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I can't speak for others but I generally turn to piracy when legal options are unavailable or unviable.

For example it's basically impossible to legally watch anime with English subtitles in my region, so I have no alternative to piracy.

It's the same story for more mainstream content. There was no legal way to stream Game of Thrones in English when it was being aired. There's no way legal way to stream Star Trek Discovery as it's being aired. Were I in the US, the only legal options, as far as I know, are to pay ~$10/month each for streaming subscriptions that would only be used for these shows.

EU-commissioned studies like [0] show that I'm not unique.

So the solution here, in my opinion, isn't to try to outlaw piracy (it's actually legal in my country) but to make the legal options more reasonable. Eliminate regional restrictions entirely. Eliminate content silos (require studios to license on the same terms to all streaming platforms).

Plus, at least one study has shown that piracy doesn't actually hurt sales [1], save for movies still in cinemas.

[0]: https://torrentfreak.com/eu-study-more-people-consume-legall...

[1]: https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-22-eu-suppressed-study-pira...

> I can't speak for others but I generally turn to piracy when legal options are unavailable or unviable.

I do this too.

But I asked whether copyright enforcement was necessary for films to get adequately funded. I'm assuming that the problems you've described with region locking aren't there. I resort to piracy when I have no other options.

> But I asked whether copyright enforcement was necessary for films to get adequately funded.

I addressed that by referencing a study that concludes piracy has no measurable impact on revenue.

>> But I asked whether copyright enforcement was necessary for films to get adequately funded.

> I addressed that by referencing a study that concludes piracy has no measurable impact on revenue.

I'm weary of studies in general because they're capable of justifying absolute bullshit. Anyway, your study was conducted in a regime where getting films for free is illegal and therefore somewhat less convenient than it could be if it were legal. We don't have access to a world in which that isn't the case, so your study is kind of... not able to answer my question?

People who appeal to studies should look up "how to prove a counterfactual".

>We don't have access to a world in which that isn't the case, so your study is kind of... not able to answer my question?

Then your question is moot, as no one can answer it. Perhaps it is you who should actually look up unfalsifiable statements.

You're saying that for a statement to be falsifiable, a logically invalid falsification needs to be accepted. How can you argue that a counterfactual can be proven without actually setting up the counterfactual scenario? Or doing something else that makes logical sense?

[edit]

Also, to be clear, I think that if a study is being used to justify a counterfactual, a long-form argument needs to be made about why it does that. You can't just give the study results (which don't actually test the counterfactual scenario). The relevant counterfactual here is "If copyright law were to be abolished then it would not hurt producers of media like film".

This whole discussion reminds me of the 2000-2010 internet. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-o...

Finally, I've edited out some insults and comments which didn't make sense.

I don't know what to tell you, you said yourself that your question cannot be answered, so why even ask it?

> I'm weary of studies in general because they're capable of justifying absolute bullshit.

Do you have a proposal for an alternative process?

> Anyway, your study was conducted in a regime where getting films for free is illegal and therefore somewhat less convenient than it could be if it were legal.

In Switzerland, the country I live in, piracy is legal. You might be interested in researching the consequences.

There is no need for artificial scarcity, the arts could be funded like Patreon stuff, with instead the government giving the money to individuals to spend on creators they like: https://www.cepr.net/report/the-artistic-freedom-voucher-int...

The problem is that the definition of 'unavailable' or 'unviable' can quickly expand to include more or less anything. Have to wait a week for the film to be available in your area? It's not available on your chosen streaming service? The file costs a dollar more than you want to pay or doesn't come with the full set of download rights you want? People use all of these and more as excuses for pirating. If a programme owner wants to charge $10 a month to view their one show that's their right, and audiences have a wide range of free or cheaper alternatives to choose from if they don't want to pay it.

Unsurprisingly, HN being full of people who've got rich off Web 2.0 tech that profits from the spread of piracy and its resulting products (ultra cheap streaming at the expense of artists and creators), plus enjoyed tons of cheap/free digital goods and entertainment over the years, has a hive mind that considers all this perfectly ok

A film is just a bag of bytes. Consider we live in an age where:

- 20+MBit connections are the norm in the Western world

- there are no border checks or national firewalls to impede the flow of information worldwide (barring tyrannical regimes)

- the cost of making a copy and sending it out to anywhere around the world approximately = free

- we've had 20+ years to work on the service problem of piracy, to reach an acceptable equilibrium

It seems outrageous that we have fractured streaming services, no true digital ownership (even to match what we had for decades with VHS and optical discs), that restricting download rights is even a thing (I got my bag of bytes and paid for it, what is it to you what program or hardware I use to play it?), or that we have to wait at all for a film to be released in all geographies (I don't care that I'm in the Philippines - I already speak English and can't be bothered to wait for the official dubbing) if the bytes can come streaming down the pipe in less than a second.

I'm not entitled. I do have high expectations because we live in the goddamn future and copyright cartels are LARPing a world of digital cavemen. Like hell I'm gonna be content with that.

Call me um nitpicking, but files under CC (creative commons) is: 'no true digital ownership' ? No! [smashes-forehead] ^^

hint: i thought there was a finer drawn li...

> REM://youtube.com/watch?v=WpU7Hxf8iBw

> How are films supposed to get funded if people get them for free?

Let me pay money and download a DRM-free mp4 that I can keep forever and watch anywhere. I'd do it and so would a sizable percentage of existing pirates.

> The latter costs money, but is more convenient.

Not really. If my internet connection is fast, I can download a movie in a few minutes and watch it in VLC, which is more user-friendly than any web player. If my internet connection is slow, streaming won't work anyway. Maybe there's a medium-speed sweet spot in between for which streaming is more convenient, but I suspect only a minority of users occupy that sweet spot.

> Illegal streaming services are not viable because they're centralised and easy to crack down on

No, illegal streaming services are not viable because torrents exist and people prefer downloading movies to streaming them. People who prefer legal streaming services over illegal downloads do so because of the legal vs illegal bit, not because of the streaming vs downloads bit.

> Let me pay money and download a DRM-free mp4 that I can keep forever and watch anywhere. I'd do it and so would a sizable percentage of existing pirates.

This. DRM is a major incentive for piracy. I regret every single DRMed music and video purchase I've ever made.

Remember Gabe Newell: "Piracy is almost always a service problem, not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable."

Show me the online service that lets me purchase any TV show or movie ever produced, in the highest resolution the media was mastered in, and allow me to play it on whatever device I choose--and I will be a paying customer for life. The service simply doesn't exist outside of piracy.

I don't think the answer is very complicated: It doesn't have to be free. Stop being actively hostile to people who want to pay for your content. Make it available in as many places and formats as possible. Piracy is a service problem.

- If I pay for Netflix, I can't watch in full quality because I'm on Linux.

- If I pay for an online rental, I can't watch in full quality because I'm on Linux.

- DVDs and especially Blu-rays come with DRM that breaks in weird ways for many people.

- DVDs and Blu-rays come with unskippable warnings (often about piracy) before getting to the content.

- More and more content is becoming exclusive to specific streaming services, dramatically increasing the complexity and price for everyone.

All of these problems only apply to people who pay for the content. Everything is available for free from pirates without any of these issues (but with plenty of other issues, which are accepted because it's free). Legal, permanent digital copies of movies and TV shows don't seem to exist at all.

I have on several occasions downloaded pirated copies of movies or TV shows that I already had legal access to, just to watch them the way I want. The fact that that's even something to consider is ridiculous.

For music this is partially solved. I can pay for streaming access to anything in the Spotify library, or the Apple Music library, or one of several others. They all contain the vast majority of music most people want to listen to, and compete on other features. This is the direction Netflix and competitors should have moved in, but instead they went for exclusivity.

If I would rather maintain my own library (which I do), I can buy songs and albums on services like Bandcamp, and get high-quality, DRM free files. There is no equivalent for movies and TV shows.

I still semi-regularly run into artists who only offer their music on streaming services, in which case I will listen to their song on YouTube and then forget about them. The alternative would again be piracy, so these artists are missing out on revenue.

They are selling files. It's not that hard.

I'm more than happy to pay for movies or shows and currently subscribe to 5 streaming services but often find I need to resort to pirated content for a few reasons:

1. Frequently movies I want to watch are simply unavailable to stream or purchase in my country (Australia). Often they are available on the streaming services I subscribe to but only for users in other countries.

2. Being hearing impaired, I need subtitles but these are often unavailable on the streaming services. I can almost always get them for pirated content. So often I will pirate a movie that I could watch through a streaming service just so I can get the subtitles.

My experience with Netflix: it told me to switch browsers, disable my VPN, and install spyware on my computer, so that I could have the privilege of viewing video in 720p while I had an Internet connection.

I just laughed, closed the browser, opened up tpb. In 5 minutes I was watching what I wanted in 4K. I don't need to jump through hoops, install spyware, surrender my privacy, and I have a .mkv I can play on whatever device I want. I'd gladly pay good money for this.

Not to mention: I have access to older/niche content, not just endlessly formulaic "Netflix original series", I can lend it to someone else (remember dvds?), I can archive a copy and not be dependent on the whims of my provider.

> How are films supposed to get funded if people get them for free?

> What is your model for how films should get funded?

The same way free-to-air TV pays for itself - adverts. Either a couple of ad breaks in the film, or rotating watermarks on screen throughout the film. And make getting it easier than me finding the equivalent torrent. Release schedule - cinema, streaming, 'free'.

When films aren't available on any of the streaming services I subscribe to, what do you expect me to do? Pay another £60 per annum to watch one film on a streaming service I'll never use again? I read somewhere there are 1000 streaming services in the UK, and over 2000 in the US.

I've said before on here, it's a shame we didn't have today's bandwidth back in the mp3 days, because that forced the hand of the music industry to back iTunes, or Spotify, and only now they're beginning to fragment a little. If the video industry was under pressure from widescale cheap piracy, we'd have an industry wide streaming site. Instead we have Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Disney+, HBO, and so on.

One day before launch Paramount pulled Star Trek Discovery off Netflix to their own streaming service. Can you guess what the most pirated TV show was over the following weeks?

To be clear, I don't agree with piracy, but I have zero sympathy for movie studios and their shitty walled gardens.

> The same way free-to-air TV pays for itself - adverts. Either a couple of ad breaks in the film, or rotating watermarks on screen throughout the film.

Please no. Watching La vita è Bella[1] or a Clockwork Orange[2] and being interrupted by an ad for toothpaste or a theme park would muddy the experience. That model would make most good films unpalatable. Were that the only legal way to consume movies, piracy would continue to exist for cuts without ads.

Do note that the US model of having ad breaks during an episode of a TV show isn’t in use all over the world. In Portugal, breaks happens between episodes but are longer.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Is_Beautiful

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(film)

> Please no.

Agreed, but how else would you release a "free" version of a movie that funds itself as per the parent comment? Watermarks are probably the optimal solution, but people are used to advert funded TV/movies.

Non-intrusive product placement. Kind of like cigarettes.

> When films aren't available on any of the streaming services I subscribe to, what do you expect me to do? Pay another £60 per annum to watch one film on a streaming service I'll never use again? I read somewhere there are 1000 streaming services in the UK, and over 2000 in the US.

Yes? Especially when you actually normally are able to use a thirty day trial, or pay £5 for a single month without a rolling contract, or just don't watch the title, or go and purchase/rent it from iTunes et al?

All of those are perfectly legitimate options.

On the front page right now:

The Pentagon and CIA Have Shaped Thousands of Hollywood Movies into Super Effective Propaganda

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29835933

I say, if piracy destroys Hollywood- let it.

'Be a favour to everyone and above of all, cinema.

Fix the service problem of actually being able to find films.

Back in the day, Netflix's DVD library was close enough to complete that there was little need to look elsewhere, and their streaming selection was not terrible when it launched. Now that the whole system is fractured, the simple act of finding out who streams your movie is a chore, and in many cases getting it in the original language with proper subtitles is non-trivial.

Create a single point of entry to a high-quality library with minimal friction, and you eliminate the desire to pirate in many people.

> The conclusion is that obtaining films legally via streaming services remains the most convenient option

Try living outside the US :).

> What is your model for how films should get funded?

I don't see the movie industry suffering all that much. So maybe ... they can figure it out themselves since it's obviously working well enough, and it's not a life&death situation, but one of optimization. https://www.statista.com/statistics/260198/filmed-entertainm...

> Try living outside the US

I’m not finding it now, but I remember a joke attributed to Tim Berners-Lee (unconfirmed). Paraphrased:

> In the past, if you wanted to see new episodes of a TV show as they came out you’d have to fly to the US every week. Today, thanks to the internet, you can find much cheaper flights.

> How are films supposed to get funded if people get them for free?

Film "success" is still measured primarily in box office revenues, indicating - to me at least - that a successful theatrical release is where the money's at. There are certainly some people out there who would rather watch some shaky camcorder recording of a theater screen for free than actually go to a movie theater, but it doesn't seem like that's had much of an impact on the box office bottom line - even with COVID affecting theater attendance - probably because of the theater experience itself still ostensibly having some dollar value.

> some shaky camcorder recording of a theater screen

Haha. I remember this from... 15 years ago? The pirating industry has moved on substantially since then

That still happens, especially with tentpole movies. Sometimes it takes a few weeks after release for a non-shaky pirate recording to be widespread.

And sometimes the movie gets leaked from the studio months before it hits the cinemas

https://thecinemaholic.com/movies-that-leaked-before-they-we...

You have to wait for the whole film to finish downloading before you can watch it. This is inconvenient.

I've heard from a friend of mine that torrent clients have streaming mode as well. I.e. packets arrive not randomly, but in order, and as long as your DL speed exceeds 1 second per second, you are fine.

Also downloading a popular 1080p movie takes minutes. I think for my workflow pirating is actually easier than dealing with a decentralised streaming ecosystem without cross app searches.

I've also heard from a friend that qbitorrent supports this (sequential download).

> [edit] It's interesting that this is getting so many downvotes, even though it's asking a question and the premises are currently true. As other commenters have pointed out, BitTorrent downloads a file in random order and not from beginning to end, and this is less convenient than streaming.

Don't bother, the narrative here is that Netflix, Disney+, IP owners and distributors are literally forcing people to pirate content not available to them through their subscriptions.

file sharing: Your premise is incorrect, you can stream them as well.

streaming service: If you figure out which service to use. If the service that has them is available in your region. And has that movie with your preferred language. And with your preferred subtitle language.

Only if all points are checked do streaming services become more convenient… mostly. There are then also companies like Netflix or Amazon who like making it as hard as possible to watch something compared to pirating it (hyperbole, yes. But also with quite some truth to it, at least for TV shows, I don’t watch movies)

> file sharing: Your premise is incorrect, you can stream them as well.

Doesn't BitTorrent download the file in random order, instead of from beginning to end? I thought there was a good reason why it had to do that. I thought the only alternative was centralisation.

That’s something clients can control.

It downloads them in the order you tell your client to do.

It's usually not a (fully) random order, but rather the least-available (from other peers) parts get prioritised, to ensure maximum overall throughput. e.g. if 10 clients have the first part, but only 2 have the second part, it will prefer to download the second part first if possible.

But as the other replies say, your client can request any part it wishes. A few clients doing this won't have a significant effect on the overall throughput. Even if most clients were doing this, it would mostly only result in slightly lower download speeds overall.

The exception is for torrents with very few seeders, where this can have a much worse effect, but you are unlikely to be able to stream those sequentially at a reasonable speed anyway.

> file sharing: Your premise is incorrect, you can stream them as well.

Of sorts, when there's enough excess bandwidth available that fairness doesn't really matter. By design bittorrent randomizes download order to improve the ability of peers to be of mutual interest to enable tit-for-tat.

That is possible, I have never used this feature. Though I’d guess that something new or old enough for it to matter, can’t download fast enough to keep up with a stream anyway.

If enough pirates cared about streaming, there would be better p2p streaming. But bandwidth is cheap and movies take minutes.

>How are films supposed to get funded if people get them for free?

You can fund them before the fact with patronage. That is, recoup the cost beforehand, and the work is free for everyone to enjoy after it is made.

I thought about this. Can you get sufficient funding via this method? Some films are really expensive.

There have been pretty large scale crowdfunding/patreon type projects. Who's to say that a MCU type film can't be next ?

So films need to be expensive? I believe the dark night was in the 300m+ range. What would a 50m budget get?

Angel Studios has had great success with this, with The Chosen. 3 seasons fully funded and a 4th one half way [0]. [0]: https://watch.angelstudios.com/thechosen/pif

May be start with how did copyright term get to such insane length and why isn't it being rolled back?

I agree with you, but you aren't answering my question about funding. The question is an existential one about whether copyright should exist at all, and be enforced too.

Point is, piracy is only a natural counter balance to those who pushed copyright term to the current insanity and want to keep the status quo. So far they don't seem to have a problem with making new films despite constant cries that skies are falling becasue of piracy.

>How are films supposed to get funded if people get them for free?

I don't care is an acceptable answer here

Live off the fat of the land. Judging from how profitable movies are, there is plenty of fat

The same way as always, by people paying for them. Just because people pirate, doesn't mean they don't pay.

The fact is, piracy is widespread and profits are growing. There doesn't seem to be a big effect of piracy on the market as a whole. People do understand the concept of paying for what they use. The right way to battle piracy is to make payment super easy for the kind of use people expect.

As a more practical matter, I see the fight against piracy resulting in the creation of totalitarian systems of control on the internet, along with systems to block people from having control over their devices and data, which I do not agree with.

I agree that people should be paid something for their work. I also postulate that letting people with lower income pirate the majority of their entertainment results in a better market in the long run, when they (hopefully) get the means to contribute back. I see the current Draconian measures as not helping anyone, except the people implementing them and the less savoury branches of government.

I subscribe to three different streaming services, and if I really like something that isn't on them I'll buy a Blu Ray or DVD. I also rent stuff on YouTube.

But I have no qualms about pirating things that simply aren't purchasable without jumping through hoops (or at all as is the case for most older TV shows that are even a little bit obscure).

Unfortunately you don't really own an individual license to the content if you get a BluRay - your content is still tied to the media. Some of my BluRays are unplayable due to scratches, which means that my license is gone. Ok, these are the terms, but with terms like that piracy wins.

I'd like a full quality, DRM-free file with my BluRay purchases. And then I'd just skip the BluRay and buy the file itself...

They don't sell the DRM-free file because of piracy... But in fact, there is more piracy because they don't sell the file!

"Free/pirated" services should just be tracked and the artist should be compensated from an organization (a'la rcaa/mpaa/etc). The "organization" could be government, but I'm sure that would not be welcomed in the U.S.

There's lots of of places around the world where paying for some streaming is not viable (even less so for multiple services). Same goes for stuff like video games.

I myself grew up in the post-soviet baltics and around the time when when I got more into gaming - my monthly income was around 400 and new games were around 60. When Steam (and it's sales), Humble Bundle, GOG became more of a thing and my income increased - I just sort of stopped pirating games. It was definitely more convenient to get something on e.g. Steam than pirate it and jump through hoops to get the cracks working.

When Netflix first became available - I started using that. It seemed worth paying even for limited library. But there were lots of things that was impossible to get any other way than pirating. As I stopped watching movies/tv shows - I stopped paying for Netflix. I don't thing I'd be willing to pay for multiple streaming services.

My current (largely overpriced) media of choice is audiobooks.

>You have to wait for the whole film to finish downloading

It depends on the video file format. If the file format supports opening partial files you can just open them when downloading.

>The latter costs money

There are plenty of free movie streaming sites.

>>You have to wait for the whole film to finish downloading

>It depends on the video file format. If the file format supports opening partial files you can just open them when downloading.

I based my assumption on the fact that BitTorrent doesn't download the file from beginning to end in order. It downloads the file in a random order.

No, it can download files in order. Almost all clients have that option.

Isn't the random order option better in some way? Is there a way of using probability to quantify this in some way? I'm thinking that there's a higher probability that a random "chunk" of a file will be available if the chunks are downloaded randomly. But I haven't looked into this enough to know.

I'd assume you are correct (intuitively, if you don't constrain order at all, you'll have more opportunities for matching required parts than if you do constrain order) However I've found that it's very much possible to stream 1080p torrents without any problems, even when skipping back and forth or jumping to other parts of the movie without anymore noticeable delay than I'd expect from e.g. netflix.

If it was not possible to download in order, things like popcorn wouldn't be there for years. It streams torrent movies via this method.

> It depends on the video file format. If the file format supports opening partial files you can just open them when downloading.

It's a bit more complicated than that as you have to ensure that your torrent client downloads data in order, from start to finish. Usually it's more or less random.

There are torrent clients that support this though, for sure.