Streaming Pirates Are Hollywood’s New Villains - Illegal subscription services that steal films or TV shows bring in $2 billion a year in ads and subscriber fees.
Streaming Pirates Are Hollywood’s New Villains
If you follow some of the links to pirate sites in the article you'll get redirected to some anti-piracy site which amongst other things tells you this:
removed ... that's literally the reason I pirate.
The problem isn't the number of providers, the problem is exclusive licensing deals.
If it was like music, then (theoretically), more choice is better. AFAIK all the platforms have pretty much all the music, so there is some choice available.
With TV and film, it's so fractured that it's literally easier to just pirate things, even for shows I (potentially) have ad-free paid access to already. With Stremio + Torrentio + a Debrid service, I just launch one app and everything's available in seconds. With paid services, I need to search Netflix, then Prime, then CBC Gem, by which point I'd already be watching.
Plus, torrentio lets me pick the video quality I want, so I can force 4K H265 on my big screen for films or just pop on a 720p H264 on my small underpowered laptop (that can't decode H265 fast enough for smooth playback).
It's not even about price, it's just a better experience to pirate. And that's a Big Problem for the industry.
They keep telling us that we can’t own or preserve media. We strongly disagree.
My mind is turning on the piracy front. I've paid for Netflix for like a decade, and it was good.
I tried not to pirate, but there was no legal way to stream Game of Thrones, so we would do watch parties. Eventually HBO came to Canada through bell and I could watch it online.
That moment was pretty great, I could watch all my shows, and HBO, and Netflix was putting out some strong content.
Then everyone decided they wanted a piece of the pie. Netflix has continued increasing prices while everyone pulled their content out, Amazon turned prime video into a roulette wheel of "can I watch this or not", and Disney+ launched and very quickly turned into only shovelling garbage quality star wars and marvel projects, and now everyone is stuffing ads into their shitty content fiefdoms.
We're back to where piracy is the better experience and now I can't watch the content I want because it's at most 2 shows a year per platform.
When they remove access to content I paid for... Fuck em.
If buyin' ain't owning, piracy ain't stealin'
To be fair, streaming was never buying. It was always paying entry to a library. If stuff gets removed from the library that's the way it is.
That isn't to say I don't agree. Piracy is a service problem, as Gabe Newell so eloquently put it. Streaming started losing the moment it started splintering into cable networks.
Had a very similar experience at the end of last year. Was sick of the bullshit all the providers were pulling and set up jellyfin.
Now running that on a pi so we've got our own streaming platform with movies and shows that you'd either need at least three separate services for or just outright won't find if you don't pirate.
Disney+ is the only one i subscribe to here in BC. Since it comes combined with STAR (almost-Hulu) it is a fair value. TV service from Telus is stupid expensive and I still would not get to watch my hockey team. Not that I want to right now with them backpedalling so fast. Fucking Kings...
Have they considered offering better content and services than the free options?
Gabe said it best! "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've dropped something like 5 services in the last year and a half no the last year, due to the declining quality of their offerings, both in user interface, user experience, and content. EDIT: And price hikes!
In fact the easier option is anti-piracy technology. As shown by the continued investment in various DRM vendor offerings. Competing on service quality is very hard.
If they can't make money while they're charging us, how are the pirates so good at it?
sparking concerns on Wall Street that the services will never be as profitable as cable once was
Obligatory fuck Wall Street
All my homies hate wall street
Yeah this was the entire reason streaming was successful. It was cheaper than cable. Did they think more money would appear from nothing?
They always think that.
Money from nothing and the clicks for free guitar riff
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don't restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
Piracy is about ease of use (it's getting even easier), and about value. DRM has repeatedly been shown to hurt only the people who try to pay for legitimate access. Not a single time has it prevented me from getting a copy of something if I wanted to, and it's clearly not stopping people from providing those copies or streams.
So stop wasting bathtubs of money on stopping piracy, but maybe take a few less buckets of money from consumers in exchange for your service. As long as you price it such that the cost of being legit can't compete with the ease of use and value from piracy, some folks aren't going to make the choice you want them to.
Some folks won't be able to spend on your service anyway, because they just can't afford it - but they still might buy other merchandise, they can still spread how great your show is to their friends who possibly will subscribe to your service, but regardless you aren't going to get their dollars no matter what you do. So stop trying.
The solution is so easy. Make your content available at a reasonable price, make it easy to use, don't restrict it by geography, and let people watch it on any device that can connect to your service.
They had achieved this just a short time ago, and their subscriptions and profit reflected that consumers were happy with the offerings. But the studios wanted MORE, and now everything is fragmented across a dozen different services with increased subscription fees, and geo-locks so you can't share accounts. I was paying almost $100 per month for subscriptions at one point, and then they fragmented it further and I said "fuck it, I'm out!". I cancelled everything. They think they can endlessly exploit their consumers, and maybe there is a sub-section of them that will endure never ending fragmentation and price increases, but I'm not one of them. Bye!
What's a reasonable price to you? Can you apply this same value to everyone? Seems like just about anything is easy to access through various services except for maybe some niche stuff. I don't think being "easy" is quite enough. People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.
Dunno. Less than what things cost now? I think knocking down the geographic restrictions and letting people watch it on any device or OS that can connect are likely bigger fights than pricing, if the industry actually cared to solve the problem.
It's not as if we don't have examples of this. Yes, some people still pirate music. Roughly 20 years ago, almost literally everyone with the knowhow was pirating music. (And with services like kazaa, emule, etc, it took very little knowhow)
You know what didn't solve it? Prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM.
What solved it was when Apple started selling legit music for 99 cents per track, and keeping album costs reasonable. (Much as I hate to give apple any credit.) Spotify, amazon, etc all got on board, and now almost no one pirates music. (I pre-apologize for whatever detail I misremembered there - that was a long time ago.)
Am I saying that exact model will apply to video streaming services? No, but what's not going to do it is prosecuting consumers, high prices, and DRM. We have decades of proof of this.
People like getting stuff for free even if they can afford it.
Some people will pirate no matter what. You can worry about them, or you can worry about everybody else. At some point (and I suspect we're well past it) the return on investment has got to start looking pretty bad for all the money and technology they have tried to throw at piracy.
We managed it for music streaming for the most part.
Say it louder with me for the people in the back.
Piracy is not stealing.
"If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing."
I gotta say I love this meme. I think about it every time a tech company does something really scummy to take away features and products that people have purchased (and not rented/leased).
I wouldn't ever buy the content so it's not a lost sale either. All I've done is copy a file. gasp
You're not allowed to buy the content anyways. You're only allowed to pay for the illusion of ownership, until they decide they don't want to host it anymore, and then you lose it. They're such bullshit artists that they redefine common words like "buy" and "own" in their ToS.
i dunno i heard that you wouldn't steal a car
Correct. I wouldn’t steal a car. But I would absolutely make a perfect copy of a car for free.
Just stopped in to say fuck you to the greedy motherfuckers who created a market for sharing massively overpriced content and now cry all over their piles of money cause they are BIGGER piles of money.
Which is to say: "Fuck you".
What about the small, local services that are just trying to pay the broadcast production bills and make a little cash to become viable businesses?
Fuck those people too?
Because these piracy services also affect them. These services restream the content taking away revenue from the small streaming services. In many cases we're talking about volumes less than 100. So these restream services pop up, illegally use trademarks and copyrighted materials to advertise, and can reduce volumes enough that they are no longer viable.
Sometimes these things affect regular people trying to make life work too. Not just billionaire assholes who legitimately deserve the criticism.
Would you really put the blame on piracy for that when there are conglomerates manipulating the entire market? I'm not doubting they exist, but can you name a small business streaming service that would be affected by pirate services? I have never heard of such a company. I've seen small streaming services utilized by libraries but they are on government contracts and tax funded as far as I know.
Since the fruit hangs so low: Yes, small creators get affected by it as well.
But what do we say to cops that dont snitch on their "bad apple" colleagues? Correct, they are part of the problem.
So from that I deduce that small creators (like myself) need to stand up against these practices or be considered part of the problem.
Have a good one.
I don't use these services, but after learning a bit about them I have to say I'd rather pay an honest thief than one who lies about ownership ¯(ツ)_/¯
I don't use these services either, but my understanding is that some of these thiefs seem to not even have a profit model. One prominent streamer who I won't name, "FZ", as the kids call it, they don't require registration and are allowing those who use ad-blockers to access the site.
I don't understand why Hollywood is even going after these guys. Just wait for their lack of monetization sweeps them under.
That FZ fella sounds like he's got a nonprofit I could donate to.
Why not name them? This isn't reddit...
Y'all fucked up by not leaving everything on Netflix.
The mystery of how movie companies can't own cinemas but can own streaming services.
No subscription fee to use Steam. Games are available to download and play offline. 3 clicks of the mouse to buy, install, and play a game. It's so damn easy to use Steam, I don't miss buying physical PC games and I certainly don't miss rolling the dice on russian cracks.
Steam also has so many features that cracks usually can't or don't offer. Friends system, anticheat, workshop modding, cosmetics, multiplayer (although this is actually a case of it usually being locked behind Steam), fast updates, Proton, just to name a few.
Steam and Netflix are the sole reasons I stopped pirating as a teenager/young adult.
I canceled Netflix long ago at this point and have been on the brink of going back to pirating films/TV. Too many streaming services.. it's just like TV packages before Netflix disrupted the model.
Honestly, with services like Jellyfin/Plex and the Sonarr suite, pirating has never been more convenient.
I add something to my Plex watchlist, and it automatically appears on my Plex server in 1080p or 4K (whichever format I prefer, with subtitles and metadata ready to go,) in like 20 minutes. And I can stream that to as many devices as I want. Hell, I can even give friends access to my server, and I can access theirs too. All through a single UI, with no regional restrictions or “sorry you can’t watch that without signing into your home wifi, because we want to make sure you’re in the same household” BS.
Streaming services were supposed to save us from the hassle of physical media, and be better than cable TV…
The only viable strategy for Netflix in the long run to stay in the game is to exploit people's FOMO. You'll sell way more subscriptions if you have a hot brand new show that everyone wants to watch. There will always be pirates, so if they want to stay one step ahead of them, they have to make sure there's an abundance of quality programming on their platform coming out pretty much constantly.
Haven't pirated a game since 2008. The same year i made a steam account. Coincidence?
That illustration with the hook through the film reel is so clever, I love it.
I was hoping someone else would mention it. It's quite cool.
Can someone list those piracy subscription services so we can avoid them as responsible citizens?
You should definitely avoid XtremeHD IPTV (http://xtremehdiptv.org/). For $15 a month, it's way too cheap to offer all the live TV, movies, and series that it does. The article specifically mentions low pricing as a red flag, and I can definitely say that compared to what you'd normally pay for every live channel (including the premium ones and pay per view), series, and any just about any movie you can think of, this is most definitely a service that you should steer clear of.
Hey friend, I'm gonna PM you for some intel if you don't mind!
IPTorrents is even worse at iptorrents.com for only $10/mo
The people who are stealing our movies and our television shows and operating piracy sites are not mom and pop operations,” says Charlie Rivkin, chief executive officer of the MPA, who adds that some of the operators also engage in drug trafficking, child pornography, prostitution and money laundering. “This is organized crime.”
I like how they always have to fabricate a connection to organized crime. Trying to convince the reader that is not just copyright infringement.
It's projection.
Hollywood was founded on IP theft of European filmmakers' work and funded by various mobs, which then went on to lobby (bribe) politicians into changing certain regulations on gambling in AZ, et al, to pave the way for Vegas and the like.
Fuck Hollywood with a rusty pineapple sideways.
There's nothing more quintessentially American than pulling the ladder up behind you.
This has to be stopped. Just look at what Napster did to the music industry. That’s right, there used to be a music industry and now it’s just…gone. No more music, no more money to be made in music. Don’t let these evil streaming services do the same to poor defenceless Hollywood, bastion of women’s rights!
I haven't been able to listen to music since year 2000 😢
Jokes aside, I have paid for Google's music service since it launched (RIP Play Music), but I am a millisecond away from canceling my subscription because Google does not provide me with any way to randomize playlists. I don't mean shuffle play. That shit is broken and always has been. It would not be a big deal if I could randomize my playlists on demand, but no.
I've still got some songs (including horrendously misattributed artists/titles) from limewire in my music library, all these years later.
I still have some too, but thanks to Musicbrainz it's all tagged properly now. Guess System of a Down never made a Zelda techno after all.
It's so funny to me that we have to circumvent the site's paywall in order to read an article about pirating.
Based as hell.
Lol, so true.
Though anymore I archive pretty much any article I share. I have a Macrodroid script to grab the link from my clipboard and send it to archive.ph and open it in a browser.
I'm currently setting up ArchiveBox for my own use too.
there’s a special place in heaven for people that link to archive sites to avoid paywalls
Adding to the discussion, if you want to watch anything that's not mainstream (i.e. non-western, or arthouse), you're basically supposed to either wait for it to stream on Mubi or get a Blu-ray/DVD (that are often out of circulation if it's more than 5 years old). So the only real option is pirating.
One time I went to this unit of a store and the lady was unfamiliar with werner herzog. Not even in their system.
I've been doing this for free.
Meme: You guys are getting paid?
Oh no. Poor Hollywood. Darn.
It sure is fascinating how surges in the usage of pirate platforms tend to coincide with eras of worsening value proposition in entertainment. We should really get some top notch analysts on this to get an explanation.
They make hardware with defects looking at you RROD and YLOD , they expect you to rebuy everything again every time there is a new console ( Nintendo). They remove your content that you have paid for from your library (Amazon, Sony, music from games), they alter the deal after purchase by instering DRM and shitty launchers and turn off servers (Ubisoft and EA). They lock you out of accessing stuff on devices you own with DRM (eg Netflix 4k on linux ).
Then we have regional releases, changes to privacy policies which we didn't agree to when we signed up.
Add to the fact we're being fucked over at every turn. The price of everything is increasing, housing is a mess, they're fucking up the environment while record profits have been pouring in year on year.
They can go suck a lemon 🍋
I will only support FOSS and those who help further that goal such as valve. Otherwise it the high seas everyday.
🏴☠️✊
So Hollywood copyright lawyers will target illegal subscription services rather than individual downloaders? Fine by me.
I can understand paying for a legal streaming service where at least a tiny percentage of profits goes into producing new material. I pirate out of convenience and availability, because movies and series aren't released immediately in my region.
Paying somebody for streaming film and TV shows that they have no hand in producing, and thus not supporting new productions — same as I can download for free myself? — that makes no sense to me.
If someone makes it so I can stream all the shows and all the movies and such in one convenient place, without having to find them myself, hunt down the right versions, etc, I'm good with paying them for that.
It'd be better if it was from a legal service, but as long as exclusives are allowed that can't happen. If the owners of the content were required to allow anyone who wants to distribute it to do so, at the same cost with no special deals for one distributor over another, then every streaming service could have everything, if they choose. They could then compete on quality of service and which content they choose to have, not on what content they can lock down for themselves alone.
Paying somebody for streaming film and TV shows that they have no hand in producing, and thus not supporting new productions — same as I can download for free myself? — that makes no sense to me
It makes sense for me. The one i’m using is $20 per year. I just think of it as convenience fee. It has netflix features but for all movies and tv shows.
I understand why people do it, but for me it's a principle thing. I'm not going to pay someone for content they stole. Fuck that.
I generally don't have a problem with copyright infringement, but people who make a profit from it are scumbags.
And like I said, I get convenience/availability. I guess paying for stolen goods is one step too far for me. Like, "Dude, pass it around, but it's not yours to sell".
Subscriber fees? Who's paying for pirated content?
EDIT:
Instead of paying for 50 streaming platforms, you pay for one that has it all. Convenient.
I didn't know that was a thing. Good for people who want to toss a coin to your streamer, I guess.
Lots of people are. Real Debrid is the shit! It's about $2.80 per month for the ability to stream pretty much everything. But ads? Nah, man. There are ads on the torrent sites, but none on streaming. Pirates are pretty ad-adverse.
If you're paying for it, then you could argue that you aren't "stealing" it. How are you (or at least the average person) suppose to know that the steaming service you used got their content illegally? This way, all of the liability falls on the streamer rather than the consumer.
[Raises hand]
I don't have time to fuck with managing a seedbox to make ratios and community participation bullshit (looking at you, abt). I don't even have time to fight incompletes on a usenet block. Let me drop a Benjamin in your "donation" box every couple of years and I'll cover part of the server as long as I can find what I need, when I want it, in the quality I'm looking for.
I have subscriptions to a few of the big boys through legal cross-marketing deals; it's still better to know that my shows will be waiting for me on my server if and when I ever get around to watching them.
Realdebrid bro
Oh my God, that's disgusting! Illegal streaming services online? Where? Where did they post those?
Haha, they won't even allow me to watch stuff on Netflix in 1080p because I use linux. Eat shit
Oh no…
Anyway
I block ads, so neener-neener. 🤡
Oh no. Poor Hollywood.
Anyway…
Oh no! Anyway dot jpeg
Vote with your wallet, they told us.
Then they got massively butthurt when we voted with our wallets.
not my problem
"your failed business model is not my problem"
Wtf, how can a post in a piracy group be a link to a site that won't let you read an article unless you subscribe or create an account..?!
The same way I haven't seen an ad in years, I also use a paywall bypass extension.
So I guess it skips my mind sometimes; when none of these sites have had paywalls for years.
I would argue a good chunk of the people here would prefer the OG link so they can archive it themselves (or make an offline .html copy directly)
I don't want to have five different streaming services that cost twice what cable used to cost, and is way more inconvenient trying to figure out which platform has what. Streaming can get fucked!
Remember when they found out the dudes behind piratebay were like 3-5 hacktivist friends who made it in their free time lol?
Also what illegal subscriptions. Do they really think people pirate content for it to be sold and not shared?
People who pirate content don't do it for free. It might be news to you, but piracy is a huge business.
Not for every average Hollywood movie ever.
There's so many acronyms for the source because of how many people independently rip, not even including cam rips.
Now if it's some big gun software like cobalt strike, then sure yeah people definitely charge.
But Movie and TV pirating is so easy, people regularly make their own rips and torrents.
Is this talking about stuff like private torrent trackers and Usenet providers, or are there more Netflix-like things out there that people are paying for?
Aren't they still releasing mostly to cinemas?
Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao
Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao
For several years (at least half a decade) I used a service that provided live TV for most major networks, and reliable, easy to access streaming of literally every televised sport I ever heard of, and many that I didn't know existed or didn't expect to be televised.
It was easy to use, had all the live TV we cared for (incl and especially sporting events, which was the only thing we weren't already getting by legit streaming services or other means, and which we cared about watching live vs later ) for 30 bucks a month. I started using it right after I forked out a couple hundred bucks to the NHL only to find that doing so just made it so that it cost me a lot of money to be blacked out from the games we cared to watch.
It was what we all want streaming services to be - reliable, comprehensive, high quality, easy to use, and cheap.
That's why.
Edited to add - the service went down last year. I know of no similar replacement, but given this article they must exist.
You should definitely avoid http://xtremehdiptv.org/ It's about half the price you were paying and has live TV, movies and series.
Convenience, I'd imagine. Not everybody wants to deal with ads or self-hosting.
I also know someone that subs to a pirate streaming site that they use for learning English. It has a solid library but also has dual subtitles on everything and categories based on vocabulary difficulty and accents. It's cheaper than a single legit subscription, but has way more value (both the language stuff and the massive pirated library).
Real-debrid is worth paying for imo
People need to expect to pay for art and entertainment. People should. It's immoral and unethical to not pay for art and expect art to be there.
People also should be able to pay the artist directly and not some billion dollar company who continue to try to squeeze the artists and limit creativeness all in servitude to the almighty dollar (or any other currency)
Okay so what I'm hearing is you want companies to make investments in artists directly - so a form of profit sharing essentially. Why would a company invest in artists if artists get all of the profits when its successful and the company loses all of the capital if it fails? Why would any business want to partake in a system like that?
People need to expect to pay reasonable prices on a reasonable basis for art and entertainment, and pretending everyone should be cool with fifty different streaming services and never owning anything again is its own sort of immorality and lack of ethics.
Exactly, we’re not paying for the art, we’re paying for a limited license to view art that has already been made.
Not to mention I don’t mind paying when I know the artists who do the work will get a bigger cut than the guy who owns the servers they’re hosted on.
I have no problem paying for such things.
But when the distributors block access, and tell me buying ain't owning by removing access to what I've paid for, well fuck 'em.
I think most people would agree that artists should be fairly paid for their work. But when greedy, profiteering corporations are the ones commissioning and profiting from art, then IMO we have a moral duty to fuck with their exploitative business model.
I agree with you.
But we had a situation where consumers were happy and were paying for content, piracy dropped off, and it was insanely profitable for Netflix.
Then everyone got greedy and stuck their dicks in the pie and ruined it, and this is the backlash.
If you buy content digitally, it gets pulled from your library without your consent or recourse. If you steam you're paying more and more for less.
What we had was good, now none of my friends talk about TV shows because it starts with "hey, did you watch X, it's on paramount?" "No", "oh, nevermind".
And art should be accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. There's a reason that piracy almost died out completely and then came back with a vengeance. People don't mind paying a reasonable price for art, the prices and accessibility of art has just become unfeasible.
I disagree about art. Art exists for art's sake. It's not a commercial product. I don't have to pay to enjoy the Mona Lisa or the Bach. I might pay to enter a museum, or attend a performance, so I agree with you about entertainment, but art is different. Art enriches the world, improves life, expands understanding, and we should all of us pay for it with taxes. And we do!
I think your point about paying for museums touches on part of the issue.
It does cost to distribute art/entertainment. I have no problem paying for that.
It's that over the years distributors have gotten greedy (ads on a paid service, like cable did? Fuck you), and are telling us "buying ain't owning" by removing things we've paid for.
Art being for everyone, well, while I agree on an abstract level, there's a whole discussion we could have about that, starting with the range of "art" that's produced, from the mass-appeal art (so more base, simpler, becuae that has the broadest appeal), to the more niche.
At one time artists were supported by a patron (and now we have things like Patreon).
Then we have the players who get into the "art" business as an opportunity - consider things like the explosion of popular music in the 50's (that sounded similar courtesy of things like Rockola) and today's Autotuned music.
It's a big bucket of questions, ideas and concerns, and while philosophical me agrees with the basic premise of the value of art, the realist recognizes that art has a tangible value too, or people wouldn't be willing to pay for it.
Where does this expectation come from?
I did not commission these works.
They created their art without a contract between them and I.
Their ability to recover their cost is not my responsibility.
Their right to obtain a profit is capitalist nonsense.
The force of government injecting a contract doesn't create a moral obligation.
So where does this moral obligation come from?
Is there some religious text indicating the divinity of copyright?
The concept was created from nothing.
The writers strike who has to fight over getting streaming royalties goes to show that the money doesn't even make it to the artists.
The issue isn't paying. It's how fractured the services are and how we don't even get to pay to own a copy of the art.
I don't disagree, but isn't there something to be said for denying people access to the popular culture based on their ability to pay for it?
Most places will still have OTA broadcasts of content, at least from the major networks. That is still "free" but cable/digital TV prices are ridiculous.
Where I live there are no digital broadcast stations available so expensive subscription TV or piracy are the best options.
It's a tragedy of the commons - as an economics problem it matters, sure, but copyright is an artificial monopoly, not a human right. We could provide these more efficiently with public funding of the arts or crowdfunds, without the need to make up imaginary property with imaginary ethics.
But if you want to sign up for a bunch of subscriptions because some might trickle down to the writers, be my guest.
I don't expect it to be there. It just is. I can't go about my day without them shoving ads about it in my face.
I expect the lot of them to get their own damn jobs making food and shit that we actually need so I don't have to work all the damn time just to not afford being able to do my own art.