If you follow some of the links to pirate sites in the article you’ll get redirected to some anti-piracy site which amongst other things tells you this:
Bitch … that’s literally the reason I pirate.
Now only 1400$ a month to watch any show at 480p! Upgrade now to 2100$ per month for the high resolution videos? Can’t afford it? Just get another job you lazy hobo!
Not so fast now! High resolution video only available on edge on windows
unintelligible screaming
Or, fill your phones, laptop and streaming devices with 1000 of our proprietary apps! Your personal information and viewing habits get sent 1000 ways from Sunday thanks to all the Privacy Policies you agreed to~
Uh, ok
The problem isn’t the number of providers, the problem is exclusive licensing deals.
If it was like music, then (theoretically), more choice is better. AFAIK all the platforms have pretty much all the music, so there is some choice available.
With TV and film, it’s so fractured that it’s literally easier to just pirate things, even for shows I (potentially) have ad-free paid access to already. With Stremio + Torrentio + a Debrid service, I just launch one app and everything’s available in seconds. With paid services, I need to search Netflix, then Prime, then CBC Gem, by which point I’d already be watching.
Plus, torrentio lets me pick the video quality I want, so I can force 4K H265 on my big screen for films or just pop on a 720p H264 on my small underpowered laptop (that can’t decode H265 fast enough for smooth playback).
It’s not even about price, it’s just a better experience to pirate. And that’s a Big Problem for the industry.
They keep telling us that we can’t own or preserve media. We strongly disagree.
My mind is turning on the piracy front. I’ve paid for Netflix for like a decade, and it was good.
I tried not to pirate, but there was no legal way to stream Game of Thrones, so we would do watch parties. Eventually HBO came to Canada through bell and I could watch it online.
That moment was pretty great, I could watch all my shows, and HBO, and Netflix was putting out some strong content.
Then everyone decided they wanted a piece of the pie. Netflix has continued increasing prices while everyone pulled their content out, Amazon turned prime video into a roulette wheel of “can I watch this or not”, and Disney+ launched and very quickly turned into only shovelling garbage quality star wars and marvel projects, and now everyone is stuffing ads into their shitty content fiefdoms.
We’re back to where piracy is the better experience and now I can’t watch the content I want because it’s at most 2 shows a year per platform.
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To be fair, streaming was never buying. It was always paying entry to a library. If stuff gets removed from the library that’s the way it is.
That isn’t to say I don’t agree. Piracy is a service problem, as Gabe Newell so eloquently put it. Streaming started losing the moment it started splintering into cable networks.Sony allowed you to purchase episodes and seasons of shows like Mythbusters. They specifically stated you were purchasing that content.
Then they removed that purchased content from people’s account’s after they went separate ways with Discovery. Sony and Discovery stole from their customers
Yea, that’s just plain stupid of them. I don’t know how they expected that to go over.
Oh yes, I bought that content, but sure, take it away. I totally understand that the licensing changed.
– No one, ever
Media companies, “We are losing money because people don’t want to pay.”
Or just maybe, your product sucks and people are finding alternatives to avoid dealing with you.
Currently pirating or streaming from a secondary site is faster, better quality, and easier to use. It’s really not that hard to figure out.
Yup. You can pay Netflix for 4K, but you can only get 4K with Edge on Windows and even then only if you have the right hardware. Like, what’s the point? On Linux you can only get 1080p by spoofing your just agent. Otherwise they only give you 720p.
Had a very similar experience at the end of last year. Was sick of the bullshit all the providers were pulling and set up jellyfin.
Now running that on a pi so we’ve got our own streaming platform with movies and shows that you’d either need at least three separate services for or just outright won’t find if you don’t pirate.
Disney+ is the only one i subscribe to here in BC. Since it comes combined with STAR (almost-Hulu) it is a fair value. TV service from Telus is stupid expensive and I still would not get to watch my hockey team. Not that I want to right now with them backpedalling so fast. Fucking Kings…
Have they considered offering better content and services than the free options?
Gabe said it best! “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
I’ve dropped something like 5 services in the last year and a half no the last year, due to the declining quality of their offerings, both in user interface, user experience, and content. EDIT: And price hikes!
So every movie/show for less than $50/year + time spent setting up arrs lol
Honestly, this assumes that the content is even worth that. The older I get, the more conscious I am that my time left is constantly shrinking. Do I really wanna spend 3 hours watching a shitty movie? Do I really wanna spend 6-12 hours watching a shitty season of a shitty show? Nah, I’d rather enjoy an active activity than passively pass the time. I’ll pay a little for the little amount of content I care about at a time to be presented in a convenient way. I’m probably not gonna pirate until they make it impossible to cycle between services, and I’m sure that’s coming within a few years. Get ready for 2 year contracts for Netflix, $8/month (“for the first 6 months” in tiny print).
I think I’m too young and naive to think like that haha
For now. My knees and back ache, I don’t understand a lot of new slang and memes, I have pairs of “good socks”, and it’ll all happen to you one day too.
Thanks grandpa! I’m kidding I’m kidding, I know, my time will come, not looking forward to it
Even that cost and arrs aren’t strictly necessary. For those who like to binge their shows, most of them get a “complete” version on most good torrent sites once they’re done releasing (let’s not get started on the cousin-fucking yeehaw lissencephalic level of thinking it takes to release streamed shows weekly). Download those, watch them, preserve what you think you’ll rewatch in the future then delete the rest. So long as your machine has a good few terrabytes it’ll last some time.
Yeah I referred to usenet by default that’s why the cost 😅
Fair. I’d assumed it was a rough amount for the electricity bill increase for running a home server
In fact the easier option is anti-piracy technology. As shown by the continued investment in various DRM vendor offerings. Competing on service quality is very hard.
If they can’t make money while they’re charging us, how are the pirates so good at it?
sparking concerns on Wall Street that the services will never be as profitable as cable once was
Obligatory fuck Wall Street
All my homies hate wall street
Yeah this was the entire reason streaming was successful. It was cheaper than cable. Did they think more money would appear from nothing?
They always think that.
Money from nothing and the clicks for free *guitar riff*
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don’t restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
Piracy is about ease of use (it’s getting even easier), and about value. DRM has repeatedly been shown to hurt only the people who try to pay for legitimate access. Not a single time has it prevented me from getting a copy of something if I wanted to, and it’s clearly not stopping people from providing those copies or streams.
So stop wasting bathtubs of money on stopping piracy, but maybe take a few less buckets of money from consumers in exchange for your service. As long as you price it such that the cost of being legit can’t compete with the ease of use and value from piracy, some folks aren’t going to make the choice you want them to.
Some folks won’t be able to spend on your service anyway, because they just can’t afford it - but they still might buy other merchandise, they can still spread how great your show is to their friends who possibly will subscribe to your service, but regardless you aren’t going to get their dollars no matter what you do. So stop trying.
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don’t restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
They had achieved this just a short time ago, and their subscriptions and profit reflected that consumers were happy with the offerings. But the studios wanted MORE, and now everything is fragmented across a dozen different services with increased subscription fees, and geo-locks so you can’t share accounts. I was paying almost $100 per month for subscriptions at one point, and then they fragmented it further and I said “fuck it, I’m out!”. I cancelled everything. They think they can endlessly exploit their consumers, and maybe there is a sub-section of them that will endure never ending fragmentation and price increases, but I’m not one of them. Bye!
What’s a reasonable price to you? Can you apply this same value to everyone? Seems like just about anything is easy to access through various services except for maybe some niche stuff. I don’t think being “easy” is quite enough. People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.
140$ to have all streaming apps, on many different app, is not reasonable.
Do you need all of them at once? It’s ok to rotate. I subscribe to different things at different times. I still download stuff if, either what i have access to isn’t good enough or if i just can’t find what I’m looking for through conventional means.
Needing to rotate just makes it inconvenient. More inconvenient than pirating unfortunately
Dunno. Less than what things cost now? I think knocking down the geographic restrictions and letting people watch it on any device or OS that can connect are likely bigger fights than pricing, if the industry actually cared to solve the problem.
It’s not as if we don’t have examples of this. Yes, some people still pirate music. Roughly 20 years ago, almost literally everyone with the knowhow was pirating music. (And with services like kazaa, emule, etc, it took very little knowhow)
You know what didn’t solve it? Prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM.
What solved it was when Apple started selling legit music for 99 cents per track, and keeping album costs reasonable. (Much as I hate to give apple any credit.) Spotify, amazon, etc all got on board, and now almost no one pirates music. (I pre-apologize for whatever detail I misremembered there - that was a long time ago.)
Am I saying that exact model will apply to video streaming services? No, but what’s not going to do it is prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM. We have decades of proof of this.
People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.
Some people will pirate no matter what. You can worry about them, or you can worry about everybody else. At some point (and I suspect we’re well past it) the return on investment has got to start looking pretty bad for all the money and technology they have tried to throw at piracy.
Thanks for the reply! Valid points. I was one of the ones that downloaded a ton of music before it was available at all, back in the Napster days. It’s harder for some reason with video. With the music they can just throw everyone’s stuff on there but video for some reason can only go to maybe a couple of services which really limits what some people have access to.
I don’t worry about the ones pirating at all, lol. I’m actually looking into setting up arr apps but my setup is not conventional so it will take some fiddling.
Sorry I didn’t mean you personally. I was speaking generally to the content providers. 😁
We managed it for music streaming for the most part.
Say it louder with me for the people in the back.
Piracy is not stealing.
“If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing.”
I gotta say I love this meme. I think about it every time a tech company does something really scummy to take away features and products that people have purchased (and not rented/leased).
I wouldn’t ever buy the content so it’s not a lost sale either. All I’ve done is copy a file. gasp
You’re not allowed to buy the content anyways. You’re only allowed to pay for the illusion of ownership, until they decide they don’t want to host it anymore, and then you lose it. They’re such bullshit artists that they redefine common words like “buy” and “own” in their ToS.
I believe their justification would be that you aquiring the media is a definite loss of sale vs you not subbing/buying the media is a potential sale in the future.
Edit: Not my opinion. Just imagining how they would justify it before court should it come to it.
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“Customers want to own their content”. It’s amazing to me that execs don’t grasp this? Or that they think if they stop allowing it people will stop caring, but maybe they will eventually. But it seems obvious, I’ve know many families that had massive dvd collections they were proud of. Bookshelves with dozens of books they probably never even read. It’s just comforting to have a thing and know it’s yours.
Every development in business consolidates their power and increases anxiety for the people.
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By that same rational: My not getting a raise is a lost sale because if I had more money I would buy more. So is corporate profit a lost sale?
i dunno i heard that you wouldn’t steal a car
Correct. I wouldn’t steal a car. But I would absolutely make a perfect copy of a car for free.
Just stopped in to say fuck you to the greedy motherfuckers who created a market for sharing massively overpriced content and now cry all over their piles of money cause they are BIGGER piles of money.
Which is to say: “Fuck you”.
What about the small, local services that are just trying to pay the broadcast production bills and make a little cash to become viable businesses?
Fuck those people too?
Because these piracy services also affect them. These services restream the content taking away revenue from the small streaming services. In many cases we’re talking about volumes less than 100. So these restream services pop up, illegally use trademarks and copyrighted materials to advertise, and can reduce volumes enough that they are no longer viable.
Sometimes these things affect regular people trying to make life work too. Not just billionaire assholes who legitimately deserve the criticism.
Would you really put the blame on piracy for that when there are conglomerates manipulating the entire market? I’m not doubting they exist, but can you name a small business streaming service that would be affected by pirate services? I have never heard of such a company. I’ve seen small streaming services utilized by libraries but they are on government contracts and tax funded as far as I know.
Local motorsports in the US.
It’s a whack-a-mole of services which restream content, but the piracy services are also subscription based.
Since the fruit hangs so low: Yes, small creators get affected by it as well.
But what do we say to cops that dont snitch on their “bad apple” colleagues? Correct, they are part of the problem.
So from that I deduce that small creators (like myself) need to stand up against these practices or be considered part of the problem.
Have a good one.
I don’t use these services, but after learning a bit about them I have to say I’d rather pay an honest thief than one who lies about ownership ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t use these services either, but my understanding is that some of these thiefs seem to not even have a profit model. One prominent streamer who I won’t name, “FZ”, as the kids call it, they don’t require registration and are allowing those who use ad-blockers to access the site.
I don’t understand why Hollywood is even going after these guys. Just wait for their lack of monetization sweeps them under.
That FZ fella sounds like he’s got a nonprofit I could donate to.
Why not name them? This isn’t reddit…
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No subscription fee to use Steam. Games are available to download and play offline. 3 clicks of the mouse to buy, install, and play a game. It’s so damn easy to use Steam, I don’t miss buying physical PC games and I certainly don’t miss rolling the dice on russian cracks.
Steam also has so many features that cracks usually can’t or don’t offer. Friends system, anticheat, workshop modding, cosmetics, multiplayer (although this is actually a case of it usually being locked behind Steam), fast updates, Proton, just to name a few.
Steam and Netflix are the sole reasons I stopped pirating as a teenager/young adult.
I canceled Netflix long ago at this point and have been on the brink of going back to pirating films/TV. Too many streaming services… it’s just like TV packages before Netflix disrupted the model.
Honestly, with services like Jellyfin/Plex and the Sonarr suite, pirating has never been more convenient.
I add something to my Plex watchlist, and it automatically appears on my Plex server in 1080p or 4K (whichever format I prefer, with subtitles and metadata ready to go,) in like 20 minutes. And I can stream that to as many devices as I want. Hell, I can even give friends access to my server, and I can access theirs too. All through a single UI, with no regional restrictions or “sorry you can’t watch that without signing into your home wifi, because we want to make sure you’re in the same household” BS.
Streaming services were supposed to save us from the hassle of physical media, and be better than cable TV…
This is exactly the route I’ve been thinking about heading!
The only viable strategy for Netflix in the long run to stay in the game is to exploit people’s FOMO. You’ll sell way more subscriptions if you have a hot brand new show that everyone wants to watch. There will always be pirates, so if they want to stay one step ahead of them, they have to make sure there’s an abundance of quality programming on their platform coming out pretty much constantly.
Eh, that only goes so far. Any appeal to their original content is eroded by their practices surrounding streaming packages.
I canceled when they bumped their price up a lot, and had it structured to where the HD streaming was paired with the package for a bunch of devices. It’s bullshit that they don’t allow HD streaming with a package with only 1 or 2 devices.
I am also deterred by their password sharing crackdown, because I used to share subscription payments with my brother in another household.
I read that they’re planning on doing away with the commercial free subscription, and I have no interest to resubscribe if it’s a payment plus commercial model.
The convince of having quality original content in one place is nullified by their sleazy bullshit practices. There’s no way that their “convince” outweighs the little effort it takes to pirate the content IMO.
Haven’t pirated a game since 2008. The same year i made a steam account. Coincidence?
Y’all fucked up by not leaving everything on Netflix.
The mystery of how movie companies can’t own cinemas but can own streaming services.
That illustration with the hook through the film reel is so clever, I love it.
I was hoping someone else would mention it. It’s quite cool.
Can someone list those piracy subscription services so we can avoid them as responsible citizens?
You should definitely avoid XtremeHD IPTV (http://xtremehdiptv.org/). For $15 a month, it’s way too cheap to offer all the live TV, movies, and series that it does. The article specifically mentions low pricing as a red flag, and I can definitely say that compared to what you’d normally pay for every live channel (including the premium ones and pay per view), series, and any just about any movie you can think of, this is most definitely a service that you should steer clear of.
Hey friend, I’m gonna PM you for some intel if you don’t mind!
IPTorrents is even worse at iptorrents.com for only $10/mo
Hey man I have a question for you! Is this service download only or does it offer streaming too? Seems like a traditional torrent site to me, but just wanted to ask! Limited info on the site obvi.
Yes. It seems to do IPTV as well.
Seems to be invite only at the moment according to their sign up page. Any way for you to send an invite?
Eh…I don’t know. I think there is. But IDK and it may run extra…IDK. I blatantly ignore that stuff.
I will look into that here in a minute. I will see what I can figure out.
The people who are stealing our movies and our television shows and operating piracy sites are not mom and pop operations,” says Charlie Rivkin, chief executive officer of the MPA, who adds that some of the operators also engage in drug trafficking, child pornography, prostitution and money laundering. “This is organized crime.”
I like how they always have to fabricate a connection to organized crime. Trying to convince the reader that is not just copyright infringement.
It’s projection.
Hollywood was founded on IP theft of European filmmakers’ work and funded by various mobs, which then went on to lobby (bribe) politicians into changing certain regulations on gambling in AZ, et al, to pave the way for Vegas and the like.
Fuck Hollywood with a rusty pineapple sideways.
There’s nothing more quintessentially American than pulling the ladder up behind you.
This has to be stopped. Just look at what Napster did to the music industry. That’s right, there used to be a music industry and now it’s just…gone. No more music, no more money to be made in music. Don’t let these evil streaming services do the same to poor defenceless Hollywood, bastion of women’s rights!
I haven’t been able to listen to music since year 2000 😢
Jokes aside, I have paid for Google’s music service since it launched (RIP Play Music), but I am a millisecond away from canceling my subscription because Google does not provide me with any way to randomize playlists. I don’t mean shuffle play. That shit is broken and always has been. It would not be a big deal if I could randomize my playlists on demand, but no.
There’s no such thing as pure randomness in computer science.
Pure randomness isn’t great for music playlists. The algo needs to account for recency so you don’t hear the same some 6 times in a row. Technically still random but no one wants that.
That’s the difference between randomizing a playlist and shuffle play. If you randomize a playlist, the songs will never repeat unless you have them in the list twice. YouTube Music’s shuffle play often plays the same twenty songs over and over out of a playlist with over six hundred songs.
I’ve still got some songs (including horrendously misattributed artists/titles) from limewire in my music library, all these years later.
I still have some too, but thanks to Musicbrainz it’s all tagged properly now. Guess System of a Down never made a Zelda techno after all.
