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> “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offer
by Shank 4y ago
> “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.” -- Gabe Newell
There have been many times where I've found DRM encumbered products inferior: trying to stream anime on Crunchyroll during primetime only to experience slowdowns; trying to screenshot something for a wallpaper only to get it blacked out; trying to download offline shows with subtitles, only to find subtitles didn't get downloaded with the video. Compound that with The Streaming Wars, I can't help but feel like a lot of people will turn to piracy out of necessity. It isn't enough that there are like 10 subscriptions to get all of the content you might want. It's also that each provider reinvents the wheel and each version is slightly jagged in different ways and doesn't work like a wheel. It's like 10 inferior clones of a wheel. Piracy, much to the chagrin of all of these services, usually fixes this: an H.265 .mkv file usually "just works" without problems in your favorite media player.
It's just a mess right now.
- tobyhinloopen 4y agoEbooks are the worst offenders IMO. Most stores I’ve seen don’t even tell me the format or DRM, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be an open format
- politelemon 4y agoWorst part for me is that even libraries, who want to promote openness and reading, are perfectly comfortable with delivering books using Adobe's horrible DRM delivery solution.
- sct202 4y agoLibraries have to play in the rules the publishers give them or else they get cut off from the supply of ebooks. They already have to pay more for the ebooks that expire after a certain number of loans.
- Mezzie 4y agoYeah, it's a major misconception to state that they're happy about it. Talk to librarians after hours and they will rant. (And most of us have personal DRM stripped libraries).
- Cerium 4y agoAt least Adobe DRM is trivially easy to break. Right click in the Adobe software and it has a "open document storage location" option. Then drop that DRM loaded PDF into Calibre and you get a free and clear PDF in your library. At that point I go back to the library and hit the return button.
- LarryMullins 4y agoWhy not get a DRM-free epub off the net in the first place?
- yshklarov 4y agoIn some cases these are not available. For instance, archive.org has many books that don't seem to be available anywhere else.
- neilv 4y agoI've started buying from ebooks.com exclusively, because they tell me it's DRM-free EPUB and PDF. I end up paying a big premium in practice over Kindle DRM and discounted paperbacks, but I'm doing my part to convince publishers to offer DRM-free.
- soco 4y agoSpeaking of buying DRM-free books, let me mention again The Humble Bundle. Not many books in there, but for a good cause: https://www.humblebundle.com/ https://www.humblebundle.com/
- neilv 4y agoI bought a DRM-free Schneier's "Applied Cryptography" from a Humble Bundle, and got a virtual pile of other interesting books at the same time.
- sam_lowry_ 4y agoSchneier's last book, Data and Goliath IIRC, was also available as an audiobook, so I bought it, listened...until it ended abruptly at 1/3 of the full length. How could he do this to readers, old fart!?
- avtar 4y ago_Some_ of their books are DRM-free. “But please note that eBooks.com uses Adobe DRM to protect most ebook files, so the device, or the software running on the device must be compatible with Adobe DRM. If you'd prefer to obtain your books without DRM, you can browse our DRM-free section.” https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-gb/articles/214119286-Guide-to-ebook-reader-devices https://support.ebooks.com/hc/en-gb/articles/214119286-Guide...
- tren 4y agoYes, unfortunately this is the case (I work for ebooks.com). Most publishers require us to use DRM and Adobe DRM really sucks, but there isn't other options out there and we don't have the resources to make something better. We focus quite a bit of effort on educating publishers about moving to DRM-Free as it makes everyone's lives easier and from what we've seen increases publisher sales numbers. https://about.ebooks.com/should-we-sell-your-ebooks-without-drm/ https://about.ebooks.com/should-we-sell-your-ebooks-without-... https://about.ebooks.com/sales-jumped-54-when-this-publisher-went-drm-free/ https://about.ebooks.com/sales-jumped-54-when-this-publisher...
- bccdee 4y agoI like using the Kobo store, because it sells some of its books DRM-free. When it does use DRM, it lists the book as being DRMed, and Kobo DRM is easy to remove anyway.
- irrational 4y agoAre you aware of Calibre?
- pizza234 4y ago> There have been many times where I've found DRM encumbered products inferior: trying to stream anime on Crunchyroll during primetime only to experience slowdowns; trying to screenshot something for a wallpaper only to get it blacked out; trying to download offline shows with subtitles, only to find subtitles didn't get downloaded with the video. Compound that with The Streaming Wars, I can't help but feel like a lot of people will turn to piracy out of necessity. Piracy is not necessarily better. Languages are very few (english essentially), subtitles may not exist at all, quality is variable, and speed can be a problem as well, since it depends on how popular a movie is. Most importantly, malware push from pirate websites is a very serious problem. I warn non-power users not to download from pirate websites.
- alexiaa 4y agoIt's common for them to not include more than original and/or English audio, but most competent groups will generally include all available subtitles at least.
- kaba0 4y agoBesides the websites displaying less than friendly ads, what malware can even be found in downloading a video format? Sure, it could be an executable renamed to some video format, or something like that, but without a serious vulnerability in your video player which was very cleverly hacked for very low reward, what can even happen?
- pizza234 4y agoIn the video file itself none, but before being able to click to download whatever (either torrent download or streaming), there's lot of misdirection. From a certain tablet for example, I wasn't able to start a video playback _at all_ from a certain website, because ads kept popping up. In some cases, it's not obvious where to click even for experienced users.
- kaba0 4y agoSure, but nothing will “infect” your computer even if you click all the fake download/play buttons.
- kevincox 4y ago> trying to screenshot something for a wallpaper only to get it blacked out I found this out when I was going to send a screenshot of a funny scene to a friend. Ok, I guess they don't want free advertising.
- TAForObvReasons 4y agoEven license holders benefit from using the pirated versions of games: > Denuvo DRM Outage Leads to Major Games Being Unplayable [0] https://gamerant.com/denuvo-drm-outage-major-games-unplayable/ https://gamerant.com/denuvo-drm-outage-major-games-unplayabl... > The cracked version of Resident Evil Village runs better, testing confirms [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/resident-evil-village-drm-denuvo-stuttering/ https://www.pcgamer.com/resident-evil-village-drm-denuvo-stu... > Shadow of the Tomb Raider Reportedly Runs Better Now That Denuvo Has Been Removed [2] https://gamerant.com/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-reportedly-runs-better-denuvo-removed/ https://gamerant.com/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-reportedly-ru...
- smcl 4y agoThat RE:Village one was wild - those stutters looked frustrating
- malfist 4y agoDenuvo is awful. Anno 1800 uses it, I can't tell you the number of times I've had to fiddle with my computer because it doesn't want to connect to it's server and says I can't play the game. If the pirated version wasn't so buggy I'd use that, even though I've paid for the game.
- Sakos 4y agoI bought NFS Unbound when it came out. It was rendered unplayable on Linux repeatedly whenever EA updated their new launcher app even though the game otherwise ran fine on Linux. Piracy is our last refuge from companies delivering awful user experiences and shitting on our rights as consumers.
- lilboiluvr69 4y agoFucking. Preach. Just so you know you can fix EA games on the Steam Deck by logging into EA with your steam account and linking it. All the EA launcher games will work again. Go to EAs help page. https://help.ea.com/en/contact-us/ https://help.ea.com/en/contact-us/ Click login, and choose the Steam option. Link your steam with your ea account. Then try launching your game again. You’ll get the gray screen but give it time and it will go away.
- RunSet 4y agoIt is worth considering that Gabe Newell quote in light of how Steam built its original install base: By strong-arming owners of retail copies of Half-Life (notably including players of CounterStrike, a player-created mod) and requiring them to install Steam and create an account to update Half-Life / play it online. At the time this was as well-received as any other strong-arming.
- dml2135 4y agoThe pirating user experience is incredible right now. Gone are the days of hunting around different torrent trackers and sketchy websites for what you want. You can set up a server with the *arrs and download anything with the click of a button, and then have it automatically added to something like Plex or Jellyfin to watch. And then you hold on to the media to rewatch it whenever you like, forever.
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago*arrs?
- zeendo 4y agoReadarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr (and others) Modern versions of CouchPotato or SabNZB if you were familiar with those
- 9935c101ab17a66 4y agoOverseerr is worth a mention — it’s really, really good. Waaay better than Ombi.
- half0wl 4y agoGabeN hit the nail on the head. If you make paying for a service/content impossible or hard, people who want it will find other ways to get it. Regional DRM/content licensing is one annoying culprit.. Consumers want something instant, and if you instantly tell them "this is not available in your region," they're obviously not going to go out of their way to figure out where, whom, and how to pay for it.