This is why I'm uncomfortable with paying for digital things that don't come in files and can't be used offline.
The Rossman quote is very apt. If the "purchase" of a file won't give me ownership of the file, then pirating the file isn't theft.
No. It’s not a matter of not being clear enough.
If it’s not clear enough, maybe 10-20% of customers would be confused.
I’d bet anything that if we did a survey 80+ percent of users would think that the platform wouldn’t be able to unilaterally revoke their content.
It goes beyond “not clear” and straight into fraud and false advertising.
This seems improbable. Copying media (I've never hijacked a ship at sea) is a skilled activity. Those not constantly practicing the skill, soon lose it. It's not as if you can just ask somewhere how to do it... never mind the bad advice you'd get ("Just go to this shithole website with 1900 popups, postage-stamp sized streaming, and malware!"), but places like Reddit and other social media shut down any such conversations in a hurry. They're onboard with the status quo.
If someone who understood torrenting stopped 10 years ago, but feels compelled to start today, what can they do? Kickass is dead, Rarbg is dead. EZtv long gone. A half dozen others. Many of the private trackers are gone, but even those that aren't you'll find your accounts all deactivated.
And, the latest generation is just completely clueless when it comes to technology in general. "How can I torrent this, I can only use my phone! Isn't there something that works with my smartphone!?!?!" They don't own the hardware, are unwilling to invest in having it but even more than the money hit of that they're just completely disinterested in it.
The pro-copyright jackoffs might not have won yet, but victory's in sight and they're mostly patient (at least when they're not binging on cocaine).
There are a number of torrent sites still active and when they go down, others will appear. That's how it's happened historically.
Usenet is still alive and well.
Pirate streaming sites are still out there.
Torrentfreaks is a great source for sites, etc.
There are a lot of ways for media to be pirated. Operating a vpn and torrent, while not part of most people's skillsets, the tech has advanced to the point where it's not difficult.
There was a tech barrier, but advancements in tech, make VPN as easy as, install WindScribe. Register an account. Click a button. VPN connect active. (Note: I'm not advocating WS, they are a random VPN provider I used as an example)
That's because a killswitch is a dumb idea. It's bad software written badly for a consumer operating system, but the job you were asking it to do was as critical as any control process some esoteric barebones RTOS wouldn't have been perfectly trusted to do.
I don't say this because I'm some genius... I'm saying that I'm the dumbass who learned these things slowly, over years, by fucking it up over and over.
> Pirate streaming sites are still out there.
This may be in the same universe as "piracy", but even so the light from real "piracy" will never reach it, it is that far away.
Seedboxes are even easier, albeit less well known.
The point is when there is a will, there will always be a way. As things progress, more and more people will start looking into other options, like piracy and the barrier is lower than it was in the Usenet days, for example.
The ones that are clueless when it comes to technology will either have to learn about the stuff, or ask a friend to do it. The same thing happened 10 years ago, maybe not with smartphones but copying a movie into a flash drive to watch in one of those fangled new TVs that could play media from an USB mass storage device was certainly a thing.
I've slowly over the years lost whatever toehold I had on private trackers, but even when I had that it was just impossible to expand it. Until this last year whenever it was, I was happy enough with Rarbg. The night before it dying, I remember thinking to myself "I am so fucked if they go out". I think I might have been the one that jinxed it.
> I’m also wary of any private trackers because they block using VPNs.
Yeh, that policy's not great. It's only 50/50 that they do that so they can snitch on you if they get raided.
It's usable. Was a learning curve, and though it's been awhile it seems like I spent more time getting it configured than it should have taken.
> and somehow are developed in the open on GitHub so I feel like they should be fairly trustworthy.
They're like 5 steps down the "contributory infringement" hierarchy. Though that probably wouldn't help them in sued, because the punishment for facing a lawsuit comes as soon as it is filed, rather than after judgement.
"Cloud" service economics cannot work for "sales" of content, that only works for subscription models. The vendor has ongoing costs related to a one-time sale; of course they're going to screw you out of it no matter what lies they tell you.
I mostly buy physical media, although BandCamp got a fair amount of my money before it was eviscerated. The first sale doctrine still exists, as much as rentiers hate it.
Where I draw the line is for applications, music and books. Because their uses are perpetual. So no DRMs for anything. I'm not asking you to support new hardware (if I purchase an exe file, a wma album or a mobi book, that's what I'm stuck at), but no shutting down access because you need me to pay for the latest version. I should be able to pop up a VM and consume or use what I purchased.
Saas is another story, but that because it's their servers, not my computer.