Have they considered offering better content and services than the free options?
Gabe said it best! “The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
I’ve dropped something like 5 services in the last year and a half no the last year, due to the declining quality of their offerings, both in user interface, user experience, and content.
So every movie/show for less than $50/year + time spent setting up arrs lol
Even that cost and arrs aren’t strictly necessary. For those who like to binge their shows, most of them get a “complete” version on most good torrent sites once they’re done releasing (let’s not get started on the cousin-fucking yeehaw lissencephalic level of thinking it takes to release streamed shows weekly). Download those, watch them, preserve what you think you’ll rewatch in the future then delete the rest. So long as your machine has a good few terrabytes it’ll last some time.
Yeah I referred to usenet by default that’s why the cost 😅
Fair. I’d assumed it was a rough amount for the electricity bill increase for running a home server
Can someone list those piracy subscription services so we can avoid them as responsible citizens?
You should definitely avoid XtremeHD IPTV (http://xtremehdiptv.org/). For $15 a month, it’s way too cheap to offer all the live TV, movies, and series that it does. The article specifically mentions low pricing as a red flag, and I can definitely say that compared to what you’d normally pay for every live channel (including the premium ones and pay per view), series, and any just about any movie you can think of, this is most definitely a service that you should steer clear of.
Hey friend, I’m gonna PM you for some intel if you don’t mind!
IPTorrents is even worse at iptorrents.com for only $10/mo
Hey man I have a question for you! Is this service download only or does it offer streaming too? Seems like a traditional torrent site to me, but just wanted to ask! Limited info on the site obvi.
Yes. It seems to do IPTV as well.
Seems to be invite only at the moment according to their sign up page. Any way for you to send an invite?
They keep telling us that we can’t own or preserve media. We strongly disagree.
This has to be stopped. Just look at what Napster did to the music industry. That’s right, there used to be a music industry and now it’s just…gone. No more music, no more money to be made in music. Don’t let these evil streaming services do the same to poor defenceless Hollywood, bastion of women’s rights!
I haven’t been able to listen to music since year 2000 😢
Jokes aside, I have paid for Google’s music service since it launched (RIP Play Music), but I am a millisecond away from canceling my subscription because Google does not provide me with any way to randomize playlists. I don’t mean shuffle play. That shit is broken and always has been. It would not be a big deal if I could randomize my playlists on demand, but no.
There’s no such thing as pure randomness in computer science.
Pure randomness isn’t great for music playlists. The algo needs to account for recency so you don’t hear the same some 6 times in a row. Technically still random but no one wants that.
That’s the difference between randomizing a playlist and shuffle play. If you randomize a playlist, the songs will never repeat unless you have them in the list twice. YouTube Music’s shuffle play often plays the same twenty songs over and over out of a playlist with over six hundred songs.
If you follow some of the links to pirate sites in the article you’ll get redirected to some anti-piracy site which amongst other things tells you this:
Bitch … that’s literally the reason I pirate.
Now only 1400$ a month to watch any show at 480p! Upgrade now to 2100$ per month for the high resolution videos? Can’t afford it? Just get another job you lazy hobo!
Not so fast now! High resolution video only available on edge on windows
unintelligible screaming
Or, fill your phones, laptop and streaming devices with 1000 of our proprietary apps! Your personal information and viewing habits get sent 1000 ways from Sunday thanks to all the Privacy Policies you agreed to~
The problem isn’t the number of providers, the problem is exclusive licensing deals.
If it was like music, then (theoretically), more choice is better. AFAIK all the platforms have pretty much all the music, so there is some choice available.
With TV and film, it’s so fractured that it’s literally easier to just pirate things, even for shows I (potentially) have ad-free paid access to already. With Stremio + Torrential + a Debrid service, I just launch one app and everything’s available in seconds. With paid services, I need to search Netflix, then Prime, then CBC Gem, by which point I’d already be watching.
Plus, torrentio let’s me pick the video quality I want, so I can force 4K H265 on my big screen for films or just pop on a 720p H264 on my small underpowered laptop (that can’t decode H265 fast enough for smooth playback).
It’s not even about price, it’s just a better experience to pirate. And that’s a Big Problem for the industry.
Remember when they found out the dudes behind piratebay were like 3-5 hacktivist friends who made it in their free time lol?
Also what illegal subscriptions. Do they really think people pirate content for it to be sold and not shared?
People who pirate content don’t do it for free. It might be news to you, but piracy is a huge business.
Not for every average Hollywood movie ever.
There’s so many acronyms for the source because of how many people independently rip, not even including cam rips.
Now if it’s some big gun software like cobalt strike, then sure yeah people definitely charge.
But Movie and TV pirating is so easy, people regularly make their own rips and torrents.
It sure is fascinating how surges in the usage of pirate platforms tend to coincide with eras of worsening value proposition in entertainment. We should really get some top notch analysts on this to get an explanation.
My mind is turning on the piracy front. I’ve paid for Netflix for like a decade, and it was good.
I tried not to pirate, but there was no legal way to stream Game of Thrones, so we would do watch parties. Eventually HBO came to Canada through bell and I could watch it online.
That moment was pretty great, I could watch all my shows, and HBO, and Netflix was putting out some strong content.
Then everyone decided they wanted a piece of the pie. Netflix has continued increasing prices while everyone pulled their content out, Amazon turned prime video into a roulette wheel of “can I watch this or not”, and Disney+ launched and very quickly turned into only shovelling garbage quality star wars and marvel projects, and now everyone is stuffing ads into their shitty content fiefdoms.
We’re back to where piracy is the better experience and now I can’t watch the content I want because it’s at most 2 shows a year per platform.
When they remove access to content I paid for… Fuck em.
If buyin’ ain’t owning, piracy ain’t stealin’
To be fair, streaming was never buying. It was always posting entry to a library. If stuff gets removed from the library that’s the way it is.
That isn’t to say I don’t agree. Piracy is a service problem, as Gabe Newell so eloquently put it. Streaming started losing the moment it started splintering into cable networks.Sony allowed you to purchase episodes and seasons of shows like Mythbusters. They specifically stated you were purchasing that content.
Then they removed that purchased content from people’s account’s after they went separate ways with Discovery. Sony and Discovery stole from their customers
Yea, that’s just plain stupid of them. I don’t know how they expected that to go over.
Oh yes, I bought that content, but sure, take it away. I totally understand that the licensing changed.
– No one, ever
The people who are stealing our movies and our television shows and operating piracy sites are not mom and pop operations,” says Charlie Rivkin, chief executive officer of the MPA, who adds that some of the operators also engage in drug trafficking, child pornography, prostitution and money laundering. “This is organized crime.”
I like how they always have to fabricate a connection to organized crime. Trying to convince the reader that is not just copyright infringement.
It’s projection.
Hollywood was founded on IP theft of European filmmakers’ work and funded by various mobs, which then went on to lobby (bribe) politicians into changing certain regulations on gambling in AZ, et al, to pave the way for Vegas and the like.
Fuck Hollywood with a rusty pineapple sideways.
There’s nothing more quintessentially American than pulling the ladder up behind you.
Adding to the discussion, if you want to watch anything that’s not mainstream (i.e. non-western, or arthouse), you’re basically supposed to either wait for it to stream on Mubi or get a Blu-ray/DVD (that are often out of circulation if it’s more than 5 years old). So the only real option is pirating.
One time I went to this unit of a store and the lady was unfamiliar with werner herzog. Not even in their system.
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don’t restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
Piracy is about ease of use (it’s getting even easier), and about value. DRM has repeatedly been shown to hurt only the people who try to pay for legitimate access. Not a single time has it prevented me from getting a copy of something if I wanted to, and it’s clearly not stopping people from providing those copies or streams.
So stop wasting bathtubs of money on stopping piracy, but maybe take a few less buckets of money from consumers in exchange for your service. As long as you price it such that the cost of being legit can’t compete with the ease of use and value from piracy, some folks aren’t going to make the choice you want them to.
Some folks won’t be able to spend on your service anyway, because they just can’t afford it - but they still might buy other merchandise, they can still spread how great your show is to their friends who possibly will subscribe to your service, but regardless you aren’t going to get their dollars no matter what you do. So stop trying.
I don’t want to have five different streaming services that cost twice what cable used to cost, and is way more inconvenient trying to figure out which platform has what. Streaming can get fucked!
Haha, they won’t even allow me to watch stuff on Netflix in 1080p because I use linux. Eat shit
I don’t use these services, but after learning a bit about them I have to say I’d rather pay an honest thief than one who lies about ownership ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I don’t use these services either, but my understanding is that some of these thiefs seem to not even have a profit model. One prominent streamer who I won’t name, “FZ”, as the kids call it, they don’t require registration and are allowing those who use ad-blockers to access the site.
I don’t understand why Hollywood is even going after these guys. Just wait for their lack of monetization sweeps them under.
Why not name them? This isn’t reddit…
That FZ fella sounds like he’s got a nonprofit I could donate to.
