11 ms·

People will probably just torrent things again. In the minds of the vast majority of people piracy is a victimless crime. These people have only stopped piratin

People will probably just torrent things again. In the minds of the vast majority of people piracy is a victimless crime. These people have only stopped pirating because it's easier to pay and use Netflix. Guaranteed they'll go back to torrenting. Gabe Newell: "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

takeda 11y ago
They (I'm talking about publishers I don't believe this benefits Netflix in any way) are doing this at the time when Popcorn Time is available, and when you can add SuperRepo to Kodi and stream pirated movies from 1Channel. I mean at this point the only reason people would want to use Netflix is feeling guilty about pirating. But how can you feel guilty when publisher is constantly trying to screw you over?
- LeoNatan25 11y ago
  None of these streaming services offer quality streams. Terribly compressed "1080"p with some silly 2.1 downmix. There's more to Netflix than just "guilty". It's a genuine source for a relatively high quality material.
  - ultramancool 11y ago
    Yeah, if you want quality, use Usenet.
    - LeoNatan25 11y ago
      Usenet has become a cesspool of removed content and malware infected fakes for the most part (some password protected private posters exist, I am aware). It has become too famous for its own good. Private torrent trackers is where it's for me.
      - ultramancool 11y ago
        Use Sonarr and CouchPotato, it does all the work for you, if something fails it just gets another copy. You don't touch anything, just wait a few minutes and it works its magic. For TV at least, it's the perfect set up. If you're having takedown issues though you need a better provider.
        LeoNatan25 11y ago
        To be honest, I am good with the torrent trackers I have now. I have found the ones that take care of my niche interests (remux, usually).
  - sangnoir 11y ago
    Availability beats quality. Given the choice between not watching anything because it's not in your Netflix region, and streaming/torrenting, most people would choose the latter.
    - LeoNatan25 11y ago
      I'm not disputing that. I am arguing that given the choice of full Netflix library and the pirate streaming alternatives, there are more reasons to choose Netflix (or iTunes or Amazon) than just convenience.
- skrebbel 11y ago
  > I mean at this point the only reason people would want to use Netflix is feeling guilty about pirating. I don't think my Panasonic TV has a Popcorn Time app. Or my phone, for that matter.
  - roywiggins 11y ago
    Popcorn Time has both an iPhone and Android port.
    - dingo_bat 11y ago
      He was talking about his TV, which is unlikely to run iOS or Android. Even the TVs with Android probably cannot run all Android apps, you have to specifically target TVs.
      - roywiggins 11y ago
        I was addressing the "phone" part of it, really. PopcornTime works fine on phones. (I easily sideloaded it onto a set-top Android box, it works fine but you need a mouse or trackpad to navigate the interface. I think it would work fine on any semi-recent Android version)
  - takeda 11y ago
    You can get Fire TV or similar and install Kodi on it. You can also install it directly on many other Smart TVs (I know it is possible on Samsung) but it might take more effort.
- rhino369 11y ago
  From the IP holders point of view: Netflix streaming content they don't have the right to because the subscriber is using a VPN is no different than piracy. The subscriber is just paying a middleman (netflix) for it. But they see no money for it. This is because one company doesn't typically hold the IP rights world wide. Why does paying the wrong people make it better? >I mean at this point the only reason people would want to use Netflix is feeling guilty about pirating. That's ridiculous.
- jamespo 11y ago
  Exactly, you're entitled to take what you want when you want for nothing :/
  - jeena 11y ago
    Wait, I always thought Netflix was a payed service?
  - takeda 11y ago
    Pirating is not stealing, at most it is a lost sale for them. If I want to watch a movie, am willing to pay and they don't make it available to me, what can I do? They wouldn't get my money either way. They are hurting themselves.
0xffff2 11y ago
Again? I used to regularly check Netflix before Pirate Bay, but it's been so long since anything I wanted to watch was streamable on Netflix (and I'm in the US too) that I rarely bother anymore. Even at the best of times it was maybe 50/50. Hell, I torrented "The Man in the High Castle" even though I have Amazon Prime just because I didn't feel like installing Silverlight. Even when you are paying for the content, it can still be easier to watch via other means.
- neumann 11y ago
  same - we torrent content we have access to on Netflix and Amazon because, for some unknown reason, those services regularly degrade their video quality to 420p while torrents download at 1.4mb/s.
  - trvz 11y ago
    The problem is probably your ISP, check http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/ http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/.
    - soylentcola 11y ago
      Not surprising. We pay for cable (ugh, not my call) as well as Netflix and Amazon Prime. The cable box version of on-demand video is terrible because it's a cable box. The apps and websites are usually OK...except when they're not because Comcast is throttling or Amazon doesn't include Chromecast support in the mobile app so you have to cast the whole fullscreen browser tab. When I don't just plug the damn laptop in, I tend to just connect through VPN and despite the fact that it slows my connection down considerably, I can stream any of the shows I've paid for through Popcorn Time or any other streaming torrent client. A typical hour-long episode is usually finished downloading within the first few minutes of the show and it's all accessible in a single interface. My personal dream is that Comcast or one of these awful companies decides that they need to do a better job of pleasing customers and starts offering a legal PopcornTime/Netflix-style web interface to browse and stream all of the content you're already paying for. That is something I would actually want to subscribe to. Instead I pay, rarely torrent anything I don't have legal access to, and stream/download illegally just because it's easier and works better. I haven't gone as far as some friends who set up auto-downloaders for usenet or torrents so they always have the latest episodes sitting on their NAS as soon as they go up. But I've considered it.
vacri 11y ago
Gabe's spot on the money for my use case. I used to pirate games relentlessly, all the way back to Amiga 500 days. Then Steam came along, got relatively stable, and I've not pirated a game since. It's actually harder to get a pirated game now than one off Steam - you have to find a torrent or download location, find patches (if there are any), scour comments to see if there's any hint of malice in the download, and if it's not a popular game (or an old one), your torrent might take a long time. There are some limitations with Steam (including "what if it goes away?"), but the overall experience is much more frictionless.
- sergiotapia 11y ago
  That's the story for a lot of ex-pirates.
- bbradley406 11y ago
  I'm in the same situation regarding Steam. The "What if it goes away?" question is a large one (and we'll see it in action as today's cloud services fold with time), but I believe they would distribute some form of patch that allows you to play your collection offline. In any case many cracking-scene patches are targeting the Steam versions of games, and if you've already paid for the game there's no financial harm to Valve in cracking it.
eva1984 11y ago
Streaming has made people lazy. Unless I want some shows really badly, I won't even bother to torrent it. Once you go streaming, you never go back..
JTon 11y ago
Agreed. However, my ISP throttles torrents drastically during peak hours. It sucks. I can use Netflix with little issue, but I can't download a torrent faster than 25kbps
- plaguuuuuu 11y ago
  use a seedbox
rhino369 11y ago
>Gabe Newell: "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable." And yet trackers are filled with content available on Steam, iTunes, Amazon instant, etc. The idea that piracy is only a service problem is just as big of a myth as the idea that it is purely a pricing issue. It's can be both or either depending on the person.
- cynix 11y ago
  > And yet trackers are filled with content available on Steam, iTunes, Amazon instant, etc. At least for video/audio content, none of these paid services can match the quality (e.g. bitrate) of pirated torrents.
  - BookmarkSaver 11y ago
    There is no way that any significant portion of music piracy is due to audio quality qualms. I only have my own perspective, but outside of niche online communities I never even hear about things like "audio quality" or "bitrate" get talked about, but piracy is a massively widespread phenomenon. People pirate for money and convenience, rarely quality unless their ISP isn't reliable enough to stream.
    - baddox 11y ago
      > piracy is a massively widespread phenomenon is a different statement than "piracy is a problem"
- _benedict 11y ago
  You realise those services aren't universally available, right? Not that there aren't going to still be pirates anyway; there are plenty of people in the world who cannot afford those services.
erikb 11y ago
It would really surprise me if people at Netflix would read your comment and be shocked by the news. They are probably fighting against that localisation as much as they can, but the old structures/corps/cultures/laws are still too big and stubborn for a single company to completely beat them. So Netflix and co have to compromise. And they are still doing quite well, I'd say.
jakobegger 11y ago
Yes. I don't know why content producers don't get this. I really want to legally buy/rent my media, but so much content just isn't available on iTunes in Austria. And even when it is, it's a pain in the ass. We bought a few films for our kids to watch, but when I copied them to my old computer I couldn't play them because of the DRM. So I look for a way to strip the DRM from the files I legally bought so I can play them, which turns out to be surprisingly hard, and I just give up and torrent the film.
DavideNL 11y ago
> Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem agreed; I have Netflix and HBO, and still regularly download videos and tv shows. It saddens me to see how little content is available legally. Some TV shows become available 1 or 2 years after being released in the US, for example at the moment i can't see Once Upon a Time season 5 (the previous seasons are on Netflix). So what are our options, wait 2 years even though you know it's already out there right now? Not even the TV show Friends is available on Netflix where i live (in Europe). Sucks ass.

takeda 11y ago

They (I'm talking about publishers I don't believe this benefits Netflix in any way) are doing this at the time when Popcorn Time is available, and when you can add SuperRepo to Kodi and stream pirated movies from 1Channel. I mean at this point the only reason people would want to use Netflix is feeling guilty about pirating. But how can you feel guilty when publisher is constantly trying to screw you over?

LeoNatan25 11y ago
None of these streaming services offer quality streams. Terribly compressed "1080"p with some silly 2.1 downmix. There's more to Netflix than just "guilty". It's a genuine source for a relatively high quality material.
- ultramancool 11y ago
  Yeah, if you want quality, use Usenet.
  - LeoNatan25 11y ago
    Usenet has become a cesspool of removed content and malware infected fakes for the most part (some password protected private posters exist, I am aware). It has become too famous for its own good. Private torrent trackers is where it's for me.
    - ultramancool 11y ago
      Use Sonarr and CouchPotato, it does all the work for you, if something fails it just gets another copy. You don't touch anything, just wait a few minutes and it works its magic. For TV at least, it's the perfect set up. If you're having takedown issues though you need a better provider.
      - LeoNatan25 11y ago
        To be honest, I am good with the torrent trackers I have now. I have found the ones that take care of my niche interests (remux, usually).
- sangnoir 11y ago
  Availability beats quality. Given the choice between not watching anything because it's not in your Netflix region, and streaming/torrenting, most people would choose the latter.
  - LeoNatan25 11y ago
    I'm not disputing that. I am arguing that given the choice of full Netflix library and the pirate streaming alternatives, there are more reasons to choose Netflix (or iTunes or Amazon) than just convenience.
skrebbel 11y ago
> I mean at this point the only reason people would want to use Netflix is feeling guilty about pirating. I don't think my Panasonic TV has a Popcorn Time app. Or my phone, for that matter.
- roywiggins 11y ago
  Popcorn Time has both an iPhone and Android port.
  - dingo_bat 11y ago
    He was talking about his TV, which is unlikely to run iOS or Android. Even the TVs with Android probably cannot run all Android apps, you have to specifically target TVs.
    - roywiggins 11y ago
      I was addressing the "phone" part of it, really. PopcornTime works fine on phones. (I easily sideloaded it onto a set-top Android box, it works fine but you need a mouse or trackpad to navigate the interface. I think it would work fine on any semi-recent Android version)
- takeda 11y ago
  You can get Fire TV or similar and install Kodi on it. You can also install it directly on many other Smart TVs (I know it is possible on Samsung) but it might take more effort.
rhino369 11y ago
From the IP holders point of view: Netflix streaming content they don't have the right to because the subscriber is using a VPN is no different than piracy. The subscriber is just paying a middleman (netflix) for it. But they see no money for it. This is because one company doesn't typically hold the IP rights world wide. Why does paying the wrong people make it better? >I mean at this point the only reason people would want to use Netflix is feeling guilty about pirating. That's ridiculous.
jamespo 11y ago
Exactly, you're entitled to take what you want when you want for nothing :/
- jeena 11y ago
  Wait, I always thought Netflix was a payed service?
- takeda 11y ago
  Pirating is not stealing, at most it is a lost sale for them. If I want to watch a movie, am willing to pay and they don't make it available to me, what can I do? They wouldn't get my money either way. They are hurting themselves.

0xffff2 11y ago

Again? I used to regularly check Netflix before Pirate Bay, but it's been so long since anything I wanted to watch was streamable on Netflix (and I'm in the US too) that I rarely bother anymore. Even at the best of times it was maybe 50/50. Hell, I torrented "The Man in the High Castle" even though I have Amazon Prime just because I didn't feel like installing Silverlight. Even when you are paying for the content, it can still be easier to watch via other means.

neumann 11y ago
same - we torrent content we have access to on Netflix and Amazon because, for some unknown reason, those services regularly degrade their video quality to 420p while torrents download at 1.4mb/s.
- trvz 11y ago
  The problem is probably your ISP, check http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/ http://ispspeedindex.netflix.com/.
  - soylentcola 11y ago
    Not surprising. We pay for cable (ugh, not my call) as well as Netflix and Amazon Prime. The cable box version of on-demand video is terrible because it's a cable box. The apps and websites are usually OK...except when they're not because Comcast is throttling or Amazon doesn't include Chromecast support in the mobile app so you have to cast the whole fullscreen browser tab. When I don't just plug the damn laptop in, I tend to just connect through VPN and despite the fact that it slows my connection down considerably, I can stream any of the shows I've paid for through Popcorn Time or any other streaming torrent client. A typical hour-long episode is usually finished downloading within the first few minutes of the show and it's all accessible in a single interface. My personal dream is that Comcast or one of these awful companies decides that they need to do a better job of pleasing customers and starts offering a legal PopcornTime/Netflix-style web interface to browse and stream all of the content you're already paying for. That is something I would actually want to subscribe to. Instead I pay, rarely torrent anything I don't have legal access to, and stream/download illegally just because it's easier and works better. I haven't gone as far as some friends who set up auto-downloaders for usenet or torrents so they always have the latest episodes sitting on their NAS as soon as they go up. But I've considered it.

vacri 11y ago

Gabe's spot on the money for my use case. I used to pirate games relentlessly, all the way back to Amiga 500 days. Then Steam came along, got relatively stable, and I've not pirated a game since. It's actually harder to get a pirated game now than one off Steam - you have to find a torrent or download location, find patches (if there are any), scour comments to see if there's any hint of malice in the download, and if it's not a popular game (or an old one), your torrent might take a long time. There are some limitations with Steam (including "what if it goes away?"), but the overall experience is much more frictionless.

sergiotapia 11y ago
That's the story for a lot of ex-pirates.
bbradley406 11y ago
I'm in the same situation regarding Steam. The "What if it goes away?" question is a large one (and we'll see it in action as today's cloud services fold with time), but I believe they would distribute some form of patch that allows you to play your collection offline. In any case many cracking-scene patches are targeting the Steam versions of games, and if you've already paid for the game there's no financial harm to Valve in cracking it.

eva1984 11y ago

Streaming has made people lazy. Unless I want some shows really badly, I won't even bother to torrent it. Once you go streaming, you never go back..

JTon 11y ago

Agreed. However, my ISP throttles torrents drastically during peak hours. It sucks. I can use Netflix with little issue, but I can't download a torrent faster than 25kbps

plaguuuuuu 11y ago
use a seedbox

rhino369 11y ago

>Gabe Newell: "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable." And yet trackers are filled with content available on Steam, iTunes, Amazon instant, etc. The idea that piracy is only a service problem is just as big of a myth as the idea that it is purely a pricing issue. It's can be both or either depending on the person.

cynix 11y ago
> And yet trackers are filled with content available on Steam, iTunes, Amazon instant, etc. At least for video/audio content, none of these paid services can match the quality (e.g. bitrate) of pirated torrents.
- BookmarkSaver 11y ago
  There is no way that any significant portion of music piracy is due to audio quality qualms. I only have my own perspective, but outside of niche online communities I never even hear about things like "audio quality" or "bitrate" get talked about, but piracy is a massively widespread phenomenon. People pirate for money and convenience, rarely quality unless their ISP isn't reliable enough to stream.
  - baddox 11y ago
    > piracy is a massively widespread phenomenon is a different statement than "piracy is a problem"
_benedict 11y ago
You realise those services aren't universally available, right? Not that there aren't going to still be pirates anyway; there are plenty of people in the world who cannot afford those services.

erikb 11y ago

It would really surprise me if people at Netflix would read your comment and be shocked by the news. They are probably fighting against that localisation as much as they can, but the old structures/corps/cultures/laws are still too big and stubborn for a single company to completely beat them. So Netflix and co have to compromise. And they are still doing quite well, I'd say.

jakobegger 11y ago

Yes. I don't know why content producers don't get this. I really want to legally buy/rent my media, but so much content just isn't available on iTunes in Austria. And even when it is, it's a pain in the ass. We bought a few films for our kids to watch, but when I copied them to my old computer I couldn't play them because of the DRM. So I look for a way to strip the DRM from the files I legally bought so I can play them, which turns out to be surprisingly hard, and I just give up and torrent the film.

DavideNL 11y ago

> Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem agreed; I have Netflix and HBO, and still regularly download videos and tv shows. It saddens me to see how little content is available legally. Some TV shows become available 1 or 2 years after being released in the US, for example at the moment i can't see Once Upon a Time season 5 (the previous seasons are on Netflix). So what are our options, wait 2 years even though you know it's already out there right now? Not even the TV show Friends is available on Netflix where i live (in Europe). Sucks ass.