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> Piracy is competition to bad content behavior.
No it isn't. It's a workaround. This is an 8 billion dollar deal, there would have to be an impossible amou
> Piracy is competition to bad content behavior.
No it isn't. It's a workaround. This is an 8 billion dollar deal, there would have to be an impossible amount of piracy for it to count as "competition." This is precisely the reason why government regulation here is correct, as consumers, we don't have a lever long enough to have any real impact on the core problem.
And we're just one side of the deal. These types of distribution setups are not just bad for consumers, but for actors, directors, producers and anyone who makes a living on any part of these productions.
The knee jerk responses to avoid meaningful government regulation are always baffling to me.
> No it isn't. It's a workaround.
Sure, but it's a trivially easy workaround.
Our focus of attention on matters of regulation ought to be in those areas where working around the problem is not nearly as dead simple as a torrent client, a NAS, and a Plex server.
The two solutions don't play in the same ballpark of EV either. With Torrent and NAS and Plex you're talking niche phenomena forever.
It's a lot easier than that now. There are apps now that package the bittorent client and website with magnet links into a single unified app ecosystem that looks somewhat like the spotify app, but with practically every movie and TV show ever produced. You don't have to wait for downloads, the client will stream the torrent for you after maybe 30 seconds of buffer. It's often much faster for me to use this app to get to a show, than to navigate the website and do the same for a service I might pay for.
Trivially easy for a trivially small number of people. Does everyone else have to put up with whatever experience Amazon thinks they should get?
It's really not.
I'm a computer geek, and I'm LONG past the point where setting up safe VMs and signing up to half a dozen services like newsgroup server and directories and search engines and what nots, download software with impossible names like sabnzbd (I'm waiting up for somebody to scream how nobody uses sabnzbd anymore, it's been replaced by jidwiaj and iqerqip, which are super easy, and that just proves my point:P), setup my own webservers that talk to themselves internally so my downloader would work with my cataloguer that would work with the sorter that talks to the video player, figuring out a VPN to keep me somewhat safe while introducing a whole 'nother threat vector... gawd I get a headache just thinking about it. And I end up paying the same as I would for 2-4 monthly legit services. And then my wife wants to watch this movie that's just come out and I download eight versions of it but four are fake and two have hieroglyphic subtitles in three languages baked into video stream and take up half the screen. And then it stops half way through. And then I'm on a business trip (remember those? hah!) and my family wants to watch something and now I have to spend 47 minutes on the phone trying to guide her on how to do that before we all quit in frustration.
My few friends who still do that try to get me back on board, and their "quick & easy explanation on how to do it because it's so easy now" is still three pages long, while skipping 70% of crucial steps & detail.
Just, NO. Whoever thinks piracy is "trivially easy" has a very specific mindset (Hey, it's OK, I used to as well...!), and lacks empathy for those with different mindset/circumstances/skills/priorities... who happen to make up the clear majority of public.
Well there is put.io (no affiliation). If it became popular enough though I’m sure it’d get shut down some how.
On a Mac TPB + a decent VPN + BiglyBT = trivially easy torrenting. I have certainly never encountered any of the hardships you describe.
I have been using that same setup for… 10+ years? With BiglyBT replacing Vuze after Vuze was purchased and turned in to garbage.
Well-crafted regulation is constructive, in that it expresses the social problem and provides guidance on the expected behavior. That can shape investment and allow companies to make long-term decisions.
Piracy can have many reasons behind it, including just not wanting to pay for things in general. And it’s easy for companies to dismiss as just an expense to manage, like shoplifting (“loss”) in the retail channel.
This comment reminds me of the classic
"For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
It's extremely important to recognize that piracy is only a workaround for the consumer side. The consolidation of media production undoubtedly also changes what media gets produced. The types & style of content produced in each era of 'Hollywood' is incredibly influenced by who held power in the content creation process.
At several points the studios had the upper hand which meant that actors would only appear in a single studio's films. When more regulation freed actors from those types of contracts then celebrity actors were the major selling point. And for a while individual directors had a lot of power including final cut privileges which is why older in the 80s often had a theatrical release and a directors cut.
It seems that overall we are moving back towards studio control as single companies once again control production and distribution. For the most part this has worked out OK since most of these companies (Netflix, Hulu, etc.) were actually competing with the 'legacy' studios. However, now that major consolidation has taken place including the growth of Disney, etc; we are likely to see the industry and content itself shift to meet their interests. You can already see that, outside of small players and foreign sources, most studios focus on single annual big budget films marketed to an international audience (read: US & China). Just look at the top 20 films from 2015 vs 1995 vs 1985.
[2015] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls073655785/ https://www.imdb.com/list/ls073655785/
[1995] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls057887703/ https://www.imdb.com/list/ls057887703/
[1985] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls057991323/ https://www.imdb.com/list/ls057991323/
The solution is to break up big tech.
Amazon shouldn't be ten companies in one.
Google shouldn't be able to set web and mobile standards, then reap ad monies by forcing everyone to accept their anticompetitive changes.
Apple shouldn't be the sole guardian of iPlatform. You can't have a protection racket on 50% of all commerce (phones >> gaming consoles) and enforce what gets put on the device.
These companies don't have moats the size of an ocean. They have moats the size of a Schwarzschild radius, and they're sucking up everything in their path. Google, in particular, is being lazy as fuck because they don't have to actually do anything anymore.
Microsoft is literally the only tech giant behaving correctly, and it's probably because they got slapped with antitrust in the 2000s.
Competition is supposed to be good for the economy. These companies should have to try harder. The minute they no longer face existential risks, they become destructive.
Government regulation would be one solution. Another would be less government regulation, specifically making piracy legal.
You are blind to the amount of time you spend finding torrents, manage disk space, cleanups, feeding your TV-box, replacing broken/fake media, versus just opening an app and clicking play.
I say this as someone who's setup sonarr, radarr, bazaar, nzbget, usenet priorities, indexers, ombi, etc, which eliminates most maintenance and labor. Stuff can still break, quotas run out, and I want market options.
If I could pay to watch British panel shows, and everything else I want to watch from where I reside, I would do so.
1. Go to {insert-seedbox-website-because-there-are-so-many-like-seriously}.com (I'd share my favorite, but you know, don't want to break any rules, suffice to say there's a great search engine named "Google" that will point you in the right direction)
2. Pay $5-$10/month for a seedbox that pre-hosts rTorrent. Zero configuration. It will give you a web address, you visit it, and boom, torrent client.
Wait, should I pay for it in Bitcoin? I mean, you can. But you don't have to. It literally doesn't matter. No one gets caught doing it this way, unless you're a real Whale.
3. Go to {any-number-of-piracy-websites-even-that-one-everyone-knows-about-yeah-it-still-exists-and-its-fine}.com
4. Download torrent -> Upload into your rTorrent
You can, alternatively, skip all of that, pay for NordVPN or whatever, and just use your favorite local torrent client. Same thing.
A whole 3 pages, to be sure. I've got friends who wouldn't know a Mac from a PC, and they still pirate all the latest movies. Its startlingly easy. Experientially, there's near-zero risk of getting caught. It hasn't changed even a millimeter in a decade. Its the same process we all used back in middle school (or, you know, wherever you were ten years ago). Its just gotten cheaper, and also less interesting because of the Golden Days of streaming, but I think it'll come back if streaming continues splintering as it has.
Whoa; lots of great responses :)
I've read all the comments, and they're helpful, illuminating, insightful, and I've learned a lot (genuinely).
But overall they did not change and rather enforced my perspective:
1. the "Easy, out of the box, set-it-and-forget-it, everybody knows this" method to safely and easily to this seems to still change every 6-12 months, and still doesn't compare to convenience of just pushing a button on Netflix.
2. Paying for VPNs or Seedboxes etc easily equals the cost of a "just works" streaming service, while incurring new and exciting security & privacy threat vectors.
3. Most importantly, they don't take into account on what I will put forward is the actual mainstream public scenario: family that just wants to watch stuff . Between spouse who cannot be bothered with three remotes and two computer keyboards and six devices and 7 steps to watch something they could otherwise just stream on their phone, parent-in-law who wants to watch NBA/NHS/Soccer/Whatever reliably and in real time with no interruptions, kids who want to watch Paw Patrol safely now now now, all of this at the same time and all of them expecting six nines reliability and utter convenience across all their devices all the time always.
I'm off that particular wagon train, and if that makes me less of a computer geek, then so be it :-)
I love how the term "break up big tech" includes "break" in it. Kind of makes you realize what's really at stake here. Sure, you don't want monopolies, but is breaking US companies going to actually prevent monopolies, or are you just shifting the balance of power from US companies to Chinese companies? Because you sure as hell are not going to break those up - and Tik Tok has demonstrated what should be obvious: we are already neck-deep in the water trying to fend off Chinese companies from taking over the US market, and our competitive margin is only getting slimmer every day. A family member works a lot with Chinese companies and predicted this 13 years ago, and I remember laughing him out of the room. I am no longer laughing today, and I think most of us won't be with each passing day.
If you truly believe multinational conglomerates are the pinnacle of innovation then you may be right.
But from my perspective they acquire because they can't innovate internally.
I don't think I implied that multinational conglomerates are the pinnacle of innovation. I implied that they are important to our economy, and by extension (see my other comment), they are important to our way of life, our way of thinking, and our ability to live in a free and democratic society. That doesn't mean that companies get to operate without any regulatory oversight, but I would be careful to constrain domestic companies in ways that we cannot constrain their international competitors.
Somehow this concept might be easier to explain by looking at the analogies from the military world. Of course the world would be a better place if we all destroyed all of our nuclear weapons. Does that mean that the US should lead by example and destroy all of our weapons first with no assurances that others will do the same? Of course not. We do this step by step, and only as much as we can trust and enforce through bilateral agreements. Well, military power is intrinsically linked to economic power, so it should be clear that we wouldn't want to cap our economic power by implementing rules that others don't have to follow. Of course, two notable exceptions are environmental concerns, and in the future likely also mental health concerns. But you can't just go crazy with imposing unreasonable limitations in those two areas (eg: requesting that every factory is only powered by renewable energy, while allowing Chinese companies to use whatever energy they want). The same thinking should apply to any limitations we want to invoke on protecting our mental health - we have to approach this step by step, rather than killing our domestic companies and handing over the market share to the foreign ones.
I look at it differently (and I admit I could be wrong). I don't view these conglomerates as weapons but rather as baggage holding us back. I think by freeing ourselves from them we'll have a better chance at dominating competing nations. While they do have a lot of resources, it's not often good comes from it. They stifle innovation and lack imagination.
That's a very scary thought. What you're saying is, these big companies already are, or about to become, effectively untouchable, because they're now important strategic assets for United States in its struggle to maintain global economic dominance.
I agree it's a scary thought. Really, it's not much different than what happened with the military industrial complex. We'd be better off without it assuming every other country got rid of theirs, but since that's not happening, it has become effectively untouchable. I am not happy about it, but you won't see me advocating for destroying all of our weapons without other countries following suit. The same applies to my thinking around the tech companies, which are increasingly becoming important drivers of our economic growth.
This is such a cowardly view.
> or are you just shifting the balance of power from US companies to Chinese companies?
That's not going to happen. The biggest Chinese companies only exist because of stolen technology. This is a well documented fact. Tencent for example has this business model:
1) Identify trending games from competitors outside of China
2) Clone those games and release them internationally
3) Petition the Chinese government to block the game they cloned in China
Maybe in the short term they'll see some growth, but in the long-term innovation will always prevail.
If anything, breaking up these monopolies will lead to more innovation as the smart people working at Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. will no longer be tied by the "golden handcuffs" and will be driven to build and experiment with new ideas and technologies, instead of spending their days working on ads or other money printing businesses that provide little value to society.
This is such a cowardly view.
> If anything, breaking up these monopolies will lead to more innovation
Yes, let’s violate a company’s right to exist and conduct business just because we don’t like ads, or have preferences for how the run things. If you’re so concerned that they are not doing the right thing, then you go out and do it.
I am not sure the right for a company to exist, is a real thing. These are artificial entities created by the government that give groups of people liability protection and the ability to act as one entity legally.
It is not really a right, so much as a practical privilege we have set up. As such they should be open to whatever democratic will of the people. If the people arbitrarily decide they can only have so much power or size, then so be it.
> created by the government
The entity sure, but beyond the entity you have a group of people who have created something and want to sell it to you. If the Democratic will of the people said that we should jail them for creating shows we don’t like, I’m sure you’d object. Just because the people will it doesn’t mean it is correct.
People have a right to get together and create things and sell them to you under a contract. You have the right to accept or refuse. That simple.
Our society is regulation drunk.
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Microsoft is hardly behaving correctly rather behavior is just considered normal at this point.
Compared to Amazon, Google, & Apple, Microsoft's is incredibly litigious when it comes to licensing their products. It can seem baffling that most other tech company grants access to what you are licensed to use but Microsoft, perhaps deliberately, makes their licensing confusing and imprecise. Since not everything that requires a license is enforced via software, you can pretty easily be breaking their licensing rules.
Additionally, Microsoft products are deeply entrenched business best practices and auditor requirements:
Use Windows? Pay for it.
Need centralized antivirus for your organization? Pay for it.
Need to enforce MFA for Windows accounts? Pay extra for it.
Use Linux? Aren't you glad that Windows Defender supports it? And yea pay more for it.
Meanwhile Office 365 is a mess compared to AWS. Maybe Azure is better but it's still obvious that Microsoft uses its dominance in the OS space to pander more products to service its own OS which means they have no incentive to actually make Windows easy to manage.
Microsoft buying up the good will of developers is just an extra twist of the knife.
I am all up for first principles thinking, which is what you demonstrated above. The problem with this approach, however, is that you have to think deeply enough to get to the very bottom of each topic. Your analysis didn't touch on the fundamental need of any democratic society to sustain strong economic growth. It's a well-known fact that destabilization of that growth nips away at democratic principles and ultimately leads to totalitarian governance. Just look a the role of economic instability in the Nazi rise to power [1].
So, yes, people may decide that we no longer want a certain type of companies. Heck, let's take it a step further - people may also decide that we want everyone to get a million dollars, no questions asked. But people are smarter than that, which is why we still have democracies.
[1] https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-nazi-rise-to-power/the-nazi-rise-to-power/the-role-of-economic-instability/ https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-nazi-rise-to-power...
> Your analysis didn't touch on the fundamental need of any democratic society to sustain strong economic growth
The need of the society is to defend property rights and sustain the rule of law. Economic growth is good, but you can’t make it the top of your list. Besides, we are already awash in too much regulation as it is, we should be heading the other direction towards more liberty. I’m not saying there’s never a time for regulation, just that we are waaaay past the point of reason in many areas.
It feels like we're agreeing on some subjects (eg: too much regulation can kill economic growth), but disagreeing on the importance of economic growth for the defense of property rights and rule of law. My point is that those two items can only be guaranteed in a democratic society (you won't find them in places like Russia, Middle East, most of Africa, etc). In an earlier comment, I referenced a piece that discusses the impact of economic stability on Nazi's rise to power. You will find many other examples of democratic societies turning into totalitarian regimes at the time when people lost faith in elections (which is something they do when they can no longer pay for their food and rent).
Yes I think we do agree on many things. I think in general we both value property rights and that’s a good place to be.
We may disagree on which is the cart and which is the horse. I think that in general you need a moral people who will enforce the rule of law to get economic growth, so the rule of law is the horse. And the horse’s horse is the morality of the people, something Weimar Germany was certainly lacking. Get those in order first and I think prosperity will follow. Try to put prosperity first, then it won’t matter what rule of law you have b/c the most important thing is to make money.
I thought most of that was implied by the word “practical.”
As a practical matter it may be bad policy. But, right it is not.
> The biggest Chinese companies only exist because of stolen technology.
We can debate the origination of their know how just like we can debate the origination of Covid. But at the end of the day what matters are the results, and China demonstrated with Covid how much more successfully they were in execution than we were. That same scenario is being replayed in board rooms across the globe - the Chinese people are hungrier, work harder, and get results more quickly. Granted, there are still gaps in some areas, but the margins are shrinking every day.
> Maybe in the short term they'll see some growth, but in the long-term innovation will always prevail.
You are somehow implying that the Chinese people are fundamentally bad at innovation. That's neighboring on being a racist statement that you should take a moment to reflect on. Just like innovation is not limited to the Bay Area, it's not limited to the US either. The Bay Area did in fact produce a disproportional amount of breakthrough ideas in the past 50 years, but not because their residents are somehow genetically more superior to other parts of the country (and ironically, you might be surprised to find out just how many Chinese workers stand behind so many of those Bay Area companies). It happened because the infrastructure for ideas was there (lack of enforcement of non competes, high risk tolerance of financial backers, previous waves of successful founders sharing their know-how with young founders and pouring money into new startups, etc). The pandemic has removed the need for in-person meetings for fundraising, and suddenly we're seeing an even more pronounced decentralization of the Bay Area, which should prove that innovation is not tied by city, county, or country borders - it's tied by regulatory, educational, and financial constraints, all of which are rapidly improving in China.
Once this current wave of Chinese mega-successful companies cashes out, the next wave will be even stronger. It's only a matter of time until a suitable ecosystem forms in China that will give their people the right ingredients to kick our ass in innovation, on top of all the other things they are already kicking our ass in.
> their residents are somehow genetically more superior to other parts of the country
Those are your words, not mine.
I never said that Chinese people can’t innovate. My point was that Chinese companies don’t innovate, and if you wanted to have an adult discussion about it, I would’ve been happy to clarify for you why I believe that.
But I’m not going to entertain a discussion with someone that tries to support their argument by putting words in my mouth and suggesting I’m racist. A discussion with someone like that will go nowhere productive.
Let me start with an apology: using loaded terms is not a good way to have a good faith conversation, and that wasn't appropriate.
But you have to admit there's something about our folks being a bit too comfortable with the notion that the Chinese people won't catch up with us because we innovate and they don't. I see people justifying their beliefs in one of these two ways:
1. Focusing on barriers that supposedly exist in China today and will continue to exist forever. Something like: "their government will always force them to do things in a certain way", or "the lack of regulatory framework invites bad behavior and doesn't instill the discipline required to be creative," etc.
2. Focusing on the idea of American Exceptionalism - essentially, it doesn't matter what China does now or in the future, we're always going to be a few steps ahead because of the most unusual events that have led to the formation of our country, our political system, our culture and values, and our inherent will to be the global leaders and ambassadors.
I would be curious to hear what your thoughts are. In my mind, as I laid out above, innovation is not a privilege bestowed upon any one location or nationality, but instead a byproduct of regulatory, educational, and financial ingredients all coming together and unblocking barriers to creativity. All of those elements are changing in China very rapidly, and all of them are moving in the "right" direction.
So for your statement "Maybe in the short term they'll see some growth, but in the long-term innovation will always prevail" to ring true to me, I would have to be convinced that we somehow have a defensible advantage in one of those three elements, and that this barrier will stand the test of time. Because I think we're both agreeing on the notion that there's nothing fundamentally special about us and our raw capabilities compared to theirs.