
Scene bust triggered historic drop in ‘pirate’ releases - caution
https://torrentfreak.com/scene-bust-triggered-historic-drop-in-pirate-releases-200904/
======
tenebrisalietum
Awesome. Now we can see if the movie and media industry experience a
correlated rise in profits and settle this question whether "piracy" damages
these industries once and for all.

~~~
hesdeadjim
At what point have people become so entitled that they think they should be
able to consume all the content they want for free because they are slightly
inconvenienced by price or availability.

If you don't feel like paying, don't watch it.

If you don't feel like finding out what service a show is on, don't watch it.

If you don't like the fact that you need to subscribe to multiple streaming
networks to watch the shows you want to, don't subscribe and don't watch the
shows. Having 5 streaming services to subscribe to is still infinitely better
than cable.

If you think piracy "sticks it to the man", you'd do a better job by not
watching a show and not talking about it. Pirating the Mandalorian and gushing
about it to friends, family, and the internet just helps Disney.

Edit: Please downvote me, I enjoy finding out how many people consider media
consumption a fundamental human right instead of the luxury good that it is.

Regardless, ask yourself how you'd feel if the film, video game, or book you
pirate was made by a close friend. Would you tell them you pirated their
product? And if so, why?

As a video game creator whose digital games cost nothing to copy and
distribute, I can assure you that piracy directly affects my ability to
continue making games.

~~~
barrkel
Eh. We have subscriptions to 4 different video streaming services, and still
sometimes download TV shows directly to ensure we can watch them e.g. on
holiday in a different country without VPN backflips. Even more so if they
have ad breaks (e.g. GoT on NowTV in UK); I don't mind paying, but I do mind
ads. Not to mention higher quality due to bandwidth dropping lower at peak
times, if the service can't keep up (I'm looking at you, NowTV).

I've bought Thief 2 & 3 and bunch of other games twice now, on original CDs /
DVD and on Steam or GOG, and used No-CD cracks for the originals for
convenience.

~~~
hesdeadjim
What you are doing isn't piracy though. You've paid for the content and are
working around crappy DRM. That issue is entirely separate from the piracy
itself.

Pirates love to conflate their activity with the noble pursuit of freeing the
world from DRM. Maybe that is true for the people on the 'scene', but the
countless millions of people torrenting their releases are doing it because
they simply want something for free. Your actions are very much the exception.

~~~
HeadsUpHigh
What he is doing is legally considered piracy.

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GiorgioG
It's much easier to pirate the content and have a single source of media than
trying to figure out which pay service a show/movie is available on.

'Piracy' of tv/movies won't go away until that problem is solved.

~~~
tehwebguy
I'm not blaming you as you aren't the one to set them in the first place, but
the goal posts keep moving!

Two decades post-Napster we finally have what everyone wanted all along: an
easy, cheap way to watch _almost_ every movie without leaving the couch /
listen to _almost_ every song from _almost_ any device.

But now it's not good enough unless it's literally every piece of content from
a single origin 0_0

~~~
Thrymr
> Two decades post-Napster we finally have what everyone wanted all along: an
> easy, cheap way to watch almost every movie without leaving the couch /
> listen to almost every song from almost any device.

That may be almost true for music, but is not remotely true for movies. Sure,
recent releases are usually available on _some_ streaming service, but back
catalog movies are often only available on DVD/Blue ray. The big streaming
services are not great for movie catalogs (Netflix is much worse than it used
to be). We have regressed from the Blockbuster days in that regard.

~~~
aaron695
> but back catalog movies are often only available on DVD/Blue ray.

Do you have examples?

Disney for instance are destroying the Disney Vault.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
One of the biggest successes of the music and movie industry is getting
everyone to call unlicensed distribution “piracy”.

It equates a completely non-violent act with a very violent act that was once
a capital crime.

~~~
praptak
The perception of piracy has changed though, not without help of the content
industry. I bet they would prefer us to call it "terrorism" nowadays.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
There have already been nudges into that direction:

[https://torrentfreak.com/uk-government-video-urges-
advertise...](https://torrentfreak.com/uk-government-video-urges-advertisers-
to-boycott-pirate-sites-160329/)

------
shuntress
What would people consider the ideal realistic system?

Something fair to content creators, distributors, and consumers.

I, personally, would like to be able to purchase one time "unlimited" licenses
(like buying a book or a DVD) that can be easily validated by the publisher's
web API and enable non-subscription content to be served by
netflix/hulu/amazon/etc.

To enable (for example) streaming an amazon show through netflix. Presumably,
streaming providers would (assuming the cost on an individual movie/series
basis would be too small to be practical as a single payment made by me at
time of consumption) include low-cost "Bring your own content" add-ons to
subscriptions that would cover distribution costs through aggregate balances
between providers.

~~~
pbronez
Some of the streaming music services do something like this. They scan your
local music library and unlock those tracks to stream regardless of your
subscription accesses. I used Google Music for this a while back.

~~~
sandworm101
Mp3.com That was attempted back in the day with CDs. It did not end well.

"To make the service easy to use, MP3.com did not require users to load their
own music into the virtual lockers. Rather, a user merely had to insert a copy
of the music into the CD-ROM drive of a computer, at which point MP3.com would
verify that the person had possession of a CD, then the company would
automatically put a copy of the music into the person's virtual locker."

"However, the lawsuit by the record companies asserted that MP3.com had
violated copyrights by creating the digital database of albums to which they
held the copyrights. In April, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff ruled that
MP3.com had infringed companies' copyrights."

"In the ensuing months, MP3.com reached settlements with four of the record
companies, including Sony Music, Time Warner, EMI Group and Bertelsmann.
Details of the settlements were not made public, but analysts estimated the
company paid $20-million to each company."

[https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2000/08/29/mp3-com-chief-
de...](https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2000/08/29/mp3-com-chief-defends-web-
database-of-copyrighted-music/)

------
petra
What motivated people in the piracy "Scene", knowing they risk jail time ?

~~~
captainredbeard
Man vs. Society? For some us, it's just fun to give the world the middle
finger. :shrugs:

