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There is no way they had more paying subscribers than Netflix. Netflix has 160 million paying customers. These two guys had "more" and made only 1 million dolla

by 55555 7y ago

There is no way they had more paying subscribers than Netflix. Netflix has 160 million paying customers. These two guys had "more" and made only 1 million dollars total. What? Probably their total pageviews vs Netflix's total paying customers or something dumb like that.

saagarjha 7y ago
Or law enforcement trumping up a number that’s larger than any reasonable number of subscribers they actually had.
dmix 7y ago
Not to mention the infrastructure, even if they didn’t host the video content themselves (which I doubt?) just handling that many paying customers would be a major operation.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  didn’t host the video content themselves I guess you could host the most popular stuff, plus the first five minutes of everything Netflix and other streamers have, and then just redirect the rest of those streams...
roberson87 7y ago
I think it was a typo, later in the article they mention this service had more content than Netflix, Hulu etc. I share your scepticism that two individuals could build a streaming service catering to >160m customers.
wp381640 7y ago
The DOJ presser said the site was "larger" than Netflix, Hulu and Amazon combined in terms of available content - some media reports have misreported it as larger by subscriber count
- 55555 7y ago
  Thanks, that makes sense. The HN title should probably be corrected then, at mods' convenience.
- rambojazz 7y ago
  Yeah the title is definitely misguided.
- jmcs 7y ago
  That goes without saying, content providers are shooting themselves in the foot with an atomic shotgun with the current fragmentation and lots of content is not legally available anywhere.
  - dddddaviddddd 7y ago
    A tragedy of the commons among the content providers -- exclusive content is an edge that they can't resist individually, but damages them collectively.
    - magduf 7y ago
      I don't think "tragedy of the commons" is the appropriate term for what's going on here. These movies aren't a "commons", they're all privately owned by a bunch of different private entities. They used to license them to Netflix to be streamed, but now they've pulled back from that a lot so they can operate their own streaming services. "Tragedy of the commons" is when a bunch of private interests use a publicly-owned resource in a greedy way and end up ruining it for everyone. I don't think this quite applies here, but I don't know of any other term to call it because I can't think of any non-internet analogies.

by 55555 7y ago

saagarjha 7y ago

Or law enforcement trumping up a number that’s larger than any reasonable number of subscribers they actually had.

dmix 7y ago

Not to mention the infrastructure, even if they didn’t host the video content themselves (which I doubt?) just handling that many paying customers would be a major operation.

jessaustin 7y ago
didn’t host the video content themselves I guess you could host the most popular stuff, plus the first five minutes of everything Netflix and other streamers have, and then just redirect the rest of those streams...

roberson87 7y ago

I think it was a typo, later in the article they mention this service had more content than Netflix, Hulu etc. I share your scepticism that two individuals could build a streaming service catering to >160m customers.

wp381640 7y ago

The DOJ presser said the site was "larger" than Netflix, Hulu and Amazon combined in terms of available content - some media reports have misreported it as larger by subscriber count

55555 7y ago
Thanks, that makes sense. The HN title should probably be corrected then, at mods' convenience.
rambojazz 7y ago
Yeah the title is definitely misguided.
jmcs 7y ago
That goes without saying, content providers are shooting themselves in the foot with an atomic shotgun with the current fragmentation and lots of content is not legally available anywhere.
- dddddaviddddd 7y ago
  A tragedy of the commons among the content providers -- exclusive content is an edge that they can't resist individually, but damages them collectively.
  - magduf 7y ago
    I don't think "tragedy of the commons" is the appropriate term for what's going on here. These movies aren't a "commons", they're all privately owned by a bunch of different private entities. They used to license them to Netflix to be streamed, but now they've pulled back from that a lot so they can operate their own streaming services. "Tragedy of the commons" is when a bunch of private interests use a publicly-owned resource in a greedy way and end up ruining it for everyone. I don't think this quite applies here, but I don't know of any other term to call it because I can't think of any non-internet analogies.