4 ms·

Why the conspiracy theory? It works very well to stop piracy (since it's a hassle to have to pick a bottorrent program, install it, deal with it's annoying popu

Why the conspiracy theory? It works very well to stop piracy (since it's a hassle to have to pick a bottorrent program, install it, deal with it's annoying popups and ads (because you're a normal user and chose a popular bittorrent client), avoid the popups on the pirate bay, know what a magnet link it, find a player for .mkv files. It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. Anyone who disagrees hasn't tried to help their friends pirate things, or shut their eyes to the reality.

danuker 5y ago
> It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. Depends on the value of your time. If you get paid less in the amount it takes you to learn all that (like living in a 3rd world country), then it's not worth the $15.
- tdsamardzhiev 5y ago
  The amount of time it takes to learn all that is like 15 minutes. And it's one-time investment.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. My local currency is currently exchanged for USD at a factor of nearly 6 to 1, making that $15 nearly 10% of minimum wage where I live. And that's before taxes.
ddtaylor 5y ago
There are all-in-one solutions like Popcorn Time that do everything for you automatically and simply provide a Netflix like browsing experience.
DeWilde 5y ago
Not really, the issue with pirated content isn't getting the content from the DRM protected sources, it is distributing it. What prevents distribution is taking down the sites that host content, leaving old-school torrenting as the most viable option, which is a hassle to most people.
dvdkon 5y ago
I'd say it's much harder for kids to pay any amount of money online than to spend lots of time figuring out a workaround. And when they learn to pirate as a kid, they'll carry that knowledge into their adult life.
dartharva 5y ago
It's always weird how people keep insisting pirating stuff is hard and only for "techies", when all it takes is to go to a trusted website and hit the play or download button. You can literally get pirate streaming sites in google results by searching "watch <movie name> online", often in reasonable video quality. I wonder what kind of hoops you have gone through in helping your friends with something as simple as this to have such an opinion.
- 10000truths 5y ago
  Trusted websites are hard to find, though. Any site that gets sufficiently popular (e.g. Megaupload) gets shut down or taken off search results via DMCA, and anything you do find is usually some extremely sketchy site which (if it does actually have the content you want) spams you with popup ads for gambling/cam sites and whatnot every time you click anywhere. That said, downloading Bittorrent + a VPN, browsing the Pirate Bay, and clicking a magnet link isn't some Herculean effort, either. If you can figure out how to download software on a computer, it's not hard to figure out how to pirate it, too.
jorams 5y ago
Nothing you mention has anything to do with DRM. I wish I could just pay $15 to get high quality DRM-free files for a season of a TV show, but the only thing on offer is a streaming copy full of DRM (which I can't play at full quality), or a physical copy full of DRM (which I can't play without extra hardware).
- phendrenad2 5y ago
  The connection to DRM is a bit tricky to see, but I'll try to go into depth: DRM raises the bar to casual copying from "copy a file to a USB stick" to "figure out how to run bittorrent, and find a reputable pirate site that doesn't have viruses". In order to receive pirated content, you will have to pass that hurdle, or have someone in your friend network who can pass that hurdle. If none of them can, then you're blocked from pirating. If people think that isn't a hard hurdle to pass, then they just need to step outside the silicon valley echochamber, and spend more time around normal computer users.

danuker 5y ago

> It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. Depends on the value of your time. If you get paid less in the amount it takes you to learn all that (like living in a 3rd world country), then it's not worth the $15.

tdsamardzhiev 5y ago
The amount of time it takes to learn all that is like 15 minutes. And it's one-time investment.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> It's easier to pay $15 to buy the show on Amazon. My local currency is currently exchanged for USD at a factor of nearly 6 to 1, making that $15 nearly 10% of minimum wage where I live. And that's before taxes.

ddtaylor 5y ago

There are all-in-one solutions like Popcorn Time that do everything for you automatically and simply provide a Netflix like browsing experience.

DeWilde 5y ago

Not really, the issue with pirated content isn't getting the content from the DRM protected sources, it is distributing it. What prevents distribution is taking down the sites that host content, leaving old-school torrenting as the most viable option, which is a hassle to most people.

dvdkon 5y ago

I'd say it's much harder for kids to pay any amount of money online than to spend lots of time figuring out a workaround. And when they learn to pirate as a kid, they'll carry that knowledge into their adult life.

dartharva 5y ago

It's always weird how people keep insisting pirating stuff is hard and only for "techies", when all it takes is to go to a trusted website and hit the play or download button. You can literally get pirate streaming sites in google results by searching "watch <movie name> online", often in reasonable video quality. I wonder what kind of hoops you have gone through in helping your friends with something as simple as this to have such an opinion.

10000truths 5y ago
Trusted websites are hard to find, though. Any site that gets sufficiently popular (e.g. Megaupload) gets shut down or taken off search results via DMCA, and anything you do find is usually some extremely sketchy site which (if it does actually have the content you want) spams you with popup ads for gambling/cam sites and whatnot every time you click anywhere. That said, downloading Bittorrent + a VPN, browsing the Pirate Bay, and clicking a magnet link isn't some Herculean effort, either. If you can figure out how to download software on a computer, it's not hard to figure out how to pirate it, too.

jorams 5y ago

Nothing you mention has anything to do with DRM. I wish I could just pay $15 to get high quality DRM-free files for a season of a TV show, but the only thing on offer is a streaming copy full of DRM (which I can't play at full quality), or a physical copy full of DRM (which I can't play without extra hardware).

phendrenad2 5y ago
The connection to DRM is a bit tricky to see, but I'll try to go into depth: DRM raises the bar to casual copying from "copy a file to a USB stick" to "figure out how to run bittorrent, and find a reputable pirate site that doesn't have viruses". In order to receive pirated content, you will have to pass that hurdle, or have someone in your friend network who can pass that hurdle. If none of them can, then you're blocked from pirating. If people think that isn't a hard hurdle to pass, then they just need to step outside the silicon valley echochamber, and spend more time around normal computer users.