4 ms·

You can rant about "entitlement" all you wish, but the way to getting people to stop pirating content is to provide an alternative method of distribution than t

You can rant about "entitlement" all you wish, but the way to getting people to stop pirating content is to provide an alternative method of distribution than the one currently in place. Steam, iTunes, Netflix, and perhaps one day HBO branching off into their own content publishing business. A season's worth Game of Thrones Blu-Rays costs what, $50? To access a year's worth of premium cable content would cost ~$1000 to ~$1500. "I don't know the statistics but I'd have to guess at least 80% of nerds like us pirate content every single week, and nobody wants to think of themselves as an asshole. Rationalize however you need to." This is pretty much the antithesis of rationalizing. You're fine with the system in place. Others are dissatisfied with piracy and want to support the creators without the "luxury" of dropping more than a thousand bucks a year for the one or two great shows worth watching on television.

tptacek 14y ago
A season's worth of GoT Blu-Rays costs $50 1-2 years after the series has been released on HBO. Content is much more lucrative during its initial release window; it has a very definite time-value. People aren't complaining and breaking the law to get access to GoT Blu-Rays (well, actually, yeah some of them are). They're doing it to get access to GoT episodes that aren't available anywhere but on pay TV, because HBO uses them as an incentive to get people to subscribe to pay TV, which, when you think about it, is the only way pay TV could possibly ever work.
- bediger4000 14y ago
  You know, I made some socks for you to buy, to subsidize the production and distribution of my artisan bleu cheese. My cheese startup failed, you filthy pagan pirates, because you failed to buy my socks! Come on. We're supposed to just suck it up when someone offers us something for sale? You're kidding, that's not how markets work. If HBO does something stupid, they get penalized for it in the market. Beyond that, the debate here is about DRM. Institutionalizing DRM (legal mandates, DMCA style legal penalties for "reverse engineering") probably causes more damage to society as a whole than allowing some smaller monetary amount of piracy. Clamping down on the civil rights of the populace as a whole in order to prevent a tiny fraction of the populace from violating already outrageous laws on "intellectual property" really isn't a good idea. Stupid laws and stupid enforcement of stupid laws make people disrespect the law and law enforcement.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    The DMCA does not criminalize reverse engineering; my field is based in large part on routine reverse engineering of all sorts of software. While there is some grey area and certainly some overreach in the DMCA anti-circumvention mechanism, what it essentially criminalizes is an attempt to build a business on devices that circumvent content protection. As a sometimes-reverser, I'm ambivalent about this. I wouldn't howl if anti-circumvention was eliminated (it won't be, but still). I'll howl with all the other security researchers when it's abused to stifle research and disclosure of security flaws (for the overwhelming most part, it isn't, but still). I don't understand your sock/cheese metaphor at all. People can in fact bundle socks and cheese. Nobody would in reality stick up for you if you stole the socks to avoid the cheese. But nobody does bundle socks and cheese, because that's moronic. It is manifestly not moronic to bundle Game Of Thrones with ESPN.
    - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
      (I posted this a month ago) How do you know, if you are that you are indeed breaking DRM vs just doing complicated stuff with a firmware? It seems obvious if there's PKI in there somewhere. But aside that, how do you tell the difference? Might I add that the old proposed "Broadcast Flag" would have been a bit in the HDTV stream to signal no_copy. Changing that bit would have broken the DMCA.
      - Natsu 14y ago
        BnetD managed to violate the DMCA merely by being unable to emulate the authorization layer. https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd
      - bediger4000 14y ago
        Oddities like that render "intellectual property" useless. Since copyright (in the USA) lasts for life-of-author + 70 years, or 90 years for corporate authorship, you can't tell on the face of some information whether it is "property" or not. You need to know when/if the author died.
    - 14y ago
- illuminate 14y ago
  "A season's worth of GoT Blu-Rays costs $50 1-2 years after the series has been released on HBO. Content is much more lucrative during its initial release window; it has a very definite time-value." So weigh the cost for monthly fees accordingly to the value-add and factor in for the lack of subsidization.
jmsduran 14y ago
> "...the way to getting people to stop pirating content is to provide an alternative method of distribution... Steam, iTunes, Netflix..." I agree with your point to an extent. The thing is that they're not exactly viable alternatives yet. Each service you mentioned operates off the same distribution model, each with their own custom DRM that sandboxes the user from leaving that platform.

tptacek 14y ago

A season's worth of GoT Blu-Rays costs $50 1-2 years after the series has been released on HBO. Content is much more lucrative during its initial release window; it has a very definite time-value. People aren't complaining and breaking the law to get access to GoT Blu-Rays (well, actually, yeah some of them are). They're doing it to get access to GoT episodes that aren't available anywhere but on pay TV, because HBO uses them as an incentive to get people to subscribe to pay TV, which, when you think about it, is the only way pay TV could possibly ever work.

bediger4000 14y ago
You know, I made some socks for you to buy, to subsidize the production and distribution of my artisan bleu cheese. My cheese startup failed, you filthy pagan pirates, because you failed to buy my socks! Come on. We're supposed to just suck it up when someone offers us something for sale? You're kidding, that's not how markets work. If HBO does something stupid, they get penalized for it in the market. Beyond that, the debate here is about DRM. Institutionalizing DRM (legal mandates, DMCA style legal penalties for "reverse engineering") probably causes more damage to society as a whole than allowing some smaller monetary amount of piracy. Clamping down on the civil rights of the populace as a whole in order to prevent a tiny fraction of the populace from violating already outrageous laws on "intellectual property" really isn't a good idea. Stupid laws and stupid enforcement of stupid laws make people disrespect the law and law enforcement.
- tptacek 14y ago
  The DMCA does not criminalize reverse engineering; my field is based in large part on routine reverse engineering of all sorts of software. While there is some grey area and certainly some overreach in the DMCA anti-circumvention mechanism, what it essentially criminalizes is an attempt to build a business on devices that circumvent content protection. As a sometimes-reverser, I'm ambivalent about this. I wouldn't howl if anti-circumvention was eliminated (it won't be, but still). I'll howl with all the other security researchers when it's abused to stifle research and disclosure of security flaws (for the overwhelming most part, it isn't, but still). I don't understand your sock/cheese metaphor at all. People can in fact bundle socks and cheese. Nobody would in reality stick up for you if you stole the socks to avoid the cheese. But nobody does bundle socks and cheese, because that's moronic. It is manifestly not moronic to bundle Game Of Thrones with ESPN.
  - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
    (I posted this a month ago) How do you know, if you are that you are indeed breaking DRM vs just doing complicated stuff with a firmware? It seems obvious if there's PKI in there somewhere. But aside that, how do you tell the difference? Might I add that the old proposed "Broadcast Flag" would have been a bit in the HDTV stream to signal no_copy. Changing that bit would have broken the DMCA.
    - Natsu 14y ago
      BnetD managed to violate the DMCA merely by being unable to emulate the authorization layer. https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd https://www.eff.org/cases/blizzard-v-bnetd
    - bediger4000 14y ago
      Oddities like that render "intellectual property" useless. Since copyright (in the USA) lasts for life-of-author + 70 years, or 90 years for corporate authorship, you can't tell on the face of some information whether it is "property" or not. You need to know when/if the author died.
  - 14y ago
illuminate 14y ago
"A season's worth of GoT Blu-Rays costs $50 1-2 years after the series has been released on HBO. Content is much more lucrative during its initial release window; it has a very definite time-value." So weigh the cost for monthly fees accordingly to the value-add and factor in for the lack of subsidization.

jmsduran 14y ago

> "...the way to getting people to stop pirating content is to provide an alternative method of distribution... Steam, iTunes, Netflix..." I agree with your point to an extent. The thing is that they're not exactly viable alternatives yet. Each service you mentioned operates off the same distribution model, each with their own custom DRM that sandboxes the user from leaving that platform.