maxthemagician
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Time to pirate once again
Ive been using streaming services for many years now because they were convenient and easy way to pay for stuff but as years went by every company started pulling their own products to their exclusive streaming services making things more and more expensive and then netflix started denying password sharing and using drm to stop anyone from streaming stuff to friends etc.
Its already impossible to find a same show or movie with friends from different country due to countless restrictions and now drm prevents streaming from hbo and amazon video as well in past few weeks. Anything these companies want to "protect" is already out there ready to be pirated and the only ones they are inconveniencing with their practice is paying costumers who just want to watch a movie with a friend.
Guess its just time to cancel all streaming services and go back to full time piracy until they make their sites user friendly.
wheeeeeeeeeeee
Closed our Netflix finally. Kill and close em one by one.
fredhoffman1968
wash ashore the pirate bay :)
BenArowndaBlok
Anything that is locked with someone else's key is not yours. Pirating is a moral duty. Copyright is bullshit made by bullshitters to make themselves seem necessary.
rubypilgrim
Wanted to watch "Young Frankenstein" on Halloween - "unavailable on Prime" - like I couldn't even buy a digital copy.
Aspernari
Specifically on the topic of DRM, many rights holders require some form of DRM (or specific forms of it) as part of their license agreement. It's not rocket surgery to circumvent, but it's been the same story since VHS and Macrovision. It would be surprising to me to find that Prime and Max only recently implemented DRM.
DemonKysho
ReaperCDN
The cycle of convenience and piracy continues. As they continue to add barriers, it becomes more likely that people will hoist the colours.
Minneapple23
Kanopy is a good option for movies and some TV if your city/county library is linked to them. I have a Plex server that I put some choice video on, and that's always an option for someone who wants to allow friends and family to watch. Streaming prices are kind of high, but the cost is small when compared to the time one can enjoy their services.
SolusEmsu
Saw a study on piracy years back that showed the vast majority of piracy is due to content being unavailable, rather than too expensive. DRM pushes more content into being unavailable, thus increasing piracy. Executives are too fucking stupid to realize this and keep pushing their unreal mentalities and causing the company to lose money but hey they get their bonuses anyway because they do not have any responsibility for anything, only control and bad ideas.
nosimpleway
Legit customers continue to suffer. Pirates, as always, are unaffected.
wookietiddy
I'm actually thinking of going back to physical media instead and possibly digitizing it. I don't think piracy is the way. Not too comfortable with taking something I didn't pay for. But digitizing my own media, seems okay to me.
maxthemagician
I buy my music digitally in a way that I can download it. Qobuz is good for that.
Skrumblecakes
I highly recommend Louis Rossman's breakdown on how, at this point in streaming, piracy is completely justified: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs&t=563s
Exophobias
Neat. My home NAS and Plex will pay itself off for myself and family very quickly. Aye matey
TripleDane
my hate for this subscription bases is that sometimes i like to have and own and control a copy of my media so im not on some toher companies constant mercy that they dont change things.
DeepVeinZombosis
Platform decay. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
Nykidemus
That was one of the most enlightening articles I've ever read.
cmdshift3
Plex + Radarr + Sonarr + NZBGet + NZBFinder + TorGuard. All free and pretty easy to configure… and you don’t have all those torrenting problems.
Exophobias
This! Did this 6 months ago and wish I did it years ago. Family loves it as we can all cancel our services.
datphone777365
PicassoCT
Deep down all the meddle managers of every company know that what they are part of and what they are doing is wrong. So they collectively decide to hype themselves up to "absolutely essential unavoidable company" and commit Seppuku by sabotaging there own product. In the companies dying moments they then try to lobby for some dystopian absolute power grab, not realizing that politicians have a incentive for affordable/free panem & circensis for the masses.
keupajer
kickmyballsrealhard
DM me for some sites that you can watch everything for free
TheNamiKage
DRM was invented by big pirate to sell more pirates.
badbmc
My wife and I used to get by on just Netflix and Prime. Then Netflix got more expensive and neither of us was watching it much. Got rid of Netflix. Still have Prime but that's only because we have an Amazon Prime membership. Still don't watch it much but it doesn't cost anything because we want to keep the Amazon membership.
skipweasel
I want to watch Chickenrun 2 at the cinema, but it looks like it's Netflix only - which I don't have.
TheNoggle
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. (...) The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” - Gabe Newell, president of Valve, which operates Steam.
memedrift2410
Fact: at the height of Netflix's popularity (when they had everything) piracy hit an all time low since Napster's heyday.
nero4ty2
But they never had everything, I’ve been using since the dvd days and the selection was always limited and shifted frequently. They were the only source for rentals and streaming but it was never complete.
StillNotYouTube
Netflix DVD had everything. RIP.
toolzgalore2
That is a pipe dream, they will not stop because they have realized their business model doesn't work at the price they were originally asking for. The companies will collapse under their own weight or alienate their customers and fade away and get gobbled up by a bigger company
DMSledge
https://www.statista.com/statistics/444870/scripted-primetime-tv-series-number-usa/ The number of shows being produced has doubled over the last decade. Its not that they didn't have a good model, its that they are insatiable. Netflix made around $13 Billion profit over the last year.
MikeRInternetTraveler
And if they ‘only’ make $13billion in profit this year, that will somehow be a failure. Growth above all! Never enough! Capitalism will kill us all in the name of next quarter’s profits.
maybeamonster
oh, it worked fine at a good price point. fifteen of them don't.
DMSledge
Its not about the competition, its about the need for increased profits. $13 billion isn't enough for Netflix any more.
GTimgur
I hope yarhar is on the rise again. The Bay has been in decline and needs more seeders.
sambaah05
@OP - it widely varies how much but one of the reasons for restrictions is the actors get a royalty when their content is viewed. Especially if something is streaming only, understanding how many paying customers watched is a big deal. Non paying viewers don't help the actors really
atomicsockmonkey
Yeah but we don't really care.
maxthemagician
But the content isnt available everywhere, so even if you truly wanted, you cant pay to see it together. Its like claiming they lose money
sambaah05
Steaming royalty payments reflect that multiple people may be viewing, and that you won't have individual ticket sales.
maxthemagician
if you have a friend in person looking the movie with you. Watching movies with a friend is the only reason I bought hbo for example.
Kagenical
Because a substantial number of their customers don't care or notice, are willing to pay more for additional functionality, or have never heard of a torrent. We're perpetually online, we know these things. My 70yo mother doesn't. I suspect as her generation "disconnects" (ahem) consumption metrics will change quite dramatically.
nycjtw
have never heard it expressed as 'disconnects' but I dig the dual usage here. nicely done.
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
I know these things but I work in software dev so I directly see the issues with pirating. Thus I can't do it in good conscience. Plus I boycott rather than pirate, because for example I hate Amazon and their business practices. I don't want to benefit from their awful behaviour. So I boycott them. Yes I want to see Good Omens and Wheel of Time and other stuff they produce, but I'll have to live without it. At least I have the books.
HIVp0sit1ve69
That's funny because the software devs I worked with were always the most prolific pirates. Many even participated in uploading torrent material.
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
I know. It seems pretty hypocritical to me, that they want people to pay for the software they work on, but they're fine with not paying for the software other people work on. Especially when we've all seen that if our product doesn't meet the sales targets, people get laid off. I get the idea that people think they're "sticking it to the man", but the man just turns around and sticks it to the employees. The execs always come out ahead, meanwhile the dev teams get raises and bonuses cut, get /1
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
benefits cut, or get laid off. And those of us who aren't laid off have to cover the work of the ones who are. Or, we just cut their work and the product gets worse and it's just a cycle of worsening products and more layoffs till they shut down the product altogether. I try to explain this to them and they just shrug and say "I'm not giving some big corp my money". But most devs work for big corps, including me and them. Just hypocritical. /2
TacoPoweredHelicopter
You are %100 correct and I have sailed the internet seas myself. Most who steal justify it by saying it's only hurting some big company.
HIVp0sit1ve69
The devs pretty much did not give a rats ass if anyone bought the company's software. They had good employment opportunities anywhere they wanted to go.
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
I guess. This is one reason why the industry's getting shittier and shittier.
Maulbert
Executives are under a constant delusion that no matter how much money they're making, they're always being cheated out of even more. They're a cancer on actual creative people.
mrthewhitee
There isn't a delusion, not as much as people like to believe. Drm makes it inconvenient for the average person to copy their content, and to reality is many people still don't bother with torrents. They know pirate groups will get it eventually, the goal is to delay and reduce the reach of the copies, not stop them completely.
Shaodyn
There's no such thing as enough for rich executives. It's like there's a void inside them that nothing can really fill but they're constantly chasing more in hopes that they can.
MerriMod
It's a lot worse than that, honestly. There's an attitude among execs - especially in the game industry - that all money is their money. Not that they deserve to earn it, but all the money in everyone's wallet is already actually theirs and everyone is literally stealing from them. Don't buy a game? You've stolen money from them. Are you an employee and want to be paid for your work? You're a thief and an enemy. Did their own dumbfuck decisions backfire on them? No, everyone else is wrong.
Agreeablebug6
Almost like unregulated capitalism, and the mentality of ‘if you’re not growing you’re worthless’ isn’t sustainable
4vie
As I've heard (James) Stephanie Sterling say multiple times so far.... "Corporations don't want as much money as possible. They want ALL the money", courtsey of a friend who worked at .
TheWombatStrikesAgain
The drive for constant growth is literally - not figuratively - killing us.
MikeRInternetTraveler
Unchecked capitalism will kill us all. Literally.
Wyattcon11
Business majors. They do not know how to create value so they will suck it out of any orifice they can. If you only know how to make money, but no skills to make product, your only skill is to cannibalize your company.
syko2k
"They're a cancer". There, I fixed that up for you.
Dubs1
Ya, a perfect example of this is netflix. They had all the money they could want, but just had to try to stop password sharing.
MechaNinja
Also a lot of those people have to do shit to justify their job and their existence.
TheGriffin
I'm maintaining revenue for my region this year compared to last and doing it with half the team for half the year and yet the company still has the gall to insist we're down because our YOY revenue isn't up and we keep missing plan
afterdarkart
Its called "Elite Panic" and its one hell of a fun thing to see what money does to people. And by fun I mean depressing and I hate this world.
niooes
I think executives and upper-middle managers are consistently under the impression that things just have to change all the time. If someone whispers about a thing, everything has to change around it. It’s dumb af
Navrodel
Not necessarily every time they hear about something, but definitely every time a new idiot gets hired. I lost a job because there was a new manager that demanded the company cut costs and saw the contracting firm as nothing but a huge red line between them an "more profit." Heard later from an old colleague that the move basically shut down their issue tracking entirely, and they likely lost 10x as much over the time it took to fix it al. Idiot still got a promotion for "innovating."
Navrodel
Because the huge loss didn't show up until after the next cycle, but the cost savings showed up immediately. He obviously took credit for the savings, then blamed "the market" for the losses. After promotion, it became someone else's problem, and wouldn't you know: the new guy figured he could save money by hiring a contracting firm to get them organized again. Corporate management is full of idiotic rich nepo-babies failing constantly but bullshitting their way upward anyway. It's a dumb world.
PandaWaffleking
Now, if only an executive would notice this an unironically fix it....
TheChandrian
They have to justify their existence within the company. If they don’t fiddle with stuff, then they’re not “necessary”
CaptainMendez
^ this! I work in a specialist position in gaming and tech, and it's amazing how many people feel pressured to 'change things up' on things that are working perfectly. Like, STOP. We are making 10x profit, don't touch the things that are working perfectly. Stop bringing in people who are like "but we can squeeze an extra .2% profit if we make the product 5x worse! This math is perfect! What could go wrong?"
aducksayswhat
It's business box ticking, to be able to say you took measures to prevent a bad thing happening
aducksayswhat
If you've got a movie to license out, are you going to give it to the company that just puts it on an open server?
LincLoud
I remember reading something by a sociologist that studied executives/CEOs and she found that it's borderline sociopathy. They don't care about anything but making money as quickly and as much as possible. It's why prices have been rising on everything but wages stagnate, it's why companies will run stores with skeleton crews like in Dollar Tree while raking in over $2 billion each year, and it's why they buy politicians to keep things bad or make them worse.
wademcgillis
"We can pay you in baby rats!"
LincLoud
I wish I had contacted someone years ago from OSHA and other offices with authority but it's too late now, so I'll just say; I worked for a terrible retail pharmacy chain (the location is now closed) and one winter, the town lost power. We were told to come in despite the lack of power/heat and the snow blocking the roads. The people working consisted of myself, my supervisor, and a single pharmacist. We were initially told to simply provide already filled prescriptions to customers for ->
LincLoud
the sake of meeting their medical needs in the blackout but a district manager came by and forced us to serve all customers. We had no power so we had to do the math with a calculator, keep track with a sheet of paper, provide no receipts. This continued even as the sun set around 4pm, the store went pitch black and we worked in winter coats. It went from cold to freezing to the point that our pharmacist was experiencing head aches. An hour later, after several complaints, they let us go home.
psych0bunneh
I just want to tack on that it's not just a case of "having the wrong CEOs" either. A CEO not willing to engage in this behavior would likely be ousted by the board who are in turn controlled by investment groups. If you want to operate morally you nearly NEED to stay private. And if you do, good luck fighting off all the petty slap suits from established companies in the same industry who have investors willing to fund your demise.
GharComs
I'm lucky to work for a successful private company right now. Not that I appreciate every decision the execs make, but it seems a lot better than the horror stories from the rest of the tech industry. Fingers crossed that doesn't change any time soon.
XeononSolomon
That's the downside of capitalism. If you aren't expanding and earning more money than last quarter then you are a failure. You can't earn the same as last quarter either or same result.
Catchiest20Two
Not just a failure. If you're maintaining and the competition is growing, then they pose a larger threat. They can use their growth to limit your ability to maintain. Grow or die is the core tenant of a competition based economy, which is terrible for all involved
HelloThere1812
It's so stupid! Arghh
MikeRInternetTraveler
There are only two things that believe in infinite growth above all else: tumors and capitalism.
Varenvel
you say like it has upsides.
XeononSolomon
The upside is someday I too can exploit people and become a millionaire or billionaire.
Devious11
One of the biggest issues is when companies only allow 1080p or even as low as 720p (max) even with UHD plans if you're using a pc.
StillNotYouTube
I can't get better than 480p on streaming services because I don't have the correct OS/browser/video card/monitor combination they require.
UseTheSource
On Netflix most content is just 1080p anyway while I know there exist UHD releases. That's not what my friend is paying Premium for!
bsgt2trekfan88
Actually unless you're using edge it's restricted to 720 P.
lysani
That's why I use Edge for streaming stuff. It's the only browser on Windows that streams in 4K, with the rest stuck using 720p or upscaled to 1080p.
UseTheSource
But besides that: I'm talking about content not being available in 4k. Practically the only content in 4k I can find is Netflix originals. For example Gemini man looks great in 4k 60fps but Netflix only gave me 1080p on my TV. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i82xURPkLWo
UseTheSource
right, and even if you use Edge/the Netflix app from the Windows Store, you have to buy a license for HVEC from the Windows Store (and thus have a MS account). I believe I had a license in 'from device vendor' but Microsoft pulled that? Yeah...
znuff
Blame the MPEG-LA. HEVC is a terrible patent-encumbered codec. It requires every device that plays back the content to have a valid license. All your mobile devices have a license paid by the device manufacturer.
UseTheSource
can I blame Netflix a little bit, too? For not using AV1?
maybeamonster
>inconvenience millions of customers to prevent show from being ripped >show is now not only available for streaming on pirate sites same day but also at a higher resolution
maxthemagician
Regardless what sorta drm they use, shit will be ripped, it always will be. This doesnt prevent piracy, it just is shitting on customers.
Exophobias
I agree. As a Canadian, due to the insane costs and frequent price increases and shirty catalogue to boot; it's now the pirate life for me. Fortunately I have a home NAS and Plex server setup so that family can watch on their TV, phone or computer. So we're all able to cancel our services a
BerticusFlamebearer
So a big point of DRM is not to prevent, but to delay. If the pirates release it a week after they do, they get a bigger chunk of people who are willing to pay but aren't willing to be patient. That doesn't mean that they are doing it well or even almost well .
myotteraccount
Within ~4 hours of streaming or broadcast release is typical at this point, same day on disc release. About the only thing there is ever a significant delay on anymore is games which sometimes take a while to crack. Only game consoles have had any real effectiveness with their DRM in years. All the video playback restrictions do is hurt paying customers as pirates have been able to bypass them for years already.
maxthemagician
I would understand that for new releases, but im talking about Gladiator from 2000.
HamburgerWelper
Please try Prime Video PLEASE try Prime Video bro it's a free benefit to your Prime membership bro c'mon bro. Also Prime Video:
ZharTheMad
Hdcp is a joke to bypass.
StillNotYouTube
My computer hardware is 100% HDCP compliant, but I still get this message.
HelloThere1812
Wow.
barnwolf
That's not Amazons fault it's the contracts the content providers insisted on. /s
retailmemedrone
Even more fun the Amazon basic hdmi cables are not DRM compatible.
AllTheGoodOnesWereGone
Also, Linux? BWAHAHAHAH Fuck You eat SD.
donkeymoney
What...what even does SD mean in 2023... 720p?
GuyFromDeathValley
480p.. Even netflux AT LEAST gives ya 720p, which is at least a bit better. Used to run netflix and prime video on a linux HTPC and a 4K TV, all of it supported HDCP but because the OS is not windows.. Yea..
Bobbobbobobbananafanafobob
SD is 480i. HD is 720p. FHD is 1080p. Etc.
donkeymoney
Crazy. Fuck them. Also, I believe HD = the ratio, 1080:1920 (ergo inclusive of tons of different resolutions)? I have seen a lotta 1080p tvs/monitors. advertised as "HD".
StillNotYouTube
Typically 480p, but sometimes 720p.