Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com

9mo ago

Platforms wonder why piracy is spiking

7news.com.au Sky News Australia

Sky News Australia

It's not even surprising anymore platforms do this & act all Pikachu face why piracy is spiking

Netflix & all these streaming platforms have completely lost touch & they will lose more customers in the long run

To quote Gabe Newell on Piracy

"We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable."

91 comments

I accidentally pirate crap I have legitimate access to because I can't be bothered to figure out which damn platform its on. I have access to quite a few through work due to my industry at no out of pocket costs.
The times I try to actually search for something, it'll be listed on multiple platforms but 0 to 1 of those platforms will actually have what I'm looking for included with the subscription forcing me to manually check each one.
It is easier to just pirate.
- when you need the modern equivalent of TV Guide just to find a show …
  
  Yeah that’s called the *arr suite
  
  Looks like it's written by AI.
- Your case would apply for the legitimate use of streamio, where you can log into all the services and you can watch whatever through that service's credentials.
  
  What services can I connect to Stremio? Max?
- Rotten Tomatoes will usually say where it's streaming. Or a quick Google search of "(TV show) where streaming" will get you there. At least it used to, Google is shit these days so who knows.
  
  Justwatch.com is my go to
  Cerement linked it in their comment
  
  Depends on the country though as well. Its probably pretty easy to figure out for big ones like the USA, but in smaller countries its often a mess...
  
  That info can go stale quickly as content licensing changes. I've ran into that plenty.

Cable TV exists
Customers hate it and people start pirating
Netflix comes around, other streaming services
People happy, piracy goes down
Streaming services go back to the way cable was, increased prices, reduced content, started bundling shit you don't want.
Customers start pirating again
Surprised Pikachu face
- Maybe if we put ads in and take away the ability to download content foe offline use?
  
  NO! I've got something better!
  We make the ads guilt you into using ad blockers! Then we pepper your active streaming with ADs every 30 seconds! YOU WILL BUY! YOU WILL CONSOOME!
- Netflix comes around, other streaming services
  The (admittedly inevitable) appearance of other streaming services was shit already since with it came exclusive content.

I despise ads. I can't even bring myself to watch Netflix or Amazon Prime. If there is advertising, it ain't worth it, no matter how cheap.
- There's not enough of us, but I still don't care. I refuse to pay to watch ads. Also, I had Prime and they wouldn't let me watch high def with firefox on Linux, so even though I paid for it, I had to hit the high seas to watch content in high def.
  
  There’s not enough of us, but I still don’t care. I refuse to pay to watch ads.
  i had this conversation with my dad recently about how shitty everything is now with ads etc, and his response boiled down to "i don't care enough". sucks to see people being complacent in being subject to greedy corporate whims. as much as i want people with that mindset to care, i have no idea how to effectively argue against "i don't care".
- Mass market subscription services won't offer ad-free precisely because of the mass market exposure available to advertisers. You need to look to niche services instead, where a critical proportion of subscribers (say 30%) won't tolerate ads as opposed to 1%. Maintaining an ad-free option in such a case is basic business sense. Not only that, you'll find the ads-on tiers are more respectful of people's attention and intellect when it comes to ad content and presentation.

very much a convenience factor – Apple broke the MP3 sharing scene with the simplicity (at the time) of iTunes – video streaming started out simple but now it’s turned into cable TV, trying to find out which service is streaming a particular show, if it’s region-locked, or gated behind a premium upgrade, or just been dropped completely, or two services are still arguing over who gets the rights, or find out all the seasons are on one service except one season is on another service …
- Was iTunes popular outside of the US? Everyone I know hated they intrusive software and DRM that prevented you from playing the songs elsewhere. Don't think I know a single person who actually purchased music there.
  
  I did, back in... 2005-6? Somewhere around there. I'm from the US, so the first part of your comment applies to me, but at the time iTunes let you put music from the CDs you owned into your collection, and made it very easy to load music onto an iPod. I was 16, with some of my first disposable income from my first job. Couldn't get music easily from anything but CDs or iTunes (Or Kazaa/Limewire, but that's a different story) at the time so it just made sense. Around the time I realized I was locked into the platform by my purchases I stopped buying there and started streaming or buying CDs again.
  
  (Not US). I was burnt by Sony's Mini disc DRM BS, so when iTunes came along I recognised the slimy DRM and steered well clear so much so I have never owned an apple device much less bought music from them.
  
  Not from US. iTunes wasn't even considered/known as an option here, let alone having people using it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Dear Netflix, I've been a loyal customer since 2013. I've been perfectly happy with our arrangement. YOU are the one terminating our contract, not me. It seems you'd prefer to get rid of a happy, paying customer in the hopes you can somehow persuade them to embrace a higher cost or shittier experience (ads). That's a bold move Cotton. Buh-bye dons pirate hat
YARR MATEYS
- AOL still has 1.5 million active monthly subscribers. People forget to cancel subscriptions all the time.
  Subscriptions are a great way to sell a service to someone who isn't using it, and when they want to cancel it getting the spent money on something never used is generally impossible.
  IMO for something like a streaming service... if you don't stream a minute of video in a month you shouldn't have to pay anything.
- thing is, most of us should of known, they pulled this same crap back when they tried forcing everyone to drop the physical discs and switch to streaming only …

Guys running the one platform be like "they're pirating our show," other guy hosting a different platform be like "no, in this region it's us hosting that show so it's us they're pirating from," third guy hosting another platform be like "next month it's our platform that'll be hosting it so it'll be us they're pirating from", fourth guy hosting another platform be like "we're the guys authorized to actually be selling that show in this region at this time, so they're also pirating from us", fifth guy also hosting another platform be like "wait, they're also pirating this show only we're authorized to stream but we don't offer our service in that country"
Pirate be like "I host everything"
(Not justifying it, just saying Gabe was right)
- Gabe is right, but what a lot us fail to realize in Lemmyland is that it increasingly doesn't matter. $BigCorp is spending hard to turn it into a technology issue.

they first succeeded in curbing piracy before the moved to ruining the value of their offerings.

Because i aint spending 3 figures a month on 5+ different sports streaming services to follow one team. Simple.

Infamous implies somebody is famous in a negative way. If anything, Gabe is a shining example that should be upheld.
- "Infamous" - that means more than famous!
  
  Found the El Guapo fan.
- I think in this example it could go either way, depending on who is viewing it.
  Regular people would say he's famous.
  People running streaming platforms and other big corpos (especially Tim Sweeny) might say he's infamous.
- It's infamous among big business execs. It's famous for everyone else.

They have billions of dollars i have hundreds. I'm sure they'll survive me not giving them any of my hard earned money
- Yeah but for a publicly traded company, quarterly growth is the name of the game. If the numbers go down long enough, it's game over for them.
  
  Won't somebody please think about the shareholders?
  
  Fuck em
  
  I'm crying for them.
  
  it's game over for them
  Hopefully.
  
  They don't even have to go down. Staying stable or even going up at a consistent rate are both considered failure states, or at least unfavorable. If the rate of growth is not itself growing then they start worrying.
  It's insane.

The only thing that keeps me with subscriptions is the cartoons my daughter watches, because they are hard to find dubbed in my language (Portuguese). It's still more convenient to subscribe than try to find the dubbed cartoons online. For everything I watch I use my arr stack.
- Sounds like your daughter is at just the right age to start learning a new language? (Half joking)
  
  That's the best approach IMO but till she can watch a cartoon and understand it may be take a while..so in the mean time I'm kinda tied to streaming.
  
  I bet watching them in English with Portuguese subtitles would prob be a great way for a kid to learn English on the sly
  
  The language of Arrrrrr? 😁
- Depending on her age of course... But you can find SRT (subtitle) files for literally almost everything, often in dozens of languages. They're super tiny too since it's basically just a txt file
- There are still plenty of good deals in streaming if you have shifted to on-demand. If you want live TV or sports, they're out to gouge the fuck out of you. Luckily my Wife came around to on-demand only and an antenna. Of course, they're trying hard to take away the antenna option from everyone with ATSC 3.0.

Reed Hastings: "But our stock price shows customers love enshittification?"

i dont think they've lost touch, they've never been in touch. this behavior is apparently what produces the biggest profits for the next quarter, so they'll do it until they drive the platform into the ground, then just start another one and repeat

Gee, we've tried taking content away, raising prices, injecting adverts and forcing them to use our crappy clients.
Why are people turning to piracy?
Advertising and lobbying are the only thing these people know how to do.
- Not to mention removing features, like Netflix removing the ability to download media.
  
  If only there was a way for media to exist as a file.
  Alas, it's just not possible.

Happens here in Germany too. We were not informed via mail but via a message when we started the app on the TV (not even on a phone). Since there are two other people on that account I decided to not just cancel but talk with both of them. We moved one tier down.. Yet.

The studio cash grab explosion of streaming services is simply too inconvenient.
Subbing to everything you want to watch would still be cheaper than renting it all before streaming.
But Netflix has changed the value proposition and the stuidios are slitting their own throats trying to catch up.

Now I remember why I don't pay attention to 7 news. This article is an ad in itself.

Customers will notice the change on their next bill. Netflix has quietly put up its prices across each subscription tier in Australia.
~~Why is this even legal, oh who am I kidding lobbying most likely.~~ They began notifying people on May 13. Thanks for the correction @blindsight@beehaw.org.
- They get 30 days notice of the price increase. That's pretty reasonable and in compliance with the law, I would assume.

Case in point
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Not available in Australia
- yea that's the majority reason why people do it /s

I get Netflix for free from tmobile. But I use real-debrid and streamio to watch Netflix shows because the UI is better.
- Can you give me a tldr or a source for a tldr of setting up real-debrid with stremio?
  
  I highly recommend doing to on a PC or Mac. Doing this initially on a phone is buggy. Essentially Streamio is just a player like VLC, but has the ability to have add-ons. These add-on doesn't need to be resetup on each device you install it on. Just sign in and it's working.
  As for real debrid, I would pay the 180 days one because they give you points that you can redeem for another month or so of days.
  Good luck.
  Stremio Setup Guide Part 1: Stremio
  For Windows/Mac users - Go to https://www.stremio.com/ and download the relevant client for your platform
  For Android users - Install Stremio through the Google Play Store: Stremio - Apps on Google Play
  Open Stremio and sign up with email or Facebook
  Part 2: Real Debrid
  Go to https://real-debrid.com/
  Sign up
  Go to Premium Offers
  Choose a package and subscribe. I found that using Amazon Pay as the payment method is the most convenient (if you have an Amazon account)
  Part 3: Torrentio
  Go to Torrentio Lite - Stremio Addon
  Towards the bottom of the page, select the "Debrid Provider" option and select "Real Debrid" from the drop-down menu. This will cause a new text box to appear underneath.
  Copy the API key from this link https://real-debrid.com/apitoken and paste it into the "RealDebrid API Key**"** box
  In the Debrid Options menu: Check the box "Don't show download to debrid links" and leave the other boxes unchecked.
  Click "Install" at the bottom. It should open the Stremio app and prompt you with an "Install Addon" window. Click the green install button at the bottom.
  Optional but highly Recommended - In Stremio, click the puzzle piece in the top right to view your addons. Click "My Addons" and uninstall the "WatchHub" addon. It's an eyesore and it clutters your streams list.
  Now that you have completed the setup, you may install Stremio on any device of your choice (excluding IOS) and log in to your account to start streaming Movies/TV. Refer to the section below for Stremio installation on FireOS devices (Fire Stick, FireTV).
- I was given a netflix login by a friend, I don't use it.

I feel like what I used to be back in 2006-2010, mr. family pirate, although most of my family is glad to pay for one or two services, mostly Amazon prime, which is one of the cheapest. I let my Netflix account cancel from lack of pay some 6 months ago, nobody called me yet.
Earning money in BRL and lots of stuff having a base price in dollars doesn't help us much either.

invest in a nas instead of subscriptions.

they get everything they deserve.

The pikachu face is capitalism working as intended, instead of the corrupt capitalism they’re used to with regions of the world carved up/tariffs/government buying the product if you’re having a bad year.

I just pay Netflix because of guilty conscience. There was nothing interesting to watch in the last months.
- You have nothing to feel guilty about. Pirating is literally the more moral thing to do.

91 comments