3 ms·

> Tech industry circles nowadays are sometimes tinged with individualist selfish "take whatever you can" thinking, and anarchic or even underhanded methods. In

> Tech industry circles nowadays are sometimes tinged with individualist selfish "take whatever you can" thinking, and anarchic or even underhanded methods. Including the thinking "an express no doesn't mean no, if i can find a way to take it from them anyway" I agree with that though. It's better to circumvent than to submit and do what you're told. The same way piracy keeps streaming services somewhat honest, I'm sure that if piracy didn't exist, subscriptions would be even pricier.

bayesnet 2mo ago
The piracy thing is a bit backwards I think. Piracy is a consequence of subscription price so higher prices induce more piracy. The only way piracy doesn’t exist is if all content is free to begin with
- phlakaton 2mo ago
  And the reason that piracy doesn't exist in that case is because the creators have all had to go out of business. ;-)
  - wolvoleo 1mo ago
    Yeah but I don't care about that. I'm not here to make the system work. It's skewed against us consumers anyway.
    - phlakaton 1mo ago
      You say that like it's a bad thing. Consumers are worth less than creators in the cosmic scheme of things. I believe we should be much friendlier to consumers than our laws currently allow, but there should be a balance, and that balance should not privilege consumers above all.
      - wolvoleo 1mo ago
        It is a bad thing. And the system is skewed against creators too. It favours exclusively the rent-seeking rich middle man.
        phlakaton 1mo ago
        Well, I'll drink to that!
- aftbit 2mo ago
  There's subscription cost, then there's other factors, like DRM, usability, single source, etc. If you want to find the latest media, you can either hunt for it on one among several subscription services or you can find it on any of the big torrent sites. Once you torrent it, you can watch it on any or every device, without internet, forever. If first party media companies sold one-off DRM free downloads of movies and TV shows for a reasonable price (not even that cheap, just not requiring bundling with other content you don't want to see), I bet that'd have more of an impact on piracy rates than lowering subscription prices by 10% or whatever.
  - miki123211 2mo ago
    No. Music is basically sold like that (Itunes does it for example), and very very few people use it. There are probably some, but I don't personally know any — and I know plenty of music lovers with huge collections. Normies want to have access to everything at the click of a button, and they don't want to be worrying about disk space, cross device synchronization or organizing files in directories. Streaming is perfect for them, especially in the mobile age (I bet many people had access to more disk space in 2013 than they had in 2021 or have in 2026). People who would want to be normies but can't afford it (often in E.G. 3rd world countries) use Youtube with ads, Spotify with ads or pirated "free unlocked Spotify" apps on their Android phones. Music geeks want more music than they could possibly afford, so they use ${whatever this week's Deezer grabber is} or just get an account on Redacted. The anti-corporate left / retro people just buy vinyl, CDs or maybe tapes, depending on preference. Paying to see a movie (versus paying to own a movie) has been a longstanding tradition in the movie industry (cinemas, rentals). If anything, being able to outright own movies was a short blip, and a weird consequence of how media worked at the time, which was annoying to most of the population more than anything else.
    - rpdillon 2mo ago
      With power comes responsibility, and I think responsibility has fallen out of fashion. I think this comes down to the definition of "want", and I talk to my kids about this because I wish we had a different word. Yes, I want to have the piece of cake tonight, but I would also want to not have diabetes in 20 years. People want instant access to the entirety of music produced by humanity for a flat fee, but they also want to be able to access their music even if the industry that provides that service goes away. Curating a collection requires some responsibility and discipline, which is more work than just paying 15 bucks for the service and pressing play. But it also gives you access to that material in 20 years, which the service does not. What the industry has successfully done is have people learn that for 15 or 20 years they can cave in to their want of convenience. People don't seem to care today that they'll have to pay the price in 15 years, but they will care in 15 years. Nothing made this more evident than people buying digital movies from Sony, only to find that the rights to access the movie they purchased have been revoked. People are so sick of it in fact that they're now inventing new words like in enshitification to capture the idea that they have been brought in to an ecosystem that they're trapped in and now feel like they can't escape even though it's getting worse. People's love of convenience is the mechanism of their capture by the business.
- lrvick 2mo ago
  I have the largest physical media collection of anyone I know. I will buy things I can actually own, but with digital media the studios and labels have ensured purchasing no longer means ownership, and thus digital piracy is not stealing.
rpdillon 2mo ago
> I agree with that though. It's better to circumvent than to submit and do what you're told. Not always. Sometimes the rules are stupid, and by simply obeying them, their stupidity becomes apparent. The governments that are trying to force Facebook and Google to pay to link to their news stories are a great example. The governments foolishly assumed that the media companies would comply by paying, but instead they chose to comply by leaving. Leaving is a powerful signal.
- apefulsin 2mo ago
  They're not paying to link. They're paying to summarise, because people read the summary and don't go to the news site.
- throw0101a 2mo ago
  > Sometimes the rules are stupid, and by simply obeying them, their stupidity becomes apparent. This probably has to be in a "maliciously compliant" fashion though, as otherwise if you 'sort of' follow them things may actually still function. The point is often to show that things would not work if things were done by the book, so as to encourage the book to be rewritten or thrown out.
apefulsin 2mo ago
We can test this. Piracy used to exist and streaming services were cheap and good. Then piracy didn't exist because of that, and streaming services got expensive and worse. Now piracy exists again.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- ipaddr 2mo ago
  Piracy existed before,during and after. Things are getting expensive and profits are increasing because growth has slowed and investors want either growth in users or profits.
  - br0ceph 2mo ago
    piracy for many, exists due to the freedoms it provides. freedom todo format shift, copy, share, preserve, and largely a freedom from surveillance. noone should be able to see what media u are viewing without ur explicit permission. everytime u stream or buy, records of ur activity are created, and profiles are shared with brokers. piracy done right, elimates all capitalism, but especially surveillance capitalism, and top down control over users of media
    - cindyllm 2mo ago
      [dead]
    - wolvoleo 1mo ago
      > Everytime u stream or buy, records of ur activity are created, and profiles are shared with brokers. Unfortunately this applies even if you pirate. Your own TV you bought with your own money spies on you these days through automatic content recognition.
- wolvoleo 2mo ago
  Well some people have always been pirates, but when Netflix offered a comprehensive catalogue for a decent price very few people still bothered to pirate. That was a big break from the early 2000s when pretty much everyone here in Europe pirated. We had this app called popcorn time which had everything and made it all super easy. Now everything is split between services and prices constantly go up, you have to pay extra for viewing without ads etc. I see more and more people going back.

bayesnet 2mo ago

The piracy thing is a bit backwards I think. Piracy is a consequence of subscription price so higher prices induce more piracy. The only way piracy doesn’t exist is if all content is free to begin with

phlakaton 2mo ago
And the reason that piracy doesn't exist in that case is because the creators have all had to go out of business. ;-)
- wolvoleo 1mo ago
  Yeah but I don't care about that. I'm not here to make the system work. It's skewed against us consumers anyway.
  - phlakaton 1mo ago
    You say that like it's a bad thing. Consumers are worth less than creators in the cosmic scheme of things. I believe we should be much friendlier to consumers than our laws currently allow, but there should be a balance, and that balance should not privilege consumers above all.
    - wolvoleo 1mo ago
      It is a bad thing. And the system is skewed against creators too. It favours exclusively the rent-seeking rich middle man.
      - phlakaton 1mo ago
        Well, I'll drink to that!
aftbit 2mo ago
There's subscription cost, then there's other factors, like DRM, usability, single source, etc. If you want to find the latest media, you can either hunt for it on one among several subscription services or you can find it on any of the big torrent sites. Once you torrent it, you can watch it on any or every device, without internet, forever. If first party media companies sold one-off DRM free downloads of movies and TV shows for a reasonable price (not even that cheap, just not requiring bundling with other content you don't want to see), I bet that'd have more of an impact on piracy rates than lowering subscription prices by 10% or whatever.
- miki123211 2mo ago
  No. Music is basically sold like that (Itunes does it for example), and very very few people use it. There are probably some, but I don't personally know any — and I know plenty of music lovers with huge collections. Normies want to have access to everything at the click of a button, and they don't want to be worrying about disk space, cross device synchronization or organizing files in directories. Streaming is perfect for them, especially in the mobile age (I bet many people had access to more disk space in 2013 than they had in 2021 or have in 2026). People who would want to be normies but can't afford it (often in E.G. 3rd world countries) use Youtube with ads, Spotify with ads or pirated "free unlocked Spotify" apps on their Android phones. Music geeks want more music than they could possibly afford, so they use ${whatever this week's Deezer grabber is} or just get an account on Redacted. The anti-corporate left / retro people just buy vinyl, CDs or maybe tapes, depending on preference. Paying to see a movie (versus paying to own a movie) has been a longstanding tradition in the movie industry (cinemas, rentals). If anything, being able to outright own movies was a short blip, and a weird consequence of how media worked at the time, which was annoying to most of the population more than anything else.
  - rpdillon 2mo ago
    With power comes responsibility, and I think responsibility has fallen out of fashion. I think this comes down to the definition of "want", and I talk to my kids about this because I wish we had a different word. Yes, I want to have the piece of cake tonight, but I would also want to not have diabetes in 20 years. People want instant access to the entirety of music produced by humanity for a flat fee, but they also want to be able to access their music even if the industry that provides that service goes away. Curating a collection requires some responsibility and discipline, which is more work than just paying 15 bucks for the service and pressing play. But it also gives you access to that material in 20 years, which the service does not. What the industry has successfully done is have people learn that for 15 or 20 years they can cave in to their want of convenience. People don't seem to care today that they'll have to pay the price in 15 years, but they will care in 15 years. Nothing made this more evident than people buying digital movies from Sony, only to find that the rights to access the movie they purchased have been revoked. People are so sick of it in fact that they're now inventing new words like in enshitification to capture the idea that they have been brought in to an ecosystem that they're trapped in and now feel like they can't escape even though it's getting worse. People's love of convenience is the mechanism of their capture by the business.
lrvick 2mo ago
I have the largest physical media collection of anyone I know. I will buy things I can actually own, but with digital media the studios and labels have ensured purchasing no longer means ownership, and thus digital piracy is not stealing.

rpdillon 2mo ago

> I agree with that though. It's better to circumvent than to submit and do what you're told. Not always. Sometimes the rules are stupid, and by simply obeying them, their stupidity becomes apparent. The governments that are trying to force Facebook and Google to pay to link to their news stories are a great example. The governments foolishly assumed that the media companies would comply by paying, but instead they chose to comply by leaving. Leaving is a powerful signal.

apefulsin 2mo ago
They're not paying to link. They're paying to summarise, because people read the summary and don't go to the news site.
throw0101a 2mo ago
> Sometimes the rules are stupid, and by simply obeying them, their stupidity becomes apparent. This probably has to be in a "maliciously compliant" fashion though, as otherwise if you 'sort of' follow them things may actually still function. The point is often to show that things would not work if things were done by the book, so as to encourage the book to be rewritten or thrown out.

apefulsin 2mo ago

We can test this. Piracy used to exist and streaming services were cheap and good. Then piracy didn't exist because of that, and streaming services got expensive and worse. Now piracy exists again.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
ipaddr 2mo ago
Piracy existed before,during and after. Things are getting expensive and profits are increasing because growth has slowed and investors want either growth in users or profits.
- br0ceph 2mo ago
  piracy for many, exists due to the freedoms it provides. freedom todo format shift, copy, share, preserve, and largely a freedom from surveillance. noone should be able to see what media u are viewing without ur explicit permission. everytime u stream or buy, records of ur activity are created, and profiles are shared with brokers. piracy done right, elimates all capitalism, but especially surveillance capitalism, and top down control over users of media
  - cindyllm 2mo ago
    [dead]
  - wolvoleo 1mo ago
    > Everytime u stream or buy, records of ur activity are created, and profiles are shared with brokers. Unfortunately this applies even if you pirate. Your own TV you bought with your own money spies on you these days through automatic content recognition.
wolvoleo 2mo ago
Well some people have always been pirates, but when Netflix offered a comprehensive catalogue for a decent price very few people still bothered to pirate. That was a big break from the early 2000s when pretty much everyone here in Europe pirated. We had this app called popcorn time which had everything and made it all super easy. Now everything is split between services and prices constantly go up, you have to pay extra for viewing without ads etc. I see more and more people going back.