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Comment by Svenskunganka | Hacker News Reader

Torrents and copyright infringement is related, we can all agree on that. But I believe that pirating is related to a very fuzzy legal system regarding this topic and unfair treatment by the major movie studios & music labels. I'll try to explain as good as I can.

Being a european citizen, it is very frustrating knowing that pirating is illegal even though being a Netflix, HBO & Spotify customer. Pirating is a much bigger trend in EU & AUS than it is in the US, and I think that it mainly boils down to the US-based movie studios restricting and delaying access to content to non-US citizens. Some may think that this is acceptable, but I can't see how treating one customer differently from another is acceptable just because they have different nationalities. I'm paying exactly the same amount of money as the next US-citizen for the content, yet I am treated differently.

One other thing that troubles me is that there are higher quality content available via torrents than via the legal alternatives. Having invested in a 7.1 surround system and a 4K 3D Android TV, you would expect that the legal alternatives would have content available for such hardware, but they rarely do.

Personally I think it's absurd that the movie studios expect to be on the european market but treat those customers as second-hand customers, and I don't understand why the EU isn't doing anything about it. The EU and US relies on eachothers markets, yet music labels forces the Swedish-invented Spotify to restrict access to certain songs for non-US citizens.

I do acknowledge that some people are pirating because it's free, but I don't think that the general public does so. I'd be the happiest Netflix & HBO customer if I had the same content library as my fellow US friends.

View on HN

The term "piracy" doesn't help the problems any---it's a smear term that tries to put downloading and sharing on the same level as murder and kidnapping.

https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-banned-from-using-piracy-and-t....

I prefer the term "sharing".

As you mention, intent is not always to avoid paying. Some people may want backups, may have lost their copy after paying for it, may be frustrated by DRM-laced copies that don't work on their PC/devices, the reasons you mentioned, etc...

I also like "illegal sharing" for the description. Almost anyone can understand that with little, additional info. "Copyright infringement" is not something I can explain in 10 seconds. They'll probably remember it wrong over time, too.

Because copyright is a broken system that needs to be dissolved.

No, because there's about five rights or so with considerations for hiw they're used. Whereas, "you can use whatever you buy but sharing the file or password is probably illegal" is easy for most people to understand and lets them avoid 99% of lawsuit risk. This is true whether copyright system is good or bad. Just simple, mental model.

Except that sharing is not illegal. The idea itself is absurd and sounds absurd when expressed. If you told people that sharing was illegal, the most common response you'd get would likely be, "lol, wut?"

Sharing what you don't own without owner's permission is either illegal or considered u ethical. Cant recall off yop of head. Buying copywritten works usually buys license yo use, not distribute (share). So, don't share the copywritten work seems like sane default if one wants to stay legal.

Whether or not copyright systems make sense or not is another discussion entirely. Irrelevant even given it has to be changed via Congress by strong, voter push and/or more bribes than pro-copyright groups. If talking laws and metaphors, I focus on what is rather than should be.

Owning what you don't possess sets you up for legal takeover. No one stops you from handing a book or disc to another person, in fact, entire governmental organizations exist to handle the logistics of freely sharing such artifacts.

Sharing is the first moral many of us are taught.

You're again talking about unimplemented morals, which vary person to person, while Im talking about ways to describe actual law. A copywritten work cant be legally shared, displayed, or so on without permission of the owner. The laws have exceptions like fair use, first sale doctrine on individual copies, or libraries loaning them out. Past that, your claims of morals have no practical meaning in a country that enforces the opposite.

Such morals should instead incite those who possess them to act as a democracy to reform the complex and corrupt system. Like we did fighting thjngs like SOPA. So far, almost no action toward elected officials backing up alternatives you suggest people want while they put strong effort onto other issues. I think this means majority of the US just doesnt care that much. And quite a few oppose us hoping to be next to get rich with a monopoly or maintain good portfolios.

You brought up the topic of ethics. I am just explaining why the argument, "sharing is illegal", sounds absurd to many people.

As you noted, copyright laws respect many legally protected activities, like sharing media and holding local displays. The law is pretty clear and I think that is why we don't see many cases about the topic.

" I am just explaining why the argument, "sharing is illegal", sounds absurd to many people."

Oh yeah, I can see that. Might help get the laws changed if more people realize how absurd they are. :)

> Buying copywritten works usually buys license yo use, not distribute (share)

Under this definition loaning a book or movie to a friend is sketchy.

The sharing model is rampant as individuals, it only became a problem when the internet made it so strangers could share without much of a thought that they were even doing so.

But I seriously have to ask myself how borrowing a DVD from my friend differs from torrenting it instead. Perhaps the only difference is that only 1 copy can be watched at a time? Do we need a file loaning service?

"But I seriously have to ask myself how borrowing a DVD from my friend differs from torrenting it instead. "

I cant remember the specifics on loaning angle. I'd just not advertise that I did. Your comment reminds me that i need to fo a refresher on this stuff's grey areas in case the wording needs to be modified.

> As you mention, intent is not always to avoid paying.

Oh man, I used to have to reformat my computer regularly (like 3 times a year). There were several hardware issues, my house was struck by lightning, etc.

I swear every time I'd have to call windows, and be like "hey my key is not working" (I know it's because it was activated previously, but still). They would usually make me call and reset it or what have you.

Eventually, I just got sick of it. I torrented a cracked version and it worked like a charm.

I know people who do the same with video games. They'll get a "shared" copy first, then buy it if they like it.

Honesty, I'd argue most people would pay if they could (at a reasonable price), torrenting just makes all the barriers go away.

> Honesty, I'd argue most people would pay if they could (at a reasonable price), torrenting just makes all the barriers go away.

Or pay more, even, for a non-DRM-encumbered version; DRM stops people like you, but not crackers or the analog hole.

Thanks for sharing a good example.

>DRM stops people like you

punish the paying customer and hope for the best.

>The term "piracy" doesn't help the problems any---it's a smear term that tries to put downloading and sharing on the same level as murder and kidnapping.

Precisely:

>I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

-Jack Valenti (former president of MPAA for 38 years), 1982 congressional hearing

https://cryptome.org/hrcw-hear.htm

Thank you for sharing this! This is not only a good piece of history, but an excellent example of history repeating itself.

Correct me if I'm wrong---I haven't read it yet, but I'm excited to do so over the weekend.

It's simply luditism. Their business model depends upon the constraints of obsolete technology, so they will resist every new innovation as an evil killer until their artificial monopoly finally bleeds out.

If "piracy" is too strong of a word "sharing" is too weak of a word. Clearly we must differentiate between legal sharing and non-legal. Piring? (it also sounds like peering which is very much in the spirit of p2p.)

To me it hasn't been proven yet how the argument for p2p copyright laws is any different than a hypothetical argument for let's say drinking, should we make drinking illegal because some people end up harming others because of it and hence any positive/neutral experience derived from it denied to us and overshadowed in the darkness of legality.

>As you mention, intent is not always to avoid paying.

Yeah, not always, but very often. Everyone here is trying to downplay this, but I would say >80% of people (disclamer: pulled from my behind) torrent simply because it's free and if they can easily obtain it free rather than paying, then they will. The argument that people pirate because the paid options are shit, and if they were as convenient as torrents people would just pay for them, is rendered moot with the Steam counterexample. Content distribution is much more well advanced and convenient in games compared to movies, and people still pirate en masse.

Of course, all of us are really just talking out of our collective asses until we can cite figures from a study.

Stop talking "out of your ass". I pirate an occasional movie for a friend, but I spend more time watching shows on Netflix. Why would I even pay for Netflix when I could get anything I want for free ? Because they have a really convenient UI and easy access to their content.

I recently purchased a Google Play Music subscription, despite having 10^6 "pirated" songs on my HDD. Why ? Because they have a reasonable price, cool UI and artwork, convenience of listening anywhere, and the AI bot that helps me find new music I might be interested in. All of those things dont exist in pirate land.

Good for you. There are 6,999,999,999 other people in the world. It's not reasonable to assume everyone else thinks the same as you.

why are you suddenly using facts when your initial position used total guesses ?

> Everyone here is trying to downplay this, but I would say >80% of people (disclamer: pulled from my behind) torrent simply because it's free and if they can easily obtain it free rather than paying, then they will. The argument that people pirate because the paid options are shit, and if they were as convenient as torrents people would just pay for them, is rendered moot with the Steam counterexample. Content distribution is much more well advanced and convenient in games compared to movies, and people still pirate en masse.

There is also the argument that a large portion of those people would never have paid for your content in the first place even if it wasn't available for free through piracy, that most of them shouldn't even be considered a part of your customer base to begin with because they simply aren't willing or aren't able to pay for it.

>There is also the argument that a large portion of those people would never have paid for your content in the first place

So? If you make a product you usually pay a lot of attention to price it in a way that your target market can afford. The people that can't pay for it aren't supposed to get it for "free" (if you everyone accepted this logic capitalism as we know it would crumble). I say this as someone who pirates something every now and then but I don't have to pretend that I'm somehow righteous when I do it. I do it for the same selfish reasons everyone else does even if they like to pretend otherwise.

I wasn't trying to justify piracy or suggest that people should be able to get things for free [1]. Rather that while piracy is an unfortunate reality of doing business selling digital goods, it probably doesn't have nearly as much impact on the bottom line as some might believe.

This is why companies like Valve practically ignore piracy altogether and instead focus on delivering as much value as possible to actual paying customers at prices they're willing to accept (focusing on exactly what you said smart businesses should). Contrast that to those companies that, blinded by the sheer number of people pirating their products, waste money and time in a futile effort to combat piracy by placing draconian DRM schemes on their products, that end up resulting in the pirated versions offering a superior user experience when all is said and done. A sweet irony if I ever saw one.

[1] I used to be a heavy pirate myself when I was in high school, but these days I regularly pay for content that's priced fairly and delivered in a way that's not user-hostile, and simply treat everything else as if it never existed in the first place.

capitalism wouldn't "crumble" if people who had no need for a product happened to have possession of it. If I had a free tugboat in my back yard, that does't alter the market for tugboat operators in any nearby port.

I thought that it has been economically proven that digital goods such as mp3 downloads have zero value, since each additional copy costs the manufacturer 0.

How are you defining value?

I think standard economic thought defines value in terms of preferences.

Such that the value that something has to me is the supremum of how much I value any of the things I would give up in order to have it.

So, if I am willing to purchase an mp3 for $1, then I value it at at least $1. If I would also be willing to purchase it for $2, then I value it at at least $2.

If I value it at $2, and it is for sale at $1, then I would gain $1 of value in that transaction.

If the seller is willing to sell it at any price over $0.50 , then that is how much they value (not) selling it.

So then, in this transaction I would gain $1 in value, and they would gain $0.50 in value.

I think this is the standard way to think about it.

Digital goods don't have zero value. We know this because people are willing to pay for them. They just have very little cost to reproduce/transport which results in easy sharing. They're not even unique in this regard - you'll find the same easy reproducibility in books, architectural plans, art, simple circuits, manufacturing techniques, algorithms... any idea that can be expressed and transmitted easily. The problem isn't that those things are worthless (they're not), it's that knowledge can't be "owned" like physical items.

>The problem isn't that those things are worthless

It's just that they're worth a lot more when corporations lobby governments to make copying them illegal.

That doesn't make the "economically proven to have 0 value" claim true I don't think.

> since each additional copy costs the manufacturer 0

How about the first copy? That cost "0" too?

If not, are you suggesting the first buyer pay full price and everyone else get it for free?

No, but every additional copy is cheaper than the first, and asymptotically approaches 0.

>The argument that people pirate because the paid options are shit, and if they were as convenient as torrents people would just pay for them, is rendered moot with the Steam counterexample.

Steam is usually used as the example of how better distribution results in less pirating...but not all games are available through Steam or "as easily" obtained as through Steam.

Netflix is also a good example. Most people I knew who used PTP were:

1) In regions Netflix doesn't support or doesn't "properly" support (see: UK above)

2) Watching movies that weren't even available through Netflix.

With the death of "game demos" I pirate most of my games. I also purchase most of those games. If game demos were such a thing - the games I did not purchase were games I'd never have bought. Which is very consistent with the "typical pirate argument of trying to make themselves feel righteous".

There are (of course) people who will download for free because they can but the pirates who actually talk about pirating seem to always have other, "reasonable" motives. Bypassing DRM limitations, removing ads, to demo something/see if it is worth paying for, or because pirating is the only way to even obtain the material. They don't even have the option of paying for it if they wanted to.

How could pirating hurt sales if the person pirating can't even purchase the damn thing?

> I don't understand why the EU isn't doing anything about it

The problem is that right now the EU isn't one copyright market - each EU country is a separate market, with a tonne of legacy exclusive distribution deals in place. If the EU was a single market, it would be the same size or bigger than the US market and would probably get better attention.

The EU is working on it, it just moves at the speed of bureaucracy (and of course each country has lobbyists in the local media which has those legacy exclusive distribution deals resisting it)

Here's the page on copyright harmonization: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/copyright

And check the "Geo-blocking" and "Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement" headlines here hhttp://ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/digital/

>The EU is working on it, it just moves at the speed of bureaucracy

I would guess the speed is more limited by 27 governments having to agree on everything.

Getting 27 countries to agree on something sounds like bureaucracy nightmare to me :)

So, I just looked up the word "bureaucracy" in a dictionary and it says "a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by state officials rather than by elected representatives.". I always thought that was what a technocracy was.

The secondary definition is "excessively complicated administrative procedure, seen as characteristic of bureaucracy" which is the only usage I can remember seeing.

Technocracy is more about "experts make the décisions"

You seem to have a very bad dictionary.

Bureaucracy comes from the French word "bureau", that means office. It names the way things are organized in an office, and was created for private offices, only adopted for governments later.

I'll forward your opinion to the Oxford Dictionary of English

The French "bureaucratie" was coined in the 18th century by French economist Jean Claude Marie Vincent de Gournay, from French "bureau" (office/desk) + Greek "-kratia" (power of), as a criticism of how government over-regulation can stunt commerce.

It came into English in the early 19th century, carrying a similarly negative connotation. The connotations have shifted back and forth somewhat since then.

Still, it seems that it's never been primarily used to talk about private offices in English or French; the primary use has always referred to governments.

While I think that's part of it, I also don't think that the movie and record studios are really pushing for a reform either.

The largest studios could, in theory, go to the EU with a proposal for how they would like a single market for movies and music to work. They won't because they like the ability to have differentiated prices. Having to sell a movie in Sweden for the same price as in Slovenia translates directly to lost profit. Selling in Slovenia at Swedish prices results in lower sales figures and more piracy. So I doubt the big players are all that interested in help the EU on this one.

Wouldn't making EU single market and getting rid of geoblocking pretty much remove regional pricing? The piracy then would surge even more, because in Eastern Europe you can't expect people to spent 10% of their salary on a new videogame.

Well then they should just give everyone the cheap price. I don't see why Hollywood is entitled to x% of my salary. If it means they have to spend a few mllion dollars less on advertising Captain America 4 or Star Wars 8 or Fast and Furious 8 then so be it.

Or you could just not watch those movies. Hollywood is not entitled to your money in the same way that you are not entitled to free or or "cheap" access to their products.

Be that as it may, a consequence of piracy is that Hollywood is forced to the bargaining table. Protesting against that feeling of entitlement to better prices is a common theme on HN, but it ignores the (current) reality that if someone wants to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster for free, there is nothing to stop them from doing so.

I don't see why you are entitled to a cheap price.

> If it means they have to spend a few mllion dollars less on advertising Captain America 4 or Star Wars 8 or Fast and Furious 8 then so be it.

It's not like they have "spend money on advertising" as a terminal value. They spend money on advertising because advertising makes money.

If that were true, everyone would be using the cheaper spotify prices some countries have in Europe, which almost doesn't happen.

The problem is that they require a payment method from a country by having residence there, that alone prevents abuse in the overwhelming majority of situations.

For the record, I am one of those cases (technically I'm a resident in three countries, potentially 4 next year), so I'm pretty much aware of the details of it.

> Wouldn't making EU single market and getting rid of geoblocking pretty much remove regional pricing

Yes, it would. That's the whole point of the Euro currency and the long-term goal of the EU.

And that's the main reason a lot of people thought the quick expansion of the EU towards the east (or even the south) was a mistake - if you have a common market and a common travel area, but wildly differing economies, you create strife.

The EU also has more languages than the US. Even if it was legally a single market, that wouldn't make it a single market culturally.

Yes, but that doesn't prevent you from just publishing it in english, initially at least.

Right, and the countries with the smallest populations are more likely to have a majority population not needing subtitles.

Agreed, but making things available and advertising them are different things. You can hold off advertising them until you have a dubbing or subtitle available, but people who want to watch it anyway can go ahead and find it with a direct search. In several EU countries, a majority of the population is already English-fluent (or can get by with English subtitles), and those realities aren't reflected by the market.

It's worse as a Chinese citizen, buying is still an option, we have none, even through technical workarounds.

I used to be a Netflix/Hulu subscriber before they've banned proxy access to their content. Lately I tried to buy various TV streaming services but they did a great job in banning VPNs. This is where I stopped believing they have a good faith.

Sorry if I have preconceived notions, but I don't imagine anyone running any risk of prosecution for pirating foreign movies in China?

Maybe it's about the willingness to support the content creators, rather than the fear of being prosecuted?

In most cases enrich is a more correct word than support in these cases. Also replace creators for owners. Individuals and small companies I support well (buy every blue ray, CD and t-shirt they sell), large media conglomerates I do not.

Ordinary torrenting is also blocked in China. You need to run your torrent software through a VPN.

Last I was there, Astrill seemed to be the way to go. But the situation evolves.

Some torrent search/index sites and torrent trackers may be blocked, but torrent traffic itself is not blocked in China, at least on the domestic ISPs I've used. I can download a debian image over bittorrent, without VPN, without a problem. In fact, it can be faster than download directly over http, as the traffic has more potential routes.

Sounds like an issue with the Chinese government basically forcing you to use a vpn to use the internet, not the American companies.

Hah, really? http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/06/29/netfli...

Also the netflix catalog is not as big as people claims it is (I live in france). There are many movies missing from the 2000-2010 period (and more when you go beyond).

There also are many smaller details that makes torrent more attractive, like being able to watch the movie offline, HD with low bandwidth, subtitle choice, etc.

Netflix is a good step, and of course the movie industry will use it as "no excuse" argument against piracy. Meanwhile you still have other issues about net neutrality and people using VPN when they can.

Even in America, at this point most people consider themselves lucky if they find any movies worth watching on Netflix, especially anything fairly recent. Netflix's strength is its TV catalog.

Yep. Lack of availability is about the only reason I torrent anymore. It's more convenient for me to watch on Amazon or Netflix (fuck Hulu and it's commercials) or HBO than it is to torrent and manage my Kodi library.

Oh, and the ability to keep my kids tablets in airplane mode (triple the battery life!) and still let them watch their favorite shows/movies on a long road trip is definitely worth the extra effort.

Haven't the media conglomerates made it clear you pay to access the content rather than purchasing it. So pay the lowest rate you find fit the content and acquire it as you please, eg torrent + subtitles + dub that you want. Surely that's entirely consistent with their position morally?

> Haven't the media conglomerates made it clear you pay to access the content rather than purchasing it.

Legally, I think they usually make a stricter claim than that: You are purchasing access to the content, but only using the method that you paid for. If you buy the DVD, you aren't licensed to rip it and play the content from files (unless you live somewhere with medium-shifting laws that provide that right).

Further, say that you own a copy in some format, and you torrent an equivalent quality copy. What they'll actually go after you for is the redistribution of tiny chunks of the file to other people in the torrent swarm, because it's easier to prove that you took part in unauthorized redistribution than to prove that you didn't have the right to access the content in the format that you torrented.

> you would expect that the legal alternatives would have content available for such hardware, but they rarely do.

Nope, wouldn't expect that. It'll come slowly, and apparently very grudgingly. It took a decade or more to be able to get flac downloads commonly available. For years music downloads were low bit rate crap mp3. Pirate it or buy the CD were the only options for quality. It was like they actively wanted us to be searching for torrent sites.

It's like the publishing industry and digital publishing: they just don't really want it to happen at all, so they do a bad job of it.

"I'm paying exactly the same amount of money as the next US-citizen for the content, yet I am treated differently."

Nope, it is even funnier because most probably you're paying more than US citizen. 1eur>1usd on exchange market (and it is a long trend) and - correct me if I'm wrong - price levels are the same for US and EU (ie. 9usd in US, 9eur in EU)?

Add VAT to the mix and things even out again.

From Netflix's point of view it does even out, but the EU citizen still pays more for less.

Citizens benefit from any taxes paid in other ways though, so directly equating VAT with a higher net price is not completely fair.

No because what we pay in tax we get back in other forms. The US citizen will have to pay for college (instead of being paid to attend), healthcare, court costs, retirement pension, unemployment, etc.

Don't count the taxes as part of what you're getting back, it's very different and beyond the scope of this article :)

In which EU country you get paid to go to college?

At the very least, Sweden[1] and Denmark[2] have systems that pad out your student loans with government grants that apply to (almost) everyone.

[1]: http://www.csn.se/en/2.1034/2.1036/2.1037/2.1038 [2]: http://www.su.dk/english/

US has that too, it's called the Pell Grant.

> Federal Pell Grants are limited to students with financial need, who have not earned their first bachelor's degree, or who are enrolled in certain post-baccalaureate programs, through participating institutions.[1]

CSN money is not conditional based on your family's income, has no relationship with the military, and is not earmarked for any particular purpose. The only requirements are that you can't get more than 6 years total (a relatively recent restriction), that you pass 75% of your courses, and that you don't personally earn more than ~160k SEK/year (the exact amount varies, but has an inverse proportion to how much your study).

During high school you get a smaller amount, but then it's only conditional on attendance, not your academic results.

Pell is also not earmarked to a particular purpose and has no relationship with the military, as far as I know. It seems like both programs have a different set of restrictions (Pell does not care how old you are, for example), but CSN is probably more generous overall.

> Pell is also not earmarked to a particular purpose and has no relationship with the military, as far as I know.

Wikipedia disagrees: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pell_Grant

> Applicants must also sign a statement certifying that they will use the aid only for education-related purposes,

And

> Males between the ages of 18 and 25 must register with the Selective Service.

Not saying you're wrong, and I'd definitely love it if Wikipedia is wrong on this.

> Pell does not care how old you are, for example

CSN doesn't either AFAIK, only how many times you've been paid. According to WP Pell seems to have a similar policy.

> Applicants must also sign a statement certifying that they will use the aid only for education-related purposes,

Personal expenses while you are in school (including rent) count as an education-related purpose. See: http://pell-grants.org/what-the-pell-grant-money-can-be-appl...

> Males between the ages of 18 and 25 must register with the Selective Service.

These people are required to register for selective service anyway, though federal financial aid is used as a stick to enforce this requirement. See: https://www.sss.gov/Registration-Info/Who-Registration

> CSN doesn't either AFAIK, only how many times you've been paid. According to WP Pell seems to have a similar policy.

I think I am unclear on the difference between the "student allowance" and "study aid".

In Norway, 30℅ of your student loan will convert to a grant when you complete the degree. And there is no school money to pay.

Denmark. Technically you don't get paid to attend, you get a stipend to help pay your living expenses while you're studying. I know it's similar in other places too.

US standard price is $9.99 excluding tax. UK price is £7.49 (about $9.89) including tax.

Tax rates on netflix vary, in both rate and whether they are collected at all.

On one hand, I understand the frustration, and I think that copyright holders and policymamkers would be wise to keep this frustration in mind when they make and enforce copyright laws.

On the other hand, however, I don't see how this frustration can serve as a justification for copyright infringement. This seems to flow from one of two premises: 1. the studios made it, therefore I have a right to watch and enjoy it or 2. the studios have made something available to some people, therefore I have a right to see it too. And I don't see how either is even arguably true from either a moral or legal perspective. After all, we're talking about movies and TV shows here, not food and water. (It would be different, of course, if the studios were targeting traditionally disadvantaged minority groups. But I don't think there's any credible argument that there is something akin to, e.g., racial discrimination going on here.)

I do understand that it is not a justification, and I don't justify that as a reason for torrenting content that are unavailable via the legal alternatives due to geo-restriction or geo-blocking. What I am saying is that I believe the torrenting trends in the EU & AUS is mainly due to this very reason.

And let's not kid ourselves, the copyright holders are not stupid. They are very well aware that this is a problem, maybe not the reason, but at least a problem. Yet they keep up with these practices, throwing millions at copyright organizations such as MPAA & RIAA every year to build up some form of scare tactic against normal, law abiding citizens across the globe and creating lots of unnecessary tension between ISPs, governments and enterprises like Google instead of addressing the problem at hand.

There are of course edge cases where I think torrenting copyrighted content is OK. For example, my PC doesn't have a CD reader and I bought the game "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" years ago, still have the CD but no way to install the game on my PC, so... I torrented it.

> treat those customers as second-hand customers...

If I look at content available at these services, I feel more of a third or fourth hand customer. And that is the reason I have left them for good. Scorched earth is what is left for me.

But you would not even have to go to these streaming "services". I really love my classic tv shows. Take for example "Quincy, M.E.". I love this show and would pay good money to have it available at home (in DVD or BluRay format). And for my significant other have the synchronized version. The whole series was synchronized for German TV. But is it available as DVD? No it isn't.

Our only chance i to wait for the reruns on any network, program our HDD recorder and ripp the low quality TV stream.

If I would still be illegally downloading, I would already have the whole show at home, with self printed DVDs and such. But being a good and law abiding citizen I am pretty much fed.

The big issue is that it both is and isn't their fault, in a sense. I believe a lot of the hold-up comes from who owns the distribution rights for various locales, stuff that was determined years ago before online distribution was considered feasible. Odds are they'd gladly have you as a customer and sell you content, but they themselves are unable to because of previous deals. They still get a cut either way, so the studios ultimately aren't worried too much...

так....

> I'm paying exactly the same amount of money as the next US-citizen for the content, yet I am treated differently.

Netflix' official standpoint is that you are paying for access on n screens at a time at x resolution (e.g., FullHD), not for the content.

This is of course complete nonsense — of course we are paying for content — and I have no qualms whatsoever in downloading something available on Netflix US via some torrent if it is not available in my local Netflix catalogue.

>Torrents and copyright infringement is related, we can all agree on that.

I don't and neither does Bram Cohen. Regardless, I agree with your overall notion. The times have changed and customers want a better solution to quality entertainment. Restricting access and content will lead to piracy. Vice-versa will lead to less overall piracy.

I'd happily bet big money that orders of magnitude more people are pirating because it's free than because they'd invested in 7.1 surround system and a 4K 3D TVs.

Everyone I know who pirates is doing it because it's free. Although almost all of them pay for something (Netflix, Amazon Prime or Nowtv), they just don't pay for all of them. And these are all grown adults in their 30s.

Say you pay for Netflix and Amazon, but they don't have everything. So GoT has to come from somewhere... And movie releases are still over-delayed to streaming services. You see a DVD in the shop? You can stream it for free rather than wait 6 months more for it to maybe turn up on Netflix.

Cost is an issue, although I wonder how many people pirate movies ans shows because it's "really" too expensive for them. If you want to watch the movies you want, and you're not so rich, it certainly is going to cost you more than a netflix account, but I don't think everyone is doing it because of the cost, they also do it because it's easier. It's hard to beat the torrent catalog.

Also if you enter the argument of entertainment being a luxury, and that a DVD should cost around $15, you will have people pirating because they certainly don't want to spend so much for watching a movie at home. There will be people arguing over the holywood money machine and how much a movie really is worth.

You are not treated differently as a customer.

The explanation is that distribution rights are sold by territory because most old school distribution channels are by territory. And content is usally financed by the sale of rights (usually before anyone has seen anything).

But streaming is becoming more and more important and those deals will be reviewed.

To give you an example, when Netflix opened in my country, House of Cards wasn't in the catalogue. That's a show produced by Netflix. But that was because Canal + Afrique held the rights. A few months ago, it was added. Most likely because the contract expired or because they renegociated.

The fact that there is an explanation for this geoblocking doesn't mean that we aren't being treated differently.

Fortunately, Netflix is putting a lot of effort in their own content to prevent exactly this quagmire of regional licensing. They are well aware that it is one of the biggest complaints their customers have.

Oddly enough, the new Star Trek series will actually be on Netflix worldwide except for North America — usually it is only the other way around except for the local-language content.

I am worried though about Netflix (and any competitors) assembling catalogues for each separate country based on what people in that country like on average. I didn't sign up for Netflix to get Dutch soap opera's and reality shows, and I do not like being limited to a catalogue focussed specifically on what the average Dutchman wants. There is whole world out there; so what if I want to watch Austrian cooking television or Japanese game shows? Just fix the damn licensing mess already!

> usually it is only the other way around except for the local-language content.

I personally don't think this is true. There are significant amounts of content on Netflix that are only available in regions such as NLD and GBR that are not available in USA / CAN (Orphan Black comes to mind off the top of my head).

The problem definitely goes both ways.

I would give up those few titles if that means getting access to the US (or even Canadian) Netflix library. It's also important to mention that those TV series are actually aired on TV in the United States, here in the Netherlands we have to hope that some TV picks up the rights in a few years (instead of airing endless Bones/CSI/House reruns) if it's not on Netflix.

   USA: 4100 films, 1154 series
   Netherlands: 1475 films, 382 series¹

It really doesn't compare. In the US Netflix works as a back catalogue for older films as well. Sure, not everything is there, but compared to what we get…

1: http://unogs.com/countrydetail/

"Torrents and copyright infringement is related, we can all agree on that": torrent is a technology to share files while copyright infringement is an action that violates the copyright. What is the relation between them??? Then according to you, emails and copyright infringement is also related (I can send a mp3 song via emails). Or the steel industry and crimes are related because steel is used to make knives, guns ... used to commit a crime.

Now you are just playing plain stupid, and won't contribute anything of value to a serious discussion about the problems with legal alternatives over torrenting.

I can't see how you can imagine that having a discussion about this with someone high up in the movie industry acting like you do would do any good. You'd just be shunned. It's better to be realistic and acknowledge the fact that the majority of torrent traffic is related to copyright infringement, and that it is a problem and the only way to solve it is to make the legal alternatives better and more attractive to the general public. Of course, the BitTorrent protocol is not and should never be illegal, but you have to acknowledge that it is the protocol that currently plays the biggest part in infringing copyrighted content.

Pirating is absolutely LEGAL in my country, and covered under fair use. I can make a copy of any audio/visual copyrighted material and give it out to my friends and family, I am also free to download whatever I want (audio/visual, no software) from the internet. Uploading/sharing outside of my close circle of family&friends is illegal tho (no torrents).

Plenty of restrictions apply to US Spotify users too.

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