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Nearly every person in Iraq is an illegal streaming pirate, sources say
- NeutralForceUsr 4y agoThe same is true for Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and probably other countries in the region. Most people there find it stupid and a "sign of weakness" to pay for digital content. Not only media, but software as well.
- georgeplusplus 4y agoTheir government reflects their citizens behaviors. They should be glad the stupid westerners are paying. Content creators need to be paid to have an incentive to make new content, take that away and there is nothing for these leeches to steal.
- janalsncm 4y agoYou can pay all you want, but they can take your show down at any time. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161382179/hbo-max-disappearing-shows-series-streaming-warner https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161382179/hbo-max-disappeari...
- duxup 4y agoI don’t really see the problem with that. The whole streaming model is a sort of rental situation and I can just cancel and try another service.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> Content creators need to be paid to have an incentive to make new content Traditionally they do it so that women will have sex with them. It's not like there was a shortage of new content 1000 years ago.
- htag 4y agoHow many new books, songs, and videos are published everyday now. We have never had more new content.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoAnd nearly 100% of it is created with no expectation of earning any money.
- bigbillheck 4y agoYou might be surprised to know how many artists of the past were directly supported by rich people.
- thesaintlives 4y agoBravo!
- dm33tri 4y agoKinopoisk and Amediateka (legal places to watch content) grew a lot before 2022. Netflix launch there was a success too. Now there's no Netflix and shows are being pulled off Kinopoisk. I guess there's not a lot of paid content in Iraq too.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoRutracker is a great achievement of these people. It's a traditional style torrent forum that is still thriving in today's internet and has proven itself resilient to government efforts to take it down.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoDespotic empires. These people are shameless. Does anyone think hardly any of these folks in Iraq would be able to afford this content if it weren't free? Do they really think it devalues their content globally?
- karakot 4y agoA honest question: based on the title, are there legal streaming pirates?
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- bigbillheck 4y agoGood for them.
- adamnemecek 4y agoThe US government should be subsidizing it, best propaganda there is.
- recuter 4y ago'Merica bad blah blah -- I don't have the heart to tell you about the state of propaganda in the Arab world.
- myko 4y agoPerhaps propaganda is too provocative a word, but the cultural hegemony of the US is real and should be, from the US government perspective, preserved. The US has lost a lot of soft power over the past few decades (Iraq/trump as the primary drivers), exporting culture through movies and television is an easy win. All that to say I don't think the other commenter meant the US is bad necessarily, just that this is valuable to the US and her interests.
- recuter 4y agoThe links between the CIA/DoD and Hollywood are well documented: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinion#Work_with_entertainment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio... They help with movies like Iron Man and Transformers by lending equipment and so forth. It isn't a bad thing. Sadly, Hollywood is in decline and is more likely to show the US in a bad light than good at the moment. The loss of soft power is.. disconcerting.
- duxup 4y agoIt is?
- swatcoder 4y agoTut. As though copyright were but a gentleman’s agreement. How uncouth.
- borissk 4y agoPeople who pay for legal streaming of music and video are subsidizing the subversion of free speech and privacy on the Internet. The providers use part of their income to lobby politicians for more invasive monitoring of everyone's activities online (so it's easier to catch "pirates") and also fight against any means of preserving one's privacy online. All politicians who suggest to ban encryption online (to protect the children) are sponsored by the music and film industry. All VPN provides that don't keep logs are stopped from accepting payment for their service through credit/debit cards and PayPal (because streaming providers can't track "pirates" if there are no logs, so they go to the banks and ask the VPN provider to be banned from accepting bank cards).
- hackernewds 4y ago> People who pay for legal streaming of music and video are subsidizing the subversion of free speech and privacy on the Internet. So paying for a service that has cost the provider labor, effort and money is a disservice to society, versus stealing it? The verbal gymnastics are fantastic
- alwayslikethis 4y agoThe same can be said for slave or other unethically produced goods. Should you buy electronics devices made of conflict minerals (usually cobalt from slave child workers in Congo)? By paying for it, you are sponsoring their further exploitation.
- duxup 4y ago> The same can be said for slave or other unethically produced goods. Should you buy electronics devices made of conflict minerals (usually cobalt from slave child workers in Congo)? Is it possible to even know if some electronics are built/ sourced ethically?
- selcuka 4y ago> So paying for a service that has cost the provider labor, effort and money is a disservice to society, versus stealing it? Well, the GP comment might be worded a bit too direct, but that is actually the truth for the time being. It didn't have to be this way, but that's a separate discussion.
- janalsncm 4y ago“Illegal streaming” assumes that upholding the rights of foreign copyright holding megacorps is anywhere in the top 10,000 priorities for the Iraqi government. US law is not world law. This is like China saying that US websites are engaging in “illegal criticism of China”.
- pokepim 4y agoWell congress approved 500 million for negative coverage of China. So yes, US websites are even paid for shaming and criticizing China (often based on false information) and our asian enemies (like Japan in the 80s with all the Japan bashing) https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/08/01/low-point-in-japan-bashing/33bf839c-0744-43f1-8f30-a16324f71602/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/08/01/l...
- selcuka 4y agoSo what? It is still not illegal though, is it?
- RedCondor 4y agoIt's a very old tradition: >The Spanish-American War, what boosters called a “splendid little war,” began in 1898. … President McKinley sent a warship to Cuba as a precaution, but in February 1898 that ship, the USS Maine, blew up in Havana, killing 250 U.S. sailors. The cause of the explosion was unknown — and it would later be revealed to have been an accident — but both Hearst and Pulitzer published a cable from the captain of the battleship to the assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, informing him that the disaster was no accident. (The cable was later revealed to be a fake.) Jill Lepore, September 2018. These Truths: A History of the United States.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> Well congress approved 500 million for negative coverage of China. Can I get a pointer to this?
- RaoulP 4y ago
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y agoOh the flag flies high in the US too. As long as they do dumb stuff like no password sharing or country based content, piracy shall be on.
- JumpinJack_Cash 4y agoLooks like they got some freedom in the end.
- photochemsyn 4y agoMaybe the entertainment industry should go back to making money on quality live performances and theatrical events (large-screen IMAX etc.) and stop trying to control all the low-res streaming video on the Internet for nickels and dimes?
- duxup 4y agoI don’t think people want to go to the movies that much. I don’t.
- JusticeJuice 4y agoThe bit that really stands out > And since more than a third of all Iraqis are under 14, a considerable ...
- cvhashim04 4y agoWow that’s quite interesting.
- marcosdumay 4y agoWar sucks.
- duxup 4y agoI remember reading about Soviet era pedaling of American films in Soviet countries. I guess that was piracy too… I wonder how many places there are where there are few if any viable legal options?
- ggm 4y agoI miss broadcasting and only 4 channels. We kind of lost something when we decided we didn't like that model.
- 1970-01-01 4y ago14-20 minutes of commercials per hour was lost.
- RHSeeger 4y agoHulu enters the chat. Hulu drives me bonkers. I pay a monthly fee for it, and yet it feels like there's more commercials on it than there are on broadcast tv.
- ggm 4y agoYes. But also less choice-overload, more consistency of product, less craziness. I've got 6 streaming sources in my economy fighting over HBO, Disney and the others. I cannot predict a-priori where a hit show winds up, or if it even makes my country, nor if its kept or dropped. In the days of 4 majors, the volume of production was lower but the overall production quality was comparable, and the consistency of product was far, far better.
- bigbillheck 4y agoWe certainly did not.
- rationalfaith 4y ago[dead]
- wmidwestranger 4y agoSurely, the DVDs the US troops bought in the market when they were there were 100% legit... The mendacity of the producers and manufacturers has to be off the charts when you can't even let the Iraqi market slip through your fist.
- paxys 4y agoLet's bomb and destroy a county for twenty years and then get mad that they aren't paying for Netflix.