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Comment by Tadpole9181 | Hacker News Reader

And why are you acting like you have a right to unlimited access of all content made, regardless of the economics, for $20 a month at the highest quality of service through one platform?

Things cost money, that's the world we live in. You don't have to like it, but it is what it is.

The unethical option is actually illegal and, as more people do it, only game theories everyone else into having to pay more. Feel free to do it, not going to pretend I'm a saint on the matter, but don't act all incredulous and morally superior. You're still here complaining you could steal oxy cheaper than pay for it at a pharmacy; just a different fix.

WRT unsubscribing, I can't relate. It's, what, 5 buttons? I do it every other month and it's never been a problem. Isn't this forum supposed to be techies?

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> right to unlimited access of all content made, regardless of the economics, for $20 a month at the highest quality of service through one platform?

Because the only reason we don't have this is a substantial industry devoted to preventing it? Which simultaneously has a terrible rep for exploiting its workers, the pay non-transparency of Netflix, arbitrary cancellation of incomplete series, and the general fiasco that is David Zaslav.

Heck, I'd take "all content made before 2000 at acceptable quality transfers for $20", but the further back you go the more likely it is that the only online supplier of a movie is a pirate.

(Criterion Channel Online is not available in the UK, which is another bugbear: copyright means arbitrary unavailability)

Because it's totally possible? They've done it with Spotify for music. No reason the same shouldn't be done for films and TV.

Are we seriously praising Spotify's business model and affect on the creator market?

Not to mention they're up to $12/month. Creating movies and shows is significantly more expensive than music, so it makes sense the price to a catalogue would be scaled by an order of magnitude. Not to mention the increased costs for digital providers for storage, bandwidth, and compute requirements.

I'm, of course, more than happy to hear about how the reruns of Friends could stay on Netflix since it's just a dispute about perceived value. But the rest? Come on, I know you aren't totally ignorant on the economics of these markets.

I think many people would gladly pay somewhere between $60-100/mo for access to everything either ad free or very minimal ads... nobody offers that. And trying to mix-match always leaves a gaping hole. For that matter, I'd probably do somewhere between $25-50 a season of a show, depending on the show, episodes, run-length etc. As it is, you can get close to this where Blu-ray box sets are an option, and that includes media. Easy enough to rip yourself, though time consuming.

The breaking point is generally around 3-4 of the paid streaming services... many people are going to have Amazon as a baseline for shipping... then you get shoved D+ with every kind of bundling (Verizon, etc) under the sum, then Hulu may or may not be attached... People pay for Netflix out of legacy... that doesn't leave much room for Peacock, Paramount+, AppleTV, etc, etc. It's just easier to say f*ck it and pirate.

Hulu was great for the first couple years... minimal ads, new tv shows same or next day. Then the partners all dropped out with greed as primary motivators.

Making a movie or a series is way more expensive than record a song

That's an argument for having a more expensive service, not a worse one. Even ignoring price, nothing on the video side comes close to Spotify when it comes to selection, other than Netflix back in the day.

Copyright is supposed to exist for a limited time to "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts." The current 100 year plus regime is effectively forever and not in line with the original constitutional purpose. With reasonable copyright timeframes, at some point all copyright will expire and then everything will be legal. The notion that an artist is entitled to extract money from each eyeball or ear that encounters the work until the heat death of the universe is unethical.

What does that have to do with streaming services?

Probably 80% of what is watched is from the last year, a lot of it from the last month. Most of the rest is from the past couple decades. The original US copyright law of 1790 allowed for 28 years.

I mean, I agree current copyright is too long. It's just not that relevant to streaming. Not a lot of people are looking to watch old episodes of Knight Rider for free. (Those who are, I salute you.)

Given that the law is broken and the entertainment industry is generally responsible for that, it seems reasonable enough to decide you don't want to give them money that they will use against you (perhaps making exceptions for indie groups). Once you've made that decision, piracy (at least downloading) becomes amoral. Whether you watch the stuff has no effect on anyone else (personally I don't, but more because I'm not interested).

You'd be surprised how many people watch Seinfeld and Friends on repeat as comfort shows. Old shows is a pretty large part of their business.

I agree with you, but that's not what's happening in this conversation. Nor are any of these services a historical archive, they are ongoing catalogues and your subscription funds new shows, as well as servicing cost.

And let's not feign ignorance by saying the overwhelming vast majority of things being watched are exactly that new content, not 30 year old reruns of Frasier.

EDIT: I apologize, only ~2 seasons of Frasier would extend past copyright. It started airing 1993.

I do have the right to do this. In my country downloading isn’t illegal, only uploading is. And rightfully so.

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