It sounds like you're implying that paying for Netflix and using bittorrent is mutually exclusive. If the content on Netflix were better (it has everything you would ever want to watch) and less restrictive (want to watch offline?), and content creators were fairly compensated, why would a rational consumer chose anything else and why would a content creator not advocate for this scheme?
I love streaming subscriptions for the convenience factor but I find they fall far short of their promise due to "incomplete" content and restrictions of artificial scarcity-and I say this as a supporter of these services and the model used.
The profits are still largely going to the middlemen, and from all indication (that I can see), the content creators are still being shafted.
How do you mean 'incomplete' content - you mean not getting access to all the extra features on the DVD, or not having a great selection of films so you can watch anything you want? I agree that the latter is problematic, but that's why I asked the question in the context of a film that is available through multiple streaming services. I would like to understand this better.
The profits are still largely going to the middlemen, and from all indication (that I can see), the content creators are still being shafted.
As someone who works in film, I have to tell you I'm really tired of hearing this. Of course whatever Netflix pays to the original distributor goes to the distributor. From there it is split with the producer and the producer distributes into other profit participants, like investors or actors who are due residuals or whatever. Bear in mind that the main distributor often advanced some or all of the production costs, and all of the marketing costs (which are usually 50-100% of production costs). As well as that, less-successful films are often cross-subsidized by more successful films (especially in international distribution) as part of the deals distributors negotiate with producers.
Now it's not the case that every distribution deal is fair, but most of them are a lot fairer than people seem to imagine, and sticking it to a distributor in some way does nobody on the creation side any good whatsoever. I like distributors, they have fat checkbooks. I don't think people outside the business realize that they front a lot of the money that pays for movies to get made in the first place. Dealing directly with thousands of theaters and hundreds of different media markets is an awful lot of work; producers would like to focus on making more movies than trying to manage all the logistics, accounting, and collections of the distribution phase.
I wrote a long reply that wasn't too relevant, but I do want to say that I appreciate you expressing your opinion on HN. You add an excellent P.O.V. (one that I do not agree with) but I appreciate your ability to remain an even tone and express yourself. Especially with your experience in film.
Now, for the record, I will continue to pirate as long as it's more convenient than buying/streaming. Doubly so when I consider the MPAA/RIAA philosophy antithetical to that of the internet, or of my own personal beliefs. Triply so when the limitations (regional exclusivity/locking) negatively affect me without providing any clear benefit.
You're welcome. I don't lie awake at night worrying about the morals of piracy (much :-)) but I do spend quite a lot of time trying to figure out what viable alternative business models there are. It's clear there's a great demand for video entertainment, but it's a very different sort of product from something like a game in terms of how it's consumed, so paradigms like freemium or MVP are often not applicable or useful.
This is fantastic. Thank you for taking this perspective! Content (high or even low quality) pretty much sells itself, especially if we had less content. Think about how low quality much of 50s TV/etc. was much lower than modern shows.
Is industry's biggest concern (I ask you b/c you sound like you're in the scene) that current revenues are impacted by piracy? Or are they worried about the future if piracy becomes even easier?
My perception of the content industry is that they're snakes in suits. On one hand, they're crying poor, about how actors and musicians aren't getting paid b/c of piracy. On the other, you hear about Hollywood accounting, and label-slanted recording contracts. Then I read about how much money is being made overall.
I try to support the arts. I buy premium content from niche sellers who wouldn't be able to write if it weren't for their small (usually < 1k) subscriber lists. But without more transparency from the content representatives, I assume there is plenty of money in the industry. Complaining about piracy seems like they're crying because they made $1 billion instead of $1.1 billion, while still pumping out absolute trash (by and large).
An example of someone who is hugely successful, funded by people like me, and is doing it absolutely right is Louis CK. He has been mainstream, but never made much money doing it (check out his email archives, he talks about this). Now he just sends me a very genuine email with news and info, clearly written by him. The links go to a site where I can buy and download the mp4 of his performances, no restrictions, $5.
He is even transparent with how much he made over time, and how much he distributed (as bonuses!) to the people who helped make his success possible.
The content sells itself. I just want someone genuine to explain to me, with facts, why piracy is bad -- and that would require an honest examination of Hollywood's books.
Of course, the ideal way of sucking out the oxygen from these entities is to legalize the product they're pushing. Perpetuating the drug war is some "real evil shit" when you consider the police unions are among the biggest lobbying groups fighting to keep these substances in question illegal..
That's not a loaded comment.. Changing your programming environment over an SSL certificate? Tell us all about how awesome it is building apps in Java!
You want to talk loaded comments? You're reducing "I'm glad to move away from a project that breaks functionality for all users with no notice" to a quibble over an SSL certificate change.
That npm as a project thought this was the correct way to handle this kind of transition is very unsettling.
It's really disappointing to see this sort of "reasoning" used so often these days.
Just because somebody points out serious flaws or problems with one technology does not automatically mean that he or she thinks that other, unrelated-yet-similar technologies aren't flawed or are somehow perfect.
> I'm glad we've started to move away from node.js and started to use Java.
That is what I was responding to directly. The implication from the statement was that npm flaws (i.e certificate changes that break everything) is a good reason to switch to Java.
It isn't at all a good reason to switch to java, as java's equivalent would easily waste more time than even this rather embarrassing certificate problem with npm.
> unrelated-yet-similar technologies
It is related, and similar, it is a like-for-like comparison between nodejs package management and java package management.
> It isn't at all a good reason to switch to java, as java's equivalent would easily waste more time than even this rather embarrassing certificate problem with npm.
Works fine for me. Has a healthy ecosystem of 3rd-party artifact repository implementations.
> It isn't at all a good reason to switch to java, as java's equivalent would easily waste more time than even this rather embarrassing certificate problem with npm.
As someone who has used it daily for the past 5.5 years - not really. That said, I'd prefer something like Gradle, but I can't fault Maven for just working, goddamnit.
> I'm glad we've started to move away from node.js and started to use Java.
I'm not sure you get how threading works, but this thread originated from the above quote. And comparing npm with Maven given the above statement is relevant, given it is the primary "Package management" system for Java, much like npm.
I perfectly well understand how threading works. Read the rest of the comment that you cherry picked that quote from, it's about being upset at how npm doesn't seem to be taking it's responsibility seriously.
If you had some information about Maven callously performing a user-hostile update, the comparison would be appropriate. As it is you're just relying on "lolz, Java sucks" as a form of argument.
He never said he was changing because of this issue. (Logically, if he's already been changing over then it can't have been because of an issue that just happened)
"Tell us all about how awesome it is building apps in Java!" sounds like a pretty loaded comment to me though.
In the last 5 years maven (Central) hasn't given me a cert or pgp error. Building 50 times a day in Java is running just fine ;) Of course it could happen in theory to any such similar system such as NuGet if people decided to yank the rug out from under their user base.
Until there's one that doesn't suck, there should be more competition keeping the exchanges innovating and improving their services to be more competitive.
I agree with your point that paid products should be commercial free, though what about the insidious placement of commercial products embedded within the content (song lyrics or any item with a logo on it in a movie or tv show)? It seems like those commercial placements are much harder to avoid in pop culture and will likely only increase in frequency in the future. It can skew the creative process of the artisans producing content and unless true commercial-free content is rewarded in some way, this is inevitable.
Dogecoin uses scrypt like litecoin, but this proof of work was first used by Tenebrix. It also employs the random block reward (vs fixed for litecoin) pioneered by LotteryTickets (which includes the ongoing 10k block reward feature). I'm not exactly sure which repo it was started from, but the wallet client, namely the 1.5 release inherits all Litecoin updates since 0.6.*.
It makes mining more addictive, which increases the number of people who are willing to mine, even if the financial rewards for doing it drop. Same reason why people by lotto tickets even though it's a net economic negative.
I'd argue that the Dogecoin creators are actually quite brilliant, because they manage to exploit several known cognitive biases in humans to drive adoption. Design for the world as it actually is, not for how you would like it to be.
It is an incentive to keep around gear that can't normally pay for its electricity. Mining gear that isn't online 24/7 but can come online when the need arises is useful to counter a temporary 51% attack.
Interesting point. So miners would stay online and only mine blocks that they know would be profitable to them?
Presumably there would be a lot of such miners, which would increase competition for those more profitable blocks, which would essentially dampen out the expected value of the rewards. I wonder how the math works out.
The bitcoin network's transaction verification mechanism, and all the hash power behind it (users) does give bitcoin "intrinsic value". Its true value comes from network effect.
I love streaming subscriptions for the convenience factor but I find they fall far short of their promise due to "incomplete" content and restrictions of artificial scarcity-and I say this as a supporter of these services and the model used.
The profits are still largely going to the middlemen, and from all indication (that I can see), the content creators are still being shafted.