5 ms·

This is often suggested on HN anytime there's some minor issue with streaming. Piracy isn't a solution to anything. Yes, there are issues with intellectual pr

This is often suggested on HN anytime there's some minor issue with streaming. Piracy isn't a solution to anything. Yes, there are issues with intellectual property, but most of the issues aren't with movies/TV/art. Without people paying for these things, studios won't invest vast sums of money in them and we wouldn't have the vast amount of high quality content we have today.

nickthegreek 4y ago
Pirating is the solution if you want to watch Final Space in the year 2025.
- CabSauce 4y ago
  Sure. I guess in this very narrow situation where the content is no longer available, I don't have an issue. But the person I responded to seemed to be suggesting stealing content as some sort of broad solution to an undescribed issue.
  - kwhitefoot 4y ago
    The problem is that you don't know which things need to be downloaded until they disappear.
  - megous 4y ago
    Anyone can also do both if they like. Buy and download to have an archival copy.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  All three seasons are available for streaming on hindilinks4u and probably a lot of other places so it's not yet lost.
virtual_void 4y ago
I think you’re presenting a false dichotomy here. Piracy has always been there and studios still make a lot of money. People are still willing to pay for things, they just want a copy of the thing that they paid for so that it cannot be stolen from them later. The only answer here IS piracy.
- CabSauce 4y ago
  Wanting your purchase to persist is totally reasonable. Not buying a digital copy where it can disappear is the solution.
  - avianlyric 4y ago
    It would be if Blu-ray disks and DVDs weren’t covered in copy protection making it close to impossible to backup your physical purchases, or guarantee your long term ability to watch them. How many people here still have a functioning VCR? Hell, how many still have a functioning DVD player?
    - virtual_void 4y ago
      Dvd and Blu-ray are deeply upsetting things. Used to be that there were unskippable adverts and all sorts of junk I don’t expect if I paid for it. Continually adding on user hostile additional revenue streams, like adverts, on top of something i already paid for is one of the major drivers of piracy.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    > Not buying a digital copy where it can disappear is the solution. There's not always another choice.
  - virtual_void 4y ago
    Another false dichotomy! How about i pay for things I’m buying but take a pirate copy as a backup? It’s already clear that if you make digital content available at a reasonable price people will pay for it. The thing we’re arguing about is who is stealing from whom. Here’s a genuine dichotomy. Assuming I’m interested in the media, then I’m either buying or I’m renting. If I’m renting call it renting. If I’m buying don’t steal it from me later by hiding the fact that it’s a rental in thousands of lines of legalese.
thot_experiment 4y ago
I feel like you're describing a huge win here. The idea that our culture needs media juggernauts for some reason is absurd. The "vast amount of quality content" I experience from day to day comes almost exclusively from small creators, creators who's content would in many cases be a hell of a lot better if it wasn't encumbered by onerous copyright laws. Don't even get me started on how bad patents are.
- CabSauce 4y ago
  Copyright laws protect small creators too. I'm not sure how they could expect to make a living if their work could just be copied and sold or given away by anyone.
  - dragontamer 4y ago
    > Copyright laws protect small creators too. I'm not sure how they could expect to make a living if their work could just be copied and sold or given away by anyone. Blatantly false. The majority of these small creators are Twitch Streamers, Tik-tockers, Youtubers these days. All of them give their work away for free effectively. In particular, the value in the Twitch-stream is from interacting with the chat realtime. Its effectively a live performance tied to a chatroom in some niche subject matter that the audience is interested in. All of those can probably be released public-domain and free to copy, and they won't lose a single subscriber. -------- Others are paid primarily through their Patreon account or other forms of merchandise (dolls, plushies, etc. etc.). Or direct advertisements inside of the content (see Oversimplified and VPN). You can't "skip" the ad because the Ad is part of the video itself and worked into the script.
    - thot_experiment 4y ago
      FWIW if you don't want to see sponsored segments in youtube videos etc, there's a tool for this called SponsorBlock which uses crowdsourced timestamp information and allows you to opt out of seeing various different kinds of content you'd rather skip over (sponsorship, self promotion, likecommentsubscribe segments etc.)
Fargren 4y ago
I don't like this argument. It's true that without copyright we would not have the current status quo, that much is obvious. But what we could have instead if everyone was allowed to remix any content and create things freely based on other published works is unknown and unknowable. It is not obvious to me than having copyright is better than not having it. It would be better for some people and worse for others.
- thot_experiment 4y ago
  Agreed, I do think we need to make sure creation is rewarded, but creation should also be used for the good of society not hoarded for wealth. That's the problem we need to solve, we need to look for systems that encourage creation WITHOUT the need to create artificial scarcity and means for people to collect rents on intellectual property. To wit, intellectual property itself is likely a concept that keeps us locked in a local maximum.
thedanbob 4y ago
There’s a middle ground. If I want a movie or TV show, I’ll buy it from iTunes and then strip the DRM / pirate it. If I can find it streaming somewhere that yt-dlp works, I’ll download it. I don’t mind paying for content but only if it can’t be taken away from me after the fact.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
No. Piracy is the only reason things moved in acceptable direction for regular consumer. Were it not MP3, P2P, codecs, matroska and other technologies and formats, we would all still be beholden to some ridiculous locked down standard imposed by the copyright holders and bricked-by-design devices ( ala Zune, which had crazy DRM approach ). Let us not forget that there were ideas of destroying your PC if there is an indication of not allowed content on it. And even those gains, which were won with overwhelming disobedience, because early internet people were at least technical enough to burn a cd are now being eroded again, but under different guise. Piracy stopped being a thing, because it got easier to get stuff you wanted when you wanted it without trolling the internet. Now with streaming wars coming to a close, content owners think they will get to impose rules not realizing that they are making the same mistake thinking kids will not learn how to bypass whatever restrictions they put in place all over again. History. Rhymes. All that.
altruios 4y ago
we need less superhero movies, more independent content that is there for the sake of itself, and not for the sake of making money. tying money to art cheapens it. art is priceless, attaching a price therefore is a regression. Not everything is about money, not everything needs to be done. better that it is free: if you couldn't sell movies - the only ones that would exist are the ones people truly wanted to make - the quality of the artform would skyrocket, even if the quantity plummets.
than3 4y ago
It would depend on what your definition is, I suppose. The general narrative and has been if you copied it without written authorization, you are a pirate. Even if you are archiving a copy for future generations. You can't even look up news articles from 10 years ago because of that.

nickthegreek 4y ago

Pirating is the solution if you want to watch Final Space in the year 2025.

CabSauce 4y ago
Sure. I guess in this very narrow situation where the content is no longer available, I don't have an issue. But the person I responded to seemed to be suggesting stealing content as some sort of broad solution to an undescribed issue.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago
  The problem is that you don't know which things need to be downloaded until they disappear.
- megous 4y ago
  Anyone can also do both if they like. Buy and download to have an archival copy.
kwhitefoot 4y ago
All three seasons are available for streaming on hindilinks4u and probably a lot of other places so it's not yet lost.

virtual_void 4y ago

I think you’re presenting a false dichotomy here. Piracy has always been there and studios still make a lot of money. People are still willing to pay for things, they just want a copy of the thing that they paid for so that it cannot be stolen from them later. The only answer here IS piracy.

CabSauce 4y ago
Wanting your purchase to persist is totally reasonable. Not buying a digital copy where it can disappear is the solution.
- avianlyric 4y ago
  It would be if Blu-ray disks and DVDs weren’t covered in copy protection making it close to impossible to backup your physical purchases, or guarantee your long term ability to watch them. How many people here still have a functioning VCR? Hell, how many still have a functioning DVD player?
  - virtual_void 4y ago
    Dvd and Blu-ray are deeply upsetting things. Used to be that there were unskippable adverts and all sorts of junk I don’t expect if I paid for it. Continually adding on user hostile additional revenue streams, like adverts, on top of something i already paid for is one of the major drivers of piracy.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > Not buying a digital copy where it can disappear is the solution. There's not always another choice.
- virtual_void 4y ago
  Another false dichotomy! How about i pay for things I’m buying but take a pirate copy as a backup? It’s already clear that if you make digital content available at a reasonable price people will pay for it. The thing we’re arguing about is who is stealing from whom. Here’s a genuine dichotomy. Assuming I’m interested in the media, then I’m either buying or I’m renting. If I’m renting call it renting. If I’m buying don’t steal it from me later by hiding the fact that it’s a rental in thousands of lines of legalese.

thot_experiment 4y ago

I feel like you're describing a huge win here. The idea that our culture needs media juggernauts for some reason is absurd. The "vast amount of quality content" I experience from day to day comes almost exclusively from small creators, creators who's content would in many cases be a hell of a lot better if it wasn't encumbered by onerous copyright laws. Don't even get me started on how bad patents are.

CabSauce 4y ago
Copyright laws protect small creators too. I'm not sure how they could expect to make a living if their work could just be copied and sold or given away by anyone.
- dragontamer 4y ago
  > Copyright laws protect small creators too. I'm not sure how they could expect to make a living if their work could just be copied and sold or given away by anyone. Blatantly false. The majority of these small creators are Twitch Streamers, Tik-tockers, Youtubers these days. All of them give their work away for free effectively. In particular, the value in the Twitch-stream is from interacting with the chat realtime. Its effectively a live performance tied to a chatroom in some niche subject matter that the audience is interested in. All of those can probably be released public-domain and free to copy, and they won't lose a single subscriber. -------- Others are paid primarily through their Patreon account or other forms of merchandise (dolls, plushies, etc. etc.). Or direct advertisements inside of the content (see Oversimplified and VPN). You can't "skip" the ad because the Ad is part of the video itself and worked into the script.
  - thot_experiment 4y ago
    FWIW if you don't want to see sponsored segments in youtube videos etc, there's a tool for this called SponsorBlock which uses crowdsourced timestamp information and allows you to opt out of seeing various different kinds of content you'd rather skip over (sponsorship, self promotion, likecommentsubscribe segments etc.)

Fargren 4y ago

I don't like this argument. It's true that without copyright we would not have the current status quo, that much is obvious. But what we could have instead if everyone was allowed to remix any content and create things freely based on other published works is unknown and unknowable. It is not obvious to me than having copyright is better than not having it. It would be better for some people and worse for others.

thot_experiment 4y ago
Agreed, I do think we need to make sure creation is rewarded, but creation should also be used for the good of society not hoarded for wealth. That's the problem we need to solve, we need to look for systems that encourage creation WITHOUT the need to create artificial scarcity and means for people to collect rents on intellectual property. To wit, intellectual property itself is likely a concept that keeps us locked in a local maximum.

thedanbob 4y ago

There’s a middle ground. If I want a movie or TV show, I’ll buy it from iTunes and then strip the DRM / pirate it. If I can find it streaming somewhere that yt-dlp works, I’ll download it. I don’t mind paying for content but only if it can’t be taken away from me after the fact.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

No. Piracy is the only reason things moved in acceptable direction for regular consumer. Were it not MP3, P2P, codecs, matroska and other technologies and formats, we would all still be beholden to some ridiculous locked down standard imposed by the copyright holders and bricked-by-design devices ( ala Zune, which had crazy DRM approach ). Let us not forget that there were ideas of destroying your PC if there is an indication of not allowed content on it. And even those gains, which were won with overwhelming disobedience, because early internet people were at least technical enough to burn a cd are now being eroded again, but under different guise. Piracy stopped being a thing, because it got easier to get stuff you wanted when you wanted it without trolling the internet. Now with streaming wars coming to a close, content owners think they will get to impose rules not realizing that they are making the same mistake thinking kids will not learn how to bypass whatever restrictions they put in place all over again. History. Rhymes. All that.

altruios 4y ago

we need less superhero movies, more independent content that is there for the sake of itself, and not for the sake of making money. tying money to art cheapens it. art is priceless, attaching a price therefore is a regression. Not everything is about money, not everything needs to be done. better that it is free: if you couldn't sell movies - the only ones that would exist are the ones people truly wanted to make - the quality of the artform would skyrocket, even if the quantity plummets.

than3 4y ago

It would depend on what your definition is, I suppose. The general narrative and has been if you copied it without written authorization, you are a pirate. Even if you are archiving a copy for future generations. You can't even look up news articles from 10 years ago because of that.