Sure, but it's a trivially easy workaround.
Our focus of attention on matters of regulation ought to be in those areas where working around the problem is not nearly as dead simple as a torrent client, a NAS, and a Plex server.
I'm a computer geek, and I'm LONG past the point where setting up safe VMs and signing up to half a dozen services like newsgroup server and directories and search engines and what nots, download software with impossible names like sabnzbd (I'm waiting up for somebody to scream how nobody uses sabnzbd anymore, it's been replaced by jidwiaj and iqerqip, which are super easy, and that just proves my point:P), setup my own webservers that talk to themselves internally so my downloader would work with my cataloguer that would work with the sorter that talks to the video player, figuring out a VPN to keep me somewhat safe while introducing a whole 'nother threat vector... gawd I get a headache just thinking about it. And I end up paying the same as I would for 2-4 monthly legit services. And then my wife wants to watch this movie that's just come out and I download eight versions of it but four are fake and two have hieroglyphic subtitles in three languages baked into video stream and take up half the screen. And then it stops half way through. And then I'm on a business trip (remember those? hah!) and my family wants to watch something and now I have to spend 47 minutes on the phone trying to guide her on how to do that before we all quit in frustration.
My few friends who still do that try to get me back on board, and their "quick & easy explanation on how to do it because it's so easy now" is still three pages long, while skipping 70% of crucial steps & detail.
Just, NO. Whoever thinks piracy is "trivially easy" has a very specific mindset (Hey, it's OK, I used to as well...!), and lacks empathy for those with different mindset/circumstances/skills/priorities... who happen to make up the clear majority of public.
2. Pay $5-$10/month for a seedbox that pre-hosts rTorrent. Zero configuration. It will give you a web address, you visit it, and boom, torrent client.
Wait, should I pay for it in Bitcoin? I mean, you can. But you don't have to. It literally doesn't matter. No one gets caught doing it this way, unless you're a real Whale.
3. Go to {any-number-of-piracy-websites-even-that-one-everyone-knows-about-yeah-it-still-exists-and-its-fine}.com
4. Download torrent -> Upload into your rTorrent
You can, alternatively, skip all of that, pay for NordVPN or whatever, and just use your favorite local torrent client. Same thing.
A whole 3 pages, to be sure. I've got friends who wouldn't know a Mac from a PC, and they still pirate all the latest movies. Its startlingly easy. Experientially, there's near-zero risk of getting caught. It hasn't changed even a millimeter in a decade. Its the same process we all used back in middle school (or, you know, wherever you were ten years ago). Its just gotten cheaper, and also less interesting because of the Golden Days of streaming, but I think it'll come back if streaming continues splintering as it has.
1. Download Popcorn Time.
2. Watch pirated content.
I have been using that same setup for… 10+ years? With BiglyBT replacing Vuze after Vuze was purchased and turned in to garbage.
I say this as someone who's setup sonarr, radarr, bazaar, nzbget, usenet priorities, indexers, ombi, etc, which eliminates most maintenance and labor. Stuff can still break, quotas run out, and I want market options.
If I could pay to watch British panel shows, and everything else I want to watch from where I reside, I would do so.
I've read all the comments, and they're helpful, illuminating, insightful, and I've learned a lot (genuinely).
But overall they did not change and rather enforced my perspective:
1. the "Easy, out of the box, set-it-and-forget-it, everybody knows this" method to safely and easily to this seems to still change every 6-12 months, and still doesn't compare to convenience of just pushing a button on Netflix.
2. Paying for VPNs or Seedboxes etc easily equals the cost of a "just works" streaming service, while incurring new and exciting security & privacy threat vectors.
3. Most importantly, they don't take into account on what I will put forward is the actual mainstream public scenario: family that just wants to watch stuff . Between spouse who cannot be bothered with three remotes and two computer keyboards and six devices and 7 steps to watch something they could otherwise just stream on their phone, parent-in-law who wants to watch NBA/NHS/Soccer/Whatever reliably and in real time with no interruptions, kids who want to watch Paw Patrol safely now now now, all of this at the same time and all of them expecting six nines reliability and utter convenience across all their devices all the time always.
I'm off that particular wagon train, and if that makes me less of a computer geek, then so be it :-)
At what point does the daily time savings from having a unified view into all the world’s media outweigh the initial time cost of setting it up? It surely varies by person. Personally, spending one day setting up a media server is a far better experience than spending 5 minutes every #%$!ng night searching for some show on all these platforms and still not finding it.
This eliminates exposing your IP from torrents and the file being downloaded.
For a site like HN, I'm really surprised at this discussion.
Where is it complex? Most VPN providers these days provide a one-click solution to connect your devices to a VPN.
You don't need that. At least, I don't.
> a torrent client
All good operating systems (i.e. Linux) come with one. Though obviously most non-technical people don't use Linux.
> a browser
Pretty much standard on everything.
> an internet connection
Which they would be using anyway for streaming services.
> Most tv's nowadays are smart enough
Aaagh! Don't use "smart" TVs!
This response is the perfect example exactly what the OP was talking about.
Smart TVs are great. Click a button, see the show you want.
Then as a computer geek you don't seem to be aware about the modern tools to do that.
My whole point is that Netflix is fire and forget. Piracy is not only a complex install and a security threat, you also have the cognitive and time load of keeping up, learning about and reinstalling / reconfiguring new stuff all the time... I deal with sysadmin all day at work, at home, sometimes I just want to watch stuff - and certainly my family does.
Some people get pleasure out of mowing the lawn, some people get pleasure of endlessly reconfiguring their home lab - I was one of those for 25 years, but! It's crucial to recognize that's a minority.
Like, what even is all that other stuff?
And it doesn't even require a desktop / laptop. It's possible to use your seedbox to torrent, then download it to your phone, and then cast it from your phone.
The one thing I do have to futz with are subtitles. It's usually easy, but fails every now and then.
At several points the studios had the upper hand which meant that actors would only appear in a single studio's films. When more regulation freed actors from those types of contracts then celebrity actors were the major selling point. And for a while individual directors had a lot of power including final cut privileges which is why older in the 80s often had a theatrical release and a directors cut.
It seems that overall we are moving back towards studio control as single companies once again control production and distribution. For the most part this has worked out OK since most of these companies (Netflix, Hulu, etc.) were actually competing with the 'legacy' studios. However, now that major consolidation has taken place including the growth of Disney, etc; we are likely to see the industry and content itself shift to meet their interests. You can already see that, outside of small players and foreign sources, most studios focus on single annual big budget films marketed to an international audience (read: US & China). Just look at the top 20 films from 2015 vs 1995 vs 1985.
[2015] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls073655785/ [1995] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls057887703/ [1985] https://www.imdb.com/list/ls057991323/
Piracy can have many reasons behind it, including just not wanting to pay for things in general. And it’s easy for companies to dismiss as just an expense to manage, like shoplifting (“loss”) in the retail channel.