Making Millions by Distributing Pirated Movies
thehftguy.com
thehftguy.com
You can just download a pirated movie as a plain MP4/MKV/AVI file in the language you want (not necessarily the official language of your region) and the quality you want (some people like 30+ gib HDs, many prefer 5 of less gib per movie) and play it forever everywhere, including unsupported platforms (namely huge number of TVs and no-name set-top-boxes with USB ports, old PCs with exotic OSes etc). This (besides visiting cinemas, these 2 things don't really affect each other, people often do both for the same movie) is what almost everybody does in the eastern Europe. People don't really mind to pay some bucks for a movie/song/book/etc. but nobody in sane mind wants the crap I've mentioned in the first paragraph. Sell plain DRM-free standard-format multilingual downloadable files for humble prices (under $5 per movie) and you'll have almost all the audience pirate sites attract.
Not to mention being able to download subtitles in almost any language there is and then play the movie with those subtitles.
That's one of those things that drive me crazy about Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and such: there's a ton of movies I can't watch with my wife because her English isn't good enough yet.
I will tell you something more crazy about Amazon Prime. You will have an English movie available in the German catalogue but only in German (dubbed). You won't get the English version. I'd like to meet the geniuses who came up with these ideas.
Because they are mostly 'lame' to you because you know the source language and not to someone who only knows the destination language?
Because voice artists often have better voices than the original actors?
I can understand you personally not liking dubs, but I don't see how it's difficult to see the point of those who do.
Meanwhile the DVD/Bluray version usually has at least English and German voice tracks and subtitles, but usually French and some other versions as well.
My wife and kids have their Netflix UI set to Japanese, which allows them to access Japanese language and subtitles for movies that support it, even though they're not available on my English-language Netflix.
Thank you for the hint, but don't you think this is a way ridiculous? Why can't people that prefer English UI (e.g. I do, although it's neither my native language nor the official language of the country I've moved to, I am fluent in all the three but am interested in content in other languages too and I always strongly prefer all the apps UIs to be in English) access content in other languages?
There's a webpage that can convert SRT to DFXP and you can download the subtitles if someone has done the conversion be fore, but you are totally right, Netflix subtitles experience are subpar.
It's disingenous to depict torrents ("download a pirated movie") as a problems-free, conventient, alternative, since there is a certain set of associated problems.
There is malware lingering at each page. The movies are typically in english. Torrents may be very slow at certain times. Subtitles needs to be searched, generally separately, and generally, are available only in english. Subtitles may even be malware (happened a few times to me).
For a part of the audience, using torrents is worth the compromise, but it's not the very convenient and generic option that is generally depicted.
In addition, most of the people I know switched to streaming long ago; those who are willing to pay, use Netflix, the other ones, use streaming websites.
These problems are [mostly] solved for private trackers. It always amazes me that a group of volunteers can do a better job than huge companies that are dedicated to the same thing. I'd love to be able to pay for stuff with the same ease of use as a good private tracker.
The second Vernay adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo from 1954 is considered perhaps the truest to the book but it is impossible to get hold of, especially in any digital format. It seems there was a VHS edition in 1988 and Amazon.fr occasionally has third party sellers selling them. Or you can torrent it. Vernay himself is dead for 40 years, Marais only 19 years -- but of course the movie is now over 60 years old. I do not lose much sleep over "stealing" it.
I am sure everyone on that tracker has similar stories.
Edit: I am so wrong! Apparently in 2015 a German publisher made a DVD out of it! I am off to amazon.de to purchase it. I haven't checked the last few years because it seemed rather futile. This time Hackernews served as a rubber duck for debugging, sort of :D
That's a general fact of life, applicable beyond piracy scene.
To this day I'm proud of my work and glad that thousands of people have downloaded my completed works.
It's a theme that appears a lot in these pages: you can do all sorts of neat things when you ignore the rules.
Of course, getting the content for free (or for the cost of one member purchasing or renting it a single time) doesn't hurt selection either.
Even the specific stuff mentioned here about subtitles is affected by the law: translations are derivative works.
Content providers don't allow companies to ship non-DRM movies, so unless that changes...
As for the non-English-speaking audience, pirates tend to deliver better translated subtitles much faster than the official sources, and the latter frequently don't even bother - not a target market? Tough luck.
No separate download, zero risks of malware.
This is factually false. You download subtitles from a website (generally, opensubtitles.org); if somebody has maliciously uploaded a malware to that website, you will end up downloading that.
Whether the carrier is effective or not (it's dubious that downloading malware masked as subtitles will be executed) is besides the point.
If it's not compromised, having that video player download a subtitle file from a website they defined is safe.
You'd be surprised.
This, right here. I recently tried to start watching The Crown. So I go to Netflix on my tablet and start it up. I get an error 5.2[0]. Following Netflix's advice, I force-restart; I reboot my tablet; I uninstall & reinstall. Hmmm … I am running LineageOS, so I do a bit more googling. It turns out that this is actually a DRM error. Oddly, I can still play e.g. Stranger Things.
Why the #*&@ does Netflix do this? I've been a customer for a dozen years; they've made quite a packet from me over that time. All I want to do is watch their content, that I'm paying for, on my tablet.
Source: I run twicsy.com, which major networks avoid because of nsfw content, and only get about 12 cent RPM (revenue per page per 1000).
EDIT: Just realized OP is taking about incent stuff for hosting sites. We, and most "reputable" ad networks 100% disallow incent traffic and have a zero-tolerance policy.
Being a shady website is rarely an obstacle to using the same thing as everyone else.
Some ads are cheaper, some countries are cheaper. Put 3 ads per page from 3 different networks to counter balance. Then force the page to refresh once or twice. There are many ways to optimize revenues when one really care about revenues.
I hate to break it up to you but your site is picture hosting, it's low engagement and low value. People will not try the wrong "download" button 3 times until they find the right one, only to do the same thing again next week for the new episode of games of thrones.
They most likely barely break even after paying themselves a modest salary.
Country CPM
US $11.175
Nigeria $5.519
Italy $4.104
Iran $3.636
Japan $3.596
Grenada $3.591
Australia $3.217
Canada $3.198
Egypt $2.459
Panama $2.384
Germany $2.244
France $2.199
Israel $2.146
UK $2.109
South Africa $2.035
Denmark $1.733
Finland $1.732
Sweden $1.617
Portugal $1.579
New Zealand $1.545
UAE $1.528
Korea $1.480
Switzerland $1.476
Norway $1.354
Latvia $1.233
I have been using reddit for probably a decade now but don't remember ever clicking an ad. OTOH I typically misclick on a few links before I get my download when visiting pirate sites even with adblock on.
That said, thinking about it raised an interesting question: are fake download button ads presented to a risk-taking demographic a special case?
Even spending up to five to ten dollars per compromised machine, I could easily turn a hefty profit.
I don't think that your experience of running a popular site (reddit) is comparable to running a download site.
What they need to do is just keep making great content and I’ll keep paying to see it in The theater. Aren’t their revenues climbing each year?
The readers from HN are around 60% last I checked and it's pretty much the most knowledgeable large audience you will come across.
$2 CPM!! That's not even close to what shitty ad networks pay. Majority of traffic comes from countries with < 5 cent CPM
HOSTING COST It's not just about running a wordpress website here. Most decent site run auto uploaders which need decent size seedboxes. Easily hovering around a thousand dollars
Sources/runners: If its a scene pre-d site you need access to some runners. Scene access isn't cheap
Changing Domains & black hat seo: These sites are constantly loosing domains and almost all google ranking ones are using black hat seo to get their ranking. Usually means paying someone to do the dirty work.
-- Some revenue streams you missed
- Pay Per Link (aka locked/paid link shortner) things like AdFly
- Background Crypto miners (becoming rather popular on streaming sites)
-'FTP ACCESS' / paid subscriptions
Still millions? Not by a long shot.. Few thousands.. Probably yes
It couldn't be further from being a scene site. The content is limited and most of it is published late compared to some other sources available.
AdFly is a mix of pay per view and pay per click. Didn't think it was worth a specific category but why not.
Crypto is a new thing, that certainly wasn't available a year ago. That's a very interesting point though, shady sites will probably be the first ones to have a good use for it.
What we do need is better economic models that allow the creators to get paid. People are clearly willing to pay for content, but I don't know of anyone who wants studios/companies/lawyers/etc to get the money rather than the artists themselves. This old world way of thinking about content funding really needs to die off already.
IDGAF what the property holder wants, unless it's the creator themselves. Even then, if you don't want it redistributed, maybe don't put it in a format that is trivial to redistribute in. Just because they've been making money because of the old model, doesn't mean they have the right to keep making money once we've automated that away.
1. Netflix/prime/hotstar(HBO) content is often not in HD while the pirated content I stream is always HD. 2. Pirated sites give me a kind of federated search/browsing for all the content in one place.
The second point I fell is key and will remain even after the subscription services have improved their CDNs near where I live.
(My real concern is that the money they are generating is being used to fund illegal activities in the neighborhood -- which I can not tolerate. I have lost a close one to a drug crisis already, cannot take it more).
Of course, that'll also mean actually getting out the corrupt autocrats currently in charge. So... get politically engaged. (And by that I mean, do real work. Posting on social media is not getting politically engaged. Get out. Organize. Hold your politicians accountable. Run yourself.)
Going after the teens in your neighborhood might feel more satisfying, but the drug problem is a systemic problem. It's not caused by a few teens, it won't be fixed by locking up a few teens.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/...
But that convenience has brought us to where we are right now. If we continue to close our eyes to reality, preferring to go after scapegoats, guess what - nothing is going to change. We need to channel our anger into more productive channels.
You don't solve a systemic problem by attacking symptoms.
If your real issue is about drugs in your neighbourhood, you should be focusing or asking for help on how to deal with that problem, not online piracy.
Which funds which then?
Something does not sound right in this story.
I am sorry you lost a close one but it seems silly to blame torrenting teenagers for this.
Chances are the law are after them already because of their risk seeking behavior: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/meet-nate-norman-a...
Here's a novel idea that will let you win those "lost" millions back: provide a legitimate service that beats pirate sites at:
- content can be easily found
- content can be easily viewed
- no arbitary restrictions (oh, you are watching from Sweden? Oh, you only get a downsampled version with baked in subtitles covering half of the screen etc.)
Update: Relevant Oatmeal comic http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
I was happy to pay for Hulu until it took 3 ad breaks of 3 ads each (some demanding I "interact" by holding an additional 3 minutes of my time hostage if I refuse) to get through a 20 minute episode of a cartoon that aired on MTV in the mid 90s.
[0]http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe...
I avoid Hulu because of the ads too, and digital advertising is often more invasive (I haven't seen the "interact" thing you mention but it sounds awful). It's just interesting to me how much lower the tolerance for ads is between media.
Now that you will have to pay for Netflix, and HBO, and Disney, and Amazon Prime, and Hulu (I think they have exclusive deals), and that a lot of this content will not be available in non-US markets, the pirate sites will see a rise again.
Come back to argue your point when the actual offer differs only in cost and not in quality and convenience. When content providers will provide subs in a standard format, allow freely sub translations by third parties into languages they don't translate to, allow file download, DRM free, not region locked (it does fuck all and streaming sites and torrents are full to the brim weeks or months after releases), without tedious processes to confirm you are who you are and live in the right country (the only thing that they should care about is the payment), a.k.a. never.
For an extreme example see here (where my only legal and maybe available option for an anime that's floating around everywhere as 1080p BluRay rip is to get an Amazon Fire TV and hope I can stream it in SD quality to it after paying 20 dollars for the privilege): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989321
For VOY at least I suspect generational loss - for example, there is a noticeable Moire on Voyager's deflector dish in the intro.
Hell, on the @forexposure_txt twitter, there's a pirate Patreon site (taking the content that usually requires a donation, and offering it for piracy), and they're still asking for donations. And they honestly don't see the issue with it.
I wanted to get my favorite anime ever legally and this is the end result (TL;DR; - I maybe could get an Amazon Fire TV and pay 20 dollars to stream into it in SD quality while BluRay 1080p rips mp4s are floating around torrents): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15989321
Or are you going to tell me I should get a Fire TV and watch in half the quality and only on it, or hunt and get that DVD or BluRay from a private person on an auction site, just so I lose money and not get stuff for free, despite the studio not getting any from that purchase?
Not everyone is streaming the latest Game of Thrones or something. Niche stuff goes out of print, into copyright hell (NOLF game series), studios go bust (so no one who produced the content gets compensated for it, thus moral argument is gone), there are region locks (and Poland is no small or poor market for anime), arbitrary restrictions (on what languages and subs you get, on quality, on devices you can use, stream only enforcement, etc.) and then it's "theft" to want something you actually can't buy (and that would be feasible to be available with 0 impact on profits, and that's is actually available illegally and conveniently).
Copyright holders have no intention and have made no moves to replace carp, or to make non-crap readily and legally available.
Why should I buy crap from copyright holders?
Netflix, Steam, and Spotify have shown that once you provide people with non-crap, people are more than happy to pay you, and piracy all but disappears.
There is a certain anime I was interested in. I'm Polish so Crunchy Roll and Steam both are region restricted and tell me that it's not available here due to licensing (and both are stream only too).
Assuming the offer I'm seeing on Amazon streaming is available in Poland I can also get an Amazon Fire TV and stream it into that but only in 'SD quality' (WTF?!).
There are also DVD and BluRays. They are region locked and not rippable (that's breakable but it might be illegal to do so, i.e. in USA DMCA supposedly forbids DRM circumvention). They are also out of print, thus my only option is a used copy from some auctioning website, which won't support the studio or the publisher.
And then there is the illegal-as-fuck offering via dodgy streaming sites and torrents. Full DVD and BluRay rips, artbooks scans, 720p, 1080p, English dub, Japanese dub, third party and original subs: Polish, English, Spanish, English subs with descriptions of all sounds (for deaf people I assume), switchable subs in some standard format, streaming, download, no accounts needed, free, etc.
And then someone dares to come out of the fucking woodwork and say how "piracy is theft" and "pirates are evil" and "pirates are selfish and don't support the studio" while some people can literally go to Crunchy Roll or Steam, sweating, shaking, their full of dosh CC in hand, willing to spend 30 euros for the anime they want, and get told to either fuck off or gobble the stream up.
I even once had to use a cracked exe for a few year old game I have a Steam-free Polish language (subs) box copy of because the CD-Key verification servers are offline and all the support links and such from the manual are dead. Links to DMR-free patch on the Polish publisher website - dead/redirect to main site (a "redesign" took place I assume). Or (as some mindless copyright shill would likely tell me to) I could buy an entire second copy on Steam where there is no Polish version available and it's tied to Steam. That would be legal, unlike being able to play the game I bought 5 years ago in the language version I bought it in, that's a fucking crime apparently.
That crap also happens in weird regional pricing. The worst example I've seen is that flying to USA to buy a copy of a program there is cheaper than buying it on the spot in Australia (it's old but it's so idiotic I still remember it, I welcome the (c) shills to tell me how this makes sense because it costs $1700 more to sell a single copy in Australia than in USA because of labor costs, taxes, distance or something): http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/it-is-cheaper-to-fly...
If this shit (stream only, region locks, DRM, etc.) even worked it'd be vaguely less bullshit, but pirates are having a field day with all this stuff enjoying the sunshine when "entertainment" companies make people see red by spitting in their face and telling them it's raining.
It's truly baffling that almost all countries agree on Berne Convention and on stuffs as shitty as such long termed, pervasive and anti-consumer copyright laws, such harsh criminalization of piracy, blatant privacy abuse with DRM techs, all the while even "obvious and positive" things like outlawing child marriage or spousal rape or removing marry-your-rapist laws or even admitting climate change is real (let alone agreeing its caused by humans or agreeing to fight it!) are impossible to do globally.
The VLC lead dev (Jean-Baptiste Kaempf) said they offered him over 30 million EUR for secretly shipping Chrome with the VLC installer/updater.
Many other projects, from Piriform’s CCleaner to adware also ship Chrome for the same reasons.
Instead the answer is simply the rather more mundane "advertising".
At the height of their time, the likes of rapidshare/megavideo used to pay a lot.
Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15915564
I can't think of a single good use-case for pop-unders (or pop-ups even)
When you do a captive portal with some sort of timer (hotel, airplane, etc), they will sometimes do a pop under with a timer that has the option to pay more to renew. That can be slightly useful.
Or when you visit a site, and it does a pop under of a survey about that site. Then you see it when you close the window and maybe fill out the survey. That one is less useful but at least legit.
>What’s so special about this site? They made one mistake. They opened some of their analytics statistics in the period 2014-2015, probably not something they intended to do.
Does the author mean they made available their stats for the period of 2014-2015? The last sentence seems to imply it was a mistake? I'm not sure how the author got access to the page view data.
Usually I go to the network tab and pull a direct stream to the file hosted, but some even go as far as streaming using specialized clients that chop up the video and apply encryption (which I assume is easy to defeat but not worth the hassle when the whole point is to avoid the hassle of ads)