Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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.

They keep telling us that we can’t own or preserve media. We strongly disagree.

My mind is turning on the piracy front. I've paid for Netflix for like a decade, and it was good.

I tried not to pirate, but there was no legal way to stream Game of Thrones, so we would do watch parties. Eventually HBO came to Canada through bell and I could watch it online.

That moment was pretty great, I could watch all my shows, and HBO, and Netflix was putting out some strong content.

Then everyone decided they wanted a piece of the pie. Netflix has continued increasing prices while everyone pulled their content out, Amazon turned prime video into a roulette wheel of "can I watch this or not", and Disney+ launched and very quickly turned into only shovelling garbage quality star wars and marvel projects, and now everyone is stuffing ads into their shitty content fiefdoms.

We're back to where piracy is the better experience and now I can't watch the content I want because it's at most 2 shows a year per platform.

Have they considered offering better content and services than the free options?

sparking concerns on Wall Street that the services will never be as profitable as cable once was

Obligatory fuck Wall Street

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.

Say it louder with me for the people in the back.

Piracy is not stealing.

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".

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.

That illustration with the hook through the film reel is so clever, I love it.

Can someone list those piracy subscription services so we can avoid them as responsible citizens?

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.

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!

https://archive.ph/fF4ib

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.

So what they're saying is they could get all that extra revenue if they lower their price and just undercut the competition?

I've been doing this for free.

Meme: You guys are getting paid?

Oh no. Poor Hollywood. Darn.

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.

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.

Subscriber fees? Who's paying for pirated content?

EDIT:

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

I block ads, so neener-neener. 🤡