8 ms·

Say what you will about stealing, illegality, unsavouriness. If the film industry would collectively take their head out of their arses and provide such a simp

• esarbe 7y ago
  The whole business model of the content industry is based on perverting the idea of copyright and extending it beyond any reasonable limit. And with copyright terms extended to eternity and beyond, they are effectively stealing the cultural intellectual property of every living generation, depriving us of the basic means to creatively comment on our own cultural heritage. So, I have no problem with "stealing".
• BoorishBears 7y ago
  I don’t really get this. The media industry collectively thinks what they make is worth the collective cost of all their streaming services (probably hundreds of dollars a month). They’ve spent BILLIONS making the movies that make up these catalogs. And before you say “well they already made it back” let me remind you we’re on a tech forum, what industry makes the most money from “selling the same experience over and over again until your margins are nutty” You feel you have the right to watch EVERYTHING they make, a subset of a few lifetimes of content just won’t do for the modern man. So instead of sticking it to them and not buying into their game until they’re forced to reform... you go and spend time illegally downloading their movies so that instead of getting the message “we don’t make stuff good enough to justify it’s price”, they get the message “we’re doing so well that people are stealing our content, go lobby for copyright laws harder or something Legal”. Because more media than people who spent 100s of dollars to experience not that long ago is not ok, you need to have ALL of it. And if they don’t feel it’s in their best interests, you’re going to steal it (and yes, it’s stealing enough with the “but I didn’t take the original”, why don’t you go copy all your employer's IP and post it on pastebin then tell the cops you just made a copy”) - I personally pay for like, 2 services? There is A LOT of media on there. For 30$ a month I’m getting access to more shoes and movies than cable would provide for 100s of dollars once upon a time. More than any sane person could watch in one lifetime. Sometimes I have to forgo watching something because it’s not on the service I want. I don’t bother going to steal it. Once upon a time I was a kid with no money and no job, less impulse control and much more time to waste, so I would, let me not pretend I’ve never done it.... But now I’m an adult, I can decide not to watch something and watch something else if I feel it’s not worth my money. If there’s a movie worth enough to me I can usually pay for access to it specifically (one off payment before someone starts waving the subscriptions are murder stick... on a tech forum). But that’s actually never happened. Because there’s so much content there, unless you have this mentality of “I must have it all, I deserve it all, nothing less will do” I don’t see how 50$ a month of services (your cutoff) would not be enough.
  • imgabe 7y ago
    > The media industry collectively thinks what they make is worth the collective cost of all their streaming services (probably hundreds of dollars a month). Sure, they're entitled to think whatever they want. The reality is that the marginal cost of making a digital copy is near zero. Their work is widely available for free to anyone who cares to look for it. And it is extremely unlikely that the average person would ever experience any negative consequences for getting it for free. You can think that's right or wrong or try to shame people all you want, but those are simple facts. Another fact is that for a large portion of the world, the content is not available legally even if you want to pay. So, the content industry can learn to accept those facts and make a good service that makes some money. (Still many billions of dollars) or they can keep operating under the delusion that people should pay even more billions of dollars and get less.
    • BoorishBears 7y ago
      The marginal cost of a digital copy of a piece of software is almost 0$ The negative consequences of just stealing it are pretty low Unfortunately so much software has become a thin client for a fat backend, so it’s a little harder, but all said are definitely industries that pay 10,000$ a seat for software that was mostly written 20 years ago and is patched to keep it hobbling along They’re not really going to besides waging larger and larger wars on copyright and forcing DRM The thing is, I don’t really “shame” anyone, but I understand when “normal people” steal movies and shows When technologists do it, it’s the biggest WTF for me.
      • imgabe 7y ago
        I've used some of that $10k per seat software (AutoCAD and Revit). While that is expensive, businesses pay it because 10k is the revenue from one project using it. A very small project at that. It is also much easier to track down and sue a business compared to someone watching a movie alone in their room. Companies that sell that software like Autodesk and Adobe also have the sense not to worry too much about individuals pirating it because more people who know how to use it means more customers later. DRM will always fail because the content has to get decrypted at some point if anyone is going to see it.
• alexis_fr 7y ago
  Given a lot of countries are declaring the state of emergency, « state of war » for Emmanuel Macron (France), a lot of them can and will require the use of hotel, cars, or even « nationalize companies » (Italy and France). Why not also accepting that the confinement shouldn’t be an opportunity for copyright hoarders to become rich, and just temporarily allow or do nothing, so that entertainment at home be available. Perhaps even make them temporarily legal and end up with making them permanently legal. Sometimes war-times measures become permanent (female vote in France, gun confiscation and the Tignes dam all started during the WWII) when they are good.
• tnolet 7y ago
  Here here. Been saying this for years as a satisfied Popcorn time users. Been paying for Spotify already for years too. If a legal Popcorn Time existed, I'd signup directly.
  • Avalaxy 7y ago
    Just a minor nitpick, but it's "hear hear", not "here here", as it refers to hearing what is said.
• gerardnll 7y ago
  '... it's hard to decide if that new movie just out is worth spending $15 on. Might be crap.' As well a restaurant might be crap too, or a website or mason work... look up reviews before buying.
  • davidmurdoch 7y ago
    Except looking at reviews for a movie spoils the movie.
    • ApolloFortyNine 7y ago
      You can always go by the number itself, or a critic that you trust.
  • efdee 7y ago
    Or don't, and watch Netflix or Popcorn Time. The market is speaking.
  • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    If you go too a restaurant and the food is really terrible, then you can refuse to pay, send a dish back, get a reduction/waiver of the bill - even the best places get it wrong sometimes. Anyone ever got money back from Amazon/Apple/whoever because a movie they sold you sucked?
    • sbarre 7y ago
      Where I live, our major cinema chain will refund your ticket if you leave in the first 20(?) minutes of a movie.
    • joombaga 7y ago
      > Anyone ever got money back from Amazon/Apple/whoever because a movie they sold you sucked? IDK, I'll find out within 72 hours. I just asked Microsoft to give me my money back for Dynasty Warriors 9 (I'd call it broke as fuck, but it's probably subjective). I did once get a refund request for a Toy Story 4 ticket because the director and I happen to share some names.
• golergka 7y ago
  That's two conversations mixed up in one: one about what is, as in, a prediction of what we can expect people to do, without any value judgements, and another about what ought to be, as in, what's our moral and ethical opinion of this behavior. And while the second one is a very tempting rabbit hole of flame wars, the first one is very clear cut: if you give people access to everything (or almost everything) for a reasonable subscription price, they won't pirate stuff anymore.
  • msla 7y ago
    > That's two conversations mixed up in one: one about what is, as in, a prediction of what we can expect people to do, without any value judgements, and another about what ought to be, as in, what's our moral and ethical opinion of this behavior. Economists are careful to distinguish between 'positive' and 'normative' economics, where positive economics is what's observed to happen and normative economics is what someone things ought to happen, morally, for precisely that reason. There are always the people who can't or won't make that distinction, however, including the people who refuse to distinguish between describing something and expressing approval of it. This has a particular relevance in any online community with a downvote function: If enough people are offended by a description of a state of affairs, any discussion of it will be downvoted to oblivion and will be impossible to hold in that forum, especially if downvotes are tied to how much you can participate in that forum in some fashion.
    • golergka 7y ago
      This problem is older than economics itself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
• lqet 7y ago
  Having used various streaming apps (Netflix, Watchever, Apple TV, the media libraries of T-Online here in Germany and various libraries of local TV stations), I am surprised that the interface, usability and stability of my basic home entertainment center (Kodi running on an old Raspberry Pi 2) are still vastly superior. I, too, would happily pay 50 EUR / month for ANY streaming service with a decent interface and a movie library that covers the 20th century. The easiest and cheapest (and mostly legal) way to watch classics for me is still to go to the public library (with an extensive DVD / BluRay collection), rent the movie, rip it and watch it via Kodi. This costs me 10 EUR a year. That being said, what we need is a standardized way to stream movie and music content, and handle payments. This would include a standardized API to list available content with descriptions, images and prices. This would make it possible to use a private home entertainment system like Kodi efficiently and legally and would get rid of the need to use / install 100,000 different apps for each streaming service. It completely eludes why the current level of abstraction between the different providers is the app, the only explanations I can come up with is branding, a total lack of collaboration between the providers and copyright protection.
• Holmes 7y ago
  Apple built iTunes on the success of Kazaa.
  • optimuspaul 7y ago
    that is an absurd assertion. iTunes predates Kazaa by several months and iTunes never had any P2P capabilities.
    • pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      It's not entirely absurd IMO, it could be that iTunes did so well because Kazaa, et al., had laid the groundwork for an expectation of "any tune, any time" and iTunes came closest to that?
      • optimuspaul 7y ago
        perhaps, I think iTunes did so well because of iPods and iPhones.
        • Holmes 7y ago
          People had gigabytes of free music on their computers and wanted a place to store them that enabled easy playback, hence the iPod. iTunes removed the friction necessary in piracy and priced inventory low enough to emerge as a viable alternative.
• antirapepolice 7y ago
  > If the film industry would collectively take their head out of their arses and provide such a simple interface and wide catalogue to the masses, they would make hundreds of billions. They are already making hundred of billions And will make more now thanks to house confinement Why should they change model just now? > I would literally pay $50 a month for an official and legal version of this. But I'm paying zero right now... And the chances of getting caught are slightly above zero.
  • 1_player 7y ago
    > They are already making hundred of billions My point is they would make hundred of billions MORE. Some will still illegally download, but most would flock to such a service. We're not all criminals because it's fun. We just hate the inconvenience of trying to watch a movie legally in 2020, especially if you're outside of US, or worse yet, outside of the Western world.
• CJefferson 7y ago
  An official and legal version of this wouldn't be $50/month, it would be more like $200/month. It includes movies from every major company, and films while they are still in the cinema.
  • sschueller 7y ago
    That isn't far off what cable costs...
    • dfxm12 7y ago
      I'm not sure what you're getting at. First, when I had cable it was more like $100/mo, which included internet access. I also didn't get films still in the cinema with my package.
  • josho 7y ago
    Streaming music has set the price floor. For the price of an album a month you can stream all the music you want, even new releases. What makes you think movies should have a multiple of 10 instead of 1 for a monthly subscription fee? I'll attempt an answer, the cost should be whatever the market will bare. The market could likely boom at $50/mth, but at $200 it would be niche. The industry seems to even be coalescing around $30/mth (my guess) through consumers paying for multiple services.
    • forgotpwd16 7y ago
      I'm fairly certain that movies are far more expensive to produce than music albums.
      • c256 7y ago
        True. Now, compare the number of music albums produced per studio to the number of movies. We’re explicitly talking about paying per time rather than per work here; one movie versus one album is misleading and/or irrelevant.
  • 7y ago
• dfxm12 7y ago
  This doesn't really explain your position on why you don't just buy/rent $50 worth of movies per month. edit: I don't have Spotify or Apple Music. Can you expand on this without putting it in terms of those services?
  • saagarjha 7y ago
    > This doesn't really explain your position on why you don't just buy/rent $50 worth of movies per month. Isn’t their position that they’d like this thing to exist? I don’t see how you need to have a Spotify or Apple Music account to understand the argument.
    • dfxm12 7y ago
      What "thing"? You can currently buy or rent whatever you want and watch it. I haven't found anything on a streaming service that isn't also for sale/rent somewhere and have found things for sale that are not available on streaming services. If you want access to "_everything_", and are willing to pay a premium over existing services, buying/renting what you want is available today. Problem Solved, no?
      • saagarjha 7y ago
        Online?
  • 1_player 7y ago
    Flat fee. All you can eat. I don't want to do the cost-benefit analysis of "do I want to spend $X for this movie?". I can afford it, I'm not counting pennies, but when I see a price figure I spend a few seconds deciding whether it's worth it or not, and sometimes the answer is NO. On subscription services you just click and enjoy. I'm already paying for it, the answer is always YES. But there's a limit. I will not pay for 10 different services at $9.99/mo to have access to 70% of the movie repertoire. No way in hell.
• basch 7y ago
  I'm going to link to one of my old comments and a reply from fouric - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21482394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21482394 >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.) > fouric: This is actually really important. While it's immoral to take the results of someone else's work without compensating them, it's also immoral to charge your customers multiple times for the same product. It would really benefit the viewer to decouple "what am I licensed for" from "what app do i need to play this" and just allow my media player to access all my libraries regardless of which licensing/billing manager and video player I choose to use.. Movies Anywhere, Vudu, Roku, Apple and Amazon have made some progress on this front, but its still way too convoluted.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• madez 7y ago
  It is not stealing. It may be illegal, but it isn't stealing nor robbery. You may be violating the copyright law, but nobody is taken away any object and there is no threat of violence. When people get access to copyrighted works, then at first, it is good for people. Only then the idea is that the creators can't make a living by producing those works. We can solve that differently, without using copyright. Copyright is a weirdly anti-market and authoritarian concept where the government artificially makes something scarce by punishing supply. In any case, distributing stuff is not stealing. /rant
• time0ut 7y ago
  I absolutely agree on the rental risk factor. It discourages discovery of new things. In addition to that, the rental terms on these services suck. Here's an example: A month ago, my wife and I rented Casino from Amazon Prime for like $3 or whatever. It is a long movie, so we paused half way through with a plan to finish it the next day. The next evening rolls around and we discover we only had 24 hours to finish it once we had started it. We just paid again cause its only $3, but also resolved to never rent from Amazon Prime again. These systems are a worse experience than pirating. It doesn't have to be that way.
• pb060 7y ago
  I'd be happy to keep paying for a legal service if I could watch movies in original language (movies are dubbed here in Italy) with English subtitles. Doesn't seem to be technically impossible so is it due to legal issues? If so, isn't that insane?
• ezzzzz 7y ago
  Not trying to be snarky, just something worth considering... Owning physical media is not as popular as it once was due to the multitude of streaming options available. Subsequently, the cost of physical media has gone down due to the popularity of streaming. If you pick up some $5 blue-rays for older films here and there, or hit up a used place, $50/month can go pretty far. Best part, after a year or so, you would have amassed a pretty sizeable collection of media, that is yours to watch, forever (as long as you retain copy of the media). Can't really beat that. Archive it and stream it with Plex or Kodi (which I think is legal, as long as you own a physical copy). Other commenters have noted similar sentiments, but I feel like the subscription services are just the new cable. Until a better option exists, I find physical media to have the friendliest licensing for users.