LOL.
We pay for 4K, but we don’t get more than 720p unless we use some proprietary shit hardware and agree to their super-invasive “privacy policy” - and they expect people to NOT set sail in the high seas? GTFO…
I’m willing to pay for one, maybe two subscriptions, and ain’t nobody got time to dig for which service has what show to find out season 2 is on some other service entirely.
Piracy provides a better user experience 🤷♂️
Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem - Gaben
I generally agree with him, but there are a lot of people who pirate simply because they don’t want to pay. And I’m not casting moral judgment here, i just feel like it bears mentioning lol “almost always” is pretty generous
No it also means it’s a service problem in the sense that it’s not priced right for a geography. Pricing a game $70 where local average monthly income is $120 a month is a service problem. If you expect people from that geographic region to pay, the product should be priced within their means. And thus argument is valid only for digital goods where every new copy of the said goods costs mere few cents.
You’re gonna have to put in some work to convince me he used “service“ to also say “too expensive” when he said that. Hell GAAS as a concept didn’t even exist when he said that.
Lets compare three options as example:
One streaming service with everything:
- monetary costs: 25 €/month
- opportunity cost: login, type name in search bar, enjoy in good quality, language and subtitles of choice
Piracy:
- monetary costs: 0-5 €/month (hardware/vpn)
- opportunity costs: keep up to date with existing aggregator sites, take protective measures against identification, be wary of malware, limited scope of languages and subtitles, varying quality
Current streaming services:
- monetary costs: 100 €/month or more, if you cover most services
- opportunity cost: login to each service, look if they have the particular series/movie, be limited by region to which languages and subtitles you can use, have only certain episodes or certain seasons of a series, get a movie as a result, but actually have to pay extra for lending it…
People choose whether to pay monetary or opportunity costs. For a broke student priacy might still be the way to go, because they have time but not money. For most people a convenient streaming service will be the way to go though, because not having to worry about everything around and just finding your movie/series in 30 seconds, after you put dinner in the plates is the preferred option.
The current situation combines high monetary costs with high opportunity costs, so that piracy becomes attractive to many people, who would be happy to pay for a streaming service, that actually covers everything.
So i think “almost always” is perfectly applicable. Also keep in mind, that the offer of pirated stuff is directly related to the demand. if the demand reduces, so will the offer, which in this case would make piracy even less convenient. Of course the pricing matters, and if the one streaming service would cost say 50 €/month, more people would pirate again. But the dominant factor first is the service quality.
He made that statement when streaming barely existed. People were still primarily buying DVDs. That was the late 2000’s when it was only Netflix, maybe Hulu was just starting, and game streaming was barely a concept.
Actually not very true in regards to gaming at least, a study found a decently wide majority of game pirates end up buying the game. Alot of em just either use it as a demo or to bypass the copy protection garbage that fucks up the game they want to pay for.
There is no way they could possibly know the percentage of Pirates to do that. Just because it occurs doesn’t mean there aren’t countless people who do it for free things. It’s also important to remember that those claims come from advocates, so you need to take it with a ton of caveats/pinches of salt. They have a pretty strong incentive to make that case.
“Any information I don’t like is bullshit”
What? There is no information. You made a broad assertion. You don’t have a single source for that claim.
Where’s yours? 🤷
Alot of piss in the wind 😂
For gaming, you’ve got Steam, which is pretty close to the ideal legit content delivery service. You don’t even necessarily have to pirate in order to demo games if you’re comfortable paying up front and making a decision within 2 hours.
Nothing similar exists or has existed for TV/Movies. Netflix was pretty good for a while, but you’ve never had the option to download the content to your own hard drive. Now you’re not even allowed to log in to your account on as many devices as you want.
Give me a service that’s a free storefront where I can pay a one-time fee for content that I’m actually interested in and download it to my hard drive as many times in as many places as I care to. Bonus points if I can stream to other devices that I’m logged in to and lend my purchases to my friends & family like I can with Steam. I don’t care if there’s DRM in the form of me having to log in to actually use the content if I can use it the way I want.
If that’s true on its face, then you’re not losing any money either way since they are never going to pay regardless even if you try to force them to.
Meanwhile, you can absolutely scare away what could have been a paying customer by offering dogshit service.
That’s never been an assumption you can make.
If you hand me a $10 version of a thing or a $5 option of the exact same thing, I’m taking the $5. Free is no different. Especially when they can do it from the comfort of their home and not drive to a mall to buy the CD or whatever. Remember what year it was when this all started man.
Remember what year it was when this all started man.
1903 when Edison v. Lubin was filed?
If you’re going to be a smartass then I have no desire to continue this conversation. I am talking about when piracy became mainstream via napster because it became easy for people to get free music.
No it also means it’s a service problem in the sense that it’s not priced right for a geography. Pricing a game $70 where local average monthly income is $120 a month is a service problem. If you expect people from that geographic region to pay, the product should be priced within their means. And thus argument is valid only for digital goods where every new copy of the said goods costs mere few cents.
People who pirate because they don’t want to pay will never, ever pay. Not worth considering them to be honest.
Im willing to pay for two. It used to be netflix and prime, then hulu, paramount plus, disney…
Now its down to one- Proton VPN 🏴☠️
I use Mullvad. How good is Proton?
The best public option is Proton imo. With paid subscriptions you even get access to Secure Core servers where Proton runs their own data centers instead of hiring 3rd-parties like NordVPN, etc.
Case-point: Nord has been hacked before bc of third-party data centers. Proton has no breaches so far and does regular security audits, has plenty of servers outside the 14 Eyes Alliance, and actively fund privacy focused projects.
Mullvad is a close second bc of their anonymous payments.
It really depends on the quantity and sensitivity of the content I’d say.
But Proton has replaced everything I used Google for (Drive/Email). Proton will work for a good 90% of everyone most likely.
I’m all in on proton personally.
I dont have much to compare it to.
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How the fuck do you expect me to just jump into The Two Towers and not expect me to want to watch The Fellowship of the Ring first?! Oh you think I’m going to go buy/rent the first movie 😂 that’s cute.
How do people still not grasp that Netflix can’t just buy whatever they want to stream? Licenses are often being held by other services at the time. They also have no control over if a show gets pulled or not. I still see people complaining that Netflix “got rid” of the Office.
Like, I have no love for Netflix or any streaming service at this point, but at least shit on them for things that are actually in their control.
And frankly, this is how HBO, Showtime, Stars, etc have operated like this for decades before Netflix came along. It’s so weird people think “shows/movies being pulled because the license deal expired” is something unique to Netflix.
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Music industry seemed to figure it out pretty well. Except for a few rare case outliers, it doesn’t matter if I’m using Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon music, etc. Sure they all have different features, but I can blast Taylor Swift to my heart’s content and never leave one app
For the record, you can use justwatch.com and it will tell you exactly where you can watch it, and which seasons. But I’m still not paying for multiple subscriptions.
Since #1 on the list is always The Seven Seas there’s no reason to proceed further.
Stremio also has a default addon with this info
I saw this on someone’s phone and was wondering what it was, seems neat tbh but I already own a ship 🏴☠️
Hell, I even pay for a service that has all the magnet links resolved and ready to stream, no downloading involved. For 30 bucks (a year!) it’s been the most convenient way of enjoying movies & shows.
I am actually paying for a piracy service : )
Got two. Not doing anymore. Ive had up to 4 or 5 and still couldn’t find what I wanted.
https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-not-price/
As Gabe Newell said: “Piracy isn’t a pricing issue, its a service issue”
As my friend said: "every time a plastic video disc says " operation not permitted " a torrent is born…
As I say: “People will pay when it’s easy, more reliable and more convenient.” As a software product manager, I forbid my product from ever wasting developer cycles with copy protection… It’s expensive to deliver, annoying to real customers and doesn’t make us any more money…
As a user of software, I salute you.
I don’t disagree with anything but I feel like GabeN said that before streaming and subscriptions took over.
Photoshop is an incredibly easy to use and powerful tool for creators - I’d be happy to drop like $200 on, for example, the 2024 version. I’m not happy to spend $10 or $30+ a month for life to use it, especially when they lock you in to a year subscription and charge you a fee if you cancel early so you literally can’t just sub only the month when you need it, it’s the whole year, period. I’ll just pirate or use photopea or whatever.
Similar for streaming. Netflix gave us the option to pay for more screens to watch on. Now suddenly it matters whose house it’s in?? All while you’re constantly removing value from the platform and you cancel anything decent if the production value is too high? Fuck you man I’m not paying like $30 monthly for that.
Please do keep voting with your wallet - its one of the few remaining ways to express our discontent!) That being said, I feel like both of those examples are where the service provided by adobe and then Netflix are terrible.
Adobe is making you buy a whole year and Netflix is hassling you for “letting your pensioner mum watch your account”… To me, both of those are examples of bad service (coupled with cost).
For me, a counter example for me is amazon.com: I hate what they’re doing to the retail landscape but find it hard to resist, as I find them SOOO convenient, and their customer service (for now) is absolutely stunning!!! Now if their prices were too high, I’d personally probably pay for that convenience a bit. (Where there model breaks for me completely is warranty major purchases: I’ve had warranty denied by manufacturers for items purchased through non approved amazon resellers. So now, for me, anything over $100 and I’m looking for direct purchase from the manufacturer as a preference. )
I think not getting what you paid for is a pretty big service problem idk man
Maybe people would pirate less if you let them keep what they pay for.
If buying isn’t owning…
You’re buying… A temporary permission to access certain content.
…then piracy isn’t theft.
No it’s just borrowing, it’s temporary anyway, I recently looked at some movies on a very old harddisk and it was like DVD quality or worse. Threw the entire disk out.
I don’t know if it’s even borrowing, really. If you borrow my drill, I can’t use it. If you torrent a movie… Like… You’re seeding, and more people can use it!
It’s almost like our economics models with supply and demand barely work for physical products and are even worse at modelling easily reproducible digital goods
Naaaah, probably just a coincidence, best not to think about such things. /S
12% over four years? Damn. Somehow I had the impression that there’d been a significant increase.
Netflix revenue is up by roughly 60% in the same four years.
Thank you for keeping things in perspective.
if these two numbers were reversed, piracy sites would get the same treatment as videos with actual criminal content. we’re lucky
Cracking down on account sharing has sent lots of people sailing as well, and market fragmentation.
Don’t forget ads.
I’d happily pay for anything I consume if it were convenient, private, and no ads. Since I can’t get that anymore, well, it’s the high seas for me. I pay as much for high seas related services as I would for the official streamers, but the experience is 10x better.
Netflix turning off account sharing is what sent me to the high seas. Disney+ doing the same will push me over even more.
Is there anything with pirating on Disney+?
I could pirate all of Disney+ and never watch a damn thing.
Am childless.
I’m rewatching some old stuff on there as we speak.
Burn Notice, White Collar, Lie to Me. All great shows. Loki was good too.
Have cancelled it to run my own media server from now on though.
Sometimes piracy is the only method of archival
Some things are literally not available anymore by legal means. Piracy is an important tool in preserving content for future generations. Future historian will be proud of pirates.
I really want to show my friend the original Fullmetal Alchemist series, but Funimation has completely replaced it with the newer Brotherhood series everywhere. It’s such bullshit. I would be happy to pay them to watch it, but literally the only option is piracy.
Absolutely true, I was actually looking for this flash game mike shadow and the vending machine and it’s partly lock cause reasons, pirates where you at
Put everything on 1 or 2 platforms and take cuts depending on what people are watching.
I don’t care if there are 10 platforms. Let them compete on features and customer service, but the content should be available on all. A bit like ISPs, give me the content and pay the creator a cut when n I watch.
But fuck this 10 services with fragmented content.
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People saw how successful Netflix was and wanted the same even though it was never going to happen. By doing this they’ve now made Netflix shit too.
Everyone was saying this about the streaming boon then, too. We all saw “cable 2.0” headed at us.
You must have got down voted by a young person, because people have been seeing this coming for about a decade
That would be smart and is what originally happened.
Well streaming prices have gotten ridiculous.
It’s not just the prices, people are lazy. You can go to one place and get all the things or search 10 different places.
It’s not just the prices, people are lazy.
Or they just demand good value for their service. Netflix hugely curtailed piracy in their early days. Same with Valve’s Steam.
Paying up to 23$ a month (not including other streaming services) to watch maybe 5% of the shows and movies I’m interested in just didn’t seem like a good deal after a while.
Nope, you need more than 1 subscription, because quite often services only offer a few of the seasons of your favorite show, while the others are on different services.
Example: https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-episodes-movies
EIGHT different services? That is some corporate greed bullshit right there.
LOL if it wasn’t on the official website I’d have assumed it was a joke.
Would you:
- Subscribe to Netflix for watching the first season
- Then subscribe to prime video and then subscribe again to a specific channel to watch season 2
- Cancel that useless extra subscription to the prime video optional paid channel to watch seasons 3-9
- Subscribe again to that channel to watch seasons 10-16
- Subscribe to Hulu to watch seasons 17-19
- Subscribe to the Roku channel to watch seasons 20-22
- Hope that they don’t alter the licensing deals during your view or you gonna subscribe to something else
Or… Just click on “get all missing episodes” on sonarr?
And for those that are able to keep to just one subscription, switching to another when they’ve finished watching whatever show it is that said service had, they aren’t safe either.
One of the next steps that these corporations are going to take is to add fees for dropping their services, with year long contracts.
They don’t want competition, so they will try to force you to stay.
Kind of what I meant as being a problem but thanks I guess.
I know a lot of people who are sailing the Seas until the streaming Market crashes. There’s way too many businesses trying to do the same exact thing which has limited the media selection available without paying multiple $12 a month subscriptions. Eventually they will either fold or merge together again
Ironically this is a double edged sword. If they merge, expect prices to rise. Won’t be long before $100/mo is expected and accepted.
I stuck around with streaming for as long as I could but with the price increases, the restrictions, the lack of content as they revert back into cable bullshit has driven me back to getting the bulk of my stuff via torrents again.
Honestly, I’m pretty shocked that streaming remained decent for as long as it did but we all knew this was inevitable because we all know how this song and dance with greedy corporations go.
The lack of content is really bothering me.
Disney plus is the absolute worst there’s nothing on that platform for like 9 months of the year. Then they’ll have an interesting program (usually Star wars related) you can binge and then nothing for another 9 months.
Then just subscribe for that month and then cancel. We switch around from all of them; one month netflix, next month HBO, apple the next, etc… Don’t understand why people keep the subscriptions when they dont use the service…
I don’t keep the subscriptions that’s the point.
Those are rookie numbers! Let’s pump it up!
This is the number one reason I won’t ever pay for a netflix subscription (or others) again. Pay for 4K but you dont get 4K if you want to watch on your laptop or android streaming box that they don’t approve of. Like how much fucking greedier could you be? Fuck them I hope they all go the way of blockbuster soon.
I fucking wonder why. When owning isn’t owning them piracy is totally justified.
We pay for 4K, but we don’t get more than 720p unless we use some proprietary shit hardware and a
Not only that… you pay to get tv content and suddenly they remove it because of licensing or political correctness bullshit.
Not only that… you pay to get tv content and suddenly they remove it because of licensing
Preach!!
or political correctness bullshit.
Oh no
Always a tell tale sign when someone unironically drops a PC whinge.
Amen. Weird how people feel the need to insert it into random places. Cant think of any TV show that got hit from that!
The DnD episode of Community didn’t need to be removed from all streaming platforms…
It’s amazing to me that people can cite a single example of canceling that is gray area or they otherwise feel is wrong and they think that that somehow invalidates the idea of a boycott, removing things, or just finding something distasteful in general. It’s baffling really.
I can cite 100 instances of domestic violence or comparable crimes in the NFL and that’s not enough. But one episode of a show is removed, and everything about being progressive or liberal or pointing out racism in media is suddenly invalidated.
There are a lot of insanely dicey jokes and moments in community that get a pass. I love the show, but let’s be real here. I think it is missing the forest for the trees when it comes to removing “advanced dungeons and dragons” as an episode, but ultimately, it’s a small con in what is generally a very valid exercise. Plus it’s not like it was erased from existence.
You’re attributing a lot of things to me that I never said. On the whole though, I don’t disagree with you.
You’re right I could’ve been more clear that that was more of a general statement. It’s just always the one that comes up with this implied “…and that’s why cancelling is bad.”
The Dukes of Hazzard
Yes we should destroy all media that isn’t politically correct right?
Also riddled with ads
When Netflix had (seemingly) everything I was totally cool and the gang with paying for that service.
Now I have:
- Netflix
- Amazon Prime
- Apple TV
- Disney+
- NowTv
- fuck knows what else
and I still can’t find the content I want to watch. I had an urge to watch The Good, The Bad And The Ugly the other day. Could I find it on any services I pay a combined £50+ a month for? Could I fuck. Why would they be surprised they’re pushing people to ‘alternative’ sources? Sure, I can rent or buy Barbie and Oppenheimer if I want, but I don’t want. What I want is access to the tens of thousands of old, excellent, films that have been made.
My NAS literally arrived today.
I’m done.Been paying for years but it’s becomming equally predatory as linear TV so I’m out.
That’s honestly one of the biggest wtf things to me. Movies like that are old as fuck. How many people are still buying the DVD? Or paying to rent it? Not talking down on the movie itself. There’s a reason it’s still talked about. But honestly, it’s not making much, if anything.
Why not have it throw up on a streaming service? At that point, if I had the rights, and Netflix said they would pay me like $200 a week, I would probably still do it. That’s probably $200 more than what it’s currently making a week. Netflix gets to have it for cheap. And then the people who want to watch it get to.
But yet its a problem for us to pirate it?
I need to continue the dollars trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars was pretty good.
For A Few Dollars More is so-so (but I’d still watch it again), but The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is epic.
And if you enjoy them, then take a crack at High Plains Drifter or Pale Rider which are both excellent though share an underlying theme. The Outlaw Josey Wales is also well worth a watch, as is the magnificent (and best picture Oscar winner) Unforgiven starring and directed by an older, wiser, and grittier Clint Eastwood.
Definitely will check out High Plains Drifter and Magnificent Seven. Pale Rider and Unforgiven are already on the list along with Gran Torino. Also already watched The Outlaw Josey Wales, it was a really good movie.
You might also want to add Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai to your list too - they’re the Kurasawa films that A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven are western (in both senses) remakes of.
I watched Yojimbo already (which I personally found to be mediocre). I’m actually planning of watching Seven Samurai before Magnificent Seven.
1 of those 12% is just me lol /s
I get pissed at my family for being traditional hoarders but I somewhat inherited that as a data hoarder. The amount of stuff I have pirated over the years and not actually used or watched is hilarious.
Same here. But on the bright side, at least data hoarding doesn’t take up a ton of physical space.
Well, it does if you do a lot.
What are we taking TB wise?
I have about 10TB of stuff. Around 600 movies and not quite 200 TV series. I’m planning on leaving societies embrace and being away from it all in a couple of weeks and have been hoarding stuff to keep me entertained, if needed. I’m not the one you asked, but here you go. I don’t really feel like I have a ton of stuff, from a datahoarder perspective, but probably a little more than the average torrent monster.
Hm are those high res movies? 10 TB seems to small
Kind of all over the place, but mostly 1080 or so. Here’s a little data:
I have 48 movies that are 1.7G, 43 that are 1.5G, and so on.
# of movies SIZE 48 1.7G 43 1.5G 33 1.9G 31 2.2G 31 2.0G 30 1.6G 27 1.8G 25 1.4G 21 2.1G 19 2.5G 16 1.3G 14 2.6G 14 2.3G 12 2.4G 10 2.8G 9 3.0G 9 1.1G 8 4.1G ...
Probably around 30tb but all in, but drives being from 400gb to 8 tb of varying age and make. Most are just shelved and in the off chance I want something from them they get hot swapped in the dock thing
Just upgraded my truenas and plex to 8tb drives. 1600+ movies, 60+ TV series, 40,000 songs. I seed as much as I can, have uploaded over 5TB this month alone. Come get some.
I haven’t used Torrents in years, since subscribing to Netflix. But I’m fed up with needing to pay 5+ different subscriptions to get coverage across shows, so perhaps time to think about other options. What are some of the best torrent sites today,?
I use OnTheSpot downloader to grab albums from spotify at 320kbps - https://github.com/casualsnek/onthespot
Use Soulseek (nicotine+) to grab more obscure stuff. Can get everything on there, just sometimes slower and not as reliable as a torrent.
I use these sites for movies, in order of convenience:
https://ytssss.jamsbase.com/ (basically just YTS)
https://www.magnetdl.com/ (search sucks, but if you get used to it, it has huge libraries of TV series)
https://en.torrentgalaxy-official.site/
https://psa.wf/ (PSA RIPS)
I don’t really download apps anymore, so malware really isn’t an issue, but make sure you’re using UBlockOrigin plugin and a VPN like TorGuard
Could try the *arr software. Sonarr is tv, radarr is movies and lidarr is music. You can use jackett to act as an indexer and it will automatically grab the shows.
Could try the *arr software.
Haha, do you ever feel like the last one to get the joke? I do sometimes.
I’ve used them for a very long time, maybe a decade if they have been around that long, could be a bit less. I’ve seen them referred to as the *arr suite/software many times. I didn’t know there was a joke to get until you pointed it out, I’m still facepalming.
So you are not the last one.
In my defence, I’m not a native speaker, but still…
My friends and I have been joking too much about this naming scheme without even mentioning what appears to be the intentional meaning… I feel rather dumb.
yeah, i’ve thought about it. but it’s cathartic to find music/movies, download and organize them, choose artwork in Plex, things like that. I’ve got them all organized in media monkey.
96KHz audio or bust.
oh god, the difference between some of my old rips at 128 and 320 is damn near night and day. i though the song just sucked, but the quality was just shit. also found a track that got corrupt, but still played, but at 1/10th the speed, it was about 30 minutes long, but normally only 3 lol. just stretched the fuck out of it.
1337x and YTS are preferred for me. No sign up/log in BS
Regarding music, there’s also the slavart discord and their bot which allows you to download music from different streaming services in lossless formats
You can also use this site for DDL’s if you’d prefer them. No ads or premium and actively updated: dhokla.net.
