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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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. 😁
Can someone list those piracy subscription services so we can avoid them as responsible citizens?
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.
Haven’t pirated a game since 2008. The same year i made a steam account. Coincidence?
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.
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.
Subscriber fees? Who’s paying for pirated content?
EDIT:
Instead of paying for 50 streaming platforms, you pay for one that has it all. Convenient.
I didn’t know that was a thing. Good for people who want to toss a coin to your streamer, I guess.
Lots of people are. Real Debrid is the shit! It’s about $2.80 per month for the ability to stream pretty much everything. But ads? Nah, man. There are ads on the torrent sites, but none on streaming. Pirates are pretty ad-adverse.
Huh, never heard of that, it sounds pretty cool since it covers not just streaming movies, but downloads of games as well. I can definitely see the appeal.
Check out Stremio+Real-Debrid+Torrentio. It’s honestly better than any paid subscription you can get from the studios. Install it on something like a Chromecast 4k, or a Shield TV device, hook it up to your home entertainment system, and you’ve got yourself a bonafide real solution.
[Raises hand]
I don’t have time to fuck with managing a seedbox to make ratios and community participation bullshit (looking at you, abt). I don’t even have time to fight incompletes on a usenet block. Let me drop a Benjamin in your “donation” box every couple of years and I’ll cover part of the server as long as I can find what I need, when I want it, in the quality I’m looking for.
I have subscriptions to a few of the big boys through legal cross-marketing deals; it’s still better to know that my shows will be waiting for me on my server if and when I ever get around to watching them.
They make hardware with defects looking at you RROD and YLOD , they expect you to rebuy everything again every time there is a new console ( Nintendo). They remove your content that you have paid for from your library (Amazon, Sony, music from games), they alter the deal after purchase by instering DRM and shitty launchers and turn off servers (Ubisoft and EA). They lock you out of accessing stuff on devices you own with DRM (eg Netflix 4k on linux ).
Then we have regional releases, changes to privacy policies which we didn’t agree to when we signed up.
Add to the fact we’re being fucked over at every turn. The price of everything is increasing, housing is a mess, they’re fucking up the environment while record profits have been pouring in year on year.
They can go suck a lemon 🍋
I will only support FOSS and those who help further that goal such as valve. Otherwise it the high seas everyday.
🏴☠️✊
Oh no. Poor Hollywood.
Anyway…
Wtf, how can a post in a piracy group be a link to a site that won’t let you read an article unless you subscribe or create an account…?!
The same way I haven’t seen an ad in years, I also use a paywall bypass extension.
So I guess it skips my mind sometimes; when none of these sites have had paywalls for years.
I would argue a good chunk of the people here would prefer the OG link so they can archive it themselves (or make an offline .html copy directly)
Yeah, I understand. Sometimes, it just irritates me, so sorry for overreacting.
Does this extension work on android version of Firefox, and can you share it? Thx
Could you possibly share the extension? Asking for a friend
I am 100% unaffiliated w/ OP, but I would guess they use Magnolia’s bypass.
However; I am on v3.0.8.0 (2023-03-05), so I can’t speak for anything newer than that out of his/her repo or in the extension mentioned.
A fun reminder: always read what your extensions can do before yolo-clicking a download by a burner account.
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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”.
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.
