Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login
People Are Streaming Pirated Movies on TikTok, One Short Clip at a Time (wsj.com)
25 points by marban 8 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 44 comments



I know TikTok is everyones favorite bogeyman, but short clips taken from movies have been on youtube for more than a century.

Also as far as I'm concerened they should be considered fair use. At best they might convince someone to actually watch the whole thing, so whos loss is it anyway?


Most people don't watch a whole movie on tiktok, they'll watch a few clips in a row.

Regardless, that user doesn't go on tiktok to search or watch the movie, it just comes up in their fyp.

That user was never going to buy that movie, he might of never heard of it, but now there's a chance he might go watch it on one of the million streaming platforms.

It's the equivalent of people zapping between channels and finding something to watch.

Streaming platforms and co don't have this kind of discoverability, they should consider releasing clips themselves.


Just to be a stickler on copyright: your comment repeats a harmful falsehood. It's important to call it out as people begin to think it's normal, leading them into peril.

It is not fair use to take any amount of a copyrighted work and reproduce it arbitrarily.

While fair use involves some amount of unauthorised copying, this is secondary to the primary purpose - such as news reporting, reviews(e.g. criticism), teaching and research etc. Additionally fair use only covers the amount necessary to inform. You can't take a film, splice it up and call it research.

Fair use explainers are available at the links below. For ordinary people it's worthwhile understanding your rights and the boundaries of those rights.

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-fairuse.html

https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explai...


And people should remember the difference between what is legally permissible and what is allowed to exist because it’s too complicated or hard to prosecute.


Top Gun one frame at a time on Twitter got shut down…

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/par...


It's an exceedingly common technique for modern social media content producers/influencers to piggyback their content onto already viral content with "reaction takes." All it requires is saying you're reacting to it and either speaking over it from time to time and/or showing your face from time to time.

Like a LARGE amount of Twitch's "Just Chatting" consistent of people watching YouTube with their chat and not offering anything constructive ontop of it.

It's not clear to me if that's occurring here though :)


But there's a distinction between what should be allowed vs. what is legally allowed. You're talking about what's legally allowed, the parent comment is talking about what should be allowed.


Does anyone remember Quibi?

Has anyone ever even seen Quibi content? As far as I can tell, they had the piracy locked down perfectly .. meaning nobody ever posted any clips of their shows. So nobody knew about them, nobody watched them, and nobody paid for Quibi.


>As far as I can tell, they had the piracy locked down perfectly ..

You must not have been looking in the right places. As far as I know all their shows made appearances in places where they could be downloaded. It just wasn't compelling content and it had the misfortune of launching right when the covid lock downs started, so their target demographic wasn't out watching on public transportation.


Why should they be considered fair use? Fair use very clearly dictates this is not covered.


>Fair use very clearly dictates this is not covered

Fair use, to me, is anything but clear on that topic. It specifically talks about "Amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work"[1]

It then generally says "If the use includes a large portion of the copyrighted work, fair use is less likely to be found; if the use employs only a small amount of copyrighted material, fair use is more likely."

But then gives counter-examples that don't match that theme at all.

[1] https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/


All of the factors are important. This is what really trips up movie clips:

> Nature of the copyrighted work: This factor analyzes the degree to which the work that was used relates to copyright’s purpose of encouraging creative expression. Thus, using a more creative or imaginative work (such as a novel, movie, or song) is less likely to support a claim of a fair use than using a factual work (such as a technical article or news item). In addition, use of an unpublished work is less likely to be considered fair.

They also score really low here:

> Purpose and character of the use, including whether the use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes: Courts look at how the party claiming fair use is using the copyrighted work, and are more likely to find that nonprofit educational and noncommercial uses are fair. This does not mean, however, that all nonprofit education and noncommercial uses are fair and all commercial uses are not fair; instead, courts will balance the purpose and character of the use against the other factors below. Additionally, “transformative” uses are more likely to be considered fair. Transformative uses are those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the work.

Using the exact same clip can be fair use or copyright infringement based on what’s surrounding it. A long discussion of camera angles in movies using the clip is one thing, the clip by itself is very different.


you probably mean decade, not century


> but short clips taken from movies have been on youtube for more than a century.

AFAIK, it seems like entire movies are being split into 40+ parts and uploaded to TikTok, no just "short clips taken from movies". That doesn't really seem like "fair use" to me.


> short clips taken from movies have been on youtube for more than a century.

Full movies have also been on youtube since a long time. But TikTok = chinese = bad, youtube = american = good. /s


I remember those days when videos on youtube could have movie playing in a moving small rectangle bouncing around, this was done to avoid content id systems I guess. Then some movies were reflected as well.


This is still a thing for Japanese game shows on Youtube. (For some reason Japanese TV channels try their very hardest to prevent people from paying to watch their content if they are outside Japan.) Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApNCpZJawsw (from about 2 mins in)


Or a small frame around with the video slowed down perfectly so you set it to 1.5x playback speed or whatever and it was back to the correct speed.


This still happens.


I am sure content id system within youtube would be very sophisticated. But if I were to solve this problem simply. I would first detect edges of all the rectangles within a video. Then get a normalized RBG color historgram for a N seconds of the rectangle forming a timeseries. Then do a approximate time-series matching over all content in my database. I am sure this simple algorithm could be highly optimized further. Is there an opensource library which does something similar?


It is traditional arms race. The whatever system combats something is constantly improved. And the other side consisting hundreds or thousands of people try to circumvent it all the time. Not too rarely they find some new way and that then has to be blocked.


Zoomers cant torrent and they are too poor for streaming and they dont know there are free streaming sites based on http protocol. They seem to be mentally deficient as a generation.

I say this as zoomers are the consumers of TikTok.


Every single part of this comment is a wild conclusion to jump to. It's like a fractal of insane conclusions.


There are very few resources to provide Gen Z with the knowledge they need to establish technical competence on computers.

It is a serious issue, and it's really not their fault.


There an overabundance of resources. Even zoomers know how to use google or youtube. They just choose not to.


The problem partially stems from an overabundance of those resources while lacking resources for determining the integrity of the information being shared.

Or, more succinctly: There's more noise than signal.

Considering all the YT channels that offer blatantly false advice, advice against best practice, shortcuts, "quick tricks", "life hacks"... a newcomer to the topic has no way to figure out if they should trust LTT or trust fartbrain69420 when it comes to technical advice, and youtube has degraded the quality of its search massively.


They can figure it out.


Yeah, that really seems to be working out. That's definitely not a completely ignorant view of the situation that definitely doesn't make you look jaded and unwilling to actually consider the situation and context.

You people whine and bitch and moan about the next generation sucking and not understanding tech but lift not a single finger to actually consider and solve the problem.

A gross and disappointing response to having a need for better tuned resources for kids to learn tech.


>but lift not a single finger to actually consider and solve the problem.

Not my problem.


To open a computer with Windows 10 and open a browser and go to a website is too hard now?

Their problem, not mine.

The same books are all out there and now with youtube you can learn a lot.

There are MORE resources out now than before, not LESS.


> Zoomers cant torrent and they are too poor for streaming and they dont know there are free streaming sites based on http protocol.

A bit blunt, but yes. The perils of "automagical."


Correlation is not causation.

Piracy related free web streaming has existed since the moment it became possible to profit/run with ads. Looking at a list of the most popular torrents makes it clear who the largest demographic is. Z Library is an example of just how giant the TikTok userbase and how it brought younger generations into piracy.

You are misinformed.


After Twitter announced they upped the length limit on videos to over two hours, there was a wave of pirated movies being posted. I wonder what happened to that.


This reminds me of the 500 word essays split into a billion tweets.

Just use the right tool for the job...


Twitter is (was) where the people are, it makes perfect sense to distribute the essay that way. Social media sites downrank external links, and most article links these days are paywalled anyway.


Youtube (and many other free video hosting services) also serve pirated TV series and movies this way. It's pretty commonand old tactic and not unique to TikTok.


You’d only have to swipe 300 times to watch the Irishman.


Plus you get to watch it in 9:16 portrait aspect ratio, just as Martin Scorsese intended.

I would imagine the reason nobody has sent any DACMA notices or stepped up enforcement yet is because this method of piracy is almost too stupid to take seriously.


I think such short clips curated, surfaced and demographic matched by the almighty, all-knowing algorithm could be considered as crowd-sourced movie trailers playing the role of modern day word of mouth. Just like google books search results are restricted to few relevant snippets / pages but not the whole book, similarly Tiktok can restrict sequentially watching a movie.


If you're watching movies on your phone through tiktok, chances are you wouldn't appreciate the source material enough to pay for it anyway.



Not going to lie, TikTok served me some clips of the Battleship movie and I ended up watching it. I never would have otherwise considered it.

Certainly not a good movie but an easy mindless watch. Exactly what I’d except from TikTok


WSJ fails to establish why I should care.

This isn't news. This is Gee Whiz content that WSJ is trying to pass off as a serious issue. Such ominous phrasing.

I get it. Tiktok bad.

But this ain't why.





Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: