How Disney and Warner Bros. Are Causing Internet Piracy to Boom | Platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ were supposed to do away with pirated media. Instead, they may make them stronger than ever.::Platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ were supposed to do away with pirated media. Instead, they may make them stronger than ever.
I know it gets quoted a lot, but Gabe was 100% right. It boggles my mind how people in power over these streaming services just don’t get it:
One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.
I have pirated a few games due to cost, since my SO is studying at the moment, and one of us has basically always been on parental leave the last 3.5 years. I bought both Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3 when I could afford it though, since both of them brought me more than 100 hours of fun.
I never have, I don’t see the point when steam is just so convenient and has sales all the time. Just be patient on pricing, the game isn’t going to go away because you didn’t buy on release.
I also don’t trust downloading unverified, modified, software. An mp3 or mkv is probably going to be safe as you can’t load software through those really, but an exe can do anything
I prayed doom eternal, that was the only one. Then I bought it a week later.
It boggles my mind how people in power over these streaming services just don’t get it:
Oh they get it, you can be sure of that. It’s just they’re so, so greedy they don’t care that eventually in the future the well will dry up, they only care about more money NOW.
That’s how the system is set up. Even if the people in the corporation weren’t greedy, they need the line to go up every quarter. And when the higher leadership recognizes that, they hardly ever think about long term investments. So a corporation is not a money making machine, no, it’s a money maximizing machine. That’s why we call them greedy.
Yep, came to post this. I think I’ve spent more and more on Steam every year because they have actually stuck to this principle.
Don’t get me wrong I love GOG for the confirmed lack of DRM. But they just don’t do service like Valve.
I mean GOG Galaxy exists, which can even show you all games from GOG, Steam, Epic, … besides keeping your games updated.
It’s still not as good as Steam, but at least a better solution than manually checking and installing updates.
I would love to buy games from GOG, but they haven’t worked on a Linux version of GOG Galaxy. It’s back to a service issue again.
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/galaxy/release_gog_galaxy_20_for_linux
I would definitely say GOG has good service overall. The one time I had to return a game they were pretty helpful and accommodating. It’s just not at the level of Steam with a continual push of innovative and player-friendly features.
I’m on Linux where Heroic Launcher fills the app role, so GOG gets a smidge less credit there.
Usually populations do a few diffrent things under oppression:
- everything is fine, look at our source of pride,
- it sucks but what are you gonna do?
- lay flat defeatism
- WERE FUCKING BURNING SOMTHING
Right now they want to think we live in a option 1 and 2 country. We will be an option 3 and/or 4 verry soon. They cant mask the minipulation in option 4 and cant continue to funtion with either 3 or 4.
He was absolutely right.
People generally are absolutely fine with paying, so long as it’s not absurd pricing and the service is convenient.
I was happy paying for Netflix until the recent bullshit. I still pay for Spotify. I buy all my games outside of old ones that I need to emulate (again proving Gabe correct - if I could legally access them easily then I’d do that instead, but am I fuck jumping through hoops like spending thousands on old consoles I don’t have the space for nor the time to search for/import games)
P.s. I’m from India. Not one of these “pasty-faced white people” that you seem to take issue with
Capcom just started adding game breaking DRM to their archive of old single player Steam games because an exec got butthurt over a nude mod for Street Fighter. Now Steam Deck support is broken and my mods don’t work with games I purchased years ago. The pirated version is now better once again.
At almost the exact same time, Valve sent a DMCA notice to Portal64 because for some reason they care about people playing a homebrew port of a $2 15 year old game on 30 year old hardware.
I used to think Capcom and Valve were two of the last good ones. Turns out there aren’t any good ones…
All this hasn’t forced me into piracy.
It’s worse than that.
It’s forced me to stop caring about shows or movies entirely.
My coworkers talk about various TV shows and movies. I may not be able to keep up with the shows and miss out on the discussions, but fuck FOMO.
There’s been almost no movies that have come out that I’ve really cared about, nor.most of my friends.
I’ve found TV shows to be somewhat more compelling. But it’s been really hard to decide what to try to get into (limited time, partly).
But also the shared element isn’t there like it used to be. There’s just so MUCH stuff to watch, finding people to talk to about the stuff is harder than it used to be. That’s good in the sense of having choice, but worse in having the entertainment provide a connection to people and talk about. Which was always one of my motivators to watch stuff.
Plus games and YouTube and other things competing, and fragmentation of where stuff is, and corporate plbullshit turning me off, I just care less about long form shows being put out.
But people are definitely still watching tons and tons of shit. “Consuming” and “binging” is bigger than ever. I guess it’s just not us so much.
More stuff is switching to weekly rollouts and I end up not watching at all because of that.
There’s nothing wider than binging a show then getting the last episode 2 weeks later.
I honestly haven’t heard a coworker mention a TV show since White Lotus last January. Not a single show.
I’ve talked about a couple with friends: Scott Pilgrim, The Last of Us, House of Usher, but generally I brought it up and really 2023 was not a very memorable year for TV shows.
Yes me too, I find myself watching movies less and less.
I find myself buying real books, ebooks online and buying vinyls.
I still stream music though, but the thing is, most music that could be found on Spotify, could be found on Apple Music or Deezer.
most music that could be found on Spotify, could be found on Apple Music or Deezer.
As it should be. Compete witg additional features not with exclusivity.
Epic tries to do the same with Steam trying to strongarm the gaming community with free games.
And yet the users will still pay on Steam.
Same. I gave up on star wars after glub shitto was given to fake Luke at the end of that series. Just haven’t been able to care about the flood of B tier content after. Same with marvel after end game. There’s like 6 half assed shows and 8 movies or something now. It’s just too much filler and there’s no way I’m paying 3 or 4 services for mediocre content. I pirated everything in my early 20s and this feels like going back to the old times when the Internet was better. The nostalgia alone is making me happy to pirate again.
I am most definitely far more passive in my consumption than before. YouTube is actually where most of my media comes from now. Then my colleagues are always on about the Masked Singer or whatever is going on. I managed to make it through maybe 2 episodes before it made me sick.
I was sort of like this before, not really caring too much about most movies or TV shows, but that was just because I had higher standards to what I would be willing to take the time to watch. When I did find something I thought was worth my time, like for instance Full Metal Alchemist (yes I know it’s an anime, it still counts as a TV show imo. Also it’s great, I definitely recommend watching it). The general decrease in quality and increase in quantity of shows and movies just made me stop caring to watch really anything; why take a chance with a likely shitty show or movie when I can get much more fun out of playing video games? I know there’s likely some “hidden gem” kind of show that nobody really talks about because it’s hidden away in all the crappy shows, so I usually only decide to watch something if I’ve heard good things about it more than once. Even then, I may still not watch it, like for instance One Piece, which I’ve heard is incredibly long.
Hi, One Piece fan here. Yes, it’s really long and really intimidating to start. I haven’t watch most of the anime too, and never recomment others to watch it. I’m solely reading the manga (and live action).
I suggest waiting for the netflix anime readaptation that’s in production now. Logically, it should have better pace and much less filler than the first anime. It’s gonna be way easier to pick up than the first anime with its thousand episodes.
I suggest waiting for the netflix anime readaptation that’s in production now. Logically, it should have better pace and much less filler than the first anime.
I mean, it IS Netflix, so it shouldn’t be presumed to be better in any way. Still, I will try pirating it first, rather than giving Netflix any money beforehand only to find out it’s crap.
They all got greedy. All of them. We wanted a streaming service to watch our shows and movies on, and they all decided to pretend that what we really wanted was a return to paying $100+ a month for a collection of channels with content that we mostly don’t watch on them, only this time with a bunch of additional apps you have to install for each one, most of them remarkably shitty. Like cable, but stupider.
Remember when the streaming setup was simple? There was basically just Netflix, it paid for licenses to content from Disney, Paramount, etc., and provided guaranteed income for those companies. Small income, sure, but steady.
Then each of them said, “Hey, why don’t we replace Netflix, only all we’ll stream is our own stuff! And sure, most of it’s trash, but people will stick around for the good shows!”
No. No, they won’t. They’ll go back to pirating it. No one is paying for Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Paramount+, Max, Peacock, AppleTV, ESPN+, Prime, and whatever other shitty “exclusive” streaming service pops up.
I don’t think that content producers should be able to have their own streaming services. Similar to how movie studios couldn’t own theaters or whatever until lobbyists killed that too.
Prime is like: you know that service we sold you that played movies without commercials? We’re putting commercials in it.
I’m like: Bye felicia. I’ll be fucked to pay more for data transit in 2024 than I paid before, the movement of bits and streaming of bytes have not gone up fuckwits. And I don’t need the rest of the amazon trash either. Thanks for making it easy!
“Oh, and 2/3 of our content is only available via ‘channels’ which require an additional monthly subscription almost as much as the subscription you’re already paying for.”
Amazon, you literally own MGM. No I am not paying you even more money to watch MGM content, you greedy fucks.
I’m not pirating officer. I’m just collecting information for training my AI model.
Won’t be long until my ai model can produce it’s very own Linux distro complete with 7 fingered keyboard layouts
It’s just such a shame the filtering process for good training material is by hand. I’ve yet to find anything of high enough quality.
Yup.
I basically don’t pirate music because streaming is convenient.
I generally don’t pirate games because steam and GOG is convenient. (Sometimes if I’m not sure ill enjoy it I’ll pirate as a no limit trail then buy or drop).
I generally have to with movies and shows. Even though I have access to several streaming platforms though stuff like T-Mobile, AT&T, etc. it’s too annoying to jump around a bunch of apps and the quality is bad compared to the UHD rips of stuff
the quality is bad compared to the UHD rips of stuff
This is why I pirate Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I have a subscription to pretty much every streaming service in my country (Netflix, prime video, HBO max, apple TV, Sky showtime, etc. ) but Sky only has SNW in 1080p SDR. I can download it in 4k HDR. I don’t feel one bit guilty about it, I pay for the damn service that offers it. Just not in an acceptable picture quality.
It’s not just quality compared with UHD rips, it’s things like prime video refusing to play anything except 480p on a web browser… WTF are they thinking?
I don’t use if on a browser, but even on my Shield Pro it’s not great. Prime Video seems to use a very low bitrate, there’s lots of compression artifacts, even on the 4k streams.
Standard Dynamic Range. It’s a term adopted to differentiate non-HDR video from HDR video.
If I want to buy a game it’s super easy to search for it on my choice of digital store front, pay for it and download it.
If I want to watch a show I could do a search for which streaming service it’s available on and hope it’s one I have an account with, or for the same amount of effort I could do a search for the torrent and be able to watch it if the internet goes down.
Why not just rent each movie for 48 hours from Amazon for the bargain price of “pretty much the same as a Blu-ray disc, and often higher”?
This was especially frustrating with kids. All too often, with the shorter attention span of little ones, and general lack of time, where we couldn’t finish a movie that quickly. Maybe I understand that for physical media but for digital where the only scarcity is artificial?
Someone missed out on so much of my money for streaming movies when my kids were little, simply because I couldn’t guarantee finishing them in 48 hours so I didn’t rent
