I remember.
| macNchz wrote:
| I was so surprised and bummed when I discovered this was a
| thing. My wife and I started watching the original Beverly
| Hills 90210--a sort of ridiculous snapshot of American pop
| culture in the early 1990s--on some streaming service, and
| after a few episodes I noticed the music was just...super
| wrong.
|
| Reading online, I learned that a lot of the original music
| had been licensed only for the original run of the show, so
| even when it went to DVD in the early 2000s they had to
| remove a whole bunch of the original music. It's terrible
| on two fronts: one, the show is an awesome snapshot of 90s
| music, with tons of great stuff featured both as background
| music and in extended live performances, but they cut whole
| scenes and entire episodes that had too much of it, and
| two, whoever managed the process of picking replacement
| music clearly did not care at all, and used awful generic
| music that sounds like it came from a file called
| "BeachRiff.aiff" on a $29.95 CD library of royalty-free 60
| second stock music samples.
|
| I admit to finding a source of video files patched together
| from various sources with the original soundtracks intact,
| and it's simply MUCH more enjoyable. It seems, though, that
| some episodes of live performances are lost to time--or at
| least lost to the corporate owners who'd rather sit on the
| tapes in a warehouse somewhere than make them available.
| nosioptar wrote:
| That's a problem that predates streaming.
|
| There's at least one ALF ('86-90)episode that you can only
| get the uncensored version via piracy.
|
| (Episode in question is Try to Remember. ALF originally got
| an electric shock. It quickly got censored in reruns to have
| ALF slip and hit his head because the network worried kids
| would get shocked emulating ALF.)
| chongli wrote:
| _2. Highest resolution /bitrate/quality that was available at
| the time of the work's original release._
|
| Arguably higher. For example, fans of Star Wars have scanned
| the original 1977 theatrical release with very high quality
| film scanners and created a 4K release complete with film grain
| and the original scenes intact which is not available through
| approved channels.
| greazy wrote:
| Wow. I thought it was impossible to watch the original
| release of star wars. I need to hunt this down.
| amgutier wrote:
| "4k77" should get you to the right places
| jnaina wrote:
| Yup. Team Negative One are doing some very important work
| in terms of film preservation/digital archeology.
| nosioptar wrote:
| There's also a DVD release of the theatrical versions.
| Usually goes for $50-75 for OG trilogy.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Who knows, we don't know how much this is worth because
| nobody is even trying to offer it.
|
| Note that this was the original concept of Netflix's streaming
| service. The service got steadily dismantled as copyright
| holders demanded higher fees.
|
| Which means that we _do_ have a good idea how much it 's worth;
| it should lie between the range of what Netflix was able to
| sell successfully and what they weren't.
| jfghi wrote:
| Also doesn't track user and send a bunch of telemetry
| vgb2k18 wrote:
| Except for our ip address, timestamp and torrent metadata
|
| https://iknowwhatyoudownload.com
| wiredpancake wrote:
| All of which could be solved via a VPN of Seedbox.
|
| The point being, my movements around the homepage aren't
| tracked and used for pushing more ads. My microphone isn't
| being recorded for AI training or recommendations
| algorithms. The intricate ways I use the platform isn't
| being sold to some third party data company. I just open
| the film, and it works..
|
| Your IP address being logged in a bittorrent swarm is far
| less concerning to me than the 100 page privacy policy
| which explains how they will take rectal scans and sell
| them to cancer research agencies or something.
| marak830 wrote:
| Subtitles is a big one for me. I can stream something in Japan,
| that I have seen other places has english subs, but due to
| licensing I cannot see them.
|
| I know I could vpn around this, but why should I pay even more
| just for subtitles?
|
| In the end I'm paying for Netflix, Disney and Amazon. My son
| uses those as he is bilingual, I just pirate what I want to
| watch personally.
| wingworks wrote:
| This is kinda what netflix was for many peak for a brief moment
| in time. It wasn't perfect, but it was pretty great, it had
| most of what you wanted to see. Then EVERY studio wanted their
| own meh streaming system, and fragmented the system again.
| molszanski wrote:
| Also in any language. I am so tired of reading a list of
| audio/subtitles languages available, only to find out that they
| don't work after purchase. Am all platforms. Good lord. Just
| tired of that bs
| pluc wrote:
| What gets to me is exclusivity deals. Wanna watch this?
| Subscribe to that. Wanna watch that? Well itnisnt available on
| this so you'd have to subscibe to that. New streaming service
| launches with promotional exclusivity of something you like?
| Gotta get on that too. And don't get me started on sports!
|
| Streaming was OK when it was fighting cable, because it was
| cheaper and on-demand. With the constant greed, we're back to
| paying more than we used to pay for cable, it doesn't make
| sense anymore.
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| In the end, people will use what is easiest to use.
|
| The entertainment industries are going to need to come up with a
| solution fast.
|
| If they can't find a way to make it so that you can sign up once
| and get all the content you need, they are screwed.
|
| I cancelled Netflix years ago when they started blocking VPNs,
| limiting me to their extremely limited Australian library.
| wltr wrote:
| Oh, I have a question to all of the people who pirate but live in
| a country where that's illegal and punished (with huge fines, I
| assume). I'm very interested in listening to some stories of how
| it's technically done (vpn, a seedbox, or you just keep things
| simple and don't care). E.g. I've been trying sophisticated
| backlists of IPs, but I have no idea whether they work. But even
| more I am interested in a legal aspect, meaning how serious these
| copyright claims are. Do you know anyone personally, who was
| punished for downloading a TV show? Which country? Personally, I
| know many folks who do, but none who was fined.
| tstrimple wrote:
| With torrents you'll want a VPN. Usenet is generally safe just
| thanks to TLS unless you're uploading content. For that I'd use
| a VPN. But unlike torrent, Usenet isn't P2P so I can just
| download at my full internet bandwidth and don't need to hope
| there are enough seeders out there maintaining it or that I
| maintain some magic upload / download ratio.
| can16358p wrote:
| I rarely watch something off Netflix. And when I watch something
| I love watching in highest quality (4K HDR if available). If
| they'd let me pay-as-I-watch I'd be happy to do so, but I don't
| want to pay every month for a service I rarely use, and sometimes
| never for a few months.
|
| Another reason is availability. Apple TV+, for some reason, isn't
| available in my country. I've heard great thing about Severance
| which is available only there. I can't legally watch it even if I
| were to pay it. I'd _have to_ pirate it if I want to watch it.
| Alex_L_Wood wrote:
| My pet peeve is when streaming services only allow me to watch
| something in the language of the country I live in. I'm sorry,
| but why? Why would I want to watch a 1988 movie with horrible
| German dub?
| tkz1312 wrote:
| is buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing :)
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| i for I, ... quit Netflix and Prime (and deleted AirBNB and UBER)
| because they are US companies, and second ... all of what
| ryandrake said https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44906021
| easwee wrote:
| Driving back???
| downrightmike wrote:
| All streaming services should just interoperate, Give me access
| to everything, and just charge based on title to who ever has it.
| l72 wrote:
| If they were willing to sell movies and tv shows WITHOUT DRM, I'd
| happily buy what I want and put on my Jellyfin server. I don't
| pirate music because I can buy what I want on Bandcamp (and even
| mainstream music on apple and Amazon without drm).
|
| But since I can't (and you can't even find physical media for a
| lot of things), I feel like I am left with no options.
|
| I am not even trying to get stuff that is recent, as I prefer to
| wait, especially for tv shows, to finish its run before I decide
| if it is worth investing my time in.
|
| I mostly go to the library every week and pick up movies and tv
| shows on Blu-ray and rip them so I can watch them on my schedule.
| I often delete them afterwards if I feel like they don't have
| replay value.
|
| I think Jellyfin also provides a much better interface than any
| of the streaming apps, and I like to be able to know if I am
| going to watch them on my theatrical version or some extended
| version.
| panarchy wrote:
| Streaming services surprised that customers left them like they
| left cable TV for them once they turned into cable TV.
| revlolz wrote:
| Pay a bunch of money to Disney+ to watch any popular release and
| get terrible streaming quality and functionality. It makes
| complete sense to me why consumers would toss their hands up and
| find better and more accessible options.
| wslh wrote:
| One friend, who is a film enthusiast, told me that he doesn't
| understand why there aren't more titles on the streaming services
| vs. the scale of albums on Spotify. He often download old and new
| movies via Torrent.
| zamadatix wrote:
| This mirrors my experience as well. I used to pirate everything,
| it was relatively inconvenient to get the exact thing you wanted
| on physical media. Then streaming, Steam, and app stores came
| about. I pivoted 100%, it was sooo much more convenient than
| trying to find legitimate and quality copies of content and
| managing a set up to do so.
|
| Then the streaming side started to fragment a bit, but I just
| grabbed all of the subscriptions (HBO, Hulu, YouTube, Netflix,
| etc). It was getting a bit iffy on value, but at least it was
| still convenient. Now it's just ridiculously _in_convenient.
| Search around to see which service might have the thing you're
| actually trying to watch and use this device with this app to get
| a decent quality version of the content delivered, all while
| hoping it doesn't force automatic quality "for your benefit".
| With Steam it's a bit less severe, but it did reach the "and the
| games you want are split across 5 services in exclusivity" and
| "DRM is getting to be an extreme pain on some of these" stages.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Now more than ever before, for me, it's exclusively because of UX
| and not price.
|
| The most recent example: every Star Trek (TNG, Voyager, etc) on
| Netflix simply _doesn't work_ on my Chromecast.
|
| After a minute the video goes all screwy, split 1/3 across the
| screen and loses half its colour. But this doesn't happen with
| Plex.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Thank God for VLC, the greatest app ever created!
|
| https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
| djfobbz wrote:
| Oh, this one's spicy! Looks like the industry goons are back out
| with their swords.
| stargrazer wrote:
| I wouldn't have minded the newly inserted ads in Netflix or Prime
| Video. But they just throw the ads in during mid-sentence. Are
| they putting ads in using a random number generator? What
| happened to the accepted practice of putting in ads where they
| natural break occurs? It really throws out the flow of the
| moment. Major irritation. You know, how TV and Cable typically
| have done it.
| privatelypublic wrote:
| My decision on this matter was made when MGM kept running the
| "ok, who wants SG-1 exclusivity this year?" Gauntlet.
|
| I have to wonder if Amazon bought them just to stop playing the
| game. (I doubt it)
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