[Louis Rossmann] Piracy is COMPLETELY justified: Louis tries NetFlix and remembers why
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q3ZXQZZlcE
It's not just Netflix, it's every licensing issue in every country.
I love lots of foreign television, but quite a lot of it isn't immediately available (or ever available) in my country.
If I want to watch those shows or movies, I am literally at the mercy of the piracy community helping me access them, because there's a good chance that it's either months or years away from release in my country, or that I'll be unlucky and it will never release here at all.
It's a completely broken system, and Gabe Newell called it what it was over a decade ago. Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem.
It won't be solved without massive changes to international copyrights and how shows/movies are bought and sold on an international market.
Pricing doesn't hurt.
But yeah, people will pay for convenience. Nobody wants to dig around for pirated links if a simpler option is available.
But yeah, I hear you on international licensing. I try to keep up with Star Trek content and man, I don't know how you can bungle up a licensig deal that much.
The latest bit of genius includes Amazon Prime listing three seasons of Lower Decks, but the third season consisting on a page that tells you they don't have that season available, despite having had it before.
There is a fourth season. It's not available anywhere.
I gave up and pirated it, knowing it will eventually show up in a service I do own. It was all getting spoiled for me in social media anyway.
It was all getting spoiled for me in social media anyway.
I thankfully haven't seen any spoilers for anything since moving to Lemmy... on other sites it's silly easy to accidentally run into a spoilers for anything remotely popular 😭
Unless you follow ST communities here... then oops I guess spoilers are in your feed for each episode 😳
Would it even require massive changes? The framework is already built for music. The idea behind compulsory licensing is that any radio station can play any music, and the royalty rates due to the copyright holder are set in advance. The music industry fought tooth and nail to prevent streaming sites from getting access to their content, but it's now their biggest revenue source.
A world where Netflix, Disney, Paramount, Max, and all the others could use each others' (and literally all) content and pay for every stream would practically kill video piracy almost overnight. Make them all compete on their quality of service, instead of the size of their siloed library. And in the end, both customers and rights-holders would almost certainly be better off.
It would also cause REAL competition as video platforms now have to fight to be the best to use and the best value.
Years ago there was no way to watch one piece in my country. The only option for anime was funimation (which didn't have a great library) and crunchy roll which had more of the big shows but it would be incomplete. Like a show would only have the second season or last season. Anyway the only way to watch one piece was via an extension to Firefox that spoofed crunchy roll but still required a premium subscription.
The only other way to watch one piece was online with sites like anime paha.
Also it gets real expensive paying for 4-5 services when theres a show on Amazon you want to watch, maybe 2-3 on apple, 1 on Netflix and 4 on Disney + and that's not even including star trek.
There's major issues with copyright/licensings/trademarks etc. It's fundamentally flawed
Me: This guy looks and sounds like the dude that fixed my old Mac Book Pro.
checks Google
Me: Well I'll be damned...
If you go through his old videos you'll see him doing exactly that. There's a non-zero chance your computer's guts are in there in excruciating detail.
Id feel weirdly awkward and embarassed seeing my computers innards posted in a YouTube video, and I don’t know why. Like if my middle school yearbook photo showed up on Facebook.
That actually happened to me recently. My grade school best friend posted a pic from a field trip like 30 years ago and I’m naming off every person in it like I just saw them yesterday…then I see one person in it and I’m like “who the fuck is that hideous looking child? Is that me??? Shit that’s me”
Not saying I don’t some times agree with the guy, but he peddles outrage. Every video is some gripe about something. I get tired of being angry some days. Just chill out man!
Well he also repair macbooks and does a lot of good stuff for right to repair.
But his most popular videos are angry old man screams at cloud so that's probably you keep seeing.
Absolutely. I feel like his videos were more "reasonable" before. Now they're all clickbait and outrage with angry thumbnails.
Agreed. It's tiring watching social media or going to YouTube. Everything is just made to make you angry or annoyed.
Or horny.
Yeah we need to start becoming aware of how our brains are being manipulated. If you’re angry, your fight or flight response is engaged and you give your attention to something (ie. click)
I usually agree with his takes, but I can't watch more than a minute and a half of a video of his, because it's always an unscripted rant. It's fine though, he usually gets his point across in the first minute anyway, and then repeats himself for another ten minutes.
But that's exactly what I LOVE about him! Well researched and thoroughly argumented rants, full of juicy insights and no restraints. I love him, he's my spirit animal. And I love Blackberry and Clinton.
If you don't know better, it comes across as being a rage bait shit stirrer.
The comment section here is fucking stupid is what it is. People arguing over right wing.. left wing.. Nazi or whatever other nonsense that is not even related to the goddamn video or the topic at hand.
You either agree to what the creator has to to say in THIS video or you disagree. Stop fucking speculating about their political or religious stand. Don't let lemmy become another shit fest that we just moved from.
Chill.. people are just having a discussion about the odyssey website this video is hosted on. Some of us have never seen that site before and are discussing it. Just scroll past. Its not that big a deal honestly.
Don’t let lemmy become another shit fest that we just moved from.
Lemmy literally started as a political shitfest site. It's just now filled with the people from reddit too.
Don’t let lemmy become another shit fest that we just moved from.
Too late, friend. Will, based on my experience.
He is spot on with how being a consumer enters you into an adversarial relationship. It's so incredibly frustrating having to fight for what you already paid for.
And it's really sad the way that's been normalized.
I think the problem is the idea of subscription services themselves which has caused companies to become adversaries to the customers rather than partners.
When you pay a one-time fee for an item or service, it's in that business's interest to make you feel valued as a customer, to bring you good so that you are likely to pay one-time fees again in the future.
With a recurring fee model, it's in the business's interest to make you use their service less while still paying, because if you use it too much they lose money, and if they price it according to how the power users use it then it won't be a competitive deal.
Example: when you get flights costing $200 per domestic trip, the airline wants to make you feel not terrible for choosing them. But if instead of that you paid $1000 a month to fly domestically "as often as you want", they will degrade the experience so that you wouldn't even want to fly more than 5 times per month, like duct tape you to your seat if they were allowed to, or put restrictions like "only to these cities" or "only on our 3am flights" or "only on trips less than x days or longer than y days".
No matter the industry, the whole premise of the RR model is to trick you into pretending you still have whatever original value of service, while screwing you in every possible way just short of the point that causes you to cancel. That makes them the most money.
I used to pirate because I was a broke kid. Now I have money (not as much as Rossman and no money for these subscriptions) but I too need to find value when I give this money I earned to someone who makes a thing. As Rossman said, if you're tinkering to get the thing you paid for, at that point you might as well tinker and not pay for it.
P.S.: Rossman is aware his whole shtick is "angry man yells at cloud while sometimes petting cat". I get many people don't like it. Don't watch it then. Odysee is just Rossman's spare platform in case YouTube doesn't like him anymore for whatever reason. Yes it's full of loonies (and you can call Rossman one too if you want) but just don't give them your attention.
With a recurring fee model, it's in the business's interest to make you use their service less while still paying, because if you use it too much they lose money, and if they price it according to how the power users use it then it won't be a competitive deal.
You know I never thought of streaming services this way, but you're absolutely right. Any service running on a regular subscription model falls into the "gym business model" where the ideal customer is one who is paying but never showing up. That way, their operational costs stay constant while revenue goes up.
The dynamic applies to anything where you are expected to make regular payments.
Renting an apartment? Landlord wants to see you and fix your shit as little as possible.
Renting a car? They want you to drive it as little as possible so they can keep renting it for as long as possible. Maybe they're charging you by the mile, too, just to cover that base completely.
Now think about the US healthcare industry.
Just by coincidence i'm watching a gameranx video about the 10 worst AAA games, and Falcon says the same thing about games as a service (subscriptions, micro-transactions, etc.): "it seems like they're playing a game of chicken with the consumer to see what they can get away with".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8jDgkikylY
(start at 19:45)
Precisely. And the game franchises that do this the most successfully are the ones with pre-existing brand recognition to ride off of. When you start with a forgettable story and characters, then no one (outside of a small few who like being disappointed I guess) will engage with it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=E8jDgkikylY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I think you're spot on. It fits right in to the whole "enshittification" topic that Doctorow wrote about. Everyone started using streaming services like Netflix because it offered such a great user experience; now that they have the user base, unfortunately we are now at the point where Netflix has every motivation to make the platform as shitty as possible to milk as much money from their users as they can.
This is why I think FUP should be a thing on unlimited offers. I have missed out on being able to utilise great services because people abuse it. I was so happy when Pixels came with unlimited photo/video backup but because people were uploading DSLR pics and pirated movies and shows, it stopped existing.
It's not just that it hasn't gotten better in 20 years like he says, it has actively gotten worse.
Maybe before DRM would fuck with the quality of the media or block you from using it the way your prefer (despite paying for it to do what you want), but now it's exactly that, PLUS they're clawing for every scrap of data from their consumer base in order to market it to third party vendors.
I'm ready to buy stock in tin foil and live in the woods off my own urine, this shit has gotten so bad. I just want them to leave me alone and let me live without being constantly servailed and targeted with ads. Is the offer really to be made miserable and unsatisfied about my life and possessions in exchange for another season of a shitty remake of a early 2000s IP?
I fucking hate the anthropocene. Let's just pack it up and shut it down, there's nothing left for us here.
Pirates have known this for decades. Buy DRMed media means you can lose access to it at any time. And these subscription services that limit access for paid services e.g as soon as you travel, access to certain stuff is lost, sometimes the access to the entire service is lost. Additionally, for some reason, pirated stuff often has better quality than paid stuff - it's something I cannot fathom.
It was possible to get pirated 4k stuff as soon as it was released years ago, but most paid services couldn't provide that. The biggest reason being you couldn't buffer it. It only buffers a few seconds and then stops. Pirated stuff can be downloaded ahead of time and watched without buffering on a shit connection.
Fuck Netflix. What I hated most about them was they decided during the pandemic that too many people were watching stuff at 1080p, so they dropped the quality of streams to 720p. Lol. A great way to get people to pirate.
Additionally, for some reason, pirated stuff often has better quality than paid stuff - it's something I cannot fathom.
Right!? This is the most baffling part to me. Random people with camcorders at theatres have better video quality than Netflix's garbage-tier 720p that we saw in this video.
Just one point of view: I'm too poor to even buy food, but pirating books keeps me informed about current affairs and shit. It also enables me to stay alive because I still have access to my favourite authors, which makes me so happy and try to stay alive for one more release date.
Full disclosure: I've gone from a very good job to debilitating disability over 10 years in Europe. Also, before this, I bought hardback books of everything I liked. I'll do this again as soon as I can afford it. I'll always support authors as much as I can.
Sorry to hear that fellow lemmur! Let the arrrrrr books keep you company in these hard times!
Personally, the current environment has led me to avoid most of the popular culture instead.
Eh... what the hell is that link? The recommended videos on that place are WILD.
I had heard some rumblings about Rossmann being on some weird alt-right focused service, but I had honestly forgotten and I wasn't expecting to get a faceful of it by accident. Yikes.
It's odysee, a frontend to lbry, a sort-of decentralized alternative to Youtube. Which seems very enticing, because an alternative to Youtube is badly needed.
Unfortunately, at the moment it is completely overrun by religious nutjobs, Nazis and other assorted scum. It is not by its nature an alt-right service, but it does attract all those who would be banned anywhere else.
Unfortunately alt-right crypto weirdos have coopted the term "decentralised", and so it is with this site. It's a crypto-based... video... hosting... platform? I cannot for the life of me figure out how it works other than that it mines crypto in the background while you have the site open and if you have an account, you get a cut of the crypto you mined.
I have tried looking into it, but they don't explain anywhere in their promo materials, it's literally just "earn while you watch!", which... yeah no thanks. I've been on the internet and paying attention for more than 5 minutes, I know that grift when I see it.
"Decentralised" isn't enough, you need a way to ban people that is also decentralised, and that's where federation comes in.
I don't know if they're eventually going to coopt "federation". I wonder if that's the ultimate test of a social technology - if it can be coopted by reactionaries. The less able they are to do so, the better it is.
odysee is a weird place, lots of "creators" that were forced off youtube and other places for far out views or outright dangerous lies ended up there as they have almost no rules.
There are a lot of non-far-right weirdos that use it, but it is hard to scroll through without seeing some fringe crazy shit.
Jesus Christ, you weren't kidding. One of the recommended videos for me was "Why the crusades were completely justified!" Yeah, fuck that crazy shit.
https://i.imgur.com/nOOT8NK.png
what the fuck is this?! WHat IS THIS?!
What the actual fuck
Look at this fucking shit.
Gaza HQ
Fucking hell. Why did they steal the thumbnail format from those kids channels.
Every other recommend video had the word "justified" in it. It's recommending similar videos on the titles alone. I'm not defending it, just pointing out how weird that is.
"Why posting weird videos is justified"
What's really wild is that people arguing for things like Right-to-Repair would be anywhere near right-wing to begin with.
Like, Louis, you don't see how the entire conservative ideology undermines ideas like right-to-repair? How can you be like "Yeah, I trust these guys who all would shut down the things I'm arguing for," and just be oblivious to it?
Here's the conservative angle, at least in my view: "We've always had the right to repair our possessions before, and we will conserve that right for future generations."
Then again, what I consider conservative has never actually matched up with the political party, which is a big part of why I am no longer right wing.
They altered the deal.
It was a good deal a few years back, so piracy decreased a lot, and streaming company profits grew a lot. Everyone was happy.
But then they altered the deal. It's no longer worth the money, and any movie or TV show they have can disappear at any time. They also decided to start flirting with ads, so they burned a lot of trust by doing that.
It's hard finding something worth watching. Once you have seen the few good shows at one streaming company, the rest is so awful nobody wants to touch it. So the subscriber is supposed to sign up to many streaming companies... Costing them tons of money.
If streaming companies were smart, they would work together and create one streaming service with all existing movies and TV shows, and set a fair price, and depending on what movies or TV shows people choose to watch, the profits go to whatever company makes the best content.
But working together is not what you do in capitalism...
What's sad is we HAD that in original Netflix. Then the studios got greedyaf and now we are back to, basically, cable. I'm not saying Netflix isn't at a huge fault here (that 720p during covid was some real bs) but the beginning of this disaster is squarely on the shoulders of all the studios wanting their share of the pie plus more.
Imagine if they didn't throttle the resolution to 720p. No one would have been able to watch anything for 2 years.
There's this Indian ISP called Jio. They have internet plans that bundle 14 or 15 Streaming services. These are mostly streaming that are only avaialble to that region. At least that way people don't have to go through the hassle of managing every single subscription.
I'm personally happy with sailing the seas, not that I have time to watch all this content anyway.
c/technology comments: Talking about the video.
c/piracy comments: Oh no! Where's some Right-wingers on Odysee. So it's bad.
I'm sorry. But really c/piracy...really.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Oh no! Where's some Right-wingers on Odysee. So it's bad.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I’ve never heard anyone compare pixelation size to their cat’s poop before.
Yeah I was gonna say, that was oddly specific
And that's why we all pirate stuff every once in a while
Anyone know what he's alluding to with his repeated "catching fish in my backyard with a net nudgenudgewinkwink" remarks?
Piracy. He won’t come out and actually say it which could incriminate himself. Also he just setup a Koi pond in his backyard and put a 24-7 live webcam stream of it. There is really nothing more to it.
The video itself is fine, but linking odysee when it's dominated by nazis, charlatan chiropractors pretending to be medical doctors, and all the rest that youtube won't allow on their platform probably due to racism isn't a good thing. A youtube alternative would be nice but not when it's composed of nazis.
Why are Nazis the first thing you think about? You and many others on the internet. I need a filter that blocks any comment that has the word nazi.
Because odysee platforms them and it shows up in recommended videos, when searching for content and on the front page, along with bigotry. If you want to defend odysee some more do a search for 'jews' on it and see what you get.
![[Louis Rossmann] Piracy is COMPLETELY justified: Louis tries NetFlix and remembers why](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/94631302-273f-4335-9ed9-3cb7dd935420.jpeg?format=webp&thumbnail=196)
