9 ms·

It's pretty simple: They pay a hot shot company to try and stop piracy and thats the best they can come up with. Piracy can't be stopped but thats not what the

It's pretty simple: They pay a hot shot company to try and stop piracy and thats the best they can come up with. Piracy can't be stopped but thats not what they want to hear. Piracy can be greatly reduced by distributing the content via Netflix but thats not what they want to hear.

bilbo0s 7y ago
>And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites. and: >Piracy can be greatly reduced by distributing the content via Netflix Aren't you guys saying different things? One is saying people already pirate on netflix, and the other is saying netflix removes the need for piracy. If you're saying the same thing, I would interpret it to mean that piracy is greatly reduced on netflix, but not entirely eliminated. But if that be the case, would that not be evidence of netflix' anti-piracy measures working?
- diamondlovesyou 7y ago
  Those two sides aren't mutually exclusive. Demand for content creates both.
- gbear605 7y ago
  My interpretation of the quotes is that if a show is on Netflix, its pirating rates go down drastically, but some shows on Netflix are still pirated. That’s because there is a significant population who pirates only when it is easier than streaming, and Netflix makes streaming really painless, in comparison with other streaming sites like Hulu or CBS All Access. However, some people still won’t pay for Netflix (or for any other streaming service), and they’re the ones that the first quote is talking about.
- catalogia 7y ago
  DRM doesn't inconvenience pirates, but piracy inconveniences consumers. It's inconvenient to free up 50 GB of hard disk space to torrent of a 4k netflix rip you found off some shady torrent site. It's much more convenient to just give netflix a few bucks a month. That inconvenience comes from law enforcement action against pirate sites and many users having trouble managing their hard drive space. Not from DRM.
  - noodlesUK 7y ago
    It may be inconvenient to free up some disk space (citation needed, anyone on HN has probably got terabytes of free space somewhere), but the inconvenience of certain streaming platforms, or even the total hostility to watching anything ad-free (even paid users) will knock people into the piracy camp. There is no source where I can watch AAA movies that I buy on my laptop legally in 4K as it is illegal to break Blu-ray encryption (and I run Linux). I buy or rent movies I want to watch on my Apple TV in 4K, but what am I supposed to do if I want to watch something on a plane for instance? Anything that is on Netflix I watch. I can’t watch amazon prime on my Apple TV because their region system is broken (yes, if an amazon employee is reading this, please fix having prime in multiple countries) so battlestar galactica and other shows in their catalogue aren’t available come from other sources.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      I'm talking about the typical consumer, not a HN user. Most people aren't running linux, have legal streaming options available to them, don't have terabytes available to them at any particular moment (maybe they have a few terabytes of portable harddrive in a closet somewhere, but not mounted and ready to roll.) Are there scenarios where typical consumers turn to piracy? Sure, aboslutely. They generally do that when a convenient legal way isn't an option (e.g. region locks screwing them over.)
      - noodlesUK 7y ago
        You’re probably right, but I know plenty of people who are happy to use putlocker etc who aren’t technically competent at all (and yeah, they sure get malware...)
      - lowercased 7y ago
        > Most people aren't running linux, have legal streaming options available to them... Are there scenarios where typical consumers turn to piracy? Sure, aboslutely my wife - a non-tech person, really - falls in to this camp. she's turned to torrenting things because the experience of streaming is just... slow. and bad. and stuttery. oh, and we still get ads on things (hulu, for one). She figured out how to find free streams for soccer matches - when we paid for "real" streams, they still had ads taking up 20% of the screen. And still somewhat jittery/stuttery (but - those 2 minute car ads at the start of the stream were never jittery). yeah, the 'free' stuff experience isn't always great, but when the paid experiences are still kinda crappy, what's the point of paying?
- Spivak 7y ago
  Statement 1: Piracy is inevitable in all platforms and at scale every media property will be pirated by someone. Statement 2: If your content is available on a reasonably priced and performant streaming platform or is otherwise “low friction” the number of people who will choose to consume the pirated content instead of paying drops off dramatically. The problem for publishers is that there’s so many different knobs that finding what brings in the most revenue is pretty much a crapshoot.
  - jaimex2 7y ago
    Exactly what I was trying to get at, thanks.
- Erudite_Genius 7y ago
  Content piracy has long been about the exorbitant cost of acquiring content. If you look at the cost of downloading a full, original quality Blu-Ray rip, then burning that to a dual-layer BD-R disc, you're looking at an hour to torrent plus up to $10 for a dual-layer recordable disc. Compare that to a store-bought copy that's $7.88 and comes with both Blu-Ray and DVD copies, and it's no contest. Make that store-bought copy $49.95 (thanks, Marvel) and it makes piracy attractive. Add terrible DRM on top and you GUARANTEE piracy, because you're being hostile to people that have actually bought your movie. If DRM had never been invented, piracy would only be about 5% worse, and your paying customers wouldn't be cursing your existence... but the media companies are too stupid to realize that.
  - pferde 7y ago
    > If DRM had never been invented, piracy would only be about 5% worse, and your paying customers wouldn't be cursing your existence... but the media companies are too stupid to realize that. The media companies do not care whether their paying customers love them or hate them. What they do care about, though, is when there is 5% less of them. Remember, big corporations do not just want money - they want all the money (and more).
- marcosdumay 7y ago
  > But if that be the case, would that not be evidence of netflix' anti-piracy measures working? No. It's evidence that just having the content available on Netflix will reduce piracy. It is a bit less effective than it could be because Netflix doesn't run on literally everything, mostly because of anti-piracy protections, but it does run on nearly everything, so it's effective.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  Removing the reasons to infringe copyright is completely different from making it impossible to infringe someone's copyright. Netflix is a convenient enough service that makes it easy for people to watch what they want to watch. Most people will just pay for it without thinking twice. It's easy enough that most people won't even consider infringing. Netflix's value isn't just in the content it serves, it's also in the fact it frees people from the non-trivial effort required to "pirate". Private torrent trackers have an economy of their own. Making it impossible to infringe is extremely difficult. Movies and music are really just information. Extremely big numbers. It's trivial to make copies of this stuff and send those copies over the network. In previous centuries, you needed to be a major industry player and own big machines like printing presses in order to infringe on someone's copyright at scale. In the 21st century it's as easy as copy paste or forgetting to close the torrent client. People might not even realize they are doing it. This is why a fragmented streaming market will push people towards copyright infringement. Instead of pooling their intellectual property and creating one single perfect streaming service with all the content, they are making it difficult and expensive for the consumer by competing with each other. At some point, people are going to wonder if there's a better way. That's when they'll find "piracy".
geofft 7y ago
It's been decades and literally everyone in multiple industries is still refusing to admit they're throwing money after a lost cause? I won't say that's impossible, but the entire idea behind capitalism is that this happens rarely. Eventually someone will realize they can make more profit by not paying for anti-piracy, right?
- arvinsim 7y ago
  I think some companies are just looking for the appearance of fighting and succeeding against piracy.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  They cannot possibly actually think DRM stops anything. Maybe they don't get that it's convenience that drives sales rather than the content itself. I just rented Spiderman on Amazon streaming for like $6, about the same as I remember video rental used to be. I'm certain I could have pirated it if Amazon streaming had not worked on Linux. It was slightly easier and slightly more ethical feeling to rent it from Amazon, so I did. I have seen a bit of a pattern where content distributors start out by cranking the DRM to 11 and then year over year get less and less worried about it. I guess they realize over time that the DRM isn't stopping anything, who knows, maybe they're using it to provide a PR argument that they're trying their best to push some other agenda. But I think they know that it's the distribution method rather than the encryption that influences buying decisions unless they magically stop all casual piracy. Be at least as easy as casual piracy?
- tjalfi 7y ago
  Baen Books[0] and Tor[1] don't use DRM. [0] https://www.baen.com/t-drm https://www.baen.com/t-drm [1] https://www.tor.com/2013/04/29/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-year-later/ https://www.tor.com/2013/04/29/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-yea...
  - Freak_NL 7y ago
    Baen Books is one publisher who gets it, and makes a profit doing so. Some of their back-catalogue is available for free on-line, such as David Weber's Empire from the Ashes. Complete trilogy: http://www.baencd.freedoors.org/Books/Empire%20From%20the%20Ashes/Empire_From_the_Ashes.htm http://www.baencd.freedoors.org/Books/Empire%20From%20the%20... (hard sci-fi)
matheusmoreira 7y ago
> Piracy can't be stopped but thats not what they want to hear. It can be stopped. All they have to do is destroy the computing and internet freedom we all enjoy today. Can't do subversive things like copy a file if they don't let us run our software. Governments around the world are also trying to erode these same freedoms by pushing encryption regulation.
- Supermancho 7y ago
  > It can be stopped. In the context of visual/audio (re: the topic), no. Even disallowing encryption will not save companies from simple steganography.
- jaimex2 7y ago
  Even then, lets say the successfully broke all encryption and all communication - people would just go back to recording from a DVR and selling DVDs on the streets.
- shakna 7y ago
  > All they have to do is destroy the computing and internet freedom we all enjoy today. That's one of those "good luck" scenarios. Building your own homebrew computer, or your own OS is a hobby for many. If you push the people behind them, and make a market for them, you'll make them popular. The internet itself is complex, but not so complex that determined actors cannot build their own mesh networks. And whilst governments are trying to erode encryption everywhere, it won't work in the end. They may be able to take secure encryption out of the hands of civilians, maybe. But they can't take it from the pirates. And as for the incoming "no one would be that determined" argument, cracking chips to let consoles play pirated games have existed for a long time, and the average person did actually seek them out... And found them everywhere. If you make people build the infrastructure... They will.
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  It seems to me that the approach Netflix and Disney et al are taking is accomplishing just that. DRM in the browser was step one. No Widevine, or whatever crapware is needed, no Netflix. Next came the limit on higher resolutions. You want Full HD? Stop using a free operating system. You want 4k? Get Internet Explorer, or better yet, get our app on one of the approved operating systems. The next step is probably to diminish the browser experience even further until enough users have switched to the 'app'. The only reason is control. It won't drive us away from a personal computer running whatever modern OS we want, but it is slowly creating a majority of people for whom computing exclusively means a managed device with a pre-approved operating system running vetted proprietary applications.

bilbo0s 7y ago

>And yet 4K webrips of recent Netflix shows are readily available on torrent sites. and: >Piracy can be greatly reduced by distributing the content via Netflix Aren't you guys saying different things? One is saying people already pirate on netflix, and the other is saying netflix removes the need for piracy. If you're saying the same thing, I would interpret it to mean that piracy is greatly reduced on netflix, but not entirely eliminated. But if that be the case, would that not be evidence of netflix' anti-piracy measures working?

diamondlovesyou 7y ago
Those two sides aren't mutually exclusive. Demand for content creates both.
gbear605 7y ago
My interpretation of the quotes is that if a show is on Netflix, its pirating rates go down drastically, but some shows on Netflix are still pirated. That’s because there is a significant population who pirates only when it is easier than streaming, and Netflix makes streaming really painless, in comparison with other streaming sites like Hulu or CBS All Access. However, some people still won’t pay for Netflix (or for any other streaming service), and they’re the ones that the first quote is talking about.
catalogia 7y ago
DRM doesn't inconvenience pirates, but piracy inconveniences consumers. It's inconvenient to free up 50 GB of hard disk space to torrent of a 4k netflix rip you found off some shady torrent site. It's much more convenient to just give netflix a few bucks a month. That inconvenience comes from law enforcement action against pirate sites and many users having trouble managing their hard drive space. Not from DRM.
- noodlesUK 7y ago
  It may be inconvenient to free up some disk space (citation needed, anyone on HN has probably got terabytes of free space somewhere), but the inconvenience of certain streaming platforms, or even the total hostility to watching anything ad-free (even paid users) will knock people into the piracy camp. There is no source where I can watch AAA movies that I buy on my laptop legally in 4K as it is illegal to break Blu-ray encryption (and I run Linux). I buy or rent movies I want to watch on my Apple TV in 4K, but what am I supposed to do if I want to watch something on a plane for instance? Anything that is on Netflix I watch. I can’t watch amazon prime on my Apple TV because their region system is broken (yes, if an amazon employee is reading this, please fix having prime in multiple countries) so battlestar galactica and other shows in their catalogue aren’t available come from other sources.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    I'm talking about the typical consumer, not a HN user. Most people aren't running linux, have legal streaming options available to them, don't have terabytes available to them at any particular moment (maybe they have a few terabytes of portable harddrive in a closet somewhere, but not mounted and ready to roll.) Are there scenarios where typical consumers turn to piracy? Sure, aboslutely. They generally do that when a convenient legal way isn't an option (e.g. region locks screwing them over.)
    - noodlesUK 7y ago
      You’re probably right, but I know plenty of people who are happy to use putlocker etc who aren’t technically competent at all (and yeah, they sure get malware...)
    - lowercased 7y ago
      > Most people aren't running linux, have legal streaming options available to them... Are there scenarios where typical consumers turn to piracy? Sure, aboslutely my wife - a non-tech person, really - falls in to this camp. she's turned to torrenting things because the experience of streaming is just... slow. and bad. and stuttery. oh, and we still get ads on things (hulu, for one). She figured out how to find free streams for soccer matches - when we paid for "real" streams, they still had ads taking up 20% of the screen. And still somewhat jittery/stuttery (but - those 2 minute car ads at the start of the stream were never jittery). yeah, the 'free' stuff experience isn't always great, but when the paid experiences are still kinda crappy, what's the point of paying?
Spivak 7y ago
Statement 1: Piracy is inevitable in all platforms and at scale every media property will be pirated by someone. Statement 2: If your content is available on a reasonably priced and performant streaming platform or is otherwise “low friction” the number of people who will choose to consume the pirated content instead of paying drops off dramatically. The problem for publishers is that there’s so many different knobs that finding what brings in the most revenue is pretty much a crapshoot.
- jaimex2 7y ago
  Exactly what I was trying to get at, thanks.
Erudite_Genius 7y ago
Content piracy has long been about the exorbitant cost of acquiring content. If you look at the cost of downloading a full, original quality Blu-Ray rip, then burning that to a dual-layer BD-R disc, you're looking at an hour to torrent plus up to $10 for a dual-layer recordable disc. Compare that to a store-bought copy that's $7.88 and comes with both Blu-Ray and DVD copies, and it's no contest. Make that store-bought copy $49.95 (thanks, Marvel) and it makes piracy attractive. Add terrible DRM on top and you GUARANTEE piracy, because you're being hostile to people that have actually bought your movie. If DRM had never been invented, piracy would only be about 5% worse, and your paying customers wouldn't be cursing your existence... but the media companies are too stupid to realize that.
- pferde 7y ago
  > If DRM had never been invented, piracy would only be about 5% worse, and your paying customers wouldn't be cursing your existence... but the media companies are too stupid to realize that. The media companies do not care whether their paying customers love them or hate them. What they do care about, though, is when there is 5% less of them. Remember, big corporations do not just want money - they want all the money (and more).
marcosdumay 7y ago
> But if that be the case, would that not be evidence of netflix' anti-piracy measures working? No. It's evidence that just having the content available on Netflix will reduce piracy. It is a bit less effective than it could be because Netflix doesn't run on literally everything, mostly because of anti-piracy protections, but it does run on nearly everything, so it's effective.
matheusmoreira 7y ago
Removing the reasons to infringe copyright is completely different from making it impossible to infringe someone's copyright. Netflix is a convenient enough service that makes it easy for people to watch what they want to watch. Most people will just pay for it without thinking twice. It's easy enough that most people won't even consider infringing. Netflix's value isn't just in the content it serves, it's also in the fact it frees people from the non-trivial effort required to "pirate". Private torrent trackers have an economy of their own. Making it impossible to infringe is extremely difficult. Movies and music are really just information. Extremely big numbers. It's trivial to make copies of this stuff and send those copies over the network. In previous centuries, you needed to be a major industry player and own big machines like printing presses in order to infringe on someone's copyright at scale. In the 21st century it's as easy as copy paste or forgetting to close the torrent client. People might not even realize they are doing it. This is why a fragmented streaming market will push people towards copyright infringement. Instead of pooling their intellectual property and creating one single perfect streaming service with all the content, they are making it difficult and expensive for the consumer by competing with each other. At some point, people are going to wonder if there's a better way. That's when they'll find "piracy".

geofft 7y ago

It's been decades and literally everyone in multiple industries is still refusing to admit they're throwing money after a lost cause? I won't say that's impossible, but the entire idea behind capitalism is that this happens rarely. Eventually someone will realize they can make more profit by not paying for anti-piracy, right?

arvinsim 7y ago
I think some companies are just looking for the appearance of fighting and succeeding against piracy.
neltnerb 7y ago
They cannot possibly actually think DRM stops anything. Maybe they don't get that it's convenience that drives sales rather than the content itself. I just rented Spiderman on Amazon streaming for like $6, about the same as I remember video rental used to be. I'm certain I could have pirated it if Amazon streaming had not worked on Linux. It was slightly easier and slightly more ethical feeling to rent it from Amazon, so I did. I have seen a bit of a pattern where content distributors start out by cranking the DRM to 11 and then year over year get less and less worried about it. I guess they realize over time that the DRM isn't stopping anything, who knows, maybe they're using it to provide a PR argument that they're trying their best to push some other agenda. But I think they know that it's the distribution method rather than the encryption that influences buying decisions unless they magically stop all casual piracy. Be at least as easy as casual piracy?
tjalfi 7y ago
Baen Books[0] and Tor[1] don't use DRM. [0] https://www.baen.com/t-drm https://www.baen.com/t-drm [1] https://www.tor.com/2013/04/29/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-year-later/ https://www.tor.com/2013/04/29/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-yea...
- Freak_NL 7y ago
  Baen Books is one publisher who gets it, and makes a profit doing so. Some of their back-catalogue is available for free on-line, such as David Weber's Empire from the Ashes. Complete trilogy: http://www.baencd.freedoors.org/Books/Empire%20From%20the%20Ashes/Empire_From_the_Ashes.htm http://www.baencd.freedoors.org/Books/Empire%20From%20the%20... (hard sci-fi)

matheusmoreira 7y ago

> Piracy can't be stopped but thats not what they want to hear. It can be stopped. All they have to do is destroy the computing and internet freedom we all enjoy today. Can't do subversive things like copy a file if they don't let us run our software. Governments around the world are also trying to erode these same freedoms by pushing encryption regulation.

Supermancho 7y ago
> It can be stopped. In the context of visual/audio (re: the topic), no. Even disallowing encryption will not save companies from simple steganography.
jaimex2 7y ago
Even then, lets say the successfully broke all encryption and all communication - people would just go back to recording from a DVR and selling DVDs on the streets.
shakna 7y ago
> All they have to do is destroy the computing and internet freedom we all enjoy today. That's one of those "good luck" scenarios. Building your own homebrew computer, or your own OS is a hobby for many. If you push the people behind them, and make a market for them, you'll make them popular. The internet itself is complex, but not so complex that determined actors cannot build their own mesh networks. And whilst governments are trying to erode encryption everywhere, it won't work in the end. They may be able to take secure encryption out of the hands of civilians, maybe. But they can't take it from the pirates. And as for the incoming "no one would be that determined" argument, cracking chips to let consoles play pirated games have existed for a long time, and the average person did actually seek them out... And found them everywhere. If you make people build the infrastructure... They will.
Freak_NL 7y ago
It seems to me that the approach Netflix and Disney et al are taking is accomplishing just that. DRM in the browser was step one. No Widevine, or whatever crapware is needed, no Netflix. Next came the limit on higher resolutions. You want Full HD? Stop using a free operating system. You want 4k? Get Internet Explorer, or better yet, get our app on one of the approved operating systems. The next step is probably to diminish the browser experience even further until enough users have switched to the 'app'. The only reason is control. It won't drive us away from a personal computer running whatever modern OS we want, but it is slowly creating a majority of people for whom computing exclusively means a managed device with a pre-approved operating system running vetted proprietary applications.