Ask HN: How many of you are open to Piracy again?

I'm not going to speak about my personal practices, but I find the current landscape of streaming services unusable and unsustainable from a customer perspective. I share a Netflix and Prime account with my parents, and support for that is soon going to end. I don't feel like either of those services provide enough value to me to consider paying for them entirely by myself. The content is mediocre at best, finding anything good to watch is like going through a haystack, and once you find something remotely interesting you feel so exhausted that you'd rather turn off the tv and go to bed.

Don't even get me started on "there's this movie I heard about and I want to watch, but I need a subscription to this obscure random service and then also pay a rental fee on top to even get to watch it". It's just absurd.

My household has one streaming service at a time. We have lists (shared reminder lists in iOS) that we make for whenever a friend mentions a good movie - it goes on the Apple TV list, or Disney plus list, etc. then once enough films build up (can take 2-6 months sometimes) we purchase a subscription and watch all those shows for one month.

Considering how frecuently movies (and third party shows) disappear from one platform to appear in other that seems hellish.

It's easier to pirate stuff.

I'd love a website I could enter my account info for these streaming sites and turn each one on, one month at a time, with a click of a button. This would attract the ire of streaming companies though.

Realistically it’s already very easy to do this. Sure it’s not one click, but it takes all of 30 seconds.

This in a few sentences summarizes everything that sucks about the current streaming landscape

this sounds economical but also a major chore

Not at all. I do the same thing, and the key is to cancel the subscription immediately upon signing up. You keep the one month you've already paid for, and don't need to worry about recurring cost.

But that's literally (literally 'literally', not an annoying turn of phrase) a monthly 'chore' to sign up for (and cancel) the next one.

I recently forgot to cancel a one month free trial for a HTC Vive marketplace (yes, even they got some bullshit monthly sub going), and they locked me into a year long commitment.

I’ve turned very sour to these monthly renewals and accounts I can’t keep track of anymore.

To use a deeply HN metaphor, it's kind of like pulling in a 3rd party library into your source code. No matter how convenient it is at the moment, you have to account for the cost of the ongoing maintenance over time; sometimes you look at that and decide just to never pull the library in the first place.

Similarly, if I'm on the fence about some service, this is the tie breaker for me; the risk of forgetting to cancel it. Even though I do scan my bank account around once a month, I do naturally pay more attention to the bigger transactions and can easily skim past a $8.99 for a few months before noticing I accidentally left something on.

(Fortunately, where I am, it's just an annoyance. Affording individual subscriptions to all the things I may conceivably at some point want to use would be a noticeable kick in the pants, what with the proliferation of them, but accidentally leaving on one service is just an annoyance.)

Doesn't have to be monthly - sometimes I have months at a time with no subscription running at all. Once one "fills up" or there is a specific show I want to watch _now_, I activate that service and immediately cancel it. I guess it is more of a chore than just leaving them all subscribed and having access whenever - but the savings are easily worth it to me.

I do the same thing. The only inconvenience is it adds an extra step when you want to watch something after your subscription runs out (resume the subscription and cancel). Google play and the app store make this super easy.

I hear, it’s doable and it works but very few people do it because it takes patience and care. Most of these services use dark patterns to lure users into not doing that. If a larger percentage of users did it streaming services would quickly change policies.

someone is making a rails app right now to enable this as a SAAS. Now you have two problems ..

Still sounds stressful and like a chore. I would feel "forced" to burn through as much of the backlog as possible during that month, even if I don't feel like watching something from it right now.

Related to what olex said, if you're "saving" over $100/month because you don't have 8 other subscriptions running, you can tell yourself quite reasonably you're already saving a lot of money and you don't need to squeeze the value out of a monthly subscription that's less than one fast food meal's worth of money.

The whole point is to enjoy the service; if you feel stressed because you feel forced to binge everything to get your "value", well, cancel that service too. It is apparently not bringing you that value. That will help you get over it pretty quickly.

May be. To me it's easily worth the hundreds of Euros in savings from not having running subscriptions to more than one service at a time. Oftentimes I have no running streaming subscriptions at all. I guess I watch a lot less than many people do.

Because I view them via an AppleTV, I subscribe to Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, and AppleTV at various different times all through my iTunes account. It's easy to turn them on and off all through one account interface. The Account Settings page lists both Active and Expired accounts for all the services, along with next billing or expiration dates. It's just a few clicks.

Seems like it could be an opportunity for a website with all the news shows and movies on each platform. You check off the ones that seem interesting. It tells you what service to subscribe to after you hit a threshold. Not sure if any of the services have affiliate programs for revenue.

Justwatch provides a lot of that and I bet you could automate the rest

Auto-expiring temporary credit card numbers can help automate cancellations after N months, but figuring what shows are on what services and signing up for them as needed is still a major chore.

The problem with that is that legally, the contract to pay a provider, and the instruction to your credit-card company to pay a recurring amount, are two separate things. Some companies will send threatening letters, dept collectors etc after you if you just cancel the CC instruction.

It's different on the apple store, where Apple forced providers to agree that a subscription could be unilaterally cancelled via the store. Ideally we would pass a law so that credit cancellation also cancels a contract as long as the minimum period is over. Not holding my breath though.

Do you have more details? I found that in my case the credit card provider has ways to continue paying for the subscription through the magic of recurring charges that is very difficult to stop (survives credit card cancelation/number changes).

The Playpilot app helps to get an overview over where (on what streaming services) a movie or show is available.

We use JustWatch[0]. It's good for keeping a "want to watch" list and also tells you which of your services has which films at any one time.

[0] https://www.justwatch.com/

I wish I had the discipline to manage things that way.

This implies there is something about """you""" that is inherently lacking rather than the habits currently in your brain and "more discipline" often means """if only I would castigate myself more"""

What did people think was going to happen with subscription services? That you get everything you wanted in just one? This was inevitable, I am not quite sure why people were so excited about Netflix. It just meant that we own even less of what we consume. When you brought a disc (or even a digital version of it), you can kind of claim ownership. With subscription services? You can't even morally argue that you own it.

You are missing an important thing.

Netflix allowed a huge library of DVDs to be rented. You could have 3-4 DVDs on rotation for a rather cheap price.

This happened when Blockbuster would charge you $5 per movie, and Netflix would charge $10.99 for unlimited DVDs, but you could only have 3 DVDs checked out.

That's why Netflix was huge and killed Video Store rentals.

BTW, this is still the case. https://dvd.netflix.com/

Netflix has never dropped their DVD service even though they wanted to many times. There are still places in the US where broadband is unavailable.

Also, due to first sale they don't have same license restrictions as they would on streaming. Once they buy the disc they can rent it as many times they want for as long as they want.

I've considered re-adding the DVD rental, I've been using Netflix since they included the coupons in DVD player purchases, because they have the films that aren't available on Netflix streaming and it would be cheaper than adding the myriad streaming service subscriptions.

I re-upped their DVD service for a while early in the pandemic. It's still worthwhile if you want to watch a lot of movies even if their back catalog availability has deteriorated quite of bit. It makes me shake my head a bit that so many people consider suggesting that the idea of just watching some things on physical media (whether Netflix disc by mail, library, or just buying a movie) makes you a weirdo. (Or for that matter, renting streaming a la carte.)

There were a couple of movies I just can’t get without pirating. Already had Netflix and Prime, but to watch Chunking Express I would have needed to subscribe to HBO Max just for this one movie. There was no option to buy/rent it one time on YouTube/Amazon. This was true for at least 4-5 movies I wanted to see (yep, I’m that snob that doesn’t watch the latest and greatest).

And then I’d have to remember to cancel HBO Max.

Funny, I'm not from the US, all I get from https://dvd.netflix.com/ is a 404 page not found error.

Maybe that's the perfect use case for subscription-based VPNs, renting DVDs from an American IP address... Hope it fits through the IP tunnel.

I use the disc service instead of streaming. Its cheaper and the selection has a ton of stuff I want to basically rent but not buy. I also purchase a ton of movies on disc too. It is good for those 'hmm not sure if bargain bin is ok on the price to buy'. Friend of mine uses redbox pretty much exclusively too in the same way. We both have access to decent internet as well.

Downside, there is starting to become a decent number of shows/movies that are exclusive streaming. Second downside is it can be decently slow to get anything. I average about 4 discs per month on a 1 disc out at a time level. It used to be 6-8 per month. But they slowed it down.

I stopped messing with streaming because of the churn of is it on this one or that one. I just gave up and bought whatever boxset I needed. Then found I was not watching the streaming services at all.

You know what’s even cheaper than renting DVDs?

But also, I get your stance. I prefer legal routes over gray/black markets.

In the UK second hand DVDs are very cheap on eBay. A classic film might cost $2.50. Action trash is buy one get one free for $2. Both prices include postage.

Right! Streaming services weren’t feasible back then. We lacked the bandwidth, no apps existed (because internet connectivity outside of a desktop/laptop computer was in its infancy), and not that many people connect a computer to their TV.

People were excited about streaming services because we all got sick of dropping $20+ to buy a shitty movie or album, and there were always availability issues at video rental stores.

Ownership over movies and TV shows isn’t particularly important. I don’t have data to support this, but it seems true that people watch the (probably overwhelming) majority of movies only one time. Why own what I don’t want or need? And if I really enjoy the flick, I can still buy a disc.

Music seems more important to own since owning is the only way to guarantee availability.

Is that why Netflix killed video stores? I don't know anyone who used it when it had DVD rentals (I don't even know if we had that option in Canada).

Myself and most people I know stopped renting videos when we could stream stuff easily.

I think you might be an outlier. Netflix DVD rental was huge in the US—can't speak for Canada though. Everyone I know had it.

Yeah, it was big although it worked better for film than TV. I wish it were still bigger. The fact that so many people seem to think that just renting a physical disk is something weird means that they're really not investing in restocking older films any longer.

I'm sure it depended on your social circle/age group.

My age group, mid 20s during Netflix creation, everyone I knew have a Netflix DVD subscription. We were raised with VHS rentals, so DVD rentals were the natural next step when DVD players got cheap.

Spotify largely works as all-in-one sevice for (mainstream) music, I don't know why it would have been unreasonable to think that same could have happened to movies/series.

The licensing/royalty mechanisms for music have long been much more centralized.

I also strongly suspect that, if you look at the numbers, all you can eat for video would come with a price tag that very few consumers would pay--especially if you throw in live TV.

I have a Prime account, but I'll soon be cancelling it I feel. The same products can had on eBay for less money with no shipping charges added.

Prime video is quite unique, but I'm very much past them putting pre-roll ads on the content I want to watch. It's universally an advert for their own craptastic, homegrown version of an existing well-defined format. If I was interested in watching Law & Order I can start from Season 1, not from their knockoff version of it.

Amazon Music would be another great service I'd be willing to pay for, but all the available clients are so buggy it's an impediment to me using it.

> The same products can had on eBay for less money with no shipping charges added.

eBay sellers also tend to ship promptly, which used to be one of the main reasons to use Amazon/Prime. The latter's shipping speeds have increased by orders of magnitude in some parts of the country over the last couple years. It's not uncommon these days for a Prime order to sit in limbo for 3-4 days before being shipped, while the same order to the same city shipped instantly in 2018.

Prime delivery was a once a week thing in a remote town in Utah several years ago. On the other hand, my parents live in a rural area in the midwest and frequently get packages next day or two day. I'm guessing the difference is down to distribution centers.

Interestingly, I haven't had Prime since maybe 2016, and my experience was that Amazon is only capable of two day shipping, but if you don't pay for it, the item just sits on the shelf for three days, then ships.

If you can wait, most Amazon products are on Aliexpress for much less, sometimes 50% less, up to 90% for electronic components.

I return a lot of products bought from Amazon. How is the return policy and cost with Aliexpress?

Never tried it; I don't think it works too well. Amazon is probably better in that case.

yeah, I canceled Prime a few years ago. I reasoned that if I needed the product fast then it would be faster to physically go to target or walmart. And if I didn't need it fast, then the default shipping would be fine.

Their add-on services all felt lackluster too. Most of the prime video content is not well-rated.

It doesn't matter as much to me now but when I was traveling a lot some determinism in the shipping time was worth a lot to me. And even now, there's a category of things that I don't need right now but I want soonish and probably won't get to the store for a day or two anyway.

It's still a decent value to me overall--especially throwing in video.

What do they charge in the US? It costs me 3 EUR / month here in NL which is worth it. Amazon regularly either undercut or price-match other stores and for 36 EUR a year I get enough entertainment from Prime alone.

Netflix is 15 EUR / month and I honestly just keep it for the kids + my wife..

Far be it from me to shill for Amazon, but I find that I can't go without 2-day shipping.

Ebay is fine I guess, but I'd lose my mind if I had to wait a week for something. That makes the $140/yr worth it to me.

I have just been thinking of how to explain why the audio landscape (podcasts and music) are so wildly different in this sense.

While not perfect, you have a way less unreasonable user experience especially in terms of DRM and hostile in software and APIs, and the fragmentation and balkanization is not even close to at the same level.

Most people who pay seem content with what they do and complement with free and open (mostly legal save for much on the YouTube). Public warez is spotty outside of that and the toplists. Private trackers are extremely exclusive, insular and inaccessible except for the very dedicated.

What's the dominating factor here? IP ownership and legal differences? Market dynamics? Opex costs? Industry corporate cultural differences? Or is it just circumstance that Spotify and Apple Music have been able and willing enough to make it happen while what.cd left a legacy where insular elitism became the norm and video pirates have always been more Tallyho?

Adding to this is the complex web of region-limited content. Is using a VPN to watch something on Netflix more or less legal than torrenting? What if I want to watch it with subtitles that aren't available in my current region, but are in another? The other day I ended up pirating a program that I only later realized I had streaming access to via one of my streaming subscriptions, because the title was different in different regions... ugh.

Unlike in my teenage years I'm happy to support artists with my money (and do!), but it's often a puzzle to figure out what content is on what service and in what region at what price.

I didn't realize subtitles were different based on region.

Add to that the fact that there's this disquieting connection between the IP ownership and the video tech.

Couple services with plenty of good content managed to put together teams to build their mobile / web apps that can barely code their ways out of a paper bag (in the non-trivial space of high-capacity video streaming, nonetheless). It's enough to make me yell "Just give me the damn file and I'll play it myself."

Video tech for streaming is more or less off the shelf from cloud providers (disclaimer: I work for one).

As far as I know, the only two companies that have their own video streaming expertise of any note are Netflix and Disney (after the BAMTech acquisition).

Any other company with sufficient funding can outsource it.

> “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,” he said. “If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.” -- Gabe Newell

There have been many times where I've found DRM encumbered products inferior: trying to stream anime on Crunchyroll during primetime only to experience slowdowns; trying to screenshot something for a wallpaper only to get it blacked out; trying to download offline shows with subtitles, only to find subtitles didn't get downloaded with the video. Compound that with The Streaming Wars, I can't help but feel like a lot of people will turn to piracy out of necessity. It isn't enough that there are like 10 subscriptions to get all of the content you might want. It's also that each provider reinvents the wheel and each version is slightly jagged in different ways and doesn't work like a wheel. It's like 10 inferior clones of a wheel. Piracy, much to the chagrin of all of these services, usually fixes this: an H.265 .mkv file usually "just works" without problems in your favorite media player.

It's just a mess right now.

Ebooks are the worst offenders IMO. Most stores I’ve seen don’t even tell me the format or DRM, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be an open format

I've started buying from ebooks.com exclusively, because they tell me it's DRM-free EPUB and PDF.

I end up paying a big premium in practice over Kindle DRM and discounted paperbacks, but I'm doing my part to convince publishers to offer DRM-free.

Worst part for me is that even libraries, who want to promote openness and reading, are perfectly comfortable with delivering books using Adobe's horrible DRM delivery solution.

Libraries have to play in the rules the publishers give them or else they get cut off from the supply of ebooks. They already have to pay more for the ebooks that expire after a certain number of loans.

> There have been many times where I've found DRM encumbered products inferior: trying to stream anime on Crunchyroll during primetime only to experience slowdowns; trying to screenshot something for a wallpaper only to get it blacked out; trying to download offline shows with subtitles, only to find subtitles didn't get downloaded with the video. Compound that with The Streaming Wars, I can't help but feel like a lot of people will turn to piracy out of necessity.

Piracy is not necessarily better. Languages are very few (english essentially), subtitles may not exist at all, quality is variable, and speed can be a problem as well, since it depends on how popular a movie is.

Most importantly, malware push from pirate websites is a very serious problem. I warn non-power users not to download from pirate websites.

The incentives are misaligned.

Netflix, Amazon, Disney et al, aren't interested in showing me what I want to watch for a purchase price, they are after my attention, and to divert me to their most profitable revenue stream (Netflix in house creations etc).

My attention is not for sale, I'll buy content if it is sold in a manner that is attractive to me in a consumer friendly model, Louis CK selling his standup specials on his own website come to mind, otherwise I won't bother.

The problem is there's no end game for these companies, if you agree to buy something, they'll stop selling it and sell you a subscription instead. If you buy the subscription, they'll chuck ads in front of the subscribed service, and then periodically cut off access to certain content in an effort to maximize their own profit. There's no way to manage you're own library, you're subject to whatever the shareholders think they can keep squeezing out of you. On top of that, even if I yield to them completely, I still have to run their DRM blobs on my computing devices for the priviledge.

It's "amoral" to pirate in my worldview, but these companies are equally amoral. I still want to participate in the collective modern culture of tv, movies, etc, so somethings got to give.

They also have a tendency to edit, remove episodes, etc. And it does not even need to be for political correctness either. It could be licensing rights to music in shows. They will sometimes edit a show to remove the music or remove the episode altogether. (This happened with Scrubs.)

They will remove content that involves people talking about suicide. They will remove content that is offensive. They have even gone back and edited previous episodes and content. This has happened in Stranger Things (actual edits with no notice) and Arrested Development (a redesign of the fourth season that is far worse than the original version of it). (I could not watch the fifth season. It was way too terrible.)

Peep Show, 30 Rock, Community. Modern classics, editing out "offensive" material, that was actually making a point about how offensive it is.

Of course your attention is for sale. Even now, you are posting to a site whose entire purpose for existing is to advertise YC funded companies.

You are correct, obviously.

> I still want to participate in the collective modern culture ... so somethings got to give.

Same comment applies to this forum. I want to participate in discussions on HN, and therefore I am subject to the occasional job ad from YC companies. It's not perfect, but it's a bit facetious to compare that to the attention grabbing of Youtube/Amazon, etc who will intentionally curtail my efforts to find content I want, in lieu of something they want to promote.

It is very much a dark pattern that “continue watching” isn’t in the first row on the streaming services and “my list” isn’t the second row.

I agree.

It’s funny, I’m more sympathetic than ever to pirates, given how frequently creative works are disappeared or moved these days - pulled from streaming for political/social norms reasons (1984 style), “purchased” items removed from libraries for licensing reasons or because a platform outright closes, and then the garden variety shuffling of content between platforms in what seems like a hypermodern version of IP musical chairs (“who has 30 rock this week”).

But at the same time I engage in piracy less than ever before. For me it seems like the hard part used to be obtaining the content — “why can’t I buy or rent the new Sopranos online” — but now the hard part is choosing something worth my time in the oceans of available titles.

This past week I watched a Norwegian miniseries about people stuck in an airport at Christmas (Netflix). Prior week I watched videos from a London Clojure conference (YouTube premium). Prior to that I rewatched an old Jim Jarmusch movie (Criterion). A couple months ago I was on a Hulu binge (The Bear, Only Murderers) before cancelling. I bought a comedy special from Louis CK’s own website. I only used a couple months of a free year of Apple TV, to watch Ted Lasso.

My default is to watch old Anthony Bourdain, either streaming (back when I had Hulu, or when I had HBO Now for Curb Your Enthusiasm) or buy a copy on Apple’s store.

But just as often I look around and give up. Most nights there’s nothing I want to watch. If I can, I make myself read a book or do some coding or maybe a podcast. I subscribe to streaming platforms then cancel. It’s so easy to sign up and then leave.

My point is, if I can find something I want watch it’s only a few clicks to watch it legally for a decent price (helps that I am not in my 20s, income wise). But it’s hard to find anything I want to watch. Piracy is almost a non sequitir these days, most of the time. But sure, if you find something you love, make sure to torrent a copy, because it will disappear eventually for one reason or another.

I was astounded when HBO said they would remove Westworld from their streaming catalog.

WTF. Why even subscribe in the first place. Absolutely ridiculous.

I pirate everything. Haven't subscribed to a service like Spotify, Netflix, etc. in many years. I can listen to my music in CD-quality and bring it anywhere. Same with any movie, TV show, etc. And I know that no one is selling what I find interesting as analytics data.

At the same time, I want to support creators, and I'll donate/use services like Bandcamp to directly support folks I appreciate. I have a $100/mo "donation" fund.

Has nothing to do with the price as I'm more than happy to support creators. Just not through centralized platform that doesn't respect my freedom.

No, but we are at the point where we are going to start cancelling subscriptions. There is more content than we will ever watch. First of the chopping block is Netflix, there just isn't enough really good content to justify it anymore. What we are considering is subscribing for maybe 1-2 months a year, bundle the things we want to see on it then.

From our perspective the two most valuable subscriptions are AppleTV+ and Disney Plus. Apple are making by far the best "prestige" TV, and that seems to be their strategy. Quality over quantity, much like their other product ranges.

My wife and I watch slightly less on Disney, but the value it brings us as a family (8yo + 4yo) is enormous. If we could only have one subscription it would be that one.

Amazon Prime Video is just a value add on a subscription we have anyway, although we increasingly shop less on Amazon, without the free shipping we probably would cancel the video subscription.

I agree with everything you wrote. We keep Disney+ because their family content is untouchable by anyone else. HBO/Apple we trade off every couple of months depending on what's new and what we are most interested in.

Netflix I subscribe to for about 1 month per year to binge the latest of whatever I'm watching (this year: Stranger Things, The Crown) and then cancel. Anything else (Hulu, etc) is a 1 month and churn kind of situation.

Netflix especially seems to be in a content death spiral of sorts. They cancel their original content so aggressively and often in such unsatisfying ways for the audience that I've decided I don't want to watch anything on Netflix until after it is an established success with multiple seasons produced. I wish they would put more wood behind fewer arrows. Or maybe just make a move toward miniseries so at least the audience can have a satisfying beginning, middle, and end to something they've invested time in watching. I would so much rather have 5-8 episodes that form a cohesive story, than a Season 1 that sets up a world and then never gets to go anywhere because some algorithm decided the show wasn't successful enough to continue.

> What we are considering is subscribing for maybe 1-2 months a year, bundle the things we want to see on it then.

Do you see them stopping that ability at some point, and requiring a yearly subscription? I remember the cable companies wouldn't let you start and stop premium channels each month. You'd have to sign up for at least a year.

If they did, at the current rate of content we would then just cancel.

Maybe a pay per series could work, but then that's them admitting that they don't make enough good content to justify a subscription.

I disagree that we're at peak monetization (see what the price of a premium cable package used to be)

Since you mention Spotify I'm super happy with it. It's basically everything I ever wanted consistently. Can recommend new music better than any person I know, and I can feed it any song that I and somebody else like as a radio station and get a pretty decent list of songs we both don't mind. Granted I don't listen to music as many hours as I did when I was young, but that's just me changing I think.

I feel like video games are actually often underpriced if you wait for a steam sale. I think child me would be blown away by the fact I can buy a game 10x better than mario 3 for 1/10th the price of Mario 3 ($50). I'm talking Baba is You, or Hollow Knight is 7.49 right now, or Slay The Spire is 8.49 right now. When I grew up I had "Gauntlet" which had some traits/bugs that made it nearly unwinnable without a guide, even by old standards.

In TV I think there's more of an argument to be had, and if you had only said TV I think this would be an interesting discussion, but if you think it's everything I think the more likely explanation is it's a you thing (maybe just not as easy to please anymore and upset at the media for not giving you that same magical feeling).

I’ve been a Spotify premium customer for years. For music discovery, they’re incredible. But I really hate two things about Spotify:

1. Sometimes music I have in playlists disappears, for licensing reasons. I understand the reasoning but it makes me irrationally angry

2. There’s still no way to remove playlists from the home screen. No, spotify, I still don’t want to listen to your Dad Jokes podcast. I feel like some bozo product manager has had a bonus package attached to podcast listens and he’s doing what he can to get more podcast listens, instead of making me (the customer) happy.

I’m considering going back to a bespoke mp3 collection again. Something about it feels better. It feels like mine.

> No, spotify, I still don’t want to listen to your Dad Jokes podcast. I feel like some bozo product manager has had a bonus package attached to podcast listens and he’s doing what he can to get more podcast listens, instead of making me (the customer) happy.

Two things I have an issue with when it comes to Spotify and podcasts:

1. Podcasts are _still_ open and distributed via RSS. They're probably the last medium to truly exist in this way in a mainstream fashion. With a company like Spotify "embrace, extend, extinguish", then putting podcasts behind a walled garden is a real risk. (Remember when Chrome was the cool and hip browser instead of an ad space?)

2. The annoying, pushy UX (you're making my music listening experience worse)

Given 2., it's hard for me to imagine that 1. isn't a wet dream of some myopic, OKR-obsessed product person at Spotify.

I’ve been making playlist for years, and I’ve noticed Spotify mangle songs on some of the older ones. Like one of my earliest playlist now contains a few tracks of super obscure jazz from the 40s that I’m pretty sure I never added. What they replaced I’ll never know.

On 2, what really grinds my gears is that some of that content is tied to the country of your funding payment method, including podcasts in a language you don't speak about local politics on the other side of the world.

It can’t just be a me thing because when piracy showed up, it became a everyone thing. For it to return, it would return for all of us at the same time. The monetized ecosystems will metastasize to a point where everyone will go ‘the fuck? I think not’.

I have more disposable income than in my teenage years, so when it comes to convinience/money tradeoffs I'll natually choose differently than my teenage self.

Where the streaming services are getting in trouble is if they are less convinient than piracy. Steam's success is largly built on being more convinient than pirating games, and similarly early Netflix was more convinient than pirating movies. Netflix and Amazon Prime still are on the "more convinient than piracy" side for me, the plethora of other streaming services not so much.

And then there's the question whether watchin Youtube with adblocker and SponsorBlock is equivalent to piracy. It is damn convienient.

> I just feel like if we’re at peak monetization.

We're really not. If anything there's more content (for lack of a better word) available for token amounts of money than there ever has been. I don't know how old you are but back in the distant past of the 90s you had two choices if you wanted to watch a film, you could go to a shop and buy a copy, probably for more money than you'd pay for a monthly Netflix subscription now, or you could go to the video rental store and rent it for a few pounds. If you were really lucky someone you know might own a copy and would lend it to you.

Games would cost £40+ new, or you could pick up the really big older ones for £10 or so. If you happened to want a game no one else did you were out of luck. Compare that to something like Steam now, or Game Pass where for ~$15/month you can have hundreds of games to choose from.

Maybe you don't like the model of monthly subscriptions. Guess what, for almost any film you can still buy a copy, either physically on disk, or digitally and be able to watch it right now. Don't like the level of ads on YouTube (which is honestly still better than what you'd see on any TV channel)? You can pay to turn them off.

This whole thing just reeks of entitlement. You don't have a god given right to watch and play anything you choose, whenever you choose, without paying anything for that. That's not how the world works. I'm not aware that ever having been how the world works. So sure, go pirate the things you want, but don't try to justify it as anything other than "I'd rather not pay".

> content (for lack of a better word)

Content is the perfect word, insipid material to fill our bottomless pit of boredom

> which is honestly still better than what you'd see on any TV channel

The last time we had less ads on youtube than on TV they were still releasing new episodes of starget sg1, I'm too lazy to check when that was but I didn't even finish high school back then

Owning a physical copy of a movie hasn't gotten any cheaper since the 90s. A Top Gun Maverick blu-ray is $25. Netflix streaming has gone up in price significantly from debut and has a worse content library, due to "the streaming wars." Streaming access is not fair to compare to ownership --it's closer to rental, but without any of the supply-side cost of making and distributing physical media, so value to consumers should be better, based on that. The subscription services aim to lock in some or all of your entertainment budget to maximize per capita revenue month to month. If you want access to the full gamut you need to pay 5+ different ways and end up spending more than what's reasonable for a month full of viewing content (with next to no distribution cost.) IMO, it's only a good deal then if you're spending absurd an amount of time streaming, and there probably isn't enough good content to keep you busy. Quantity and variety of niche shows/films available has gone up over the years, but you can definitely argue quality has gone down apart from format fidelity and CGI quality.

Games haven't really gone down in price either, and now since so many of the games themselves are "live service" things, many of them expire after a few years when they turn the servers off. $25 cosmetic "virtual goods" are often sold in game, representing an absurd markup on the time of artists. You get manipulated/harassed to spend (maybe more like burn) money in them, often after having spent $40-70 to get in the front door.

Monetization is awful, and that shouldn't be too surprising. Businesses endeavor to extract what the market can bear most profitably, and to have a bigger piece of that pie, not so much to give the benefit of progress to the people paying.

>Games haven't really gone down in price either

They have though. Games used to be so much more expensive back in the day.

I actually ran across this nugget recently: https://twitter.com/Mailia/status/1608496022589952003

You had to shell out $70 for a copy of Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey '98. That's $130 when adjusted for inflation. And disc-based games weren't as cheap as you'd expect either. I think I saw an ad for Crash Bandicoot and the inflation-adjusted price of the game was like $74.

These days you might need to pay for $70 if you want a triple-A title on release date. If you don't mind waiting a bit or just go non-blockbuster titles, you can find a lot of games for quite a lot less.

Intellectual property is an artificial, legal notion with a specific stated Constitutional purpose. It's not God-given either. It is also supposed to be limited, but currently it's 100+ years which is effectively unlimited since it's beyond a normal human lifetime.

The current situation overly incentivizes creation of intellectual property, particularly entertainment. Did we really need 50+ cable channels with shows 24/7? Did we need endless talk shows in the 90's and reality shows in the 00's? Do we need remakes upon remakes upon remakes of franchises of stuff?

If copyright returned to sane durations instead of the corporate-legacy-creating ones in effect currently, or even didn't exist at all, much of the resources that go into entertainment might go into better, less wasteful uses, or might go into developing actual novel entertainment.

> This whole thing just reeks of entitlement.

DRM schemes also reveal that entitlement goes both ways. External companies don't have a god given right to tell me I cannot watch X on my screen or download X.

Subjecting my personal property to surveillance to enforce a parallel to this old world is too far.

I don't think it's ethical for our economic system to incentivize all these high-budget productions, so I like to "vote with my dollar," for what that's worth. Is it really good for humanity if billions of dollars are spent a year on Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 3: The Golden Spork or Top Gun: Maverick's Last Stand: The TV Show?

Various streaming apps are simply very difficult to use for me. Plus other issues: Netflix's 4K is inconsistent and has banding and artifacts that it shouldn't, for one example. There's a long, long list of dark patterns and whatnot which turn me off. You can't even screenshot in mainstream apps!

But with all these IPs being taken down and lost forever (esp. HBO), piracy and seeding feels like I'm contributing to the maintenance of a library. If we're going to spend billions of humanity's resources on these things, they should at least continue to be accessible somewhere.

The pros and cons list ends up pretty imbalanced!

I don't think I would ever resort to piracy, as a middle aged guy with a family, the reward is not worth the risk to me plus I am lucky enough to be able to afford to watch what I want if I really want it. With that said the quality of options available on streaming services has really gone down. I am subscribed to Netflix, Prime, Disney+, Apple, Hulu and HBO Max; and there is nothing to watch.

I am likely going to cancel Apple, HBO Max, Hulu and Netflix shortly. My kids like Disney+ although personally I am concerned with the channels attempts to front and center homosexuality targeted at kids. This is a personal issue I am not seeking to change anyone's opinion or mind or lead a boycott against Disney. Its just something that I don't like for my kids. So depending on if the amount of animated LGBTQ content increases on the channel I will likely cancel that as well.

I see no moral problem with file sharing. Personally it's rarely worth the hassle, though I occasionally convert a youtube video to and mp3 for niche songs I can't find on spotify. I'd say it depends on how you value your time and how difficult it is to find what you want.

"Piracy" is the legitimate competitor of streaming services. It seems like we have had a period where streaming offered a better product, but having a credible threat of competition is important to keep the streaming offerings competitive and relevant.

Well interestingly enough, it really is developers that can make a great piracy user experience. Why don’t we?

It's probably easier and faster to explain and setup someone for torrent than to signup for netflix

It's an arms race. If you make piracy too convenient, the IP lawyers and lawmakers start working against you.

I find a lot of piracy to have better UX than the legitimate ways, although maybe not for the average user who doesn't know how to set up things. But I find Plex superior to all of the legitimate streaming services and their apps.

Biggest exception is probably gaming and specifically Steam. It's been a while since the last time I've pirated a game and even then it was probably like a retro ROM.

I just reduce consumption, because 1.) that's better for you anyway 2.) most media is drivel and always has been 3.) can't be arsed to do illegal shit for such a petty reward

It depends. Games and music - no, I'm glad to pay for Spotify subscription, and I'm happy to buy a game every once in a while. Movies and TV shows - yes, if I cannot find them in Netflix. Sometimes I want to watch something, and it's not available in Netflix in my region, or not on Netflix at all. What choices do I have?

GamePass for me was the end of game piracy in any way. (plus competition between Steam and Epic lowering prices and making many more games accessible at cheap prices).

At this point for music there is so much free music available online that makes no sense to pirate anything. But I assume this depends on your music tastes.

For Movies and TV piracy is king especially if you live in a country where many less popular movies don't make it to the movie theaters and some streaming networks (e.g. hulu, disney+ etc) are not available.

I usually choose not to watch.And not because of morals, but because the life is sad when so much effort goes into consuming content.

I usually just use yt-dlp for most things I want, how is one command a sad amount of effort? A ton of older cartoons I want to watch just sit on archive.org.

Then I will miss a big pile of content. Netflix is very limited in some regions.

You will miss a big pile of content anyway because even if you are in full consumption mode with full access to everything, no one has the time to see/read/listen/play even a fraction of what is published every given day. Given our rate of media production, the backlog of potential worthwile stuff you will miss out on is ever growing.

A few weeks ago I rented the Alien: Covenant movie on youtube because I didn't even know it existed. About 2 minutes in I noticed it was playing at 480p. I paid the extra dollar for HD rental. Lo and behold, if you want to watch rented youtube movies in HD (which you paid for) you can't do it in chrome browser on mac but hilariously safari did let me watch it in HD on the same computer... Those 15 minutes of debugging added about 3 cuts to the 10000 caused by silly restrictions that exist.

Netflix is the same. You can only watch HD netflix on the netflix app or on edge.

DRM problems are very different depending on the medium.

I do buy many games, mainstream and not, and actually play them. In the big picture, DRM is not as not as bad as depicted; the vast majority of games rely only on Steam DRM, which isn't problematic.

Vocal game DRM opponents actually refer to a small section of the games landscape (AAA with Denuvo, mostly), so it's really something players love to hate.

I definitely had DRM problems a couple of times I can remember of. Definitely gave me problems, but it was a small percentage of the games I've played. If there's a problem, I don't disagree with getting a refund and pirate it.

Books are another story. In that case, I think that DRM is evil without exception, because it's important for me to use my own tools on books, which DRM prevents. Differently from games though, there are multiple distribution channels for books, and one may find more expensive non-DRM'ed versions.

(movies a different matter as well, which has been discussed quite extensively)

There's just more content that I want to watch than I have time, or attention, to watch. I only subscribe to Netflix and Disney+; and Disney+ is because I have young children. (I also subscribe to YouTube music, but I consider that a different form of entertainment. And I subscribe to Amazon, but that's for free shipping.)

Most of the time, if I want to watch something that's not part of one of these existing subscriptions, I can rent it for a small fee. I only rent 2-4 times a year. If I think the kids will want to re-watch it, I buy the Bluray. I only buy a few a year.

So, would I go back to piracy? Well... I have to really want to watch it, it has to be missing from my streaming and rental services, and I have to "not care enough to rewatch" to not buy the Bluray. The last thing I pirated, I reminded myself that I've watched it enough to justify buying it outright.

IMO: What we need is copyright reform along with piracy. Copyright should only be protected if an asset is available online instantly at a fair price. Otherwise, if the asset isn't available at a fair price, piracy should be 100% legal.

For listening music piracy isn't worth it. The streaming solutions of Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music ... are pretty good.

With a family plan it comes down to less than 3 dollars a month.

For video, the story is completely different. I would have to subscribe to 3 to 5 subscriptions and the experience varies. Netflix sucks immensely [0]. I pay for netflix and prime, but have to run my own Plex Server. When you run your own Plex Server, you also run Sonarr and Radarr. Now you don't care anymore, just add the movie, 10 minutes later i can watch it.

Setting it up maybe a little a hassle, but when it runs ... its god like.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33451725

I pirated a lot when I was younger and couldn't afford it. It's a headache I don't need anymore - worrying about VPNs or seedboxes, torrent sites moving to different domains or being shut down, maintaining ratios, letters from your ISP...

Nowadays entertainment is quite accessible through subscriptions and I just wait for decent sales on the games I want to play.

Usenet is the answer :)

Also, media piracy is much more convenient these days thanks to the excellent media server options (Plex/Emby/Jellyfin) and the *arr suite of apps.

You simply add movies and shows to your library and have them “magically” appear in your media server app on release - like a personal streaming service.

Usenet is definitely the answer. Old school but it works and its inaccessibility relative to torrents keeps it out of "easy-ish target" territory for IP enforcers.

What’s the hot one now days? I used to sub to Giganews.

This. I just got back into it a couple weeks ago.

You don't need seebox / ratios, trackers don't know how much you really uploaded, as a matter of fact it's your client that send that information, so you can send anything you want.

I think trackers eventually can find out that bad actors and bad them out. If you claimed to have sent 100 kb but nobody reported to have received them then you are flagged.

This is terrible advice. Any tracker worth participating on is monitoring ratio cheating like a hawk.

In 2008, sure. Any worthwhile monkeying of seeding statistics in a largely compliant user base will obviously stick out like a sore thumb.

That’s one of the reasons I kind of gave up on, but it is 2023. I wonder how streamlined piracy has gotten.

Chill.institute (manual) and showrss.info (scheduled TV) + put.io + cronjob running `rclone move` into your Plex media directory is one I've seen that seemed pretty neat.

Entire process is probably faster than finding which service the thing you want to watch is streaming on.

Popcorn time was quite slick when I tried it maybe in 2015 or so.

while I agree that despite fragmentation, it is more accessible, this can be a US-centric view. Even if you're aware of the service that can provide a series, you might need a VPN to subscribe and use.

For me it is not about monetization anymore, it is about convenience. I would gladly pay netflix or any other provider to have access to movies I want to actually watch. Right now it is more about what netflix wants me to watch. So I usually pay netflix for month or two when I there is something I want to watch and cancel subscription shortly after. I think rent/buy model is more sustainable here then pure streaming services.

For games I rarely pirate something, steam/gog/xbox are just too convenient for me. Unless it is something on the platform I don't have, but I still want to play it in an emulator.

Music is sort of middle ground. I am ok with content selection major stream providers have now. So basically the only thing I care about is to platform to not mess with me with some bullshit features. I switched from spotify, because I got tired of how their android and mac apps work.

I had an account for an unnamed streaming service and I really valued contributing to the production of the content with my small contribution. Then I moved from one country to another. After the move I have a credit card issued by a bank in the country I moved to and said streaming service will not accept it as payment. I can't find a way to actually pay them money. It seems the only way to get access is through some bundles with ISPs which sadly do not fit my situation. I find this extraordinarily stupid and I'm not even sure I would call it greedy. It's just counterproductive. I want to give them money, they just seem to have come to the conclusion that money is not fungible, the source matters.

The only 3 platforms that receive my money are Bandcamp, Itch.io and Steam.

The first two are pristine from an ethical standpoint.

I'm torn on Steam because it's not run as a typical USA corporation with all the anti consumer BS. The DRM they themselves provide is more of a suggestion instead of a real challenge. It can be broken with off the shelf tools or just stepping and dumping in x64dbg. However they did their fair share of damage in eroding what it means to own digital goods.

I also bought https://everycircuit.com/ because halfway through reversing the license checks I started feeling bad for the developers :(

I unapologetically pirate everything else.

I approve of Steam's commitment to Linux and they have a great track record. I also will never pirate an exectuable file.

> halfway through reversing the license checks I started feeling bad for the developers

What do you mean by this? Is there a story I'm missing?

Not much story. The wasm binary crahsed wabt (lol) so after getting frustrated with the state of the chromium tooling for wasm, I switched to messing with the android build.

That one was super easy to deal with because it had symbols. Judging by the license routines, they initally intended it to be a subscription service, only to give it an actually fair price down the road ($15). Seeing the username of the dev in the build metadata also made me feel a bit bad for him.

Some of the problems I think I’m seeing around streaming right now is that every media conglomerate is trying to extract the most they can from consumers. Media companies are debasing cable packages and streaming cable-like packages (Sling, etc.) where their channels and on-demand content is aging and lowering in quality and availability. They increasingly seem like platforms to advertise the Plus versions of services where valued content and new original content is moving rapidly to paid streaming, e.g. Discovery+, Paramount+, HBO+, Disney+, etc.

While this extraction reality sucks but I feel like there’s a game to play here that’s still better than piracy though.

I never stopped pirating, I watch movies once a week at most.

All my friends rely on streaming services, every few weeks we have a movie night, 50% of the time we can't find the movie we plan on watching even though they have 4 or 5 services, and when we find the movie we have another 50% chance of it not being available in OV.

Even when it works flawlessly, and even if you pay for the "Uber+ 8k topmaxi over resolution" option you have the same bitrate as when you were buying a DVD for 3 euros in 2005

Also, 90% of the created content is absolute garbage, sometimes we boot netflix just to scroll for literally 20 minutes in quest for something to watch before giving up

The documentary series I spent 10 years working finally landed 6 weeks ago on NBC Peacock. Guess how I saw the final cut? That's right. I pirated it. I pirated my own show.

I am. Fuck playing unfinished, unoptimized games for only 69.99 and paying for a dozen streaming services to watch shows.

Why exactly did music piracy go downhill? Because you can just pay 10 bucks (or a fiver if you're a student) per month and have pretty much everything available at high quality.

I wish the UX of streaming services wasn't so horrible. That is what makes me most want to go back to a Kodi box.

I want a personal collection of movies, imagine a bookshelf of my favorites.

But all the streaming services are like having a messy Blockbuster Video in my living room, which I don't want.

I’ve been fortunate and really can’t bring myself to take things without paying for them. Being a movie and sports fan I pay for (deep breath) Netflix, HBO, Peacock, Disney/Hulu/ESPN, Sunday Ticket, Fubo, Paramount+, Prime, and AppleTV/Music.

I don’t mind the money, except Sunday Ticket which is insanely expensive for something that blacks out the biggest games each week.

What I mind is the complete unusability of having different UIs for each of them, and the lack of any unified schedule/guide. It is bizarre that the only way to find a live football game is to try each of the services that it might be on until found.

I don’t begrudge content creators and distributors their money. I just find it insane that the content choosing user experience is so much worse than 30 years ago.

If someone came out with a 100% pirated live+streaming solution with a unified catalog and schedule, I’d happily use it while still paying for the legit services whose various baroque UXes I wouldn’t miss at all.

Alternative viewpoint: Their (movie, song, game and book content producers) problem is not piracy, it's being ignored.

Right now there is much more competition for eyeballs than there ever was in the past (social networks, video shorts, etc). People only have so many hours in the day for entertainment, and these alternative eyeball-grabbers are can only gain eyeballs at the expense of traditional eyeball-grabbers.

For example ...

I've got Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+, and the last time I saw a movie on TV was in 2021, the last series I watched to completion was The Boys (and Umbrella Academy).

I'm literally paying for tons of stuff I am not going to see; is it reasonable to think that I am going to go out of my way to search for, then download something?

I want to be back to piracy. Not specifically for money, but for quality subtitles :

I want translations that are close to the original content, not an adaptation that nearly destroys its meaning.

Until a decade ago, Japanese right owners were hardly interested in broadcasting content in my area. Fansub teams would provide subs for content as long as it wasn't licensed. (it was in order to make it available, but most of them didn't want to compete with companies who would actually develop the content). This resulted in a range of subs, each with a different trades-off between pure translations and adaptation. If you got a subtitle from a team that offered a close translation, you had much more meaning, but you had to understand a bit of what was going on.

We also had the opportunity to make the shows a bit of our own by discussing about its meaning and by reflecting on it, in order to write the subtitles. The we could compare subtitles and what each team understood.

Now most commercial services destroy that meaning. They take the show away : you're just a consumer/viewer without a say (don't forget to purchase a shirt to make the show your own) They adapt it with a lot of approximations, and remove the quirks and rudeness to make it ok for the most viewers. (yes, shonen characters are rude, you can ride a mamachari and it's not just a bicycle on which you're an angry cyclist, -kun / -chan / -dono have a meaning, ...)

I no longer enjoy to watch anime with commercial services, that's just bland. They just want to do a western show with a Japanese show. And since I used to be in a fansub team with the 'as long as it wasn't licensed' clause, I and don't approve of piracy, so I just no longer watch this content as much as I could. (now US shows like South Parks feel more mature)

I find it a shame that governments went all over the place to find dichotomies to break down public services on behalf of free competition (operating train isn't maintaining rails, selling power isn't maintaining lines and power plants,...), but that you can't just purchase a license for movie and its subtitles separately.

Again? I never stopped. I try to find ways to fund creators directly whenever I can but I'm not going to encourage:

- the balkanization of content that we've seeing

- investment in DRM

- the strengthening of artificial-scarcity-based business models which I think harm innovation more than they help

I've tested recently a very "refined" ipTV service that for the price of a single "mainstream" subscription "aggregates" all the newest content of all services + TV + Non Subscription services Movies, they provide simple to use apps for all Smart TV platforms, OS and phones, great user experience, 1 single account and app for everything. Clearly all this is illegal but in a way, removes the direct legal risk of downloading stuff yourself, I got the feeling these type of offers will start to grow a lot soon, sadly we know this type of services will never be legal.

I mean, alternative services I tested required to download and install some very fishy feeling apps or browser plugins, the whole experience to setup was not user friendly, not the case here, very nice and functional app directly from the official app stores. Also very smooth payment options from crypto to regular bank debits (Non US / EU locations).

For new music (as in recorded and released recently), no. Most of the music I buy is made by artists who probably tour in a van. So, every little sale matters to these folks. And, I'm happy to support them! In regards to some hit record from the 60's that already went 10x platinum (or whatever), I'll grab the free version in a heartbeat.

For movies / tv series, I don't want to bother. I really don't. But, the streaming landscape is just out of control (for lack of a better phrase). Even with just a few services, the signal to noise ratio is heavily noise. Who knew there were so many Christmas movies?! I just want to watch Elf. Oh, it's on the other streaming service? That's weird, it was on here last year!

I just want to buy some of this stuff digitally, so I can watch it without having to Google what service it's on. Or, after Googling it's location, come to find it's been removed recently (looking at you, Netflix). But, a lot of the newer shows are streaming only. Which, leaves one option if you want it on a hard drive.

I pay for my basically all of my games and music, proving Gabe Newell's old quote about piracy being the result of lack of convenience in the legal method of acquiring things (paraphrasing). Steam is convenient and I still have all access to all the games I bought 10+ years ago. And as for music, I stream it like most people, and also buy vinyl records for albums I particularly like which gives me something tangible and sends the artist some actual money in the process.

Movies and TV shows though, I basically pirate all of it. When it was mostly all on Netflix there was a convenient legal offering to watch a lot of content, but these days I have no idea where anything I want to watch is streaming. And even then, stuff moves around because contracts expire, new deals are formed, etc. And it's even worse if you're outside of the US (Canada in my case). You look up where to watch something and all the results tell you one thing, you go check, and it's not there because there's different distribution in Canada. I don't want to subscribe to 10 services when I'm probably not gonna use most of them in a month, and I'm not spending hours managing which services I'm subscribed to every month because it's a waste of time and it's not like I plan what I'm going to watch that far in advance anyway. Some things are only streamable on some network's website where they expect you to login with your account through a cable provider. So yeah, screw that - I flick my VPN on, load a torrent into my client, refresh my Plex and I'm watching in a few minutes. And half the time it's better quality cause it's a Bluray rip instead of running through an ugly compression algorithm.

I still do what I can to support shows I enjoy so they get some of my actual money -- buying merch or physical copies of the show/movie. But even if I buy a physical copy I still usually end up just watching it through my Plex server cause it's more convenient than grabbing a disc from my shelf and loading it into the disc drive that my current PC doesn't even have.

Let me share my perspective on piracy as a citizen of Russian Federation who don't think about relocation.

I was a youtube/Spotify/last.fm/[smth other I don't remember] subscriber before 2022.

Actually it was kind of pride in younger population in Russia for games: "I pay for all games I like".

My son, my friends has hundreds of games bought on Steam.

That was a big step actually.

How sanctions worked?

For me: - youtube/youtube music - I was a subscriber, so it was for me: "No advertisments, ability to support channels, ability to listen youtube videos on locked phone". Now: no advertisements for all Russia - which is great. Not able to listen on locked phone - irritating. Support channels (I'm a WH40K fan) - thru direct donations

- spotify - I still think that last.fm was the best

- netflix, amazon, etc - sorry, I have no options, except eztv, kickass, piratebay, etc. Nothing new

My POV: Piracy is not a problem. Piracy is a solution. When everything else failed.

I get the financial thing

but it's a bit stupid to cut off a country from shows. This is lost soft power, and gives more space for Putin's shows.

Russia no longer being able to watch shows demonstrates what 'content' is now about : 'content' that consumers pay for. They're no longer about meaning, meant to be provocative, influential, spark a discussion, or anything. They are meant to be sold, not actually viewed.

I don't typically condone piracy because I think it's important to compensate writers/actors/artists, but I do feel angry about the state of things. Physical media is looking relatively good in many cases. Discs are a hassle but at least then you know what you have after a glance at the shelf; there have been several times I bought something a la cart on Amazon / Apple / Vudu and only later realized it was actually available on a streaming service I was subbed to. Even if I'm willing to pay up (and we usually keep 2-3 subs at a time), the UX of checking each platform to see if something is available is absurd.

There's also the issue of content just randomly disappearing off streaming services for no good reason. Even big-budget, big-name shows like Westworld have now fallen prey to this. Big parts of our culture can just get thrown in the bin if some MBA decides it's what's needed to squeeze a few more pennies out of their bottom line? To me, that is unacceptable. The cultural preservation angle is the best thing about piracy IMO.

Even with all the madness, some content doesn't seem available anywhere for any price. I recently tried to track down The Abyss (1989), a scifi classic by James Cameron. It's currently not on any digital platform and the physical discs appear to be out of print. The only way to watch this movie seems to be piracy or buying a second-hand disc on eBay.

Physical media second-hand market is surprisingly good nowadays. Use reputable sellers and buy discs rated "good" or below with caution.

+1 to this. A whole load of movies that Disney and Netflix want to get behind a subscription are $2 at Goodwill or another thrift store. A DVD drive and Handbrake will place the movie on your computer for you.

The only real issues that have "encouraged considerations of piracy" for me are the drive toward subscription for things that don't involve recurring costs to service me, and the generally abysmal quality of everything in the absence of a free trial/sample.

Beyond that, piracy must be among the top 3 motivations for companies to senselessly subscription-ify everything, so engaging in it is at least participating in incentivizing that behavior.

Where I am, there are frequent power cuts or Internet is down because of a storm. We do have a generator so we can keep on living. I hate the fact tho that I'm not able to pay for content I paid for : movies, fitness classes, music etc.

So looking to build a media server full of content, via legal means or piracy!

Another motivation is while I'm ok paying now, what about in 20 or 30 years time? Maybe there will be a time where I want to discard my credit card, but still want to be able to enjoy movies. I would have paid then thousands of dollars to streaming services. A media server with my favorite content sounds like a better bet.

For movies I’m ditching the streaming subscriptions and back to digital rentals.

Most of the old movies are available for $2.99 from Amazon Prime Video.

A couple clicks from the smart tv is worth a few bucks to me compared to finding the torrent then finding a way to get it in the TV.

Watching classic films is more fulfilling than the latest steaming fad.

If you try to consume quality over quantity the monetization isn’t too bad IMHO.

It is still cost-benefit thing for me.

When I was young, I did it a lot with Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Movies, MP3, and etc. Because I didn't have money.

I don't pirate anymore because I make money.

In this day of age, piracy has increased risk with malware that mines bitcoin or locks your disk for ransom, so the risk is much higher and effectively lowers the benefit.

> In this day of age, piracy has increased risk with malware that mines bitcoin or locks your disk for ransom, so the risk is much higher and effectively lowers the benefit.

I don't think that's true at all, rather the opposite in fact. Piracy feels much safer now than it was 20 years ago.

Music is a non-issue with services competing on features rather than exclusive content.

I pirate games that cost more than ~$20 and don't provide a demo. If I enjoy the game then I'll usually buy it after an hour or two, especially indie games.

I'm done with movie/TV streaming services. Their business model and user experience is garbage while piracy provides a significantly better ease of use, overall UX and content quality. I'll reconsider paying for these services when they start competing on features and pricing rather than content exclusivity that varies by geographical region.

I'll buy e-books as long as the price is "reasonable", don't expect me to pay more for an e-book than a physical copy.

I'm doing a bit of both.

I think it's fair that artists are rewarded for their work, so I pay for one global service per type of content : Netflix for movies and TV shows, Youtube Premium for music.

However, I abhor the game of 'selling rights to certain platforms for certain duration only in certain countries', and I don't want to have to handle half a dozen subscription just because someone in the marketing team somewhere decided that this movie was going to be exclusive to this platform.

So my go to is, if I want to watch something, I first try to find it on my legal paid platform, and if I can't find it there, I'll pirate it.

Works pretty well so far.

This is my philosophy as well. I think it's a balanced approach. You are supporting the industry but also yourself. Even with this approach, I torrent much less now because there is so much high quality content that I can pay for.

I mean we live in a completely insane world:

Companies logic:

- subscribe to 10 different streaming services to watch all the tv and movies that you enjoy;

- you like music? They don’t care they will shove podcasts down your throat just because it’s cheaper for them to produce;

- ebooks? Let’s make customers pay the exact same for digital products as hard cover physical books just because it makes totally sense;

- games? Let’s put ridiculous drm that acts more like spyware, also let’s charge for 10 years old+ games the same or more than new games.

Yeah punish consumers and reward pirates, that’s their logic.

Definitely an insane world.

Havent left the seven seas since ive discovered it a decade ago. At this point the inconvenience of finding things doesnt even feel burdensome for myself and for the few i provide things. Not even in a private tracker, just a few semi private ones

I don't want to pay for DRM content.

Piracy is a better alternative. Far less hassle and better quality.

There is some very nice software out there so you can basically have your own private Netflix. Risk is minimal when setup correctly.

People say piracy is stealing. It isn't. It's the natural order of things. People support things with money that they want to see. People see plays, concerts, and movies in theaters all the time. Not letting people share a recording is ridiculous, as is the concept of eternal royalties.

Look at how much art we have that takes from prior art to turn it into something new. Piracy helps that goal. We wouldn't have people like Eminem if he hadn't pirated tapes. Piracy hurts no one, and studies show pirates spend the most on content.

A decade or so from now, no one will be talking about piracy because it will simply be the natural way of sharing, at least in free countries.

Agreed. An argument is that themovie producers won't continue producing movies. Which is false because more money is made in royalties, merchandise, and advertisements on streaming.

Piracy is stealing something measurable, property. If something is not unique or measurable, then what would the value be? So legally, I wouldn't consider it piracy by definition.

Actually, I kinda like the current way.

I can listen whatever I want via Spotify. If I like the album that much, I can buy it via iTunes or their store, however finding lossless versions are hard.

If I really love the album, I'll buy its vinyl.

If I don't plan to buy the vinyl, and can't find the lossless version or a decent priced CD, I buy the album online and find the lossless version elsewhere.

I'm a former orchestra player. I know how tedious and draining producing music is. It's unethical to just download it and let it be. Before, it was impossible to get decent music without being gouged, so I had to download some of the albums, but it's no more now. Buying prices are accessible, storage is ample, and syncing is easy.

There's no need to screw musicians over it.

I'm not a big movie buff anyway, so if I can stream it legally, I'm fine.

> If I like the album that much, I can buy it via iTunes or their store, however finding lossless versions are hard.

Try Bandcamp.

I already gave up and installed Plex along with the *arr apps on my home server.

I still pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube premium etc. but I find myself many of the times I want to watch something, I just use my home server rather than even checking if they exist on Netflix or Prime video.

Can’t give up YouTube premium, but probably will stop having Netflix as soon as they block password sharing.

I don't see the need for priracy (yet).

To pay for all streaming services I only need to work 1 hour. This is to pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Videoland, Disney+, HBO Max and Sky

As for videogames, there's currently a sale on Steam and PSN. That's when I usually buy games. It's very easy to save money but you gotta be patient.

For PSN, I keep a list of games I want to buy as bookmarks to psprices.com.

That lets me periodically check what's on sale, and also see how good the current price is, and what the price trend is.

For the PC gaming market, gg.deals can sync with your Steam wishlist and let you know where to get the best deal.

It's actually possible to get Steam games for a better price outside of Steam from official retailers like Voidu or Green Man Gaming that get their Steam keys directly from the publishers.

The day Disney+ launched, I bought a Usenet subscription. I've since cancelled Netflix, because they kept removing shows as I was watching them, then kept increasing the price, and finally added advertisements. I've stuck with Ad-free Hulu, because my kids watch a lot of shows on it, and it's been working very well. I tried Paramount+, but it doesn't work if you have a Pi-Hole, it just refuses to play anything unless you allow ads, no matter what level you pay for. Not for me.

Piracy isn't perfect, but it never shows me ads, never removes shows, and doesn't try to recommend anything to me.

100%, and I have hulu, netflix, hbo max etc. I pay for YouTube premium because the amount of savings I've made from it is 10 fold higher than the cost.

It's software that has switched from pay one time per version to subscription only that causes me to feel this way too. And let's not forget what TurboTax has done to the US.

How do you save on YouTube Premium? Is it accounting for the money value of time that you save on ads, replacing another music service, or the value of listening to the videos in background?

My entertainment consumption has basically moved to reading progression fantasy and litrpg on Royal Road and Kindle Unlimited. It more or less replaced everything, tv, movies, youtube, podcasts, I'd rather just read even if it's not exactly the best writing in the world.

Never stopped, never will. Radarr and sonarr already give me superior UI/UX than the godawful streaming service UIs, plus I never have to worry about a favorite song or show or movie suddenly going poof out of existence.

Plus, y'know, free.

This got really really complex these days. I subscribes to HBO Max but sometimes the connections to their server are so bad, the catalog page don’t even load, in case like these I will have no choice but to find some pirated sources and load them to my device. Netflix / YouTube doesn’t have these kinds of problems though.

I would say the dollars are for the smooth experiences, you have to make it worth the dollar; otherwise I have no choice but piracy.

We haven't had cable TV here in almost 20 years. But we've had some type of high-speed internet and on a business account...which never has data caps of course.

Back then, much of our TV viewing was with the old Netflix DVD-through-the-mail thing, and then various torrent sites. When more and more streaming services started popping up, I torrented less and less to being zero. But now with the shake-up with some of the streaming services (like HBO Max), you just can't get some of the shows anymore...or else you have to buy entire seasons from Amazon or wherever. I haven't resorted to it yet, but I can see how pirating will take a new upswing as the streaming services keep damaging themselves.

I'm really tired of all the streaming services and their various flaws. I've been tired of cable TV for decades now.

But I'm not about to jump to piracy.

I've started looking at setting up a personal Jellyfin server in my home network and buying DVDs and CDs again, and loading their contents into Jellyfin. That way I legally own all these things, they can't be taken away, and I have full control over my streaming experience.

Piracy has driven and given political cover to all all sorts of abusive technology.

This was entirely predictable, I and others pleaded decades ago that exactly this would happen, but people just wanted free stuff. And here we are.

Yes, the big media companies are often unlikeable. But US piracy gives up any high ground, and helps grease the push of further anti-consumer conventions and legislation. "Lawmakers, don't let big media do this latest anti-consumer thing (while we are taking their paid product for free)!" doesn't have a lot of credibility.

I never stopped.

Private torrent sites FTW

I also stream twitch with streamlink (stream scraper that pipes to vlc, blocks ads) and watch YouTube with NewPipe on my shield TV.

I just stopped consumption of TV and streaming formats.

Music that im interested in gets bought (eg. Bandcamp) or yt-dl'ed.

I don't pirate things anymore. I subscribe to Spotify Premium for music. For movies/shows I subscribe to Netflix/Disney+ when there's something I want to watch and after a couple of weeks/months I unsubscribe when I'm done. If you can't afford 12$ or whatever it is for a Netflix subscription, I think you have other problems.

Paying for various services (spotify, netflix, prime, nebula) but not opposed to supplementing things

As I've gotten older, I think my morals have gotten more defined. I no longer think that piracy is acceptable. Someone spends time and money to produce something, and I think they get the right to sell it however they like.

My choice, of course, is to pay for the content, or just not to consume it. I don't believe I have an inherent right to consume any content I want for free. The counter argument is usually that a copy of creative content doesn't take anything away from the author, but I don't really buy into that one.

That’s interesting, because as I’ve gotten older, I don’t think piracy is good or bad (or in general, my taste for amorality is much more refined), just a strategic counter attack on an opposing force that is just as fluid in its tactics.

We approached a middle ground of pricing and accessibility, but it only lasted so long. The other side over monetized, so the consumer has to counter attack and stop paying.

It’s a wild bargaining scheme, we are in a digital bazaar. Never give up a tool in your tool shed.

I don't think that someone else acting immorally gives me the license to also act against my morals, but that's just me.

If I think that Amazon is being unfair about how they make Rings of Power available, that's totally fine, I just don't consume it.

Regarding your last paragraph, could you expand a bit on why you believe that copying creative content does indeed remove something from the author?

I guess the usual argument is that a copy of something cannot, by definition be theft. The author still has the object in question.

Sometimes people counter by saying that a potential sale has been lost, but you can’t steal something that you didn’t have in the first place (the sale). The assumption that someone would have otherwise paid always seems to me a bit of a stretch.

I guess you have thought about this more than i have so I’m curious as to what you’ve come up with.

Sure! These are my opinions of course.

If I spend a lot of time, effort, or money creating something, I may have plans to try to make money on it. If many people copy it for free, they may not be stealing as physical object from me, but they are removing my ability to generate revenue from them based off of my time, effort, or money.

And of course, taking it to the extreme, people simply will stop creating works. Or, some folks may not be able to afford to create works.

I'm well aware that most here won't agree with me, but I think it's on the creator to be able to determine what they want to do with their creations, and that it's not ok for me to arbitrarily tell them that their work is completely worthless, except I really really want to utilize it.

Interesting, as I've grown older, I have had to actively try and keep my morals defined.

Constantly seeing people behave badly and get rewarded for it has increasingly led to me to believe that obeying the rules is a fools game.

On the other hand, not consuming the content vs pirating it doesn't change the outcome for the creator - if anything, piracy is slightly better as it still keeps the content relevant in the collective mindshare so that others who don't pirate (either due to moral or technical reasons) might buy said content.

Regarding youtube and ads, I feel like they've issued an ultimatum. Either you pay us or you effectively can't use the service.

It's entirely within their rights, it's their business. Personally I question that tactic since I'd think it drives people away. The size of youtube is worth a lot.

I'm sure it's working temporarily at least and some staff are getting massive bonuses for driving up revenue. But does youtube's long term goals and staff member 5 year goals go hand in hand?

I use uBlock Origin and I never see YouTube ads.

I just dont understand how media companies cant figure out that its QUALITY over Quantity. I dont want bullshit C list actors coming up with sharknado 3. Ok, maybe I do want that to some degree, but not all the time and everywhere. We get it, its cheap and easy to make. cool. no one wants to watch it and especially no one wants to pay AND watch ads to watch it.

I mostly play smaller or indie games, which have less aggressive monetization.

If I were to go and play the latest AAA like Assassin's Creed or whatever, I would definitely pirate it, but the game doesn't call to me anyway. Not only due to pricing and additional monetization, but mainly to remove the invasive DRM these kinds of titles use.

YouTube Premium I do the janky family sharing thing that makes the price tolerable, but it pays creators better so that's good.

Spotify, I'm on the verge of just going and pirating all the songs I want, because their UI is optimized for entirely the opposite way I listen to music (this could be a rant by itself).

Movies, I never stopped pirating. Just figuring out where I can find a movie in the quality and language I want requires being up to date on the existence, platform support, and terms of like 10 services. And yes, justwatch exists but A) I only watch like one movie a month, but most movies can't be rented, and are only available in a subscription which is a hassle to sign up and cancel every month, not to mention the expense. Versus pirating, where I can use 1 piece of software that will aggregate all the movies and series in the world and provide with an unified access.

The Spotify rant:

Here's how I listen to music: entire specific albums, in tracklist order, maybe queue up a couple albums. I always know what I want to listen before even thinking of opening a music player. Maybe the odd playlist if it's say, a game soundtrack that doesn't have a single album release.

Here's how Spotify fucks it up:

Home page shows a couple recent albums, which might or not be what I want to listen to. Despite the set of music I listen to being mostly fixed, it is not small, so it doesn't fit in the single row of big album art buttons.

It also shows recommendations, which as I described, have 0 value to me, and in fact, are of negative value when they take space of features that would have positive value.

The side bar has a couple options, but most of the space is dedicated to playlists ("create playlist", the button I never clicked, as well as "liked songs" and a list of arbitrary playlists). As I don't use playlists most of the time, the ones that do show up are a random smattering of previous listens.

I then click the "Your Library" tab. First of all, I was walking through the app while writing this, and a full modal to some random ass merch ad showed up. (related to the silly Wrapped thingy) I am a paying user, why am I seeing ads?

Anyways, the first page in Your Library is always Playlists, which, as previously estabilished, are useless to me. So another click to go to the Albums tab.

The albums tab is pretty alright, maybe not very information dense, and no categorization options, but it works.

Now, let me set up my listening. I go to album A, click play. It starts playing album A, brilliant. Then I go to album B, which I would like to play after album A, so I click "add to queue", which for some reason is hidden behind a "..." menu even though there more than half a screen of empty space in the row of buttons where it lies.

Did you spot what I did wrong? Playing an album plays the first song in the album, and puts the rest in the "up next" part of the queue, but queueing an album queues all its songs in the "queue" part of the queue. "up next" goes after "queue", so this means I will hear song A1, then B1, B2, [...], then A2, A3, [...]

But wait, There's more! Last time I used Spotify, I did not finish listening to the queued songs! Blimey me, there were still some songs from album C in there! So actually, my listening order is A1, C7, C8, B1, B2, [...], A2, A3, [...]. No, bad user, you did the incantation wrong!

So my usual workflow for using this blasted application is:

Open the app.

Click the tiny "queue" icon that has no indication about if there are things there or not.

Click "Clear queue"

Click "Your Library"

Click "Albums"

Select the album I want.

Click the "..."

Click "Add to queue"

Go back to the album list

Click the other album

Click the "..."

Click "Add to queue"

Rinse and repeat.

I don't even particularly mind having the feature of storing the queue for the future, it has been useful a couple times, but the fact that everything is hidden behind a million pages of useless bullshit is infuriating.

Compare it, for example, to the Elisa player on KDE, which is pretty simplistic, it gets it right! Straight to the music, the playlist ("queue" in Spotify terminology) is visible so I can immediately see and clear it if I want, playing an album doesn't put its song in the limbo queue...

Even the good old Windows Media Player has a fantastic library UI that goes straight to the point!

I propose that where possible we avoid the term "piracy" and instead use the term "commons".

Please don't conflate consensual with nonconsensual.

I don't agree with money being the issue. While I think copyright is far too long, most of the stuff people complain about would be well within coverage even at the original 14 years. I don't think it's wrong for creators (including companies) to set prices as they wish.

What does bother me though and I do think is genuinely against the core public bargain of copyright is when material simply isn't available at all, or when copyright holders attempt to extract rights beyond copyright via layering DRM and such on top. The whole reason the public grants copyright is to encourage the creation and availability of quality IP. If IP isn't available at all in a given market for a reasonable period of time, IMO it should lose copyright protection. I'd support a separate "credit right", whereby for a long period of time after expiration of copyright anyone making derivative works would need to reasonably prominently credit the original with links, but copyright should never be about keeping things away from the public, that's literally the polar opposite of the point. I should be able to go buy a DRM-free FLAC or the like of music or DRM-free MKV of movies I'm interested and then use them on all of my devices, and be able to do that for any content made anywhere in the world (at least within Berne convention type countries, which is most of them). With books, original music and so on, the protection was the law and that was that. That's what it was all built around. Copyright holders should not be able to have it both ways, to get legal protection and then add tons of stuff beyond legal protection (and lobby to disgustingly and retroactively extend copyright as they frequently did).

So if I go to get something and it's "not available in your region" or exclusively via DRM'd streaming then yes, I'm open to copyright infringement. Even more so and without hesitation if it's just not published at all anymore. Copyright should never, EVER be about REMOVING IP from the public sphere. But if a game is on GOG and they want $60 or $90? Or hell if someone wanted to charge $500 for the Ultra Hyper DigiGigi Polkadot Edition? Then I'll respect that. If it seems worth it I'll get it, if it doesn't I won't, but "monetization" isn't wrong for luxury goods. There is lots of choice, including doing stuff ourselves more easily than ever. What I do think is absolutely wrong is not putting things up for honest direct sale.

Never stopped it in the first place. Never got into streaming. Never had a single subscription.

Every time I see someone struggle with streaming services (content not available, DRM, shitty artificial limitations, shitty players, shady business practices, things you "bought" disappearing because licensing changed), I get reminded that piracy is just so much better. Find a torrent, download it, done. After you've downloaded it, you have it forever, it's not going anywhere.

On the OP question, of course I do still watch YouTube, and of course I don't pay for it. I run uBO + SponsorBlock + some userscripts for a barely bearable experience. To be honest, the modern web is literally unusable without an ad blocker anyway.

I never 'left' piracy. Part because third world issues, part because I couldn't get much sense of that: never went into any streaming service. At home we "still" consume cable TV (4 families with 5 tvs, via coax cable, 118 channels and a fee of around USD$6/month). I admit I pirate music though half of my catalog is stuff I downloaded from Jamendo.

Pricing doesn't make me think about piracy.

But when streaming services own rights to stuff and refuse to make it available, it definitely makes me value real physical ownership again. DVD/Bluray, etc.

It's concerning that the power to just remove works is available.

As I get older I feel that I care less about watching shows and movies, I would rather watch something interesting on YT, read a book, or just do some other hobby.

Music is handled by Spotify and I'm happy with that, Games through Steam which I also like just fine.

I have a netflix subscription, but I rarely use it now and I don't think my parents do either.

The one that blows my mind are the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) pay-per-views. You have to be subscribed to one service that charges monthly, ESPN+ I believe, for the 'privilege' of buying a PPV at ~$80. Not only is it quite expensive IMO, but it is a complete pain in the rear compared to the alternative of googling a couple of stream links.

Hah. Yeah pirate that shit lol. It’s almost as if these people think we’re not tech savvy.

I used to subscribe to Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video. The other day I wanted to watch Harry Potter (so not some obscure movie) and couldn't watch it anywhere in my country.

I bought a Plex lifetime pass the day after and cancelled all my subscriptions, except for Apple Music and Crunchyroll (for animes) who both fit their role for now. I can't justify paying +30€ per month for not being able to watch what I want.

Never stopped pirating.

I've used friends logins for a few streaming services, but I prefer to just torrent the content.

I'd like all of the subscription providers to provide an API so that I can have a unified front-end, in order to improve discoverability & just save my sanity.

I preferred the old days, with just a single cable/sat set-top box. Might not have been able to stream on-demand, but at least I only had to look in 1 place to record (series link etc) or work out what was available.

Agreed, there are services like Just Watch, but an official API from each streaming service would be nice.

https://www.justwatch.com/us

Games: I rarely use it as demo if I’m not sure about a game. Helped me avoid CP77 ;)

Music: I gave up on my RIAA&Co protest and nowadays just buy the albums, usually on bandcamp. Not using streaming services.

TV: Depends a lot on availability. Sometimes things are not available in English with English subs (I’m in Germany), sometimes not available at all. Don’t have much patience for either issue. Otherwise, I always have Prime and often Netflix.

Movies: I don’t watch movies.

About Amazon Prime, they are finally raising the prices in Germany, from 70€/year to 90€ a year. But besides the streaming being decent, the shipping is a nice bonus (and here Amazon has the best prices quite often, especially if shipping is free), and there’s also Twitch Prime, canceling Prime would mean I’d subscribe to one more channel, which would be almost 50€ a year anyway…

My process:

  1) I find a TV-show or movie I want to see
  2) I go to justwatch.com to see if any streaming services or digital stores carry it in my area
  3a) If 2 is true, I navigate there and watch it
  3b) If 2 is false, I open sonarr/radar, insert the show/movie there and wait.

For the ones I know I want to see 5-10+ years in the future, I try to find a Blu-ray on sale at one point and buy that.

Steam/GoG pretty much shut down any budding game piracy needs I had. It's just so easy and the sales are so common I've got more games in my collection than I have time to fully complete.

Same for music Spotify and Apple Music cover a good 99.99% of my music needs. There are a few rare albums or artist who go against the grain that are missing, but I can live without those.

Books I could pirate, but the Kindle is too simple to bother - or I can just grab the book from the local library.

If paying is easier than piracy, I'll always pick paying.

> YouTube premium

I tried YT Premium.

I found it to be unwatchable. Too bad. I was enjoying the show (Impulse).

I have no trouble paying for services I like, but find the landscape to be chaotic, and am not into paying for one marquee show.

Also, I am finding the streaming apps to be absolute bug farms. It's bad. Real bad. I'm constantly having to restart them.

I've never abandoned it. Why pay for that crap if you can pay put.io?

I'll stand out here, because I work for a major sports streaming service. So let me be heard about live streaming at least:

1) Content needs to get paid for, if you're watching an illegally restreamed match then you're not rewarding people like me for the hard work we've done to get that game to you. It's not just faceless corporations, we're people and it's really hard to make a profit in the streaming world, so every viewer counts.

2) We don't decide how much the rights cost and on top of that we spend millions getting it to our subscribers (e.g. cloud providers, CDNs, developers). We've got to pay our bills, again, no streaming service is scalping right now. Delivering Tbps of streams is hard!

3) Many live sports re-streaming services really are run by organised crime gangs. I have involvement in some revenue protection work, there's not just hacking, there's also money laundering, we've even encountered links to people trafficking in the same organisations. I'm sure you think it's an exaggeration, but it's real and it's not just some guy in his basement doing this stuff.

4) The companies that invest in technology for this stuff often invest in things like AV1, FFMPEG, Exoplayer, stuff that's available to the wider open-source community. We, as organisations, contribute back to the world in other less obvious ways. Hurting us hurts the community as well.

5) Lastly, I presume that most people here get paid for their work, or at least would like to be paid for what they do in the future. Put yourself in my shoes: how would you feel to have your work ripped off? Oh, and then someone else profits from it? Hmm, not cool. That app you work on? That website you support? Maybe you hate your employer enough that you don't care if they get ripped off, but most of the people I work with love their work, so consider that as well.

I am sure people will argue against all my points, but they stand none the less.

What I will say, unofficially, I sympathise with people who cannot watch our content because it's not available in their market and I also have some sympathy for those who are too poor to pay. But I'd assert that 99% of the people who pirate our content are not too poor and have ways of watching legally, they just choose to go to the dark side.

It's not about bad people not willing to pay, it's about your employer or their partners trying to milk consumer with different platforms and artificial restrictions. When you push too far, people will try alternatives ways (potentially illegal) or stop watching.

Sure, you will always find some people who will never pay. Focusing your business on this audience doesn't sound smart.

Just design something convenient and most people will be happy to pay. Basically, I wouldn't blame people for the current streaming landscape.

Your points are what they are, but I have to say that I find major sports to be the about the least empathetic target you could have chosen. Even college sports in the US are awash in money and we somehow end up using public money to build stadiums for teams of deca-millionaires owned by billionaires.

I get that there are plenty of working stiffs who put it all together, but I think they'd be better off asking the bosses for more of a share than admonishing the anonymous masses who just want to watch a game once in awhile.

No, I'm just cutting out my consumption. I have a simple philosophy - if I don't want to pay for it I'm cool with not having it. I have prime, will probably be getting rid of that soon, at which point I'll only have Youtube Music/Premium.

I don't pirate, purely because of the risk of malware. If there was no risk of malware, I would definitely pirate a lot more. Personally, the risk of getting all my accounts/PC hacked isn't worth saving the $X per month to me, and just the inconvenience of trudging through dozens of torrents/trackers/etc.

So you could benefit from security by compartmentalization and start pirating, it seems. You may be interested in Qubes OS: https://qubes-os.org. Can't recommend it enough.

Lotta good tips here for those wanting to pirate again lol. Thank you.

I switched to purchasing one of the first among my peers, for any type of service. But I will pirate stuff which is artificially restricted for me by the location and won't feel any remorse. Regional locks should have died decade ago. As for the service fragmentation - I've picked two of each - Netflix+Prime Video, Steam+GOG, Spotify+YT, so far I simply don't have more free time to watch or play anything more. My wait lists are rather long even on these few services :) . If other companies try to create artificial scarcity by pulling content to their new silos, well, it's their loss. They won't get my money that way.

Paid streaming services are intentionally bad/broken on Linux.

Open source, free alternatives aren't just not broken on Linux (and every other possible platform); they're actually very good.

It's too bad that Apple's Season Pass was such a failure. If it would have been successful it's possible it could have attracted almost universal participation by all the majors given its price point, and competitors with a similar model would have sprung up.

$20 or $30 just for a single season of a TV show seemed outrageous. Why pay $20 for a single season of a TV show when you can pay $10/month for unlimited?

Now most people are paying > $50/month for TV subscriptions and still don't get everything they want. So in a year that's $600. That'd buy you 20-30 season passes. How many people watch more than 20-30 shows for their $600?

I never wanted to subscribe to multiple streaming services. Netflix was a great solution but having more than one is a deal breaker for me. Password sharing with friends with other services alleviates that but the industry is trending against that practice.

This alone is a dealbreaker for me. Pricing is ridiculous for third world countries.

The competition and drying up of licenses has also diminished a lot of netflix's value. If you think of a random movie, chances are you wont find it there and said chances are steadily diminishing every year.

I think these trends make piracy more and more palatable each day.

What I do for music is that I switch continuously between platforms and take up on the 3month promo offers.

It's a bit of a chore, but I really don't feel like paying for a streming service I only use when driving the car.

I think the golden age of piracy ended when it became impractical for individuals to collect digital media. The streaming services deliver a convenience to consume anything, anywhere which is cost prohibitative for laypersons to replicate by other means.

So no - while I'm not opposed ethically, my family would be very frustrated with such a transition.

> when it became impractical for individuals to collect digital media.

When was this? I have a 300mbs internet connection, cheap access to seedboxes and newsgroups, and I can buy a 15TB hard drive at Walmart.

Never have been and doubt I ever will be. I wish this was as easy to prosecute as any other kind of theft. What the streaming services do or don't do isn't going to have any effects on my ethics.

I read today something I am not sure I believe, that Adobe opts you in by default for all of your photoshop art to be samples for their ML products. (It was a reddit post so I would need to see something more official before I really give this more thought)

If that were true it would definitely get me thinking about whether I want to keep using that product at all, let alone whether I am paying for it.

I'm paying for YoutubeTV / YT Premium / Netflix / Prime / D+. We're getting AppleTV as part of some free bundle but can't remember why.

Despite all that. The thing I watch the most is content loaded on to my Plex server. It's just easier than dealing with trying to track down shows at all the places.

IMO what stopped music piracy was having all the content under one easy to access service. It's a lesson that TV / Movies studios haven't figured out yet.

Morally, I won't go back to pirating - I stopped that around 2006. But I understand why people are so frustrated by the current landscape. It's a terrible mess that is incredibly consumer hostile, and these companies deserve to get slapped around by the "free market" (which includes being exposed to the high seas) a bit.

I wish there was less subscription model for movies. I like gog & steam, where I can precisely buy something. This gives incentive for the company to produce good content. Where subscription model does not incentivize company to create a good product.

I don't really mind paying. What I mind is geo-limiting content.

And yeah, when Netflix starts enforcing these multiple accounts; my wife and myself often work in different locations (different countries) so if they start enforcing that, it's definitely a cancel as we are not abusing anything.

Uninterested in piracy. I’m sure there is plenty of great content not covered by my current streaming subscriptions but I am fine not to experience those at all.

I really don't understand this perspective. Media is both incredibly accessible and cheap.

If you want to steal, stop looking for justification. The choice is wholly yours.

I use Soulseek. It’s actually a better discovery layer if you find someone with the same tastes. I find Netflix flashy and diluted. So much content but most isn’t quality.

Nah, too much work.

I subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime maybe once a year for a month each. That's more than enough time to watch everything worth watching.

I love how when you want to watch something specific, you proceed to search all 5 services I subscribe to and none of them have it.. what am I supposed to do if not pirate..

Just torrented Unreal Tournament '99. Indended to buy it, but Epic apparently wants to erase all traces of their old games from the web ...

I'm willing to pay a lot to have all the content I care about in one place. I do that with Steam, for example. I'm lucky that I don't have to pay a lot for all the music I care about in Spotify. For movies and shows, unless the industry can figure out how to be more convenient than Plex, I'll be sticking with Plex.

I have Prime as an Amazon subscriber and beyond that I tend to cycle through film subscriptions every few months. Just closed off Disney+ and now back in Netflix, had Mubi last summer, and prior to that Netflix.

This seems to be a sensible approach, provided you're not frothing at the mouth for new film releases.

Regarding music, we are in a golden age, in which nearly every song I want is available from either an affordable Amazon music subscription or Spotify. I fear some day it will become segmented, and that you will need multiple services to get all the bands you want. Maybe I should be preparing with MP3s backups.

I pay for indie films/music/games.

I pirate AAA/Giant corporation films/music

Digital piracy is not the same as theft, nothing was lost.

I’m not playing the "which service is this show or movie on" game. The alternatives are still a better user experience than buying legit. I have one place where I go for everything and there are no ads anywhere, I'll pay for content but I’m not going to compromise on experience.

I think there's a better place to discuss this than here and I also see little reason to discuss this.

All I'm gonna say is that I believe it's silly to pay for subscription services and pay for spotify/youtube or endure their ads.