I just feel like if we’re at peak monetization, I might as well go back to my old teenage ways.
Don't even get me started on "there's this movie I heard about and I want to watch, but I need a subscription to this obscure random service and then also pay a rental fee on top to even get to watch it". It's just absurd.
Prime video is quite unique, but I'm very much past them putting pre-roll ads on the content I want to watch. It's universally an advert for their own craptastic, homegrown version of an existing well-defined format. If I was interested in watching Law & Order I can start from Season 1, not from their knockoff version of it.
Amazon Music would be another great service I'd be willing to pay for, but all the available clients are so buggy it's an impediment to me using it.
This is why I don't subscribe to any of the streaming services, they all utterly fail at having the movies I want to watch when I want to watch them. These services are mostly for people who want to watch something and don't particularly care what it is. TV as background noise. I expunged that sloppy style of TV watching from my life and I'm never going back to it. The only time I watch something is when I want to watch that thing specifically before I even sat down. And the odds of the streaming services I might have subscribed to having that thing is basically zero.
Unlike in my teenage years I'm happy to support artists with my money (and do!), but it's often a puzzle to figure out what content is on what service and in what region at what price.
Couple services with plenty of good content managed to put together teams to build their mobile / web apps that can barely code their ways out of a paper bag (in the non-trivial space of high-capacity video streaming, nonetheless). It's enough to make me yell "Just give me the damn file and I'll play it myself."
While not perfect, you have a way less unreasonable user experience especially in terms of DRM and hostile in software and APIs, and the fragmentation and balkanization is not even close to at the same level.
Most people who pay seem content with what they do and complement with free and open (mostly legal save for much on the YouTube). Public warez is spotty outside of that and the toplists. Private trackers are extremely exclusive, insular and inaccessible except for the very dedicated.
What's the dominating factor here? IP ownership and legal differences? Market dynamics? Opex costs? Industry corporate cultural differences? Or is it just circumstance that Spotify and Apple Music have been able and willing enough to make it happen while what.cd left a legacy where insular elitism became the norm and video pirates have always been more Tallyho?
What I will say is there are certain genres or types of content where I just feel like watching that type of content and any of the services will meet that need. Rarely is there a "killer show" that I will pay for a service that hosts it anymore. If I want to watch documentaries about murderers they all have some version of that, or cop shows or home shows or ... you get the idea.
Maybe this is age showing and just the nature of how Hollywood constantly regurgitates characters, shows or "franchises" where I feel like I've seen things already when they are brand new.
That's not true. There are a number of services/products you can simply purchase or rent content without an additional subscription fee.
It is.
What's needed is some kind of aggregator; a firm that will sublicence content from the major providers, and sell it to consumers. I'm not going to set up a Netflix account to watch one show.
Of course, the big content providers won't sublicence; they'll have to be forced to. But I would watch more of their content if I could pay for just what I want to watch, without subscribing to a mess of bundles containing mainly dross content.
I pirate stuff when it's somewhere else or when it's not available anywhere (surprisingly that's 50% of cases, but maybe that's just my country). So the spread availability is one of the problems, but not having a chance to watch something legally is another.
The same problem is with videogames. Some of them can't be bought anymore (excluding used physical copies on CD/DVD, but that's not something I prefer).
Pirating movies is even legal in my coutry - it's legal to download a movie that's already shared - I just can't share it. So at least they can't jail me for this sporadic crime.
Do I feel bad? Partially. I'd prefer to pay, I love paying for stuff that's even free (donations), but I don't want to feel like I'm an animal that predators want to lacerate.
There have been many times where I've found DRM encumbered products inferior: trying to stream anime on Crunchyroll during primetime only to experience slowdowns; trying to screenshot something for a wallpaper only to get it blacked out; trying to download offline shows with subtitles, only to find subtitles didn't get downloaded with the video. Compound that with The Streaming Wars, I can't help but feel like a lot of people will turn to piracy out of necessity. It isn't enough that there are like 10 subscriptions to get all of the content you might want. It's also that each provider reinvents the wheel and each version is slightly jagged in different ways and doesn't work like a wheel. It's like 10 inferior clones of a wheel. Piracy, much to the chagrin of all of these services, usually fixes this: an H.265 .mkv file usually "just works" without problems in your favorite media player.
It's just a mess right now.
Piracy is our last refuge from companies delivering awful user experiences and shitting on our rights as consumers.
> Denuvo DRM Outage Leads to Major Games Being Unplayable
[0] https://gamerant.com/denuvo-drm-outage-major-games-unplayabl...
> The cracked version of Resident Evil Village runs better, testing confirms
[1] https://www.pcgamer.com/resident-evil-village-drm-denuvo-stu...
> Shadow of the Tomb Raider Reportedly Runs Better Now That Denuvo Has Been Removed
[2] https://gamerant.com/shadow-of-the-tomb-raider-reportedly-ru...
Piracy is not necessarily better. Languages are very few (english essentially), subtitles may not exist at all, quality is variable, and speed can be a problem as well, since it depends on how popular a movie is.
Most importantly, malware push from pirate websites is a very serious problem. I warn non-power users not to download from pirate websites.
I found this out when I was going to send a screenshot of a funny scene to a friend. Ok, I guess they don't want free advertising.
At the time this was as well-received as any other strong-arming.
Netflix, Amazon, Disney et al, aren't interested in showing me what I want to watch for a purchase price, they are after my attention, and to divert me to their most profitable revenue stream (Netflix in house creations etc).
My attention is not for sale, I'll buy content if it is sold in a manner that is attractive to me in a consumer friendly model, Louis CK selling his standup specials on his own website come to mind, otherwise I won't bother.
The problem is there's no end game for these companies, if you agree to buy something, they'll stop selling it and sell you a subscription instead. If you buy the subscription, they'll chuck ads in front of the subscribed service, and then periodically cut off access to certain content in an effort to maximize their own profit. There's no way to manage you're own library, you're subject to whatever the shareholders think they can keep squeezing out of you. On top of that, even if I yield to them completely, I still have to run their DRM blobs on my computing devices for the priviledge.
It's "amoral" to pirate in my worldview, but these companies are equally amoral. I still want to participate in the collective modern culture of tv, movies, etc, so somethings got to give.
It's our whole economic system. Everything is set up for the expectation of endless growth. Every company is expected to increase their revenue and share price and employee compensation.
This is a bit of a problem for global tech companies because when you already have a big chunk of the world's population as your customers then growing your numbers becomes difficult. The only way to get more cash then is to extract more cash from your existing users.
Even (or especially) if you're already making vast sums of cash, the expectation is that you'll produce increasing amounts of it year on year. As a result you almost have to give your users a worse experience each year.
No one seems terribly keen on the actual effects of this, but individual decision makers' performance is generally measured on how well they impel users to give up more cash.
I don't see how this situation improves without some rethinking of our whole economic system.
They will remove content that involves people talking about suicide. They will remove content that is offensive. They have even gone back and edited previous episodes and content. This has happened in Stranger Things (actual edits with no notice) and Arrested Development (a redesign of the fourth season that is far worse than the original version of it). (I could not watch the fifth season. It was way too terrible.)
Other services are going the same way. Netflix being a first mover was able to license a lot of content for what must have been more favorable rates, now that it's much easier for a studio to spin up their OWN streaming service (there are vendors out there that will sell you, essentially, a streaming service in a box) they are experimenting with increasing their rates for licensing and simultaneously running their own service.
This is all region dependent of course. Often you'll see stuff available only on the studio's streaming service in north america, but licensed to more general streaming services overseas.
We'll see how this shakes out. Perhaps someone like paramount determines that their in-house streaming service just isn't profitable and move back to a licensed model.
They don't even really want your attention. In house creations aren't the most profitable because they make money, they are the most profitable because they cost the least. As long as you keep paying your subscription they are happy. The content is intended to keep you just happy enough to stay subscribed (or upgrade your plan) as well as to attract new subscribers.
Basically their income is subscriptions, their costs are largely video licensing (or creation). Serving content is probably a minor additional cost.
Amoral or immoral? Companies (being legal entities) are amoral; and I am fine with being amoral in return; but many would complain that it's immoral :-)
But at the same time I engage in piracy less than ever before. For me it seems like the hard part used to be obtaining the content — “why can’t I buy or rent the new Sopranos online” — but now the hard part is choosing something worth my time in the oceans of available titles.
This past week I watched a Norwegian miniseries about people stuck in an airport at Christmas (Netflix). Prior week I watched videos from a London Clojure conference (YouTube premium). Prior to that I rewatched an old Jim Jarmusch movie (Criterion). A couple months ago I was on a Hulu binge (The Bear, Only Murderers) before cancelling. I bought a comedy special from Louis CK’s own website. I only used a couple months of a free year of Apple TV, to watch Ted Lasso.
My default is to watch old Anthony Bourdain, either streaming (back when I had Hulu, or when I had HBO Now for Curb Your Enthusiasm) or buy a copy on Apple’s store.
But just as often I look around and give up. Most nights there’s nothing I want to watch. If I can, I make myself read a book or do some coding or maybe a podcast. I subscribe to streaming platforms then cancel. It’s so easy to sign up and then leave.
My point is, if I can find something I want watch it’s only a few clicks to watch it legally for a decent price (helps that I am not in my 20s, income wise). But it’s hard to find anything I want to watch. Piracy is almost a non sequitir these days, most of the time. But sure, if you find something you love, make sure to torrent a copy, because it will disappear eventually for one reason or another.
WTF. Why even subscribe in the first place. Absolutely ridiculous.
At the same time, I want to support creators, and I'll donate/use services like Bandcamp to directly support folks I appreciate. I have a $100/mo "donation" fund.
Has nothing to do with the price as I'm more than happy to support creators. Just not through centralized platform that doesn't respect my freedom.
I was happily paying a netflix and spotify sub for over a decade, but once we started getting greedy with Paramount+, AppleTV+, Discovery+, Peacock, etc. I decided it was high time to sail the seven seas again, which I hadn't done since college.
I keep waiting for all the netflix-likes to fail and people go back to just selling their content to netflix, but I don't think it's going to happen. I might be yaaar matey for the rest of my life.
Take a TV show for example - hundreds of people work on these things. There's no real way to support the show when you pirate something. TV shows don't have patreons or kickstarters.
Piracy is quite attractive because of how hostile the copyright holders are to end users. Sticking it to the megacorps that treat us with such disdain, even in these small ways, feels great. But this leaves a difficult question of how to actually support the people who are making the thing.
As far as I can tell, if you are serious about this, the closest thing to directly supporting a complex creative endeavor like a TV show is to "purchase" it from Amazon. Of course, you realize you "own" nothing, and Amazon still takes its cut, but at least it's a "sale" for the specific work in some spreadsheet.
Funnily enough Firefox can apparently use Google Widevine on MacOS: https://www.drm.cloud/platform-compatibility/
I am puzzled at these ridiculous restrictions but I am happy with their effect: a million papercuts driving viewers away.
From our perspective the two most valuable subscriptions are AppleTV+ and Disney Plus. Apple are making by far the best "prestige" TV, and that seems to be their strategy. Quality over quantity, much like their other product ranges.
My wife and I watch slightly less on Disney, but the value it brings us as a family (8yo + 4yo) is enormous. If we could only have one subscription it would be that one.
Amazon Prime Video is just a value add on a subscription we have anyway, although we increasingly shop less on Amazon, without the free shipping we probably would cancel the video subscription.
Netflix I subscribe to for about 1 month per year to binge the latest of whatever I'm watching (this year: Stranger Things, The Crown) and then cancel. Anything else (Hulu, etc) is a 1 month and churn kind of situation.
Netflix especially seems to be in a content death spiral of sorts. They cancel their original content so aggressively and often in such unsatisfying ways for the audience that I've decided I don't want to watch anything on Netflix until after it is an established success with multiple seasons produced. I wish they would put more wood behind fewer arrows. Or maybe just make a move toward miniseries so at least the audience can have a satisfying beginning, middle, and end to something they've invested time in watching. I would so much rather have 5-8 episodes that form a cohesive story, than a Season 1 that sets up a world and then never gets to go anywhere because some algorithm decided the show wasn't successful enough to continue.
The experience is awful. They have a similar experience as Amazon video where they pretend to have a lot of content and when you find something you want to watch they throw up a pay gate. If you have to do research online ahead of time to figure out which shows are on the service you can spend that same time finding it elsewhere.
There's also plenty of annoying quirks with the UI like assumptions that you only watch a show on your account and never anywhere else so navigating to seasons is a pain.
The original shows are pretty good (they seem to have a weird Disney+ aversion to any nudity but violence is fine) but it was an easy choice to cancel before any free trial periods ended.
Do you see them stopping that ability at some point, and requiring a yearly subscription? I remember the cable companies wouldn't let you start and stop premium channels each month. You'd have to sign up for at least a year.
Amazon has never made sense to me. Living in Toronto the regular free shipping usually arrives in 1-2 days anyways. Is this wildly different in other cities? My partner pays for prime and I usually just order on my account anyways since there is little difference. Even if there is I rarely need something urgently.
Where the streaming services are getting in trouble is if they are less convinient than piracy. Steam's success is largly built on being more convinient than pirating games, and similarly early Netflix was more convinient than pirating movies. Netflix and Amazon Prime still are on the "more convinient than piracy" side for me, the plethora of other streaming services not so much.
And then there's the question whether watchin Youtube with adblocker and SponsorBlock is equivalent to piracy. It is damn convienient.
Since you mention Spotify I'm super happy with it. It's basically everything I ever wanted consistently. Can recommend new music better than any person I know, and I can feed it any song that I and somebody else like as a radio station and get a pretty decent list of songs we both don't mind. Granted I don't listen to music as many hours as I did when I was young, but that's just me changing I think.
I feel like video games are actually often underpriced if you wait for a steam sale. I think child me would be blown away by the fact I can buy a game 10x better than mario 3 for 1/10th the price of Mario 3 ($50). I'm talking Baba is You, or Hollow Knight is 7.49 right now, or Slay The Spire is 8.49 right now. When I grew up I had "Gauntlet" which had some traits/bugs that made it nearly unwinnable without a guide, even by old standards.
In TV I think there's more of an argument to be had, and if you had only said TV I think this would be an interesting discussion, but if you think it's everything I think the more likely explanation is it's a you thing (maybe just not as easy to please anymore and upset at the media for not giving you that same magical feeling).
1. Sometimes music I have in playlists disappears, for licensing reasons. I understand the reasoning but it makes me irrationally angry
2. There’s still no way to remove playlists from the home screen. No, spotify, I still don’t want to listen to your Dad Jokes podcast. I feel like some bozo product manager has had a bonus package attached to podcast listens and he’s doing what he can to get more podcast listens, instead of making me (the customer) happy.
I’m considering going back to a bespoke mp3 collection again. Something about it feels better. It feels like mine.
Amazon bought Thursday night NFL rights for $1 billion a year, just to get credibility. That's $12.50 for every active Prime Video user.
"Piracy" is the legitimate competitor of streaming services. It seems like we have had a period where streaming offered a better product, but having a credible threat of competition is important to keep the streaming offerings competitive and relevant.
At this point for music there is so much free music available online that makes no sense to pirate anything. But I assume this depends on your music tastes.
For Movies and TV piracy is king especially if you live in a country where many less popular movies don't make it to the movie theaters and some streaming networks (e.g. hulu, disney+ etc) are not available.
Games, always, although I only have a console now, but PS Plus I found to be a very good service, I rarely buy full price titles unless it's something exceptional, otherwise I just wait for something on sale.
I have netflix, and that was good for a while, But now with all the streaming options with exclusives, I can't be bothered to juggle my subscriptions. I tried apple TV for a bit as I got a free offer, but they had about 2 shows I wanted to watch and despite the subscription, it's still seemed to be pushing me to "buy" things (I think being allowed to use the term "Buy" from any of these services is downright fraud if they can remove it anytime they want)
plus the one I seem to consistently want is HBO Max which isn't even available outside the US
We're really not. If anything there's more content (for lack of a better word) available for token amounts of money than there ever has been. I don't know how old you are but back in the distant past of the 90s you had two choices if you wanted to watch a film, you could go to a shop and buy a copy, probably for more money than you'd pay for a monthly Netflix subscription now, or you could go to the video rental store and rent it for a few pounds. If you were really lucky someone you know might own a copy and would lend it to you.
Games would cost £40+ new, or you could pick up the really big older ones for £10 or so. If you happened to want a game no one else did you were out of luck. Compare that to something like Steam now, or Game Pass where for ~$15/month you can have hundreds of games to choose from.
Maybe you don't like the model of monthly subscriptions. Guess what, for almost any film you can still buy a copy, either physically on disk, or digitally and be able to watch it right now. Don't like the level of ads on YouTube (which is honestly still better than what you'd see on any TV channel)? You can pay to turn them off.
This whole thing just reeks of entitlement. You don't have a god given right to watch and play anything you choose, whenever you choose, without paying anything for that. That's not how the world works. I'm not aware that ever having been how the world works. So sure, go pirate the things you want, but don't try to justify it as anything other than "I'd rather not pay".
So, with that said. I do want prices to a) drop b) services to consolidate and if they don’t, I will get all my shit for free. And so will others.
And we’ll have a better world because of it. The same way we have everything else at our fingertips.
See, if we want to talk about reality and how the world works, then the truth is everything is built on leverage. If users opt for free, well then that’s a whole lot of leverage. No huffing and puffing will solve that, now will it? That’s reality.
If we couldn’t get it for free, then we’d have no leverage, they would. Then they can charge anything, and no huffing and puffing would solve it.
Calling them greedy, or calling us entitled, is just huffing and puffing. That’s how the world works.
The consumer and business are never in a discussion (there’s nothing to discuss). It is always a barter based on leverage. “Why don’t you pay this price, you are being entitled”, is not something the business can say to me, and likewise, “Why don’t you lower the price, you are being greedy”, is not something I can say to the business.
The current situation overly incentivizes creation of intellectual property, particularly entertainment. Did we really need 50+ cable channels with shows 24/7? Did we need endless talk shows in the 90's and reality shows in the 00's? Do we need remakes upon remakes upon remakes of franchises of stuff?
If copyright returned to sane durations instead of the corporate-legacy-creating ones in effect currently, or even didn't exist at all, much of the resources that go into entertainment might go into better, less wasteful uses, or might go into developing actual novel entertainment.
> This whole thing just reeks of entitlement.
DRM schemes also reveal that entitlement goes both ways. External companies don't have a god given right to tell me I cannot watch X on my screen or download X.
Subjecting my personal property to surveillance to enforce a parallel to this old world is too far.
Why not? Some sense of morals towards HBO or etc? Life is too short for me to receive a worse experience just because it might hurt Casey Bloys' massive paycheck. If they want me to pay for it they need to offer it at a reasonable quality. Because I CAN watch anything anytime I want without paying. And they don't have a God given right to demand otherwise. They have a police-enforced right to demand otherwise, but good luck doing anything about it when I'm behind a VPN.
Games haven't really gone down in price either, and now since so many of the games themselves are "live service" things, many of them expire after a few years when they turn the servers off. $25 cosmetic "virtual goods" are often sold in game, representing an absurd markup on the time of artists. You get manipulated/harassed to spend (maybe more like burn) money in them, often after having spent $40-70 to get in the front door.
Monetization is awful, and that shouldn't be too surprising. Businesses endeavor to extract what the market can bear most profitably, and to have a bigger piece of that pie, not so much to give the benefit of progress to the people paying.
It's amazing how ridiculously easy it is to pirate these days. I didn't know jack shit about anything other than a handful of torrent sites and qBittorrent until recently. Yet it took me only 15-30 minutes to set up a full media-server stack for the whole thing.
Here's my full stack:
- ProtonVPN at $120 for 2.5 years of service, approx $4/mo
- qBittorrent: torrent download client. Free
- Jellyfin Server (PC) + Jellyfin Roku Channel (Roku device): similar to Plex media server, it's like a Netflix-style UI for your local content. Free
- Sonarr: searches for TV shows and can automatically download them into qBittorrent. Free
- Radarr: searches for movies and can automatically download them into qBittorrent. Free
- Jackett: search indexer so you can search all your favorite torrent sites through one service. Integrates into Sonarr and Radarr. Free
EDIT: Oh I use Spotify for music since that one is reliable and all the music I want is there. Plus they have offline download options.
The first two are pristine from an ethical standpoint.
I'm torn on Steam because it's not run as a typical USA corporation with all the anti consumer BS. The DRM they themselves provide is more of a suggestion instead of a real challenge. It can be broken with off the shelf tools or just stepping and dumping in x64dbg. However they did their fair share of damage in eroding what it means to own digital goods.
I also bought https://everycircuit.com/ because halfway through reversing the license checks I started feeling bad for the developers :(
I unapologetically pirate everything else.
- the balkanization of content that we've seeing
- investment in DRM
- the strengthening of artificial-scarcity-based business models which I think harm innovation more than they help
Nowadays entertainment is quite accessible through subscriptions and I just wait for decent sales on the games I want to play.
You never truly ‘have’ most paid media either, it can just be deleted out from under you, which I find extremely rude and contrary to ideas of ownership and archival.
I never stopped pirating and never will. Most things I want aren’t available to stream, and I’m not waiting years for some bastard streaming company to ingest the media so I can pay for the privilege of watching it in my Plato-cave.
I don’t mind the money, except Sunday Ticket which is insanely expensive for something that blacks out the biggest games each week.
What I mind is the complete unusability of having different UIs for each of them, and the lack of any unified schedule/guide. It is bizarre that the only way to find a live football game is to try each of the services that it might be on until found.
I don’t begrudge content creators and distributors their money. I just find it insane that the content choosing user experience is so much worse than 30 years ago.
If someone came out with a 100% pirated live+streaming solution with a unified catalog and schedule, I’d happily use it while still paying for the legit services whose various baroque UXes I wouldn’t miss at all.
I am likely going to cancel Apple, HBO Max, Hulu and Netflix shortly. My kids like Disney+ although personally I am concerned with the channels attempts to front and center homosexuality targeted at kids. This is a personal issue I am not seeking to change anyone's opinion or mind or lead a boycott against Disney. Its just something that I don't like for my kids. So depending on if the amount of animated LGBTQ content increases on the channel I will likely cancel that as well.
Piracy is a better alternative. Far less hassle and better quality.
There is some very nice software out there so you can basically have your own private Netflix. Risk is minimal when setup correctly.
People say piracy is stealing. It isn't. It's the natural order of things. People support things with money that they want to see. People see plays, concerts, and movies in theaters all the time. Not letting people share a recording is ridiculous, as is the concept of eternal royalties.
Look at how much art we have that takes from prior art to turn it into something new. Piracy helps that goal. We wouldn't have people like Eminem if he hadn't pirated tapes. Piracy hurts no one, and studies show pirates spend the most on content.
A decade or so from now, no one will be talking about piracy because it will simply be the natural way of sharing, at least in free countries.
Movies and TV shows though, I basically pirate all of it. When it was mostly all on Netflix there was a convenient legal offering to watch a lot of content, but these days I have no idea where anything I want to watch is streaming. And even then, stuff moves around because contracts expire, new deals are formed, etc. And it's even worse if you're outside of the US (Canada in my case). You look up where to watch something and all the results tell you one thing, you go check, and it's not there because there's different distribution in Canada. I don't want to subscribe to 10 services when I'm probably not gonna use most of them in a month, and I'm not spending hours managing which services I'm subscribed to every month because it's a waste of time and it's not like I plan what I'm going to watch that far in advance anyway. Some things are only streamable on some network's website where they expect you to login with your account through a cable provider. So yeah, screw that - I flick my VPN on, load a torrent into my client, refresh my Plex and I'm watching in a few minutes. And half the time it's better quality cause it's a Bluray rip instead of running through an ugly compression algorithm.
I still do what I can to support shows I enjoy so they get some of my actual money -- buying merch or physical copies of the show/movie. But even if I buy a physical copy I still usually end up just watching it through my Plex server cause it's more convenient than grabbing a disc from my shelf and loading it into the disc drive that my current PC doesn't even have.
My choice, of course, is to pay for the content, or just not to consume it. I don't believe I have an inherent right to consume any content I want for free. The counter argument is usually that a copy of creative content doesn't take anything away from the author, but I don't really buy into that one.
I want a personal collection of movies, imagine a bookshelf of my favorites.
But all the streaming services are like having a messy Blockbuster Video in my living room, which I don't want.
Right now there is much more competition for eyeballs than there ever was in the past (social networks, video shorts, etc). People only have so many hours in the day for entertainment, and these alternative eyeball-grabbers are can only gain eyeballs at the expense of traditional eyeball-grabbers.
For example ...
I've got Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, and the last time I saw a movie on TV was in 2021, the last series I watched to completion was The Boys (and Umbrella Academy).
I'm literally paying for tons of stuff I am not going to see; is it reasonable to think that I am going to go out of my way to search for, then download something?
If I were to go and play the latest AAA like Assassin's Creed or whatever, I would definitely pirate it, but the game doesn't call to me anyway. Not only due to pricing and additional monetization, but mainly to remove the invasive DRM these kinds of titles use.
YouTube Premium I do the janky family sharing thing that makes the price tolerable, but it pays creators better so that's good.
Spotify, I'm on the verge of just going and pirating all the songs I want, because their UI is optimized for entirely the opposite way I listen to music (this could be a rant by itself).
Movies, I never stopped pirating. Just figuring out where I can find a movie in the quality and language I want requires being up to date on the existence, platform support, and terms of like 10 services. And yes, justwatch exists but A) I only watch like one movie a month, but most movies can't be rented, and are only available in a subscription which is a hassle to sign up and cancel every month, not to mention the expense. Versus pirating, where I can use 1 piece of software that will aggregate all the movies and series in the world and provide with an unified access.
I will usually pirate video under one or more of the following conditions:
- I already own or owned a copy of the film at some point in my life
- The film or show isn't available for streaming or even purchase
- The streaming quality is vastly inferior to the format I can pirate
- The film or show can be streamed but with no option besides "free with ads"
- I have good reason to believe that those responsible for making the film won't receive a red cent
I've been finding myself pirating more often recently because I find the quality of streaming video to often be intolerable. It may be alright for brand spanking new shows, but I like to watch a lot of older content, and the quality of the video often totally blows. I'm talking a crapton of compression, and what I suspect to be upscaled standard def rather than actual HD or 4k.
What blows my mind is that a ~250mb mkv file I torrented in under 30 seconds usually blows streaming quality out of the water. I get that torrents are on a much smaller scale, but come on, it's peer to peer file delivery that it almost immediately ready to watch with no buffering or ads or massive disk space needed.
I think it's fair that artists are rewarded for their work, so I pay for one global service per type of content : Netflix for movies and TV shows, Youtube Premium for music.
However, I abhor the game of 'selling rights to certain platforms for certain duration only in certain countries', and I don't want to have to handle half a dozen subscription just because someone in the marketing team somewhere decided that this movie was going to be exclusive to this platform.
So my go to is, if I want to watch something, I first try to find it on my legal paid platform, and if I can't find it there, I'll pirate it.
Works pretty well so far.
Most of the time, if I want to watch something that's not part of one of these existing subscriptions, I can rent it for a small fee. I only rent 2-4 times a year. If I think the kids will want to re-watch it, I buy the Bluray. I only buy a few a year.
So, would I go back to piracy? Well... I have to really want to watch it, it has to be missing from my streaming and rental services, and I have to "not care enough to rewatch" to not buy the Bluray. The last thing I pirated, I reminded myself that I've watched it enough to justify buying it outright.
IMO: What we need is copyright reform along with piracy. Copyright should only be protected if an asset is available online instantly at a fair price. Otherwise, if the asset isn't available at a fair price, piracy should be 100% legal.
Why exactly did music piracy go downhill? Because you can just pay 10 bucks (or a fiver if you're a student) per month and have pretty much everything available at high quality.
I was a youtube/Spotify/last.fm/[smth other I don't remember] subscriber before 2022.
Actually it was kind of pride in younger population in Russia for games: "I pay for all games I like".
My son, my friends has hundreds of games bought on Steam.
That was a big step actually.
How sanctions worked?
For me: - youtube/youtube music - I was a subscriber, so it was for me: "No advertisments, ability to support channels, ability to listen youtube videos on locked phone". Now: no advertisements for all Russia - which is great. Not able to listen on locked phone - irritating. Support channels (I'm a WH40K fan) - thru direct donations
- spotify - I still think that last.fm was the best
- netflix, amazon, etc - sorry, I have no options, except eztv, kickass, piratebay, etc. Nothing new
My POV: Piracy is not a problem. Piracy is a solution. When everything else failed.
Beyond that, piracy must be among the top 3 motivations for companies to senselessly subscription-ify everything, so engaging in it is at least participating in incentivizing that behavior.
I pirate games that cost more than ~$20 and don't provide a demo. If I enjoy the game then I'll usually buy it after an hour or two, especially indie games.
I'm done with movie/TV streaming services. Their business model and user experience is garbage while piracy provides a significantly better ease of use, overall UX and content quality. I'll reconsider paying for these services when they start competing on features and pricing rather than content exclusivity that varies by geographical region.
I'll buy e-books as long as the price is "reasonable", don't expect me to pay more for an e-book than a physical copy.
I still pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube premium etc. but I find myself many of the times I want to watch something, I just use my home server rather than even checking if they exist on Netflix or Prime video.
Can’t give up YouTube premium, but probably will stop having Netflix as soon as they block password sharing.
I want translations that are close to the original content, not an adaptation that nearly destroys its meaning.
Until a decade ago, Japanese right owners were hardly interested in broadcasting content in my area. Fansub teams would provide subs for content as long as it wasn't licensed. (it was in order to make it available, but most of them didn't want to compete with companies who would actually develop the content). This resulted in a range of subs, each with a different trades-off between pure translations and adaptation. If you got a subtitle from a team that offered a close translation, you had much more meaning, but you had to understand a bit of what was going on.
We also had the opportunity to make the shows a bit of our own by discussing about its meaning and by reflecting on it, in order to write the subtitles. The we could compare subtitles and what each team understood.
Now most commercial services destroy that meaning. They take the show away : you're just a consumer/viewer without a say (don't forget to purchase a shirt to make the show your own) They adapt it with a lot of approximations, and remove the quirks and rudeness to make it ok for the most viewers. (yes, shonen characters are rude, you can ride a mamachari and it's not just a bicycle on which you're an angry cyclist, -kun / -chan / -dono have a meaning, ...)
I no longer enjoy to watch anime with commercial services, that's just bland. They just want to do a western show with a Japanese show. And since I used to be in a fansub team with the 'as long as it wasn't licensed' clause, I and don't approve of piracy, so I just no longer watch this content as much as I could. (now US shows like South Parks feel more mature)
I find it a shame that governments went all over the place to find dichotomies to break down public services on behalf of free competition (operating train isn't maintaining rails, selling power isn't maintaining lines and power plants,...), but that you can't just purchase a license for movie and its subtitles separately.
Most of the old movies are available for $2.99 from Amazon Prime Video.
A couple clicks from the smart tv is worth a few bucks to me compared to finding the torrent then finding a way to get it in the TV.
Watching classic films is more fulfilling than the latest steaming fad.
If you try to consume quality over quantity the monetization isn’t too bad IMHO.
Piracy isn't perfect, but it never shows me ads, never removes shows, and doesn't try to recommend anything to me.
There's also the issue of content just randomly disappearing off streaming services for no good reason. Even big-budget, big-name shows like Westworld have now fallen prey to this. Big parts of our culture can just get thrown in the bin if some MBA decides it's what's needed to squeeze a few more pennies out of their bottom line? To me, that is unacceptable. The cultural preservation angle is the best thing about piracy IMO.
Even with all the madness, some content doesn't seem available anywhere for any price. I recently tried to track down The Abyss (1989), a scifi classic by James Cameron. It's currently not on any digital platform and the physical discs appear to be out of print. The only way to watch this movie seems to be piracy or buying a second-hand disc on eBay.
The tech is on the side of those who wish to share. The idea of sharing is 100% identical to the entire point of libraries.
I have no problem with shaming and otherwise encouraging people into paying things that they should pay for if they can.
I have a huge enormous problem with directing law-enforcement and other restrictive and punishing actions to individuals for consuming things they want to consume, when the marginal cost to do so is zero.
Funnily enough, it costs me what a couple of streaming services used to cost <$30/mo. But I don’t have these annoying restrictions.
It’s not about the money. It’s about wanting to preserve access, easily, to my favorite shows that I love to rewatch.
Plus, y'know, free.
Spotify has this down since it is rare that they don't have the music I want. I happily pay for and use this subscription.
Games are also easy to find since on PC it is a quick Google that gives a direct link to the correct store. It is still annoying when things aren't on Steam but the friction of finding the game to play is minimized by using Playnite to collate all the different services after I buy the game.
Movies and TV are just a mess that is driving people to pirate. The media companies got greedy and prevented Netflix from becoming the one stop shop for all media. Watching on the TV means that even figuring out which service to use sucks and it is a terrible user experience.
Another complaint is live sports, I would happily subscribe to Dazn if they had every sports league on it. But since they don't have some sports I want to watch then the subscription just isn't worth it. Similarly, blackouts on the sport specific services make them a non-starter.
What does bother me though and I do think is genuinely against the core public bargain of copyright is when material simply isn't available at all, or when copyright holders attempt to extract rights beyond copyright via layering DRM and such on top. The whole reason the public grants copyright is to encourage the creation and availability of quality IP. If IP isn't available at all in a given market for a reasonable period of time, IMO it should lose copyright protection. I'd support a separate "credit right", whereby for a long period of time after expiration of copyright anyone making derivative works would need to reasonably prominently credit the original with links, but copyright should never be about keeping things away from the public, that's literally the polar opposite of the point. I should be able to go buy a DRM-free FLAC or the like of music or DRM-free MKV of movies I'm interested and then use them on all of my devices, and be able to do that for any content made anywhere in the world (at least within Berne convention type countries, which is most of them). With books, original music and so on, the protection was the law and that was that. That's what it was all built around. Copyright holders should not be able to have it both ways, to get legal protection and then add tons of stuff beyond legal protection (and lobby to disgustingly and retroactively extend copyright as they frequently did).
So if I go to get something and it's "not available in your region" or exclusively via DRM'd streaming then yes, I'm open to copyright infringement. Even more so and without hesitation if it's just not published at all anymore. Copyright should never, EVER be about REMOVING IP from the public sphere. But if a game is on GOG and they want $60 or $90? Or hell if someone wanted to charge $500 for the Ultra Hyper DigiGigi Polkadot Edition? Then I'll respect that. If it seems worth it I'll get it, if it doesn't I won't, but "monetization" isn't wrong for luxury goods. There is lots of choice, including doing stuff ourselves more easily than ever. What I do think is absolutely wrong is not putting things up for honest direct sale.
For movies / tv series, I don't want to bother. I really don't. But, the streaming landscape is just out of control (for lack of a better phrase). Even with just a few services, the signal to noise ratio is heavily noise. Who knew there were so many Christmas movies?! I just want to watch Elf. Oh, it's on the other streaming service? That's weird, it was on here last year!
I just want to buy some of this stuff digitally, so I can watch it without having to Google what service it's on. Or, after Googling it's location, come to find it's been removed recently (looking at you, Netflix). But, a lot of the newer shows are streaming only. Which, leaves one option if you want it on a hard drive.
When I was young, I did it a lot with Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Movies, MP3, and etc. Because I didn't have money.
I don't pirate anymore because I make money.
In this day of age, piracy has increased risk with malware that mines bitcoin or locks your disk for ransom, so the risk is much higher and effectively lowers the benefit.
For games I rarely pirate something, steam/gog/xbox are just too convenient for me. Unless it is something on the platform I don't have, but I still want to play it in an emulator.
Music is sort of middle ground. I am ok with content selection major stream providers have now. So basically the only thing I care about is to platform to not mess with me with some bullshit features. I switched from spotify, because I got tired of how their android and mac apps work.
To pay for all streaming services I only need to work 1 hour. This is to pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Videoland, Disney+, HBO Max and Sky
As for videogames, there's currently a sale on Steam and PSN. That's when I usually buy games. It's very easy to save money but you gotta be patient.
It's software that has switched from pay one time per version to subscription only that causes me to feel this way too. And let's not forget what TurboTax has done to the US.
I can listen whatever I want via Spotify. If I like the album that much, I can buy it via iTunes or their store, however finding lossless versions are hard.
If I really love the album, I'll buy its vinyl.
If I don't plan to buy the vinyl, and can't find the lossless version or a decent priced CD, I buy the album online and find the lossless version elsewhere.
I'm a former orchestra player. I know how tedious and draining producing music is. It's unethical to just download it and let it be. Before, it was impossible to get decent music without being gouged, so I had to download some of the albums, but it's no more now. Buying prices are accessible, storage is ample, and syncing is easy.
There's no need to screw musicians over it.
I'm not a big movie buff anyway, so if I can stream it legally, I'm fine.
Music: I gave up on my RIAA&Co protest and nowadays just buy the albums, usually on bandcamp. Not using streaming services.
TV: Depends a lot on availability. Sometimes things are not available in English with English subs (I’m in Germany), sometimes not available at all. Don’t have much patience for either issue. Otherwise, I always have Prime and often Netflix.
Movies: I don’t watch movies.
About Amazon Prime, they are finally raising the prices in Germany, from 70€/year to 90€ a year. But besides the streaming being decent, the shipping is a nice bonus (and here Amazon has the best prices quite often, especially if shipping is free), and there’s also Twitch Prime, canceling Prime would mean I’d subscribe to one more channel, which would be almost 50€ a year anyway…
Why? Because I automated this process along time ago and also because I know sooner or later I am going to stop paying for that and this way I am prepared for it, because I don't have Apple or Rakuten, or many others. Because I have my own library of stuff (paid, and pirated) that goes back decades and I can access it from anywhere in the world.
With a family plan it comes down to less than 3 dollars a month.
For video, the story is completely different. I would have to subscribe to 3 to 5 subscriptions and the experience varies. Netflix sucks immensely [0]. I pay for netflix and prime, but have to run my own Plex Server. When you run your own Plex Server, you also run Sonarr and Radarr. Now you don't care anymore, just add the movie, 10 minutes later i can watch it.
Setting it up maybe a little a hassle, but when it runs ... its god like.
Every time I see someone struggle with streaming services (content not available, DRM, shitty artificial limitations, shitty players, shady business practices, things you "bought" disappearing because licensing changed), I get reminded that piracy is just so much better. Find a torrent, download it, done. After you've downloaded it, you have it forever, it's not going anywhere.
On the OP question, of course I do still watch YouTube, and of course I don't pay for it. I run uBO + SponsorBlock + some userscripts for a barely bearable experience. To be honest, the modern web is literally unusable without an ad blocker anyway.
Back then, much of our TV viewing was with the old Netflix DVD-through-the-mail thing, and then various torrent sites. When more and more streaming services started popping up, I torrented less and less to being zero. But now with the shake-up with some of the streaming services (like HBO Max), you just can't get some of the shows anymore...or else you have to buy entire seasons from Amazon or wherever. I haven't resorted to it yet, but I can see how pirating will take a new upswing as the streaming services keep damaging themselves.
While this extraction reality sucks but I feel like there’s a game to play here that’s still better than piracy though.
Now, though, I feel like I am getting gouged from one side, nickel and dimed from another. I am especially considering it for music -- chasing down out of print stuff has begun to annoy me. If they can't keep it in print, then I think they should give up copyright. I'd be willing to support legislation to that extent. We'd have to close a lot of loopholes as to what "in print" meant, mind you.
Plus, sharing my extensive music collection, which contains some rarities, might not be the worst thing.
All my friends rely on streaming services, every few weeks we have a movie night, 50% of the time we can't find the movie we plan on watching even though they have 4 or 5 services, and when we find the movie we have another 50% chance of it not being available in OV.
Even when it works flawlessly, and even if you pay for the "Uber+ 8k topmaxi over resolution" option you have the same bitrate as when you were buying a DVD for 3 euros in 2005
Also, 90% of the created content is absolute garbage, sometimes we boot netflix just to scroll for literally 20 minutes in quest for something to watch before giving up
So looking to build a media server full of content, via legal means or piracy!
Another motivation is while I'm ok paying now, what about in 20 or 30 years time? Maybe there will be a time where I want to discard my credit card, but still want to be able to enjoy movies. I would have paid then thousands of dollars to streaming services. A media server with my favorite content sounds like a better bet.
Fuck that noise.
For games though, I have no problem with the state of things. For a while Epic exclusives were annoying, but I just refrained from buying those games until they were on Steam or GoG or something and Epic seems to have become much less aggressive about it now anyway.
Steam: still more convenient than piracy.
TV/Movie streaming: rapidly becoming less convenient than piracy.
This was entirely predictable, I and others pleaded decades ago that exactly this would happen, but people just wanted free stuff. And here we are.
Yes, the big media companies are often unlikeable. But US piracy gives up any high ground, and helps grease the push of further anti-consumer conventions and legislation. "Lawmakers, don't let big media do this latest anti-consumer thing (while we are taking their paid product for free)!" doesn't have a lot of credibility.
Companies logic:
- subscribe to 10 different streaming services to watch all the tv and movies that you enjoy;
- you like music? They don’t care they will shove podcasts down your throat just because it’s cheaper for them to produce;
- ebooks? Let’s make customers pay the exact same for digital products as hard cover physical books just because it makes totally sense;
- games? Let’s put ridiculous drm that acts more like spyware, also let’s charge for 10 years old+ games the same or more than new games.
Yeah punish consumers and reward pirates, that’s their logic.
Definitely an insane world.
For episode 2 onwards I could buy the season of Discovery through apple tv, which I did. I assume S5 will be on Paramount Plus which is now available in my country, so I subscribe to that if I want to watch it.
As far as I'm concerned if I can't buy it, it's fair game, if I can pay for it then I will, or I won't watch it.
With the suite of production-quality piracy automation software out there, as well as BYO media front ends like Plex et al, those who are so inclined are a long long long way past the ‘manually rifling through Usenet or Demonoid’ of yesteryear. One can simply visit a polished web UI of a piece of software running on their home network, and that they want every season of Letterkenny in 4K and it’ll be available to them within the hour.
Those who consume media this way don’t need to keep track of which steaming service has the rights to which property at the current point in time. Nor do they need to deal with inconsistent and increasingly Byzantine UXs of steaming service apps. They can instead enjoy a consistent interface on all of their devices with a single play queue, with even the ability to build playlists and collections of media that would otherwise be across streaming services.
I am significantly visually impaired and as such find it difficult to sit back on the couch and bounce between different apps and interfaces on my Apple TV. Were I inclined to consume media by way of piracy, I imagine that I’d find the experience to all in all be much more accessible than doing things the Right Way. All completely hypothetical of course.
The one thing that paying for and using streaming services has over the modern privacy approach, for one that has the prerequisite technical knowhow and ethics to pirate in the first place, is discovery / recommendation engines. The current suite of piracy apps make attempts to recommend new media to you, but obviously they can’t hold a candle to the millions of hours and petabytes of Big Data that powers…say…Netflix’s recommendation engine.
I genuinely believe that there’s a notable portion of pirates that would stop doing it if it were easier to consume content legally. This is why you see music piracy sinking deeper and deeper into the shadows. Comparing music consumption with movie or even TV show consumption has its limits, but were there a legal way to consume such content with a Spotify level of coverage, I think that it’d be quite compelling to these people. Of course, piracy is much less of a problem than it once was, so who knows if media companies even care anymore.
If I want to watch a particular movie, and it’s not on Netlix or the iTunes Store in my country, I’ll pirate it, as I don’t feel like signing up for yet another service.
Whatever gets the most clicks generally makes it to the home page. You can also search or browse by actor, genre and other data they've imported from IMDB.
No need to sign up or sign in. Just start watching the movies you want for free. Unless you feel obligated to pay, I'm not sure why you wouldn't?
Pop-unders if you even see them on your system are still a lesser evil than ads mid stream in DRM content or dark patterns pressuring you to install some horribly bloated app. Just click and they are gone.
You can usually download the video directly over and watch it later from these streaming sites. Opening a video file in the video player of your choice and watching it whenever you like, however you like. It is almost like you own the computer and can do whatever you please with the data contained within. Imagine that.
I would say the dollars are for the smooth experiences, you have to make it worth the dollar; otherwise I have no choice but piracy.
Baahubali is a very long movie that was split into two parts. It is not a normal "movie 1 + sequel", it is basically a 5 hour long movie split in two for easier production.
Netflix originally had both parts, it is where I watched it. I went to show the movie to my wife and found out now only second half is there. The first half is on HBO, that doesn't have second half.
So to watch one movie you need two subscriptions!
If you are in the US, you pretty much have access to every streaming service, but outside of the US, some people like me struggle to access shows from Hulu for instance, and sometimes the only viable option is to wait until a TV Channel buys the rights of the shows one desires to watch.
I haven't got time for that!
I want to watch the latest of <series I enjoy>, which service is it on? Prime? Netflix? Great. Disney? OK, that has a lot of content we enjoy too.
But there's also Stan, Binge (or NowTV in the UK) ... and wtf? Apple tv? Not really there yet IMHO though the dinosaur thing was good. AMC or Paramount? Now you're just taking the piss. One or two services is fine, but what seems to be happening is the old-school distributors are trying to get in on the game (NowTV/Binge etc) and the production networks are trying to regain access to streaming bucks by pulling a few 'anchor' shows off the other services and putting them on their otherwise execrable offering.
I don't know what the answer is. But I do know I'm already using a VPN to log into the same services in different countries to try and watch stuff, and taking a lot of 'free trials' that I then cancel when I've watched the thing I want.
Piracy has got to be easier! And when it is, it thrives. When paying is easier (Spotify/Deezer/Whatever) then that wins.
Spotify, Apple Music, Google Music and all the other offers basically have the same repertoire, minus some specials. You will mostly be happy with choosing a single one. That is what I also would to like have for movies and series. Why is it different with visual media?
YouTube Music has everything that Spotify has, but better algorithm imo. Instead of radio/playlist stuff, I can just pick a song and it will autogenerate based on the mood of that song. So if you pick a song that's good to sing to, you get other songs to sing along to. Play something from a soundtrack, and it pulls similar soundtrack songs.
I think this is the way to beat piracy; offer something more than just the song, video, all that. Steam achievements and "skip intro" isn't enough though.
There are things that I've been to pirate though - all the Sims expansions, all the crap that goes on Netflix for 5 months then gets removed, things unique to one platform that doesn't have anything else (e.g. certain HBO stuff), things with lots of seasons but incomplete sets of them.
I preferred the old days, with just a single cable/sat set-top box. Might not have been able to stream on-demand, but at least I only had to look in 1 place to record (series link etc) or work out what was available.
Various streaming apps are simply very difficult to use for me. Plus other issues: Netflix's 4K is inconsistent and has banding and artifacts that it shouldn't, for one example. There's a long, long list of dark patterns and whatnot which turn me off. You can't even screenshot in mainstream apps!
But with all these IPs being taken down and lost forever (esp. HBO), piracy and seeding feels like I'm contributing to the maintenance of a library. If we're going to spend billions of humanity's resources on these things, they should at least continue to be accessible somewhere.
The pros and cons list ends up pretty imbalanced!
1) I find a TV-show or movie I want to see
2) I go to justwatch.com to see if any streaming services or digital stores carry it in my area
3a) If 2 is true, I navigate there and watch it
3b) If 2 is false, I open sonarr/radar, insert the show/movie there and wait.
Steam/GoG pretty much shut down any budding game piracy needs I had. It's just so easy and the sales are so common I've got more games in my collection than I have time to fully complete.
Same for music Spotify and Apple Music cover a good 99.99% of my music needs. There are a few rare albums or artist who go against the grain that are missing, but I can live without those.
Books I could pirate, but the Kindle is too simple to bother - or I can just grab the book from the local library.
If paying is easier than piracy, I'll always pick paying.
Music is handled by Spotify and I'm happy with that, Games through Steam which I also like just fine.
I have a netflix subscription, but I rarely use it now and I don't think my parents do either.
I tried YT Premium.
I found it to be unwatchable. Too bad. I was enjoying the show (Impulse).
I have no trouble paying for services I like, but find the landscape to be chaotic, and am not into paying for one marquee show.
Also, I am finding the streaming apps to be absolute bug farms. It's bad. Real bad. I'm constantly having to restart them.
We’ve been trimming down our streaming services to just what we need for our kid at this point, and I’ve been beefing up my media server setup to support us friends and family.
I use streams for all sporting events because that whole landscape is stupid and it’s nearly impossible to simple pay per view stream the games/teams I want to watch. I would gladly pay per stream to watch any sporting event, it’s just not simple/possible, and I don’t want a package because other than nfl, I only watch other sports sporadically/during championships.
I don’t care about any live news or anything else so cable tv is useless to me. Also every time I’m in a hotel with my son and he sees commercials on tv you can see his brain warping so I avoid all ad content at all costs.
Many people is buying games from Steam, because it's convenient. Not gonna mention we have same prices like US or even bigger, because it's in EUR, yet we have 4x smaller median salaries. And still we buy games from Steam.
Netflix was popular here too, but recently (me included) everybody is switching back to fileshares and torrents. It's unbearable to pay for multiple streaming services and that's just foreign movies, if you want our local movies, there are different streaming services for it.
Thanks but no thanks.
2. Get an Ad Blocker
3. Buy games on sale.
In summary, piracy probably only makes sense in a handful of contexts. Like I’d be open to pirating the Weird Al Movie, but mostly because there’s an ad for it where he is literally advocating this.
An experience that has stuck in my mind: as a poor Eastern European who pirated everything as a student, after emigrating to the West, earning "western money" and getting a visa card and all that, I thought: "now I'll buy legally, cool, I'll be an upstanding citizen".
However, when I wanted to buy from itunes or whatever it was (10+ years ago), I was told "The content is not available in your location". Um, yes, it is available, for free, even: if you don't want my money, your loss!
Since then, I have had enough similar experiences that my default is the seven seas.
I have bought games on steam and gog, that was ok. Ebooks, however, are, even in 2023, mostly a drm-filled usability nightmare.
I do occasionally "pirate" old foreign content that just can't be bought anywhere but it's too much of a hassle (Docker with VPN kill-switch, finding a "legit" torrent tracker, etc.); might consider using it for mainstream content as well if the streaming services keep diluting available media or keep bumping up prices to an unreasonable level.
They hide in the shadows of the dark web, Stealing passwords and login info, it's a fad, web. But it's not just about the money, you see, It's about the thrill of breaking the rules, can't you agree?
Streaming services are the new target, Subscription fees, they want to circumvent it. But the entertainment industry won't let them win, They'll fight back with all their kin.
So beware, internet pirates, the law is hot on your trail, Streaming services are here to stay, no need to wail. Better to pay for what you watch and listen, Than to risk it all and end up in prison.
The law and order way:
- Pay $$$ for a dozen of separate services, still have a lot of content not available to you
- Be forced into using crappy apps which may or may not be available on your favorite platform
- You could pay for years, but you never own anything - the moment you stop paying, you are left with nothing at all
- Be prepared for your favorite series be yanked from the service in the middle of your watching it because some lawyers didn't agree
- Be shown long idiotic un-skippable ads 4-5 times per hour
- Be unable to share your content with family, at least legally, and often be limited in number of devices allowed to access content
- The content is available only when you are online and with good internet connection
- If the content you're interested in is old or foreign or both - sucks to be you
- Maybe you'll get subtitles. Maybe not. Roll the dice.
- If the company decides the content is "not agreeable with modern sensibilities", they'd just remove it and you have no way to access it anymore
- If you don't know which service owns a particular piece of content, maybe there's a third-party service that knows that. Maybe not. Certainly nobody among content owners cares.
The Arrgh and Jolly Roger way:
- Pay nothing
- No ads ever
- Get access to the content that is convertable to any format known to man and will play on any device
- All the content can be made available offline and ported to any device that can play a video or talk standard media player protocol
- Infinite shareablity to any devices in your household
- You get it once, you have it forever and can store it for as long as you like, for zero cost
- You can get practically any content, no matter how old and what the twitter mob thinks about it
- You can get it translated and with subtitles in many languages, in formats supported by devices from mobile phone to smart TV
- There are many specialized search engines allowing to find any piece of content that exists, and usually it takes minutes, not hours
So, am I open to piracy? Hmm... Tough question.
Piracy is theft. Full stop.
When you pirate, you are stealing from someone else. Big bad corporation, or small mom-and-pop shop...
They worked to create those bits. If we're not paying, we're stealing.
The reasons why don't matter.
After getting called on it, I never did it again. If I can't afford the solution I want, I work to find something that I can afford.
As an aside - I would rather pay for a product, rather than get a free version of something and BE the product.
The golden age of easy access media was 20 years ago. Its also today, too.
I like streaming services. Streaming services are great when you're into movies, and you want to watch 2000 of them.
R.I.P. Mitch Hedburg
I feel it's back to where things were with cable TV. Subscribe to 5 services and get access to the 6 series you want to watch. Or buy a "package deal" and upgrade access to services that add nothing of value. Either way, I have no time to watch all the content I want before it expires. And once expired I have the option to pay for it again while abiding by TOS to keep the now doubly paid for access open. I have yet to encounter a .MKV with such issues.
I used to buy CDs back before and especially during the rise of Napster. It made discovering new bands and music so much easier than randomly finding something new on the radio.
Then they started suing customers, and I stopped, just stopped paying for media. I've got MP3s of the CDs I had, and there's YouTube for anything I care to listen to that's not in that.
-- Video --
The whole extractive "Intellectual Property" industry can go pound sand as far as I'm concerned. The only reason I have Netflix is inertia.
-- Games --
I have bought a few games through Steam, and I'm currently a big fan of Stardew Valley, previously it was Factorio
-- Software --
Open source as far as I can go, but Windows 10 as WikidPad doesn't work on Linux due to breakages in wx_python
$20 or $30 just for a single season of a TV show seemed outrageous. Why pay $20 for a single season of a TV show when you can pay $10/month for unlimited?
Now most people are paying > $50/month for TV subscriptions and still don't get everything they want. So in a year that's $600. That'd buy you 20-30 season passes. How many people watch more than 20-30 shows for their $600?
All I'm gonna say is that I believe it's silly to pay for subscription services and pay for spotify/youtube or endure their ads.
Most absurd is situation, when I need to use software for business, but natively it has build in spyware and my data analyzing for AI (yes, Adobe, its you) and also there is no option to use it offline for more than one week, so piracy is only way how to have working software that I actually pay for. It absolutely ridiculous consisering that I pay for this software over 7 years.
There are no professional alternatives yet. Monopoly of Adobe with their agressive dictate needs to be broken.
So I got rid of the lot and now spend my free time composing music and reverse engineering software that I find interesting.
I regard this as time much better spent than passively consuming media or getting lost inside virtual worlds adversely designed to be addictive.
And there's no need to even consider piracy, as I don't require these products. Though I'd pay for these items if I did desire them, just like I'll pay to watch something in the cinema now and again.
This alone is a dealbreaker for me. Pricing is ridiculous for third world countries.
The competition and drying up of licenses has also diminished a lot of netflix's value. If you think of a random movie, chances are you wont find it there and said chances are steadily diminishing every year.
I think these trends make piracy more and more palatable each day.
LOTR and Peripheral on prime were top-notch, just watched cowboy bebop (sad they are not making more) on netflix. I simply am never in a situation where I can't find watchable content. There is nothing I can pirate where the quality improvement is worth finding a torrent/magnet, waiting for it to download (and hope it has subs, I like subs) transfer it to TV or connect my laptop or run a plesk server or something like that.
I oppose piracy because I recognize that I am not entitled to things produced by others, even if there is literally no cost to reproduce them. (Unless the author him/herself supports said piracy!) The fact that I make enough money to afford these things (when/where they are available), as I suspect many of you do, makes the idea of piracy, frankly, ridiculous.
Such entitlement!
Their products are also strictly inferior to simply downloading movie files.
I'm older now so am not pirating myself like I used to, but I fight each and every day to try and get momentum going for a Constitutional Amendment in the USA to abolish (c)opywrong and patents laws once and for all: https://breckyunits.com/the-intellectual-freedom-amendment.h...
And when it comes to movies and TV that aren't available on a streaming platform, I'll just rent it on Apple TV. I think it's like $4 for a movie rental. A much better deal than going to the theater.
> at peak monetization
That and peak attention saturation.
I still went to concerts on occasion, but the smaller the better. And the only time I'd buy new CDs was in the lobby after the show. My cash went directly into the artist's hand, that was the only way I could see supporting the art form. If I listened to anything casually, it was radio, and I got so annoyed with top-40 and robo-rock stations that I installed a better antenna on my roof so I could pick up the little high-school LPFM station a few towns over, where real deejays still existed.
(They are still excellent, by the way. A fresh batch of optimism every semester, passion for the music, pride in the technical aspects of the broadcast. I've learned to accept REM being referred to as "oldies".)
After over a decade of this, Spotify finally made sense. It seemed like things had settled down enough, the industry had made it easy to go legit. I paid my money, got my music, I knew at least some tiny fraction of that was theoretically going to the artists (though the more I learn about this, the more disgusted I become), life was good. I could enjoy music again.
Then Spotify had its Joe Rogan moment, and I went back to feeling dirty about everything.
There's a parallel story about movies and TV, though I was never much into either. Never signed up for Netflix even in its golden era, but I can see plain as day that that era is dead and buried.
Will I pirate again? Likely not; it's simply easier to do without. I have a big shelf of dead-tree books that I've been meaning to read, and I'm finally starting to get through them. They're DRM-free, low-power, and the display contrast ratio is second-to-none.
It's so much easier to buy/rent the video and get it over with. There are so many and better ways to use your time than to waste it filling up a hard drive with videos you will never see.
I knew of a guy that spent his free time gathering videos. He had hard drives full of them. He spent so much time on it that he rarely watched any of them. All wasted time.
Piracy have also become incredibly easy for everyone, popcorn time, fmovies & webtorrent have made it extremely user friendly, almost to the point that the user is unaware of the fact that they are pirating a movie.
I do have one rule though, if there is a book or movie etc I REALLY enjoy, then I buy it just to support the creator.
It's entirely within their rights, it's their business. Personally I question that tactic since I'd think it drives people away. The size of youtube is worth a lot.
I'm sure it's working temporarily at least and some staff are getting massive bonuses for driving up revenue. But does youtube's long term goals and staff member 5 year goals go hand in hand?
Despite all that. The thing I watch the most is content loaded on to my Plex server. It's just easier than dealing with trying to track down shows at all the places.
IMO what stopped music piracy was having all the content under one easy to access service. It's a lesson that TV / Movies studios haven't figured out yet.
1) Content needs to get paid for, if you're watching an illegally restreamed match then you're not rewarding people like me for the hard work we've done to get that game to you. It's not just faceless corporations, we're people and it's really hard to make a profit in the streaming world, so every viewer counts.
2) We don't decide how much the rights cost and on top of that we spend millions getting it to our subscribers (e.g. cloud providers, CDNs, developers). We've got to pay our bills, again, no streaming service is scalping right now. Delivering Tbps of streams is hard!
3) Many live sports re-streaming services really are run by organised crime gangs. I have involvement in some revenue protection work, there's not just hacking, there's also money laundering, we've even encountered links to people trafficking in the same organisations. I'm sure you think it's an exaggeration, but it's real and it's not just some guy in his basement doing this stuff.
4) The companies that invest in technology for this stuff often invest in things like AV1, FFMPEG, Exoplayer, stuff that's available to the wider open-source community. We, as organisations, contribute back to the world in other less obvious ways. Hurting us hurts the community as well.
5) Lastly, I presume that most people here get paid for their work, or at least would like to be paid for what they do in the future. Put yourself in my shoes: how would you feel to have your work ripped off? Oh, and then someone else profits from it? Hmm, not cool. That app you work on? That website you support? Maybe you hate your employer enough that you don't care if they get ripped off, but most of the people I work with love their work, so consider that as well.
I am sure people will argue against all my points, but they stand none the less.
What I will say, unofficially, I sympathise with people who cannot watch our content because it's not available in their market and I also have some sympathy for those who are too poor to pay. But I'd assert that 99% of the people who pirate our content are not too poor and have ways of watching legally, they just choose to go to the dark side.
If you want to steal, stop looking for justification. The choice is wholly yours.
But I'm not about to jump to piracy.
I've started looking at setting up a personal Jellyfin server in my home network and buying DVDs and CDs again, and loading their contents into Jellyfin. That way I legally own all these things, they can't be taken away, and I have full control over my streaming experience.
I (nearly) stopped with video games, since I've gotten way more used to buying games (mostly on Steam) and there's enough added value in buying game vs piracy that I'm willing to pay.
I bought a Plex lifetime pass the day after and cancelled all my subscriptions, except for Apple Music and Crunchyroll (for animes) who both fit their role for now. I can't justify paying +30€ per month for not being able to watch what I want.
For movies, I usually just pay $4 to rent it from iTunes on my Apple TV. If it’s something I love and want to keep forever I might pirate it.
I subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime maybe once a year for a month each. That's more than enough time to watch everything worth watching.
For everything else, like music, movies, tv shows, etc., I hope people at least try to see if a local library system near you has access to the material.
If that were true it would definitely get me thinking about whether I want to keep using that product at all, let alone whether I am paying for it.
If these password sharing crackdowns get going in earnest, its back to torrents for me.
How else do you expect to fight against the greed that exists on the other end...? By buying their products?
So no - while I'm not opposed ethically, my family would be very frustrated with such a transition.
This seems to be a sensible approach, provided you're not frothing at the mouth for new film releases.
Netflix is heavily subsidized via my TMobile bill.
Amazon Prime Video is bundled with Amazon Prime. I would have that anyway.
AppleTV+ is bundled with Apple One
Paramount+ is bundled with Walmart+ which is free with the Amex Platinum
I am grandfathered in with free HBO Max because I have internet with AT&T.
The only thing I pay full price for is the Disney/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle.
And yeah, when Netflix starts enforcing these multiple accounts; my wife and myself often work in different locations (different countries) so if they start enforcing that, it's definitely a cancel as we are not abusing anything.
I'm really not interested in modern media anymore. It will take my whole life to get through what was produced in 10 years or so that I was interested before I had children.
I do buy many games, mainstream and not, and actually play them. In the big picture, DRM is not as not as bad as depicted; the vast majority of games rely only on Steam DRM, which isn't problematic.
Vocal game DRM opponents actually refer to a small section of the games landscape (AAA with Denuvo, mostly), so it's really something players love to hate.
I definitely had DRM problems a couple of times I can remember of. Definitely gave me problems, but it was a small percentage of the games I've played. If there's a problem, I don't disagree with getting a refund and pirate it.
Books are another story. In that case, I think that DRM is evil without exception, because it's important for me to use my own tools on books, which DRM prevents. Differently from games though, there are multiple distribution channels for books, and one may find more expensive non-DRM'ed versions.
(movies a different matter as well, which has been discussed quite extensively)
But when streaming services own rights to stuff and refuse to make it available, it definitely makes me value real physical ownership again. DVD/Bluray, etc.
It's concerning that the power to just remove works is available.
It's a bit of a chore, but I really don't feel like paying for a streming service I only use when driving the car.
I really don’t want to manage files more than I already do.
Open source, free alternatives aren't just not broken on Linux (and every other possible platform); they're actually very good.
Personally I was always open to it, no matter all great services along the lines of Netflix and Spotify etc.
Before I proceed, I have to say that in my personal opinion piracy makes sense when it comes to media, as in music, movies, shows. I feel like application piracy is a different thing. Mainly because with an application you use it a lot, while media, you own a CD, you can listen to it, but it won't be daily for years (like Windows for example). I'm also against book piracy, with the exception of university books because it's predatory.
If I did pirate stuff it would for the exact same reasons why I would have had a pirate FTP server in the 90s.
In the 90s it was because you had to pay multiple fees (or had to buy multiple CDs etc) to get access to media. If you lacked the money, you had no access. As a poor college student, it made sense to use piracy bridged that gap financially.
In the mid 2000s you basically had to use Netflix and Pandora/Spotify/Internet Radio, I have to pay a few fees, and have access, or watch small advertisements and get it for free. At that point piracy would be doing more work to get the same result.
Nowadays you have multiple services, they each have tiny niches which is exactly how Cable TV works in the States, and why piracy made sense in the 90s to begin with. If you like 4 TV shows, there are probably in 4 different streaming apps you need to use. All with their own fees. To make things worse services like Hulu, and others are still going to have advertisements. Essentially you are paying the services to watch a show, and they make money a second time by forcing advertisements down your throat.
That's BS. Maybe I just don't like spending money.
There is another problem about ownership. Anything in the cloud, you don't own, even if you paid for it. $4.99 to get this movie online annoys me. I have no control of it. I can't resell it. Sometimes it's hard to even tell what you own. I rather have it in my hard drive, then I can do what I want to it.
Ultimately though, piracy is about greed and money, both for the pirate and the services that get affected. In the 90s it was about freedom of access. That's not as much an issue case anymore.
Like if Spotify is too much of a bother, just don't listen to it. Go to Bandcamp or 7Digital or whatever and buy whatever you're into. "Oh, but they don't have this one album I want," is crap. If you really wanted it you'd jump through the hoops. Wanting it badly enough that you can't settle for anything else but not so bad that you don't want to put in the effort is just you making excuses.
The front end has changed from xbmc to kodi to plex, but it’s been the same recipe.
It’s easier to see what’s available. New shows and movies are presented to me based on my real interests rather than what Netflix is promoting, etc.
Interestingly, this isn’t always from pirating as content may come from ripped purchased dvds or even sideloaded from subscribed services (eg, subscribe to hbo, download content from tracker).
I feel like the product is known, but it’s hard to get a business model working that’s legal. Kind of like a Napster moment. I thought Netflix would be Spotify, but that didn’t workout.
Tl:dr; never stopped pirating as non-pirated hasn’t been as good for almost 20 years.
Private torrent sites FTW
I also stream twitch with streamlink (stream scraper that pipes to vlc, blocks ads) and watch YouTube with NewPipe on my shield TV.
TV Shows and Movies: Yes, if they are not on the platforms I'm subscribed to (currently Netflix and Disney)
The tendency to compress an uncontroversial description of costs and benefits as they affect multiple parties into a unique point on a moral continuum to be observed by all parties is age appropriate for a teenager.
I pirate AAA/Giant corporation films/music
Digital piracy is not the same as theft, nothing was lost.
Music that im interested in gets bought (eg. Bandcamp) or yt-dl'ed.
I've used friends logins for a few streaming services, but I prefer to just torrent the content.
To me it is just like gaming and it serves as a good example. Steam made it so easy, accessible and hassle-free that I accepted their online 'DRM' despite initially being staunchly against it. I have no reason to pirate. Just about ANY game I can think of is there. This is what the content owners need to create. They don't want to cuz they don't want to share, but to that I say, tough noodles.
I don't really want to go back to the old days, but oddly I clearly could if things got sufficiently annoying. The last time I wanted something that was locked behind another paywall was new Dexter. I ended up just skipping it ( I am not gonna subscribe to another subscription within Hulu ). I don't need it. I don't need any of it and this brings me to my main point.
It is a luxury item. It is entertainment. It is hardly a necessity.
Though I might have a way above average disgust reaction to popular culture, the relevance/tldr is that some reaction to high prices and uncertain availability and other friction of subscriptions will be to consume less, rather than pirate. I wonder what the proportions are, and how they've changed over time?
Never been closed to it.
This isn't true just for streaming services. Software is another good example. MS Office, CAD and EDA tools, online tools/SaaS, email, etc.
My simple example is what used to be called the Adobe Creative Suite. We used to buy full suites for everyone who needed it in the company and update them with every release. That worked well until CS6, the last time we sent money to Adobe. The subscription-only approach put an end to that. While we still use CS6 (we own a bunch of licenses), this has caused us to look into alternatives. One remarkable example of this is GIMP. It's a fantastic tool. It has as much, if not more, depth as Photoshop. It does everything we need to do and more (Python scripting is incredibly useful). And so, by pushing subscriptions, Adobe pretty much lost a loyal customer forever.
The business equation is, at the core, simple. You have inputs and outputs. If you want to remain viable and grow you have to increase one and decrease the other. Subscriptions force you to bleed money every month just to be able to keep working. In many cases you don't have the option to take a break. Imagine 2020, 2021 pandemic timeline when, for lots of companies, the music stopped (the inputs).
There are companies like JetBrains who get it. If you take a break you are entitled to use the product without updates (I think it reverts to the last full years' version. That's acceptable. If I remember correctly, with products like Office 360 and Fusion 360, you stop paying and you are done until you send more money. That simply isn't acceptable. I think of files and projects I have dating back to early 1980's AutoCAD and other tools.
Another example is Altium Designer. Altium has been trying really hard to shove people into a cloud-based paradigm. They spent a tremendous amount of time and money adding a whole cloud layer to their product. The strategy was to try to sell the company. AutoDesk almost bought them. The problem, in my opinion, was that they devoted so much time and effort to the cloud paradigm that they caused serious damage to the product. Every time they touched it they introduced ten new bugs. It got to the point where you almost could not trust the product. We certainly got there. After over twenty years of supporting this company with multiple licenses and annual maintenance payments, we decided to pull the plug. Last year we begun a transition to KiCAD and could not be happier. We are also happy to support the effort financially by sending a portion of what was our annual maintenance fees to the KiCAD foundation. This is very similar to what happened with Photoshop and GIMP.
That said, I do understand companies liking the subscription model. You get to shift into a consistent revenue stream and can focus on upgrading software over time. I get it. The issues is that I just don't think this is the best model for the customer. If you are going to constantly demand money there need to be non-trivial benefits to someone spending that money. Objectively speaking, there are no major benefits between Excel 2016 and whatever you get with an Office 360 subscription. Sure, a few things here and there and some collaboration benefits. Guess what, the world ran just fine before all of that.
Also game prices are fine IMO, I don't buy the overpriced AAA stuff (that still has microtransactions SMH), indie games are pretty reasonably priced IMO.