This is how it goes in other countries, too, where you cannot even legitimately get disks or downloads, much less be able to afford them.
It is true it's simpler to just stream content for those that have the money and tech, but if you've seen how the media giants have split the market it's not affordable to most people to have Hulu live tv, Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, etc - all to watch a few specific movies. Piracy is a natural result.
Don't underestimate the amount of tech knowledge people have nowadays, especially if it will save money. They themselves may not know, but they know someone that does. The internet has become a beautiful resource to learn absolutely anything. VPN's are advertised everywhere on YouTube. Necessity is the mother of invention after all.
Oh yes, thank you for remembering that. It's truly an exception around here.
Pretty much all streaming services refuse to accept my money or provide access to 0.1-1% of their catalog (compared to what is available in the US, literally a few to a few dozen shows/movies) for exactly the same price per month, so who would even bother? Of course, you can always try to find a working VPN, if they weren't getting blocked all the time.
I believe Spotify is the only service that gives access to the same selection as in every other country.
So everyone "pirates" everything, especially if you want content in its untranslated original form.
Edit: except for games. Most games are available from Steam and other major platforms, and those are very popular.
The person in your anecdote likely wasn’t a profitable customer anyway. Their goal is to make money from the masses who have it, not to try to squeeze blood from a stone.
Because that's apparently the only way to watch legitimate DVDs.
This works also in the opposite direction. I know of some couples, who can easily share even 200USD/month on streaming services, however they consider "the alternatives" to "save money", who are of course illegal here in Europe.
Nowadays "saving" let's say 20USD for Netflix per month is - in my opinion - a very bad bargain considering the fact, that you can end up paying a lot of punitive damages.
Pirated software/movies always added some sort of value to the product. For example, DVDs forced (and still do) you to watch a couple of minutes of FBI warnings, anti-piracy trailers etc. instead of just letting you instantly watch the movie you paid (!) for. Pirated DVDs just offered the movie, full control to the user - like in streaming nowadays.
So if you have the money, I do not get people who want to "save money" on streaming.
Funny thing is that pirated content is the only ethical content I know of, that doesn't rely on ads (streaming services have ads too, even if you pay)
anyway, if I pay for Netflix who has produced their own content, why should I also watch the ads for other Netflix content?
Isn't it enough to pay for it?
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/tv-film-co...
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/oct/26/squid-g...
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-57838473
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-57382459
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/scarlett-johansson-sues-dis...
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-56815282
Also, streaming services are swimming in cash and using it to monopolize the market, instead of rewarding creators.
theft is when you take something from someone, when you download a movie, Netflix users can still watch it, Netflix can still stream it and they don't lose anything.
In fact their profits have gone up, despite helping piracy by releasing more and more content easily sharable outside of their platforms.
Netflix alone made 7.5 billions in the third quarter of 2021, up from 6.4 billions in the third of 2020.
someone really believes that leaks are unfortunate? have you seen a single image leaked from the next Indiana Jones movie? Do you know the title?No? you know why? because they'll work next year on the post production and are keeping everything under rigorous control. leaks will be useful only when they are ready to launch. When Luca..ehm Disney wants to take secrecy seriously, they absolutely can and will.
Anyway: I pay for prime video, because it's included with prime. I rarely watch other streaming services nor download their content.
Last exception was Foundation from Apple, thank god I did not pay for that!
Usually it works like this: I wanna watch an old movie, say Total Recall, some streaming service bought it for Christmas or whatever occasion together with all Schwarzenegger movie, to release a "member berry" bundle
I probably already have it, ripped from DVD, when it comes out I download it again because I'll probably find the x265 version which is smaller or the 2160p (or 1080p) restored version.
If someone ever one day invents the Star Trek replicator, it would end scarcity of physical goods overnight! This would be an amazing thing for humanity (and would likely be opposed/outlawed by the same moneyed interests that oppose the sharing of non-physical goods). This hypothetical invention would utterly change humanity for the better.
I would download a car! No question. If the alternative is needlessly spending money on the exact same product, of course I would, and so would nearly everyone posting here. What an absurd campaign that was! In a world without physical good scarcity, there would be nothing ethically wrong with doing it.
Oh, and we’ve only been talking about cars and movies—luxury goods. Notice how the argument is never “would you download food?” Or “would you download insulin?” I think even EvilStudioExec might have a hard time arguing against downloading necessities or life-saving medicine.
If you go to the hospital in my country you can "download inulin" because it's free for everybody who needs it, rich or poor.
Yes, such as when you use someone's creative work contrary to their express desire. Digital goods don't work the same way as physical works, it's true, but all of the people involved in making them still need to get paid.
The principled, ethical stance is not to watch things you don't want to pay for. Nobody's life is impoverished by making the percentage of entertainment they don't watch go from 99.9987% to 99.999%.
No, that's not theft.
That's infringement of rights.
But I speak with many artists and creators, they are more mad than me, I have a job where I get paid no matter what the result is, because they pay for my time.
they are between a rock and a stone: accept to work for these platforms and get paid shit, while they nmake billion, or don't and get paid shit, but at least own your work. Guess which way many are starting to take...
> The principled, ethical stance is not to watch things you don't want to pay for.
according to what ethical stance, exactly?
yours?
do you really think it is so relevant?
or the ethic of corporations, which is objectively something to stay way from.
Again, I'm not saying that the current situation is great but if you were really concerned about artists being fairly compensated you would not take the action which results in them not getting paid. You could buy directly from the artist or you can go without, but taking advantage of their work without the agreed upon compensation calls your motives into question.
Are you saying that if I ask an artist to make a painting for me and the painting get stolen AFTER they made it, I am allowed to not pay the artist?
That's a really strange POV.
Media companies should pay artists, not me.
I am only paying for their services, not for the content, which I can get in many other ways or not get it at all, which is an option too, but by your logic not watching the content would lead to artists not getting paid so I should feel bad about that too...
I am not the one monetizing artists' work and they are not doing it because I am paying, but because media companies hired them to do their job.
Again: sorry, not sorry!
That’s not the situation being discussed. What you’re arguing is more along the lines that it’s okay to sneak into a concert because you don’t like the guy selling tickets.
Not at all.
I'm arguing that you could listen to an unofficial bootleg if you don't like the guy selling tickets.
If you want to help the band, you can buy their merch from the stand.
If people working for large media companies had a merchandise stand, I would buy it, if I liked what they do.
Most of my friends are artists, writers, comic writers, painters, musicians, director, actors etc.
I've worked in the music business for a long time myself
What my friends say is that people working for streaming services today have lost the status of artists, they are employee of those companies and are doing a job, it's the company's responsibility to pay their salaries, they are not interacting with the audience anymore, they are not gifting the World with their creations, they are making products.
Just like coders who work at Adobe.
Do they mind if someone installs a cracked copy of Photoshop?
No, they do not.
Why should they?
Interesting point. Did the people who made the content get paid too? And is the value of the DVD in the physical object or the content?
No, they chose to opt-out of this market.
Usually yes, because those would be the actors/cameramen/directors/editors/etc who would be paid for their work before the finished work then would be sold on to consumers. The question here is really "Did the people who fronted the money for the content get paid?" For simplicity I'm ignoring royalties here.
> And is the value of the DVD in the physical object or the content?
If we agree that copies of digital content are zero-cost, then the monetary value of the DVD is in the physical object.
Obviously that's only half the argument because nobody's watching blank DVDs.
But how do we fairly compensate the group that fronts the money for the content to be created? IMO, this is the genius of crowdfunding and why I'm bullish about it being the economic future of content. If a content creator can convince enough people to give them money to make something, then there is nobody who needs to profit from distribution. The content is fully paid-for up-front.
It's also not a new idea. Rich patrons funded works of art in the Renaissance. Rights management would have actually been counterproductive because the point of the art was the aggrandizement of the patron.
I admire your intellectual honesty about admitting that royalties exist. Anyway, the question here is where did the money for up-front salaries come from and does does it keep coming when the if the publisher's profits are reduced?
I have participated in a few crowdfunding campaigns and I agree that it could work for a specific niche: where the content creators are already well known enough that they can attract a sufficient audience that trusts them to do something sensible with their money. It's going to be hard for newcomers. Just look at failed kickstarters: there is a lot of trash there but there could be some unpolished gems there.
> Rights management would have actually been counterproductive because the point of the art was the aggrandizement of the patron.
This is kind of the point. If I have to choose blindly between a show that's made because Jeff Bezos wants to fund it and meddles with it personally or a show that Jeff's firm funds because some professionals believe it's going to attract paying viewers, my bet is on the latter.
- Something not being available in your country
- The version that is available is a "helpfully" translated one when you would rather watch the original with subs
- Your device isn't worthy of receiving a high-quality stream despite you paying for one and your hardware being capable of decoding it
- The player is just shitty and you can't use your own
- There are ads despite you paying a subscription
- You "bought" a movie, then it was taken away from you because the seller lost the license. In other words, your continued access to something you allegedly own is still contingent on the seller and its whims.
It's surprising how much people are willing to tolerate, but in general, around me torrenting something is still the default. Some people do have Netflix or other subscriptions, but they are a minority. Just no one is having this whole "you get the same exact movie but you pay AND you get a worse UX" thing.
And DVDs? I don't think I've ever seen an actually licensed and encrypted DVD. Many players ignore all those "no fast forwarding" flags as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time
Unfortunately now there are so many streaming platforms piracy will gain in popularity again. Lots of people don't mind paying for one or two, but probably not five or six. Especially when some just have one or two good programmes.
'Subscription rotation' may become a thing: you pay for a service for a few months, catch up on any shows that were released on it that you haven't seen, and then cancel and move onto the next one. A year later you come back to the first one and do a new catch-up.
There may be one or two that you stick with (e.g., Disney if you have kids).
Unless there's a continuous series of releases that people will want to watch, I'm not sure they'll want to subscribe for an entire year: it surely adds up.
Probably depends from where you are. In Poland some 15 years ealier, it was quite a common skill, even for people who rarely used anything else on the internet. Many people had crappy and unstable connections and torrenting was the only viable option for them to watch anything from the Internet.
But Netflix has 213 million users. If pirating was really so much easier and DRM made legal options unusable, they wouldn’t.
DRM sucks, but Netflix isn’t going out of business any time soon
I am willing to bet there are more than 500 million people pirating, so I don't think this argument carries much weight. Netflix is a very 'rich western country' thing. The rest of the world exists.
The rest of the world exists but that doesn't mean they were going to be paying customers anyway.
Nitpicking, but Netflix has 213 millions subscribers, not users.
We don't know how many of them are active or how many people are using them.
We simply know they paid one time.
Pirating skyrocketed as well during 2020
The two things are not adversaries as much as one might think
Theatrical releases on streaming services have helped piracy, now you can download a movie mere days after it came out and the quality is gonna be perfect.
> More people are pirating movies during the coronavirus lockdown During the last seven days of March, there was a 43% spike in Americans visiting sites that pirate movies compared with the last seven days of February. Italy, which went under lockdown orders on March 9, saw visits to piracy sites spike 66%
If you know more, I'm curious to listen.
I don't know many folks that actually torrent things now. If you want to be able to see it offline, sure, or if you want the physical file. It isn't necessary, though. Even if it was, the last torrenting software I used was pretty easy and you didn't need to be that tech savvy to use it.
It doesn't matter because this isn't necessary. Streaming sites exist, and they are definitely easy to use. So long as you have a decent internet connection, there is no real reason to download anything.
Perhaps though the real friction is not exactly technical but that the piracy sites don't have the same attention-capturing "feed" or recommendation mechanisms set up. Just the friction of having to make choices.
Popular movies were always on top of the list because the default sorting was by seeders and these movies would load instantly
At the time it was the best streaming experience existing, paid or free combined.
[edit] oh and install was just dropping an all-in-one app somewhere on your computer and launch it.
The allure of Netflix is simply legality, but for selection it is a step backwards from a decent streaming site.
Part of what people don’t seem to remember is that one of the benefits of iTunes was its huge selection. Netflix is becoming more and more like BandCamp, not iTunes, in terms of selection. I don’t go there to find something to watch anymore. I only go there if I want to watch one of the few things worth watching on it.
There is currently no legal video platform for watching all the things. (And that’s ignoring the DRM crap.)
also, no ads.
there is nothing inherently difficult in watching unlicensed content.
and downloading has been a thing since I can remember.
Everyone in my age range or younger than me (mid 40s) should know exactly how to do it.
the main two reasons people watch paid services nowadays are:
1 - they have kids and don't want to do parenting, because it's hard, so they buy Disney+ and leave the kids in front of it
2 - they are young and have been educated to them by their parents (AKA they don't pay for it)
3 - go back to one
As you age (30s-40s), generally your can afford more and so access some of these most popular cultural artefacts without copyright infringement; so you should pay. Also, it may become less important to establishing and maintaining friendships and status (like if you find your niche in society).
I don't think those following such a social progression need be aware of it.
At my age I have no FOMO, truth is I never had it before either, it might be me or the fact that I am naturally immune to most mimetic tactics, I simply get no reward from social acceptance.
Anyway: at my age I have developed my own moral compass,I pay to go to the movies, I pay for concerts, I pay for records, I pay for books, I pay to watch and listen online content that I think it's worth it (I buy a lot of music from Bandcamp) I have no ethical problem boycotting VC funded services that want to build a monopoly (growth, they call it) and have fragmented the market in ways that "excluded [people] from the principle cultural medium film/television" of their times.
sorry, not sorry.
But who has the disposable income? Who is being catered to, really?
"magistv"
I often hear arguments that its “easier to pirate movies than use DRM’d software”. But I don’t think this is actually the case for the average non-tech-savvy person. If you can operate a torrent client or even know what one is, you are much savvier than the average Netflix/Roku/etc user.
DRM means that there isn’t a point-and-click app for my mom to send her sister a movie. This is the average person who buys movies. Not some geek on a tech forum.