5 ms·

My proposal is that everyone pirate the crap out of whatever they wish to watch, as the civil disobedience threat behind the happy facade. Hopefully this will

by marvin 6y ago

My proposal is that everyone pirate the crap out of whatever they wish to watch, as the civil disobedience threat behind the happy facade. Hopefully this will once again force content producers to consider the risks of prioritizing profits exclusively, at the cost of convenience and fragmentation. Worked 10 years ago, should work equally fine today.

bobthepanda 6y ago
If piracy becomes rampant enough, content producers may simply pull out entirely, or pivot to less desirable models. There is a reason why the Chinese gaming market is mostly grindy GaaS designed to lure in whales.
- chii 6y ago
  > There is a reason why the Chinese gaming market is mostly grindy GaaS designed to lure in whales. and it's not because of piracy. It's because these games _do_ absolutely bring in more money, due to the way it's designed to fuel addiction. There's plenty of games in the indie games market that are original and fresh. But the unfortunate outcome of those games is that they don't bring in as much money, and so any failure dooms the indie developer.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    With how large the Chinese population is, even a small slice of that should be more than enough to sustain a thriving community of indie games. But China lacks any major non-GaaS companies.
donpott 6y ago
I'd agree with the proposal, but I'm not sure it would work equally fine today. I'm starting to think that the advent of Netflix weakened piracy movements too much, at just the wrong time. After all, media conglomerates have had 10 years to prepare and perfect their anti-piracy systems. What happens in an arms race if one of the sides stops innovating for a decade?
- chii 6y ago
  > perfect their anti-piracy systems and yet it's trivial today to obtain any media you want to watch for free. popcorn time comes to mind, but there's countless others. Fighting piracy is like trying to fight the tide.
  - donpott 6y ago
    My anecdotal experience suggests that today it is slightly more difficult to find pirated content than in "the golden age of Piracy" (namely the mid-noughties to mid-10s). My hypothesis is that having a critical mass of people willing to search, consume and generate pirated content is important.
secfirstmd 6y ago
But what about content quality? Movies are mostly rubbish at the moment. Either redone old stuff or comic related because of the torrent effect - it's the only way studios can make money. There's an argument that music has gone downhill also because of it. You either do well as a band with the first two albums and translate that into tour money or you are gone. I can't imagine that a lot of artists that don't make tour money like Enya would ever emerge these days - no matter how good their studio stuff is. Quality series creation driven by money flowing from streaming services is one of the few bright sparks in quality entertainment these days other than gaming. If everyone decides to pirate the crap out of that we end up essentially with middle of the road rubbish as we basically are at the cinema now. I get the frustration about needing to have so many services, it feels like we have just uninvented cable to reinvent it again (I'm waiting for places to start selling packages of streaming) but the benefit at least has been in programming.
harryh 6y ago
10 years ago pirates complained about cable packages that forced them to buy a whole bunch of channels they didn't want. Instead they wanted a la carte choices. Now pirates complain about "convenience and fragmentation." Saying they want a service with everything all in one place. The truth is that pirates want content for free. Which is fine. I get that. But don't try to package up this belief as some kind of principled "civil disobedience." You want to watch other people's stuff for free. Own it.
- Spivak 6y ago
  I mean Spotify has completely eliminated my desire to pirate music. I did when I was younger but $10/mo easily worth the price. If such a thing existed for TV and movies it would be a no-brainer too. And Netflix was that for a while. Sure, it didn’t have everything but it had enough that I had more good content than I could watch. It’s not that it’s fragmented, it’s that too expensive to maintain 7 streaming service subscriptions. So most people seem to pick one or two, account share to get coverage, and then pirate what still isn’t available.
  - harryh 6y ago
    "I pay for what I feel like paying for and then I steal the stuff I don't feel like paying for" kind of proves my point.
- brnt 6y ago
  Piracy is cheap, and that is appealing, granted. But first and foremost, it's easy and has the best availability/catalogue bar none. I decide what I want, I go to a torrent site, between a few minutes and an hour later I have it. Done. This workflow hasnt changed in 20 years either. For me, that is the appeal.
  - em-bee 6y ago
    actually that's not quite true. you can easely find recent or popular stuff, by anything older is really hard to find, or the torrents are dead.

by marvin 6y ago

bobthepanda 6y ago

If piracy becomes rampant enough, content producers may simply pull out entirely, or pivot to less desirable models. There is a reason why the Chinese gaming market is mostly grindy GaaS designed to lure in whales.

chii 6y ago
> There is a reason why the Chinese gaming market is mostly grindy GaaS designed to lure in whales. and it's not because of piracy. It's because these games _do_ absolutely bring in more money, due to the way it's designed to fuel addiction. There's plenty of games in the indie games market that are original and fresh. But the unfortunate outcome of those games is that they don't bring in as much money, and so any failure dooms the indie developer.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  With how large the Chinese population is, even a small slice of that should be more than enough to sustain a thriving community of indie games. But China lacks any major non-GaaS companies.

donpott 6y ago

I'd agree with the proposal, but I'm not sure it would work equally fine today. I'm starting to think that the advent of Netflix weakened piracy movements too much, at just the wrong time. After all, media conglomerates have had 10 years to prepare and perfect their anti-piracy systems. What happens in an arms race if one of the sides stops innovating for a decade?

chii 6y ago
> perfect their anti-piracy systems and yet it's trivial today to obtain any media you want to watch for free. popcorn time comes to mind, but there's countless others. Fighting piracy is like trying to fight the tide.
- donpott 6y ago
  My anecdotal experience suggests that today it is slightly more difficult to find pirated content than in "the golden age of Piracy" (namely the mid-noughties to mid-10s). My hypothesis is that having a critical mass of people willing to search, consume and generate pirated content is important.

secfirstmd 6y ago

But what about content quality? Movies are mostly rubbish at the moment. Either redone old stuff or comic related because of the torrent effect - it's the only way studios can make money. There's an argument that music has gone downhill also because of it. You either do well as a band with the first two albums and translate that into tour money or you are gone. I can't imagine that a lot of artists that don't make tour money like Enya would ever emerge these days - no matter how good their studio stuff is. Quality series creation driven by money flowing from streaming services is one of the few bright sparks in quality entertainment these days other than gaming. If everyone decides to pirate the crap out of that we end up essentially with middle of the road rubbish as we basically are at the cinema now. I get the frustration about needing to have so many services, it feels like we have just uninvented cable to reinvent it again (I'm waiting for places to start selling packages of streaming) but the benefit at least has been in programming.

harryh 6y ago

10 years ago pirates complained about cable packages that forced them to buy a whole bunch of channels they didn't want. Instead they wanted a la carte choices. Now pirates complain about "convenience and fragmentation." Saying they want a service with everything all in one place. The truth is that pirates want content for free. Which is fine. I get that. But don't try to package up this belief as some kind of principled "civil disobedience." You want to watch other people's stuff for free. Own it.

Spivak 6y ago
I mean Spotify has completely eliminated my desire to pirate music. I did when I was younger but $10/mo easily worth the price. If such a thing existed for TV and movies it would be a no-brainer too. And Netflix was that for a while. Sure, it didn’t have everything but it had enough that I had more good content than I could watch. It’s not that it’s fragmented, it’s that too expensive to maintain 7 streaming service subscriptions. So most people seem to pick one or two, account share to get coverage, and then pirate what still isn’t available.
- harryh 6y ago
  "I pay for what I feel like paying for and then I steal the stuff I don't feel like paying for" kind of proves my point.
brnt 6y ago
Piracy is cheap, and that is appealing, granted. But first and foremost, it's easy and has the best availability/catalogue bar none. I decide what I want, I go to a torrent site, between a few minutes and an hour later I have it. Done. This workflow hasnt changed in 20 years either. For me, that is the appeal.
- em-bee 6y ago
  actually that's not quite true. you can easely find recent or popular stuff, by anything older is really hard to find, or the torrents are dead.