this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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LOL.

We pay for 4K, but we don't get more than 720p unless we use some proprietary shit hardware and agree to their super-invasive "privacy policy" - and they expect people to NOT set sail in the high seas? GTFO..

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Maybe people would pirate less if you let them keep what they pay for.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You're buying... A temporary permission to access certain content.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

...then piracy isn't theft.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I can easily say that the amount of my friends and family that have become interested in my Emby setup has expontentially consistently increased every round that these streaming providers have increased their rates.

The experience of launching 7 different streaming apps to find something, content constantly vanishing or moving platforms, and just an overall poor user experience coupled with doubling/tripling of each platforms costs....

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The companies have almost successfully re-introduced the very problem that streaming originally solved.

It's like this dipshits don't want our money. I've always been firm that any content removed from streaming services is a message from that content company that they don't want the money of the customers subscribed to said service and thus are okay with those people pirating it instead.

If they cared about the money, they'd had left the content there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But realistically even if pump and dump schemes like this make the customers hate them, it might still make more as a total sum - and if so as a cooperation they'd almost have to take the shitty route (or be surpassed by someone who will).

Yay capitalism

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Yay capitalism

Lol, you think greed won't exist under socialism? Greed is why communism fails every time. People are inherently greedy in a world where scarcity exists.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Luckily, we don't live in a world where scarcity exists, just one with a resource distribution problem.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago

we don’t live in a world where scarcity exists

Wrong, there's a distinct scarcity of logic in your arguments.

"Scarcity is so fundamental to economics that scarce goods are also known as economic goods. In economics, scarce goods are those for which demand would exceed supply at a price of zero." https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/scarcity.asp

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

How many more democratically elected Latin American governments do we have to replace with fascist military dictatorships before you finally understand that socialism simply doesn't work?

  • The USA
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Why yes, greed is exactly why Cuba deserves to be embargoed for all eternity, look how flawed communism is lol haha /s

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

All I see here is pointing fingers at Cuba and Venezuela failing in places that they were sabotaged by the US, big surprise.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago

What use is communism when it's so easily foiled by capitalism? Seems like a major flaw.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Uh no? I don't think I really implied it wouldn't either, nor even that I'm a socialist tbh

something something manufactured scarcity changes things

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago

I bet we'll reach a point again where normal services are just so shit that piracy is normal again. Then they'll try and take down even more things. Hopefully then we'll decide to move operations to I2P.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (2 children)

https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-not-price/

As Gabe Newell said: "Piracy isn't a pricing issue, its a service issue"

As my friend said: "every time a plastic video disc says " operation not permitted " a torrent is born...

As I say: "People will pay when it's easy, more reliable and more convenient." As a software product manager, I forbid my product from ever wasting developer cycles with copy protection.. It's expensive to deliver, annoying to real customers and doesn't make us any more money...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't disagree with anything but I feel like GabeN said that before streaming and subscriptions took over.

Photoshop is an incredibly easy to use and powerful tool for creators - I'd be happy to drop like $200 on, for example, the 2024 version. I'm not happy to spend $10 or $30+ a month for life to use it, especially when they lock you in to a year subscription and charge you a fee if you cancel early so you literally can't just sub only the month when you need it, it's the whole year, period. I'll just pirate or use photopea or whatever.

Similar for streaming. Netflix gave us the option to pay for more screens to watch on. Now suddenly it matters whose house it's in?? All while you're constantly removing value from the platform and you cancel anything decent if the production value is too high? Fuck you man I'm not paying like $30 monthly for that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Please do keep voting with your wallet - its one of the few remaining ways to express our discontent!) That being said, I feel like both of those examples are where the service provided by adobe and then Netflix are terrible.

Adobe is making you buy a whole year and Netflix is hassling you for "letting your pensioner mum watch your account".. To me, both of those are examples of bad service (coupled with cost).

For me, a counter example for me is amazon.com: I hate what they're doing to the retail landscape but find it hard to resist, as I find them SOOO convenient, and their customer service (for now) is absolutely stunning!!! Now if their prices were too high, I'd personally probably pay for that convenience a bit. (Where there model breaks for me completely is warranty major purchases: I've had warranty denied by manufacturers for items purchased through non approved amazon resellers. So now, for me, anything over $100 and I'm looking for direct purchase from the manufacturer as a preference. )

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

As a user of software, I salute you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

12% over four years? Damn. Somehow I had the impression that there'd been a significant increase.

Netflix revenue is up by roughly 60% in the same four years.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Thank you for keeping things in perspective.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Bold of you to think that they even think of us at all.

I actually mean that seriously: we continue seeing, over and over, that no, quite often they do NOT expect people to NOT do that, they quite simply DGAF. They pirate us, we pirate them, it becomes just another "cost of doing business", until they are strong enough to eventually crack down further. See ad blocking & Chrome recently, after multiple decades of internet ads pushing the limits.

It's like a zombie nom noming your brains - after like 2 bites it'll get bored and wander off, and it literally doesn't even need to "eat", it simply is so fucking DUMB that it doesn't know what else to do with itself. It is truly horrifying b/c while your entrails may be strewn about on the floor, or in the throats of tens of zombies, they in turn... don't even have the decency to be aware that you've died!?

Lower-level managers sell ideas to higher-level managers, and "logic" has little to do with those conversations, compared to the amount of emo-stroking that goes on "oh, you will become so rich, and powerful, and handsome, and brave, and precious" (from here:-P) - and so long as enough people play along, that happens!

Our world is just so fucking STUPID.

That said, what they do is on them, while what we do is on us. Find a way to live - hopefully by finding a way to contribute, if/where you can.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Us: We think about you all the time!

Corporations: Funny, because we don't think of you ever.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago

(Funny b/c in this pic, corps are the ones who are dicks:-P)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I'm willing to pay for one, maybe two subscriptions, and ain't nobody got time to dig for which service has what show to find out season 2 is on some other service entirely.

Piracy provides a better user experience 🤷‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Im willing to pay for two. It used to be netflix and prime, then hulu, paramount plus, disney…

Now its down to one- Proton VPN 🏴‍☠️

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem - Gaben

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I generally agree with him, but there are a lot of people who pirate simply because they don’t want to pay. And I’m not casting moral judgment here, i just feel like it bears mentioning lol “almost always” is pretty generous

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If that's true on its face, then you're not losing any money either way since they are never going to pay regardless even if you try to force them to.

Meanwhile, you can absolutely scare away what could have been a paying customer by offering dogshit service.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That’s never been an assumption you can make.

If you hand me a $10 version of a thing or a $5 option of the exact same thing, I’m taking the $5. Free is no different. Especially when they can do it from the comfort of their home and not drive to a mall to buy the CD or whatever. Remember what year it was when this all started man.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Remember what year it was when this all started man.

1903 when Edison v. Lubin was filed?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago

If you’re going to be a smartass then I have no desire to continue this conversation. I am talking about when piracy became mainstream via napster because it became easy for people to get free music.