6 ms·

> 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

by caeril 5y ago

> 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.

threatofrain 5y ago
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.
- asdff 5y ago
  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.
dkarl 5y ago
Trivially easy for a trivially small number of people. Does everyone else have to put up with whatever experience Amazon thinks they should get?
NikolaNovak 5y ago
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with impossible names like sabnzbd (I'm waiting up for somebody to scream how nobody uses sabnzbd anymore, it's been replaced by jidwiaj and iqerqip, which are super easy, and that just proves my point:P), setup my own webservers that talk to themselves internally so my downloader would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.
- rapind 5y ago
  Well there is put.io (no affiliation). If it became popular enough though I’m sure it’d get shut down some how.
- Fezzik 5y ago
  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.
  - croon 5y ago
    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.
- saltyfamiliar 5y ago
  I truly cannot relate. All one needs is a VPN, a torrent client, a browser and an internet connection. Most tv's nowadays are smart enough to either connect to a simple Windows share or at least be able to play movie files. My SO and I watch a new movie almost every single night with a very simple setup and rarely encounter problems. It reads to me like you've over engineered movie night and are now complaining about the complexity.
  - d0gbread 5y ago
    Three comments so far that highlight the exact point the parent was making, a true lack of empathy. VPN alone is enough complexity for most... it's hard to find one that doesn't have comments calling it potentially insecure, questioning the owner, nevermind keeping tabs on if it sells to another owner.
snowwrestler 5y ago
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.
Pmop 5y ago
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."
- MattRix 5y ago
  For those who haven’t seen it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
KingMachiavelli 5y ago
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/

by caeril 5y ago

threatofrain 5y ago

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.

asdff 5y ago
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.

dkarl 5y ago

Trivially easy for a trivially small number of people. Does everyone else have to put up with whatever experience Amazon thinks they should get?

NikolaNovak 5y ago

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.

rapind 5y ago
Well there is put.io (no affiliation). If it became popular enough though I’m sure it’d get shut down some how.
Fezzik 5y ago
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.
- croon 5y ago
  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.
saltyfamiliar 5y ago
I truly cannot relate. All one needs is a VPN, a torrent client, a browser and an internet connection. Most tv's nowadays are smart enough to either connect to a simple Windows share or at least be able to play movie files. My SO and I watch a new movie almost every single night with a very simple setup and rarely encounter problems. It reads to me like you've over engineered movie night and are now complaining about the complexity.
- d0gbread 5y ago
  Three comments so far that highlight the exact point the parent was making, a true lack of empathy. VPN alone is enough complexity for most... it's hard to find one that doesn't have comments calling it potentially insecure, questioning the owner, nevermind keeping tabs on if it sells to another owner.

snowwrestler 5y ago

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.

Pmop 5y ago

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."

MattRix 5y ago
For those who haven’t seen it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

KingMachiavelli 5y ago

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/