Nearly every person in Iraq is an illegal streaming pirate, sources say | Hacker News Reader

Nearly every person in Iraq is an illegal streaming pirate, sources say

torrentfreak.com

39 pointsCoBE1055 comments

“Illegal streaming” assumes that upholding the rights of foreign copyright holding megacorps is anywhere in the top 10,000 priorities for the Iraqi government. US law is not world law. This is like China saying that US websites are engaging in “illegal criticism of China”.

Well congress approved 500 million for negative coverage of China. So yes, US websites are even paid for shaming and criticizing China (often based on false information) and our asian enemies (like Japan in the 80s with all the Japan bashing)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1985/08/01/l...

So what? It is still not illegal though, is it?

It's a very old tradition:

>The Spanish-American War, what boosters called a “splendid little war,” began in 1898. … President McKinley sent a warship to Cuba as a precaution, but in February 1898 that ship, the USS Maine, blew up in Havana, killing 250 U.S. sailors. The cause of the explosion was unknown — and it would later be revealed to have been an accident — but both Hearst and Pulitzer published a cable from the captain of the battleship to the assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, informing him that the disaster was no accident. (The cable was later revealed to be a fake.)

Jill Lepore, September 2018. These Truths: A History of the United States.

> Well congress approved 500 million for negative coverage of China.

Can I get a pointer to this?

I just looked this up myself. It was proposed as part of last year's COMPETES act:

https://prospect.org/politics/congress-proposes-500-million-...

I only found articles on this from when the act was still moving through congress. But the act was passed, so I assume this part did as well.

It feels nefarious to me how acts and budgets in the US can bundle things like this.

I’ve done my fair share of torrenting and the like. Never once I have been under the illusion that I have some kind of special right to someone else’s unique combinations of bits.

If the internet wasn’t around people would still be copying VHSs and DVDs. Just because the internet makes it easier to copy doesn’t mean you get a special pass.

I did it for the same reason the Iraqis do it, it’s cheaper, easier, and at times unavailable otherwise.

> Never once I have been under the illusion that I have some kind of special right to someone else’s unique combinations of bits.

Copyright law isn't about your special rights to someone else's unique combination of bits. It's about what rights they have the legal ability to deny you to those bits. There are plenty of situations where copyright law in one country differs from that of another country; and neither of them are "right".

- An work that is still under copyright in one country at 50 years, but lost copyright in another when it hit 40.

- A videogame that requires a server to run, but the company running it abandoned it.

- A picture of a public place, like the Eiffel tower at night, which runs afoul of copyright law in one country, but not another.

- Software that is abandonware, legal to copy/use in some countries but not others.

Not following the copyright laws of the US (or, for instance, France when it comes to the Eiffel tower and it's lights) does not automatically mean you think you have "special rights to someone else's bits". It means you don't recognize the authority by which they claim they have special rights over your actions; at least as it pertains to the current situation.

Conflating copyright with technical inability to use a thing (game servers shutting down) highly conflates the situation, in my view.

Traditionally, citizens & non-citizens have the ability to ignore & shirk copyright to a high degree. It's a new infernal shit show that now it's no longer just a legal protection that loosely defends corporate rights to media, but technological protection too.

It's as if France can go make photos of the Eiffel tower self destruct, and it's incredibly fallen. Often what we can do isn't regulated under copyright at all- under DRM, every useless cad company gets to make up its own new rights regime, fast worse than any copyright system, where invariably they have all rights & own everything & can change the agreement whenever & however they like in any way that suits them.

Conflating the DRM technological dominionizing with copyright- as you do again and again- ascribes & conflates a despicable monstrous abyssal major horror to a merely somewhat damned existing minor infernalism.

> Conflating the DRM technological dominionizing with copyright- as you do again and again-

Come again?

- The first one is flat out copyright

- The second one is debatable, because it depends on the how.. but I'll give you that one

- The third one is, I thought, copyright... you're not allowed to take pictures of the Eiffel tower at night because the lighting for it is copyrighted.

- The third one is copyright (copying a piece of software that can no longer be purchased)

>Never once I have been under the illusion that I have some kind of special right to someone else’s unique combinations of bits.

To be fair to Iraqis, since Americans and others decided to illegaly invade and occupy their country for a decade, they are entitled to ignore US (UK, AU, SP, IT, etc) intellectual property rights in perpetuity. It seems reasonable to me as a 3rd party observer.

Likewise, copyright holders in one country should be under no illusion that their rights are universal. US law extends only as far as its borders and treaties.

Further, it’s a bit rich for the US to burn down the Iraqi economy and then expect them to start paying royalties to American Fortune 100 conglomerates. Frankly, if they announced they were giving away free movies to Iraq as reparations it would be an insult, but they even have the gall to shame their people for not paying.

Your own choice of words betray your misunderstanding.

> someone else’s unique combinations of bits

If you take a piece of paper from a pack you purchased and you take a pen filled with ink you have likewise purchased and you right the entire contents of this post on a piece of paper what makes your paper, decorated with your ink, by the sweat of your brow MY combination of bits.

Nobody needs a special right the ordinary property rights we have understood to exist for thousands of years are sufficient for us to agree on whose paper it is. I would need a special right to imagine that the words you chose to inscribe transformed it into MY paper.

People who pay for legal streaming of music and video are subsidizing the subversion of free speech and privacy on the Internet. The providers use part of their income to lobby politicians for more invasive monitoring of everyone's activities online (so it's easier to catch "pirates") and also fight against any means of preserving one's privacy online.

All politicians who suggest to ban encryption online (to protect the children) are sponsored by the music and film industry.

All VPN provides that don't keep logs are stopped from accepting payment for their service through credit/debit cards and PayPal (because streaming providers can't track "pirates" if there are no logs, so they go to the banks and ask the VPN provider to be banned from accepting bank cards).

> People who pay for legal streaming of music and video are subsidizing the subversion of free speech and privacy on the Internet.

So paying for a service that has cost the provider labor, effort and money is a disservice to society, versus stealing it? The verbal gymnastics are fantastic

> So paying for a service that has cost the provider labor, effort and money is a disservice to society, versus stealing it?

Well, the GP comment might be worded a bit too direct, but that is actually the truth for the time being. It didn't have to be this way, but that's a separate discussion.

The same can be said for slave or other unethically produced goods. Should you buy electronics devices made of conflict minerals (usually cobalt from slave child workers in Congo)? By paying for it, you are sponsoring their further exploitation.

> The same can be said for slave or other unethically produced goods. Should you buy electronics devices made of conflict minerals (usually cobalt from slave child workers in Congo)?

Is it possible to even know if some electronics are built/ sourced ethically?

More like paying for a service that a company chose to put X amount of dollars in is not automatically a service to society.

I might pay someone $1000 for a fruit basket, but society is certainly served better if I put that money towards someone's lifesaving surgery instead.

Second this. In our current era the copyright owners (usually not even the authors themselves) are the ones lobbying for increasing surveillance to encroach on the fundamental rights to speech and information. They are also lobbying for ever-lengthening copyright. By paying, you are sponsoring their actions. We should also reform the political system to make it less susceptible to lobbying, but that's another discussion.

The US government should be subsidizing it, best propaganda there is.

'Merica bad blah blah -- I don't have the heart to tell you about the state of propaganda in the Arab world.

Perhaps propaganda is too provocative a word, but the cultural hegemony of the US is real and should be, from the US government perspective, preserved. The US has lost a lot of soft power over the past few decades (Iraq/trump as the primary drivers), exporting culture through movies and television is an easy win.

All that to say I don't think the other commenter meant the US is bad necessarily, just that this is valuable to the US and her interests.

The links between the CIA/DoD and Hollywood are well documented:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...

They help with movies like Iron Man and Transformers by lending equipment and so forth. It isn't a bad thing.

Sadly, Hollywood is in decline and is more likely to show the US in a bad light than good at the moment. The loss of soft power is.. disconcerting.

It is?

The same is true for Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and probably other countries in the region. Most people there find it stupid and a "sign of weakness" to pay for digital content. Not only media, but software as well.

Their government reflects their citizens behaviors.

They should be glad the stupid westerners are paying. Content creators need to be paid to have an incentive to make new content, take that away and there is nothing for these leeches to steal.

You can pay all you want, but they can take your show down at any time.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1161382179/hbo-max-disappeari...

I don’t really see the problem with that.

The whole streaming model is a sort of rental situation and I can just cancel and try another service.

> Content creators need to be paid to have an incentive to make new content

Traditionally they do it so that women will have sex with them.

It's not like there was a shortage of new content 1000 years ago.

How many new books, songs, and videos are published everyday now. We have never had more new content.

And nearly 100% of it is created with no expectation of earning any money.

You might be surprised to know how many artists of the past were directly supported by rich people.

Bravo!

Kinopoisk and Amediateka (legal places to watch content) grew a lot before 2022. Netflix launch there was a success too. Now there's no Netflix and shows are being pulled off Kinopoisk.

I guess there's not a lot of paid content in Iraq too.

Rutracker is a great achievement of these people. It's a traditional style torrent forum that is still thriving in today's internet and has proven itself resilient to government efforts to take it down.

The bit that really stands out

> And since more than a third of all Iraqis are under 14, a considerable ...

Wow that’s quite interesting.

War sucks.

Let's bomb and destroy a county for twenty years and then get mad that they aren't paying for Netflix.

Maybe the entertainment industry should go back to making money on quality live performances and theatrical events (large-screen IMAX etc.) and stop trying to control all the low-res streaming video on the Internet for nickels and dimes?

I don’t think people want to go to the movies that much. I don’t.

Surely, the DVDs the US troops bought in the market when they were there were 100% legit... The mendacity of the producers and manufacturers has to be off the charts when you can't even let the Iraqi market slip through your fist.

Tut. As though copyright were but a gentleman’s agreement. How uncouth.

A honest question: based on the title, are there legal streaming pirates?

Despotic empires. These people are shameless. Does anyone think hardly any of these folks in Iraq would be able to afford this content if it weren't free? Do they really think it devalues their content globally?

I remember reading about Soviet era pedaling of American films in Soviet countries. I guess that was piracy too…

I wonder how many places there are where there are few if any viable legal options?

Looks like they got some freedom in the end.

Oh the flag flies high in the US too. As long as they do dumb stuff like no password sharing or country based content, piracy shall be on.

I miss broadcasting and only 4 channels. We kind of lost something when we decided we didn't like that model.

14-20 minutes of commercials per hour was lost.

Hulu enters the chat. Hulu drives me bonkers. I pay a monthly fee for it, and yet it feels like there's more commercials on it than there are on broadcast tv.

Yes. But also less choice-overload, more consistency of product, less craziness.

I've got 6 streaming sources in my economy fighting over HBO, Disney and the others. I cannot predict a-priori where a hit show winds up, or if it even makes my country, nor if its kept or dropped. In the days of 4 majors, the volume of production was lower but the overall production quality was comparable, and the consistency of product was far, far better.

We certainly did not.

Good for them.

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