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I am not sure about Popcorn Time, but these days you can find plenty of watchable results by searching for "<movie name> watch online" in search engines from co

I am not sure about Popcorn Time, but these days you can find plenty of watchable results by searching for "<movie name> watch online" in search engines from countries that don't care about copyright (notably Russia). It appears that they use the same setup - put terabytes of encrypted video files on platforms that offer some kind of free storage (hello, Github) and have a simple website hosted in a piracy-friendly country that loads these files, decrypts them on-the-fly and plays the video. If you open such a site without an adblocker, you may find some truly ingenious monetization "schemes". Like opening a target site in a background window, scrolling it programmatically and clicking on ads in a "natural" way, while the user is busy watching. The funniest part though is that the market for it only exists due to the greed and stupidity of the legal "platforms". Many people would happily buy (as in pay once, play forever) films and TV shows, many others would find it reasonable to pay $20-50/month for a single streaming service covering 90% of the things you would want to watch. But having relevant movies splintered over a multitude of competing platforms with a combined rent approaching what you could pay for a small apartment is a complete non-starter. So, people are back to piracy.

marczellm 5y ago
I live in Hungary. Disney+ hasn't launched here, which means you cannot watch stuff like the new Star Wars shows legally, you can only pirate them. (Yeah, I know VPN exists.) My point is it seems Disney has decided this market is too small for them to lift a finger. There are other movies that you simply cannot watch on any platform legally.
gruez 5y ago
>If you open such a site without an adblocker, you may find some truly ingenious monetization "schemes". Like opening a target site in a background window, scrolling it programmatically and clicking on ads in a "natural" way, while the user is busy watching. does that actually work? what you're describing shouldn't work due to same-origin.
- john_moscow 5y ago
  If the target site is controlled by the same party, it could easily include logic for loading the auto-scrolling script when opened from the player, and pretending to be a regular site otherwise.
- zinekeller 5y ago
  It should be like that, but ad platforms are engaging not just in a cat-and-mouse game of ad blockers but also ad impression fraud (their words, not mine). This is why the JS loaded from ad servers are huge - they're trying to detect if it's an actual user or scripted click, which ironically pushes users to block ads wholesale due to these heavy and genuinely CPU-eating JS blobs.
vlunkr 5y ago
> Many people would happily buy (as in pay once, play forever) films and TV shows You can do this, physically or digitally.
- dajonker 5y ago
  Physically, yes, as long as the medium doesn't get damaged or deteriorated. Digitally, the "forever" part doesn't actually work that great in practice [1]. Unless you can download the movie and store or yourself. [1] https://www.slashfilm.com/560987/you-still-own-movies-on-apple-even-if-they-disappear-from-your-library/ https://www.slashfilm.com/560987/you-still-own-movies-on-app...
  - vlunkr 5y ago
    Yeah, it's unfortunate that the movie industry has held on to DRM so hard.
  - cubesnooper 5y ago
    I’ve seen a few venues where it’s possible to digitally buy DRM‐free movies, as a straight up downloadable 1080p MP4. Unfortunately the selection is very limited, to pretty much just a handful of indie documentaries and short films. I know of three sources: VHX, Vimeo On Demand, and GOG. Although upon looking it appears VHX is now owned by Vimeo, so there are really only two. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ https://www.gog.com/movies https://www.gog.com/movies
lou1306 5y ago
> the market for it only exists due to the greed and stupidity of the legal "platforms". From my experience as a 30-something guy in South/West EU, the "market" for the sites you mention is mostly made of high school/university students who are unwilling or unable to put any money into home entertainment content. > many others would find it reasonable to pay $20-50/month for a single streaming service covering 90% of the things you would want to watch But in the EU, $20-50/month get you 2-4 (if not 5) subscriptions from the main content providers. At that point, you are either at that 90% or pretty close. I agree that having multiple services is subpar, but so is looking for movies on the sites you mention (especially without a good adblocker). And I am pretty sure that we will just end up either reinventing cable (ugh), or having smart TVs that subscribe/unsubscribe you from streaming services based on your watch list to keep your monthly expenses at a minimum.
- watermelon0 5y ago
  This varies widely between countries in the EU: > Viewers in Germany have access to 43.1% of the films available online in the EU, while in Slovenia, for example, only 0.3% are available. From recently published https://www.fuen.org/en/article/Borderless-Media-Consumption-Geoblocking-reform-FUEN-sits-at-the-table-with-film-and-TV-industry https://www.fuen.org/en/article/Borderless-Media-Consumption...
cpursley 5y ago
Yeah, I don't buy this. Russia now has several pretty good Netflix-like competitors with good TV apps.
dustymcp 5y ago
I use kodi for this very purpose i have streaming accounts aswell but the greed and fragmentaion is bringing me back its just easier..
godelski 5y ago
> The funniest part though is that the market for it only exists due to the greed and stupidity of the legal "platforms". Many people would happily buy (as in pay once, play forever) films and TV shows, many others would find it reasonable to pay $20-50/month for a single streaming service covering 90% of the things you would want to watch. I think a lot of people miss this. A lot of pirating declined when Netflix became popular. Then there were a ton of platforms and pirating came back. But I feel pirating is different now. It's because there's one compelling show on the small platforms and so those get pirated. A certain amount of centralization is good but too much makes it difficult.
- anyfactor 5y ago
  > A certain amount of centralization is good but too much makes it difficult. The Medelin drug cartel story. I wonder what monopolistic entities are working effectively yet we don't realize it.
  - godelski 5y ago
    I think natural monopolies are pretty common wherever there is a network effect. Depending on what you mean by effective, I'd say that Facebook has an effective monopoly. We could say oil or web hosting has a centralized oligopoly. I should refine my first comment by stating that there is a trend to centralization with markets that depend on network effects. This is simply because power in these markets isn't linear with respect to the number of users, but rather super-linear. Momentum is a key aspect.
- radmuzom 5y ago
  I jumped into the Netflix bandwagon and stopped using torrents few years back. Then I realized that Netflix has almost no content at all, and primarily interested in pushing "their content" onto the masses. Now I am back to torrents. One big difference is now it is harder to find torrents - earlier, it was easy to find one say for a Uruguayan movie from 2004; they are becoming quite rare now.
  - deleted 5y ago
estaseuropano 5y ago
Netflix each year raises prices but the actual offer (ignoring Netflix Originals) is shrinking (at least in my smaller European market). I just reduced from the UHD to just HD subscription and am back to the price of 2-3 years ago. I end up just watching less, if not for the kids it would long be canceled. Disney is an evil corp that I can't support while keeping my soul. On the plus side: one more reason not to watch.
- dleslie 5y ago
  I used to binge classic scifi and documentaries on Netflix, and then one day it seemed like both parts of the catalogue were reduced to a small fraction of what they were. I'll unsub once my kids grow tired of their (mostly awful) cartoons.
6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
> many others would find it reasonable to pay $20-50/month for a single streaming service covering 90% of the things you would want to watch. I just use prime and rent movies that aren't free on it. It covers well over 90% of what I want to watch, and I spend well under $50/mo on it. After the $10 subscription, $40/mo for the rentals is like 2-3 seasons of a show, or 10+ movies (in addition to the included stuff). Legal cheap solutions exist, you just have to be willing to rent movies and shows like in the blockbuster days.
peakaboo 5y ago
Yup. I'm also back to piracy, which is ridicolous really as a grown man. But should I pay for 5 different streaming services, where I basically borrow movies for whatever time they decide? I can't even remember which service has which movie so its very hard to just start watching something.
oh_sigh 5y ago
I wouldn't call that greed and stupidity of the legal platforms. Netflix would probably have every piece of content on their site if owners would license it to them at a reasonable fee.

marczellm 5y ago

I live in Hungary. Disney+ hasn't launched here, which means you cannot watch stuff like the new Star Wars shows legally, you can only pirate them. (Yeah, I know VPN exists.) My point is it seems Disney has decided this market is too small for them to lift a finger. There are other movies that you simply cannot watch on any platform legally.

gruez 5y ago

>If you open such a site without an adblocker, you may find some truly ingenious monetization "schemes". Like opening a target site in a background window, scrolling it programmatically and clicking on ads in a "natural" way, while the user is busy watching. does that actually work? what you're describing shouldn't work due to same-origin.

john_moscow 5y ago
If the target site is controlled by the same party, it could easily include logic for loading the auto-scrolling script when opened from the player, and pretending to be a regular site otherwise.
zinekeller 5y ago
It should be like that, but ad platforms are engaging not just in a cat-and-mouse game of ad blockers but also ad impression fraud (their words, not mine). This is why the JS loaded from ad servers are huge - they're trying to detect if it's an actual user or scripted click, which ironically pushes users to block ads wholesale due to these heavy and genuinely CPU-eating JS blobs.

vlunkr 5y ago

> Many people would happily buy (as in pay once, play forever) films and TV shows You can do this, physically or digitally.

dajonker 5y ago
Physically, yes, as long as the medium doesn't get damaged or deteriorated. Digitally, the "forever" part doesn't actually work that great in practice [1]. Unless you can download the movie and store or yourself. [1] https://www.slashfilm.com/560987/you-still-own-movies-on-apple-even-if-they-disappear-from-your-library/ https://www.slashfilm.com/560987/you-still-own-movies-on-app...
- vlunkr 5y ago
  Yeah, it's unfortunate that the movie industry has held on to DRM so hard.
- cubesnooper 5y ago
  I’ve seen a few venues where it’s possible to digitally buy DRM‐free movies, as a straight up downloadable 1080p MP4. Unfortunately the selection is very limited, to pretty much just a handful of indie documentaries and short films. I know of three sources: VHX, Vimeo On Demand, and GOG. Although upon looking it appears VHX is now owned by Vimeo, so there are really only two. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ https://vimeo.com/ondemand/ https://www.gog.com/movies https://www.gog.com/movies

lou1306 5y ago

> the market for it only exists due to the greed and stupidity of the legal "platforms". From my experience as a 30-something guy in South/West EU, the "market" for the sites you mention is mostly made of high school/university students who are unwilling or unable to put any money into home entertainment content. > many others would find it reasonable to pay $20-50/month for a single streaming service covering 90% of the things you would want to watch But in the EU, $20-50/month get you 2-4 (if not 5) subscriptions from the main content providers. At that point, you are either at that 90% or pretty close. I agree that having multiple services is subpar, but so is looking for movies on the sites you mention (especially without a good adblocker). And I am pretty sure that we will just end up either reinventing cable (ugh), or having smart TVs that subscribe/unsubscribe you from streaming services based on your watch list to keep your monthly expenses at a minimum.

watermelon0 5y ago
This varies widely between countries in the EU: > Viewers in Germany have access to 43.1% of the films available online in the EU, while in Slovenia, for example, only 0.3% are available. From recently published https://www.fuen.org/en/article/Borderless-Media-Consumption-Geoblocking-reform-FUEN-sits-at-the-table-with-film-and-TV-industry https://www.fuen.org/en/article/Borderless-Media-Consumption...

cpursley 5y ago

Yeah, I don't buy this. Russia now has several pretty good Netflix-like competitors with good TV apps.

dustymcp 5y ago

I use kodi for this very purpose i have streaming accounts aswell but the greed and fragmentaion is bringing me back its just easier..

godelski 5y ago

> The funniest part though is that the market for it only exists due to the greed and stupidity of the legal "platforms". Many people would happily buy (as in pay once, play forever) films and TV shows, many others would find it reasonable to pay $20-50/month for a single streaming service covering 90% of the things you would want to watch. I think a lot of people miss this. A lot of pirating declined when Netflix became popular. Then there were a ton of platforms and pirating came back. But I feel pirating is different now. It's because there's one compelling show on the small platforms and so those get pirated. A certain amount of centralization is good but too much makes it difficult.

anyfactor 5y ago
> A certain amount of centralization is good but too much makes it difficult. The Medelin drug cartel story. I wonder what monopolistic entities are working effectively yet we don't realize it.
- godelski 5y ago
  I think natural monopolies are pretty common wherever there is a network effect. Depending on what you mean by effective, I'd say that Facebook has an effective monopoly. We could say oil or web hosting has a centralized oligopoly. I should refine my first comment by stating that there is a trend to centralization with markets that depend on network effects. This is simply because power in these markets isn't linear with respect to the number of users, but rather super-linear. Momentum is a key aspect.
radmuzom 5y ago
I jumped into the Netflix bandwagon and stopped using torrents few years back. Then I realized that Netflix has almost no content at all, and primarily interested in pushing "their content" onto the masses. Now I am back to torrents. One big difference is now it is harder to find torrents - earlier, it was easy to find one say for a Uruguayan movie from 2004; they are becoming quite rare now.
- deleted 5y ago

estaseuropano 5y ago

Netflix each year raises prices but the actual offer (ignoring Netflix Originals) is shrinking (at least in my smaller European market). I just reduced from the UHD to just HD subscription and am back to the price of 2-3 years ago. I end up just watching less, if not for the kids it would long be canceled. Disney is an evil corp that I can't support while keeping my soul. On the plus side: one more reason not to watch.

dleslie 5y ago
I used to binge classic scifi and documentaries on Netflix, and then one day it seemed like both parts of the catalogue were reduced to a small fraction of what they were. I'll unsub once my kids grow tired of their (mostly awful) cartoons.

6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago

> many others would find it reasonable to pay $20-50/month for a single streaming service covering 90% of the things you would want to watch. I just use prime and rent movies that aren't free on it. It covers well over 90% of what I want to watch, and I spend well under $50/mo on it. After the $10 subscription, $40/mo for the rentals is like 2-3 seasons of a show, or 10+ movies (in addition to the included stuff). Legal cheap solutions exist, you just have to be willing to rent movies and shows like in the blockbuster days.

peakaboo 5y ago

Yup. I'm also back to piracy, which is ridicolous really as a grown man. But should I pay for 5 different streaming services, where I basically borrow movies for whatever time they decide? I can't even remember which service has which movie so its very hard to just start watching something.

oh_sigh 5y ago

I wouldn't call that greed and stupidity of the legal platforms. Netflix would probably have every piece of content on their site if owners would license it to them at a reasonable fee.