Haha, they won’t even allow me to watch stuff on Netflix in 1080p because I use linux. Eat shit
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?
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~
They keep telling us that we can’t own or preserve media. We strongly disagree.
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.
sparking concerns on Wall Street that the services will never be as profitable as cable once was
Obligatory fuck 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*
All my homies hate wall street
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 wouldn’t ever buy the content so it’s not a lost sale either. All I’ve done is copy a file. gasp
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.
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.
Vote with your wallet, they told us.
Then they got massively butthurt when we voted with our wallets.
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.
Remember when they found out the dudes behind piratebay were like 3-5 hacktivist friends who made it in their free time lol?
Also what illegal subscriptions. Do they really think people pirate content for it to be sold and not shared?
People who pirate content don’t do it for free. It might be news to you, but piracy is a huge business.
Not for every average Hollywood movie ever.
There’s so many acronyms for the source because of how many people independently rip, not even including cam rips.
Now if it’s some big gun software like cobalt strike, then sure yeah people definitely charge.
But Movie and TV pirating is so easy, people regularly make their own rips and torrents.
Again, it might be news for you, but it’s a huge business with many layers. There are plenty of professional rippers and crackers who earn a living one way or another. There are plenty of underground translators and streamers. Ads, hostings, seed boxes, TV boxes, different partnerships - there’s a lot of money flowing.
Just go to any public tracker and you will see ads. Download some subtitles and they often contain ads as well. And then you have partnerships like targeted attacks on software developers, etc. Then there are normies who are getting scammed into buying pirated content for full retail price by physical media vendors. All kinds of handy people who will install you a dish to receive pirated satellite TV “for free”.
Adding to the discussion, if you want to watch anything that’s not mainstream (i.e. non-western, or arthouse), you’re basically supposed to either wait for it to stream on Mubi or get a Blu-ray/DVD (that are often out of circulation if it’s more than 5 years old). So the only real option is pirating.
One time I went to this unit of a store and the lady was unfamiliar with werner herzog. Not even in their system.
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!
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.
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.
When they remove access to content I paid for… Fuck em.
If buyin’ ain’t owning, piracy ain’t stealin’
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
