8 ms·

'Canada Is a Video Piracy Hotspot While Brazil Sees Piracy in Decline'

26 points by CTOSian 3y ago

_3u10 3y ago
[flagged]
- hhh 3y ago
  What genocide is Canada committing?
  - poochipie 3y ago
    Not OP, but they are likely referring to the MMIWG crisis [0], which Justin Trudeau called a "genocide" in 2018. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Inquiry_into_Missing_and_Murdered_Indigenous_Women#Canadian_%22genocide_of_Indigenous_Peoples%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Inquiry_into_Missing_...
    - snapplebobapple 3y ago
      I would agree that or some ancient history residential schools stuff if this person appeared left/far left leaning. They are talking about the budget like the deficit matters though, so I suspect they are more right leaning and so are referring to what I proposed in my other response.
      - rmellow 3y ago
        I wouldn't consider the 1970s "ancient history". We're well within survivor's lifespan, not to mention the trauma of family members.
        snapplebobapple 3y ago
        Yes, this is a common error made by many. You are looking at the residential school not so great days and grouping it in with the actually terrible pre WW2 days. They aren't the same, especially when talking about genocide vs abuse. Even if they were the same 50+ years ago is a very long time ago. I also worry that you are making the follow up error made by many and trying to use things that happened 50+ years ago now to justify current bad outcomes, when the current bad outcomes stem largely from the utter institutional failure that is indigenous services and the corrupt fiefdoms that are the reserves.
  - snapplebobapple 3y ago
    Usually when people make that claim about Canada (and don't appear to be left/far left) they are referring to either our medical assistance in dying laws (which went from only for people on the brink of dying from stuff like cancer to now contemplating extension to mature minors, people with mental illness only among others) or they are referring to our abortion laws.
    - jj999 3y ago
      all of these being good things.
      - snapplebobapple 3y ago
        They could be but the could also be really bad things. I am personally uneasy about how far we are and continue to extend medical assistance in dying (it's one thing to help someone a few months away from death from cancer to speed things up and avoid a ton of suffering and expense, it's something entirely different to allow the government to off people that would have otherwise likely lived for decades, are minors, are retarded, etc). That is too new for me to have strong objections though, I will wait another decade and see where the regulations/practices settle down to before I draw a strong conclusion. The abortion thing is also potentially problematic because it hasn't really been settled. The old law was just thrown out without replacement legislation, which legalized everything from early abortion (which most people are fine with) all the way up to very late stage abortion (which a large minority of people are very much not ok with). This leaves a wedge for people that feel strongly against the policy to convince more people to also be against by referencing the extreme minority of very late stage abortions as a cludge to remove support for the vast majority of abortions that are a lot earlier. I'm a big fan of abortion (mothers seem to know when they are going to raise criminals and abortion removed so many future criminals that it actually changed the crime stats) so I would prefer for us to go through the uncomfortable situation the USA is currently going through and settle this with a compromise that removes a lot of that wedge pressure, while maintaining abortion laws that would allow the vast majority of currently performed abortions with no additional bureaucratic BS.
  - _ugfj 3y ago
    > What genocide is Canada committing? My educated guess based on "as well as freezing bank accounts just for attending a peaceful protest" in the same breath is vaccine mandates. Poster is a nutjob. The "peaceful protest" was a Russian dark money backed attempt to disrupt Canadian life, to sow discord and chaos. I mean, they were successful with Brexit and Trump so they took a stab at Canada but they didn't manage to tear Canada apart. On the surface, they were protesting vaccine mandates but that was just the drivel for the redneck fodder. Canadian authorities haven't seen the like yet so they let it grow up to a point where they actually managed to disrupt Canadian economy seriously by occupying a bridge leading to a border crossing. So the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency, froze their bank accounts and sent them home. No one died. These nutjobs forget this rather important point: Canadian authorities peacefully managed to end this.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      I don't really understand how such people end up on HN. You'd think it was the type of place educated people tend to find.
    - _bkyr 3y ago
      I don't know if poster GP is a nutjob but I've noticed more and more of those type of low-quality comments on here. It all sounds like echoes of a distorted news headlines repeated over and over until we get to the point of: "They don't even have the right to life, their country is committing a genocide, and the goverment tries to take most of their money".
    - rightbyte 3y ago
      Blaming boogeymen for discontent and protests is far more worrying then the protests themself in my opinion. Like Napoleon in the Animal farm ...
    - H_Pylori 3y ago
      [dead]
    - adamomada 3y ago
      The end of your comment has some facts wrong, if you care - the emergency was declared after the bridges were back open - the private banks froze the accounts “Russian dark money backed attempt to disrupt life” LOL. I watched the live streams. I know people who went to Ottawa. Real people were Real pissed off with government mandates and a peaceful protest that should not have ended in a proper democracy was disrupted. And you cheer for the result
dawnerd 3y ago
And I bet that data is skewed by VPN.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  People are not really torrenting over VPN.
  - almatabata 3y ago
    I thought it was the reverse. Usually you are advised to use a VPN while torrenting for the explicit purpose of hiding your IP.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      I mean, that's going to eat up quota limits, and the VPN provider, most of them will still hand over information if requested - assuming they don't just firewall off torrents. Generally paying for a seedbox is the accepted way to pirate while hiding IP.
  - dawnerd 3y ago
    Couldn’t be further from the truth. VPNs are the main way people are hiding their IPs. Providers like PIA have no caps and are just shy of fully endorsing it.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      Nah. Most people might use VPNs to hide their IPs, but most people are not using torrents also. There's honestly little need to hide an IP just for torrenting anyway, at least in the US, Canada and most western countries. You just get a letter from the ISP you can ignore. If you use torrents a lot, you use a seedbox, not a vpn.
      - dawnerd 3y ago
        I think you’re in a different bubble. If no one used vpn for torrents why is one of the top docker images for transmission one to support vpns? No ones spending money on a seed box that’s just casually torrenting. https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn
mococa 3y ago
It must be because streaming prices in Brazil are low, and people generally lack the technical knowledge to use torrents. Many don't even have a computer anymore and do everything on their mobile phone or smart TV.
- guax 3y ago
  Its only because of cheap streaming and password sharing. People in Brazil would be able to pirate using a toaster if prices were too high. Only one person has to get the file, then it gets distributed easily.
Liftyee 3y ago
Honestly surprised how low those rates are, given the constant enshittification of streaming services (and countless other things). Remember, if buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing. https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-jame...
atum47 3y ago
Last shows i (I'm Brazilian) remember pirating: Mr Robot, cause i didn't even know where to watch it legally and Cobra Kay, which for some reason was on YouTube originals. The latter I've download and disturbed to my friends back in college on a pen drive, i did the show a favor. A sad thing, some what related to this is there's nothing worth pirating now a days. Every single movie or TV show is bad these days.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >A sad thing, some what related to this is there's nothing worth pirating now a days. Every single movie or TV show is bad these days. I get you, but I disagree. "The Boys" and "Invincible" are amazing shows IMHO. Great writing, great directing, great VFX, top cast delivering great performances. There's probably other great stuff out there but I don't have time to invest in finding and watching more. It's mostly big-name Hollywood productions that suck nowadays because of their terrible unoriginal writing focused around present day identity politics(South Park's famous jab at Disney's focus to "put a black chick in it and make her lame and gay!") coupled with the lazy and excesive use of VFX, but there's plenty of gems coming from the European(Nordics, France, etc) and Asian cinemas than nobody ever hears about unless you go looking for them. Especially Korea has been knocking it out of the park in the last few years. Foreign(from the US pov) cinema is killing it because they're not stuck chasing to milk existing franchises to death but cand afford to actually be original and take risks with new material, compared to Hollywood who's now the McDonalds/Starbucks of the entertainment industry, focused on selling bland predictable content at massive scale with insane marketing budgets, chasing profits.
  - pokerface_86 3y ago
    gotta disagree on invincible, i thought season 2 especially has been pretty middling. a show that ironically you kinda have to pirate due to season 1 only being available on amc+ and season 2 being available through prime, but only in australia and new zealand is Pantheon. feels like something the HN crowd would eat up too.
    - 3y ago
Havoc 3y ago
The one is a market netflix & friends are trying to expand into, the other is a market they already have exhausted for growth and are squeezing for max profit. Guess which consumers enjoy more.
sandworm101 3y ago
Of course canada loves piracy. Canada is part of US and UK media culture but is often blocked by licensing restrictions. Every time a canadian is refused the ability to stream a US tv show, a pirate is born. Every time a canadian clicks on a link and is hit with "not availible in your country", a pirate is born. Tell me I cannot watch the Dr Who christmas eve special until after christmas? Ill defend that torrent in court with my last breath. (Fyi, the first season of the Doctor Who reboot was cosponsored by CBC, making it canadian. Look at the credits of most every movie these days and you'll find it recieved canadian tax benefits, yet Canada is often blocked or delayed at release. And half of US actors are secret Canadians.)
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > Ill defend that torrent in court to my last breath. Well, not that you would win on those grounds, but you wouldn't have to you wouldn't ever be charged in Canada anyway unless you left it seeding for mad long.
  - sandworm101 3y ago
    Give me one scifi fan on the bench or jury and ill pay nothing. After 30ish years of media sharing culture, most of those in power are sympathetic to the issue, which is why Canada turns a blind eye.
    - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
      Jury's can't vacate the verdict just because they sympathize with you. Your argument is "I take what I want because I want it and I have no other way" isn't at all convincing. Canada doesn't turn a blind eye, they explicitly decriminalized it especially for people that are not distributing. Your argument would be bunk regardless though.
      - dbspin 3y ago
        Juries absolutely can vacate the verdict. Its called Jury Nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
20 years later and people are still indoctrinated to think piracy isn't just the natural state of information sharing.
- diego_moita 3y ago
  > piracy [...] the natural state of information sharing. Well... if you think cooking recipes, clothing, architectural styles or business practices, yes. But if you think Beethoven symphonies, "Citizen Kane" or James Watt's steam engine then no. My point is that big, rare, difficult, hard, risky or expensive innovations need a different incentive than the simple and mundane ones. I'll agree that the system is largely abused by rent-seekers but most of modern technology and culture was fostered by intellectual propriety.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    > But if you think Beethoven symphonies, "Citizen Kane" or James Watt's steam engine then no. Still yes. Had the internet existed back then of course people would be freely sharing and discussing those things. > My point is that big, rare, difficult, hard, risky or expensive innovations need a different incentive than the simple and mundane ones. Sure. That's irrelevant though. 20+ years of piracy data shows it doesn't hurt sales. Don't drink the koolaid.
  - eastbound 3y ago
    I don’t know, I can copy Beethoven symphonies at will. What’s incredible is that the government have taken upon themselves the mission of preventing computer users from copying bytes, at the expense of the taxpayer. It’s a mission impossible, for the financials of big corporations. And some people even say “But there is no other solution!”
walterbell 3y ago
Canada spent years digitizing classic Canadian TV and published the shows on a Youtube channel, then suddenly deleted all the content in 2022 without notice to archivers, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35716982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35716982
diego_moita 3y ago
Interesting that also Spain, Argentina and Chile are on the low and declining sector, but not Mexico. My suspicion is that it has something to do with the strategy of streaming sites: language and cheap. Streaming sites (mostly Netflix) have been releasing a lot of shows in Spanish/Portuguese, including some of good quality and have been keeping their prices low in those countries. And these shows haven't been available in pirate sites, most people in the region don't have the know-how to pirate them and put it there.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Cheap is a big part of this. Canada is on the not-cheap side, one of the few countries where streaming a show to your phone legitimately is more expensive than in the US. And canada has language barriers, specifially that streaming services must offer a french option, that sometimes results in content being blocked.
daeros 3y ago
I'm from the US and I love piracy too. Who doesn't love getting free stuff?
unintendedcons 3y ago
Canada charges a piracy tax on ALLL HARD DRIVES AND STORAGE MEDIA. It's not piracy, we already paid!
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
  Oh they do that garbage in Canada too? I thought i was able to escape it by leaving Italy
- xethos 3y ago
  > Canada's current private copying levies are as follows: $0.29 per unit for CD-R, CD-RW, CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio disks [0] The Canadian government does not. You likely haven't paid the tax in the last decade, if ever. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
  - unintendedcons 3y ago
    Thank you for this correction. While it changes my understanding of the legal facts, my feelings about piracy remain the same. Funny, that.
Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
I wonder if immigration is also a reason. I have children with who speak Italian abd it's often not possible to access the movies dubbed in Italian, even on Disney+, even though I know for a fact that they exist. Obviously nobody is going to license the italian dub for Canada, so there is no way for me to purchase the Italian version.

26 points by CTOSian 3y ago

_3u10 3y ago

[flagged]

hhh 3y ago
What genocide is Canada committing?
- poochipie 3y ago
  Not OP, but they are likely referring to the MMIWG crisis [0], which Justin Trudeau called a "genocide" in 2018. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Inquiry_into_Missing_and_Murdered_Indigenous_Women#Canadian_%22genocide_of_Indigenous_Peoples%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Inquiry_into_Missing_...
  - snapplebobapple 3y ago
    I would agree that or some ancient history residential schools stuff if this person appeared left/far left leaning. They are talking about the budget like the deficit matters though, so I suspect they are more right leaning and so are referring to what I proposed in my other response.
    - rmellow 3y ago
      I wouldn't consider the 1970s "ancient history". We're well within survivor's lifespan, not to mention the trauma of family members.
      - snapplebobapple 3y ago
        Yes, this is a common error made by many. You are looking at the residential school not so great days and grouping it in with the actually terrible pre WW2 days. They aren't the same, especially when talking about genocide vs abuse. Even if they were the same 50+ years ago is a very long time ago. I also worry that you are making the follow up error made by many and trying to use things that happened 50+ years ago now to justify current bad outcomes, when the current bad outcomes stem largely from the utter institutional failure that is indigenous services and the corrupt fiefdoms that are the reserves.
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
  Usually when people make that claim about Canada (and don't appear to be left/far left) they are referring to either our medical assistance in dying laws (which went from only for people on the brink of dying from stuff like cancer to now contemplating extension to mature minors, people with mental illness only among others) or they are referring to our abortion laws.
  - jj999 3y ago
    all of these being good things.
    - snapplebobapple 3y ago
      They could be but the could also be really bad things. I am personally uneasy about how far we are and continue to extend medical assistance in dying (it's one thing to help someone a few months away from death from cancer to speed things up and avoid a ton of suffering and expense, it's something entirely different to allow the government to off people that would have otherwise likely lived for decades, are minors, are retarded, etc). That is too new for me to have strong objections though, I will wait another decade and see where the regulations/practices settle down to before I draw a strong conclusion. The abortion thing is also potentially problematic because it hasn't really been settled. The old law was just thrown out without replacement legislation, which legalized everything from early abortion (which most people are fine with) all the way up to very late stage abortion (which a large minority of people are very much not ok with). This leaves a wedge for people that feel strongly against the policy to convince more people to also be against by referencing the extreme minority of very late stage abortions as a cludge to remove support for the vast majority of abortions that are a lot earlier. I'm a big fan of abortion (mothers seem to know when they are going to raise criminals and abortion removed so many future criminals that it actually changed the crime stats) so I would prefer for us to go through the uncomfortable situation the USA is currently going through and settle this with a compromise that removes a lot of that wedge pressure, while maintaining abortion laws that would allow the vast majority of currently performed abortions with no additional bureaucratic BS.
- _ugfj 3y ago
  > What genocide is Canada committing? My educated guess based on "as well as freezing bank accounts just for attending a peaceful protest" in the same breath is vaccine mandates. Poster is a nutjob. The "peaceful protest" was a Russian dark money backed attempt to disrupt Canadian life, to sow discord and chaos. I mean, they were successful with Brexit and Trump so they took a stab at Canada but they didn't manage to tear Canada apart. On the surface, they were protesting vaccine mandates but that was just the drivel for the redneck fodder. Canadian authorities haven't seen the like yet so they let it grow up to a point where they actually managed to disrupt Canadian economy seriously by occupying a bridge leading to a border crossing. So the Prime Minister declared a state of emergency, froze their bank accounts and sent them home. No one died. These nutjobs forget this rather important point: Canadian authorities peacefully managed to end this.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    I don't really understand how such people end up on HN. You'd think it was the type of place educated people tend to find.
  - _bkyr 3y ago
    I don't know if poster GP is a nutjob but I've noticed more and more of those type of low-quality comments on here. It all sounds like echoes of a distorted news headlines repeated over and over until we get to the point of: "They don't even have the right to life, their country is committing a genocide, and the goverment tries to take most of their money".
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Blaming boogeymen for discontent and protests is far more worrying then the protests themself in my opinion. Like Napoleon in the Animal farm ...
  - H_Pylori 3y ago
    [dead]
  - adamomada 3y ago
    The end of your comment has some facts wrong, if you care - the emergency was declared after the bridges were back open - the private banks froze the accounts “Russian dark money backed attempt to disrupt life” LOL. I watched the live streams. I know people who went to Ottawa. Real people were Real pissed off with government mandates and a peaceful protest that should not have ended in a proper democracy was disrupted. And you cheer for the result

dawnerd 3y ago

And I bet that data is skewed by VPN.

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
People are not really torrenting over VPN.
- almatabata 3y ago
  I thought it was the reverse. Usually you are advised to use a VPN while torrenting for the explicit purpose of hiding your IP.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    I mean, that's going to eat up quota limits, and the VPN provider, most of them will still hand over information if requested - assuming they don't just firewall off torrents. Generally paying for a seedbox is the accepted way to pirate while hiding IP.
- dawnerd 3y ago
  Couldn’t be further from the truth. VPNs are the main way people are hiding their IPs. Providers like PIA have no caps and are just shy of fully endorsing it.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    Nah. Most people might use VPNs to hide their IPs, but most people are not using torrents also. There's honestly little need to hide an IP just for torrenting anyway, at least in the US, Canada and most western countries. You just get a letter from the ISP you can ignore. If you use torrents a lot, you use a seedbox, not a vpn.
    - dawnerd 3y ago
      I think you’re in a different bubble. If no one used vpn for torrents why is one of the top docker images for transmission one to support vpns? No ones spending money on a seed box that’s just casually torrenting. https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn

mococa 3y ago

It must be because streaming prices in Brazil are low, and people generally lack the technical knowledge to use torrents. Many don't even have a computer anymore and do everything on their mobile phone or smart TV.

guax 3y ago
Its only because of cheap streaming and password sharing. People in Brazil would be able to pirate using a toaster if prices were too high. Only one person has to get the file, then it gets distributed easily.

Liftyee 3y ago

Honestly surprised how low those rates are, given the constant enshittification of streaming services (and countless other things). Remember, if buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing. https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-jame...

atum47 3y ago

Last shows i (I'm Brazilian) remember pirating: Mr Robot, cause i didn't even know where to watch it legally and Cobra Kay, which for some reason was on YouTube originals. The latter I've download and disturbed to my friends back in college on a pen drive, i did the show a favor. A sad thing, some what related to this is there's nothing worth pirating now a days. Every single movie or TV show is bad these days.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>A sad thing, some what related to this is there's nothing worth pirating now a days. Every single movie or TV show is bad these days. I get you, but I disagree. "The Boys" and "Invincible" are amazing shows IMHO. Great writing, great directing, great VFX, top cast delivering great performances. There's probably other great stuff out there but I don't have time to invest in finding and watching more. It's mostly big-name Hollywood productions that suck nowadays because of their terrible unoriginal writing focused around present day identity politics(South Park's famous jab at Disney's focus to "put a black chick in it and make her lame and gay!") coupled with the lazy and excesive use of VFX, but there's plenty of gems coming from the European(Nordics, France, etc) and Asian cinemas than nobody ever hears about unless you go looking for them. Especially Korea has been knocking it out of the park in the last few years. Foreign(from the US pov) cinema is killing it because they're not stuck chasing to milk existing franchises to death but cand afford to actually be original and take risks with new material, compared to Hollywood who's now the McDonalds/Starbucks of the entertainment industry, focused on selling bland predictable content at massive scale with insane marketing budgets, chasing profits.
- pokerface_86 3y ago
  gotta disagree on invincible, i thought season 2 especially has been pretty middling. a show that ironically you kinda have to pirate due to season 1 only being available on amc+ and season 2 being available through prime, but only in australia and new zealand is Pantheon. feels like something the HN crowd would eat up too.
  - 3y ago

Havoc 3y ago

The one is a market netflix & friends are trying to expand into, the other is a market they already have exhausted for growth and are squeezing for max profit. Guess which consumers enjoy more.

sandworm101 3y ago

Of course canada loves piracy. Canada is part of US and UK media culture but is often blocked by licensing restrictions. Every time a canadian is refused the ability to stream a US tv show, a pirate is born. Every time a canadian clicks on a link and is hit with "not availible in your country", a pirate is born. Tell me I cannot watch the Dr Who christmas eve special until after christmas? Ill defend that torrent in court with my last breath. (Fyi, the first season of the Doctor Who reboot was cosponsored by CBC, making it canadian. Look at the credits of most every movie these days and you'll find it recieved canadian tax benefits, yet Canada is often blocked or delayed at release. And half of US actors are secret Canadians.)

PrimeMcFly 3y ago
> Ill defend that torrent in court to my last breath. Well, not that you would win on those grounds, but you wouldn't have to you wouldn't ever be charged in Canada anyway unless you left it seeding for mad long.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Give me one scifi fan on the bench or jury and ill pay nothing. After 30ish years of media sharing culture, most of those in power are sympathetic to the issue, which is why Canada turns a blind eye.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    Jury's can't vacate the verdict just because they sympathize with you. Your argument is "I take what I want because I want it and I have no other way" isn't at all convincing. Canada doesn't turn a blind eye, they explicitly decriminalized it especially for people that are not distributing. Your argument would be bunk regardless though.
    - dbspin 3y ago
      Juries absolutely can vacate the verdict. Its called Jury Nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

20 years later and people are still indoctrinated to think piracy isn't just the natural state of information sharing.

diego_moita 3y ago
> piracy [...] the natural state of information sharing. Well... if you think cooking recipes, clothing, architectural styles or business practices, yes. But if you think Beethoven symphonies, "Citizen Kane" or James Watt's steam engine then no. My point is that big, rare, difficult, hard, risky or expensive innovations need a different incentive than the simple and mundane ones. I'll agree that the system is largely abused by rent-seekers but most of modern technology and culture was fostered by intellectual propriety.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  > But if you think Beethoven symphonies, "Citizen Kane" or James Watt's steam engine then no. Still yes. Had the internet existed back then of course people would be freely sharing and discussing those things. > My point is that big, rare, difficult, hard, risky or expensive innovations need a different incentive than the simple and mundane ones. Sure. That's irrelevant though. 20+ years of piracy data shows it doesn't hurt sales. Don't drink the koolaid.
- eastbound 3y ago
  I don’t know, I can copy Beethoven symphonies at will. What’s incredible is that the government have taken upon themselves the mission of preventing computer users from copying bytes, at the expense of the taxpayer. It’s a mission impossible, for the financials of big corporations. And some people even say “But there is no other solution!”

walterbell 3y ago

Canada spent years digitizing classic Canadian TV and published the shows on a Youtube channel, then suddenly deleted all the content in 2022 without notice to archivers, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35716982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35716982

diego_moita 3y ago

Interesting that also Spain, Argentina and Chile are on the low and declining sector, but not Mexico. My suspicion is that it has something to do with the strategy of streaming sites: language and cheap. Streaming sites (mostly Netflix) have been releasing a lot of shows in Spanish/Portuguese, including some of good quality and have been keeping their prices low in those countries. And these shows haven't been available in pirate sites, most people in the region don't have the know-how to pirate them and put it there.

sandworm101 3y ago
Cheap is a big part of this. Canada is on the not-cheap side, one of the few countries where streaming a show to your phone legitimately is more expensive than in the US. And canada has language barriers, specifially that streaming services must offer a french option, that sometimes results in content being blocked.

daeros 3y ago

I'm from the US and I love piracy too. Who doesn't love getting free stuff?

unintendedcons 3y ago

Canada charges a piracy tax on ALLL HARD DRIVES AND STORAGE MEDIA. It's not piracy, we already paid!

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago
Oh they do that garbage in Canada too? I thought i was able to escape it by leaving Italy
xethos 3y ago
> Canada's current private copying levies are as follows: $0.29 per unit for CD-R, CD-RW, CD-R Audio, CD-RW Audio disks [0] The Canadian government does not. You likely haven't paid the tax in the last decade, if ever. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
- unintendedcons 3y ago
  Thank you for this correction. While it changes my understanding of the legal facts, my feelings about piracy remain the same. Funny, that.

Fire-Dragon-DoL 3y ago

I wonder if immigration is also a reason. I have children with who speak Italian abd it's often not possible to access the movies dubbed in Italian, even on Disney+, even though I know for a fact that they exist. Obviously nobody is going to license the italian dub for Canada, so there is no way for me to purchase the Italian version.