- I had to wait 25 minutes for the activation email
- I activated my account, but it wouldn’t let me access my account settings for another 25 minutes
- then I had to install Silverlight (I’m on OS X)
- then I tried to start the stream, which resulted in an OS freeze and something like the OS X blue screen, which I have never seen ever before
- then I rebooted and tried again, which failed with the *authentication* step
- the web inspector showed a bunch of JS and/or Silverlight errors
- I gave up and installed Silverlight on my wife’s Win 10 machine
- the stream would load, but it has hard-coded German subtitles for signs and Dothraki scenes, which is annoying.
- it has no optional English subtitles
- it is only HD, not Full HD
- stream was kind of laggy
- downloads very fast
- usually there are subtitles
- superb quality
- I can watch whenever I want with the player I want
- no browser plugins, no errors, no nothing.
- it just worksIt's not too hard to slap a PayPal or Stripe button in front of an HTML5 video with optional Flash fallback. But no, legal entities need to make sure that you won't rip them off with their digital rights nonsense.
I understand that this is mostly a legal requirement, but the technical implementation still sucks tremendously up to a point where I wonder, why a service that charges money can't afford better developers than a free service.
Also: It's not that piracy is without hassles. The piracy-process could easily be outperformed by making it as simple as payment button in front of a media player or downloadable file.
Because when I want to download GoT as a torrent, I have to install a BitTorrent client, I have to go find the torrent files, I must look at ads for porn sites, I often must find the right download button in spammy-looking sites, I need to distinguish which file I actually want and see if it's a fake or not.
The piracy process is difficult enough for most people, but it's still so much easier than the process of watching the show legally.
I simply can't wrap my head around this.
So I turned my NAS back on and cancelled my subscription.
I'm happy paying content providers, I really am. I visit the cinema, buy DVDs and even songs on iTunes. But if you stop me or hinder me to the point where piracy is a significantly easier option (Or only one illegal option when there are only illegal options) then I'm going to do it.
(This is slightly annoying however because there is a rather large "netflix" button on my new TV remote.)
One often-overlooked point is soundtracks. This is why there's no official Cold Case DVD/BD set - it would be prohibitively expensive to license all the music for distribution outside of TV.
Media Rights Capital "owns" House of Cards, Netflix distributes the show. Even then MRC's rights are probably limited because they bought the rights to the concept from the BBC who originally did House of Cards as a mini-series.
Yeah, that's probably what they're doing. It wouldn't be too hard for them to get the first 95% either - beyond ARIN/NIC registration searches etc, they could just look for IP addresses that often have a large number of subscribers behind them, especially a large number of non-us subscribers.
A normally configured proxy and VPN usually end up with a flagged IP, as I've read multiple reports of people trying with DO or Amazon EC2 nodes.
You had the choice to stop watching... and thats the only legal choice. To pretend that doing something illegal because you feel entitled to it is right, thats a little bit... childish?
Its simple entitlement. Don't try to confuse the issue by making it about some kind of discriminatory issue. A business has to have licences to operate in a country, there are many stipulations and there is a cost involved with those stipulations, netflix has no oblication to jump through legal hurdles and pay more money so everyone can enjoy their content.
I work for a global company - one who works in the digital realm and makes AAA games... trust me, I deal with these things. You'd be surprised the effort for a US company to sell their product/service in china...
But this only means that international law is a mess, and have to be repealed/updated. It won't happen soon, unless there will be more and more people willingfully breaking the law, as they are damn right to feel "entitled" to equal service, which can be delivered by config option. Technically, it is not a big deal. If it is a huge legal deal, the laws be damned.
Man, i didnt realize they HAD to copy them... i swear they have the option to just not watch.
Oh, but again, they feel entitled to watch.
I bet people like Rosa Parks, MLK, etc... people who paid dearly for Equal rights would be so upset that you've lowered the meaning of that word to simple movies...
Being treated differently, being cast aside and being held back from success because of your race, that you cant change, that you had no control of aquiring - is nowhere near not being able to watch a movie because of legal restrictions of where you live. How do you possibly consider those things even remotely similar?
In fact, there were sit-ins in "white only" movie theaters, because some people weren't accepted here even if they were able to pay. It's not that they didn't have the option to just not watch the movie, right?
Back then, white people were responding to just accusations exactly the same way — "come on, it's _just_ the bus ride! it's just the movie! what's the big deal?"
I can't easily come to live where I want — visa issues. This is discrimination by nationality, exactly the same as discrimination by skin color. And part of this big discrimination is my inability to watch the movie based on the place where I live.
Edited that for clarity.
For example, must the price to stream the latest James Bond movie be the same in India as the United States?
Pragmatically, though, it is not a big deal. Here in Switzerland, I am content to pay 2x price for the same content as in the US — we have to support our reputation as the most expensive country on Earth, after all :) In India, one can attempt to sell software and content for the same price as in US, but it won't generate any sales. The pragmatic option is to sell Indian-localized software for low price, and English versions for original price, which is already working perfectly well for software and everyone is happy. Both me and an Indian girl can buy any US-made software. At least it was possible when the software was downloaded or delivered physically — software in app stores are becoming subject to the same shitty policies as the rest of digital content.
The world is becoming increasingly global, but policymakers and copyright holders try to isolate us in nation state borders.
Technically, if you own a restaurant, you can refuse to serve anyone, they are not entitled to your food and service. But try to selectively refuse service to African Americans, or gays, or Canadians, or Swiss, or all non-Americans, and see where this road will lead you and how much time you'll get until first lawsuit.
If history is any teacher, it is impossible to fight immoral discriminatory laws legally. Peaceful protest works much better. So, go pirate, history and truth are on our side.
>Its simple entitlement
>they feel entitled to watch
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
>why do you feel entitled to consume content that you didn't create, in the first place?
Because it has been published, therefore it is public. 'Publish' is literally a verb that means 'to make available to the public'. And 'public' is literally an adjective that means 'open to or shared by all people'. Of course people have a right to access public things. Why would you feel otherwise? Do you feel guilty when you go to a public park because you didn't create the land? Do you feel the urge to surrender yourself to the police because you walked on a public sidewalk that you didn't create?
Copyright grants special privileges to an author so that they can be compensated for their work, in hopes that this will encourage people to publish things. If you refuse to use your privileges, that's your choice, you decided not to get paid. The public is still entitled to keep the gift that you gave them.
Where it gets ugly is that copyright declares that copying or transmitting something (even something already public) is itself an act of publication, and only the author is allowed to determine who may republish their work for awhile. So redistributing without permission is not allowed. But it has been published and therefore the public does still have a right to access it if it is available, they just don't have the right to republish it.
Which leads to the issue here. What is the correct result if something is public, and the public has every right to access it, but can't exercise that right because it's not available? In theory, the author should take advantage of their copyright privileges to get some money from the public in exchange for access. That would be a win-win, leaving everybody happy!
In the past, that could be difficult due to printing and shipping and international trade difficulties and various other legitimate problems. But today's tech makes it relatively trivial, cheap, and convenient to sell digital files online globally. So if the author chooses not to do so, then in the eyes of the public, the author has opted out of their copyright privilege, they have forfeited. It is a public thing that should be open to free access, since the author has chosen not to accept payment for access. Of course, that's not what the law says yet, but that's already what people believe is correct, reasonable, and ethical.
Authors who attempt to suppress access to public things, or make it unreasonably difficult and expensive to do so, or bully people who try to access them, are in the wrong, and they will lose eventually. That is an unethical and immoral stance, and it is an abuse of copyright, not in keeping with its intent.
Therefore I had a Netflix USA account, which I accessed via unblock-us. The clampdown by Netflix has been "successful" and I now can't access Netflix USA using unblock-us.
This happened halfway through watching House of Cards. So my choice was either stop watching or download the remaining episodes...
I am tired of companies talking about borderless trade, global economy, etc. when the distribution of movies and tv shows is stuck in the sad world of geo-restrictions. I also legally get access to UK TV channels through my cable subscription, but I don't get access to iPlayer as that's only for UK residents... so again the only option to catch-up on TV that I forgot to record, is to use an unblocker.