8 ms·

The only moral problem I have in your anecdote is the lying about it. With every fibre of my being, I could not care less about torrenting game of thrones.

by sho 6y ago

sixothree 6y ago
I pay for netflix, amazon prime, spotify (and thus hulu), and apple tv+, sometimes youtube tv, HBO+ during Game of Thrones. I pretty much just torrent much of the content I could find on these services. It's so much easier to just have it appear in the list instead of switching devices, sometimes remotes. Just so tired of boxes and remotes and accounts and having to "type" with a stupid remote control. Most of this could be solved if I could reliably queue something from my laptop to be played on my tv. Like how YouTube lets you queue videos.
- the_af 6y ago
  More importantly, if you downloaded some episodes, barring an act of god that destroys your house and the equipment within, you know you will get to enjoy those episodes at the time of your own choosing and with the best quality, no streaming issues or glitches. With HBO, who knows? I still remember they were unable to cope with the load for some of Game of Thrones episodes.
- acomjean 6y ago
  They make kinda do it pretty easy to stream the major services on TVs now. I can't imagine its easier to just torrent the files. I kinda don't care if people torrent, but they've made it easy enough I don't bother. The trouble is of course I'm paying for something that isn't as versatile (shows/movies come and go, I can't watch without a connection) but I think its easier and the tradeoff is worth it. I don't tend to watch shows over and over so that helps. Although I agree typing with the onscreen keyboard and remote just sucks... Of course I am old and remember the hassle of video rentals which involved physical media (where what you wanted often wasn't available), so my threshold for retrieving content might be higher.
SkyBelow 6y ago
At some point I find it hard to draw a distinction between a library and a torrent. Gotta to avoid legal trouble, but from a moral standpoint outlawing torrents is like outlawing the library.
- shuntress 6y ago
  Digital and physical copies of media content differ significantly in their transmissibility and copy-ability. For example, creating a digital copy of some content is typically so easy that creating an entirely new duplicate copy is actually how works are transfered. Compared to physical media where creating a copy can be so difficult that copies are shared by physically moving individual copies rather than re-duplicating them. While many libraries do have significant and valuable collections of digital works, they also tend to have somewhat overrought (or overly trusting) systems for preventing illicit copying.
- rhino369 6y ago
  >At some point I find it hard to draw a distinction between a library and a torrent. So why use torrents instead of the library? You know full well the difference.
  - na85 6y ago
    The library uses a shitty app and DRM.
    - o-__-o 6y ago
      Nothing stopping you from recording your screen a la a 1980s VCR
      - wccrawford 6y ago
        Actually, HDMI has DRM built in, and many DRM-laden apps won't work unless the HDMI DRM is working. The Amazon app has been telling me recently that my connection to my TV doesn't have it, but it actually does. Then I'll hit "play" again and it'll work. (I think it was a bug in their app, because it stopped again.) So recording it requires something that implements that HDMI DRM scheme, but still allows you to record.
flak48 6y ago
And the fact that the intern didn't care/foresee we would suffer downtime or at the very least a major inconvenience if our accounts were suspended as long as they could finish their personal task.
joe463369 6y ago
Can you explain why? I can understand why people want things for free, but thinking that you shouldn't contribute towards the production cost of the programme you enjoy seems strange to me.
- toxik 6y ago
  GoT season 8 is something that happened to me, not something I enjoyed. Like a bully ruining your sand castle after a long day at the beach.
  - joe463369 6y ago
    How does that work? Do you watch programmes, then send off a cheque to HBO if it meets your standards?
    - toxik 6y ago
      Pay for media? How quaint.
    - CamperBob2 6y ago
      It's probably fairly common among people who want to be able to access content freely while preserving an internal sense of ethical behavior. That's basically what I did with a certain popular TV series. I'd torrent the individual episodes, then buy the DVD box sets at the end of the season to pay for it. When it became clear that the writers didn't actually have any idea what they were doing (which was a topic of no small debate at the time), I stopped buying the box sets. Whether I stopped torrenting it is neither here nor there, but let's just say that the peer comment ("The last season wasn't something I enjoyed, it was something that happened to me") really rung a bell with me. Later, the same story repeated itself with another popular show on a different network, at which point I just disengaged with TV for good.
  - AlexCoventry 6y ago
    I stopped when they resuscitated Jon Snow. That was blatant pandering, and it was clearly going to be downhill from there.
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
>I could not care less about torrenting game of thrones. Promoting and distributing game of thrones is a crime against art, beauty and taste. Pirating it only makes things worse as it exacerbates the network effect.

The only moral problem I have in your anecdote is the lying about it. With every fibre of my being, I could not care less about torrenting game of thrones.

by sho 6y ago

The only moral problem I have in your anecdote is the lying about it. With every fibre of my being, I could not care less about torrenting game of thrones.

sixothree 6y ago

I pay for netflix, amazon prime, spotify (and thus hulu), and apple tv+, sometimes youtube tv, HBO+ during Game of Thrones. I pretty much just torrent much of the content I could find on these services. It's so much easier to just have it appear in the list instead of switching devices, sometimes remotes. Just so tired of boxes and remotes and accounts and having to "type" with a stupid remote control. Most of this could be solved if I could reliably queue something from my laptop to be played on my tv. Like how YouTube lets you queue videos.

the_af 6y ago
More importantly, if you downloaded some episodes, barring an act of god that destroys your house and the equipment within, you know you will get to enjoy those episodes at the time of your own choosing and with the best quality, no streaming issues or glitches. With HBO, who knows? I still remember they were unable to cope with the load for some of Game of Thrones episodes.
acomjean 6y ago
They make kinda do it pretty easy to stream the major services on TVs now. I can't imagine its easier to just torrent the files. I kinda don't care if people torrent, but they've made it easy enough I don't bother. The trouble is of course I'm paying for something that isn't as versatile (shows/movies come and go, I can't watch without a connection) but I think its easier and the tradeoff is worth it. I don't tend to watch shows over and over so that helps. Although I agree typing with the onscreen keyboard and remote just sucks... Of course I am old and remember the hassle of video rentals which involved physical media (where what you wanted often wasn't available), so my threshold for retrieving content might be higher.

SkyBelow 6y ago

At some point I find it hard to draw a distinction between a library and a torrent. Gotta to avoid legal trouble, but from a moral standpoint outlawing torrents is like outlawing the library.

shuntress 6y ago
Digital and physical copies of media content differ significantly in their transmissibility and copy-ability. For example, creating a digital copy of some content is typically so easy that creating an entirely new duplicate copy is actually how works are transfered. Compared to physical media where creating a copy can be so difficult that copies are shared by physically moving individual copies rather than re-duplicating them. While many libraries do have significant and valuable collections of digital works, they also tend to have somewhat overrought (or overly trusting) systems for preventing illicit copying.
rhino369 6y ago
>At some point I find it hard to draw a distinction between a library and a torrent. So why use torrents instead of the library? You know full well the difference.
- na85 6y ago
  The library uses a shitty app and DRM.
  - o-__-o 6y ago
    Nothing stopping you from recording your screen a la a 1980s VCR
    - wccrawford 6y ago
      Actually, HDMI has DRM built in, and many DRM-laden apps won't work unless the HDMI DRM is working. The Amazon app has been telling me recently that my connection to my TV doesn't have it, but it actually does. Then I'll hit "play" again and it'll work. (I think it was a bug in their app, because it stopped again.) So recording it requires something that implements that HDMI DRM scheme, but still allows you to record.

flak48 6y ago

And the fact that the intern didn't care/foresee we would suffer downtime or at the very least a major inconvenience if our accounts were suspended as long as they could finish their personal task.

joe463369 6y ago

Can you explain why? I can understand why people want things for free, but thinking that you shouldn't contribute towards the production cost of the programme you enjoy seems strange to me.

toxik 6y ago
GoT season 8 is something that happened to me, not something I enjoyed. Like a bully ruining your sand castle after a long day at the beach.
- joe463369 6y ago
  How does that work? Do you watch programmes, then send off a cheque to HBO if it meets your standards?
  - toxik 6y ago
    Pay for media? How quaint.
  - CamperBob2 6y ago
    It's probably fairly common among people who want to be able to access content freely while preserving an internal sense of ethical behavior. That's basically what I did with a certain popular TV series. I'd torrent the individual episodes, then buy the DVD box sets at the end of the season to pay for it. When it became clear that the writers didn't actually have any idea what they were doing (which was a topic of no small debate at the time), I stopped buying the box sets. Whether I stopped torrenting it is neither here nor there, but let's just say that the peer comment ("The last season wasn't something I enjoyed, it was something that happened to me") really rung a bell with me. Later, the same story repeated itself with another popular show on a different network, at which point I just disengaged with TV for good.
- AlexCoventry 6y ago
  I stopped when they resuscitated Jon Snow. That was blatant pandering, and it was clearly going to be downhill from there.

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

>I could not care less about torrenting game of thrones. Promoting and distributing game of thrones is a crime against art, beauty and taste. Pirating it only makes things worse as it exacerbates the network effect.