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Until recently, 3. (poor connection) has been a huge issue for me and streaming services. When there is a download/watch later, I sigh with relief. 7. is only

Until recently, 3. (poor connection) has been a huge issue for me and streaming services. When there is a download/watch later, I sigh with relief. 7. is only sort-of an issue, IMHO. Anything that is pirated is usually fairly benign content and I don't care if someone knows how many times I've watched Idiocracy. I just wish I could know how many times I've watched it too. I would add: Piracy offers the ability to remember content that isn't popular enough to remain in streaming services. I just searched "Big Trouble in Little China" and Google Play wants me to pay $3.79 to rent it or the full original price to purchase it. Tell me, does the original cast get any of that or is it just adding pocket change to Google's coffers?

qrios 1y ago
> I don't care if someone knows how many times I've watched Idiocracy. I come from Germany, from East Germany. And some people there wanted to know if you had seen certain films and how often. And ‘Idiocracy’ would have been very high up on their list. Not all films were banned right from the start (‘The Legend of Paul and Paula’ [1]), but right from the beginning the Stasi found it very interesting who had watched the film. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Paul_and_Paula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Paul_and_Paula
- callc 1y ago
  This. Privacy does not matter until it does. Thanks for your example, qrios
- tclancy 1y ago
  What if I have recently watched The Lives of Others? (Which everyone in the US should.)
  - qrios 1y ago
    ‘The Lives of Others’ is an outstanding film. However, it is a reappraisal of East German history and was made seven years after the collapse (the director grew up in West Germany and Western Europe). US-America has looked at the subject of surveillance of its own population and its own (possible) collapse many times and often in a timely manner. "The Conversation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation "Enemy of the State": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film) "The Siege": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege "In the Heat of the Night": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heat_of_the_Night_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heat_of_the_Night_(film... "Eagle Eye": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Eye If you ask publicly, ‘What if I've seen XYZ?’ then it's actually already too late.
    - zerocrates 1y ago
      The collapse being the collapse of the DDR? The Lives of Others must have been made way further beyond that than 7 years. Closer to 20, I'd figure.
      - arrowsmith 1y ago
        TLOO came out in 2006, 16 years after the DDR collapsed. I wondered if GP was thinking of another movie so I asked ChatGPT, which told me: "The German film you’re thinking of is "Good Bye, Lenin!" — released in 2003, exactly seven years after the formal end of the DDR in 1990." (My emphasis.) So much for GPT-5.
        qrios 1y ago
        Right, I missed a whole decade. (For me 1989, the Mauerfall is the official end of GDR)
        irthomasthomas 1y ago
        That's hilarious. Imagine going back two years and showing someone GPT-5? They might think the Pause AI movement had won. It makes you ponder an alternate timeline where the OpenAI brain trust wasn't dismantled Which version did you use, though? GPT-5, GPT-5-Thinking, GPT-5 Pro, GPT-5-Mini, GPT-5 with Thinking (reasoning effort=high) or one of the other 18 options? Did you tell it to think harder? Maybe you are just holding it wrong?
        bambax 1y ago
        Making what is essentially a router dispatching queries to the smallest engine susceptible to answer a question was maybe a good optimization from a techical and business pont of view. But branding that router "GPT5" is a huge marketing mistake, because now, every time a smaller model says something stupid (as they often do), it seems that's the best OpenAI has to offer...
        GoblinSlayer 1y ago
  - pmarreck 1y ago
    Trivia about that movie: The spying devices used were authentic and from the era depicted.
- irthomasthomas 1y ago
  Interesting. There isn't one sentence in that article (English) which describes the political controversy of that movie. A single sentence mentions the film almost being banned for its 'political overtones'.
  - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
    The English article is incomplete. The banner is there. I guess I could try to complete it but it’s highly my work would be struck out by an angry editor feeling territorial for a reason or another so maybe not. The French article is a bit better - I don’t understand German sadly. The controversy stems from the protagonists values. They put their love for each other and their search for fulfilment above other commitments which was seen as dangerously non communist. The film was cleared by the head of East Germany but the censors still imposed a tragic ending.
helsinkiandrew 1y ago
> Tell me, does the original cast get any of that or is it just adding pocket change to Google's coffers? Google will have negotiated with the “owner” (in this case I think Disney) for a wholesale price and then adds its retail markup (eg 20%). Disney pay the industry standard SAG/DGA union negotiated residual agreements to cast, writers and directors
- imoverclocked 1y ago
  I find myself wishing for a lower-overhead approach to this. 20% already gets the price from $14.99 to $12.49. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the cast gets less than 50% and lawyers get more than 40% of that. If true, that's less than $6.25 to the folks that actually made the movie and $8.75 (or more) of pure, unadulterated overhead. Finally, clicking on "where to watch" shows prices within $0.20 of each other. It's not ... not price-fixing, but it kinda is. Also, "wholesale" is such a strange way to look at this. There is no way the digital asset is sent to them more than once. It's some kind of strange fiction for me to imagine, "here are X downloads of movie Y at a discounted rate. If you want more, you need to come back and purchase another X downloads." It's as if a download itself is a consumable that Disney provides.
  - helsinkiandrew 1y ago
    The actor residuals are much less than 50%, but the remaining goes to the studio/funders who own the rights, not lawyers. Wholesale/retail makes more sense if you think of google having to deal with consumers, providing a website/apps, advertising, collecting payments etc. whilst the movie company makes the content and negotiates deals with broadcasters and streaming companies around the world.
3036e4 1y ago
> I just wish I could know how many times I've watched it too. I exported all my private data from Netflix and it had very detailed information on exactly when I (or anyone else in the household) watched what. Sadly it only went back a few years. Either they do not keep older data or they pretend not to. My Spotify data seemed to be complete for all years I have used it, listing the exact time and location, what device etc, I listened to any track there ever.
boppo1 1y ago
>isn't popular enough No that's because it's good enough to get rented regularly. Why sign a streaming deal if your IP prints money?

qrios 1y ago

> I don't care if someone knows how many times I've watched Idiocracy. I come from Germany, from East Germany. And some people there wanted to know if you had seen certain films and how often. And ‘Idiocracy’ would have been very high up on their list. Not all films were banned right from the start (‘The Legend of Paul and Paula’ [1]), but right from the beginning the Stasi found it very interesting who had watched the film. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Paul_and_Paula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Paul_and_Paula

callc 1y ago
This. Privacy does not matter until it does. Thanks for your example, qrios
tclancy 1y ago
What if I have recently watched The Lives of Others? (Which everyone in the US should.)
- qrios 1y ago
  ‘The Lives of Others’ is an outstanding film. However, it is a reappraisal of East German history and was made seven years after the collapse (the director grew up in West Germany and Western Europe). US-America has looked at the subject of surveillance of its own population and its own (possible) collapse many times and often in a timely manner. "The Conversation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation "Enemy of the State": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film) "The Siege": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege "In the Heat of the Night": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heat_of_the_Night_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heat_of_the_Night_(film... "Eagle Eye": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Eye If you ask publicly, ‘What if I've seen XYZ?’ then it's actually already too late.
  - zerocrates 1y ago
    The collapse being the collapse of the DDR? The Lives of Others must have been made way further beyond that than 7 years. Closer to 20, I'd figure.
    - arrowsmith 1y ago
      TLOO came out in 2006, 16 years after the DDR collapsed. I wondered if GP was thinking of another movie so I asked ChatGPT, which told me: "The German film you’re thinking of is "Good Bye, Lenin!" — released in 2003, exactly seven years after the formal end of the DDR in 1990." (My emphasis.) So much for GPT-5.
      - qrios 1y ago
        Right, I missed a whole decade. (For me 1989, the Mauerfall is the official end of GDR)
      - irthomasthomas 1y ago
        That's hilarious. Imagine going back two years and showing someone GPT-5? They might think the Pause AI movement had won. It makes you ponder an alternate timeline where the OpenAI brain trust wasn't dismantled Which version did you use, though? GPT-5, GPT-5-Thinking, GPT-5 Pro, GPT-5-Mini, GPT-5 with Thinking (reasoning effort=high) or one of the other 18 options? Did you tell it to think harder? Maybe you are just holding it wrong?
        bambax 1y ago
        Making what is essentially a router dispatching queries to the smallest engine susceptible to answer a question was maybe a good optimization from a techical and business pont of view. But branding that router "GPT5" is a huge marketing mistake, because now, every time a smaller model says something stupid (as they often do), it seems that's the best OpenAI has to offer...
      - GoblinSlayer 1y ago
- pmarreck 1y ago
  Trivia about that movie: The spying devices used were authentic and from the era depicted.
irthomasthomas 1y ago
Interesting. There isn't one sentence in that article (English) which describes the political controversy of that movie. A single sentence mentions the film almost being banned for its 'political overtones'.
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  The English article is incomplete. The banner is there. I guess I could try to complete it but it’s highly my work would be struck out by an angry editor feeling territorial for a reason or another so maybe not. The French article is a bit better - I don’t understand German sadly. The controversy stems from the protagonists values. They put their love for each other and their search for fulfilment above other commitments which was seen as dangerously non communist. The film was cleared by the head of East Germany but the censors still imposed a tragic ending.

helsinkiandrew 1y ago

> Tell me, does the original cast get any of that or is it just adding pocket change to Google's coffers? Google will have negotiated with the “owner” (in this case I think Disney) for a wholesale price and then adds its retail markup (eg 20%). Disney pay the industry standard SAG/DGA union negotiated residual agreements to cast, writers and directors

imoverclocked 1y ago
I find myself wishing for a lower-overhead approach to this. 20% already gets the price from $14.99 to $12.49. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the cast gets less than 50% and lawyers get more than 40% of that. If true, that's less than $6.25 to the folks that actually made the movie and $8.75 (or more) of pure, unadulterated overhead. Finally, clicking on "where to watch" shows prices within $0.20 of each other. It's not ... not price-fixing, but it kinda is. Also, "wholesale" is such a strange way to look at this. There is no way the digital asset is sent to them more than once. It's some kind of strange fiction for me to imagine, "here are X downloads of movie Y at a discounted rate. If you want more, you need to come back and purchase another X downloads." It's as if a download itself is a consumable that Disney provides.
- helsinkiandrew 1y ago
  The actor residuals are much less than 50%, but the remaining goes to the studio/funders who own the rights, not lawyers. Wholesale/retail makes more sense if you think of google having to deal with consumers, providing a website/apps, advertising, collecting payments etc. whilst the movie company makes the content and negotiates deals with broadcasters and streaming companies around the world.

3036e4 1y ago

> I just wish I could know how many times I've watched it too. I exported all my private data from Netflix and it had very detailed information on exactly when I (or anyone else in the household) watched what. Sadly it only went back a few years. Either they do not keep older data or they pretend not to. My Spotify data seemed to be complete for all years I have used it, listing the exact time and location, what device etc, I listened to any track there ever.

boppo1 1y ago

>isn't popular enough No that's because it's good enough to get rented regularly. Why sign a streaming deal if your IP prints money?