
MoviePass reportedly changed passwords to prevent users from seeing films - nwrk
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20799145/moviepass-subscriber-passwords-accounts-limit-change-films-tactics
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basementcat
LOL explains why I kept "forgetting" my password and had to reset it a bunch
of times!

PS. Thanks to the investors of MoviePass for giving me an appreciation of
independent and foreign cinema.

~~~
CriticalCathed
I used my moviepass only to buy tickets to my local independent cinema!

I have to thank those venture capitalists.

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cryptozeus
“with the hope that a majority of users wouldn’t see more than one movie a
month, much in the same way a gym offsets high overhead by relying on members
who hardly ever show up. The problem is that people enjoy going to the movies
in a way that they don’t particularly like going to the gym”

Ha !

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Already__Taken
never heard of my dad then that will put a dvd in on loop for a few weeks. He
has a player going into a TV splitter, so or movie channel is literally _a_
movie.

~~~
dolphm
i used to have a raspberry pi wired up for exactly this purpose. it just
played random files from a folder on a NAS.

the main advantage being no UI to run on the pi at all.

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lloydatkinson
I’ve experienced something similar with ebay and paypal, 100%.

Suddenly and out of nowhere I couldn’t login to either and had to do “forget
my password” for both of them.

This triggered a several month long incident of my old passwords allowing me
to log in and my new password working _some_ of the time. I have absolutely no
explanation of it but it got the to the point of having the small number of
passwords I’ve used for both of them written down next to my computer. I could
type in the same password three days in a row and it worked, and then the
fourth day it stopped working and the another old one worked.

Deeply frustrating and still no explanation for it.

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BubRoss
Bank of America just tells you your password wasn't right if you are on a VPN.
It's terrible from all angles and the only way to find out is to guess what
they're problem is or search for forums where people have had the same thing
happen and figured it out.

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heavenlyblue
They must use a boolean of “is-vpn” as a (part of) salt for your password.

The worst thing is that they can’t even tell themselves if that boolean has to
be true or false because of all the hashing.

/s

~~~
brokenmachine
Sounds more like they have a blacklist of VPN IPs and just give the "wrong
password" message if you try to login from one.

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quickthrower2
In terms of financial strategy and moral compass, this company looks like a
good fit for a takeover by Uber.

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ljm
We have a similar subscription model in the UK for Cineworld. For a monthly
fee you can go to the cinema as much as you like.

The key difference is, the monthly fee costs about 50% more than a single
ticket, and you’ll be lucky to have more than 2 or 3 movies you want to watch
each month, with the obvious dry-spells where nothing really appeals. Since it
also gives a discount on snacks (already hugely expensive), it’s just a way to
sell more sweets and pop.

It pays for itself after two films, when there _are_ two worth watching, and
as long as you don’t bother with snacks. Cineworld easily claws back some of
that money when you skip the cinema for one month, or only go once.

It seems a lot better thought through than what turned out to be a free-for-
all cinema subsidy with MoviePass.

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judge2020
It's the same with AMC stubs A-list in the US except for more of a premium;
~200% of a standard adult movie ticket, $22 a month (if you don't go to
certain states) and only 10% off concessions. It's better if you have a
theatre near you with IMAX/Dolby/etc. showings since it's the same price.

[https://www.amctheatres.com/amcstubs/alist](https://www.amctheatres.com/amcstubs/alist)

~~~
asark
Also lets you jump in front of people in the concession line. With the result
that I (a non-A-List-member) will never buy concessions from them again. Which
is kind of a good thing for me all around, actually, since I probably
shouldn't have been in the first place.

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Benjamin_Dobell
Pretty sure NordVPN have recently started applying a similar tactic. The apps
(on all platforms) have all seemingly started logging you out between use
(after a small period of time has elapsed). Presumably the hassle of logging
back in decreases usage, but customers keep paying.

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vbezhenar
Why would they do that? I'm renting VPS for around $1/month and it can serve
5-10 VPN connections (well, not very loaded I guess, but it works just fine
for average users). They're asking $2.62/month. So their margins are massive.

~~~
Benjamin_Dobell
They quite literally have thousands of servers all around the world, many of
which they need to go the extra mile with to keep off Netflix blacklists etc.
so the service itself is very different to spinning up a single VPS.

In terms of utilisation; a significant portion of their users use the service
for P2P (there's even dedicated P2P servers) and many more users such as
myself for streaming (around geo-blocking).

Utilisation is public and many servers are indeed frequently near max
utilisation, even when there are hundreds in a region. Decreasing utilisation
at that scale will have a significant impact on profitability.

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lota-putty
Is there any fail-safe law out there that catches all loopholes in existing
laws?

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natermer
There is no need for laws for this stupidity. Unless you want to consider the
laws of economics.

Namely: Create a shitty business model that depends on treating your customers
like shit and you can expect to out of business as soon as your venture funds
dry up.

This is the sort of problem that solves itself.

Either that or people can keep giving these jokers money, wait for some
lawsuit to happen and then in 7 or 8 years after the lawyers take their cut
you can expect a check in the mail for 4 or 5 dollars.

~~~
quickthrower2
> This is the sort of problem that solves itself.

Unfortunately it doesn't. If you've ever watched the UK TV series "Watchdog"
you'll see time after time people set up businesses, rip people off, go
bankrupt, rinse and repeat. Game theory trumps economic models here - and the
rules of the game are whatever loopholes these people can find.

To be fair these cinema clowns haven't done anything much worse than a 'fair
usage policy' on a mobile phone offering 'unlimited calls' would do. They were
sly about it rather than upfront. They could have just introduced new terms as
of the next payment. But the general point is about the free market sorting
this sort of thing out doesn't work.

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mrfusion
I think there’s a general pattern here.

A subscription company can make its service hard to use and decrease usage and
therefore costs to increase profit.

But it’s at the expense of long term profit as users gradually get fed up and
leave.

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throwaway2048
Remember, the ideal situation for a business to be in is you paying them,
while they do nothing.

Moviepass took this to a whole other level.

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Havoc
I find it strange that the overall concept seems to work fine in the UK but
not the US.

...like I'm basically in the cinema 2-3 times a month and that's been going
for years

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iwasakabukiman
It works in the US too. All of the major chains offer subscription services
now.

It didn’t work for MoviePass because they are a third party and charged less
than the price of a ticket per month.

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Causality1
It does beg the question, does changing a user's password without their
consent violate the CFAA?

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techdevangelist
At the very least I smell potential fraud with the trip wire limits then
associated messages saying no more screen times and password resets. CFAA
could potentially be applied but I think since it’s their platform and done by
an authorized agent it may be a stretch. But some state AGs could read into
these actions and open wider lines of investigation, and compel other
evidence. If this is what they are okay talking about, think of the other
dirty deeds that were kept hush hush..

