Piracy in the UK: the failed war on illegal content
huckmag.com
huckmag.com
Until that happens, expect piracy, it won't ever be stopped.
Actually I think they do. The median salary is quite low in the UK so there are a lot of people for whom piracy is an economic act rather than being about DRM.
I pay for a Spotify Premium subscription. It has 99% of the music I want to listen to, and it works on all my devices - including Linux. I only use it a dozen hours a month or so, but it's too convenient not to get it.
I tried a Netflix subscription early on for a few months - before the streaming service explosion. It had a horrible UX, didn't work on half my devices, and only had a small fraction of the content I wanted to watch. In other words, it was literally impossible to legally get a Spotify-like streaming experience.
The solution? I spent hundreds on a movie/tv download server instead. A single torrent tracker provides everything I could possibly want, with an extremely easy user experience, and the content is guaranteed to work on all my devices. It would be cheaper for me to subscribe to a streaming service, but a decent one does not exist.
In the years since then the streaming landscape has only gotten worse, with content now distributed among a dozen different streaming services. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to that?
With piracy, you download it, you keep it. Job done.
After paying probably over £1400 for Netflix in 11 years, you’re rewarded with the films you want leaving, having half of a box set starting half way through. That said, in purchasing media, you’d only get 1 film a month, maybe 2, for the cost of a Netflix sub…
I’ve only seen one album get removed from Spotify since I started using it, so the landscape there is a bit more universal. You want music, it’s on Apple, Spotify, etc.
You want a movie… well. Might be on Netflix, or moved to Disney+. Oh yay, it’s on Prime Video, but on no, it’s for bloody rent.
This is why piracy will continue. If we had a Spotify of Movies, which is what Netflix was, people would pay.
I’ve seen a lot of folks on other forums say that a lot of their classic favourites aren’t on any service (people wanting to watch over the holidays), so resorted to the DVD.
The problem is the proliferation of different streaming services. Your friend recommends Slow Horses, which is on Apple TV+. Another recommends The Day of the Jackal, which is on Now TV. You want to watch Premier League football, so you need both Sky Sports and TNT Sports to see all the matches. Before you know it, you're spending £80 a month on subscriptions and you're still missing out on things that are on Disney+ or some American streaming service you've never heard of.
If your mates have all got hookey Fire Sticks and get to watch whatever they want with no ads and no subscription fee, you're going to feel like a complete mug for doing things legally.
... unless you have an IPTV subscription where you can stream all the games from a foreign TV channel with English commentary.
The idea with the blackout being that it encourages you go to physical games but Premiership games good luck getting tickets for those (even if you do they're extortionate) or go to local games which you might not be as interested in.
And yet the only growing sector in UK retail at the moment is discount shops.
If you can't download anything substantial without blowing your mobile data cap, you're not going to do much piracy; you're going to buy £5 DVDs.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/saving-money/s...
Personally I don’t pirate, I prefer getting second hand physical media (funnily enough the movie studios miss out on any money there as well).
They don't make any money. They are, essentially, only useful learning experiences in what not to do.
from the artist's perspective, it is quite bad money wise (https://www.rocksoffmag.com/the-impact-of-music-streaming-on...).
from a consumer's perspective however, music streaming enjoys the relative lack of "exclusive" content that other media suffers from. so i personally have no issues with its current state.
That's why countries like Russia for instance are so lackluster on piracy, they sure have ways to monitor their citizens but they know very well that you don't mess with entertainment.
Romans knew that thousands of years ago, you would have to be the biggest bell end to not understand that.
> five people were jailed for more than 30 years for selling subscriptions to illegal streaming networks.
Rapist get between 10 and 20 in my country, murder is around 20 and only assassination is getting to 30. In what civilized countries is selling illegal streaming subscription worth 30 years of jail ?
After searching internet, Seems like they were 5 and each got around 6 years, so it's 30 years total. Makes more sense, don't know if the wording was bad or my brain tired.
idea: digital property could be uniquely insurable, as a loss could be re-issued withe same serial #
It's hard to take the original article seriously when it's going on and on about "stealing". It does have an astute point about out of touch ham-fisted anti-piracy campaigns actually increasing public support for piracy. In that light, this article would have itself been better as a video clip.
I just couldn't believe it. I'd had decades of piracy through Virgin Media, no VPN in the UK and it just didn't occur to me that I couldn't do that elsewhere.
1. Open Steam 2. Search for game 3. Buy game 4. Play game
Whereas if I want to watch a movie, I honestly don't even know where to start looking for it, there's no simple way to just pay for it on the movie app, keep it forever, download it, and watch it when you want. You have to do this ritual of finding what streaming service it's actually on, hope you have a subscription to it, if not subscribe to it, probably find it's not even available in your region, and if the stars align you might be able to watch your film for the next 30 days.
Or you can go on one of the many pirate sites, search for the movie, click the play/download button, and you're sorted.
I do pirate movies quite frequently, but moreso because it's the only realistic way to type a name into a search bar and just play the damn thing.