
I tried to watch Game of Thrones legally in France, Here is what happened - judauphant
https://medium.com/@jdauphant/i-tried-to-watch-game-of-thrones-legally-in-france-here-is-what-happened-2e4b1f5aaf76
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jswny
It still baffles me that the media companies that so often complain, file
lawsuits, and spend exorbitant amounts of money lobbying still cannot grasp
the simple concept that people _will_ pay for content that they can easily
access. How can these people not realize they are fundamentally doing
something wrong when you have a situation like the one in this article in
which it would be quicker, easier, and a better experience to pirate the show
in question than to watch it through the legal channels? Of course, pirating
is illegal and wrong. However, maybe these giant media companies should spend
their money on improving their platforms and making them more widely available
instead of using said funds trying to convince lawmakers to create laws to
prevent the very problem that their own business practices helped perpetuate.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Media companies are tied up in contracts designed for the TV/Movie age -
spelling out distribution rights geographically and by channel (media). It may
take a generation to get free of all that.

~~~
ryandrake
So, these media companies would love nothing more than to provide (or enable
someone else to provide) a Steam-like worldwide un-region-locked reasonably
priced streaming service that supports all my devices, lets me pick and choose
audio tracks/encodings and subtitles, not force me to go through a network of
partners or worry about who has a distribution deal with who--a service that
just lets me pick a show/movie and watch it. But, the only reason they can't
do this is "contracts"? We're not talking about the speed of light or the
limits of thermodynamics. Contracts are written by humans, signed by humans,
and enforced by humans. Surely if the humans running these companies really
wanted to provide such a customer-focused product, they could today stop
signing these "old media" contracts and work together to quickly unwind what's
preventing them from competing with piracy. I don't buy the "but our hands are
tied" story.

~~~
marcus_holmes
I live in Australia, where media distribution rights have been negotiated with
a small range of distributors. When someone like Netflix shows up, there's not
much they can show here without infringing on someone else's exclusive rights.

Each of the distributors is then tied into exclusive deals with TV stations,
streaming services, etc.

It's the "exclusive" part of the rights that stops us from having nice things.

Oh, and Steam? un-region-locked? Hahahahhahahaahaha no

~~~
marak830
I agree, steam has some massively stupid region locks. For example, a friend
wanted me to play the secret world recently. I could not download it from
Japan, on steam, but could from the companies site.

I ended up logging into his steam to download the client, then launched from
the directory to log into my account(due to their slow servers, steams being
faster and more updated - go figure).

------
Vexs
Of all the DRMS out there, steam has done the best job at preventing piracy.
Why? Not because it's secure, steam drm is pretty easy to get around. But
because it's just so gosh darned convenient to use, and has so many extra
features. Steam controller, steam community, steam workshop, and steam itself
is a very good library organizer.

The best way to combat piracy is to offer a better service, which I have yet
to see. It's always a tremendous pain in the ass, and gives subpar results
compared to piracy. Take, for instance, rick and morty. To watch it, I have to
sign into an account, link that account to my ISP/provider, and then I get to
watch my videos online. Except it barely works. It took forever to get my ISP
to authorize it, and the first time they messed it up. After that, online had
subpar quality, and would for whatever reason, cut out randomly/not let me
login. Compare this to a pirate site/torrent, where it's just one-click, watch
in full resolution.

~~~
morinted
I thought that Rick and Morty was free on Adult Swim's website? That's where I
ended up watching at least the first season (that might have changed).

However, from the same creator, there was Dan Harmon's Community. Season 6 was
funded by Yahoo, and they put it up on Yahoo Screen. For free! Great! Except
they had big issues with buffering, and region locked the show to America. In
the end that whole operation was shut down.

~~~
mikeash
Some Rick and Morty episodes are available for free, but not all. I think they
shuffle them around so if you have patience you can eventually watch them all
that way.

------
stefs
subtitles usage has been a bit problematic for me too. i'm hearing impaired
and my mothers tongue is german; i can read english almost as well as german,
but spoken language is and always will be a problem (i get parts of it but not
everything, even in german). my friends all prefer OV, so when i watch movies
with them, i usually want english audio and english subtitles, because the
dialogue and subtitles indeed differ A LOT between different languages (e.g.
they use different numbers, the audio track says it's 2.2 miles away, while
the subtitles say it's 1.8 kilometers away, which is incredibly distracting
and immersion-breaking). if i remember correctly, german audio tracks and
german subtitles of english movies also differ regularly (my guess is that
they're translated independently).

the problem with netflix in a german speaking country: they indeed offered
original language audio tracks, but subtitles were often german only, which
made the experience unbearable (my guess is that, as always, international
licensing is to blame). either we turned off the subtitles, which hurt the
experience for me, or watched the movie in german with german subtitles, which
hurt the experience for them (and for me).

afaik netflix improved this a lot in recent times - there are a lot more
english subtitles available. other than that piracy is the only option for an
enjoyable movie experience with guests.

~~~
devnonymous
I stopped using both Netflix and Amazon Prime here in Germany because of the
messed up subtitles. I do not speak German so I used to opt for the OV
versions but whenever there were non-English dialogues in the video (Spanish
in Mad Men, Morzart in the jungle, better call Saul... Etc) the subtitles
would be in German, which for me meant not understanding anything that was
being said!

It's frustrating. Here I am willing to actually give them money so that I get
essentially what I could with popcorn time!

------
runeb
I subscribe to HBO but pirate their shows because the only player available to
me is their web player and it chops, lags and has my 2015 Macbook Pros fans
blaring at full speed. This on a 250 mbit connection on Chrome.

I morally justify it by still paying my subscription every month and not
seeding the torrents.

~~~
serge2k
Their site is unresponsive bizarre ways I haven't seen anywhere else online.

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SimeVidas
In Croatia, you can only get HBO via a select few ISPs (like ~half of them).
If you’re at a different ISP, you’re out of luck. I actually bothered a friend
who is at a “compatible ISP” to subscribe to the HBO packet and share their
HBO GO password with me; I was ready to pay _my friend_ to watch Game of
Thrones! (They told my friend that you have to sign a contract for 12/24
months and I didn’t want to put my friend through that whole process, so I
went “Fuck it” and started downloading the episodes via torrent.)

I tried HBO, I tried!

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pmarreck
When a business fails to cater to a market that wants its media, and said
market can have its needs met by piracy, does it become ethically OK to
pirate?

~~~
vinceguidry
The problem with drawing ethical lines is, nobody is ever going to be able to
really agree where that line should lie. Exactly how nice does a media
company's offerings have to be? Exactly which circumstances justify piracy?

The right way to think about this is that each person has their own ethical
line that they will or won't cross in certain circumstances, and companies can
and should encourage, through market offerings, them to stay on the commerce-
friendly side of their line.

If prices are too high, offer a lower-end product. If people are complaining
about nags, offer a higher-end one. And so on until you've got so few people
on the destructive side that the people on the commerce-friendly side do the
work of bringing them in line.

Of course, this means making your business responsive to the market and not
just profits, and that's exceedingly difficult for the media conglomerates.
Piracy is the big stick we all have to force them to play ball with us.

Ultimately, there's no right or wrong, just competing interests. It's bringing
them all in line with each other that's the goal, not hammering out some grand
idea of justice that's going to change every time the market changes.

~~~
philipov
> Exactly how nice does a media company's offerings have to be?

Under capitalism, if the distribution company is not _the best_ provider of
their service, then they deserve to be pushed out of the market. So the answer
to how good their offering has to be is: Better than the pirates'

~~~
pavel_lishin
But piracy doesn't function within capitalism; it breaks the rules of the
system.

That's rather like saying that if your democratically elected officials is not
doing things that are in your best interest, they deserve to be pushed out by
a man with a gun.

~~~
vinceguidry
The thing about politics and economics is that they build the effects of
people breaking the rules right into their calculations. Econ has concepts
like breakage, politics has straight-up watched thousands of political orders
get upended by various people with various goals including "because fuck you,
that's why". And they've quietly worked out ways to correct such perversions
and keep everything reasonably smooth.

Nothing breaks the rules of either because failure is built right into the
system, the stakes are too high to allow such systems to remain brittle.
Capitalism is bigger than individuals, firms, collections of firms, entire
industries, groups of industries trying to coerce the system. People once
thought OPEC could bring down the global order. Never happened. People thought
the very existence of nuclear weapons put humanity on a clear path to
annihilation. Also didn't happen, but it was hairy for awhile.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Just because a system is built to withstand certain rule-breakage doesn't mean
that those things are part of the system. Cars come with airbags and
seatbelts, but driving into a concrete bollard is not recommended by the
manufacturer or the DMV.

~~~
vinceguidry
Economies aren't cars, they're made of people. A person can respond
intelligently to something breaking his economy, a car can't, it can only
respond according to the way it was designed.

------
jballanc
Honestly, you know what? This is fine.

The insistence of US media companies to continue geographically restricting
content in an effort to make a few extra bucks has done more to kill US
cultural imperialism than decades of "home grown" efforts. As a concrete
example, in the past few years there has been an explosion of GoT-style dramas
in Turkey (which they've even begun exporting to neighbors in the region).

Perhaps not surprisingly, this season GoT was available same-day on Turkish
cable, with either dubbed or original voice tracks.

~~~
veridies
Do you have any recommendations for Turkish shows? I'd be interested in seeing
them.

~~~
jballanc
Probably the most popular of the historical-fiction variety are "Muhteşem
Yüzyıl" and its spin-off "Muhteşem Yüzyıl: Kösem". "Behzat Ç." is a pretty
good police drama. The one that really sort of kicked off the modern
renaissance of Turkish dramas, though, is "Aşk-ı Memnu", which is a modernized
take on a famous 19th century Turkish novel. Many of the actors from that
series went on to star in later Turkish dramas.

(Note: Just so you know what to expect, Turkish dramas are sort of a cross
between their US counterparts and Spanish Telenovelas. There is some action,
but much more emphasis on interpersonal conflicts...and more than a few very
long, overly dramatic shots backed with suspenseful music.)

------
jagermo
Similar in Germany. Its gotten better, but most streaming services only
offered the German dubbed version or hardcoded subtitles.

Is it any wonder that streaming sites are all the rage?

~~~
lorenzhs
I've never had a problem with Netflix in Germany. All the productions I've
watched so far have had the original language (usually English) available, no
burned-in subs. Exception would be transcriptions of on-screen text (like the
text messages in Sherlock), but that's because they don't provide separate
video tracks for English and German. I'm okay with that.

Of course Netflix doesn't have the new HBO shows - but that's a different
issue.

~~~
m_fayer
Netflix has by far the best technical characteristics of all subscription
services available in Germany (I've tried them all.) Unfortunately its library
is laughable.

~~~
lorenzhs
Oh please, can we stop it already? Yes, it's not as big as the US library.
Yes, many TV shows only have the first couple of seasons available with
several missing. But there's a lot of content rotation, with plenty of new
stuff to watch. I haven't run out yet. You can get an overview what they added
recently at [http://germany.netflixable.com/](http://germany.netflixable.com/)

If you're going there to watch something specific, you might have a bad time.
If you're going there to discover stuff to watch and have a good time, it's
pretty good.

Complete list: [http://germany.netflixable.com/2016/06/complete-
alphabetical...](http://germany.netflixable.com/2016/06/complete-alphabetical-
list-fri-jul-1.html)

------
gambiting
I know the problem, it's the same in Poland - a lot of content has Polish
subtitles baked-in and it's incredibly frustrating.

------
caioiglesias
Oh, the oatmeal experience
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones)

------
hexane360
I have a story like this:

My parents have a semi-expensive digital cable package that includes streaming
from a computer. They use it to watch old episodes of their shows from the
major networks.

One day, they brought a laptop to the next-door neighbors to watch an old
episode. The streaming service wouldn't stream because it wasn't on their home
network!

So they have a mobile streaming service that only works from their network,
defeating the entire purpose of _mobile streaming_.

------
tempodox
Let's put it from a capitalist point of view: Piracy is the market's way of
saying, “your business model is broken and you should be out of business”.
Funny that the ones wailing the loudest about piracy are also the greatest
capitalists. But for their greed and double standards, they should be the
first ones to understand the message.

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klaustopher
This year they offered the season on iTunes and Amazon Prime Video as a season
pass for €34,99 for the HD version. They released the episodes on tuesday
morning, about 24hrs after the airing time in the US ...

This was a good step forward from last year, where they released the season
pass episodes 2 weeks after the airing in the US

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gear54rus
He's given them too much of his time... Subscribe to some carrier? service to
watch something? lol, back to torrents.

Or you could use self hosted VPN to get around restrictions due to lines in
the sand.. IF you're feeling generous

And then they complain about pirates pfffshh... If I need to make
extraordinary effort to get your thing at a reasonable price, you might as
well stay at home.

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amalrik_maia
use popcorn-time and be happy

~~~
judauphant
I could but it's not legal :(

~~~
amalrik_maia
I understand your experiment is try watch the series without broke the law.
But some laws are plain stupid and a law forbidding people from use a free
streaming service is not only stupid but oppressing. Do yourself a favor
contract a good vpn, watch whatever show you want and enjoy freedom :)

"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to
do so." \- Thomas Jefferson

~~~
throwanem
Following that maxim comes with the implicit privilege of taking the
consequences. Depending on your local jurisdiction, it's very possible that
breaking the law to watch a decent but hardly worldshattering TV drama
involves more risk than it's worth.

~~~
Sammi
Vpn.

~~~
throwanem
Mitigating the risk doesn't eliminate it. Take your own chance, of course -
but don't think you're not taking any chance at all.

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arbre
How about VPN + regular HBO?

~~~
judauphant
It will work but, it’s a violation of terms and condition of HBO now. So it's
not legal :(

> (a) You must reside within the fifty states of the United States of America
> (“U.S.”), the District of Columbia, and certain US territories
> (collectively, the “Service Area”) and have reached the age of 18, or the
> age of legal majority in your state or territory of residence;

Source: [https://www.hbonow.com/terms](https://www.hbonow.com/terms)

~~~
gambiting
Against the terms of service != not legal. I would argue that if you paid for
the content no one in Germany could charge you with anything.

~~~
judauphant
Are your sure ?

Here is an example for California :
[https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-
ter...](https://www.eff.org/fr/deeplinks/2010/07/court-violating-terms-
service-not-crime-bypassing) > the court also found that bypassing technical
or code-based barriers intended to limit access to or uses of a website may
violate California's computer crime law.

If you have more informations about that, I am interested

~~~
gambiting
In US, sure. But agreements like EULA have been proven completely meaningless
courts in different EU countries - you can break them all you like, it's
definitely not illegal. The company might stop doing business with you, but
you absolutely haven't broken any laws.

