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.
Haha, they won’t even allow me to watch stuff on Netflix in 1080p because I use linux. Eat shit
😈
It’s so funny to me that we have to circumvent the site’s paywall in order to read an article about pirating.
Based as hell.
Lol, so true.
Though anymore I archive pretty much any article I share. I have a Macrodroid script to grab the link from my clipboard and send it to archive.ph and open it in a browser.
I’m currently setting up ArchiveBox for my own use too.
there’s a special place in heaven for people that link to archive sites to avoid paywalls
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.
They keep telling us that we can’t own or preserve media. We strongly disagree.
Oh no! Anyway dot jpeg
People need to expect to pay for art and entertainment. People should. It’s immoral and unethical to not pay for art and expect art to be there.
People also should be able to pay the artist directly and not some billion dollar company who continue to try to squeeze the artists and limit creativeness all in servitude to the almighty dollar (or any other currency)
Imagine paying $1 to each name that appears in the credits of a movie or tv show, which would be paying the artists directly for their work. It’s not feasible, but that’s what I read when folks toss out paying the artist directly.
Let’s assume that this hypothetical movie had 2,000 people working on it, which isn’t a crazy number to assume. You think people should pay $2,000 to watch a movie?
No, that’s exactly the point they were making.
But if we assume a movie that made a billion dollars, and assume a high ticket price like $20, then that’s 50 million tickets sold. That math only checks out if each person paid $0.01 per worker. If we cut out useless executives, that number goes way the fuck down. So yes, let’s pay artists directly, and we’ll save money at the same time. Even if it were a tenth of a penny to each credit per viewer, that’s $50k on average, which is higher than the actual average wage for crew.. I know actors and directors make more, but that’s why I’m not going so far as to say we should only pay $2 for a ticket.
So yes, let’s pay artists directly
Where does the money come from to actually make the movie?
Based on actual ticket prices, from producers that expect to triple their investment I guess. Us idiots are fantasizing about ~10% while they’re hitting triple digit percentages.
People need to expect to pay reasonable prices on a reasonable basis for art and entertainment, and pretending everyone should be cool with fifty different streaming services and never owning anything again is its own sort of immorality and lack of ethics.
Exactly, we’re not paying for the art, we’re paying for a limited license to view art that has already been made.
Not to mention I don’t mind paying when I know the artists who do the work will get a bigger cut than the guy who owns the servers they’re hosted on.
I have no problem paying for such things.
But when the distributors block access, and tell me buying ain’t owning by removing access to what I’ve paid for, well fuck 'em.
I think most people would agree that artists should be fairly paid for their work. But when greedy, profiteering corporations are the ones commissioning and profiting from art, then IMO we have a moral duty to fuck with their exploitative business model.
And art should be accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. There’s a reason that piracy almost died out completely and then came back with a vengeance. People don’t mind paying a reasonable price for art, the prices and accessibility of art has just become unfeasible.
I agree with you.
But we had a situation where consumers were happy and were paying for content, piracy dropped off, and it was insanely profitable for Netflix.
Then everyone got greedy and stuck their dicks in the pie and ruined it, and this is the backlash.
If you buy content digitally, it gets pulled from your library without your consent or recourse. If you steam you’re paying more and more for less.
What we had was good, now none of my friends talk about TV shows because it starts with “hey, did you watch X, it’s on paramount?” “No”, “oh, nevermind”.
I don’t disagree, but isn’t there something to be said for denying people access to the popular culture based on their ability to pay for it?
Not particularly. Things generally cost money. It’s not a human rights violation to say you can’t see a movie if you have zero dollars.
So then we don’t worry about people’s ability to engage in their communities through shared experiences and exposure to arts and culture, we just leave people out? Exclude them if they’re poor. I don’t think I care for that to be honest.
It’s a tragedy of the commons - as an economics problem it matters, sure, but copyright is an artificial monopoly, not a human right. We could provide these more efficiently with public funding of the arts or crowdfunds, without the need to make up imaginary property with imaginary ethics.
But if you want to sign up for a bunch of subscriptions because some might trickle down to the writers, be my guest.
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.
So every movie/show for less than $50/year + time spent setting up arrs lol
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
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 posting 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
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~
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 + Torrential + 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 let’s 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.
Aren’t they still releasing mostly to cinemas?
It sure is fascinating how surges in the usage of pirate platforms tend to coincide with eras of worsening value proposition in entertainment. We should really get some top notch analysts on this to get an explanation.
Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao
Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao
For several years (at least half a decade) I used a service that provided live TV for most major networks, and reliable, easy to access streaming of literally every televised sport I ever heard of, and many that I didn’t know existed or didn’t expect to be televised.
It was easy to use, had all the live TV we cared for (incl and especially sporting events, which was the only thing we weren’t already getting by legit streaming services or other means, and which we cared about watching live vs later ) for 30 bucks a month. I started using it right after I forked out a couple hundred bucks to the NHL only to find that doing so just made it so that it cost me a lot of money to be blacked out from the games we cared to watch.
It was what we all want streaming services to be - reliable, comprehensive, high quality, easy to use, and cheap.
That’s why.
Edited to add - the service went down last year. I know of no similar replacement, but given this article they must exist.
You should definitely avoid http://xtremehdiptv.org/ It’s about half the price you were paying and has live TV, movies and series.
How do younpay for these services? I’d imagine you might not want to use your credit cards.
Convenience, I’d imagine. Not everybody wants to deal with ads or self-hosting.
I also know someone that subs to a pirate streaming site that they use for learning English. It has a solid library but also has dual subtitles on everything and categories based on vocabulary difficulty and accents. It’s cheaper than a single legit subscription, but has way more value (both the language stuff and the massive pirated library).
Real-debrid is worth paying for imo
