You can watch Pluto TV in VLC, and the MPA considers this piracy | Hacker News Reader

You can watch Pluto TV in VLC, and the MPA considers this piracy

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194 pointsCrypticShift72 comments

From TFA:

> First and most importantly, ads were still being served via the stream; it was just happening via whatever third-party client the user was using. The main difference here is the app being used, and honestly, is that really such a bad thing?

From their perspective, they likely thought so. The amount of user tracking and spying data they can hoover up via an app., which is not available to them from someone using VLC (or another player) is huge, and it is very likely that a huge part of their monetization of Pluto TV streams comes from the tracking data they can hoover up via their app.

No app., no tracking data, no tracking data means lost profits from selling the same. So of course they try to abuse the DMCA as best they can to claw back those lost profits.

Does this mean that adblockers will be seen as piracy tools in the near future?

People have been making the "adblocking is piracy because it interferes with monetization" argument for years. As with all these questions, the detail of "be seen as X by whom exactly" matters.

I make a point not to argue with stupid people. And instead, everybody I help with their computer, I show them adblockers, paywall bypassers, anti-trackers, and other user-enabling tech.

Computers act against the intentions of most people because they're not aware of their choices. So I help show them what is available and to use them.

The anti-adblocker crowd is just plain stupid. And from being a system engineer for many years, you can't fix stupid.

Of course! The ad blocker is creating an uninspired derivative of a copyrightable work. Piracy!

I don't see how that can even be possible to argue for. If I close my eyes and put earplugs in when an ad is playing is that piracy? It's no different than blanking out an ad that my own personal computer is receiving when I don't feel like viewing or listening to something on it.

By the same logic if I don't feel like having my own computer send someone else's computer some metadata about my viewing experience then there is nothing they can do about it. My computer, my rules.

> If I close my eyes and put earplugs in when an ad is playing is that piracy?

See: https://www.iflscience.com/eyetracking-moviepass-app-will-pa...

Then wear this: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51u1WvdSZHL._AC_UY1000_....

> If I close my eyes and put earplugs in when an ad is playing is that piracy?

There’s certainly a not unreasonable argument that it is if you agreed to watch ads in exchange for getting something. If you do a project for me and I agree to pay you after I receive your invoice and then stop accepting mail, refuse all emails, ignore all phone calls, run away from you when I see you in person and otherwise do everything possible to prevent myself from receiving your invoice, wouldn’t you consider that theft of services?

That isn’t to say I think all ad blocking is theft of services, nor to say that something like broadcasting with ads constitutes an agreement or even that abuse of ads in such an agreement wouldn’t justify blocking ads. Just that the argument is not unreasonable

There’s certainly a not unreasonable argument that it is if you agreed to watch ads in exchange for getting something.

It is unfortunate for some that this does not apply to online content. Because though vendors of online content might like to pretend that such an agreement is in place, that agreement is at best implicit. No one asked me, and I agreed to no such thing, no matter the fantasies of of the ad suppliers.

So, no; the argument is entirely unreasonable, and falls down at its core premise.

From a different angle, does this mean that when you visit a website, you should not see any ads (or content) until you’ve agreed to the TOS? And preloading ads and their scripts shouldn’t be allowed because those on metered connections would effectively be forced to pay for ads before agreeing?

> you agreed to watch ads

How many ads did I agree to? How long? Did I agree for them to harvest and sell my info to 3rd parties? And which ones? Did I agree to Equifax selling out my private info (including salary history) via The Work Number?

These corporations have been stealing from me forever using their lawyer thugs and endless microscopic print while having no option but to say "yes" to everything. Are you going to live without a cellular phone plan in 2023? Or internet? Or a car that is now a SaaS that tracks you via GPS and sells it to god-knows-who. Farmers can't even own their tractors today if John Deere gets their way. The rent-seeking is all a bit too much.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64206913

the farmers won the John Deere argument! .. i didn't read the article but half my family is farmers and they were excited about it.

That makes my pi-hole……..a bank?

> So of course they try to abuse the DMCA as best they can to claw back those lost profits.

Classic "felony contempt of business model" play

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...

For those who didn't read the article: Github took down the git of am .m3u file.

That file is a playlist format, and contains links, no content itself. The links are to places where the stream is legally made available. Main difference is the tracking embedded in the site/app via which the MPA would like you to view the content.

Not sure why Github caved - doesn't seem reasonably needed on the face of it...

And they've done it before[1], about a year ago. This used to be a great source for free (not illegal) content, though it was clear that some links were bad.

[1] Now disabled: https://github.com/iptv-org/iptv

How sad, when the pandemic was roaring this was my go to!

Psst. https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory...

the m3u still points to the same place though

> Not sure why Github caved - doesn't seem reasonably needed on the face of it...

Because the US DMCA gives them little choice otherwise. If they receive a DMCA request that looks real [1], the DMCA leaves little room for the site to do anything other than take down the content. The content owner would need to file a DMCA counter claim (which is part of the DMCA process) after-which Github can legally restore the content without also taking on possible copyright liability.

[1] and a DMCA from the MPA will likely look very real and properly correct on its face.

> The content owner would need to file a DMCA counter claim

how difficult is it to make a counter-claim in cases like these (which, i think, is a legitimate counter-claim)?

Not difficult at all, but the counter claim has to come from the owner of the github repo, not just anyone.

And we don't know what is in the mind of the repo owner, so we have no idea why no counter has been filed.

DMCA counter-claims require the name, address and phone number of the repo owner which is why fake DMCAs are a well-known method of doxxing anonymous people.

The DMCA is a very flawed law that is easy to abuse and isn't even effective at stopping actual copyright infringement from being rampant on the internet.

My understanding is that you can sue for damages if somebody makes a fraudulent DMCA claim but that's not a sufficient deterrent because lawsuits are expensive and often the damages are small or non-existent. For example, it almost certainly wouldn't be worth it for the owner of this repo to sue the MPA (if an actual attorney disagrees, then I defer to their opinion).

For the MPA, this DMCA is all upside and no risk even though it seems legally dubious. For the repo owner, a counter-claim is a self-doxx that opens up the risk of being sued by the MPA (if they think it's actually worth suing over) for very little upside. Which is why this is such a good example of why the DMCA is a bad law.

While the DMCA isn’t a perfect solution, the absence of the DMCA would have worse consequences. In that case, the reality at best would be that GitHub would simply take your content down with a C&D and you’d have no opportunity to challenge it. But highly likely that GitHub wouldn’t legally risk themselves to host others content, and it just wouldn’t exist.

> DMCA counter-claims require the name, address and phone number of the repo owner which is why fake DMCAs are a well-known method of doxxing anonymous people.

Can this be a business?

A named individual has to "sign" both a DMCA notice and a counter notice.

They do have a choice. If they follow the DMCA process, they have a safe harbor; if they don't they can be a party to an infringement claim.

It makes the most business sense to just follow the process in most cases, IMHO; but they can take a risk if they want.

Look, the developers went serverless, so now they don't have servers anymore they just have a monolithic website/app ecosystem, and any other access or attempted access is illegal systems intrusion, because they said so.

Never mind the massive Lazy Susan Scheme of unicast cloud bandwidth, collusion, and Berkshire Hathaway's money this whole activity entails.

This is not a valid application of the DMCA. URLs aren't covered by the DMCA unless they point to infringing content (Pluto TV has distribution rights) or circumvention technology.

https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/linking-copyrighted-materia...

Google Cache still has a copy: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:DrNxtm...

It looks like archive.is backed up from that cache as well: https://archive.is/x7Gfz

They're doing geo-blocking because that site just says "This feature is coming soon. We’re currently working on it! Thanks for your patience." for me. It probably only works in the US aka the default country. The stream URLs probably work worldwide. They don't want people watching US TV outside of the US because reasons.

The reason is that they probably have distribution rights for the US/North America, so if they're streaming to other locations, they can be sued. So they need to at least appear to be 'taking steps to prevent' such things.

Another potential reason is that they may want to have some kind of other user tracking to measure the effectiveness of their ads. Either way though, they could have handled this on the server side and made this much easier. It’s hard to complain when the server refuses a connection because $business_reasons. That would be fine. Blocking due to Geo-IP, a required Pluto client, etc would make sense. But that can all be handled with a technical solution.

But a DMCA takedown for a list of URLs just seems so heavy handed and wrong. It’s like they only know one way to solve a problem. Or they have too many lawyers.

Not to mention - why did the MPA do this as opposed to Paramount?

Doesn't Paramount pay the MPA (or is a member thereof) to do it for them? That would make sense to me.

I think it's available in most of Western Europe and Latin America.

Linux Mint comes with Hypnotix that contains free feeds for 974 TV channels world-wide, and 171 US-En Movie channels. Of these are nearly all of Pluto TV's channels, many of the free movie channels available on Roku, and even a few channels I can get over the air.

Given my browser's built-in privacy 'stuff' (plus uBlock Origin and uMatrix), and the block lists in my firewall, the funny thing is that I leak the most PII data watching OTA TV via the HDHomeRun app on my phone (I prefer their app to VLC on my phone). MPA needs to take a time-out, maybe catch up with technology.

> MPA needs to take a time-out, maybe catch up with technology.

Look it takes a lot of time and effort to make 12,000 completely indistinguishable superhero movies a year. They can't stay up on every little thing like "advances in technology", "changes in social attitudes", and "what legally constitutes piracy".

For those who are similarly curious, https://github.com/linuxmint/hypnotix#tv-channels-and-media-... says

> By default, Hypnotix is configured with one IPTV provider called Free-TV: https://github.com/Free-TV/IPTV

Looks like someone saved a copy - https://pastebin.com/DXGstrXV

Those are the channels from Brazil though. PlutoTV is available in many countries, and each has their own streaming links.

I mean it's been on the internet for more than a minute, there's bound to be copies and backups. Whether they're easy to find is another matter though, since the search engines won't index them anymore. Although there's bound to be various github content copies out there that are resistant to takedowns.

Yep, someone certainly did :3c

This is not the real deal.

I found a another source by searching github(hint: search for the domain name) and it has many US live streams in HD and it's not even geo blocked.

Thanks to whoever decided to streisand this, would not found this awesome service without you.

The thing with the ads doesn't happen for me though. Between the episodes on PlutoTV the browser / app would serve individual ads. But the video stream itself only has some synthwave style PlutoTV logo playing during that time.

It depends on the "channel" and the time. I get the logo playing a lot watching through the official app on my tv.

The logo is probably a backfill for when Pluto fails to select an ad to run.

This is the complaint from Plutos perspective. They are likely using client side ad insertion to serve targeted ads. There’s a separate VAST ad manifest which likely goes with the m3u8 url that has all the ad load and beacon data.

This doesn’t happen in an alternative client.

Note they could also be doing server side ads which replaces the individual video segments but there’s limitations there. Most streamers are still focused on client side ad insertion

im sure the takedown ended up adding to a charted metric, buried in a division quarterly ppt. Piracy is a stretch, at best its perhaps digital trespass(insofar as if youre not using the pluto site they are losing that delicious user data) and thus in breach of some EULA that absolutely no one but paramount is aware of

Plus, it's likely the Streisand Effect is in now full force and they actually have increased this kind of activity not just for themselves, but for anyone else with a similar, oddly inviting setup.

Piracy is a stretch unless it refers to violence on the ocean.

FWIW privateering was violent, on the ocean, and legal

It's not too difficult to figure out how to get Pluto's API to cough up the stream URLs, if you're the kind of person that knows how to use the developer tools in your browser. You can do similar things with Stirr and Tubi. Roku and Samsung also don't bother to encrypt their streams, but I don't think they have websites where you can watch them, so you'd have to tear apart one of their apps or get their list of channels from someone else.

Is this as easy as grepping the apk file for the app?

Just watch network traffic for m3u8 files. The actual URL is likely pulled in from a config when the app starts.

https://i.mjh.nz/PlutoTV/all.m3u8

or, divided by region: https://i.mjh.nz/PlutoTV/

By analogy, lists of over-the-air TV and radio station frequencies, or unencrypted satellite channels would also be subject to takedown.

My first instinct would indeed be that attaching to a stream would be analogous to tuning your TV to a particular channel, and this m3u is a channel list.

Of course, lawyers always make it complicated.

And the Streisand effect kicks in.

Never heard of Pluto TV before. Will be sure to watch.

TBH in this case I think PlutoTV (who I assume issued the DMCA takedown) effectively shot themselves in the foot. The problem here is that if you were to take down a bunch of episodes of a TV show, those episodes would theoretically be ~500mb a piece which means re-hosting them would be non-trivial. However when you're talking about a 50kb text file that can be shared literally anywhere, far more people now know that this is possible and can find the list with any amount of digging.

If PlutoTV was smart about this, they would have kept their lawyers out of it and had their engineers quietly patch this.

Some good content, unfortunately buried under a lot of advertising, which makes most of it uninteresting even if I have other means of watching it. The lists are easily available "around", good luck taking down all of them.

When you block ads network wide their apps play a generic PlutoTV logo loop while they should be on. Oddly my son seems to like the visuals and music on those so that's a nice unintentional side effect of blocking ads.

There's a 24/7 MST3K channel which I used to watch a lot

You shouldn't break the law. That said, if watching the ad-supported streams of these shows counts as piracy, may as well just actually pirate the media and not have to bother with the ads.

Heard of Pluto TV since the last LG OS update which activated it for me (or my wife accidentally clicked consent)

I love Pluto TV - they have Jeopardy! and The Price is Right 24/7 channels. That's all the content I need.

MST3K 24/7 too! I love a good 24/7 channel in general.

> How is watching a stream with ads, albeit on VLC instead of the Pluto app, piracy?

Surveillance capitalists starve when you cut out their invasive trackers.

It's free and ad supported ..that's pretty hardcore if you want to watch it thru VLC. They do need to make money to keep it running.

Sure you can download all shows off BitTorrent and watch all thru VLC.

You still see the ads in VLC

I would advise anyone to learn to search on github tv *.m3u8

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