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Comment by mjr00 | Hacker News Reader

> The plan was to monitor BitTorrent swarms, identify IP addresses sharing content most frequently or long-term, and then match them to local ISPs.

Wouldn't the most prolific seeders also be the ones most likely to have a VPN or a seedbox, making this pointless?

As far as I know, the entertainment industry almost entirely stopped going after individuals after their attempts in the early 00s ended up as a PR disaster as they mostly ended up suing clueless grandmothers and preteen girls[0]. Then Netflix came along and made piracy mostly irrelevant, as it was a lot easier for the average consumer to pay $10/month for Netflix than deal with torrenting.

Now that piracy is on the rise again due to the fracturing of streaming platforms, I wonder if we'll see these individually targeted lawsuits resurface.

[0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/riaa-settles-wi...

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It's astonishing to me how resistant Hollywood is to just offering their products at reasonable prices and conveniently. We had a brief stint of it over the pandemic and now it seems they've forgotten it all, are determined to make all their bespoke streaming services as expensive if not moreso than cable, and work advertisements in for additional profits.

Like how did the MBA class become so deathly allergic to the simplest business model of all: Make a thing, and sell the thing?

It's because they forgot the middle step: make the thing worth buying.

Good point but I don't think they forgot so much as think it's much cheaper to just skip that step.

In the short term, sure. Once people realize your entire catalog is tired remakes... not so much.

I think there are some parallels here to the commercial real estate market, which is incentivized to keep rent artificially high because of the underlying funding model.

If Hollywood made the content cheap and easily accessible, it would be a confirmation that the content was not that valuable, and by extension, the salaries of the people that make it would not be justified.

> resistant Hollywood is to just offering their products at reasonable prices and conveniently.

Agree. However - Hollywood have been financially hit by pandemic, the writer/actor stike and other AI impacts. Filmie type people tell me studios are in troble. So, a perfect storm of pain points.

Businesses are trees in a forest. Infinite growth requires decay/enshittification, which produces tinder. When conditions are ripe, flames of disruption burn down old edifices, fertilizing the ground for new growth.

It's the classic birth/growth/death/rebirth cycle.

BREIN is run by lawyers, not IT professionals, and it shows.

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