As Gabe Newell once said:
Piracy is an issue of service, not price
this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Yep. The video entertainment industry had a great solution to piracy in Netflix and it had moved piracy out of the mainstream... Then companies got competitive and content became fractured across a multitude of platforms.
"now that we finally solved one of the hardest problems we've ever faced, let scrap the solution!"
No, it's actually:
"Now that we've gotten everyone locked into one service, let's squeeze them for every single cent we can until they pop!"
It's literally capitalsim's job and it will never change.
I would have continued to pay a steadily increasing price for Netflix if they kept being a "one stop shop" for content.
I was very annoyed when they dropped Mythbusters and Dr Who halfway through me watching them, and then loosing all the Disney movies was just a nail in the coffin.
Even if it cost less, I could not be bothered to maintain multiple subscriptions/accounts/passwords for the content I want.
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The reason why public companies were a mistake
Yeah that's definitely more accurate. That's the step 3 everyone's always missing in those 1 2 3? 4 profit! things.
Then companies got competitive
You spelled greedy wrong
Heh, I actually had greedy when intially typing the comment and changed it after some thought.
Greedy might be more apt, as from basic economics you would think price should come down as more players entered the market... But we've seen the opposite.
The price of the subscription isnt what bother me personally though, I used to pay alot more for cable, its more the quanity of subscriptions/ accounts/apps that have to be used that drove me away.
Yep, it was greed, pure and simple. After seeing how wildly successful Netflix and Hulu were, companies that owned ip weren't content in just having a small piece of the pie. No, they needed the whole thing.
I hope all of these late-coming streaming services burn to the ground. And I LOVE streaming their content for free.
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And companies just don't seem to get it. They saw Netflix boom in popularity and said, "Hey, I wanna do that," without realizing that having all your content in one platform was what made it so successful.
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Same for music for me. Only difference now, I get to choose where my money goes. Instead of some streaming company giving next to nothing to the bands I listen to and everything else going to some super popular stuff I don't enjoy.
Yeah, I've spent more money on smaller bands through Bandcamp then I ever have on streaming services, all thanks to piracy, since I realized it's much better for offline files.
So...you're going to post torrents and seed all those movies...right?
You do realise that you're saying that piracy didn't work for you, so you went out and spent your money instead, yeah?
Not saying it didn't work, in fact I still download encodes. But for stuff I really like, I buy the physical versions.
Upload the remuxes
I've been trying to find a place where I can safely do so, but I don't want to risk getting in legal trouble.
EDIT: Typo.
Some private tracker. Just be careful, and maybe don't upload things there are already remuxes of
As @Pulp mentioned: Upload to private trackers.
I may or may not have uploaded some music cds I imported from overseas to private trackers.
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Various studies showed the same over the last 20-25 years. Pirating does increase revenue for companies and articles torrented.
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I read an article about this many years ago. They had found that pirated games can increase sales:
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That was shown in the early days of Metallica's (fuck Metallica, btw) bullshit with Napster. The music fans were downloading music, as well as buying music, more.
Fucking Lars. Metallica just did not get it and attacked their fans. Nobody had a problem paying for the music, they just wanted to be able to download it. They didn't want a CD they wanted an MP3.
I was a huge Metallica fan. Saw them for both Ride the Lightning and Justice when they toured. Most of us got into them by pirating (ie, copying album->tape or tape->tape for/from friends). I spent more on their tickets and concert tees than I would have buying their albums. But after Lars and that Napster shit, I just figured they were dead to me. Haven't listened to them since.
Oh man, you brought up a really good point. There's the albums, and then there's the merch. Metallica junkies would have like 20 band shirts and so much Metallica swag all over their places. Those guys would drop thousands of dollars. They lived for that music. When Lars came out and was basically "it's about the money" so many fans stopped caring about the music. When they stopped caring about the music they stopped buying the merch.
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Are there any good services like bandcamp, but for video? Even if it doesn't have blockbuster/popular movies I'd be interested. I spend a lot of money on bandcamp because it's easy and simple: I give them money and in return get bits that I do what I want with.
If you're looking for DRM-free digital distribution, the best I can think of is Vimeo on Demand. You pay one-time for a movie, and in return you get the option to download the movie as a MP4. There's mainly arthouse films and documentaries, but you may be able to find a few gems.
Thanks! That's the sort of thing I'm looking for
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The problem is you're obsessed with movies to do such things. Just download 1080 and watch it on your tv or mobile and that's it, you watched a movie. And if you're willing to help the community, encode, seed, distribute and that's enough.
I've ripped a good number of blu-rays to network storage. If you're looking for older, less popular stuff it's the best option. And older releases are usually just a few bucks. The new stuff I torrent because I can usually find a decent rip, but for stuff I want to put in my library a rip from optical disk is the best, but not free of course. You can even do it for free, public libraries often have a good collection of older releases on optical disk.
My local wall-mart has a large number of older blockbusters on their bargain bin. Got all 3 John Wicks for $15 total, and then directly ripped them into my server
Same idea with video games. There are many game franchises that I never would have gotten into as a kid if I hadn't been able to pirate them. I usually still pirate games to try them out, and if I end up enjoying it or want features like online play, I might buy it during a Steam sale.
me too, but usually only with indie games, because triple a studios can go fuck themselves. but like Stardew valley costs $6, imma buy it
Command & Conquer was like that for me. I pirated Red Alert 2, but ended up buying it like six times via various collections. None of that would have happened had I not had that first pirated copy.
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Many others have said before people who pirate spend more on media than those who don’t.
I pay for cable tv (get off my lawn) in addition to several other streaming services.
And sometimes I still can’t get the thing I want. You think I’m going to spend even more when my half dozen existing subscriptions don’t cover this one thing? I don’t think so.
I wouldn't be the faithful Final Fantasy patron I am today had it not been for a ROM of FF VI my old room mate put on my computer back in college. Now I own nearly ALLLLL of them (the ones available on modern platforms). I've also started investing in the Trails series for a similar reason and I don't regret it.
Yep.
I’m a fan of a certain sport, and they didn’t have a reasonable way of making it available on demand… so I sailed the seas. But lo and behold once an app was available, I was happy to pay as I’m no longer having to wait.
Someone smarter than I said. The largest part of piracy is a delivery issue. Make thing’s available and people will pay for them.
Every video game I've ever pirated and played for more than 30m I now legitimately own.
I bought more CDs while Napster was in its heyday than the entire rest of my life combined.
This happened to me too. I download movies and shows onto my plex and watch them at my leisure. If I love a show or movie I get the Blu-ray and watch it in 4K/atmos! It’s nice being able to sample things before buying.
Avid reader here, and I sometimes browse books on pirate bay. When I find one I like I download the ebook and if I read it I also buy a print edition. Not everyone does that, of course, but in my case piracy generates sales.
I suspect your story is not unusual. Piracy is, at worst, a morally neutral action.
The problem with older media is that you have to actively create torrents, the tracker might fold, etc.
With eD2K, it's very old school P2P filesharing, just give it a directory and the files on it are shared on the network.
Of course, the "push" part to torrent tracker sites isn't as active.
I use both torrents and eD2K, depending on what I'm looking for.
Similar outcome. At this point, I mostly just rent 4k online because my massive Plex library has bit-for-bit Blu-ray rips of everything I care about enough to have on hand. But I spent years building that library by ripping physical media.
I still buy and rip CDs because I love album art and want high quality. If not for the former, I'd likely go flacc or lossless and buy online.
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