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I read this same thing a lot on Reddit and HN. It surprising to me on HN because I would assume most people on here are making good money. For my family here i

I read this same thing a lot on Reddit and HN. It surprising to me on HN because I would assume most people on here are making good money. For my family here is the monthly spend with taxes for my area included: HBO Max $ 13.53 Hulu $ 7.21 Disney+ $ 0.18 (w/ Hulu) Paramount+ w/ Showtime $ 10.82 Apple TV+ $ 10.81 AMC+ $ 7.56 Amazon Prime $12.53 $62.64/month. Now, about 20 years ago in 2004 my parents had basic cable and they paid $60/month. An my parents combined made no where near what I make today in my salary alone. And with inflation the cost of entertainment has gone down significantly. As for figuring out what is on what- Apple TV has made this easy. Is piracy easier? Legality aside you need a seed box, membership to specific sites, and VPN. Which can add up to more than $30/month just to download pirated content. Not to mention the time investment in figuring out how to get the movies and tv shows to your family members on all of their devices. A budget NAS with 20 TB is going to cost $500. A small PC to transcode also $500. Also all the technical know how required. Backing up 20 TB to the Backblaze is going to cost $13/mo. So lets not pretend piracy is easier.

dijit 3y ago
You're missing Netflix, ironically.
cvalka 3y ago
Put.io
2Gkashmiri 3y ago
oh no. you are trying to set up a full blown alternative. that's not how the majority of world does piracy. here is how it goes. you have a laptop/pc. you go to tbp, search for the top 100 for movies/tv shows and download the torrent, watch it and delete the file to save space. what you are describing is off-limits for majority of the world. i have rented seedboxes back in 2016 for 2 months to get those "points" to get to a private tracker. never before, never after. i have been using the above tbp+vlc method on a daily basis since 2005-06. only recently lookmovie and other streaming sites have made it a bit easier. oh, also, there is an outlier. popcorntime. it JUST WORKS. I used it on the 2nd day of its initial release, i saw the whole weeks drama with death threats and the subsequent forks that arose. i have been using that as well so i am confirming and NOT PRETENDING that piracy is easier that actually paying for stuff.
finaard 3y ago
> Is piracy easier? Legality aside you need a seed box, membership to specific sites, and VPN. Which can add up to more than $30/month just to download pirated content. Not to mention the time investment in figuring out how to get the movies and tv shows to your family members on all of their devices. This part is trivial nowadays: sonarr/radarr and related handle discovery and library management, and jellyfin does the playback. Reasons I got back into piracy included trying to watch a series with my wife, and finding it gone. Seasons missing while streaming, UI becoming worse (for the last few years of Netflix I fully relied on an external paid service to discover new things on Netflix because of that). More and more content I cared about being removed, with lots of content I don't care about getting added - while price kept going up _and_ account sharing policies being put in that'd match my non-account sharing use case. I'm still paying for Disney+ - though based on the Netflix experience I'm adding everything I'm interested in to my local library. Amazon Prime got kicked out after they got too expensive - and even while I had prime I never actually used the video player as the UI is so horrible, but already back then pirated all the stuff I was paying for.
fragmede 3y ago
A seed box and a VPN is maybe $15 a month, and there are private torrent sites that don't charge monthly membership fees. If you've got a expansive family with lots of kids and want to fully replace Netflix with Jellyfin on a libel server it's a bunch more work, but torrenting shows onto your laptop to watch is fairly easy. At the end of the day, for someone that's motivated to not give companies money because they see them as greedy rather than a way to compensate the creators, it becomes a labor of spite. That $500 budget NAS, downloading content in native resolution so there's no transcode box needed, spread across all the families and cousins, is easily paid for in car repair favors or what else the family has to offer the uncle or aunt running the pirate video service. $500 vs $60/month? that's just 9 months. 3 if you figure there are three households where you're saving them $60/month. Personally, I rotate membership between one service and just limit my own tv time, but piracy really is too easy if you know what you're doing and are morally flexible.
AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> It surprising to me on HN because I would assume most people on here are making good money. A lot of people are students, or just don't like paying money for a frustrating experience even if they can afford it. > $62.64/month. But then you haven't got access to the things which are currently on Netflix or Peacock or YoutubeTV or whatever it is this time, and feel anxious or resentful that you're paying a monthly fee for whichever one you're not currently watching, or else have to spend time canceling or re-signing up for them all the time. > Legality aside you need a seed box, membership to specific sites, and VPN. Which can add up to more than $30/month just to download pirated content. That's how the people who have the money do it, but they're not doing it for the money. > Not to mention the time investment in figuring out how to get the movies and tv shows to your family members on all of their devices. Why would that take a long time to figure out? > A budget NAS with 20 TB is going to cost $500. A small PC to transcode also $500. Used PCs are ~free and anyone can get 20TB of storage to put in it for <$160: https://www.amazon.com/HGST-Ultrastar-HC510-7200RPM-Drive/dp/B09VY75NLH/ https://www.amazon.com/HGST-Ultrastar-HC510-7200RPM-Drive/dp... Also, people often have these things already. > Backing up 20 TB to the Backblaze is going to cost $13/mo. Why would someone pay money to back up to the internet what they downloaded from the internet to begin with?
- geraldhh 3y ago
  > Why would someone pay money to back up to the internet what they downloaded from the internet to begin with? most of your points lack insight/pragmatism but this one made ma laugh
alpaca128 3y ago
It's not about the money, but about convenience, as is often repeated. I regularly buy games on Steam yet pirate movies. It can take 30+ minutes and multiple account registrations to figure out whether a movie is even accessible where I live in the preferred language at a given day. I don't watch them every day, so a subscription model doesn't make much sense for me. I'd also pay for interruptions in the stream, lower resolution/quality, and in some cases ads. Why would I ever do that? > Legality aside you need... I don't need a NAS. Transcoding content doesn't need special separate hardware. Technical know-how is also required to troubleshoot streaming issues. Backup is always necessary. Membership to specific sites? Never had one. If piracy was the dark art you make it seem then it would never be significant enough to make Netflix worry about it.
offices 3y ago
Beyond the Dril-candles-tweet economics already discussed: I already own a PC that could transcode if that was something I actually wanted to do.
zulban 3y ago
Your infrastructure costs for pirating content are comical. Try to think of how to pirate the cheapest way possible, instead of the most expensive way to prove your point. Probably need a 100 TB SSD to pirate a single movie. And definitely gigabit. 16 GB VRAM should do it.

dijit 3y ago

You're missing Netflix, ironically.

cvalka 3y ago

Put.io

2Gkashmiri 3y ago

oh no. you are trying to set up a full blown alternative. that's not how the majority of world does piracy. here is how it goes. you have a laptop/pc. you go to tbp, search for the top 100 for movies/tv shows and download the torrent, watch it and delete the file to save space. what you are describing is off-limits for majority of the world. i have rented seedboxes back in 2016 for 2 months to get those "points" to get to a private tracker. never before, never after. i have been using the above tbp+vlc method on a daily basis since 2005-06. only recently lookmovie and other streaming sites have made it a bit easier. oh, also, there is an outlier. popcorntime. it JUST WORKS. I used it on the 2nd day of its initial release, i saw the whole weeks drama with death threats and the subsequent forks that arose. i have been using that as well so i am confirming and NOT PRETENDING that piracy is easier that actually paying for stuff.

finaard 3y ago

> Is piracy easier? Legality aside you need a seed box, membership to specific sites, and VPN. Which can add up to more than $30/month just to download pirated content. Not to mention the time investment in figuring out how to get the movies and tv shows to your family members on all of their devices. This part is trivial nowadays: sonarr/radarr and related handle discovery and library management, and jellyfin does the playback. Reasons I got back into piracy included trying to watch a series with my wife, and finding it gone. Seasons missing while streaming, UI becoming worse (for the last few years of Netflix I fully relied on an external paid service to discover new things on Netflix because of that). More and more content I cared about being removed, with lots of content I don't care about getting added - while price kept going up _and_ account sharing policies being put in that'd match my non-account sharing use case. I'm still paying for Disney+ - though based on the Netflix experience I'm adding everything I'm interested in to my local library. Amazon Prime got kicked out after they got too expensive - and even while I had prime I never actually used the video player as the UI is so horrible, but already back then pirated all the stuff I was paying for.

fragmede 3y ago

A seed box and a VPN is maybe $15 a month, and there are private torrent sites that don't charge monthly membership fees. If you've got a expansive family with lots of kids and want to fully replace Netflix with Jellyfin on a libel server it's a bunch more work, but torrenting shows onto your laptop to watch is fairly easy. At the end of the day, for someone that's motivated to not give companies money because they see them as greedy rather than a way to compensate the creators, it becomes a labor of spite. That $500 budget NAS, downloading content in native resolution so there's no transcode box needed, spread across all the families and cousins, is easily paid for in car repair favors or what else the family has to offer the uncle or aunt running the pirate video service. $500 vs $60/month? that's just 9 months. 3 if you figure there are three households where you're saving them $60/month. Personally, I rotate membership between one service and just limit my own tv time, but piracy really is too easy if you know what you're doing and are morally flexible.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> It surprising to me on HN because I would assume most people on here are making good money. A lot of people are students, or just don't like paying money for a frustrating experience even if they can afford it. > $62.64/month. But then you haven't got access to the things which are currently on Netflix or Peacock or YoutubeTV or whatever it is this time, and feel anxious or resentful that you're paying a monthly fee for whichever one you're not currently watching, or else have to spend time canceling or re-signing up for them all the time. > Legality aside you need a seed box, membership to specific sites, and VPN. Which can add up to more than $30/month just to download pirated content. That's how the people who have the money do it, but they're not doing it for the money. > Not to mention the time investment in figuring out how to get the movies and tv shows to your family members on all of their devices. Why would that take a long time to figure out? > A budget NAS with 20 TB is going to cost $500. A small PC to transcode also $500. Used PCs are ~free and anyone can get 20TB of storage to put in it for <$160: https://www.amazon.com/HGST-Ultrastar-HC510-7200RPM-Drive/dp/B09VY75NLH/ https://www.amazon.com/HGST-Ultrastar-HC510-7200RPM-Drive/dp... Also, people often have these things already. > Backing up 20 TB to the Backblaze is going to cost $13/mo. Why would someone pay money to back up to the internet what they downloaded from the internet to begin with?

geraldhh 3y ago
> Why would someone pay money to back up to the internet what they downloaded from the internet to begin with? most of your points lack insight/pragmatism but this one made ma laugh

alpaca128 3y ago

It's not about the money, but about convenience, as is often repeated. I regularly buy games on Steam yet pirate movies. It can take 30+ minutes and multiple account registrations to figure out whether a movie is even accessible where I live in the preferred language at a given day. I don't watch them every day, so a subscription model doesn't make much sense for me. I'd also pay for interruptions in the stream, lower resolution/quality, and in some cases ads. Why would I ever do that? > Legality aside you need... I don't need a NAS. Transcoding content doesn't need special separate hardware. Technical know-how is also required to troubleshoot streaming issues. Backup is always necessary. Membership to specific sites? Never had one. If piracy was the dark art you make it seem then it would never be significant enough to make Netflix worry about it.

offices 3y ago

Beyond the Dril-candles-tweet economics already discussed: I already own a PC that could transcode if that was something I actually wanted to do.

zulban 3y ago

Your infrastructure costs for pirating content are comical. Try to think of how to pirate the cheapest way possible, instead of the most expensive way to prove your point. Probably need a 100 TB SSD to pirate a single movie. And definitely gigabit. 16 GB VRAM should do it.