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Comment by q3k | Hacker News Reader

We were fine for a while. Netflix killed film/series piracy for me - for a while it literally made no sense.

Then, every copyright owner realized they want a slice of the streaming cake - (HBO, Disney+, all the cable networks...) and started making their content exclusive on their platforms. Now, instead of a single Netflix (or anyone else, really) subscription I would have to pay for a dozen, that I would rarely use for more than one series/film. Or I can't even get it at all, because it's not available in my country. Or only available with subtitles in a language I don't understand. Or I can't watch it on the hardware I want to.

The music industry got their shit together and even the most copyright-paranoid artists are on Spotify, or on Bandcamp (which is subscription-free). When the film industry does the same I'll gladly start paying them money again.

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Same boat, I haven't torrented a movie in years because Netflix gave me a good way to pay for them.

But now I have two streaming subscriptions and the catalog between them is still too sparse. I think I'd need 4 or 5 separate subscriptions to stop losing the "is this somewhere that I can watch it?" game.

Plus I have a VPN account that my phone and tablet are connected through almost all the time. I don't like having to leave that turned off when I want to watch something, often I'm multitasking and it means whatever else I'm doing is now connecting from my home IP address.

Can you recommend a good VPN for this use case?

I'm using PIA, but they were purchased recently by Kape Technologies so I'm not sure if I'll re-up when my subscription expires. Where I'm at right now is they're probably more trustworthy than Comcast, and less likely to do something like selling my IP address -> personal identity to advertisers.

https://www.hackread.com/private-internet-access-pia-vpn-sol...

They say it doesn't change anything, but with VPN services you really have no way of knowing how trustworthy they are.

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/the-continually-e...

Still, I figure on balance I'm better off having my internet browsing aggregated with all the other traffic coming out of their endpoints versus coming from my modem's IP address.

i signed up for PIA using paypal (i thought i was just setting up my payment source, but they fully created an account) and they sent me an username + password in plain text via email.

i cannot trust a company that does that.

On the one hand, not great. On the other, what can someone do with access to your PIA account? I don't think that gives them any ability to snoop on your traffic, and there's no user data in the account for them to steal.

They could mooch off your access within the 5 device limit, or sign in online and pay your bill?

Mullvad is better

Never were fine in Australia. Half of the Dr. Who were absent because of "legal reasons". I can't recall now (I don't have subscription for almost 3 years) but there were bunch of TV shows I wanted to binge and they were unavailable or partially available. Big Bang Theory never were on Netflix IIRC, I had to pay for one of the seasons. I don't think anything from HBO is there and so on.

I'm not playing those games, I can torrent whatever I want to seen in better quality - with subtitles in variety of languages, HD or SD, some number of audio tracks with different translations if I wish (even though I don't need it after leaving in English speaking country for some time) and so on.

It's just shitty user experience.

Relevant Reddit comic: https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/bcdlbf/hello_old_fr...

> The music industry got their shit together and even the most copyright-paranoid artists are on Spotify...

To be fair, unless their play count rivals Taylor Swift, those artists probably still aren't making much money. I have quite a few friends who are professional musicians and this is a common complaint.

Im nit saying spotify isnt a positive thing for consumers (and maybe also artists in the long run) but there's definitely a tradeoff to having one platform to rule them all.

I remember when people complained that cable wasn't à la carte. Now we complain that streaming services are à la carte. Its a fun cycle.

For whatever reason, video content is tightly tethered to copyright based gatekeeping profits. The cycle can be seen in literally every country.

Similar reasons for why Youtuber film-makers aren't treated seriously by Hollywood film-makers ie their portfolios aren't taken seriously. There's a weird snobbishness in the whole industry

Except... it's not. It's still bundled, just differently.

A la carte would be what Amazon Prime Video does with all of the stuff that isn't free--you just pay for the thing you actually watch.

In that case, what is the maximum amount of subscription fee that you are willing to shell out before resorting to piracy?

Personally, I think it should be tiered. I'm willing to pay ~$2 for older films (that's what my grocery store charged when I was a kid), ~$5 for new releases, and I expect a discount for paying month to month vs ala carte. So, if I watch one movie/week, $10/month seems fair since I'll probably watch 1-2 new releases and likely won't watch a movie every week. If I watch 2x that, then $15-20 seems fair. If I watch a movie every day, $50/month seems fair. Maybe pay extra for higher quality.

I currently pay for Netflix and Amazon prime, mostly so my kids can watch cartoons (we don't have c cable or satellite TV) and because my wife likes fast shipping (we watch way more Netflix than Amazon Prime though). I don't expect to pay more than either service to have access to a better selection of movies.

i already pay for: netlix, hulu, hbo, amazon prime and youtube premium.

so i already shell out a LOT of money to media companies, so i'm ok with pirating if a specific movie/series is not in any of those services because the owner of the movie/series i'm pirating is probably getting my money through any of those services.

You already know that answer is going to be different for everyone, so I don't know why you bother asking it.

A better question is when are film studios going to stop profiteering with their license fees and allow their works to be available on any platform (instead of meticulously negotiating with one platform and moving around every couple months).

The question opens up other questions exactly like you mentioned. For eg: If it was never about the price point, and more about it being available on a single platform, would you be fine with paying a very high subscription fee for a platform which holds all the catalogues?

Let me be clear, I torrent things too, but I've never really had an answer to the piracy question. I wouldnt just want to blame it on all the studios seperating out the catalogues into their own service.

I'd at least like to see what a more fair & open content market would look like. So far it's just anti-competitive, anti-consumer bullshit for TV & Movies. I haven't pirated a game after Steam got big. I haven't pirated any music after Spotify came around. Clearly the model works.

Literally Youtube. If google actually seriously got into the media business by buying up some smaller film catalogs worldwide(i'm sure AMC/criterion/some other country specific catalog collections will be easily purchasable for them as a starter), we could see streaming services go under overnight.

I think anti-trust litigation from old lawmakers is the only thing stopping them

Kind of an interesting angle. YouTube is limited in how it can compete against the film monopoly/oligopoly due to broader anti-trust concerns at Google

And in the meantime, you're just choosing not to consume their content, right?

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