7 ms·

They may not be stupid, but that doesn't mean they're totally rational either (that would be inhuman and I can assure you they're just as human as the rest of u

They may not be stupid, but that doesn't mean they're totally rational either (that would be inhuman and I can assure you they're just as human as the rest of us.) Most of these media companies have never even tried no-DRM so a fully rational appraisal of the value of DRM simply isn't possible for them. The music industry largely went no-DRM (and streaming) and they were totally unscathed. A good quality mp3 or flac file is what, tens of megabytes at most? Really easy to pirate. A good quality 4k rip is going to be tens of gigabytes. Pirating something that large is a hassle for me but inconceivable for some of my friends or family members. Pirating movies and TV shows has always been more niche than pirating music. And the formats easiest to pirate (720p, low bitrate, etc) are the formats being given the lightest DRM. I wager there are some very human emotions involved in the decision making, namely pride and possessiveness. "We made this so we get to control it." The effectiveness of the DRM takes a backseat.

jowsie 7y ago
A good quality (for your average media consumer) 4k rip can be as low as 8gb. Sure it's not blu-ray quality but neither is Netflix, and no one cares. At least where I live, you're looking at 5-15 minutes to download a 4k rip on the average home connection. This is also completely ignoring pirate streaming sites, that while not as popular as they used to be, still exist and are lower friction than Netflix half the time. I'd wager I know more people pirating films/tv than I do music.
- catalogia 7y ago
  Those pirate streaming sites are such a nightmare of ads and malware, I find it hard to believe many consumers prefer it to legal streaming. The reason somebody would use that is because they can't afford the legal streaming service, or legal streaming isn't an option at all. This has nothing to do with DRM. And why do they use those shady pirate streaming sites, instead of pirate torrents of higher quality? It's because many of them struggle to find even 8GB of free space. I know some users who view deleting files to free up space to save new files as part of their daily routine. It doesn't need to be this way, but that's the way it currently seems to be.

jowsie 7y ago

A good quality (for your average media consumer) 4k rip can be as low as 8gb. Sure it's not blu-ray quality but neither is Netflix, and no one cares. At least where I live, you're looking at 5-15 minutes to download a 4k rip on the average home connection. This is also completely ignoring pirate streaming sites, that while not as popular as they used to be, still exist and are lower friction than Netflix half the time. I'd wager I know more people pirating films/tv than I do music.

catalogia 7y ago
Those pirate streaming sites are such a nightmare of ads and malware, I find it hard to believe many consumers prefer it to legal streaming. The reason somebody would use that is because they can't afford the legal streaming service, or legal streaming isn't an option at all. This has nothing to do with DRM. And why do they use those shady pirate streaming sites, instead of pirate torrents of higher quality? It's because many of them struggle to find even 8GB of free space. I know some users who view deleting files to free up space to save new files as part of their daily routine. It doesn't need to be this way, but that's the way it currently seems to be.