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Comment by nasalgoat | Hacker News Reader

On the topic of pirated content, I was an early contributor to the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter, and I received my "digital download" today.

It consisted of a link to sign up to two separate websites to download a specific player that would stream the video for me on supported platforms only. Also, the HD version might not be available right away.

I checked and the torrent of the HD version had been online for 30 minutes already.

Why do they bother with this bullshit? It makes no logical sense and all it does is hurt them.

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I was also a contributor to the Veronica Mars movie Kickstarter.

When I received my email today and found out it was Ultra Violet, I was quite upset. I emailed the address they have listed on the F.A.Q. site with my complaint.

I backed the Kickstarter, but in order to watch it on my AppleTV I have 2 options: 1. Purchase from iTunes. or 2. Pirate.

The money I spent to back the Kickstarter could have been used for the iTunes copy. Which doesn't need an external player and is easily accessible on my AppleTV. The iTunes version may have DRM, but it's easily strippable if I desire to back it up for example.

Edit: Some spelling.

You kickstart something because you want to help them make it, not because you want a product in return.

While you could strip the copy protections that's a crime.

I'm not sure what is unclear about, "If you donate X, you will receive Y." That's not a simple donation, it's a pre-order.

That's right! I mean there are a lot of people who are considering Kickstarter as a charity. It's not a charity!

It's a funding platform and of course funding does come with the risks of projects failing, founders running away with the money. But, it certainly doesn't have to be a free lunch giveaway as in, "Hey, you wanna start a product/company and be a millionaire? Great! Take my $100 and make merry! No no, I don't want anything in return, I am just doing charity". No thank you sir! If I have to do charity, I know where the drop boxes are.

It is very clear. It is also dishonest.

That's a serious problem with Kickstarter - they allow groups to offer tiers that appear to be pre-orders and do nothing when those pre-orders are not delivered.

Kickstarter isn't going to stop doing this despite all the criticism. So people need to keep reminding everyone that tier rewards are menaingless. Maybe you'll get the reward, maybe you won't, but you don't back a project for the reward but because you want to see the project succeed.

Repeating this message may make kickstarter stop projects being dishonest with reward tiers.

It will also cause a significantly lower amount of investment into the site, projects, and overall would decrease the number of fees collected. So it ain't happening.

It's not quite a pre-order. You explicitly bear part of the risk, so you're an investor. But you invest in exchange for the end-product, rather than equity.

That's disingenuous. I am well aware that a Kickstarter pledge is not the same thing as a pre-order -- the project might fail, circumstances might change, etc. However, the $35 tier specifies that "You will receive a digital version of the movie within a few days of the movie's theatrical debut". I assume @b3b0p pledged an amount within that tier. Unless that assumption is wrong, the complaint is justified, at least morally and maybe legally.

Exactly, I supported the movie and I am glad I did, but I would not have done the amount I did had I known that the digital copy was going to be this Ultra Violet version. I would have pledged less or possibly pledged more to get the Blu-ray.

In the back of my mind I feared that the digital copy would be Ultra Violet. It was a gamble and understand it was a risk, that I ended up losing. I would buy the iTunes or Blu-ray now, but I don't want to spend more on a movie.

I agree that the tier rewards are dishonest and are morally and ethically wrong.

But "do not use Kickstarter as a shop or as a pre order platform" was reasonably common before the veronica mars kickstarter; the changes to tier rewards was before the VM kickstarter (and perhaps Kickstarter needs to implement another change to prevent people offering things they cannot provide).

We need to keep repeating the message that tier rewards are just suggestions of what you might get, maybe, possibly, and that there are many reasons why you might not get that product.

I help kick start something because I see that their idea is good and they need funding to convert that idea into a product. It's like I am being an investor, so the least they can do is give me a product if not a long time share as is the case with real investors and all.

So, no I am not doing charity on kick starter and if that's what Kickstarter is about, this charity, then it's basically flawed! I don't think I am asking for much! Idea of free lunch is unacceptable to me and I just hope that's not what Kickstarter is about.

There are non-profit ventures that I've supported on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo and I have never wanted anything in return. That's an entirely different story.

If I back something, I want the product they promised given they didn't fail. If they failed, I am fine with it and I wish them luck w/o any expectations that they would return my money.

It's crime only in retarded countries.

Defeating copyright protection measures is a crime in many countries - EU, US, Canada, etc etc.

BTW: Retard is a pointless insult. The people you are calling retard don't care. But the people who have learning disability do care - language like this continues to be used to oppress those people, to the point that even when adjusted for illness they die earlier than the general population because of discrimination.

Please consider using a better insult.

"It's only a crime in fucking stupid countries", perhaps?

That's crazy. How hard is it for them to give you a key for iTunes as well as whatever they own preferred platform is?

I backed Shadowrun returns, and I think I got a direct download at first, but I also got keys for both Steam and GOG.com (DRM free, so extra nice). And a DLC that's bigger than the original campaign. Some Kickstarters know how to take care of their backers.

I've also backed a couple projects that claimed to give me DRM-free digital downloads of video material.

In one case, what I actually got was a bunch of private web streams, with promises of downloads "someday in the future when it's all finished".

In another case, I also got a rather poor quality web stream with awful subtitles - eventual pirate versions offered a much higher quality product.

It really is sad that even with things like Kickstarter projects, legal digital video offerings still remain awful compared to what you can get illegally.

I backed an animated Grimm Fairy Tales pilot on Kickstarter and our digital download was an MP4 without DRM. So, there are people doing it.

It's worth noting that while Veronica Mars was kickstarted, Warner Brothers still owns it.

I strongly suspect they're the entity responsible for the distribution decisions.

It's a problem of separation. I wonder if the higher-ups at these media companies use their own products? Do they buy similar products?

The highest-ups have assistants to take care of drudgery like that. No need for the executives to waste time with a series of media players which do not work seamlessly with high-fidelity playback equipment.

I'd honestly wouldn't be surprised if most of them didn't watch movies at all.

I think it boils down to the psychology of "something to gain" vs. "something to lose". New creatives who are kickstarting and bootstrapping lean towards the former, and are fine with relinquishing control if it means they get sales at all. Old guard suits are banking on a statistically predictable return rate, and focus on reducing risks to that return, even at the cost of additional short-term profits or long-term goodwill.

Of course, the fact that Veronica Mars was kickstarted puts a hole in my theory. :) I'm guessing that its stakeholders are still partially in the old guard mindset, and/or they're trusting Hollywood's "best practices" for digital distribution. (They may also be under pre-existing contract restrictions for the Veronica Mars IP.)

I definitely believe it's the latter - the IP holders think they're protecting their content when in fact they are only increasing the piracy of it.

I agree. The notion of creating false demand on the internet by constraining supply is not going to work ever, as it is ad infinitum a cat and mouse game.

What does work is making content that is desired easy to get to and consume (at their own pace without delays before releases etc) at wide scale. People will pay for ease and they do like rewarding the creators of good entertainment and educational services. The better experience will always win, even if it is pay.

Where before content creators wanted everyone tuning in at one time for big ad dollars and network effect, now it is the opposite, they should want consumers to drift through their lands of content at their leisure and not want to leave. This actually distributes traffic and demand as well so there aren't huge funnels of bandwidth hogging false demand schedules (HBOGO recently failed on the last episode of True Detective, where House of Cards people watch more distributed because it is all available at once).

Counterpoint: Louis CK releases his videos for $5 and says please don't pirate it. People do I'm sure, but there are enough people who see the value. I paid the $5 because I want Louis to keep doing his thing.

I think of Louis CK as being more on the indie "something to gain" side, even though he risked serious money out-of-pocket on his first special. He wasn't constrained by a history of previous business practices and any particular expecatations of the returns; whereas HBO has been churning out comedy specials for decades, and would never have risked their business model on a DRM-free experiment in a million years.

On the other side the 'Stripped' comics documentary, also from kickstarter got downloads out today. One link to a website, and code for DRM free download. A delightful experience. I'm glad I supported them.

Wow! Without your comment I wouldn't have seen that Veronica Mars was released! I was also an early contributor but ignored most of their mails since they have a tendency to spam... (which is okay since that's what kickstarter is about).

So thanks for your comment, I'm just gonna torrent the movie instead of using my flixster code.

edit: I'm streaming in in Flixster right now, I had no problem (didn't have to download a player).

If you ignored the emails (like I did), you might not have noticed that you're probably also entitled to some stickers, and a T-shirt (if you pledged at the $35 level).

well, I did receive that T-shirt and was very surprised!

Per their last update today, it sounds like they'll hook you up with a different download if you complain to customer service. Probably something still DRM'd though, likely iTunes.

>torrent of the HD version had been online for 30 minutes already.

Same for the news servers. The TV companies could learn a thing or two from the efficiency of the pirate world.

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