Comment by fridek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fridek | Hacker News Reader

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In my part of the world (Eastern Europe) 25 mbps no-quota costs about $20/mo (~2% avg income) in the urban areas. Outside of cities the price stays the same but usually only (A)DSL is available, with bandwidth ranging from 512kbps to ~15mbps.

Accidentally, an average price of a DVD movie is also around $20. So yes, there are places where fast internet is affordable, yet movies are not. Unless you want to watch only one per month and give up your internet instead.

There is also a matter of TV series, which you have to wait 1-2 years for (poorly dubbed) in TV or on DVD.

Of course we are probably in something like the top 10% of wealthy places to live in. I can only imagine that situation in poorer countries resembles the one we had when internet was just kicking off and hardly anyone had connection. There was (illegal) business model of downloading movies (from Kazaa or weird warez forums), burning them on CDs and selling for the locally acceptable price.

Guess what - unless the price of virtual goods is adjusted to the local standards, and the availability increases, piracy will be there.

It can get even lower than that. Living in Eastern Europe as well. Paying less than 10 USD for a 50Mb connection.

If a $20 DVD isn't affordable, $20/mo internet isn't. (I'm also fairly skeptical that your average DVD movie is $20, as though that's the absolute lowest you'll ever pay.) Movies aren't a God-given right, so it's not like you deserve a set amount of movies per month.

Even then, while that situation is certainly more excusable, you're still the minority. That site isn't made for the Eastern European lower class who can't afford to buy a DVD. It's made for folks who have the money (which means they can purchase and maintain a computer as well as a monthly internet connection) but who don't feel like spending it.

Plus, I'm fairly sure iTunes has movie rentals in most Eastern European countries.[0]

[0]: http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3599

I have a cheap internet connection (16Mbit, ~$13/month), and I'm not a minority. In my country, having an internet connection that's speedy enough for video streaming is not a luxury. And yet, I can't even buy anything off iTunes, Google Play Store, not to mention Netflix and other similar services. In fact, we even got PayPal only in mid 2013 (and not even the full service - we can only send money and can't receive anything), that's how "open" the internet is to our market.

Also, my country is in southern Europe, not part of the EU yet.

> The vast majority of people will be using this to watch movies they don't feel like paying for.

I think this is highly biased towards your own ideas of how someone could use such service. You are, in fact, projecting[0] your own probable scenarios to large group of people you have never met, living in countries you've only heard of in the news. That, sir, is unfair. You should not stick with generalized opinions and prejudice, mkay?

[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection

Is there a discipline that starts footnotes at 0?

Computer Science. Everything starts with 0.

What journals use this style of footnote formatting?

Actually, I'm not a minority, I know hardly anyone who behaves differently in my country. I also certainly am not in lower class. I hardly ever watch movies and when I do, I go to the cinema, because I don't like storing use-once junk in my apartment. Try to put it in perspective of 2% of income - in US most people can accept $85 broadband but hardly a $85 DVD, even if they are earning much more than average. I would be considered an idiot with too much money to spend if I bought them for myself. The only DVDs I have seen anywhere were gifts, as they are easy to pick and fit in boxes well.

The only reason why broadband may cost that much is because it's localized and one can't simply buy EU broadband in US. There are actually good reasons for broadband prices to be affected by local economy, since labour and materials may have different cost there. That's not the case with DVDs, which cost the same (pennies) to manufacture.

But maybe I should have put more emphasis on the problems with availability rather than money. Having a choice of spending my $20 on cinema tickets or a DVD, sometimes I would choose latter to watch something at home. But here DVDs are released only when the dubbing is ready, often after a year from the original release. I could get to this content earlier online, but I don't have Netflix here, nor Play Movies, Pandora and many others. There were problems with DVD releases that were solved in two ways: by VOD with reasonable monthly fee or by torrents. Saying torrents are for the greedy is just a good excuse to prosecute piracy instead of improving the market.

Your first sentence doesn't make any sense -- There is so much more that you can do with a $20/mo internet connection than a $20 DVD. I would go as far as to say that today, in the developed world, an internet connection is a necessity; DVDs on the other hand are not.

How about everyone who can't afford a computer but CAN afford to hang out at the local internet cafe all day?

Maybe put.io is really the new youku.com

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