I remember once writing to an Aussie record label asking for a copy of an old album of Brett Garsed. They told me I wouldn't find it here in Europe nor they had the means to send it to me. Should I just accept it? Once again, I could find it in Nicotine++.
I can't find many movies I like in original language in Netflix, HBO and Amazon, all services I have legal accounts for. Again, should I just accept I won't watch them knowing that I might find them in other channels?
I live in Spain, country where I pay a compensation copyright tax for every pen drive, computer, hard drive, TV set, etc, I purchase just in case I download something "illegally".
It turns out I'm lazy/I choose not to spend the required time and I accept not enjoying albums and movies I otherwise would.
Well, let me tell you I applaud Popcorn Time.
Cancellation of the fee
On March 24, 2011, the National Court annulled the order that regulates the rates applicable to the various devices and supports recorded with the digital canon. The reason is that, because it is a regulation, it needed procedures related to supporting and economic reports that were not carried out.
On July 12, 2011, the Congress of Deputies voted favorably on a non-law proposal that urges the Government to abolish said canon and replace it with another compensation formula for authors and content owners that is more suited to copies and uses actually made.
On December 31, 2011 the canon was definitively repealed by the newly constituted new Congress of Deputies, being replaced by a new payment this time by the State whose procedure is about to be developed.
Source (in spanish): https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_por_copia_privada_(Espa%...
I join the clapping, sorry for the nitpick!
Still, too lazy/don't have the time to do it.
I think that sums it up pretty well. Thanks for at least being honest about it.
I applaud the effort at legitimately trying to get a copy. However, sounds like an opportunity still might exist. Small record labels are always hard pressed for cash. Maybe there's a business deal to be made. I'm sure they would be open to licensing the music to you. You could then release the album yourself, or maybe a compilation album with tracks from other artists in the same style of music. Now you have the opportunity to bring that music to a wider audience based on your interest while maybe making a little money on it as well.
This is HN after all. Maybe there's some new website you can make that allows cash strapped record labels to distribute the music legitimately using some new programming language of the day. You could then write up a Show HN and let us all know. We might even be interested.
I have personal experience of starting a niche record store with a friend. We were both tired of the music we wanted not being available and decided we'd do it ourselves. Neither of us had any idea about the music industry. We both put in $500 each. Every dime of that was used to buy the initial inventory. We had no money to have a website built (circa 1999). So I learned how to use MySQL and PHP and built one. During the years we ran the business, there were many conversations with artists and record labels. We sold compilation albums where other people licensed individual tracks from labels and arranged them together onto a CD. We even had several discussions about starting our label, but stopped short of that.
My brother made a song with 10 yearly listens and I can find it on there.
Also Bandcamp is a thing. Very few dinosaurs or really, super niche artists are on neither platform.
Not sure if you've heard of it or not, but Discogs might be a great place for you to source and purchase a used copy of those albums.
However,seller declined to ship me discs(to india) even though i was willing to pay shipping. He said customs tends to seize items like music cds
I don't know specifically about Spain, but this 'copyright tax' [that was introduced in most, if not all European countries, probably a directive] was for you to legally be able to create copies on your devices of legally acquired contents.
The interpretation you have been giving it, is mentally satisfying, but not legally tenable
There seems to be contents on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=manouche . I leave it for you as home-work to ddgo the solution from there.
I'm not advocating for or against what you are choosing to do, but the position of "it's my only choice" is not really accurate. You have no inherent right to that media.
Popcorn Time and other P2P file sharing tools are convenient, but let's not be hypocrites about it, they enable illegal behaviour and allow you to go against the wishes of content creators, denying them both revenue from and control of their creations.
It's hard to justify why you think that creators have a right to the contents of your hard drive and wallet. I don't remember being party to the social or legal contract that created such rights nor realistically do I have a voice in changing it.
If society says that as a poor person in addition to having less of everything else I ought to enjoy less movies, music, books, games then perhaps society can go to hell.
I'm not saying the acts are equivalent, just that the positions are.
It also feels like statistically I should have read at least one comment where someone is convinced by argument that their copyright infringement is wrong but over twenty years on the Internet, I actually haven't. Very interesting.
It's also pretty easy for me to not judge since I've done things of dubious ethicality myself: I've never paid for a full copy of a textbook. Either I've bought the Asian copy or I've been part of a pool-and-photocopy group. Even now I use scihub preferentially.
Interestingly, the scihub usage is more acceptable online than the pool-and-photocopy but in real life no one has given me any grief for either.
To be honest, I don't feel very guilty either. And I'd do it again. If I attempt to see it as something shameful, convincing arguments defending myself pop out. I suspect it's something in the shape of the elephant and the mahout - the justification comes because I've already decided what I'll do. What I'll do is not rationally justified - that's coming after.
I'd speculate (idly) that this is the same mechanism in other pirates.
The legal system in your jurisdiction may disagree with you on that one.
> It's hard to justify why you think that creators have a right to the contents of your hard drive and wallet
I never tried to "justify" creators doing anything to your computer or anyone else's? Show me where I said that? That's a preexisting grindy-axe you brought along with you, friend..
I simply said that P2P file sharing denies content creators (big and small) control over the use of the works they own.
Which is strikingly similar to your position that other people shouldn't control your belongings, don't you think?
That being said I use popcorn time and stremio and torrents regularly. The difference is, I don't justify my crimes. I'm aware of what I'm doing, I don't need to live in a universe that is a self created moral illusion. I likely will do something unethical if I could hide it and it made economic sense. I am human and, morally, I am imperfect, but unlike most of you, morally, I am aware of my imperfections and I don't try to construct logical scaffolding to lie to myself and others. I can pirate because most people pay for the things I pirate, such a model is only sustainable if most people don't do what I do. Things like popcorn time threaten to change the balance.
If you want to save the world or do better for the world, do not assume that the world is as described by our parent poster pachico. It's not intelligent to assume that people are going to use popcorn time then purchase Netflix to offset some of that guilt (still a crime btw). Assume the world is made out of people who are as pachico really is.. people who are morally grey but make up lies and illusions to comfort themselves into thinking they are justified in their crimes.
I stopped pirating games 10 years ago when my salary crossed a threshold where it wasn't worth my time anymore to pirate a game vs. the convenience to buy it from steam. The way to combat piracy is to create systems that appeal to the previous aforementioned logic.
Spotify was a step in the right direction but it eliminated much of the huge profits made by the music industry. Perhaps those profits were ludicrously too large anyway. Either way, the way forward isn't trying to justify your crimes. It's admitting that hey, we are victims of the tragedy of the commons, we use popcorn time because it's free and easy to use... to combat this situation you either need to take steps to destroy this product or come up with something way better.
Don't forget copyright is a human construct and is far from being perfect. Also the amount of years after which art becomes public is human made and totally arbitrary. Why not 2 years? Why not 500 years? Ethics are not in the game here, I'm afraid. I'd like you to reply but please, restrain yourself from insults this time. Thanks
My point is what you're doing is wrong and you know it on some level.
That wasn't the point. The point is that a lot of these technicalities are self constructed justifications. Illusions and lies we tell ourselves to cope with our imperfection. I conflate because I don't care about the technicalities, I'm talking about something primal and simple.
In its most simplistic form, this is what I mean:
If I create a work of art to make money or even for just limited showings and you copy it and distribute it without my permission, than you are doing something wrong and you know it.
That's all. My argument is saying that anything on top of that is an attempt to justify your actions.
I am also tempted to tell you that you might want to revise you usage of the words morally and ethically and that these are probably more profound than to be applied to a kid wanting to buy an album but failed to find it. Having said this, have a good day.
Don't make it profound. Make it simple. The kid couldn't find the album so he DLed it illegally. The kid is aware of this illegality at some level.
That awareness is how simple the situation actually is. The profoundness arises when someone tries to justify the situation. I use the word ethics and morals as one would use it in common english parlance about discussions of such matters, I am not asking for a philosophical definition of said terms.
If the artist is okay with it great! But if the artist is not okay with at all does he own the rights to the art he created? Does he have the right to permit you not to copy his things? That is the ethical question.
Did you have the right to do it without asking the artist for permission? What if one day the artist did actually want to make a profit off his work?
Quite a shit mix of contradictions.
This is an utter lie. I never said this. Me being aware of my actions does NOT make any of my actions more moral. I never said this. You are either lying or delusional.
I'm actually a very high scorer on the psychopathy spectrum. The official term is antisocial disorder. This means I am technically less moral than most people.
Me being aware of my actions only makes me aware of my actions and my morality and who I actually am as a person. That's it.
>as long as you don't claim they're the original. It doesn't fit this scenario.
You're getting into technicalities. Let me put it simply. It fits. I'm talking about the general notion and feeling about plagiarism. This is the ENTIRE point of my conversation. Copying something without permission is in general wrong. There are cases where if the author is dead for over a century then things may feel gray, but who cares.
I don't want to get into technicalities because I don't care for the technicalities and neither do you. We all are aware of the cases there's no need to argue about it. If you want to argue about how a "technicality" makes the original posters plagiarism correct than don't care yo have that conversation because it's a waste of my time.
If the film industry would collectively take their head out of their arses and provide such a simple interface and wide catalogue to the masses, they would make hundreds of billions.
I would literally pay $50 a month for an official and legal version of this.
The end users don't really care that it is not possible because "legal reasons". This app proves otherwise and I wholeheartedly approve of their mission.
EDIT: if I would pay $50 a month, why am I not buying/renting movies on iTunes or Amazon for the same amount? For the same reason Spotify or Apple Music are making a killing. Give me a flat rate and let me watch _everything_, it's hard to decide if that new movie just out is worth spending $15 on. Might be crap.
So, I have no problem with "stealing".
I, too, would happily pay 50 EUR / month for ANY streaming service with a decent interface and a movie library that covers the 20th century. The easiest and cheapest (and mostly legal) way to watch classics for me is still to go to the public library (with an extensive DVD / BluRay collection), rent the movie, rip it and watch it via Kodi. This costs me 10 EUR a year.
That being said, what we need is a standardized way to stream movie and music content, and handle payments. This would include a standardized API to list available content with descriptions, images and prices. This would make it possible to use a private home entertainment system like Kodi efficiently and legally and would get rid of the need to use / install 100,000 different apps for each streaming service. It completely eludes why the current level of abstraction between the different providers is the app, the only explanations I can come up with is branding, a total lack of collaboration between the providers and copyright protection.
>I think the bigger issue than paying for multiple services is duplicate licensing. If I sign up for DirecTV, Amazon Prime, and CBS how many shows am I triple licensing? If all these companies want me to sign up for multiple services, there needs to be a way for them to pass "already licensed" information to each other, and pro-rate their bills accordingly.
>ATT, Comcast, Disney, CBS already own almost all the historical content. Id rather pay a small licensing fee to those 4 and then be able to watch their content on any platform, rather than deal with multiple middlemen that have CBS, Comcast, Disney, ATT licensing costs built into their product price. IF I select DirecTV/ATT as my "licensing manager" then any time I sign up for Disney+, Peacock+, CBS All Access, I want a discount off one of the two ends (would make more sense to give all my subscription info to DirecTV and get a DirecTV discount. Then DirecTV can go to Disney and say "17% of our customers dont need to pay Disney licensing costs, weve adjusted our payment to you accordingly.)
> fouric: This is actually really important. While it's immoral to take the results of someone else's work without compensating them, it's also immoral to charge your customers multiple times for the same product.
It would really benefit the viewer to decouple "what am I licensed for" from "what app do i need to play this" and just allow my media player to access all my libraries regardless of which licensing/billing manager and video player I choose to use.. Movies Anywhere, Vudu, Roku, Apple and Amazon have made some progress on this front, but its still way too convoluted.
What makes you think movies should have a multiple of 10 instead of 1 for a monthly subscription fee?
I'll attempt an answer, the cost should be whatever the market will bare. The market could likely boom at $50/mth, but at $200 it would be niche. The industry seems to even be coalescing around $30/mth (my guess) through consumers paying for multiple services.
Here's an example: A month ago, my wife and I rented Casino from Amazon Prime for like $3 or whatever. It is a long movie, so we paused half way through with a plan to finish it the next day. The next evening rolls around and we discover we only had 24 hours to finish it once we had started it. We just paid again cause its only $3, but also resolved to never rent from Amazon Prime again.
These systems are a worse experience than pirating. It doesn't have to be that way.
Economists are careful to distinguish between 'positive' and 'normative' economics, where positive economics is what's observed to happen and normative economics is what someone things ought to happen, morally, for precisely that reason. There are always the people who can't or won't make that distinction, however, including the people who refuse to distinguish between describing something and expressing approval of it. This has a particular relevance in any online community with a downvote function: If enough people are offended by a description of a state of affairs, any discussion of it will be downvoted to oblivion and will be impossible to hold in that forum, especially if downvotes are tied to how much you can participate in that forum in some fashion.
They are already making hundred of billions
And will make more now thanks to house confinement
Why should they change model just now?
> I would literally pay $50 a month for an official and legal version of this.
But I'm paying zero right now...
And the chances of getting caught are slightly above zero.
My point is they would make hundred of billions MORE. Some will still illegally download, but most would flock to such a service.
We're not all criminals because it's fun. We just hate the inconvenience of trying to watch a movie legally in 2020, especially if you're outside of US, or worse yet, outside of the Western world.
As well a restaurant might be crap too, or a website or mason work... look up reviews before buying.
The market is speaking.
Anyone ever got money back from Amazon/Apple/whoever because a movie they sold you sucked?
IDK, I'll find out within 72 hours. I just asked Microsoft to give me my money back for Dynasty Warriors 9 (I'd call it broke as fuck, but it's probably subjective).
I did once get a refund request for a Toy Story 4 ticket because the director and I happen to share some names.
edit: I don't have Spotify or Apple Music. Can you expand on this without putting it in terms of those services?
I don't want to do the cost-benefit analysis of "do I want to spend $X for this movie?". I can afford it, I'm not counting pennies, but when I see a price figure I spend a few seconds deciding whether it's worth it or not, and sometimes the answer is NO.
On subscription services you just click and enjoy. I'm already paying for it, the answer is always YES.
But there's a limit. I will not pay for 10 different services at $9.99/mo to have access to 70% of the movie repertoire. No way in hell.
Isn’t their position that they’d like this thing to exist? I don’t see how you need to have a Spotify or Apple Music account to understand the argument.
You can currently buy or rent whatever you want and watch it. I haven't found anything on a streaming service that isn't also for sale/rent somewhere and have found things for sale that are not available on streaming services.
If you want access to "_everything_", and are willing to pay a premium over existing services, buying/renting what you want is available today. Problem Solved, no?
The media industry collectively thinks what they make is worth the collective cost of all their streaming services (probably hundreds of dollars a month).
They’ve spent BILLIONS making the movies that make up these catalogs.
And before you say “well they already made it back” let me remind you we’re on a tech forum, what industry makes the most money from “selling the same experience over and over again until your margins are nutty”
You feel you have the right to watch EVERYTHING they make, a subset of a few lifetimes of content just won’t do for the modern man.
So instead of sticking it to them and not buying into their game until they’re forced to reform...
you go and spend time illegally downloading their movies so that instead of getting the message “we don’t make stuff good enough to justify it’s price”, they get the message “we’re doing so well that people are stealing our content, go lobby for copyright laws harder or something Legal”.
Because more media than people who spent 100s of dollars to experience not that long ago is not ok, you need to have ALL of it. And if they don’t feel it’s in their best interests, you’re going to steal it
(and yes, it’s stealing enough with the “but I didn’t take the original”, why don’t you go copy all your employer's IP and post it on pastebin then tell the cops you just made a copy”)
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I personally pay for like, 2 services?
There is A LOT of media on there. For 30$ a month I’m getting access to more shoes and movies than cable would provide for 100s of dollars once upon a time. More than any sane person could watch in one lifetime.
Sometimes I have to forgo watching something because it’s not on the service I want. I don’t bother going to steal it. Once upon a time I was a kid with no money and no job, less impulse control and much more time to waste, so I would, let me not pretend I’ve never done it....
But now I’m an adult, I can decide not to watch something and watch something else if I feel it’s not worth my money.
If there’s a movie worth enough to me I can usually pay for access to it specifically (one off payment before someone starts waving the subscriptions are murder stick... on a tech forum).
But that’s actually never happened. Because there’s so much content there, unless you have this mentality of “I must have it all, I deserve it all, nothing less will do” I don’t see how 50$ a month of services (your cutoff) would not be enough.
Sure, they're entitled to think whatever they want. The reality is that the marginal cost of making a digital copy is near zero. Their work is widely available for free to anyone who cares to look for it. And it is extremely unlikely that the average person would ever experience any negative consequences for getting it for free.
You can think that's right or wrong or try to shame people all you want, but those are simple facts. Another fact is that for a large portion of the world, the content is not available legally even if you want to pay.
So, the content industry can learn to accept those facts and make a good service that makes some money. (Still many billions of dollars) or they can keep operating under the delusion that people should pay even more billions of dollars and get less.
The negative consequences of just stealing it are pretty low
Unfortunately so much software has become a thin client for a fat backend, so it’s a little harder, but all said are definitely industries that pay 10,000$ a seat for software that was mostly written 20 years ago and is patched to keep it hobbling along
They’re not really going to besides waging larger and larger wars on copyright and forcing DRM
The thing is, I don’t really “shame” anyone, but I understand when “normal people” steal movies and shows
When technologists do it, it’s the biggest WTF for me.
My country passed laws to have a minimum percentage of national movies showing in theatres at any time. Lobbying has nothing to do with demand.
Good or bad, people will steal it because they feel entitled to it.
They lobby for things like DCMA enforcement and DRM because people steal it.
If people didn’t steal it, there would be other things to lobby about, is that your point?
I don’t think that wasn't obvious but sure.
My point is the things stealing leads them to lobby about things related to stealing, which are things that end up not being great for anyone.
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I mean to be clear, the cat is out of the bag and this line of thought is more of a thought experiment than anything.
People steal, DRM exists and DCMA exist, the status quo is set.
These days, if there's nothing good on Netflix, I play video games or read a book because both of those offer far more value/dollar. If the movie industry offered $2 rentals for everything other than new releasees, I'd watch more movies. I'm only willing to pay $5 to watch a movie if it's a new release and I really want to watch it. I also rarely go to the theater as well because $10+ is too much for that experience unless it's opening weekend for a film I've been waiting for (we usually go on Tuesdays for the discounted rate for regular entertainment).
I wish the film industry would recognize the opportunity they have that's evidenced by projects like PopcornTime. If they make a movie platform with a nearly complete catalogue, people will use it. It's annoying to check multiple streaming platforms to see where something is available, and it's annoying to pay $5/movie to rent (that's about discounted theater prices, but without the theater experience).
Sometimes war-times measures become permanent (female vote in France, gun confiscation and the Tignes dam all started during the WWII) when they are good.
so i would have to buy the film in physical form so i can watch it.
Added to the fact that you need a boatload of stuff to even build it [1], and you get an interesting cocktail of mass-exploitation.
0: https://old.reddit.com/r/mealtimevideos/comments/dulvpz/subs...
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22614247
This doesn't look good:
https://old.reddit.com/r/PopCornTime/comments/flcqsd/trojan_...
https://old.reddit.com/r/PopCornTime/comments/fknfnm/is_this...
https://old.reddit.com/r/PopCornTime/comments/fluait/the_vpn...
1. It deletes your favorites folder
2. An obnoxious blinking icon in the main page and a label while the stream is being prepared is trying to nudge you into buying a VPN service
3. The option to load subtitles is botched
Here if you want the old(0.3.x) version: https://get.popcorntime.app/repo/build/
https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop/releases...
Edit: the binaries inside seem OK. I assume it's to bypass the Gatekeeper lockdown when a user downloads an app file.
provides an IRC-router like interface that can be used to share files over encrypted and obfuscated HTTP. Give it a look if you're having torrent problems.
FWIW I'm getting a lot of frameskips from my video chats, so I think it's legitimately congested.
Absolutely not. There are very legal reasons torrents are used (its great for releasing large datasets). Isps should treat all data the same.
https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-desktop/blob/v0....
0.3.10 Beta - Popcorn Is Love - 31 October 2016
No info anywhere. Did it actually change?
No write-up I can find though.
That's the problem with code signing. It's just an attempt to graft the status quo monkeysphere onto the digital realm - you "know" the author of the code, so therefore you trust it completely, because you can sue them post-hoc if they harm you. This doesn't scale to the digital world, but that hasn't stopped these unimaginative power-hungry companies from trying to force us into it.
Is this the same repo that is in Archlinux AUR?
Services like https://www.justwatch.com/ make it easy to not break the law. I used to use Popcorn time all the time, but honestly it kinda feels good to not steal /shrug
It is essential for one's erudition, which historically has been considered important for an informed citizenry that knows the good and the beautiful.
Take the mid-20th century canon of films, works by directors like Ozu, Kurosawa, Godard, Truffaut, Antonioni, etc. These are recognized as classics of film art and part of our general cultural heritage now. However, due to changes in legislation in the years since they were made, they are still under copyright, and so a person would have to spend thousands of dollars to legally obtain a cultural education that, in this day and age, ought to be available to anyone regardless of their means. A person pirating such films is not necessarily doing it for daft entertainment (because often these classics are not particularly fun and entertaining), but simply to learn and be familiar with the canon.
And before you say that one can turn to the library instead of torrenting: many countries around the world never had well-stocked libraries to begin with. In fact, in some of these same countries it can be less than straightforward to purchase the content even if one has the money to spend.
You and I have much different takes on what feels good.
I think virtue is good for us and thus "feels good", because that has been my experience.
I think following laws that aren't inherently unjust is virtuous. The only question is if these laws are unjust or not. (In this case I guess we're just talking about the laws of paying for goods.)
> regressive companies trying to put the Internet back in the bottle, destroy net neutrality, push us into proprietary platforms, divide online communities based on geographic location, surveil our behavior, etc
This is too vague to be compelling. At the end of the day, you are paying for content that was created by human beings. Is there a middle man? Yes. Would it be better without the middle man? Also yes. Is there an alternative? Only if we are okay with not paying the creators that put in the work to make the content. I am no longer okay with that.
For me, at the end of the day, your argument is at best pointing out a less than ideal economic system and at worst it is justifying viscous behavior that, taken to its limit, can be used to justify virtually any kind of illegal behavior.
Less than ideal != unjust.
BTW, I also tried to buy Harlots in Canada, in physical format. It wasn't available in Blu-Ray
I find a good 10-20% of things unavailable across Netflix + all non-subscription services.
i can't rent any movies on amazon and while youtube offers some movies, they are either subtitled in my native language (which i don't like, i prefer english subtitles) or they are dubbed (which is even worse).
Edit: Apparently this question has upset a good number of people. It was a genuine inquiry. It would have been nice to see your thoughts in written form instead of the downvotes.
To those that did answer--thanks! Really incredible how complicated the licensing arrangements are across the world.
Then, every copyright owner realized they want a slice of the streaming cake - (HBO, Disney+, all the cable networks...) and started making their content exclusive on their platforms. Now, instead of a single Netflix (or anyone else, really) subscription I would have to pay for a dozen, that I would rarely use for more than one series/film. Or I can't even get it at all, because it's not available in my country. Or only available with subtitles in a language I don't understand. Or I can't watch it on the hardware I want to.
The music industry got their shit together and even the most copyright-paranoid artists are on Spotify, or on Bandcamp (which is subscription-free). When the film industry does the same I'll gladly start paying them money again.
But now I have two streaming subscriptions and the catalog between them is still too sparse. I think I'd need 4 or 5 separate subscriptions to stop losing the "is this somewhere that I can watch it?" game.
Plus I have a VPN account that my phone and tablet are connected through almost all the time. I don't like having to leave that turned off when I want to watch something, often I'm multitasking and it means whatever else I'm doing is now connecting from my home IP address.
I'm not playing those games, I can torrent whatever I want to seen in better quality - with subtitles in variety of languages, HD or SD, some number of audio tracks with different translations if I wish (even though I don't need it after leaving in English speaking country for some time) and so on.
It's just shitty user experience.
To be fair, unless their play count rivals Taylor Swift, those artists probably still aren't making much money. I have quite a few friends who are professional musicians and this is a common complaint.
Im nit saying spotify isnt a positive thing for consumers (and maybe also artists in the long run) but there's definitely a tradeoff to having one platform to rule them all.
Similar reasons for why Youtuber film-makers aren't treated seriously by Hollywood film-makers ie their portfolios aren't taken seriously. There's a weird snobbishness in the whole industry
A la carte would be what Amazon Prime Video does with all of the stuff that isn't free--you just pay for the thing you actually watch.
I currently pay for Netflix and Amazon prime, mostly so my kids can watch cartoons (we don't have c cable or satellite TV) and because my wife likes fast shipping (we watch way more Netflix than Amazon Prime though). I don't expect to pay more than either service to have access to a better selection of movies.
so i already shell out a LOT of money to media companies, so i'm ok with pirating if a specific movie/series is not in any of those services because the owner of the movie/series i'm pirating is probably getting my money through any of those services.
A better question is when are film studios going to stop profiteering with their license fees and allow their works to be available on any platform (instead of meticulously negotiating with one platform and moving around every couple months).
Additionally, the loss is not one to one. Each pirated video does not equate to a lost sale. The fact that people imply that is ludicrous.
Man, I haven't said that stuff in like 20 years. Takes me back to naptser day. Now someone ask me if I would download a car!
This makes paying users less likely to sympathize with the content provider. And then you see those transparent attempts to skew numbers so they can generate some compassion ("This episode of GoT was pirated 30 million times which means we lost 30 million possible subscribers!!11" type thing) and you start having a really bad impression about them whether you pay for the service o not.
I am forced to torrent content that I already legally pay for just to get a proper subtitle or voice over for example, because sometimes I get a different experience for the same content based on the country I'm in.
And the fragmentation of titles across platforms doesn't help one bit. We're basically heading to the same situation with today's cable business.
Personally, living in a country whose language I don't master means many of the titles in my Netflix catalogue are unwatchable. Anime being in Japanese and only dubbed or subed in the local language and nothing else. In English speaking countries the exact same titles have English sub or dubbing.
For the legal part, stealing is for physical objects, eg. the victim doesn't have disposal of this stolen good anymore. This is not true for intellectual «property» since it's a copy. This is why copyright & copyright infringement has been created, whose original purpose was to protect authors from publisher and protect publishers that made advances to authors from other publishers.
For the moral part, you have no clear answer, circulation of free copies obviously reduces revenues of authors, but also it allows access of content to people that wouldn't have paid for it anyways, case where the loss of revenue is shaky.
To extend further, it's related to consumer frustration, while it's no question that being frustrated if you don't own a Ferrai is frivolous, if you can't afford it, you have to steal it from someone, the frustration occurred for copyright content is solely based on publisher/distributor strategy on maximizing revenue. The thing is, total revenue has a, albeit unknown, maximum theoretical possible, hence after a trigger frustration left is purely and solely a strategy to protect revenue. In the end, you get frustrated people just to have copyright holders a better peace of mind and revenue, and nothing else, so there's a moral balance to keep that you can't reduce to a black and white situation.
Copyright law with its duration of 95 years after the authors death is practically universally seen as the result of money being transfer from large companies into the control of politicians that voted in favor of the law. Normally when laws get written as the result of money changing hand we call it corruption, but as the supreme court have show, that is not always so.
Some people have tried to fix the problem from within, but the US political system makes third-party initiatives like that rather hard. Internationally, the result of the corrupt process spread through international trade agreements where nations has to either implement the same laws or risk getting trade sanctions from the US, and thus internationally nations has accepted the same corrupt law in exchange for getting through trade deals.
There is no moral ground for following current copyright law except blind following. Instead what we get is individual moral decisions where for example a person might feel it being acceptable to view 95 minus 1 year after the authors death old video on youtube, but find it wrong to view a recently released cinematic movie. Each person uniquely define when, where and how they feel copyrights exclusive monopoly is morally defensible and when it is not. The result is that you get about as many different moral view on the issue as there is people.
Therefore downloading is not illegal here (sharing is, which kind of puts torrents into a strange place).
The world is a bit crazy, isn't it.
You can get the tax back, but you have to jump through a lot of hoop holes, and so not a lot of business do it.
It’s purely racket.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
The collected money is in general handed out by Copyswede [1], but for music it's handled by STIM [2]. STIM also supposedly handles paying money to artists played for customers at the barber, and all these special cases, and music played on TV, and so on.
I don't know for sure, but I think that the money is divided based on official sales data, so the artists who sell most also gets most of the "cassette tax" as it is known, because it was introduced as an added tax on cassettes back in the 80s.
It is not popular with consumers, since you have to pay extra for blank CDs, DVDs, USB sticks, and hard drives even if you don't use them to copy music. The tax is not to cover loss of income due to piracy, I just learned from the Wikipedia page, but to enable private copying of music without having to buy extra copies from the producer. As I said, since you have to pay even if you use the CD as a Linux boot disc, it's not very popular with the public, but a lot of people don't even know about it.
[1] https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyswede (in Swedish)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIM (in English)
Spotify doesn't have even half of my collection of Johnny Horton (which I torrented as well).
Also, I'm afraid of censorship. Some of the early 20th century county singers we throwing n-words left right and center and you won't find them on Spotify. Same for Apple Music. With Apple Music it even worse. Music disappears from the library _suddenly_. Just because same shady firm has it's license expired in Australia. Internet is full of stories of people who were unable to re-download movies or music form iTunes because the right owner has deleted it from the store. No, no money back.
So the only place where I pay for music is Bandcamp, which lets you download the stuff you paid for, right here, right now in variety of formats including lossless.
Sometimes you can compromise with one side if the other is really good. Spotify is a good example, where it really is more convenient to pay $10 for every song you could ever think of.
On the other hand, there’s no similar buffet-style movie service that has more than 10% of the movies I want to watch.
It’s hard for someone to justify paying $60/month on the four streaming services (since the market is so fragmented) and still not able to watch Iron Man 2 (though 1 and 3 are there)
But for me the answer is fairly obvious: availability. If video content was as convenient to consume as music, then pirating wouldn't be making a comeback. You can subscribe to all major streaming services and it's likely you won't find a given niche tv series or cult movie, unlike with music that with a single spotify sub you can listen to basically any formally published album (Ok, I know it's not strictly true, but it's closer to this state than with video)
You could called it "unlicensed copying" if you want, that's legally sound.
If I take your car, you don't have a car anymore.
If I make a copy of your movie, you still have that movie.
Arguably, you're being deprived of the money from the sale of the movie, but there are already other terms that can be used (piracy, copyright infringement).
And that's only wishy washy wish-I-had-money, nothing real. (And even that isn't really the case since sale and piracy are not mutually exclusive)
Edit: and for the moral part, most Hollywood people preach for communism. So let them show the way.
It also isn't treated as stealing by (most countries'?) legal frameworks. It's copyright infringement - and not even commercial infringement (where you are making money by infringing). Non-commercial copyright infringement isn't even criminal - it's a civil matter.
Add in the fact that these deals change all the time so season 3 might be somewhere else by the time I'm caught up and ready to watch it and the whole system is madness.
Hope that helps
I don't live in the United States and if I want to watch say Westworld, even though it's airing on the national broadcaster for free, it only does so in French, which I don't understand. There's nowhere I can legally watch the English version so my only option is piracy.
In other cases it's because the market is fragmented. Were I still living in the US, I'd happily pay $20/mo for a Netflix subscription (and do) but I wouldn't pay $10/m for each of Amazon, Hulu, Netflix, Disney Plus, HBO for American stuff plus another $10/mo for each anime streaming service that has an exclusive.
However, you could also think of it like the digital equivalent of sharing. If someone purchases a movie or TV series on physical disks, they could loan it to you without breaking the law. In fact, they could even make a copy of the disk and not break the law. The only way to break the law this way is by having multiple copies in use at the same time. This is just digital sharing without checks in place to make sure multiple copies of the content aren't used simultaneously.
That being said, who is really harmed when I give someone a copy for free? I'm not stealing from the content creator (I paid, after all), and I'm not selling it, and there's no guarantee that the person I gave it to would have purchased it. If the creator hasn't lost anything and I'm not taking credit for it, nobody was harmed. In my eyes, this makes piracy acceptable as long as I don't sell it.
If we didn't have such strong copyright protections, content creators would be forced to compete with piracy by offering convenience, but instead they sue. Netflix has proven to reduce piracy because they offer convenience, but that only works for content they can provide.
No it isn't. If I steal your bike you no longer have a bike. You no longer have the benefits of using it for transportation, society is worse off. As you explained copyright is very different from that. So, let's not call these 2 different things the same.
