7 ms·

Piracy and such hoarding are inextricably intertwined. If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality,

Piracy and such hoarding are inextricably intertwined. If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality, or a somewhat popular movie in original BD format), you better grab it when it's available, as further down the line getting the exact same such content may be more and more difficult. Streaming services have a similar issue (re-encoding, bad rereleases due to licensing issues, delistings, crappy format choices in the first place) but generally a bit better SLA-like and a longer timeframe to watch certain content.

voisin 4y ago
> If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality, or a somewhat popular movie in original BD format), you better grab it when it's available, as further down the line getting the exact same such content may be more and more difficult. The constant availability of the pirated content is a big driver of the cost here. For some of the obscure stuff, this could be on a backup, or even on something like Amazon Glacier (I.e. no one is watching 30tb of video content regularly), and the resulting computer needed for pirating could be significantly less expensive, both to build/buy and for monthly electricity costs (like a laptop).
- imtringued 4y ago
  Amazon Glacier assumes that you only retrieve a fraction of the data.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    So it's for hoarding?
trompetenaccoun 4y ago
That's the same for non-pirates in this rent economy where you don't own the things you buy anymore. And anyone I know who's seriously into movies, meaning they watch stuff far beyond the Follywood mainstream, is part of some online club/"pirate group" if you want to call them that, because there isn't another way to get a lot of the rare stuff. Even though someone may legally hold the rights, but they simply don't make it available to the public.
- memetomancer 4y ago
  > "And anyone I know who's seriously into movies, meaning they watch stuff far beyond the Follywood mainstream..." This sounds pretty dreadful - "Follywood" is hardly clever I'm afraid to say. Especially when linking it to an elite snobbery of being "seriously into movies" . But please hear me out - I don't mean to just rip on you for a turn of phrase. But there are a couple of things you are maybe overlooking that are sort of implied by tying these concepts together as you have. Hollywood is a truly magnificent human achievement, but sometimes it's hard to see that when bobbing around in the waves of its deluge. Step back a bit and consider that in the past century it has produced a steady stream of narrative masterpieces that are shared by the whole world. That the stagecraft and special effects have given palpable form to impossible dreams, etc. In less glowy-flowy terms, it is an overwhelming machine designed to produce and transmit pure culture. A major force in what they call "Cultural Imperialism". To a not insignificant degree it turned the tide in the Cold War, for example. You can see the struggle every time there is a news story about China demanding modification, or rejecting Hollywood output. Eventually Hollywood will win that struggle, even if it takes a few generations. There are many countries with their own film industries, least of which is China, but including India, Japan, Korea, Italy France, and on and on. But none of them have had remotely the success, popularity or power of Hollywood. The place, the machine is an absolute Triumph. But to get back to your unfortunate turn of phrase... imagining that you or they have some elite status due to watching films out of the mainstream - A major component of the Hollywood machine is using the mainstream films' revenue to subsidize genre films, student films and often picking up truly independent films. These are the elitist films you seem to be referring to, that or the film output of the other countries. This range of films have always been a part of the machine, since the early days a century ago. Much of it is mediocre or clumsy. Sometimes they are shocking or disruptive. Sometimes they are genuinely brilliant or visionary. But all of this obscure stuff that movie buffs are glorying in, ultimately this is just the output of the training ground for the Hollywood Mainstream. Consider Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson's filmography to see what I mean. Both started out making quirky indy horror films and once graduated began putting out $Billion dollar joints.
smoe 4y ago
I think it is more intertwined with your movie-watching habit. Akin to that in the DVD age most people probably only had maybe a couple of dozens, few with entire walls in their home dedicated to movie storage. Almost all of the movies/series I watch are somewhat obscure (from a Hollywood perspective) so I like to keep them around. But I don't watch nearly enough movies or care enough about their longevity, that a single, non backed up external drive wouldn't be good enough. I guess there are many people who pirate for the sake of pirating trying to collect as much content as they can without actually consuming it all. But don't know what proportion this is.

voisin 4y ago

> If you want a particularly uncommon variant of some pirate content (like an obscure movie in any quality, or a somewhat popular movie in original BD format), you better grab it when it's available, as further down the line getting the exact same such content may be more and more difficult. The constant availability of the pirated content is a big driver of the cost here. For some of the obscure stuff, this could be on a backup, or even on something like Amazon Glacier (I.e. no one is watching 30tb of video content regularly), and the resulting computer needed for pirating could be significantly less expensive, both to build/buy and for monthly electricity costs (like a laptop).

imtringued 4y ago
Amazon Glacier assumes that you only retrieve a fraction of the data.
- fomine3 4y ago
  So it's for hoarding?

trompetenaccoun 4y ago

That's the same for non-pirates in this rent economy where you don't own the things you buy anymore. And anyone I know who's seriously into movies, meaning they watch stuff far beyond the Follywood mainstream, is part of some online club/"pirate group" if you want to call them that, because there isn't another way to get a lot of the rare stuff. Even though someone may legally hold the rights, but they simply don't make it available to the public.

memetomancer 4y ago
> "And anyone I know who's seriously into movies, meaning they watch stuff far beyond the Follywood mainstream..." This sounds pretty dreadful - "Follywood" is hardly clever I'm afraid to say. Especially when linking it to an elite snobbery of being "seriously into movies" . But please hear me out - I don't mean to just rip on you for a turn of phrase. But there are a couple of things you are maybe overlooking that are sort of implied by tying these concepts together as you have. Hollywood is a truly magnificent human achievement, but sometimes it's hard to see that when bobbing around in the waves of its deluge. Step back a bit and consider that in the past century it has produced a steady stream of narrative masterpieces that are shared by the whole world. That the stagecraft and special effects have given palpable form to impossible dreams, etc. In less glowy-flowy terms, it is an overwhelming machine designed to produce and transmit pure culture. A major force in what they call "Cultural Imperialism". To a not insignificant degree it turned the tide in the Cold War, for example. You can see the struggle every time there is a news story about China demanding modification, or rejecting Hollywood output. Eventually Hollywood will win that struggle, even if it takes a few generations. There are many countries with their own film industries, least of which is China, but including India, Japan, Korea, Italy France, and on and on. But none of them have had remotely the success, popularity or power of Hollywood. The place, the machine is an absolute Triumph. But to get back to your unfortunate turn of phrase... imagining that you or they have some elite status due to watching films out of the mainstream - A major component of the Hollywood machine is using the mainstream films' revenue to subsidize genre films, student films and often picking up truly independent films. These are the elitist films you seem to be referring to, that or the film output of the other countries. This range of films have always been a part of the machine, since the early days a century ago. Much of it is mediocre or clumsy. Sometimes they are shocking or disruptive. Sometimes they are genuinely brilliant or visionary. But all of this obscure stuff that movie buffs are glorying in, ultimately this is just the output of the training ground for the Hollywood Mainstream. Consider Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson's filmography to see what I mean. Both started out making quirky indy horror films and once graduated began putting out $Billion dollar joints.

smoe 4y ago

I think it is more intertwined with your movie-watching habit. Akin to that in the DVD age most people probably only had maybe a couple of dozens, few with entire walls in their home dedicated to movie storage. Almost all of the movies/series I watch are somewhat obscure (from a Hollywood perspective) so I like to keep them around. But I don't watch nearly enough movies or care enough about their longevity, that a single, non backed up external drive wouldn't be good enough. I guess there are many people who pirate for the sake of pirating trying to collect as much content as they can without actually consuming it all. But don't know what proportion this is.