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Comment by zer00eyz | Hacker News Reader

I no longer care that "piracy is wrong"

You know whats wrong, you price gouging me for 15 services that are all awful.

Unlike TV where channels compete for eyeballs, unlike the theater where they only make money when you show up streaming services have perverse incentives.

What is the ideal streaming customer: one who pays, and never watches. The content only has to be good enough often enough to make you not want to unsub and resub. I have to suspect that these servcies are programing this way.

It explains why free + ads is a model for better content. You only get paid for what I watch... It means that 800 hours of shit content isnt worth having up, and you need to have better stuff.

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No, free + ads is a horrible mess of perverse incentives. Pay per view is the model that aligns interests.

You realize that ads are pay per view. Rather than cash its attention and eyeballs. It's an arbitrage one can win if smart.

No, they're a third party fucking everything up. The person watching the stream should pay the streaming service.

Right:

Netflix is an all you can eat buffet... It's cheap and the food is half assed at best. Every now and again the come out with something good but your gonna eat a lot of mediocre to get your moneys worth.

I can pay Amazon or a theater to watch ONLY what I want to see. I pick it I pay for it. If it sucks I'm out 3-6 bucks for a rental or 15+ for a theater. Unlike a restaurant, you're never getting a refund or a freebee if the content is bad.

Or I can watch something like tubi. Where I don't have a true profile... I get to watch ads' to watch content. IM trading a bit of my attention for not pre paying for the hope of good content and being able to abandon something if it is bad with a minimum of loss.

Give me a streaming service with a reasonable amount of ad's and give me a micro transaction to skip them when I really want to...

> You realize that ads are pay per view.

Fun quip but not a sophisticated view on business models.

The big categories include: AVOD (advertising subscription on demand) is a different business model from SVOD (subscription video on demand) is different from TVOD (transactional video on demand).

There are 3 kinds of TVOD:

* Pay-Per-View (charge viewer every time you watch)

* Download-to-Rent (access title for limited time)

* Electronic-sell-through (one time fee for unlimited access)

Some business start with one simple model but embrace some hybrid for different content types or to reach a more diverse customer base.

* Pay-Per-View (charge viewer every time you watch)

If I pay 99 cents to watch a movie once that's Pay Per View.

Are you making the argument that me sitting through ads for 99 cents worth of value to the streamer is different than a direct transaction? The money per stream is still changing hands, Be it from my hands or an advertisers to the streamer and then the content producer.

Because of modern profiling you could make the argument that the no sign up services are tracking who watches what at a household level (shadow subscriptions). But that does not change the fact that in a pure ad based model If I dont watch no one gets paid...

Regardless of who is paying for the view, myself to streaming service, an andversiser or sponsor, me to a theater... if the product isnt quality no money changes hands. This is in direct contrast to streaming service where the ideal customer pays and does not watch (or watches the minimum)... where consumption reduces profit.

>Are you making the argument that me sitting through ads for 99 cents worth of value to the streamer is different than a direct transaction?

Are you seriously trying to argue that it isn't? You're basically arguing that making waffles at home is exactly the same thing as getting pancakes from IHOP because the farmers get paid either way, never mind that the meal isn't actually the same and neither are the parties involved.

If you pay $5 or $2 to watch a film and I choose to pick the no money ad version what IS the distinction.

Nothing really if we both enjoy the content. If it sucks however we both have choices. I move on to the next thing and enjoy it. IF you move on, then you're paying again, if you stay your funding shitty content and wasting time.

I think you're misunderstanding - when they say "pay per view" they mean the consumer pays with real money, not attention. Yes the producer is paid per view. They're the same from that point of view. But that doesn't make them the same.

The most important differences are:

* pay per view doesn't have advertisers to satisfy * people's time is worth much more to advertisers than it is to the average viewer. People are only going to pay cash for things they really specifically want to watch (e.g. Game of Thrones), not channel hopping trash (24 hours in A&E) - but they'll happily watch adverts for the trash.

good news, now we have paid + ads, just like cable

Why do we tolerate this? Shouldn't there be consumer protections that say that if you don't use the service, you shouldn't have to pay for that month? Where do we get our refunds?

People should be responsible enough to be able to tap a few buttons to cancel while they are taking a shit instead of watching TikTok.

Why should we waste any of our time doing that when they could just charge for minutes watched, like the gas/electric company. They're already tracking that data.

Unless you are in the business of making and selling media, I don’t see how you could claim that. The cost structures of utilities as well as demand curves seem like they would so different that the comparison is nonsensical.

Instead of telling other people how to run their business, perhaps people should be putting their money where their mouth is and create the media and try selling it by the minute, and see how successful they are.

Gas and electric charge for “delivery” as a flat fee, then actual usage on top of that.

If streaming services did similar, you likely wouldn’t be that much better off

Plus, but not unsubscribing, you’re reinforcing their current business model.

I am sure you are suggesting this in good faith, but I think that pay per minute would actually make things even worse.

That depends on how much you watch. It would at least incentivize them to produce content worth your time. On the other hand, it could lead to a lot of content being stretched out and padded to increase minutes spent...

Exactly. I think we've grown spoiled. I've actually gone back to mostly books from the public library for entertainment in the evenings. When I get that desire for visual entertainment, I'll go catch a movie. It's the same laziness I think that results in people not voting and not spending a couple of hours helping out with charities instead of not doom-scrolling for a while.

Piracy is "wrong" in the context of the social contract we're taught from birth: treat others nice and they'll treat us nice. It's the underpinning of our success as the human species.

Corporations are not humans and do not honor the social contract.

> Piracy is "wrong" in the context of the social contract we're taught from birth: treat others nice and they'll treat us nice.

Hard disagree: telling me what I can and cannot share with third parties is YOU not being nice. Me sharing things with third parties does not involve you at all.

Copyright (in the US) is not a moral framework but a ulitarian one - intended as a way to incentivize production of creative and scientific works by intruducing entirely artificial scarcity. But that's just a handwavy justification for the invasion of our rights that is accepted without question not because there is data backing it up but because that's what people are used to. In reality the need for copyright is questionable at best as humans have been creating long before copyright was invented. It is also questionable that we need to keep creating new content at the current rate when we still have (or could have without copyright) the entirety of creations from human history at our disposal.

I refuse to watch ads and would sooner change my lifestyle to exclude watching TV or youtube than watch ads. It is blatant psychological manipulation. Fortunately there are technological means to avoid ads and get to watch the things I want to watch, so I will continue to do that for now.

I like youtube premium because it is ethically correct to pay for the cost of the content I watch + a reasonable profit for everyone involved, and youtube manages to be a highly centralised location for everything I care about video wise and I spend about 20hrs a week of watch time. I'm not paying for a billion different services Disney, HBO, netflix, blah, blah just to watch maybe a few hrs of content a month on each (at most). The value proposition of all streaming services besides youtube premium is atrocious.

I don't mind paying for a subscription, or watching ads (though prefer to have sub option).

What I do mind is: suited executives shaking hands for exclusivity meaning that if someone wants access to everything they have to use a dozen streaming services. I also hate that you'll pay a subscription for a streaming service and then within that there are additional subscriptions to that service's partners so you end up paying for the base service + Y additional ones. Or paying for streaming and having a selection of the content still cost money to rent. And don't get me started on things being available only in certain regions (also due to the stinking hand shaking).

EU needs to ban exclusivity contracts imo. If Apple make their own content, sure, that could only be on Apple TV. But if Netflix shake hands with HBO on something to make it only available on Netflix...that sort of thing should be illegal.

>You know whats wrong, you price gouging me for 15 services that are all awful.

No one is price gouging. You can easily survive without watching ANY media. You can also easily only pay for the exact media that you want at the exact time you want. You can also easily pay for less than 15 services, even just 1, anytime you want.

People seem to like to complain about not being able to afford a luxury, which is more affordable than it has ever been in the history of media.

Edit: to reply to comment below, consider the price for 1 month of the subscription to be the price of the media.

Edit 2: the root cause of all these complaints is excessive copyright terms. Make copyright expire after 10 years, and there will be plenty of streaming competition.

>> You can also easily only pay for the exact media that you want at the exact time you want.

Great where is the three body problem available for its fair market value.

Wait it isnt, it's locked behind a monthly subscription.

How about the bear... nope locked up in another service.

I would happily pay fair value for these items. Marking them up like its blockbuster new release shelf circa 2000 or in 15 different pay per view services is ... dumb.

This is why folks stole cable and got cracked boxes. This is why piracy ran rampant in music for so long. Video has yet to catch up and its leading to a new round of piracy...

The DOJ went after apple but we cant reflect on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

> No one is price gouging. You can easily survive without watching ANY media. You can also easily only pay for the exact media that you want at the exact time you want.

It's 2024, we shouldn't be content with only what's needed for "survival" and we shouldn't accept being exploited in order to have access to art and culture. With modern technology and nearly free and instant global distribution art and culture should be increasingly made more accessible to everyone, but instead the paywalls grow ever higher and arbitrary restrictions are put in place.

Sadly we can't always pay for the exact media that want. The amount of lost works is increasing. Streaming services are pulling content and refusing to release it on physical media making it unavailable, and they are censoring content making unedited works unavailable at any price (at least legally). Expect the problem to get worse.

Agree with everything, but the way to do that is lower copyright lengths. A much simpler, cleaner way to solve the issue across all businesses with minimal government intervention and opportunity for corruption.

And the solution to end slavery is to reduce the maximum allowed enslavement length - I man to outlaw it. But in the short term that doesn't mean you shouldn't run away and ensure your own freedom instead of waiting for something that likely won't happen in your lifetime.

Did you ever care? What changed for you personally?

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