5 ms·

" decides to solve the obvious problems that cause people to pirate" - you mean like giving away everything for free? Well yeah, something someone else made, b

by jasmer 3y ago

" decides to solve the obvious problems that cause people to pirate" - you mean like giving away everything for free? Well yeah, something someone else made, but for free, instead of $4.99, that's a 'better product' for consumers ... until there exists non such products to buy. It's an enduring bit of weird logic at HN, that somehow IP should not exist, 'because mega corps!' If anti-piracy did not exist within regular countries, then literally zero content that required investment would get made, it's that simple. If people can trivially access content 'for free' they generally will do that. For music, it's not so bad, it just so happens most of the best music is cheap to make and niche artists couldn't command a high price anyhow, ergo the long-tail slot on Spotify has some efficiency to it. But there are innumerable productions which we all enjoy which require investment and without some kind of rights management, those literally disappear. It's all theoretical until you make something that is 'stolen' and it hits home pretty fast. Some arguments could definitely be made that the long-tail of piracy is actually beneficial, even to content producers, as it leaks content to areas wherein individuals couldn't afford to buy it, but that's a specific argument. It's a bit ominous for countries to be blocking other countries etc. but this issue likely has to be looked at somehow. If 'piracy' is below certain thresholds they should just not worry about it, but that may not be the case.

mxkopy 3y ago
The Amazon Video app crashes so frequently it's unusable; it's actually more convenient to torrent. Spotify too has a hissy fit every time I lose wifi connection, I'd keep all my songs locally if I weren't listening to new music every week. Etc. Etc. While it's true that the cost is a problem to consumers, most won't jump through the hoops for it alone. I try to teach my friends to pirate things as much as I can, and they never want to because they don't want viruses or to go to "sus websites". Consumers in general don't want to break the law. Only the most dedicated ones with time and knowledge to spare will really go through with it.
- martin8412 3y ago
  Infuse has so rarely crashed on me, and it works entirely locally without internet connection.
tm-guimaraes 3y ago
It seems that "Piracy is a service problem" is still not in people minds. Steam already proved that. Spotify already proved that. The netflix of 7 years ago proved that. Best sellers such as witcher3 that had no DRM what so ever also proved that. It's not about long tails or any other argument, it's much simpler than that. People are willing to pay for a decent service, people are unwillingly to have extra work. A Pirate website is never going to be more accessible than an official one always because of funding to do proper UX, so, even if all kinds of DRM were forbidden, actual legal services would always have the upper hand, and the better their service the less of a need for piracy. When steam started getting traction, PC piracy plummeted. When spotify became available, same thing happenned for music. When each film studio didn't have its own streaming service, the piracy was falling. Witcher 3 was a best seller on PC (and this is an AAA game, not a 5$ indie) when you could just copy paste your friends installer instead of buying. Everything is so goddam simple, provide good service, good value, and only people that don't actually have the budget to buy your stuff will pirate. Piracy is like union strikes, yes they are annoying and bring profits down, and it's bullshit that I have to wait 5 hours for a train because of a strike. But it is a necessary mechanism of power balance. > If people can trivially access content 'for free' they generally will do that. "trivially" is not so simple. what about app store access in every device? from tv boxes, phone to PC. what about shared settings, data etc between them? there is no success pirate story on that, only techies that have such hobie have something compared to an actual nice setup. It's the "why dropbox" comment. Pirates can't get enough money or legal ground to build something comparable to what a legal company can build. This means it's ok if it is forbidden to block bullshit practices like DRM and remote deletion, if you actually care for the customers, no pirate app/website can compete with you.
- jasmer 3y ago
  If there were no DRM at all, it'd be trivial to host content with a few ads and the UX would be just fine. Spotify only came to exist because of the massive piracy problems of MP3 - it was all available there for sale, but people wouldn't pay. Spotify just provides a model that will work in the age of privacy, aka 'next to zero pricing' aka 'ad supported unlimited streaming' which sucked the money out of the business. Consider if all films had to try the 'Spotify model' which is to say it's all free with a few ads, the industry would be wiped out. This is 100% about a game of laws, DRM, 'accessibility' and price. 'Piracy' is absolutely unnecessary for the market to operate effectively, the evidence for that is all around you: physical goods can generally not be pirated! How does the 'economy' work for your Milk and Cereal producers? Just fine. "if you actually care for the customers, no pirate app/website can compete with you. " Again, a fallacy, Netflix provides a great service, they already face 'piracy' of people sharing logins, and if those movies were available at 'piratedmovies.com' without any IP laws etc. it'd be the #1 site the the world, bigger than Google, the UI would be irrelevant. You could make some arguments about broadcast TV, which is abysmal, and the ultra high prices for sports these days when some people just want to watch a game or two, but for most media it's very simple: people don't want to pay.
Kim_Bruning 3y ago
> you mean like giving away everything for free? The way some people distribute media, you'd have to outright pay me to accept it in some cases. Conversely, getting movies via eg torrents is extremely convenient, and I don't have to worry about DRM, license retraction, or other forms of loss-of-access. I'm just sad there's there is still no easy way to pay for this kind of service for movies at least (at least not without subsidizing predatory behavior) . Netflix and Steam sort of head in the right direction, but are (occasionally) still stymied by DRM, spyware, and loss-of-access at times. GoG.com covers many of the bases, so GoG definitely gets money from me from time to time.
reportgunner 3y ago
I pirate because I refuse to tolerate and fund the rampant dark patterns, blatant lies, getting scammed out of something I paid for that I can't access anymore.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  If you don't want to fund the rampant dark patterns, blatant lies, and scams; there's nobody forcing you to watch their content. Don't have a double standard - either watch their content or don't. Watching movies is not a human right or a necessary feature of survival. Nobody has a human right to watch a movie or play game in the specific way they prefer, even if they can argue for technical superiority of it.
  - machinawhite 3y ago
    I'm sure they will instantly delete any pirated content and never commit this heinous crime ever again after reading that.
  - DJHenk 3y ago
    This is not about technical superiority. This is about big corporations using their size and money to abuse a market. Watching a movie is not a human right. Selling barely functional products (or non-functional products, or products that destroy perfectly fine and paid for other products, as I have experienced myself) by tactics as dark patterns, blatant lies and scams is not a corporate right. Both sides are in the wrong here. Pretending that one is fine and the other is not is in itself a double standard.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Advertising encourages watching. Ads are being paid for and shown through other media creating a demand. You are being encouraged to watch the content by the creators of the movie. Now you have a group of people who want to watch. Some of them can afford to watch and pay for it. Some of them can't and won't see it. Some of them can but it's not available so they pirate. Some can but will pirate because it's easier or cheaper. This are all caused by the demand the movie creators paid for. Don't create demand and gaslight people when they want to watch it by saying it isn't necessary for survival. People want to see it because the movie creators are telling them to and they spent money to get people who can't afford or won't pay to want to see the movie
jorams 3y ago
I'm not saying IP should not exist. You don't have to legalize piracy. Piracy is not a good thing. Piracy does not offer a better product because it's free. Pirating is actually an awful experience for most people, involving shady sites, malicious ads, and a serious risk of malware. Once you get through all that, however, you've got a video file of whatever quality you prefer, that you can play in whatever way you prefer, that won't disappear based on some contract you are not party to. Some people pirate media because they don't want to spend any money on it. You're not going to get those people to pay. Lots of other people are willing to spend money on media. For those people either the product they want is not for sale, or they are punished every step of the way for their willingness to pay. In the days of DVD it was unskippable anti-piracy warnings, only seen by people paying for DVDs. Now it's the proliferation of streaming services with different exclusive content. It's their unavoidable software that's somewhere between bad and thoroughly broken. It's limiting video quality to 720p/480p on platforms that aren't sufficiently infected with DRM. It's content getting deleted from streaming services, either because of their license expiring or the service deciding it doesn't want to pay residuals anymore. It's the fact that DRM-free media is not for sale in the first place.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  > Pirating is actually an awful experience for most people, involving shady sites, malicious ads, and a serious risk of malware Yeah, it sucks. It's a pain in the ass and does cost some money, plus time. But it solves 3 problems for me: 1) Material can't disappear. I even "pirate" YouTube videos, for this reason. 2) Everything's in one place with a consistent UI. 3) I have access to several things that aren't available to buy or rent, period (and if I'm having to set things up to serve this material, anyway, the marginal cost of pirating more isn't that high) Fix those and, my god, I'd gleefully decommission my pirated-stuff server. Really, fix 1 and 3 and it wouldn't be worth it to keep doing it just for 2.
sgift 3y ago
> If anti-piracy did not exist within regular countries, then literally zero content that required investment would get made, it's that simple. Of course, there's always the same model other people use: If a cabinet maker wants to make money they have two options: They can find someone who wants something made, tell them the price and if they pay that price make it. Or they can take a long look around and say "you know what, I think people would like to buy chairs. I'll make a chair and put it up for sale" - note that the second option doesn't have any guarantees. If someone takes a look around the shop, decides to not buy the chair and instead makes one themselves that's absolutely okay. Copyright is an anomaly, not the rule. Most people can only sell something once.
- jasmer 3y ago
  That analogy, and the statement 'most people can only sell something once' has no bearing at all on the issue at hand. If Avengers is available for everyone on pirate.com the day it comes out, then Avengers will make only a few million, not enough to pay for all the costs ... and so it will ever not get made. The same goes for many productions. No revenue -> No production. The amount of upsidedown and sideways logical contortions going on here to avoid that reality is definitely odd - a perpetual feature of HN, I can't fathom exactly what it is but it's predictable.

by jasmer 3y ago

mxkopy 3y ago

The Amazon Video app crashes so frequently it's unusable; it's actually more convenient to torrent. Spotify too has a hissy fit every time I lose wifi connection, I'd keep all my songs locally if I weren't listening to new music every week. Etc. Etc. While it's true that the cost is a problem to consumers, most won't jump through the hoops for it alone. I try to teach my friends to pirate things as much as I can, and they never want to because they don't want viruses or to go to "sus websites". Consumers in general don't want to break the law. Only the most dedicated ones with time and knowledge to spare will really go through with it.

martin8412 3y ago
Infuse has so rarely crashed on me, and it works entirely locally without internet connection.

tm-guimaraes 3y ago

It seems that "Piracy is a service problem" is still not in people minds. Steam already proved that. Spotify already proved that. The netflix of 7 years ago proved that. Best sellers such as witcher3 that had no DRM what so ever also proved that. It's not about long tails or any other argument, it's much simpler than that. People are willing to pay for a decent service, people are unwillingly to have extra work. A Pirate website is never going to be more accessible than an official one always because of funding to do proper UX, so, even if all kinds of DRM were forbidden, actual legal services would always have the upper hand, and the better their service the less of a need for piracy. When steam started getting traction, PC piracy plummeted. When spotify became available, same thing happenned for music. When each film studio didn't have its own streaming service, the piracy was falling. Witcher 3 was a best seller on PC (and this is an AAA game, not a 5$ indie) when you could just copy paste your friends installer instead of buying. Everything is so goddam simple, provide good service, good value, and only people that don't actually have the budget to buy your stuff will pirate. Piracy is like union strikes, yes they are annoying and bring profits down, and it's bullshit that I have to wait 5 hours for a train because of a strike. But it is a necessary mechanism of power balance. > If people can trivially access content 'for free' they generally will do that. "trivially" is not so simple. what about app store access in every device? from tv boxes, phone to PC. what about shared settings, data etc between them? there is no success pirate story on that, only techies that have such hobie have something compared to an actual nice setup. It's the "why dropbox" comment. Pirates can't get enough money or legal ground to build something comparable to what a legal company can build. This means it's ok if it is forbidden to block bullshit practices like DRM and remote deletion, if you actually care for the customers, no pirate app/website can compete with you.

jasmer 3y ago
If there were no DRM at all, it'd be trivial to host content with a few ads and the UX would be just fine. Spotify only came to exist because of the massive piracy problems of MP3 - it was all available there for sale, but people wouldn't pay. Spotify just provides a model that will work in the age of privacy, aka 'next to zero pricing' aka 'ad supported unlimited streaming' which sucked the money out of the business. Consider if all films had to try the 'Spotify model' which is to say it's all free with a few ads, the industry would be wiped out. This is 100% about a game of laws, DRM, 'accessibility' and price. 'Piracy' is absolutely unnecessary for the market to operate effectively, the evidence for that is all around you: physical goods can generally not be pirated! How does the 'economy' work for your Milk and Cereal producers? Just fine. "if you actually care for the customers, no pirate app/website can compete with you. " Again, a fallacy, Netflix provides a great service, they already face 'piracy' of people sharing logins, and if those movies were available at 'piratedmovies.com' without any IP laws etc. it'd be the #1 site the the world, bigger than Google, the UI would be irrelevant. You could make some arguments about broadcast TV, which is abysmal, and the ultra high prices for sports these days when some people just want to watch a game or two, but for most media it's very simple: people don't want to pay.

Kim_Bruning 3y ago

> you mean like giving away everything for free? The way some people distribute media, you'd have to outright pay me to accept it in some cases. Conversely, getting movies via eg torrents is extremely convenient, and I don't have to worry about DRM, license retraction, or other forms of loss-of-access. I'm just sad there's there is still no easy way to pay for this kind of service for movies at least (at least not without subsidizing predatory behavior) . Netflix and Steam sort of head in the right direction, but are (occasionally) still stymied by DRM, spyware, and loss-of-access at times. GoG.com covers many of the bases, so GoG definitely gets money from me from time to time.

reportgunner 3y ago

I pirate because I refuse to tolerate and fund the rampant dark patterns, blatant lies, getting scammed out of something I paid for that I can't access anymore.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
If you don't want to fund the rampant dark patterns, blatant lies, and scams; there's nobody forcing you to watch their content. Don't have a double standard - either watch their content or don't. Watching movies is not a human right or a necessary feature of survival. Nobody has a human right to watch a movie or play game in the specific way they prefer, even if they can argue for technical superiority of it.
- machinawhite 3y ago
  I'm sure they will instantly delete any pirated content and never commit this heinous crime ever again after reading that.
- DJHenk 3y ago
  This is not about technical superiority. This is about big corporations using their size and money to abuse a market. Watching a movie is not a human right. Selling barely functional products (or non-functional products, or products that destroy perfectly fine and paid for other products, as I have experienced myself) by tactics as dark patterns, blatant lies and scams is not a corporate right. Both sides are in the wrong here. Pretending that one is fine and the other is not is in itself a double standard.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Advertising encourages watching. Ads are being paid for and shown through other media creating a demand. You are being encouraged to watch the content by the creators of the movie. Now you have a group of people who want to watch. Some of them can afford to watch and pay for it. Some of them can't and won't see it. Some of them can but it's not available so they pirate. Some can but will pirate because it's easier or cheaper. This are all caused by the demand the movie creators paid for. Don't create demand and gaslight people when they want to watch it by saying it isn't necessary for survival. People want to see it because the movie creators are telling them to and they spent money to get people who can't afford or won't pay to want to see the movie

jorams 3y ago

I'm not saying IP should not exist. You don't have to legalize piracy. Piracy is not a good thing. Piracy does not offer a better product because it's free. Pirating is actually an awful experience for most people, involving shady sites, malicious ads, and a serious risk of malware. Once you get through all that, however, you've got a video file of whatever quality you prefer, that you can play in whatever way you prefer, that won't disappear based on some contract you are not party to. Some people pirate media because they don't want to spend any money on it. You're not going to get those people to pay. Lots of other people are willing to spend money on media. For those people either the product they want is not for sale, or they are punished every step of the way for their willingness to pay. In the days of DVD it was unskippable anti-piracy warnings, only seen by people paying for DVDs. Now it's the proliferation of streaming services with different exclusive content. It's their unavoidable software that's somewhere between bad and thoroughly broken. It's limiting video quality to 720p/480p on platforms that aren't sufficiently infected with DRM. It's content getting deleted from streaming services, either because of their license expiring or the service deciding it doesn't want to pay residuals anymore. It's the fact that DRM-free media is not for sale in the first place.

yamtaddle 3y ago
> Pirating is actually an awful experience for most people, involving shady sites, malicious ads, and a serious risk of malware Yeah, it sucks. It's a pain in the ass and does cost some money, plus time. But it solves 3 problems for me: 1) Material can't disappear. I even "pirate" YouTube videos, for this reason. 2) Everything's in one place with a consistent UI. 3) I have access to several things that aren't available to buy or rent, period (and if I'm having to set things up to serve this material, anyway, the marginal cost of pirating more isn't that high) Fix those and, my god, I'd gleefully decommission my pirated-stuff server. Really, fix 1 and 3 and it wouldn't be worth it to keep doing it just for 2.

sgift 3y ago

> If anti-piracy did not exist within regular countries, then literally zero content that required investment would get made, it's that simple. Of course, there's always the same model other people use: If a cabinet maker wants to make money they have two options: They can find someone who wants something made, tell them the price and if they pay that price make it. Or they can take a long look around and say "you know what, I think people would like to buy chairs. I'll make a chair and put it up for sale" - note that the second option doesn't have any guarantees. If someone takes a look around the shop, decides to not buy the chair and instead makes one themselves that's absolutely okay. Copyright is an anomaly, not the rule. Most people can only sell something once.

jasmer 3y ago
That analogy, and the statement 'most people can only sell something once' has no bearing at all on the issue at hand. If Avengers is available for everyone on pirate.com the day it comes out, then Avengers will make only a few million, not enough to pay for all the costs ... and so it will ever not get made. The same goes for many productions. No revenue -> No production. The amount of upsidedown and sideways logical contortions going on here to avoid that reality is definitely odd - a perpetual feature of HN, I can't fathom exactly what it is but it's predictable.