It's much easier to pirate the content and have a single source of media than trying to figure out which pay service a show/movie is available on.
'Piracy' of tv/movies won't go away until that problem is solved.
'Piracy' of tv/movies won't go away until that problem is solved.
Now if a show or movie doesn't stream in your region or isn't otherwise easily online accessible, that's a different story. In that case it's on the industry to do better. When content is readily available on a streaming service, I don't think it's fair to point at the entertainment industry and say they have a problem to solve. In that case 'the problem' might actually be people wanting to watch movies and not pay for it.
Why would you need to change your public IP? Is the how cable works in the US?
Also they didn't say they're in the US.
1) Having to signup and manage accounts on every streaming service is not easy even if you forget about the money.
2) Most services are not global.
3) Even if they are in your area, they might not be complete. Last week I tried to rent a German movie on Amazon, but realized they only provide English subtitles if you live in the US.
I almost exclusively use streaming services now, but it's still annoying to have to search what streaming service everything is currently on, and there are some older movies (been watching a lot of 80s movies I missed lately) in which there is no subscription service it's available, only pay $4+ to rent on Amazon Prime.
and other services are excellent for it.
To me, the real issue is finding movies/tv shows where you cannot buy or rent them. Amazingly, it is still an issue in this world.
I would love to see The Bob Mathias Story from 1954. It was created by Allied Artists that has been bought and sold a few times ending up at ViacomCBS. Through many weeks of trying to find out if I could get a copy the best I could get was ViacomCBS sometimes allows it to be shown on TV.
I want to buy/rent a copy of movie that exists and cannot. How in 2020 can this happen?
I get: "Heads up! Reelgood does not support your region yet."
Sometimes I'm curious about how many movies a service has.
After some checking around, I did find it for $20 / season on Amazon, which comes with the following license agreement:
> Offers and pricing for subscriptions (also referred to at times as memberships), the subscription services, the extent of available Subscription Digital Content, and the specific titles available through subscription services, may change over time and by location without notice (except as may be required by applicable law).
So... I can give them $20 for them to stream it to me for however long they'd like.
It is impossible to buy the series on DVD.
This is not an isolated incident. As with the late what.cd, at some point these torrent services also serve as an archive of secondary and rare work. This particular example does not fall into that category, but it is not hard to find others, such as the classic Max Headroom, that do (https://reelgood.com/show/max-headroom-1987).
Two decades post-Napster we finally have what everyone wanted all along: an easy, cheap way to watch almost every movie without leaving the couch / listen to almost every song from almost any device.
But now it's not good enough unless it's literally every piece of content from a single origin 0_0
That may be almost true for music, but is not remotely true for movies. Sure, recent releases are usually available on _some_ streaming service, but back catalog movies are often only available on DVD/Blue ray. The big streaming services are not great for movie catalogs (Netflix is much worse than it used to be). We have regressed from the Blockbuster days in that regard.
Do you have examples?
Disney for instance are destroying the Disney Vault.
The content industry would prefer the all content is charged per view based on who is in the same room as the screen with differentiated costs based on market and even consumer. To enforce them they would prefer all computers be so locked down they are effectively paid for and maintained by you but owned by them with the right to reach over the wire and destroy your hardware if they find you are using it in a way they don't approve of. [1]
They also want veto right over roll out of any new tech that might change the amount of money they are apt to make. Example the VCR, netflix etc.
In return consumers want everything to be completely free with no ads with a great interface and Hatch to be launched into space with no space suit.
We can probably settle in between on something like compulsory licensing like radio play so that any service can offer any video and the creators always get paid. Let copyright holders set the rate but offer the same to all parties
[1] In case you didn't catch it, during a Senate Judiciary committee hearing this week on copyright abuse, the chairman -- that'd be Sen. Hatch -- endorsed technology that would twice warn a computer user about illegal online behavior, "then destroy their computer."
https://money.cnn.com/2003/06/19/commentary/wastler/wastler/
Paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Max and still not coming close to "almost every" movie isn't cheap.
And, yes, we want it from a single origin. It's not our fault that the movie/tv industry is a dumpster fire.
I'll start considering rights holders arguments when they're not capriciously gating or scalping on content, and are not limiting their content to their service du jour. The music industry has solved about 60-80% of this problem depending on what you like. The movie and series side has regressed to become worse and more expensive than blockbuster was. Shame!
subscribing to 3 different streaming services has no benefit for the customer. there's no reason to pay for essentially the same thing 3 times just because some studios decided to have fun with movie rights
This year I've been signing up for whatever has the movie I want to watch at the moment and then terminating right away so I'm never really subscribed to anything and have a time constraint to max out the other content on the service over the next 30 days.
We're seeing more and more content getting split up and requiring more and more separate subscriptions as time goes on.
I mean, I'm annoyed that Netflix had a bunch of Marvel movies, but not all of them. I'm annoyed that I used to watch them on Netflix all the time and now they're gone.
On the other hand, it's because Disney+ exists, and there's no reason for Disney+ to ever remove them (preasumably), since they own the rights to them so there's no licensing deals to work with. That means that they should be there "forever".
Likewise, I don't want to also have to pay for CBS All Access to watch the latest Trek, but, if I do, it does mean that I don't have to worry about Star Trek: Discovery disappearing down the road.
The only way for things to be there "forever" is to be streaming from the company that owns the copyright, and more and more such companies are setting up their streaming services and can then guarantee that "foreverness", but that comes at costs for them, and thus costs for us. It's unfortunate, but it feels as though it's either one or the other.
Now, in order to guarantee that we always have access to content, we're ultimately being asked to pay for more services at a total cost that looks more like the cable fees we didn't enjoy paying to begin with. We cut cords because of cost, and now that savings is almost gone and we're back to square one.
I don't have an answer and it's not an easy question to solve, I'm just saying that that's the point of frustration for a lot of people.
Edit: In some sense, what we have now - and seem to continue expanding upon - is worse than before. We used to be able to find it all on one cable provider with one UI, now we have to pay the same amount that many people found to be "too much" and have to deal with countless different UIs.
Your kidding yourself. We could limit to movies released in U.S. theaters in the past 20 years and you'd still be completely wrong.
Arctic Air - Arctic Air Season 1 is not streaming nor available to rent or purchase.
jPod - jPod Season 1 is not streaming nor available to rent or purchase.
Being Erica - List several streaming services that have it, including Pluto TV, which is free/ad supported.
So three Canadian tv shows off the top of my head and there's only a 33% hit rate. That's not very good.
My friend uses sonarr + usenet and its not as easy as amazon/google/itunes/redbox/fandago rentals or purchases on a roku.
A Slack alert can notify you of an automated download of a movie off someone’s top list or a TV series that has started screening again and has been downloaded. Automated piracy is impressive.
https://www.smarthomebeginner.com/docker-home-media-server-2...
Could also be nice if there was some sort of system where the people who actually worked on the film could decide who really deserves the money.
Most of them individually have more content than you can watch in a lifetime.
What about the concept of, picking the shows you have access to watch?
If the service barely has anything you watch, what happens if you don't get access to it?
People compare this all to cable, the problem with cable is you couldn't just pay $10 and get something. You payed $10 for a cable box, then you payed $30 for standard definition, then you added 20 dollars here and there for packages and HD, and a fee for mobile viewing.
Now you can pay $30 for one or two services and get access to more content than people were paying hundreds for!
But then the complaint becomes "yes but I can't watch literally everything"?
i have a very specific list of things i do want to see. favourite shows, certain actors, prefered genres. but what i want to see is spread over half a dozen services.
for $30 i get a lot of content that i don't want, and with every additional service i get more content that i don't want. and yet i'd have to spend more than $100 just to get 40 hours of the content that i do want.
you are effectively suggesting that i should not be picky and just watch what i am offered.
if i needed more content than i can watch in my lifetime, i could just watch youtube for free.
no thanks.
You want a 5 course dinner with items from 5 restaurants.
You don't want to eat everything on each restaurant's menu... but you want to eat "everything", * you want a plate of everyone's content*
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I'm saying you're allowed to want that, but if you can't afford it don't blame the restaurants for not huddling under one roof and making this imaginary buffet with "everything" under one roof.
We had that setup and it sucked worse than this, this new paradigm works better for people who understand the concept of... not getting everything you want?
It's like people don't get the concept of not getting to watch something because you can't afford it or something.
You're free to pirate it, really it's no skin off my back. I'm not even judging you (unless you try and give it some lame validation other than "I didn't want to pay for it" or in some cases "It's not available to pay for")
But then don't pretend it's the studios fault! It's literally easier (and cheaper, and more flexible) than ever to pay for access to their shows.
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A little over 10 years ago a $200 cable bill wasn't unheard of after regional fees, per set top box fees, HD channel fees, special packages for movies.. and it wasn't until last year these fees even had to be disclosed up front, so after a sketchy sales call you'd wait a few weeks for it to all get set up, then get your first bill and start a developing a new skill: negotiating your cable bill. And good luck canceling it if you needs changed
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There's this strange sense of entitlement people have that lets them overlook how much better the current situation is because they just need be able to watch everything they have a whim to watch.
I mean your response of "you want me to just watch what I'm offered?!?!" is so funny to me.
I mean yes? If by "offered" you mean what you paid for then yes lol. Sometimes I want to watch a show but it's not on a service I have and I don't fond any value in that service so I just... find another show to watch!
Is that really so mindblowing?
I don't see it as oppression, I don't see it as something so fundamentally unfair, I think "good thing there's these cheap services I have that have so much content I don't think I'll ever not find another show".
Now people who couldn't afford cable packages can get more content than they did before for less, on more flexible payment terms, with more flexible access, it really is a good thing if you can get over the fact sometimes you just might have to give up some gratification...
in my home country cable was available for a decent price without hidden fees because such trickery is illegal there.
for the restaurant: food courts do exist, and they can have surprisingly high quality food, so yes, it is possible to create a market where everyone can pick and choose.
sure, for you the current situation may be an improvement. and if you are satisfied with that, that's fine.
i am not satisfied because i know we can do better.
So I'd say you're over thinking the analogy, but actually that's the perfect representation of what's wrong with cable.
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Not to mention, my comment isn't just saying "it's good because it's better than cable", that's just focusing on an aside lol.
My comment is "it's good period as you're (god forbid) willing to watch something else once in a while, or pay for it." Hell like I said I don't care if you pirate it just again don't pretend the studio made you by not making a bespoke service with everything you want.
And also your comment about your home country... something tells me your home country doesn't have the worlds largest entertainment industry: https://www.selectusa.gov/media-entertainment-industry-unite...
People often confuse raw sales with revenue, even Bollywood revenue the pails in comparison to American revenue
That being the case a simple comparison of "I paid less elsewhere" doesn't represent the reality of things. You were either paying for less overall content, or paying for a lot of content produced and heavily funded by the US payment structure and much more cheaply licensed to your country.
The complication being of course, if it was values at that pricing locally then the shows wouldn't exist.
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And it's not like the US was alone in their cable situation so I'm very surprised to hear it was better else aside from the fees. The fees were problematic, but by it's very nature cable involves hardware and often has termed contracts
I've lived in multiple other countries (I wasn't born in the US) and 10 years ago I find it very hard to believed any country has cable (or even worse satellite) TV at "decent price" without the "pay us more for HD" and bundled packages mess unless there was just straight up a barely any content compared to the kinds of packages I'm talking about.