Why is that? You can download everything for free. I don't think people use Netflix to access otherwise inaccessible content but rather because it's more convenient than searching for the right torrent link.
It is just far easier to just watch Netflix etc; if it had no drm, the vast majority would not change anything I would think, especially because the GP already said: no-one cares about drm. If they don’t care it doesn’t matter either way for most people (not the handful of Hn readers). It is like privacy; the vast majority of people don’t care; just the few that worry about dystopia.
However many if not most people still use Netflix even thought they have no real reason to.
Streaming from a „offensichtlich rechtswidrige Vorlage“ (§ 53 UrhG.) is not legal. That has been clarified by a decision from the EuGH in 2017.
I'm not a lawyer though and this isn't legal advice. Let me know if there have been verdicts and legal proceedings stating the contrary.
Anyway; what adblocker? I use adblock plus and it works for most sites, but not these type of sites; they seem to use every trick in the book.
As an additional warning, some kodi addons are torrent based and thus potentially risky in germany without using an anonymisation service like a vpn
So that private use can quickly become public for those less technically inclined.
I've never had fakes nor malware in ~10 years of downloading stuff.
Ultimately, it should be easy. If using Netflix and Disney+ is easier than using the Pirate Bay, then I gladly pay for Netflix and Disney+. If it becomes harder, more frustrating, fragmented, ad-riddled, or I need additional subscriptions to access the stuff I want, at some point the Pirate Bay becomes more convenient again.
There are plenty of fakes and mislabelings. some malware (especially on the download software)
And before anyone complains, nobody needs a movie to take more than 700MB ;)
See also: the 30-year-long campaign by the RIAA to stop any kind of non-DRMed digital high-fidelity consumer recordable media from being marketed. They finally lost it with the advent of the CD-R, but it's the reason that MiniDisc had DRM, Digital Compact Cassette was never "a thing", etc.
Convenient, but also relatively affordable to do things the legal way. Back in the day when torrenting was popular, even among the general population, most new albums would cost 15-20 Euro, getting a movie season was 30-40 Euro. Now you can get as much music is you need for 10 Euro per month. The situation with video streaming is a bit more complex, because the market is fragmented, but regardless you can pick your service and watch quite a lot of material for 10 Euro per month.
If you have to spend 50 Euro per month to get fresh music, torrenting looks far more attractive than when it's 10 Euro per month.
I would like to see a cultural shift away from the idea, that one must go through some middleman to make and publish anything, towards the idea, that if you have a great project and you put yourself out there and people believe in your idea, they will support you and all of society reaps the benefits. We would become more a society of choice and self-informing, than a society of maximized consumption.
At the same time, I think in many areas there is still a long way to go, to achieve that cultural shift.
These middleman, as all, come from a practical need, not cultural one. The people creating the content usually have no interest or skill in making marketing material, setting up meetings with venues, handle IP infringement/lawsuits, and all the other mind numbing boring stuff that these publishing studies handle that takes time away from their actual skill. I think the obvious outcome is that this middleman is automated, and split, but again, that's not a cultural shift, that's a practical one.
This is not true. Many if not most artists create art because they enjoy it.
What is true is that middle men like publishers and record labels wouldn’t exist if nobody paid for content. Coincidentally, they are also the ones who push the lie that nobody would make content if they weren’t paid.
Why is it so common to assume that no artist who is compensated for their work creates art because they enjoy it? You're presenting a false dichotomy.
Quality content takes time, effort and money, even when you love what you're doing. Every creative industry is littered with the corpses of the careers of brilliant, passionate artists who couldn't afford to live on goodwill alone. Compensation is what allows artists the freedom and capability to do what they love.
I don't think many people will deny that compensation encourages more creation. That is in fact the basis for copyright (at least in the US) - to romote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. But that does not mean that the current copyright scheme is the best way of achieving more creation. In many ways it stifles creation as much as it encourages it.
Yes, we need to make it so that those who create can afford to live. But why do we need to so heavily restrict everyone elses rights to share and then throw public funds into enforcement of that insanity in order to achieve that? Really, we should make it so that everyone can affort to live instead and encourage creation via public and community funding or private patronage directly instead of doing this copyright dance where middlemen profit off our shared culture.
The sci-fi author Charlie Stross has a series of blog posts on their site about all the work that goes into publishing a book and how much of it is done by employees of the publisher (and how that is not work that Stross can do / would like to do).
> Also, lots of people, including many artists, like the stability of a steady pay check
I'm sure many plumbers would like recurring royalties from their work too. That doesn't mean that that is a good way for society to function. Any discussion of copyright that just looks at the needs of the creators without considering the effects on everyone else is fundamentally flawed.
History shows otherwise but even if that was true: Free (re)distribution does not inherently mean that the creator is not compensated in some way.
Some people aren't comfortable doing illegal, potentially immoral, things like torrents of copyrighted works.
Disney originally wanted VHS tapes to lock so you had to pay them to rewind them.
You may be affected by propaganda from very influential copyright holders with massive marketing power.
The moral/ethical side is more murky depending on how you want to look at things. For example, for me personally there is a big difference between things like libraries (a copy was purchased and allows one showing at a time), a rewind lock (interference with how you use something you purchased), and duplication (streaming included). The previous ones required someone to purchase. Does it cut into sales? Sure. But someone still paid money for a true copy and they copy is a single instance. With duplication the scale is different. It can affect sales drastically and hurt the workers (not just the stars and greedy companies). Some people may feel the latter is unethical/immoral. I tend to buy used stuff. I also just don't buy stuff if I think it's too expensive. I haven run into any issues with Netflix either.
There was a presentation by Lawerence Lessig everyone should watch from years ago. There was a time when by default _everything_ was public domain, unless explicitly copyrighted.
This has flip-flopped to now where almost nothing is public domain. How did this happen? Money bought enforcement of made up rules and then laws were bought (lobbied?) to take everything out of the public domain.
A simple legal test. Can you make a backup copy of your own data? Yes. Of your own movies? (still just data) Yes. But people still seem to think, maybe it's illegal when it is not.
Can you give your backup copies of _your_ data to your friend? Yes. Even if it includes your movies? Yes.
Why? Because under copyright laws it doesn't cause harm, it's not fraud, etc... I've been to court over copyright infringement, it's a civil issue in almost _every_ single case normal people would be involved in.
Here's what it takes to be "criminal" where you are in trouble with the _law_. (Civil is a contract violation between people, _not_ with the government)
* Done so for private or commercial financial gain;
* Over 180 days, reproduced or distributed 1 or more copyrighted works with a total retail value of over $1,000; or
* Released over a publicly accessible computer network material that was intended for commercial distribution
[source: https://www.draskovich.com/blog/2019/december/is-copyright-i... ]
Now, do you even know a _single_ person that has committed a _crime_ of copyright infringement? I would argue very, very likely no.
Therefore, you making copies of your movies and giving them to friends (even over the internet) for _fun_ or whatever, constitutes civil copyright infringement, _not_ criminal.
If you cross the street without using the crosswalk you are breaking a criminal law. If you drink booze under 21, criminal. If you smoke weed, criminal.
If you copy a movie and even share it on the internet, NOT criminal, it's civil offense.
This doesn't even get into the issues with consciences objections to insane laws.
Last argument: If your core argument is loss of money if copyright was put back to 14 years instead of the bonkers length it is now, I argue patent law proves otherwise. And the rampant file sharing has not hurt any jobs I've heard of so far. (artificial scarcity/supply/demand)
/rant
"There was a time when by default _everything_ was public domain, unless explicitly copyrighted."
That wouldn't really change rhis issue because the producers would still copyright.
"Now, do you even know a _single_ person that has committed a _crime_ of copyright infringement?"
Given this:
"Released over a publically accessible computer network material that was intended for commercial distribution"
Yes, a fair amount. The reason they focus on the civil side is that the company can recover damages that way. They likely could go after many individuals criminally if people are distributing over publiclly accessible torrents or download a lot of new movies (not released on DVD digital) in 180 days. Either civilly or criminally, it can be a terrible time, and many people don't want to risk that.
"If you copy a movie and even share it on the internet, NOT criminal, it's civil offense."
As long as the movie is not theaters-only.
"If you cross the street without using the crosswalk you are breaking a criminal law."
Not quite. Jaywalking also requires that you impede the travel of a vehicle.
"If your core argument is loss of money if copyright was put back to 14 years instead of the bonkers length it is now"
I'd be fine with shorter lengths. I believe Disney was one that lobbied for the longer length. That doesn't really address people circumventing copyright during that 14 years.
This is really the crux. How many lawsuits have there been where someone used a patent for personal use, shared their use on the internet and was sued for millions of dollars and lost in court? (even 1?)
I feel it's an absurdity that I can spend _millions_ making a widget and after 15 (or 14?) years anyone can use my design for free, and somehow people support this limitation for patents but not for copyrights. (and we still have a vibrant economy based on patents)
Huh. Now that's an interesting claim I have never heard before. Google doesn't seem to turn up anything on it. Do you have any supporting info? If there's really anything to the claim, I'd love to read more.
Also, a favorite: https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-ki...
Where I live, you'll be fined if you download a movie torrent.
Edit: you don't get fined on the first download, you have to repeat the infraction. First download only gets a warning.
Edit again: Here's the warning you receive first:
Madame, Monsieur,
Vous avez souscrit un abonnement à internet auprès du fournisseur d’accès à internet <insert provider here>.
Votre connexion internet a été utilisée pour télécharger et/ou mettre à disposition une ou plusieurs oeuvres protégées par le droit d'auteur : * Date et heure des faits : <insert datetime of infraction here> (Horaire GMT : l’heure de Paris correspond à l’heure GMT +1h en hiver et +2h en été) * Adresse IP: adresse IP <insert IP here>) * Logiciel(s)/protocole(s) : <insert torrent software used here>. Conséquences :
Le téléchargement illégal, appelé couramment « piratage », prive les créateurs de leur rétribution et représente un danger pour l’économie du secteur culturel. Il vous expose en outre, vous et votre entourage, a des contenus inappropriés (pornographie, violence...) et/ou malveillants (virus, spams…).
En l'absence d'autorisation des détenteurs des droits sur ces œuvres, les faits constatés peuvent constituer une infraction pénale et entraîner des poursuites devant le tribunal de police pour contravention de négligence caractérisée (punie d'une peine maximale de 1500 euros d'amende ou 7500 euros pour les personnes morales).
L'utilisation qui est faite d'un accès à internet engageant la responsabilité personnelle du titulaire de l'abonnement, c'est donc vous qui êtes exposé(e) aux sanctions prévues par la loi.
Le présent courriel constitue un premier avertissement.
Si votre accès à internet est à nouveau utilisé pour des téléchargements illégaux ou des mises en partage d'œuvres protégées, l'Hadopi sera amenée à réexaminer votre dossier en vue de son éventuelle transmission à l'autorité judiciaire.
Actions à mener :
Je vous engage donc à prendre, sans délai, toute mesure utile pour éviter une nouvelle infraction. Vous pouvez consulter le site internet de l’Hadopi qui vous propose des fiches pratiques et des vidéos pédagogiques qui vous permettront notamment de :
* Sécuriser votre accès à internet en paramétrant votre box. Vous pouvez également vous rapprocher de votre fournisseur d’accès à internet sur ce sujet : https://hadopi.fr/outils-usages/parametrer-sa-box * Désinstaller les logiciels pair à pair de vos équipements : https://hadopi.fr/outils-usages/desinstaller-un-logiciel-pai... Par ailleurs, il existe sur internet de nombreuses offres légales disponibles. Pour vous aider :
* L’Hadopi référence les offres légales labellisées par l’institution et celles apparaissant comme respectueuses des droits de propriété intellectuelle : https://hadopi.fr/outils-usages/rechercher-un-site-ou-un-ser... * L’Hadopi vous donne également des indices pour identifier les sites illégaux. * Si l'œuvre que vous cherchez n’est pas disponible sur l’un des sites référencés par l’Hadopi, vous pouvez le signaler sur la page dédiée du site de l’Hadopi. L’ensemble de ces actions est disponible sur https://hadopi.fr/outils-usages. Vous avez également la possibilité de formuler des observations et d'obtenir des renseignements, en contactant l’Hadopi :
* Par voie électronique, en utilisant le formulaire suivant :https://cpdform.hadopi.fr/ notamment si vous souhaitez obtenir des précisions sur le titre des œuvres qui ont été téléchargées ou mises à disposition depuis votre connexion à internet ; * Par voie postale: Hadopi - Commission de protection des droits, 4 rue du Texel, 75014 Paris ; * Par téléphone au 09.69.32.90.90 (Appel non surtaxé de 9h à 12h30 et de 13h30 à 17h). Retrouvez toutes les informations utiles sur www.hadopi.fr/outils-usages/reagir-a-la-reception-dune-recommandation.
For anyone else wondering what a "personne morale" is:
En droit français, une personne morale est un groupement doté de la personnalité juridique. Généralement une personne morale se compose d'un groupe de personnes physiques réunies pour accomplir quelque chose en commun. Ce groupe peut aussi réunir des personnes physiques et des personnes morales. Il peut aussi n'être constitué que d'un seul élément.
La personnalité juridique donne à la personne morale des droits et des devoirs. Le droit français distingue :
les personnes morales de droit public : l'État, les collectivités territoriales, les établissements publics... ;
les personnes morales de droit privé : les plus courantes étant les sociétés privées, les sociétés civiles, les groupements d'intérêt économique, les associations. Certaines personnes morales de droit privé sont chargées de la gestion d'un service public.