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> “I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” Tom Rutledge, the chief executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., said during an earnings call las

> “I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall,” Tom Rutledge, the chief executive officer of Charter Communications Inc., said during an earnings call last month. “It’s just too easy to get the product without paying for it.” Boo hoo. All these companies thinking they can split all their content up and get people to pay for every single service are in for a (totally expected) surprise. I'll share my plex server with friends and family long before I pay for more than 1-2 services.

criley2 7y ago
The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. Especially on this board. I understand a lot of reddit is younger and irresponsible so piracy-as-the-norm is a popular trope, but among the engineers whose livelihoods depend on subscription models, we still promote service theft without so much as a hint of shame? If the economics of a service don't make sense to you, then do not subscribe. But to turn around and steal from the engineers and artists who work to create these experiences is just indefensible. You are not entitled to television shows.
- cvhashim 7y ago
  Not sure why you're been downvoted. But agreed.
- tsukurimashou 7y ago
  making a copy of something is not the same as stealing
  - criley2 7y ago
    Yes it is. You can pedantically argue the American legal systems definition of stealing means that you have to charge thieves using different laws depending on what was stolen, but this is an unintellectual argument hiding behind legalese to abuse colloquial words. It still baffles me that people try to justify their objectively immoral theft of someone else's hard work and their right to profit on that work as they see fit with pedantry like this.
  - RmDen 7y ago
    How about copying a $100 bill?
    - xfer 7y ago
      By your logic wouldn't you say that the content providers are doing the same thing?
      - criley2 7y ago
        The only people who can copy a $100 bill have "the license" to do so. The only people who can copy a show to show it to you have "the license" to do so. When you disregard the license put in play to govern the content, you're stealing from the people who protect their property with licenses. Even in the open source world, respecting the terms of a license is important.
    - croon 7y ago
      That's forgery, or fraud. So also not stealing.
    - mikestew 7y ago
      There's nothing wrong with copying a $100 bill. It's when you try to exchange it for goods that have value that it becomes an issue.
      - Merrill 7y ago
        >Making photocopies of paper currency of the United States violates another section of the code, Title 18, Section 474 of the U.S. Code. Also forbidden under the statute: printed reproductions of checks, bonds, postage stamps, revenue stamps and securities of the United States and foreign governments. Those who violate this law can be fined up to $5,000 and/or be sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. https://legalbeagle.com/7612138-illegal-copy-currency.html https://legalbeagle.com/7612138-illegal-copy-currency.html
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    You're right - it's not stealing, but it's not right either. Do you think there should be no intellectual rights? Are you OK with everyone copying whatever side-project revenue stream you may have without paying you?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - henrikschroder 7y ago
      That's not the point. The point is that copyright infringement is a very well-defined crime, and the activities we are talking about here are copyright infringement. It's not theft. It's not fraud. It's not vandalism. And yet, people in these discussion use those wrong terms to describe the activity. But the only reason they do that, is because they want to attach the greater stigma of those crimes, onto the less stigmatized crime of copyright infringement. And that's a dishonest argument.
  - criddell 7y ago
    You're right, of course. But this isn't a court of law and so we use terms like piracy and theft when we are talking about copyright infringement and nobody is really confused.
- alexfromapex 7y ago
  Corporate America has been stealing from us for decades, especially Comcast/Charter.
  - criley2 7y ago
    I forgot that two wrongs make a right, my bad.
    - alexfromapex 7y ago
      What they’re doing isn’t just a “wrong” it’s horrible. These are the people lobbying Congress to ruin the country for their personal gain. Their business model has always been “you have no choice” because it’s either choose them or AT&T which is equally bad so Americans can’t vote with their wallets to get rid of them. They are the ones paying Ajit Pai to ruin net neutrality. They are not just wrong they are pure evil.
    - DataWorker 7y ago
      You don’t care when huge mega corps steal from your people, but you seem outraged that people might do things like share a video with a friend or spouse. What’s wrong with you?
- basch 7y ago
  I agree with you except for the feedback loop of "make content, sell content, use money from content to buy an extension to copyright law, rinse, repeat." There is a level of assault ON the public's rights happening. They arent completely innocent content creators being robbed, having done nothing wrong. It smells less of entitlement, and more of intentional comeuppance.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Are people downloading things that they believe the copyright should have already expired on? (Under the original copyright act it was 14+14. So stuff older than 1991). Or are they downloading the latest Avengers movie?
    - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
      Nobody downloads anything anymore, this isn’t 2006. They stream it for free using someone else’s pw, or some sketchy site. OR, bob pays for Netflix, Alice pays for Hulu, and they share with eachother. THAT is the actual use case these companies are complaining about, as if Bob and Alice would buy both accounts themselves. Likey not gonna happen, but some executive calculation says they are losing money in this deal.
    - wmorgan 7y ago
      That's a timely question with the holidays coming up. A lot of people will be wanting to watch movies from the 1940's and 50's. Many of them don't realize those works are still under copyright. It's not just hypothetical. In our family we subscribe to 3 or 4 streaming services, but last year we still had to pay $5 to watch It's a Wonderful Life (1946), a movie that was literally in the public domain for 20 years. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) wasn't available at any price, except with ads that stretched its 25-minute runtime to nearly an hour. We pirated that one. I don't think most people would think there was anything wrong with that.
      - tptacek 7y ago
        You think an ordinary person's expectation is that It's A Wonderful Life is public domain? I think the opposite thing is true, and that most Americans generally assume that any major motion picture or television show is copyrighted no matter when it was produced.
- maxsilver 7y ago
  > The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. It's not stealing when you already paid in full. Sharing my Netflix password with my wife and/or child is not stealing, I paid in full for that account, and have now for many many years. My Plex server is full of DVDs and BluRays I paid full retail price for (that's $20 to $30 USD each), it's not stealing to use it, and it's not stealing to let some friends occasionally borrow films from it. The entitlement companies feel to micromanage the lives of their paid-in-full customers is ridiculous. If you don't want people to have your product, stop selling them the product. And if you sell someone a product, don't act all surprised that they now have the product and are free to use it accordingly.
  - reaperducer 7y ago
    Wife and child is one thing. But the problem the problem is that people are sharing with people who aren't relatives. Old college roommates from 15 years ago who live on the other side of the country. Coworkers. People they meet in bars. None of these are legitimate. I get the attraction of getting content for free. I used to pirate software when I was young and broke. But I'm an adult now and I do adult things, meaning I pay for what I consume. Amazingly, people can survive without consuming other people's content. You don't have to watch a streaming service. There are other things in life to do. Much like I think people who don't vote forfeit the right to complain about politicians, I think people who steal content don't get to complain about the quality of the available content.
    - close04 7y ago
      I have a premium plan with Netflix which allows me to watch content on 4 screens concurrently, on "laptop, TV, phone and tablet" [0]. It is shared with family members and each one is probably logged into several devices used wherever we may be in the world. Everything is completely within the rules [1]. That's what we pay for and that's how we want to use it. Any limitation like annoying password resets, strict geofencing, or any move a company makes to tell me how to use the service I pay for and use entirely legally inconvenience me, the paying customer. It will not inconvenience Pirate Joe. Of course none of these inconveniences and limitations would ever come attached to a hefty price drop to make it worth the effort for me. The entitlement companies feel to inconvenience paying customers for profit is never surprising. Also those "lost revenue" calculations are so massively and intentionally misleading by presuming that every non-paying viewer would turn to a paying one. If your point is based on misdirection it's not much of a point. [0] https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform [1] https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse
- robcohen 7y ago
  I think the issue here is that culture should on some level be free. This is why libraries are free. Personally, I want to financially support media creators, but every time I get a forced prereel commercial, or Hulu inserts ads in a service I pay for, I make a mental note to care a little less. Every time I’m region restricted, I make a mental note. Every time my browser widevine plugin breaks and I can’t watch something, I make a mental note. Essentially every time I witness a dark pattern, I realize this is about control. Not fairness. Fuck them. If they wanna play games, I’ll play games. And I’ll win, because I’m better at it than they are. I would be happy to pay some cryptocurrency directly to an artist for the production of media. I could care less about the distributors though.
  - kranner 7y ago
    > I think the issue here is that culture should on some level be free. This is why libraries are free. Should software be free as well then? It seems to me it should fit the definition of culture, and the economics of e.g. a game seem similar to the economics of making a movie.
    - papln 7y ago
      Everything should be free but I should still get my salary.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    Be careful of what you wish for. Disney is a creator, and soon many people will be paying them money directly, cutting out existing distribution middlemen, letting a single company control a very large portion of American media.
    - danaris 7y ago
      "Disney" is not the artist. Artists are human beings. Disney is a megacorporation that hires many individual artists. Now, it's true that it takes many individual artists working together to make a major motion picture of any kind, but that doesn't change the fact that there are so many layers of middlemen between your money and the actual artists that saying that "giving Disney your money" is giving your money to the artists is....at best a gross oversimplification, and at worst outright false.
- joshstrange 7y ago
  As much as corporate America likes to whine, bitch, and moan about piracy I'm willing to bet no engineer has LEGITIMATELY lost their job due to too much of the content on the service they support being pirated. Stop painting this as if people who pirate/account-share are reaching into the "poor" engineer's pockets, it's disingenuous and simply untrue. This is the rich wanting to get richer and trying to create a false dichotomy of either "Steal content" or "Pay for content" is an effective way to do it, too bad it's not based in reality/truth when there is a 3rd option "Don't watch it".
  - me_me_me 7y ago
    But think of the poor, malnourished engineered! The execs are going to trickle down the money to them only if you pay for merely 10 subscriptions.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zelly 7y ago
  It's not stealing because it's not zero-sum. Nothing is exfiltrated from anyone else's possession. It would be another thing if people were abusing a hack on Netflix directly, impersonating strangers' accounts, using customer service, and increasing their CDN bill. No money is being lost with piracy, only potential money. And not all lost potential money is the same. A coffee shop loses potential money if you barricade the entry, but that's very obviously ethically worse than using the coffee shop's recipe at home 2 cities away and maaybe losing them potential money. Someone losing potential money does not always mean theft occurred. Doubly so for potential money from rent-seeking.
- ajna91 7y ago
  "Glib talk of ‘intellectual property rights’, then, concedes polemical ground to the monopoly rent-extractor by granting a certain perceived virtue to those who hold licences and rights. The rest of us are merely greedy and grasping grubbers for someone else’s property. But in so conceiving the domain of ‘intellectual property rights’, the notions of borrowing, reuse, reworking, remixing and constructive enhancement – all of which are needed for culture and science and art to grow – are lost in the semantic mire created by ‘property’. Things that are owned in the exclusionary way that the indiscriminate use of ‘intellectual property’ suggests cannot sustain art and science and culture." - https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-intellectual-property-is-nonsensical-and-pernicious https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-intellectual-property-is-...
- GoblinSlayer 7y ago
  Business is inherently competitive, you can't ask others to be nice, capitalism simply doesn't work that way.
- iovrthoughtthis 7y ago
  A key property of theft and stealing is "permanently depriving" another of something. If someone downloads a binary representation of some information, the downloaded bits have been exactly duplicated many times (barring errors). When one consumes or views that copy of the information no other individual is deprived of anything as a direct result. I'm actually a fan of the notion of copyright, trademarks and intellectual property in a sense but not to power it currently holds. Infringement on your sole or licensed right to copy is not as significant an issue as permanently depriving someone of something. You might argue that someone who copies another's information is depriving them of money that would have been paid for that information. This is flawed though as you would need to be able to prove that the infringer of the copyright would have paid for the information in the first place.
- LeoNatan25 7y ago
  > If the economics of a service don't make sense to you, then do not subscribe. That’s exactly what I’m doing. What does it matter exactly if I pirate or not? The money would not reach “engineers” and “artists” either way.
  - javagram 7y ago
    If you weren’t pirating, you’d have to find some other way to spend your time. Presumably you find watching pirated content superior to the free, legal alternatives (e.g. DVDs from the library) available or you wouldn’t be doing it. If piracy wasn’t available , you might find yourself paying for some content even if not everything you pirate.
- blondin 7y ago
  > Especially on this board. you are probably talking about paywalls. my 2 cents is that all that pay-to-read content is somehow going against what the internet stood for: a network where information could be freely shared. this will always find some resistance. what about having a separate network where they can take all their pay-to-read blogging platforms, newspapers & magazines, etc? the other thing is that it's impossible to pay for all these digital services. and more and more are being created. something is wrong with that model and it won't last long.
basch 7y ago
I think the bigger issue than paying for multiple services is duplicate licensing. If I sign up for DirecTV, Amazon Prime, and CBS how many shows am I triple licensing? If all these companies want me to sign up for multiple services, there needs to be a way for them to pass "already licensed" information to each other, and pro-rate their bills accordingly. ATT, Comcast, Disney, CBS already own almost all the historical content. Id rather pay a small licensing fee to those 4 and then be able to watch their content on any platform, rather than deal with multiple middlemen that have CBS, Comcast, Disney, ATT licensing costs built into their product price. IF I select DirecTV/ATT as my "licensing manager" then any time I sign up for Disney+, Peacock+, CBS All Access, I want a discount off one of the two ends (would make more sense to give all my subscription info to DirecTV and get a DirecTV discount. Then DirecTV can go to Disney and say "17% of our customers dont need to pay Disney licensing costs, weve adjusted our payment to you accordingly.)
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  While I see your point, that's never been how media is served up - you're not given license to shows, you're gaining access to what they want you to have from their license. Your cable bill was never reduced because the same show was playing on two channels at once.
  - basch 7y ago
    A cable bill is a bit like insurance. They dont expect 100% of customers to watch ESPN, 100% of customers pay Disney for access to ESPN, but they pay less than the full cost each. People not watching cover the costs of people watching. Theres two models of TV. Live and On Demand. In the On Demand world its much more "am I licensed to start this stream" vs "can I tune into this broadcast in progress." Especially if the broadcast is adding any value, like tv hosts interjecting fun making of movie facts at commercial breaks.
  - braindeath 7y ago
    Idiotic. A few years ago you could say that on demand streaming over the internet was also “never been how media is served up”... engravings on wax cylinders was “never been how media is served up” was also true. Obviously things are different in this era then they were 30 years ago during peak cable. What’s your point that meaningfully responds to the gp?
ghaff 7y ago
I thought everyone wanted content to be split up when it was bundled as a cable package.
- mrkstu 7y ago
  If they all follow Disney's pricing model, that would work, but everyone wants too big a slice of the pie.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    Disney has admitted that they will lose money at their current price level. Which implies strongly that they'll be increasing prices substantially in the future.
    - yodon 7y ago
      Disney has lots of ways to monetize. A slight increase in the odds your family books a Disney Cruise is a significant real monetization channel that doesn't show up in subscription pricing. Matthew Ball has a good analysis of these models[0]. [0]https://redef.com/original/nine-reasons-why-disney-will-succeed-and-why-four-criticisms-are-overhyped https://redef.com/original/nine-reasons-why-disney-will-succ...
    - megablast 7y ago
      They admitted they will lose money for the first few years, not forever. Like almost every single product. Do you think the iPhone or Xbox made a profit in the first few years, when you count the money spent on research and factories?
    - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
      How do you lose money on content you already own? This is just Hollywood accounting in effect.
      - TulliusCicero 7y ago
        There's a cost to providing the service in terms terms of bandwidth, servers, and development staff. There's also a cost to the new, original content they're putting on there, like the Mandalorian.
rayiner 7y ago
Why do you feel entitled to get the product of other peoples work for free?
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  It’s easy to shirk copyright law without moral consideration when it’s become so draconian against citizens. Is denying a faceless corporation profit from finding some bits elsewhere theft? It seems the public consensus is no. This is the digital content market seeking equilibrium. Competing against free is hard, but possible! Don’t whine as a CEO that your job is hard, it’s supposed to be hard.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    I feel like that’s a cop-out. I agree that draconian criminal enforcement of what is a civil tort is unwarranted. But do people really see it as a form of civil disobedience, or do they just feel entitled to stuff for free? And if it’s civil disobedience, why not do it in a principled way? Download and share but don’t watch it. I’d liken it more to the looting and vandalism in response to police brutality. More opportunism than civil disobedience.
    - toomuchtodo 7y ago
      I think comparing it to looting and vandalism is a bit hyperbole. It’s closer to copying a book at the library and taking the copy home. No one is deprived of an object or the content when duplicated, they only miss out on whatever revenue they were attempting to capture.
      - rayiner 7y ago
        I dislike the book analogy because it puts on the cloak of “sharing learning.” The kinda of things people are pirating are consumer goods—created solely for the purpose of being sold for entertainment. It’s stealing candy, not stealing bread.
SilasX 7y ago
>Boo hoo. All these companies thinking they can split all their content up and get people to pay for every single service are in for a (totally expected) surprise. But people complained just as loud when cable TV "made them pay for everything even though they only watch three channels".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- papln 7y ago
  All people want is everything for a tiny price. They are morally entitled to that, no?
  - lovehashbrowns 7y ago
    Why are you presenting a straw man and making people seem entitled based on that straw man? That's not at all the issue and has never been. In the channel subscription days, people wanted to be able to select certain channels, like let's say Discovery Channel and History Channel, without having to pay $X base + $Y for the package that has both of those channels. In that case, you're also paying for channels you'll never watch, whereas you want to pay for select channels only. But cable companies never offered that option because they're using bundles to subsidize less popular channels. Now we're back to the same issue. Previously, Netflix and maybe Hulu were the options. Still sorta bundling, but at least if you like X show and Y show, they might both be on Netflix and you can stay in one subscription. Now with every company making their own subscription, and forcing shows to be exclusive, you're having to subscribe to multiple services just to watch X and Y shows. Same problem as before. Don't make it seem like people are entitled just because they want simplicity and choice.
    - wilg 7y ago
      It's fine to want those things, but I think the "entitlement" idea comes from people who believe it is okay to have those things without paying for them. It is analogous (or maybe identical) to stealing something you don't need because you think the price is too high. The appropriate response is not to steal it and also not to buy it.

criley2 7y ago

The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. Especially on this board. I understand a lot of reddit is younger and irresponsible so piracy-as-the-norm is a popular trope, but among the engineers whose livelihoods depend on subscription models, we still promote service theft without so much as a hint of shame? If the economics of a service don't make sense to you, then do not subscribe. But to turn around and steal from the engineers and artists who work to create these experiences is just indefensible. You are not entitled to television shows.

cvhashim 7y ago
Not sure why you're been downvoted. But agreed.
tsukurimashou 7y ago
making a copy of something is not the same as stealing
- criley2 7y ago
  Yes it is. You can pedantically argue the American legal systems definition of stealing means that you have to charge thieves using different laws depending on what was stolen, but this is an unintellectual argument hiding behind legalese to abuse colloquial words. It still baffles me that people try to justify their objectively immoral theft of someone else's hard work and their right to profit on that work as they see fit with pedantry like this.
- RmDen 7y ago
  How about copying a $100 bill?
  - xfer 7y ago
    By your logic wouldn't you say that the content providers are doing the same thing?
    - criley2 7y ago
      The only people who can copy a $100 bill have "the license" to do so. The only people who can copy a show to show it to you have "the license" to do so. When you disregard the license put in play to govern the content, you're stealing from the people who protect their property with licenses. Even in the open source world, respecting the terms of a license is important.
  - croon 7y ago
    That's forgery, or fraud. So also not stealing.
  - mikestew 7y ago
    There's nothing wrong with copying a $100 bill. It's when you try to exchange it for goods that have value that it becomes an issue.
    - Merrill 7y ago
      >Making photocopies of paper currency of the United States violates another section of the code, Title 18, Section 474 of the U.S. Code. Also forbidden under the statute: printed reproductions of checks, bonds, postage stamps, revenue stamps and securities of the United States and foreign governments. Those who violate this law can be fined up to $5,000 and/or be sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. https://legalbeagle.com/7612138-illegal-copy-currency.html https://legalbeagle.com/7612138-illegal-copy-currency.html
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  You're right - it's not stealing, but it's not right either. Do you think there should be no intellectual rights? Are you OK with everyone copying whatever side-project revenue stream you may have without paying you?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - henrikschroder 7y ago
    That's not the point. The point is that copyright infringement is a very well-defined crime, and the activities we are talking about here are copyright infringement. It's not theft. It's not fraud. It's not vandalism. And yet, people in these discussion use those wrong terms to describe the activity. But the only reason they do that, is because they want to attach the greater stigma of those crimes, onto the less stigmatized crime of copyright infringement. And that's a dishonest argument.
- criddell 7y ago
  You're right, of course. But this isn't a court of law and so we use terms like piracy and theft when we are talking about copyright infringement and nobody is really confused.
alexfromapex 7y ago
Corporate America has been stealing from us for decades, especially Comcast/Charter.
- criley2 7y ago
  I forgot that two wrongs make a right, my bad.
  - alexfromapex 7y ago
    What they’re doing isn’t just a “wrong” it’s horrible. These are the people lobbying Congress to ruin the country for their personal gain. Their business model has always been “you have no choice” because it’s either choose them or AT&T which is equally bad so Americans can’t vote with their wallets to get rid of them. They are the ones paying Ajit Pai to ruin net neutrality. They are not just wrong they are pure evil.
  - DataWorker 7y ago
    You don’t care when huge mega corps steal from your people, but you seem outraged that people might do things like share a video with a friend or spouse. What’s wrong with you?
basch 7y ago
I agree with you except for the feedback loop of "make content, sell content, use money from content to buy an extension to copyright law, rinse, repeat." There is a level of assault ON the public's rights happening. They arent completely innocent content creators being robbed, having done nothing wrong. It smells less of entitlement, and more of intentional comeuppance.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Are people downloading things that they believe the copyright should have already expired on? (Under the original copyright act it was 14+14. So stuff older than 1991). Or are they downloading the latest Avengers movie?
  - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
    Nobody downloads anything anymore, this isn’t 2006. They stream it for free using someone else’s pw, or some sketchy site. OR, bob pays for Netflix, Alice pays for Hulu, and they share with eachother. THAT is the actual use case these companies are complaining about, as if Bob and Alice would buy both accounts themselves. Likey not gonna happen, but some executive calculation says they are losing money in this deal.
  - wmorgan 7y ago
    That's a timely question with the holidays coming up. A lot of people will be wanting to watch movies from the 1940's and 50's. Many of them don't realize those works are still under copyright. It's not just hypothetical. In our family we subscribe to 3 or 4 streaming services, but last year we still had to pay $5 to watch It's a Wonderful Life (1946), a movie that was literally in the public domain for 20 years. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) wasn't available at any price, except with ads that stretched its 25-minute runtime to nearly an hour. We pirated that one. I don't think most people would think there was anything wrong with that.
    - tptacek 7y ago
      You think an ordinary person's expectation is that It's A Wonderful Life is public domain? I think the opposite thing is true, and that most Americans generally assume that any major motion picture or television show is copyrighted no matter when it was produced.
maxsilver 7y ago
> The entitlement people feel to steal is always surprising. It's not stealing when you already paid in full. Sharing my Netflix password with my wife and/or child is not stealing, I paid in full for that account, and have now for many many years. My Plex server is full of DVDs and BluRays I paid full retail price for (that's $20 to $30 USD each), it's not stealing to use it, and it's not stealing to let some friends occasionally borrow films from it. The entitlement companies feel to micromanage the lives of their paid-in-full customers is ridiculous. If you don't want people to have your product, stop selling them the product. And if you sell someone a product, don't act all surprised that they now have the product and are free to use it accordingly.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Wife and child is one thing. But the problem the problem is that people are sharing with people who aren't relatives. Old college roommates from 15 years ago who live on the other side of the country. Coworkers. People they meet in bars. None of these are legitimate. I get the attraction of getting content for free. I used to pirate software when I was young and broke. But I'm an adult now and I do adult things, meaning I pay for what I consume. Amazingly, people can survive without consuming other people's content. You don't have to watch a streaming service. There are other things in life to do. Much like I think people who don't vote forfeit the right to complain about politicians, I think people who steal content don't get to complain about the quality of the available content.
  - close04 7y ago
    I have a premium plan with Netflix which allows me to watch content on 4 screens concurrently, on "laptop, TV, phone and tablet" [0]. It is shared with family members and each one is probably logged into several devices used wherever we may be in the world. Everything is completely within the rules [1]. That's what we pay for and that's how we want to use it. Any limitation like annoying password resets, strict geofencing, or any move a company makes to tell me how to use the service I pay for and use entirely legally inconvenience me, the paying customer. It will not inconvenience Pirate Joe. Of course none of these inconveniences and limitations would ever come attached to a hefty price drop to make it worth the effort for me. The entitlement companies feel to inconvenience paying customers for profit is never surprising. Also those "lost revenue" calculations are so massively and intentionally misleading by presuming that every non-paying viewer would turn to a paying one. If your point is based on misdirection it's not much of a point. [0] https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform https://www.netflix.com/signup/planform [1] https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse
robcohen 7y ago
I think the issue here is that culture should on some level be free. This is why libraries are free. Personally, I want to financially support media creators, but every time I get a forced prereel commercial, or Hulu inserts ads in a service I pay for, I make a mental note to care a little less. Every time I’m region restricted, I make a mental note. Every time my browser widevine plugin breaks and I can’t watch something, I make a mental note. Essentially every time I witness a dark pattern, I realize this is about control. Not fairness. Fuck them. If they wanna play games, I’ll play games. And I’ll win, because I’m better at it than they are. I would be happy to pay some cryptocurrency directly to an artist for the production of media. I could care less about the distributors though.
- kranner 7y ago
  > I think the issue here is that culture should on some level be free. This is why libraries are free. Should software be free as well then? It seems to me it should fit the definition of culture, and the economics of e.g. a game seem similar to the economics of making a movie.
  - papln 7y ago
    Everything should be free but I should still get my salary.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Be careful of what you wish for. Disney is a creator, and soon many people will be paying them money directly, cutting out existing distribution middlemen, letting a single company control a very large portion of American media.
  - danaris 7y ago
    "Disney" is not the artist. Artists are human beings. Disney is a megacorporation that hires many individual artists. Now, it's true that it takes many individual artists working together to make a major motion picture of any kind, but that doesn't change the fact that there are so many layers of middlemen between your money and the actual artists that saying that "giving Disney your money" is giving your money to the artists is....at best a gross oversimplification, and at worst outright false.
joshstrange 7y ago
As much as corporate America likes to whine, bitch, and moan about piracy I'm willing to bet no engineer has LEGITIMATELY lost their job due to too much of the content on the service they support being pirated. Stop painting this as if people who pirate/account-share are reaching into the "poor" engineer's pockets, it's disingenuous and simply untrue. This is the rich wanting to get richer and trying to create a false dichotomy of either "Steal content" or "Pay for content" is an effective way to do it, too bad it's not based in reality/truth when there is a 3rd option "Don't watch it".
- me_me_me 7y ago
  But think of the poor, malnourished engineered! The execs are going to trickle down the money to them only if you pay for merely 10 subscriptions.
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zelly 7y ago
It's not stealing because it's not zero-sum. Nothing is exfiltrated from anyone else's possession. It would be another thing if people were abusing a hack on Netflix directly, impersonating strangers' accounts, using customer service, and increasing their CDN bill. No money is being lost with piracy, only potential money. And not all lost potential money is the same. A coffee shop loses potential money if you barricade the entry, but that's very obviously ethically worse than using the coffee shop's recipe at home 2 cities away and maaybe losing them potential money. Someone losing potential money does not always mean theft occurred. Doubly so for potential money from rent-seeking.
ajna91 7y ago
"Glib talk of ‘intellectual property rights’, then, concedes polemical ground to the monopoly rent-extractor by granting a certain perceived virtue to those who hold licences and rights. The rest of us are merely greedy and grasping grubbers for someone else’s property. But in so conceiving the domain of ‘intellectual property rights’, the notions of borrowing, reuse, reworking, remixing and constructive enhancement – all of which are needed for culture and science and art to grow – are lost in the semantic mire created by ‘property’. Things that are owned in the exclusionary way that the indiscriminate use of ‘intellectual property’ suggests cannot sustain art and science and culture." - https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-intellectual-property-is-nonsensical-and-pernicious https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-intellectual-property-is-...
GoblinSlayer 7y ago
Business is inherently competitive, you can't ask others to be nice, capitalism simply doesn't work that way.
iovrthoughtthis 7y ago
A key property of theft and stealing is "permanently depriving" another of something. If someone downloads a binary representation of some information, the downloaded bits have been exactly duplicated many times (barring errors). When one consumes or views that copy of the information no other individual is deprived of anything as a direct result. I'm actually a fan of the notion of copyright, trademarks and intellectual property in a sense but not to power it currently holds. Infringement on your sole or licensed right to copy is not as significant an issue as permanently depriving someone of something. You might argue that someone who copies another's information is depriving them of money that would have been paid for that information. This is flawed though as you would need to be able to prove that the infringer of the copyright would have paid for the information in the first place.
LeoNatan25 7y ago
> If the economics of a service don't make sense to you, then do not subscribe. That’s exactly what I’m doing. What does it matter exactly if I pirate or not? The money would not reach “engineers” and “artists” either way.
- javagram 7y ago
  If you weren’t pirating, you’d have to find some other way to spend your time. Presumably you find watching pirated content superior to the free, legal alternatives (e.g. DVDs from the library) available or you wouldn’t be doing it. If piracy wasn’t available , you might find yourself paying for some content even if not everything you pirate.
blondin 7y ago
> Especially on this board. you are probably talking about paywalls. my 2 cents is that all that pay-to-read content is somehow going against what the internet stood for: a network where information could be freely shared. this will always find some resistance. what about having a separate network where they can take all their pay-to-read blogging platforms, newspapers & magazines, etc? the other thing is that it's impossible to pay for all these digital services. and more and more are being created. something is wrong with that model and it won't last long.

basch 7y ago

I think the bigger issue than paying for multiple services is duplicate licensing. If I sign up for DirecTV, Amazon Prime, and CBS how many shows am I triple licensing? If all these companies want me to sign up for multiple services, there needs to be a way for them to pass "already licensed" information to each other, and pro-rate their bills accordingly. ATT, Comcast, Disney, CBS already own almost all the historical content. Id rather pay a small licensing fee to those 4 and then be able to watch their content on any platform, rather than deal with multiple middlemen that have CBS, Comcast, Disney, ATT licensing costs built into their product price. IF I select DirecTV/ATT as my "licensing manager" then any time I sign up for Disney+, Peacock+, CBS All Access, I want a discount off one of the two ends (would make more sense to give all my subscription info to DirecTV and get a DirecTV discount. Then DirecTV can go to Disney and say "17% of our customers dont need to pay Disney licensing costs, weve adjusted our payment to you accordingly.)

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
While I see your point, that's never been how media is served up - you're not given license to shows, you're gaining access to what they want you to have from their license. Your cable bill was never reduced because the same show was playing on two channels at once.
- basch 7y ago
  A cable bill is a bit like insurance. They dont expect 100% of customers to watch ESPN, 100% of customers pay Disney for access to ESPN, but they pay less than the full cost each. People not watching cover the costs of people watching. Theres two models of TV. Live and On Demand. In the On Demand world its much more "am I licensed to start this stream" vs "can I tune into this broadcast in progress." Especially if the broadcast is adding any value, like tv hosts interjecting fun making of movie facts at commercial breaks.
- braindeath 7y ago
  Idiotic. A few years ago you could say that on demand streaming over the internet was also “never been how media is served up”... engravings on wax cylinders was “never been how media is served up” was also true. Obviously things are different in this era then they were 30 years ago during peak cable. What’s your point that meaningfully responds to the gp?

ghaff 7y ago

I thought everyone wanted content to be split up when it was bundled as a cable package.

mrkstu 7y ago
If they all follow Disney's pricing model, that would work, but everyone wants too big a slice of the pie.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Disney has admitted that they will lose money at their current price level. Which implies strongly that they'll be increasing prices substantially in the future.
  - yodon 7y ago
    Disney has lots of ways to monetize. A slight increase in the odds your family books a Disney Cruise is a significant real monetization channel that doesn't show up in subscription pricing. Matthew Ball has a good analysis of these models[0]. [0]https://redef.com/original/nine-reasons-why-disney-will-succeed-and-why-four-criticisms-are-overhyped https://redef.com/original/nine-reasons-why-disney-will-succ...
  - megablast 7y ago
    They admitted they will lose money for the first few years, not forever. Like almost every single product. Do you think the iPhone or Xbox made a profit in the first few years, when you count the money spent on research and factories?
  - kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
    How do you lose money on content you already own? This is just Hollywood accounting in effect.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      There's a cost to providing the service in terms terms of bandwidth, servers, and development staff. There's also a cost to the new, original content they're putting on there, like the Mandalorian.

rayiner 7y ago

Why do you feel entitled to get the product of other peoples work for free?

toomuchtodo 7y ago
It’s easy to shirk copyright law without moral consideration when it’s become so draconian against citizens. Is denying a faceless corporation profit from finding some bits elsewhere theft? It seems the public consensus is no. This is the digital content market seeking equilibrium. Competing against free is hard, but possible! Don’t whine as a CEO that your job is hard, it’s supposed to be hard.
- rayiner 7y ago
  I feel like that’s a cop-out. I agree that draconian criminal enforcement of what is a civil tort is unwarranted. But do people really see it as a form of civil disobedience, or do they just feel entitled to stuff for free? And if it’s civil disobedience, why not do it in a principled way? Download and share but don’t watch it. I’d liken it more to the looting and vandalism in response to police brutality. More opportunism than civil disobedience.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    I think comparing it to looting and vandalism is a bit hyperbole. It’s closer to copying a book at the library and taking the copy home. No one is deprived of an object or the content when duplicated, they only miss out on whatever revenue they were attempting to capture.
    - rayiner 7y ago
      I dislike the book analogy because it puts on the cloak of “sharing learning.” The kinda of things people are pirating are consumer goods—created solely for the purpose of being sold for entertainment. It’s stealing candy, not stealing bread.

SilasX 7y ago

>Boo hoo. All these companies thinking they can split all their content up and get people to pay for every single service are in for a (totally expected) surprise. But people complained just as loud when cable TV "made them pay for everything even though they only watch three channels".

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papln 7y ago
All people want is everything for a tiny price. They are morally entitled to that, no?
- lovehashbrowns 7y ago
  Why are you presenting a straw man and making people seem entitled based on that straw man? That's not at all the issue and has never been. In the channel subscription days, people wanted to be able to select certain channels, like let's say Discovery Channel and History Channel, without having to pay $X base + $Y for the package that has both of those channels. In that case, you're also paying for channels you'll never watch, whereas you want to pay for select channels only. But cable companies never offered that option because they're using bundles to subsidize less popular channels. Now we're back to the same issue. Previously, Netflix and maybe Hulu were the options. Still sorta bundling, but at least if you like X show and Y show, they might both be on Netflix and you can stay in one subscription. Now with every company making their own subscription, and forcing shows to be exclusive, you're having to subscribe to multiple services just to watch X and Y shows. Same problem as before. Don't make it seem like people are entitled just because they want simplicity and choice.
  - wilg 7y ago
    It's fine to want those things, but I think the "entitlement" idea comes from people who believe it is okay to have those things without paying for them. It is analogous (or maybe identical) to stealing something you don't need because you think the price is too high. The appropriate response is not to steal it and also not to buy it.