If you follow some of the links to pirate sites in the article you'll get redirected to some anti-piracy site which amongst other things tells you this:
Bitch ... that's literally the reason I pirate.
Now only 1400$ a month to watch any show at 480p! Upgrade now to 2100$ per month for the high resolution videos? Can't afford it? Just get another job you lazy hobo!
Not so fast now! High resolution video only available on edge on windows
unintelligible screaming
Or, fill your phones, laptop and streaming devices with 1000 of our proprietary apps! Your personal information and viewing habits get sent 1000 ways from Sunday thanks to all the Privacy Policies you agreed to~
Uh, ok
The problem isn't the number of providers, the problem is exclusive licensing deals.
If it was like music, then (theoretically), more choice is better. AFAIK all the platforms have pretty much all the music, so there is some choice available.
With TV and film, it's so fractured that it's literally easier to just pirate things, even for shows I (potentially) have ad-free paid access to already. With Stremio + Torrentio + a Debrid service, I just launch one app and everything's available in seconds. With paid services, I need to search Netflix, then Prime, then CBC Gem, by which point I'd already be watching.
Plus, torrentio lets me pick the video quality I want, so I can force 4K H265 on my big screen for films or just pop on a 720p H264 on my small underpowered laptop (that can't decode H265 fast enough for smooth playback).
It's not even about price, it's just a better experience to pirate. And that's a Big Problem for the industry.
They keep telling us that we can’t own or preserve media. We strongly disagree.
Have they considered offering better content and services than the free options?
Gabe said it best! "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."
I've dropped something like 5 services in the last year and a half no the last year, due to the declining quality of their offerings, both in user interface, user experience, and content. EDIT: And price hikes!
So every movie/show for less than $50/year + time spent setting up arrs lol
Honestly, this assumes that the content is even worth that. The older I get, the more conscious I am that my time left is constantly shrinking. Do I really wanna spend 3 hours watching a shitty movie? Do I really wanna spend 6-12 hours watching a shitty season of a shitty show? Nah, I'd rather enjoy an active activity than passively pass the time. I'll pay a little for the little amount of content I care about at a time to be presented in a convenient way. I'm probably not gonna pirate until they make it impossible to cycle between services, and I'm sure that's coming within a few years. Get ready for 2 year contracts for Netflix, $8/month ("for the first 6 months" in tiny print).
I think I’m too young and naive to think like that haha
For now. My knees and back ache, I don't understand a lot of new slang and memes, I have pairs of "good socks", and it'll all happen to you one day too.
Thanks grandpa! I’m kidding I’m kidding, I know, my time will come, not looking forward to it
Even that cost and arrs aren't strictly necessary. For those who like to binge their shows, most of them get a "complete" version on most good torrent sites once they're done releasing (let's not get started on the cousin-fucking yeehaw lissencephalic level of thinking it takes to release streamed shows weekly). Download those, watch them, preserve what you think you'll rewatch in the future then delete the rest. So long as your machine has a good few terrabytes it'll last some time.
Yeah I referred to usenet by default that’s why the cost 😅
Fair. I'd assumed it was a rough amount for the electricity bill increase for running a home server
In fact the easier option is anti-piracy technology. As shown by the continued investment in various DRM vendor offerings. Competing on service quality is very hard.
If they can't make money while they're charging us, how are the pirates so good at it?
sparking concerns on Wall Street that the services will never be as profitable as cable once was
Obligatory fuck Wall Street
All my homies hate wall street
Yeah this was the entire reason streaming was successful. It was cheaper than cable. Did they think more money would appear from nothing?
They always think that.
Money from nothing and the clicks for free *guitar riff*
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don't restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
Piracy is about ease of use (it's getting even easier), and about value. DRM has repeatedly been shown to hurt only the people who try to pay for legitimate access. Not a single time has it prevented me from getting a copy of something if I wanted to, and it's clearly not stopping people from providing those copies or streams.
So stop wasting bathtubs of money on stopping piracy, but maybe take a few less buckets of money from consumers in exchange for your service. As long as you price it such that the cost of being legit can't compete with the ease of use and value from piracy, some folks aren't going to make the choice you want them to.
Some folks won't be able to spend on your service anyway, because they just can't afford it - but they still might buy other merchandise, they can still spread how great your show is to their friends who possibly will subscribe to your service, but regardless you aren't going to get their dollars no matter what you do. So stop trying.
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don't restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
They had achieved this just a short time ago, and their subscriptions and profit reflected that consumers were happy with the offerings. But the studios wanted MORE, and now everything is fragmented across a dozen different services with increased subscription fees, and geo-locks so you can't share accounts. I was paying almost $100 per month for subscriptions at one point, and then they fragmented it further and I said "fuck it, I'm out!". I cancelled everything. They think they can endlessly exploit their consumers, and maybe there is a sub-section of them that will endure never ending fragmentation and price increases, but I'm not one of them. Bye!
What's a reasonable price to you? Can you apply this same value to everyone? Seems like just about anything is easy to access through various services except for maybe some niche stuff. I don't think being "easy" is quite enough. People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.
140$ to have all streaming apps, on many different app, is not reasonable.
Do you need all of them at once? It's ok to rotate. I subscribe to different things at different times. I still download stuff if, either what i have access to isn't good enough or if i just can't find what I'm looking for through conventional means.
Needing to rotate just makes it inconvenient. More inconvenient than pirating unfortunately
Dunno. Less than what things cost now? I think knocking down the geographic restrictions and letting people watch it on any device or OS that can connect are likely bigger fights than pricing, if the industry actually cared to solve the problem.
It's not as if we don't have examples of this. Yes, some people still pirate music. Roughly 20 years ago, almost literally everyone with the knowhow was pirating music. (And with services like kazaa, emule, etc, it took very little knowhow)
You know what didn't solve it? Prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM.
What solved it was when Apple started selling legit music for 99 cents per track, and keeping album costs reasonable. (Much as I hate to give apple any credit.) Spotify, amazon, etc all got on board, and now almost no one pirates music. (I pre-apologize for whatever detail I misremembered there - that was a long time ago.)
Am I saying that exact model will apply to video streaming services? No, but what's not going to do it is prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM. We have decades of proof of this.
People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.
Some people will pirate no matter what. You can worry about them, or you can worry about everybody else. At some point (and I suspect we're well past it) the return on investment has got to start looking pretty bad for all the money and technology they have tried to throw at piracy.
Thanks for the reply! Valid points. I was one of the ones that downloaded a ton of music before it was available at all, back in the Napster days. It's harder for some reason with video. With the music they can just throw everyone's stuff on there but video for some reason can only go to maybe a couple of services which really limits what some people have access to.
I don't worry about the ones pirating at all, lol. I'm actually looking into setting up arr apps but my setup is not conventional so it will take some fiddling.
Sorry I didn't mean you personally. I was speaking generally to the content providers. 😁
We managed it for music streaming for the most part.
Say it louder with me for the people in the back.
Piracy is not stealing.
"If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing."
I gotta say I love this meme. I think about it every time a tech company does something really scummy to take away features and products that people have purchased (and not rented/leased).
I wouldn't ever buy the content so it's not a lost sale either. All I've done is copy a file. gasp
You're not allowed to buy the content anyways. You're only allowed to pay for the illusion of ownership, until they decide they don't want to host it anymore, and then you lose it. They're such bullshit artists that they redefine common words like "buy" and "own" in their ToS.
I believe their justification would be that you aquiring the media is a definite loss of sale vs you not subbing/buying the media is a potential sale in the future.
Edit: Not my opinion. Just imagining how they would justify it before court should it come to it.
Which is stupid, because I’ll happily buy content I like with the guarantee it’ll never be taken from me. That’s not a real risk with physical media so why should that be acceptable with digital media?
He may have been an asshole but Steve Jobs said it best:
Customers want to own their content
And to reuse the same Gaben quote often repeated here:
Piracy is an issue of service, not price.
"Customers want to own their content". It's amazing to me that execs don't grasp this? Or that they think if they stop allowing it people will stop caring, but maybe they will eventually. But it seems obvious, I've know many families that had massive dvd collections they were proud of. Bookshelves with dozens of books they probably never even read. It's just comforting to have a thing and know it's yours.
Every development in business consolidates their power and increases anxiety for the people.
My theory is they're just trying to stifle the ability to own any content to normalize the concept of not owning content, which over time will make the masses complacent.
By that same rational: My not getting a raise is a lost sale because if I had more money I would buy more. So is corporate profit a lost sale?
i dunno i heard that you wouldn't steal a car
Correct. I wouldn’t steal a car. But I would absolutely make a perfect copy of a car for free.
Just stopped in to say fuck you to the greedy motherfuckers who created a market for sharing massively overpriced content and now cry all over their piles of money cause they are BIGGER piles of money.
Which is to say: "Fuck you".
What about the small, local services that are just trying to pay the broadcast production bills and make a little cash to become viable businesses?
Fuck those people too?
Because these piracy services also affect them. These services restream the content taking away revenue from the small streaming services. In many cases we're talking about volumes less than 100. So these restream services pop up, illegally use trademarks and copyrighted materials to advertise, and can reduce volumes enough that they are no longer viable.
Sometimes these things affect regular people trying to make life work too. Not just billionaire assholes who legitimately deserve the criticism.
Would you really put the blame on piracy for that when there are conglomerates manipulating the entire market? I'm not doubting they exist, but can you name a small business streaming service that would be affected by pirate services? I have never heard of such a company. I've seen small streaming services utilized by libraries but they are on government contracts and tax funded as far as I know.
Local motorsports in the US.
It's a whack-a-mole of services which restream content, but the piracy services are also subscription based.
Since the fruit hangs so low: Yes, small creators get affected by it as well.
But what do we say to cops that dont snitch on their "bad apple" colleagues? Correct, they are part of the problem.
So from that I deduce that small creators (like myself) need to stand up against these practices or be considered part of the problem.
Have a good one.
I don't use these services, but after learning a bit about them I have to say I'd rather pay an honest thief than one who lies about ownership ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Y'all fucked up by not leaving everything on Netflix.
The mystery of how movie companies can't own cinemas but can own streaming services.
No subscription fee to use Steam. Games are available to download and play offline. 3 clicks of the mouse to buy, install, and play a game. It's so damn easy to use Steam, I don't miss buying physical PC games and I certainly don't miss rolling the dice on russian cracks.
Steam also has so many features that cracks usually can't or don't offer. Friends system, anticheat, workshop modding, cosmetics, multiplayer (although this is actually a case of it usually being locked behind Steam), fast updates, Proton, just to name a few.
Steam and Netflix are the sole reasons I stopped pirating as a teenager/young adult.
I canceled Netflix long ago at this point and have been on the brink of going back to pirating films/TV. Too many streaming services.. it's just like TV packages before Netflix disrupted the model.
Honestly, with services like Jellyfin/Plex and the Sonarr suite, pirating has never been more convenient.
I add something to my Plex watchlist, and it automatically appears on my Plex server in 1080p or 4K (whichever format I prefer, with subtitles and metadata ready to go,) in like 20 minutes. And I can stream that to as many devices as I want. Hell, I can even give friends access to my server, and I can access theirs too. All through a single UI, with no regional restrictions or “sorry you can’t watch that without signing into your home wifi, because we want to make sure you’re in the same household” BS.
Streaming services were supposed to save us from the hassle of physical media, and be better than cable TV…
This is exactly the route I've been thinking about heading!
The only viable strategy for Netflix in the long run to stay in the game is to exploit people's FOMO. You'll sell way more subscriptions if you have a hot brand new show that everyone wants to watch. There will always be pirates, so if they want to stay one step ahead of them, they have to make sure there's an abundance of quality programming on their platform coming out pretty much constantly.
Eh, that only goes so far. Any appeal to their original content is eroded by their practices surrounding streaming packages.
I canceled when they bumped their price up a lot, and had it structured to where the HD streaming was paired with the package for a bunch of devices. It's bullshit that they don't allow HD streaming with a package with only 1 or 2 devices.
I am also deterred by their password sharing crackdown, because I used to share subscription payments with my brother in another household.
I read that they're planning on doing away with the commercial free subscription, and I have no interest to resubscribe if it's a payment plus commercial model.
The convince of having quality original content in one place is nullified by their sleazy bullshit practices. There's no way that their "convince" outweighs the little effort it takes to pirate the content IMO.
Haven't pirated a game since 2008. The same year i made a steam account. Coincidence?
That illustration with the hook through the film reel is so clever, I love it.
I was hoping someone else would mention it. It's quite cool.
The people who are stealing our movies and our television shows and operating piracy sites are not mom and pop operations,” says Charlie Rivkin, chief executive officer of the MPA, who adds that some of the operators also engage in drug trafficking, child pornography, prostitution and money laundering. “This is organized crime.”
I like how they always have to fabricate a connection to organized crime. Trying to convince the reader that is not just copyright infringement.
It's projection.
Hollywood was founded on IP theft of European filmmakers' work and funded by various mobs, which then went on to lobby (bribe) politicians into changing certain regulations on gambling in AZ, et al, to pave the way for Vegas and the like.
Fuck Hollywood with a rusty pineapple sideways.
There's nothing more quintessentially American than pulling the ladder up behind you.
Can someone list those piracy subscription services so we can avoid them as responsible citizens?
You should definitely avoid XtremeHD IPTV (http://xtremehdiptv.org/). For $15 a month, it's way too cheap to offer all the live TV, movies, and series that it does. The article specifically mentions low pricing as a red flag, and I can definitely say that compared to what you'd normally pay for every live channel (including the premium ones and pay per view), series, and any just about any movie you can think of, this is most definitely a service that you should steer clear of.
Hey friend, I'm gonna PM you for some intel if you don't mind!
IPTorrents is even worse at iptorrents.com for only $10/mo
Hey man I have a question for you! Is this service download only or does it offer streaming too? Seems like a traditional torrent site to me, but just wanted to ask! Limited info on the site obvi.
Eh...I don't know. I think there is. But IDK and it may run extra...IDK. I blatantly ignore that stuff.
I will look into that here in a minute. I will see what I can figure out.
Yes. It seems to do IPTV as well.
Seems to be invite only at the moment according to their sign up page. Any way for you to send an invite?
This has to be stopped. Just look at what Napster did to the music industry. That’s right, there used to be a music industry and now it’s just…gone. No more music, no more money to be made in music. Don’t let these evil streaming services do the same to poor defenceless Hollywood, bastion of women’s rights!
I haven't been able to listen to music since year 2000 😢
Jokes aside, I have paid for Google's music service since it launched (RIP Play Music), but I am a millisecond away from canceling my subscription because Google does not provide me with any way to randomize playlists. I don't mean shuffle play. That shit is broken and always has been. It would not be a big deal if I could randomize my playlists on demand, but no.
There's no such thing as pure randomness in computer science.
Pure randomness isn't great for music playlists. The algo needs to account for recency so you don't hear the same some 6 times in a row. Technically still random but no one wants that.
That's the difference between randomizing a playlist and shuffle play. If you randomize a playlist, the songs will never repeat unless you have them in the list twice. YouTube Music's shuffle play often plays the same twenty songs over and over out of a playlist with over six hundred songs.
I've still got some songs (including horrendously misattributed artists/titles) from limewire in my music library, all these years later.
I still have some too, but thanks to Musicbrainz it's all tagged properly now. Guess System of a Down never made a Zelda techno after all.
It's so funny to me that we have to circumvent the site's paywall in order to read an article about pirating.
Based as hell.
Lol, so true.
Though anymore I archive pretty much any article I share. I have a Macrodroid script to grab the link from my clipboard and send it to archive.ph and open it in a browser.
I'm currently setting up ArchiveBox for my own use too.
there’s a special place in heaven for people that link to archive sites to avoid paywalls
So what they're saying is they could get all that extra revenue if they lower their price and just undercut the competition?
Piracy is a service problem
Yeah, but good service is a profit problem!
/s
Not sure why you added the "/s" as you're not wrong
Yeah I didn’t think I needed it. It was a last second addition just in case.
Adding to the discussion, if you want to watch anything that's not mainstream (i.e. non-western, or arthouse), you're basically supposed to either wait for it to stream on Mubi or get a Blu-ray/DVD (that are often out of circulation if it's more than 5 years old). So the only real option is pirating.
One time I went to this unit of a store and the lady was unfamiliar with werner herzog. Not even in their system.
I've been doing this for free.
Meme: You guys are getting paid?
It sure is fascinating how surges in the usage of pirate platforms tend to coincide with eras of worsening value proposition in entertainment. We should really get some top notch analysts on this to get an explanation.
Oh no. Poor Hollywood. Darn.
They make hardware with defects looking at you RROD and YLOD , they expect you to rebuy everything again every time there is a new console ( Nintendo). They remove your content that you have paid for from your library (Amazon, Sony, music from games), they alter the deal after purchase by instering DRM and shitty launchers and turn off servers (Ubisoft and EA). They lock you out of accessing stuff on devices you own with DRM (eg Netflix 4k on linux ).
Then we have regional releases, changes to privacy policies which we didn't agree to when we signed up.
Add to the fact we're being fucked over at every turn. The price of everything is increasing, housing is a mess, they're fucking up the environment while record profits have been pouring in year on year.
They can go suck a lemon 🍋
I will only support FOSS and those who help further that goal such as valve. Otherwise it the high seas everyday.
🏴☠️✊
So Hollywood copyright lawyers will target illegal subscription services rather than individual downloaders? Fine by me.
I can understand paying for a legal streaming service where at least a tiny percentage of profits goes into producing new material. I pirate out of convenience and availability, because movies and series aren't released immediately in my region.
Paying somebody for streaming film and TV shows that they have no hand in producing, and thus not supporting new productions — same as I can download for free myself? — that makes no sense to me.
Paying somebody for streaming film and TV shows that they have no hand in producing, and thus not supporting new productions — same as I can download for free myself? — that makes no sense to me
It makes sense for me. The one i’m using is $20 per year. I just think of it as convenience fee. It has netflix features but for all movies and tv shows.
I understand why people do it, but for me it's a principle thing. I'm not going to pay someone for content they stole. Fuck that.
I generally don't have a problem with copyright infringement, but people who make a profit from it are scumbags.
And like I said, I get convenience/availability. I guess paying for stolen goods is one step too far for me. Like, "Dude, pass it around, but it's not yours to sell".
Subscriber fees? Who's paying for pirated content?
EDIT:
Instead of paying for 50 streaming platforms, you pay for one that has it all. Convenient.
I didn't know that was a thing. Good for people who want to toss a coin to your streamer, I guess.
Lots of people are. Real Debrid is the shit! It's about $2.80 per month for the ability to stream pretty much everything. But ads? Nah, man. There are ads on the torrent sites, but none on streaming. Pirates are pretty ad-adverse.
Huh, never heard of that, it sounds pretty cool since it covers not just streaming movies, but downloads of games as well. I can definitely see the appeal.
Check out Stremio+Real-Debrid+Torrentio. It's honestly better than any paid subscription you can get from the studios. Install it on something like a Chromecast 4k, or a Shield TV device, hook it up to your home entertainment system, and you've got yourself a bonafide real solution.
So I live in Germany and as such I avoid torrents. The thing with torrents is, that as soon as you're on a tracker, you're sharing content illegally. There's an entire industry of law firms built around fucking up torrent users.
That's why I used to use real-debrid to download stuff from one click hosters manually. How does stremio and torrentio work? Is it a safe alternative for German pirates? I really want to cancel some subscriptions here, especially now that they're planning on using ads.
You should be using a no-logging VPN, even if only as a question of principle (I'm afraid that in Germany, it's highly likely common people's Internet activity is already under dragnet state surveillance: things like the mandatory providing and recording of ID when buying a phone SIM in Germany - which is unusual elsewhere in Europe - only serve for there to be a centralized record linking communication streams to people).
Something like Mulvad will cost you €5 a month, way cheaper than any streaming service.
I got used to using a VPN back when I live in the UK (which is probably the worst Surveillance State in Europe after Russia, as show by the Snowden Revelations which in Britain only led to politicians making laws to rectroactivelly make their massive civil society surveillance practices legal) and as it so happenned it was perfect at hiding my sailing of the high seas from those law firms (which were very active there) for more than a decade there.
The way things are fast decaying in so-called Democracies when it come to the actually practice of democracy in governance, it's probably a good idea to start doing your online life behind a VPN (not that it suffices, but it's a start).
Thanks for the reply! Sorry I didn't get around to answering earlier. I have been too preoccupied with work, so my Internet activity was limited to streaming and gaming for a very long time now. Gaming is still fine, having GoG and Steam around. But streaming is becoming less and less attractive and more complicated due to fragmentation (granted, it's not as bad as in the USA yet).
I'll check out Mulvad and some other VPNs, thanks for the hint. I just keep hearing that torrenting in Germany still is dangerous, despite using a VPN. Does Stremio with real debrid work without the torrent part?
I'm old school and just download torrents with something like BiglyBT and put them in my local NAS (which is really just a bunch of portable HDs connected to my router), from where I can access them anywhere in my home, most importantly from a cheap media player connected to my TV.
Been doing this for over a decade and it works for me. Also I know how to do it in a way that keeps me safe from such legal firms extorting money from people pirating digital works, whilst if you thrown "convenience" software into the mix, it's harder to make sure it's not leaking your IP address or other personal data even when using a VPN.
The rule with running under a VPN is to:
Use a VPN provider which does not keep logs, hence my recommendation of Mulvad but there are others that the community considers reliabled in that respect (look around)
Do not register for any pirate anything using your e-mail.
Configure your torrent application to only connect via the VPN (settings depend on the program) so that it doesn't "leak" by using your ISP connection directly if, for example, you forgot to start the VPN.
Personally I also tend to chose a VPN exit point outside my own country to make things harder from a legal point of view: complex legal cases involving multiple legal jurisdictions aren't worth the trouble for the legal system to catch a person torrenting for personal use.
If your torrenting goes via a VPN (hence it's important to make sure it's not leaking) all that those law firms have is an IP address to an exit point of the VPN provider. Unless the VPN provider is willfully cooperative (i.e. a letter in legal language merelly asking is enough for them to give the data, and the whole point of the likes of Mulvad is that they are not cooperative) those legal firms need to get a Court Order to force the VPN provider to give them the IP address of the machine using that VPN exit point at that time (i.e. your machine) and if the VPN provider doesn't keep logs they can't give that data since they don't have it anymore, plus is both the VPN provider and the exit point are in a different country - i.e. a different legal jurisdiction - it gets even harder because, for example, German Courts can't directly issue valid court orders for other countries (it's pretty simple when the target is your local ISP, not so much if it's, say, a company in Sweden)
It's simply not worth it for those law firms or the courts to go after common torrenting in such a situation, especially as there is a vast number of easy to extort people torrenting from their home connection directly, what the Americans would call "low hanging fruit".
Certainly this is how it worked in the UK which had the same kind of situation.
A VPN is not a protection for people committing actual real crimes (say, murder for hire) because it's definitelly worth it for the Justice System to jump through the hops needed to get such a person (in this case they would need a court order to wiretap the VPN provider to catch that person on the act and other legal jurisdictions would definitelly cooperate in a timelly manner to catch a murderer), but for people just doing normal torrenting for personal consumption it's absolutelly not worth it to overcome that many hurdles to give somebody a fine.
For those law firms too, it's just easier to send legal letters to the ISPs of people torrenting via their home connection directly to get their name and address (without even involving a Court) and then send those people threathening legal letters than to try and legally force an uncooperative VPN provider in a different country to give them the IP address of the home user whilst they still have it (if I remember it correctly, Mulvad's logs are in-memory only and last only 24h).
Thanks mate! I haven't pirated anything in ich a long time that I really need to get back into it. But most wikis/mega threads are for piracy outside of Germany, so it's difficult to find good information. You gave me some good pointers and, more importantly, ease of mind.
I was also planning on using my NAS to stream movies from like I did in the past.
If you're paying for it, then you could argue that you aren't "stealing" it. How are you (or at least the average person) suppose to know that the steaming service you used got their content illegally? This way, all of the liability falls on the streamer rather than the consumer.
[Raises hand]
I don't have time to fuck with managing a seedbox to make ratios and community participation bullshit (looking at you, abt). I don't even have time to fight incompletes on a usenet block. Let me drop a Benjamin in your "donation" box every couple of years and I'll cover part of the server as long as I can find what I need, when I want it, in the quality I'm looking for.
I have subscriptions to a few of the big boys through legal cross-marketing deals; it's still better to know that my shows will be waiting for me on my server if and when I ever get around to watching them.
Realdebrid bro
Oh my God, that's disgusting! Illegal streaming services online? Where? Where did they post those?
Haha, they won't even allow me to watch stuff on Netflix in 1080p because I use linux. Eat shit
Oh no…
Anyway
Oh no. Poor Hollywood.
Anyway…
Vote with your wallet, they told us.
Then they got massively butthurt when we voted with our wallets.
I block ads, so neener-neener. 🤡
Oh no! Anyway dot jpeg
not my problem
"your failed business model is not my problem"
Wtf, how can a post in a piracy group be a link to a site that won't let you read an article unless you subscribe or create an account..?!
The same way I haven't seen an ad in years, I also use a paywall bypass extension.
So I guess it skips my mind sometimes; when none of these sites have had paywalls for years.
I would argue a good chunk of the people here would prefer the OG link so they can archive it themselves (or make an offline .html copy directly)
Yeah, I understand. Sometimes, it just irritates me, so sorry for overreacting.
Does this extension work on android version of Firefox, and can you share it? Thx
Could you possibly share the extension? Asking for a friend
I am 100% unaffiliated w/ OP, but I would guess they use Magnolia's bypass.
However; I am on v3.0.8.0 (2023-03-05), so I can't speak for anything newer than that out of his/her repo or in the extension mentioned.
A fun reminder: always read what your extensions can do before yolo-clicking a download by a burner account.
I just spent like an hour trying several methods to install this on Android, sadly I was not successful. If anyone can inform me on how to install this on Firefox for Android (not a fork), please let me know.
Firefox does not support all extensions on Android yet. But should be soon I think.
I don't want to have five different streaming services that cost twice what cable used to cost, and is way more inconvenient trying to figure out which platform has what. Streaming can get fucked!
😈
Remember when they found out the dudes behind piratebay were like 3-5 hacktivist friends who made it in their free time lol?
Also what illegal subscriptions. Do they really think people pirate content for it to be sold and not shared?
People who pirate content don't do it for free. It might be news to you, but piracy is a huge business.
Not for every average Hollywood movie ever.
There's so many acronyms for the source because of how many people independently rip, not even including cam rips.
Now if it's some big gun software like cobalt strike, then sure yeah people definitely charge.
But Movie and TV pirating is so easy, people regularly make their own rips and torrents.
Again, it might be news for you, but it's a huge business with many layers. There are plenty of professional rippers and crackers who earn a living one way or another. There are plenty of underground translators and streamers. Ads, hostings, seed boxes, TV boxes, different partnerships - there's a lot of money flowing.
Just go to any public tracker and you will see ads. Download some subtitles and they often contain ads as well. And then you have partnerships like targeted attacks on software developers, etc. Then there are normies who are getting scammed into buying pirated content for full retail price by physical media vendors. All kinds of handy people who will install you a dish to receive pirated satellite TV "for free".
Is this talking about stuff like private torrent trackers and Usenet providers, or are there more Netflix-like things out there that people are paying for?
Aren't they still releasing mostly to cinemas?
Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao
Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao
For several years (at least half a decade) I used a service that provided live TV for most major networks, and reliable, easy to access streaming of literally every televised sport I ever heard of, and many that I didn't know existed or didn't expect to be televised.
It was easy to use, had all the live TV we cared for (incl and especially sporting events, which was the only thing we weren't already getting by legit streaming services or other means, and which we cared about watching live vs later ) for 30 bucks a month. I started using it right after I forked out a couple hundred bucks to the NHL only to find that doing so just made it so that it cost me a lot of money to be blacked out from the games we cared to watch.
It was what we all want streaming services to be - reliable, comprehensive, high quality, easy to use, and cheap.
That's why.
Edited to add - the service went down last year. I know of no similar replacement, but given this article they must exist.
You should definitely avoid http://xtremehdiptv.org/ It's about half the price you were paying and has live TV, movies and series.
How do younpay for these services? I'd imagine you might not want to use your credit cards.
I have a credit card that I don't use for daily use, so it always has a sub $100 balance. It's easy for me to notice if there are any extra charges. I think if you were really concerned about privacy, they accept cryptocurrency.
Convenience, I'd imagine. Not everybody wants to deal with ads or self-hosting.
I also know someone that subs to a pirate streaming site that they use for learning English. It has a solid library but also has dual subtitles on everything and categories based on vocabulary difficulty and accents. It's cheaper than a single legit subscription, but has way more value (both the language stuff and the massive pirated library).
Real-debrid is worth paying for imo
People need to expect to pay for art and entertainment. People should. It's immoral and unethical to not pay for art and expect art to be there.
People also should be able to pay the artist directly and not some billion dollar company who continue to try to squeeze the artists and limit creativeness all in servitude to the almighty dollar (or any other currency)
Okay so what I'm hearing is you want companies to make investments in artists directly - so a form of profit sharing essentially. Why would a company invest in artists if artists get all of the profits when its successful and the company loses all of the capital if it fails? Why would any business want to partake in a system like that?
No, fuck the middle man, we don't need billion dollar conglomerates to distribute our media. The people have the tools and connection to create and share without these old business models trying to keep us in the 19th century as wage slaves, happy for the peanuts that their monopolies allow us to have.
I pirate things, and I also pay artists directly for their work when I can. Companies like Netflix manipulate the data and the market to ensure they are making the most profit possible. That is their entire goal as businesses. This exploitation should be separate from art altogether.
To be fair, the billion dollar conglomerates are the ones that fund the creation of the media. Without those billions, the media just doesn't get made.
They spend the majority of those billions on marketing, higher tier salaries, a very small portion goes to the artists. Without those billions media would still get made because there is always demand for entertainment and art.
Nobody is saying that. You made that up as a stupid alternative to what we're saying is bad to make the bad thing look like it makes sense.
Imagine paying $1 to each name that appears in the credits of a movie or tv show, which would be paying the artists directly for their work. It's not feasible, but that's what I read when folks toss out paying the artist directly.
Let's assume that this hypothetical movie had 2,000 people working on it, which isn't a crazy number to assume. You think people should pay $2,000 to watch a movie?
No, that's exactly the point they were making.
But if we assume a movie that made a billion dollars, and assume a high ticket price like $20, then that's 50 million tickets sold. That math only checks out if each person paid $0.01 per worker. If we cut out useless executives, that number goes way the fuck down. So yes, let's pay artists directly, and we'll save money at the same time. Even if it were a tenth of a penny to each credit per viewer, that's $50k on average, which is higher than the actual average wage for crew.. I know actors and directors make more, but that's why I'm not going so far as to say we should only pay $2 for a ticket.
So yes, let’s pay artists directly
Where does the money come from to actually make the movie?
Based on actual ticket prices, from producers that expect to triple their investment I guess. Us idiots are fantasizing about ~10% while they're hitting triple digit percentages.
The movie production has to be paid for before the movie hits theaters. Again, where exactly does that money come from?
Maybe start at a much lower number. If the movie is popular, then millions of people will watch it. Pay each person who worked on the film a penny per view. If the movie gets viewed by 10 million people in the movie theater, each person who worked on the movie gets paid $100,000. If the movie was made by 2000 people (a bit big for most films crews) then each viewer would have to pay $20 to see the movie, or roughly what a normal movie ticket costs anyway. The difference is the studio would make zero dollars and not have a marketing budget.
Wouldn't that just be a bunch of QR codes in the credits? That would be easier to automate than it is to pay middlemen.
People need to expect to pay reasonable prices on a reasonable basis for art and entertainment, and pretending everyone should be cool with fifty different streaming services and never owning anything again is its own sort of immorality and lack of ethics.
Exactly, we’re not paying for the art, we’re paying for a limited license to view art that has already been made.
Not to mention I don’t mind paying when I know the artists who do the work will get a bigger cut than the guy who owns the servers they’re hosted on.
I think most people would agree that artists should be fairly paid for their work. But when greedy, profiteering corporations are the ones commissioning and profiting from art, then IMO we have a moral duty to fuck with their exploitative business model.
I have no problem paying for such things.
But when the distributors block access, and tell me buying ain't owning by removing access to what I've paid for, well fuck 'em.
And art should be accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. There's a reason that piracy almost died out completely and then came back with a vengeance. People don't mind paying a reasonable price for art, the prices and accessibility of art has just become unfeasible.
I disagree about art. Art exists for art's sake. It's not a commercial product. I don't have to pay to enjoy the Mona Lisa or the Bach. I might pay to enter a museum, or attend a performance, so I agree with you about entertainment, but art is different. Art enriches the world, improves life, expands understanding, and we should all of us pay for it with taxes. And we do!
I think your point about paying for museums touches on part of the issue.
It does cost to distribute art/entertainment. I have no problem paying for that.
It's that over the years distributors have gotten greedy (ads on a paid service, like cable did? Fuck you), and are telling us "buying ain't owning" by removing things we've paid for.
Art being for everyone, well, while I agree on an abstract level, there's a whole discussion we could have about that, starting with the range of "art" that's produced, from the mass-appeal art (so more base, simpler, becuae that has the broadest appeal), to the more niche.
At one time artists were supported by a patron (and now we have things like Patreon).
Then we have the players who get into the "art" business as an opportunity - consider things like the explosion of popular music in the 50's (that sounded similar courtesy of things like Rockola) and today's Autotuned music.
It's a big bucket of questions, ideas and concerns, and while philosophical me agrees with the basic premise of the value of art, the realist recognizes that art has a tangible value too, or people wouldn't be willing to pay for it.
It’s that over the years distributors have gotten greedy (ads on a paid service, like cable did? Fuck you), and are telling us “buying ain’t owning” by removing things we’ve paid for.
Not to mention they just eliminate shows and movies from their services without any regard to what the artist wants. I'm still mad about Final Space.
Where does this expectation come from?
I did not commission these works.
They created their art without a contract between them and I.
Their ability to recover their cost is not my responsibility.
Their right to obtain a profit is capitalist nonsense.
The force of government injecting a contract doesn't create a moral obligation.
So where does this moral obligation come from?
Is there some religious text indicating the divinity of copyright?
The concept was created from nothing.
The writers strike who has to fight over getting streaming royalties goes to show that the money doesn't even make it to the artists.
The issue isn't paying. It's how fractured the services are and how we don't even get to pay to own a copy of the art.
I don't disagree, but isn't there something to be said for denying people access to the popular culture based on their ability to pay for it?
Most places will still have OTA broadcasts of content, at least from the major networks. That is still "free" but cable/digital TV prices are ridiculous.
Where I live there are no digital broadcast stations available so expensive subscription TV or piracy are the best options.
Not particularly. Things generally cost money. It's not a human rights violation to say you can't see a movie if you have zero dollars.
So then we don't worry about people's ability to engage in their communities through shared experiences and exposure to arts and culture, we just leave people out? Exclude them if they're poor. I don't think I care for that to be honest.
It's a tragedy of the commons - as an economics problem it matters, sure, but copyright is an artificial monopoly, not a human right. We could provide these more efficiently with public funding of the arts or crowdfunds, without the need to make up imaginary property with imaginary ethics.
But if you want to sign up for a bunch of subscriptions because some might trickle down to the writers, be my guest.
I don't expect it to be there. It just is. I can't go about my day without them shoving ads about it in my face.
I expect the lot of them to get their own damn jobs making food and shit that we actually need so I don't have to work all the damn time just to not afford being able to do my own art.
If you follow some of the links to pirate sites in the article you'll get redirected to some anti-piracy site which amongst other things tells you this:
Bitch ... that's literally the reason I pirate.
Now only 1400$ a month to watch any show at 480p! Upgrade now to 2100$ per month for the high resolution videos? Can't afford it? Just get another job you lazy hobo!
Not so fast now! High resolution video only available on edge on windows
unintelligible screaming
Or, fill your phones, laptop and streaming devices with 1000 of our proprietary apps! Your personal information and viewing habits get sent 1000 ways from Sunday thanks to all the Privacy Policies you agreed to~
Uh, ok
The problem isn't the number of providers, the problem is exclusive licensing deals.
If it was like music, then (theoretically), more choice is better. AFAIK all the platforms have pretty much all the music, so there is some choice available.
With TV and film, it's so fractured that it's literally easier to just pirate things, even for shows I (potentially) have ad-free paid access to already. With Stremio + Torrentio + a Debrid service, I just launch one app and everything's available in seconds. With paid services, I need to search Netflix, then Prime, then CBC Gem, by which point I'd already be watching.
Plus, torrentio lets me pick the video quality I want, so I can force 4K H265 on my big screen for films or just pop on a 720p H264 on my small underpowered laptop (that can't decode H265 fast enough for smooth playback).
It's not even about price, it's just a better experience to pirate. And that's a Big Problem for the industry.
They keep telling us that we can’t own or preserve media. We strongly disagree.
Have they considered offering better content and services than the free options?
Gabe said it best! "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."
I've dropped something like 5 services in the last year and a half no the last year, due to the declining quality of their offerings, both in user interface, user experience, and content. EDIT: And price hikes!
So every movie/show for less than $50/year + time spent setting up arrs lol
Honestly, this assumes that the content is even worth that. The older I get, the more conscious I am that my time left is constantly shrinking. Do I really wanna spend 3 hours watching a shitty movie? Do I really wanna spend 6-12 hours watching a shitty season of a shitty show? Nah, I'd rather enjoy an active activity than passively pass the time. I'll pay a little for the little amount of content I care about at a time to be presented in a convenient way. I'm probably not gonna pirate until they make it impossible to cycle between services, and I'm sure that's coming within a few years. Get ready for 2 year contracts for Netflix, $8/month ("for the first 6 months" in tiny print).
I think I’m too young and naive to think like that haha
For now. My knees and back ache, I don't understand a lot of new slang and memes, I have pairs of "good socks", and it'll all happen to you one day too.
Thanks grandpa! I’m kidding I’m kidding, I know, my time will come, not looking forward to it
Even that cost and arrs aren't strictly necessary. For those who like to binge their shows, most of them get a "complete" version on most good torrent sites once they're done releasing (let's not get started on the cousin-fucking yeehaw lissencephalic level of thinking it takes to release streamed shows weekly). Download those, watch them, preserve what you think you'll rewatch in the future then delete the rest. So long as your machine has a good few terrabytes it'll last some time.
Yeah I referred to usenet by default that’s why the cost 😅
Fair. I'd assumed it was a rough amount for the electricity bill increase for running a home server
In fact the easier option is anti-piracy technology. As shown by the continued investment in various DRM vendor offerings. Competing on service quality is very hard.
If they can't make money while they're charging us, how are the pirates so good at it?
Obligatory fuck Wall Street
All my homies hate wall street
Yeah this was the entire reason streaming was successful. It was cheaper than cable. Did they think more money would appear from nothing?
They always think that.
Money from nothing and the clicks for free *guitar riff*
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don't restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
Piracy is about ease of use (it's getting even easier), and about value. DRM has repeatedly been shown to hurt only the people who try to pay for legitimate access. Not a single time has it prevented me from getting a copy of something if I wanted to, and it's clearly not stopping people from providing those copies or streams.
So stop wasting bathtubs of money on stopping piracy, but maybe take a few less buckets of money from consumers in exchange for your service. As long as you price it such that the cost of being legit can't compete with the ease of use and value from piracy, some folks aren't going to make the choice you want them to.
Some folks won't be able to spend on your service anyway, because they just can't afford it - but they still might buy other merchandise, they can still spread how great your show is to their friends who possibly will subscribe to your service, but regardless you aren't going to get their dollars no matter what you do. So stop trying.
They had achieved this just a short time ago, and their subscriptions and profit reflected that consumers were happy with the offerings. But the studios wanted MORE, and now everything is fragmented across a dozen different services with increased subscription fees, and geo-locks so you can't share accounts. I was paying almost $100 per month for subscriptions at one point, and then they fragmented it further and I said "fuck it, I'm out!". I cancelled everything. They think they can endlessly exploit their consumers, and maybe there is a sub-section of them that will endure never ending fragmentation and price increases, but I'm not one of them. Bye!
What's a reasonable price to you? Can you apply this same value to everyone? Seems like just about anything is easy to access through various services except for maybe some niche stuff. I don't think being "easy" is quite enough. People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.
140$ to have all streaming apps, on many different app, is not reasonable.
Do you need all of them at once? It's ok to rotate. I subscribe to different things at different times. I still download stuff if, either what i have access to isn't good enough or if i just can't find what I'm looking for through conventional means.
Needing to rotate just makes it inconvenient. More inconvenient than pirating unfortunately
Dunno. Less than what things cost now? I think knocking down the geographic restrictions and letting people watch it on any device or OS that can connect are likely bigger fights than pricing, if the industry actually cared to solve the problem.
It's not as if we don't have examples of this. Yes, some people still pirate music. Roughly 20 years ago, almost literally everyone with the knowhow was pirating music. (And with services like kazaa, emule, etc, it took very little knowhow)
You know what didn't solve it? Prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM.
What solved it was when Apple started selling legit music for 99 cents per track, and keeping album costs reasonable. (Much as I hate to give apple any credit.) Spotify, amazon, etc all got on board, and now almost no one pirates music. (I pre-apologize for whatever detail I misremembered there - that was a long time ago.)
Am I saying that exact model will apply to video streaming services? No, but what's not going to do it is prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM. We have decades of proof of this.
Some people will pirate no matter what. You can worry about them, or you can worry about everybody else. At some point (and I suspect we're well past it) the return on investment has got to start looking pretty bad for all the money and technology they have tried to throw at piracy.
Thanks for the reply! Valid points. I was one of the ones that downloaded a ton of music before it was available at all, back in the Napster days. It's harder for some reason with video. With the music they can just throw everyone's stuff on there but video for some reason can only go to maybe a couple of services which really limits what some people have access to.
I don't worry about the ones pirating at all, lol. I'm actually looking into setting up arr apps but my setup is not conventional so it will take some fiddling.
Sorry I didn't mean you personally. I was speaking generally to the content providers. 😁
We managed it for music streaming for the most part.
Say it louder with me for the people in the back.
Piracy is not stealing.
"If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing."
I gotta say I love this meme. I think about it every time a tech company does something really scummy to take away features and products that people have purchased (and not rented/leased).
I wouldn't ever buy the content so it's not a lost sale either. All I've done is copy a file. gasp
You're not allowed to buy the content anyways. You're only allowed to pay for the illusion of ownership, until they decide they don't want to host it anymore, and then you lose it. They're such bullshit artists that they redefine common words like "buy" and "own" in their ToS.
I believe their justification would be that you aquiring the media is a definite loss of sale vs you not subbing/buying the media is a potential sale in the future.
Edit: Not my opinion. Just imagining how they would justify it before court should it come to it.
Which is stupid, because I’ll happily buy content I like with the guarantee it’ll never be taken from me. That’s not a real risk with physical media so why should that be acceptable with digital media?
He may have been an asshole but Steve Jobs said it best:
And to reuse the same Gaben quote often repeated here:
"Customers want to own their content". It's amazing to me that execs don't grasp this? Or that they think if they stop allowing it people will stop caring, but maybe they will eventually. But it seems obvious, I've know many families that had massive dvd collections they were proud of. Bookshelves with dozens of books they probably never even read. It's just comforting to have a thing and know it's yours.
Every development in business consolidates their power and increases anxiety for the people.
My theory is they're just trying to stifle the ability to own any content to normalize the concept of not owning content, which over time will make the masses complacent.
By that same rational: My not getting a raise is a lost sale because if I had more money I would buy more. So is corporate profit a lost sale?
i dunno i heard that you wouldn't steal a car
Correct. I wouldn’t steal a car. But I would absolutely make a perfect copy of a car for free.
Just stopped in to say fuck you to the greedy motherfuckers who created a market for sharing massively overpriced content and now cry all over their piles of money cause they are BIGGER piles of money.
Which is to say: "Fuck you".
What about the small, local services that are just trying to pay the broadcast production bills and make a little cash to become viable businesses?
Fuck those people too?
Because these piracy services also affect them. These services restream the content taking away revenue from the small streaming services. In many cases we're talking about volumes less than 100. So these restream services pop up, illegally use trademarks and copyrighted materials to advertise, and can reduce volumes enough that they are no longer viable.
Sometimes these things affect regular people trying to make life work too. Not just billionaire assholes who legitimately deserve the criticism.
Would you really put the blame on piracy for that when there are conglomerates manipulating the entire market? I'm not doubting they exist, but can you name a small business streaming service that would be affected by pirate services? I have never heard of such a company. I've seen small streaming services utilized by libraries but they are on government contracts and tax funded as far as I know.
Local motorsports in the US.
It's a whack-a-mole of services which restream content, but the piracy services are also subscription based.
Since the fruit hangs so low: Yes, small creators get affected by it as well.
But what do we say to cops that dont snitch on their "bad apple" colleagues? Correct, they are part of the problem.
So from that I deduce that small creators (like myself) need to stand up against these practices or be considered part of the problem.
Have a good one.
I don't use these services, but after learning a bit about them I have to say I'd rather pay an honest thief than one who lies about ownership ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Y'all fucked up by not leaving everything on Netflix.
The mystery of how movie companies can't own cinemas but can own streaming services.
No subscription fee to use Steam. Games are available to download and play offline. 3 clicks of the mouse to buy, install, and play a game. It's so damn easy to use Steam, I don't miss buying physical PC games and I certainly don't miss rolling the dice on russian cracks.
Steam also has so many features that cracks usually can't or don't offer. Friends system, anticheat, workshop modding, cosmetics, multiplayer (although this is actually a case of it usually being locked behind Steam), fast updates, Proton, just to name a few.
Steam and Netflix are the sole reasons I stopped pirating as a teenager/young adult.
I canceled Netflix long ago at this point and have been on the brink of going back to pirating films/TV. Too many streaming services.. it's just like TV packages before Netflix disrupted the model.
Honestly, with services like Jellyfin/Plex and the Sonarr suite, pirating has never been more convenient.
I add something to my Plex watchlist, and it automatically appears on my Plex server in 1080p or 4K (whichever format I prefer, with subtitles and metadata ready to go,) in like 20 minutes. And I can stream that to as many devices as I want. Hell, I can even give friends access to my server, and I can access theirs too. All through a single UI, with no regional restrictions or “sorry you can’t watch that without signing into your home wifi, because we want to make sure you’re in the same household” BS.
Streaming services were supposed to save us from the hassle of physical media, and be better than cable TV…
This is exactly the route I've been thinking about heading!
The only viable strategy for Netflix in the long run to stay in the game is to exploit people's FOMO. You'll sell way more subscriptions if you have a hot brand new show that everyone wants to watch. There will always be pirates, so if they want to stay one step ahead of them, they have to make sure there's an abundance of quality programming on their platform coming out pretty much constantly.
Eh, that only goes so far. Any appeal to their original content is eroded by their practices surrounding streaming packages.
I canceled when they bumped their price up a lot, and had it structured to where the HD streaming was paired with the package for a bunch of devices. It's bullshit that they don't allow HD streaming with a package with only 1 or 2 devices.
I am also deterred by their password sharing crackdown, because I used to share subscription payments with my brother in another household.
I read that they're planning on doing away with the commercial free subscription, and I have no interest to resubscribe if it's a payment plus commercial model.
The convince of having quality original content in one place is nullified by their sleazy bullshit practices. There's no way that their "convince" outweighs the little effort it takes to pirate the content IMO.
Haven't pirated a game since 2008. The same year i made a steam account. Coincidence?
That illustration with the hook through the film reel is so clever, I love it.
I was hoping someone else would mention it. It's quite cool.
I like how they always have to fabricate a connection to organized crime. Trying to convince the reader that is not just copyright infringement.
It's projection.
Hollywood was founded on IP theft of European filmmakers' work and funded by various mobs, which then went on to lobby (bribe) politicians into changing certain regulations on gambling in AZ, et al, to pave the way for Vegas and the like.
Fuck Hollywood with a rusty pineapple sideways.
There's nothing more quintessentially American than pulling the ladder up behind you.
Can someone list those piracy subscription services so we can avoid them as responsible citizens?
You should definitely avoid XtremeHD IPTV (http://xtremehdiptv.org/). For $15 a month, it's way too cheap to offer all the live TV, movies, and series that it does. The article specifically mentions low pricing as a red flag, and I can definitely say that compared to what you'd normally pay for every live channel (including the premium ones and pay per view), series, and any just about any movie you can think of, this is most definitely a service that you should steer clear of.
Hey friend, I'm gonna PM you for some intel if you don't mind!
IPTorrents is even worse at iptorrents.com for only $10/mo
Hey man I have a question for you! Is this service download only or does it offer streaming too? Seems like a traditional torrent site to me, but just wanted to ask! Limited info on the site obvi.
Eh...I don't know. I think there is. But IDK and it may run extra...IDK. I blatantly ignore that stuff.
I will look into that here in a minute. I will see what I can figure out.
Yes. It seems to do IPTV as well.
Seems to be invite only at the moment according to their sign up page. Any way for you to send an invite?
This has to be stopped. Just look at what Napster did to the music industry. That’s right, there used to be a music industry and now it’s just…gone. No more music, no more money to be made in music. Don’t let these evil streaming services do the same to poor defenceless Hollywood, bastion of women’s rights!
I haven't been able to listen to music since year 2000 😢
Jokes aside, I have paid for Google's music service since it launched (RIP Play Music), but I am a millisecond away from canceling my subscription because Google does not provide me with any way to randomize playlists. I don't mean shuffle play. That shit is broken and always has been. It would not be a big deal if I could randomize my playlists on demand, but no.
There's no such thing as pure randomness in computer science.
Pure randomness isn't great for music playlists. The algo needs to account for recency so you don't hear the same some 6 times in a row. Technically still random but no one wants that.
That's the difference between randomizing a playlist and shuffle play. If you randomize a playlist, the songs will never repeat unless you have them in the list twice. YouTube Music's shuffle play often plays the same twenty songs over and over out of a playlist with over six hundred songs.
I've still got some songs (including horrendously misattributed artists/titles) from limewire in my music library, all these years later.
I still have some too, but thanks to Musicbrainz it's all tagged properly now. Guess System of a Down never made a Zelda techno after all.
https://archive.ph/fF4ib
It's so funny to me that we have to circumvent the site's paywall in order to read an article about pirating.
Based as hell.
Lol, so true.
Though anymore I archive pretty much any article I share. I have a Macrodroid script to grab the link from my clipboard and send it to archive.ph and open it in a browser.
I'm currently setting up ArchiveBox for my own use too.
there’s a special place in heaven for people that link to archive sites to avoid paywalls
So what they're saying is they could get all that extra revenue if they lower their price and just undercut the competition?
Piracy is a service problem
Yeah, but good service is a profit problem!
/s
Not sure why you added the "/s" as you're not wrong
Yeah I didn’t think I needed it. It was a last second addition just in case.
Adding to the discussion, if you want to watch anything that's not mainstream (i.e. non-western, or arthouse), you're basically supposed to either wait for it to stream on Mubi or get a Blu-ray/DVD (that are often out of circulation if it's more than 5 years old). So the only real option is pirating.
One time I went to this unit of a store and the lady was unfamiliar with werner herzog. Not even in their system.
I've been doing this for free.
Meme: You guys are getting paid?
It sure is fascinating how surges in the usage of pirate platforms tend to coincide with eras of worsening value proposition in entertainment. We should really get some top notch analysts on this to get an explanation.
Oh no. Poor Hollywood. Darn.
They make hardware with defects looking at you RROD and YLOD , they expect you to rebuy everything again every time there is a new console ( Nintendo). They remove your content that you have paid for from your library (Amazon, Sony, music from games), they alter the deal after purchase by instering DRM and shitty launchers and turn off servers (Ubisoft and EA). They lock you out of accessing stuff on devices you own with DRM (eg Netflix 4k on linux ).
Then we have regional releases, changes to privacy policies which we didn't agree to when we signed up.
Add to the fact we're being fucked over at every turn. The price of everything is increasing, housing is a mess, they're fucking up the environment while record profits have been pouring in year on year.
They can go suck a lemon 🍋
I will only support FOSS and those who help further that goal such as valve. Otherwise it the high seas everyday.
🏴☠️✊
So Hollywood copyright lawyers will target illegal subscription services rather than individual downloaders? Fine by me.
I can understand paying for a legal streaming service where at least a tiny percentage of profits goes into producing new material. I pirate out of convenience and availability, because movies and series aren't released immediately in my region.
Paying somebody for streaming film and TV shows that they have no hand in producing, and thus not supporting new productions — same as I can download for free myself? — that makes no sense to me.
It makes sense for me. The one i’m using is $20 per year. I just think of it as convenience fee. It has netflix features but for all movies and tv shows.
I understand why people do it, but for me it's a principle thing. I'm not going to pay someone for content they stole. Fuck that.
I generally don't have a problem with copyright infringement, but people who make a profit from it are scumbags.
And like I said, I get convenience/availability. I guess paying for stolen goods is one step too far for me. Like, "Dude, pass it around, but it's not yours to sell".
Subscriber fees? Who's paying for pirated content?
EDIT:
Instead of paying for 50 streaming platforms, you pay for one that has it all. Convenient.
I didn't know that was a thing. Good for people who want to toss a coin to your streamer, I guess.
Lots of people are. Real Debrid is the shit! It's about $2.80 per month for the ability to stream pretty much everything. But ads? Nah, man. There are ads on the torrent sites, but none on streaming. Pirates are pretty ad-adverse.
Huh, never heard of that, it sounds pretty cool since it covers not just streaming movies, but downloads of games as well. I can definitely see the appeal.
Check out Stremio+Real-Debrid+Torrentio. It's honestly better than any paid subscription you can get from the studios. Install it on something like a Chromecast 4k, or a Shield TV device, hook it up to your home entertainment system, and you've got yourself a bonafide real solution.
So I live in Germany and as such I avoid torrents. The thing with torrents is, that as soon as you're on a tracker, you're sharing content illegally. There's an entire industry of law firms built around fucking up torrent users.
That's why I used to use real-debrid to download stuff from one click hosters manually. How does stremio and torrentio work? Is it a safe alternative for German pirates? I really want to cancel some subscriptions here, especially now that they're planning on using ads.
You should be using a no-logging VPN, even if only as a question of principle (I'm afraid that in Germany, it's highly likely common people's Internet activity is already under dragnet state surveillance: things like the mandatory providing and recording of ID when buying a phone SIM in Germany - which is unusual elsewhere in Europe - only serve for there to be a centralized record linking communication streams to people).
Something like Mulvad will cost you €5 a month, way cheaper than any streaming service.
I got used to using a VPN back when I live in the UK (which is probably the worst Surveillance State in Europe after Russia, as show by the Snowden Revelations which in Britain only led to politicians making laws to rectroactivelly make their massive civil society surveillance practices legal) and as it so happenned it was perfect at hiding my sailing of the high seas from those law firms (which were very active there) for more than a decade there.
The way things are fast decaying in so-called Democracies when it come to the actually practice of democracy in governance, it's probably a good idea to start doing your online life behind a VPN (not that it suffices, but it's a start).
Thanks for the reply! Sorry I didn't get around to answering earlier. I have been too preoccupied with work, so my Internet activity was limited to streaming and gaming for a very long time now. Gaming is still fine, having GoG and Steam around. But streaming is becoming less and less attractive and more complicated due to fragmentation (granted, it's not as bad as in the USA yet).
I'll check out Mulvad and some other VPNs, thanks for the hint. I just keep hearing that torrenting in Germany still is dangerous, despite using a VPN. Does Stremio with real debrid work without the torrent part?
I'm old school and just download torrents with something like BiglyBT and put them in my local NAS (which is really just a bunch of portable HDs connected to my router), from where I can access them anywhere in my home, most importantly from a cheap media player connected to my TV.
Been doing this for over a decade and it works for me. Also I know how to do it in a way that keeps me safe from such legal firms extorting money from people pirating digital works, whilst if you thrown "convenience" software into the mix, it's harder to make sure it's not leaking your IP address or other personal data even when using a VPN.
The rule with running under a VPN is to:
If your torrenting goes via a VPN (hence it's important to make sure it's not leaking) all that those law firms have is an IP address to an exit point of the VPN provider. Unless the VPN provider is willfully cooperative (i.e. a letter in legal language merelly asking is enough for them to give the data, and the whole point of the likes of Mulvad is that they are not cooperative) those legal firms need to get a Court Order to force the VPN provider to give them the IP address of the machine using that VPN exit point at that time (i.e. your machine) and if the VPN provider doesn't keep logs they can't give that data since they don't have it anymore, plus is both the VPN provider and the exit point are in a different country - i.e. a different legal jurisdiction - it gets even harder because, for example, German Courts can't directly issue valid court orders for other countries (it's pretty simple when the target is your local ISP, not so much if it's, say, a company in Sweden)
It's simply not worth it for those law firms or the courts to go after common torrenting in such a situation, especially as there is a vast number of easy to extort people torrenting from their home connection directly, what the Americans would call "low hanging fruit".
Certainly this is how it worked in the UK which had the same kind of situation.
A VPN is not a protection for people committing actual real crimes (say, murder for hire) because it's definitelly worth it for the Justice System to jump through the hops needed to get such a person (in this case they would need a court order to wiretap the VPN provider to catch that person on the act and other legal jurisdictions would definitelly cooperate in a timelly manner to catch a murderer), but for people just doing normal torrenting for personal consumption it's absolutelly not worth it to overcome that many hurdles to give somebody a fine. For those law firms too, it's just easier to send legal letters to the ISPs of people torrenting via their home connection directly to get their name and address (without even involving a Court) and then send those people threathening legal letters than to try and legally force an uncooperative VPN provider in a different country to give them the IP address of the home user whilst they still have it (if I remember it correctly, Mulvad's logs are in-memory only and last only 24h).
Thanks mate! I haven't pirated anything in ich a long time that I really need to get back into it. But most wikis/mega threads are for piracy outside of Germany, so it's difficult to find good information. You gave me some good pointers and, more importantly, ease of mind.
I was also planning on using my NAS to stream movies from like I did in the past.
If you're paying for it, then you could argue that you aren't "stealing" it. How are you (or at least the average person) suppose to know that the steaming service you used got their content illegally? This way, all of the liability falls on the streamer rather than the consumer.
[Raises hand]
I don't have time to fuck with managing a seedbox to make ratios and community participation bullshit (looking at you, abt). I don't even have time to fight incompletes on a usenet block. Let me drop a Benjamin in your "donation" box every couple of years and I'll cover part of the server as long as I can find what I need, when I want it, in the quality I'm looking for.
I have subscriptions to a few of the big boys through legal cross-marketing deals; it's still better to know that my shows will be waiting for me on my server if and when I ever get around to watching them.
Realdebrid bro
Oh my God, that's disgusting! Illegal streaming services online? Where? Where did they post those?
Haha, they won't even allow me to watch stuff on Netflix in 1080p because I use linux. Eat shit
Oh no…
Anyway
Oh no. Poor Hollywood.
Anyway…
Vote with your wallet, they told us.
Then they got massively butthurt when we voted with our wallets.
I block ads, so neener-neener. 🤡
Oh no! Anyway dot jpeg
not my problem
"your failed business model is not my problem"
Wtf, how can a post in a piracy group be a link to a site that won't let you read an article unless you subscribe or create an account..?!
The same way I haven't seen an ad in years, I also use a paywall bypass extension.
So I guess it skips my mind sometimes; when none of these sites have had paywalls for years.
I would argue a good chunk of the people here would prefer the OG link so they can archive it themselves (or make an offline .html copy directly)
Yeah, I understand. Sometimes, it just irritates me, so sorry for overreacting.
Does this extension work on android version of Firefox, and can you share it? Thx
Could you possibly share the extension? Asking for a friend
I am 100% unaffiliated w/ OP, but I would guess they use Magnolia's bypass.
However; I am on v3.0.8.0 (2023-03-05), so I can't speak for anything newer than that out of his/her repo or in the extension mentioned.
A fun reminder: always read what your extensions can do before yolo-clicking a download by a burner account.
I just spent like an hour trying several methods to install this on Android, sadly I was not successful. If anyone can inform me on how to install this on Firefox for Android (not a fork), please let me know.
Firefox does not support all extensions on Android yet. But should be soon I think.
I don't want to have five different streaming services that cost twice what cable used to cost, and is way more inconvenient trying to figure out which platform has what. Streaming can get fucked!
😈
Remember when they found out the dudes behind piratebay were like 3-5 hacktivist friends who made it in their free time lol?
Also what illegal subscriptions. Do they really think people pirate content for it to be sold and not shared?
People who pirate content don't do it for free. It might be news to you, but piracy is a huge business.
Not for every average Hollywood movie ever.
There's so many acronyms for the source because of how many people independently rip, not even including cam rips.
Now if it's some big gun software like cobalt strike, then sure yeah people definitely charge.
But Movie and TV pirating is so easy, people regularly make their own rips and torrents.
Again, it might be news for you, but it's a huge business with many layers. There are plenty of professional rippers and crackers who earn a living one way or another. There are plenty of underground translators and streamers. Ads, hostings, seed boxes, TV boxes, different partnerships - there's a lot of money flowing.
Just go to any public tracker and you will see ads. Download some subtitles and they often contain ads as well. And then you have partnerships like targeted attacks on software developers, etc. Then there are normies who are getting scammed into buying pirated content for full retail price by physical media vendors. All kinds of handy people who will install you a dish to receive pirated satellite TV "for free".
Is this talking about stuff like private torrent trackers and Usenet providers, or are there more Netflix-like things out there that people are paying for?
Aren't they still releasing mostly to cinemas?
Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao
For several years (at least half a decade) I used a service that provided live TV for most major networks, and reliable, easy to access streaming of literally every televised sport I ever heard of, and many that I didn't know existed or didn't expect to be televised.
It was easy to use, had all the live TV we cared for (incl and especially sporting events, which was the only thing we weren't already getting by legit streaming services or other means, and which we cared about watching live vs later ) for 30 bucks a month. I started using it right after I forked out a couple hundred bucks to the NHL only to find that doing so just made it so that it cost me a lot of money to be blacked out from the games we cared to watch.
It was what we all want streaming services to be - reliable, comprehensive, high quality, easy to use, and cheap.
That's why.
Edited to add - the service went down last year. I know of no similar replacement, but given this article they must exist.
You should definitely avoid http://xtremehdiptv.org/ It's about half the price you were paying and has live TV, movies and series.
How do younpay for these services? I'd imagine you might not want to use your credit cards.
I have a credit card that I don't use for daily use, so it always has a sub $100 balance. It's easy for me to notice if there are any extra charges. I think if you were really concerned about privacy, they accept cryptocurrency.
Convenience, I'd imagine. Not everybody wants to deal with ads or self-hosting.
I also know someone that subs to a pirate streaming site that they use for learning English. It has a solid library but also has dual subtitles on everything and categories based on vocabulary difficulty and accents. It's cheaper than a single legit subscription, but has way more value (both the language stuff and the massive pirated library).
Real-debrid is worth paying for imo
People need to expect to pay for art and entertainment. People should. It's immoral and unethical to not pay for art and expect art to be there.
People also should be able to pay the artist directly and not some billion dollar company who continue to try to squeeze the artists and limit creativeness all in servitude to the almighty dollar (or any other currency)
Okay so what I'm hearing is you want companies to make investments in artists directly - so a form of profit sharing essentially. Why would a company invest in artists if artists get all of the profits when its successful and the company loses all of the capital if it fails? Why would any business want to partake in a system like that?
No, fuck the middle man, we don't need billion dollar conglomerates to distribute our media. The people have the tools and connection to create and share without these old business models trying to keep us in the 19th century as wage slaves, happy for the peanuts that their monopolies allow us to have.
I pirate things, and I also pay artists directly for their work when I can. Companies like Netflix manipulate the data and the market to ensure they are making the most profit possible. That is their entire goal as businesses. This exploitation should be separate from art altogether.
To be fair, the billion dollar conglomerates are the ones that fund the creation of the media. Without those billions, the media just doesn't get made.
They spend the majority of those billions on marketing, higher tier salaries, a very small portion goes to the artists. Without those billions media would still get made because there is always demand for entertainment and art.
Nobody is saying that. You made that up as a stupid alternative to what we're saying is bad to make the bad thing look like it makes sense.
Imagine paying $1 to each name that appears in the credits of a movie or tv show, which would be paying the artists directly for their work. It's not feasible, but that's what I read when folks toss out paying the artist directly.
Let's assume that this hypothetical movie had 2,000 people working on it, which isn't a crazy number to assume. You think people should pay $2,000 to watch a movie?
No, that's exactly the point they were making.
But if we assume a movie that made a billion dollars, and assume a high ticket price like $20, then that's 50 million tickets sold. That math only checks out if each person paid $0.01 per worker. If we cut out useless executives, that number goes way the fuck down. So yes, let's pay artists directly, and we'll save money at the same time. Even if it were a tenth of a penny to each credit per viewer, that's $50k on average, which is higher than the actual average wage for crew.. I know actors and directors make more, but that's why I'm not going so far as to say we should only pay $2 for a ticket.
Where does the money come from to actually make the movie?
Based on actual ticket prices, from producers that expect to triple their investment I guess. Us idiots are fantasizing about ~10% while they're hitting triple digit percentages.
The movie production has to be paid for before the movie hits theaters. Again, where exactly does that money come from?
Maybe start at a much lower number. If the movie is popular, then millions of people will watch it. Pay each person who worked on the film a penny per view. If the movie gets viewed by 10 million people in the movie theater, each person who worked on the movie gets paid $100,000. If the movie was made by 2000 people (a bit big for most films crews) then each viewer would have to pay $20 to see the movie, or roughly what a normal movie ticket costs anyway. The difference is the studio would make zero dollars and not have a marketing budget.
Wouldn't that just be a bunch of QR codes in the credits? That would be easier to automate than it is to pay middlemen.
People need to expect to pay reasonable prices on a reasonable basis for art and entertainment, and pretending everyone should be cool with fifty different streaming services and never owning anything again is its own sort of immorality and lack of ethics.
Exactly, we’re not paying for the art, we’re paying for a limited license to view art that has already been made.
Not to mention I don’t mind paying when I know the artists who do the work will get a bigger cut than the guy who owns the servers they’re hosted on.
I think most people would agree that artists should be fairly paid for their work. But when greedy, profiteering corporations are the ones commissioning and profiting from art, then IMO we have a moral duty to fuck with their exploitative business model.
I have no problem paying for such things.
But when the distributors block access, and tell me buying ain't owning by removing access to what I've paid for, well fuck 'em.
And art should be accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. There's a reason that piracy almost died out completely and then came back with a vengeance. People don't mind paying a reasonable price for art, the prices and accessibility of art has just become unfeasible.
I disagree about art. Art exists for art's sake. It's not a commercial product. I don't have to pay to enjoy the Mona Lisa or the Bach. I might pay to enter a museum, or attend a performance, so I agree with you about entertainment, but art is different. Art enriches the world, improves life, expands understanding, and we should all of us pay for it with taxes. And we do!
I think your point about paying for museums touches on part of the issue.
It does cost to distribute art/entertainment. I have no problem paying for that.
It's that over the years distributors have gotten greedy (ads on a paid service, like cable did? Fuck you), and are telling us "buying ain't owning" by removing things we've paid for.
Art being for everyone, well, while I agree on an abstract level, there's a whole discussion we could have about that, starting with the range of "art" that's produced, from the mass-appeal art (so more base, simpler, becuae that has the broadest appeal), to the more niche.
At one time artists were supported by a patron (and now we have things like Patreon).
Then we have the players who get into the "art" business as an opportunity - consider things like the explosion of popular music in the 50's (that sounded similar courtesy of things like Rockola) and today's Autotuned music.
It's a big bucket of questions, ideas and concerns, and while philosophical me agrees with the basic premise of the value of art, the realist recognizes that art has a tangible value too, or people wouldn't be willing to pay for it.
Not to mention they just eliminate shows and movies from their services without any regard to what the artist wants. I'm still mad about Final Space.
Where does this expectation come from?
I did not commission these works.
They created their art without a contract between them and I.
Their ability to recover their cost is not my responsibility.
Their right to obtain a profit is capitalist nonsense.
The force of government injecting a contract doesn't create a moral obligation.
So where does this moral obligation come from?
Is there some religious text indicating the divinity of copyright?
The concept was created from nothing.
The writers strike who has to fight over getting streaming royalties goes to show that the money doesn't even make it to the artists.
The issue isn't paying. It's how fractured the services are and how we don't even get to pay to own a copy of the art.
I don't disagree, but isn't there something to be said for denying people access to the popular culture based on their ability to pay for it?
Most places will still have OTA broadcasts of content, at least from the major networks. That is still "free" but cable/digital TV prices are ridiculous.
Where I live there are no digital broadcast stations available so expensive subscription TV or piracy are the best options.
Not particularly. Things generally cost money. It's not a human rights violation to say you can't see a movie if you have zero dollars.
So then we don't worry about people's ability to engage in their communities through shared experiences and exposure to arts and culture, we just leave people out? Exclude them if they're poor. I don't think I care for that to be honest.
It's a tragedy of the commons - as an economics problem it matters, sure, but copyright is an artificial monopoly, not a human right. We could provide these more efficiently with public funding of the arts or crowdfunds, without the need to make up imaginary property with imaginary ethics.
But if you want to sign up for a bunch of subscriptions because some might trickle down to the writers, be my guest.
I don't expect it to be there. It just is. I can't go about my day without them shoving ads about it in my face.
I expect the lot of them to get their own damn jobs making food and shit that we actually need so I don't have to work all the damn time just to not afford being able to do my own art.