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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

Personally I stick to netflix and pirate other content.

I pay for Netflix and pirate what is available on Netflix, because my local video player has much better hardware acceleration than web browsers, is more efficient and as a byproduct gives me better video quality.

The most insane part of streaming is all services are capped at 720p on desktop. This is the biggest thing everyone should be yelling at lol. To watch anything on desktop I have to pirate it just to have watchable quality

Selfish. Pay for what you're watching or find something else to do.

I think if the copyright on the work is older than 25 years, its immoral to extract rent on it. As much as a lot of Netflix's stuff isn't that great, at least they're making new content to talk about. Disney doesn't really deserve any more money for A New Hope.

I think this is a reasonable point. There is no cogent argument that society benefits from Disney having a 100+ year copyright term.

Na, I want to watch what my friends are watching without paying for 6 different streaming services. Do you have a problem with that?

How does not paying for something you weren't going to pay for anyway harm anyone? If it was a physical good, sure. But a zero marginal cost good? nah that's not selfish at all.

I'd add that I watch it, and then I talk about it, making more people want to watch it.

Hey, I got some boots that need licking too...

Agreed. I always find this argument from people really odd.

"They don't sell what I want in the form that I want therefore it's OK for me to steal what I want in the form I want"

Would they apply to same logic to Costco for instance? "Costco only sells the widget I want in 10 packs so that gives me the (moral) license to steal one widget from the producer"

Theft deprives the seller of the object, causing direct financial losses. With piracy, there's no difference between someone who doesn't consume the media and someone who pirates.

If consuming media without paying the copyright holder is morally wrong, then so is second hand purchasing and selling, as well as rentals. Indeed, copyright industries have a long and storied history of trying to shut down rental chains, to some success in Japan.

Just because you paid someone some money to view a TV series, doesn't mean you paid the people who funded production.

> With piracy, there's no difference between someone who doesn't consume the media and someone who pirates.

This assumes everyone who pirates media would not have paid for the media if piracy was not an option. If piracy was truly impossible or was highly enforced with strict penalties, do you think everyone who pirates media would just stop consuming that media?

I know of people who pirate every minute of content they watch on TV and pirate nearly every second of music they listen to. Do you think they would just cease watching TV shows and movies and cease listening to music? Or would they start purchasing access to some?

There's obviously some percentage of piracy that happens because content is truly unavailable in a way for the consumer to reasonably consume (region blocks, licensing deals, etc) or because the content is just astronomically priced out of their reach ($10/mo for someone who makes $100/mo income, $1,000 software packages for students) that would not have purchased it. I fully agree there would be some percentage of people who truly would never buy the media regardless of the ability to pirate. But I think if piracy was truly impossible or had almost assured steep penalties there would be some amount more sales.

No, but I would go and buy that from Amazon. Because Amazon is practical. Like pirating.

Occasionally do this because I don't want to give Disney and Amazon another cent. Sometimes you can pay content creators directly, but not always.

But you still want to consume the media that Disney and Amazon makes (and at the end of the day, is hiring artists, writers, and animators), so you see some value in it.

Kind of muddies this righteous stance you're pretending to take.

> Kind of muddies this righteous stance you're pretending to take.

You're projecting.

> But you still want to consume the media that Disney and Amazon makes

Barely. I'd never pay for it, except as stand-alone content.

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