Had an interesting conversation with someone the other day on why people pirate - especially due to the cost of living increasing, etc.
I've just cut back on a bunch of streaming services myself - mainly due to cost.
Was curious to hear all of your perspectives on why many of you pirate.
Choose the option that best applies to you!
If a streaming service was able to have every piece of content, but had a justifiable, significantly higher price tag attached to it, would you still consider that more convenient than pirating?
If it had everything, in all variations and qualities? I probably couldn’t afford it, but I would want it.
Yes, back in the day Netflix had basically everything. Then the movie studios, the TV studios and others said we want our version of that. Now we have dozens and dozens asking for inflated monthly memberships.
Blockbuster had an online service to compete with Netflix, just before they went bankrupt. With Blockbuster's relationship with distributors it had everything on it from all studios, it was better than Netflix was and ever will be. But Netflix already had market dominance by then, it was too late to make a difference.
@AustriaBargain: Funny story, Netflix was developed with the intention of selling it off for someone else to run, the first customer choice being Blockbuster who laughed them out of the office. They thought it was a niche market and they were doing fine how they were through rentals, must've been some good fly on the wall conversations during their demise.
Something else worth mentioning is a lot of movie studios didn't take their streaming seriously either, they started as a movie rental business posting red envelopes with movies for the week. When negotiating with studios for their postage rentals they added some long term streaming contracts into the mix (for cheap, because who wants to stream, right?) so when they launched their streaming services they had rights to virtually everything (in the US).
The studios soon realised streaming was the future but had their rights tied up with Netflix so couldn't start their new services until they expired, at which point Netflix started producing a bunch of original content to make up for all of the broadcasting rights they were about to lose.
@AustriaBargain: Sounds like Blockbusters marketing team did an abysmal job. I’d never heard they had any form of streaming service
Sounds like Blockbusters marketing team did an abysmal job. I’d never heard they had any form of streaming service
The service would have been started up in the US.
Australia is a tiny market, so why would they bother trying to promote it here.
@ColtNoir: Oz could plausibly be used to test new variants on existing products like matcha flavoured chicken nuggets at McDonalds. But not 20 years ago when Blockbuster was haemorrhaging money and desperately needed to defend their main market because their core product had become obsolete within a the span of a handful of years.
Blockbuster didn't need to 'experiment'. Blockbuster needed to survive.
Blockbuster would have done a fantastic job at marketing their service, because they still had the pockets for advertising, they still had tens of thousands of bricks and mortar locations in the US for local advertising. But they would have had very little reason to bother promoting it in a market of 20M people halfway around the globe.
Netflix has always had a lot of titles, problem is most of them are utter unknown crap. YOu end up spending more time browsing then starting then stopping titles than actually watching complete titles.
The thing that shits me the most is when you're half way through a show and then it's no longer on that service anymore. Insanity.
Yep, now when you have a dozen $10/mth subs, another company comes out and wonders why I want give them $10/mth for their little pos too.
Netflix had me pretty much stop pirating for a while there bar thr odd thing i was looking for i couldnt find. Then as you mention every studio wanted to dip its toe in.
Blows my .ind seeing some peiple paying for e ery seevice per month just incase streamer x has 1 show or movie they might want to watch else the sub collects dust
Currently have 4 services, so if one combined all of that content and more then I guess I'd be willing to spend what I already do on an aggregated platform.
This won't happen. There's just too much politics. Hollywood is a political beheamouth itself.
Can't watch certain things in certain regions
Don't get to watch certain things at same release date as other countries.
Honestly take the piss out of customers, customers will take the piss out of you.
Pretty much this.
Hey buy our VHS, now buy our DVD, now buy the same Blu-Ray, now buy it on 4K, now 8K…..
You can't buy it cheaper elsewhere and play it on your equipment at home.
You have to sit through ads, OK we'll make the ads skippable…
You have to sit though FBI warnings about not pirating…when you paid for the disc, and you don't even live in the U.S.
Hey why not try our cable content, you can watch all your favourite content with NO ADS!, promise.
Currently re-watching BSG on blu-ray and have to skip through 3-4 spam screens to get to the actual content.
This is called cable ;)
i count at least 7 different services i would need to watch the shows i like/want. so yeah ship it is for me.
When Netflix first started it legit nearly had every show and then suddenly other streaming services took back their content… higher prices. naaah, ima do my own thing.
Yep, put it this way,i have absolutely no desire to pirate music because of Spotify. If movies and TV shows had a similar service model I would be all in.
Nice try AFP. I definitely don't, but if I hypothetically did, I would agree. I've got netflix, amazon prime & youtube premium and yet I would still choose to download the show even though I can watch it on my subscription. It's just better and smoother because my computer is a quad core that goes up to 4.5Ghz with an 8GB graphics card where as the TV is a 1.2Ghz dual core processor, so much faster just to cast it from the computer. Not that I would know, as this is all hypothetical.
@supersabroso
Yes I am the same as this. If it's a good movie I would download it. The video birate is better and the sound quality is better
But this is all hypothetical as well haha
And 4-8k
When anyone buys sporting rights and doesnt even offer a minimum of 4k in 2023 its pathetic
I honestly just like saving money.
A man after my own heart lol.
I don't but hypothetically speaking:
If you don't mind me asking, why don't you pirate? Are the streaming services able to meet all your needs? Or is it more of a moral thing?
Not op, but between 2 streaming services (one of which I'm not even paying for), I don't really have time or interest in trying to consume more.
Putting together a setup to watch pirated material is simply more hassle than it's worth for me.
I agree. I mean seriously, after work, time with family, cleaning the house, the car, watching a bit of live sport, sleeping, browsing ozbargain, staying on top of the budget, and having time with friends, how much exactly can one watch in the course of 7 days???? Do we really have to have 10000 options anyway? Sometimes, less is definitely more.
you forgot wanting to wear an eye patch
.
Rather the peg leg and the rum thanks!
I personally don't like the idea of pegging …. sorry did I get the wrong end of the peg again? ;-)
On the flip side, if a large hard drive fails then you need to buy another one and download all those shows again. When you factor in the cost of the hard drives it might make more sense to pay for access to one of those pirate streaming services that has everything on it. They also have live TV streams from around the world, which is nice sometimes.
True, backup would be important, especially for self-ripped content or difficult to acquire content. For many shows, they would be a throw-away post watch.
I'm not sure how i'd feel paying a service which which is illegal or borderline legal.
Think of that service like paying a crooked Foxtel installer for an illegal Foxtel hookup.
@AustriaBargain: Which one can you pay for like that? Because i've been a victim of this too many times - losing hard drives and even ssds on rare occasions
@BLAIL: I dunno, I don't do it. The owner of my home has one of those Android boxes with the app that has it all going on. Probably full of malware but he doesn't care. There's also apps that let you tap into libraries of media which you pay for access to, another mate is big into that. I still download tv shows and movies the old fashioned way.
@AustriaBargain: I'd be interested in signing up if it was reasonable ($10-$20) - that way I can cancel my Stan, Netflix and Disney. Please check with your mate on what it's called if you can.
For any long term storage…some sort of RAID setup where everything is stored on duplicate over at least 2 disks is essential
Used to pirate everything. Eventually got Netflix which I ran for a few years. Now there's 32145 streaming services it's back to sailing the high seas for me.
~$2 YT Premium covers my music.
exactly. netflix was revolutionary but now we've gone from "most things on free to air TV.. eventually" and some downloads to needed 84 different services and free TV being basically dead.
haven't reverted yet but need to figure out the 2023 version of being a pirate!
Why do people rate Netflix when 99% of its titles are completely worthless and nobody is gong to watch u ntil the end ?
it was really cool at first and it had the monopoly. Now the sentiment is very different and most people are willing to stop and start membership every few months, and to swap services.
i think the next price increase will be a price premium if you start and stop your membership vs continuous membership
nobody? how do you know?
@oranglama: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/netflix-release…
At the other end, a little more than 20 percent of the titles on Netflix’s list (3,813 in all) had very little viewing. The company rounded them to 100,000 hours, but they would fall between 50,000 and 149,999 hours — barely a drop in the streamer’s more than 100 billion total hours of viewing for the six months.
What is 100k / 4k ?
is that a big number for a country with a 100M netflix subs or is that something like less than 5 secs ?
Netflix has been a staple for my wife and I since it came out. Sure, not every blockbuster is there but there’s always something to watch if you move out of your typical bubble.
Since a little before squid games, we’ve found a number of Scandinavian and Korean shows that’s we’ve quite enjoyed. They’re no masterpieces but are interesting enough.
My setup is Netflix, families foxtel go + 1 cycled streaming service (Disney, Prime etc).
Allegedly have heard of people running a plex server and they have mates chipping in to help cover power and hardware upgrade costs. Much easier to have everything in the one place, can't have been me though.
I've heard of people with Plex servers built in years and years of torrenting, ditching everything the same day they discover the combo Stremio+Torrentio+RealDebrid
It's eye-opening. Too good to be true, yet true. Look it up.
I've never heard of this, but I shall look it up (when I get home from work)
This! I am surprised no one mentioned stremio.
well, I've got something to research now.
I'm more of a Plex+Sabnzbd+Sonarr man myself
I love torrents and use them occasionally with Sonarr and Prowlarr but Usenet with Drunkenslug seems to be able to find more and doesn't rely on someone seeding which can be a problem with older content.
Only downside is the Usenet and Drunkenslug subscription but worth it for me.
That was me but also overseer to Automate the downloads once added to Plex watchlist. Moved to Stemio with Real-DBrid, can't go back to Plex, never once had an issue with not enough seeders, you can't compare it to traditional torrenting, you don't need a VPN it just works great.
With Usenet, I was paying for multiple VIP indexers including slug, plus backbone provider with backup blocks. Even with a 1gbps NBN connection, still needed to wait for the download and processing, with Stremio even with a much smaller connection, it's on-demand like Netflix.
I actually have Prime, Netflix, Disney subs, but actually just watch most via Stemio, stuff all the individual apps.
@UltimateAI: Yeah interesting, I've had a non-techie friend ask about Real-DBrid.
I like the idea of it, my concern is with these managed services is if it gets removed then you're scrambling to find and setup something else.
Having flashbacks of trying to support family and friends using a Kodi box and adding sources when they get taken down.
I've been happy with NZB speed (only on 50Mbps), using slug as an indexer, and Sonarr will happily go off and grab stuff that I've subscribed to but would be nice to on demand stream stuff.
Plex as a client goes alright, sometimes a bit slow.
All of these use standard protocols so if any one of those pieces of the puzzle goes down then you can always use another indexer, usenet provider, nzb client, media organizer and player.
It's more work for sure but I like the flexibility to be able to change out what I need.
@PeelThis: Very True, although Plex has had some questionable behavior lately, like emailing your friends a list of what you watched that week.
@UltimateAI: Yeah I did notice that, odd!
But if/when they give me the shits I can always jump to something else with everything else in the in the process doing it's thing.
If I wasn't so heavily invested in the setup with a NAS as well I would probs would be jumping at real-dbrid
I wouldn't watch it anyway if I had to pay. No one loses in this case.
I felt that way, then I realized i was only watching 1 or 2 movies or tv shows per year anyway, so little decent content is being made.
same for gaming
Real entertainment is ozb forum posts these days tbh.
I think this recent example has really gotten people's attention, Sony Is About To Remove Over 1,000 Discovery Shows, Even If You've Purchased Them
Personally I haven't really stopped purchasing physical CD's and Blu-ray/UHD, and if there is something I do want to watch on streaming either wait for an offer or just pay for a month and watch everything they have over that time.
I'm another person that still buys CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays. But I also have Amazon Prime (not for the streaming, that's just a bonus) and Disney+.
You dont actually buy digital media, you only buy a license which has so many exceptions that well they can take it away at any moment.
Which is all fine and dandy, until the people who were paying for content get it taken away from them, and they decide "Well why not just get it for free instead if i'm going to be treated like a chump?" Its very shortsighted.
No argument, im just stating the actual fact around digital media… there is no ownership by the purchaser.
If buying is not owning then piracy is not stealing
Honour of Vikings.
I feel like everything has gone backwards and it's easier to pirate rather than buying for a dozen different streaming services. It really was easier when Netflix had the monopoly.
Especially with 🕵🐠.
Do you mean when Foxtel had the monopoly?
Probably. I've never signed up to a streaming service. Ever.
Back before it was feasible to download or stream over the internet, Foxtel was a nice luxury to have. Always too expensive for me but I lived with people who had it over the years, and friends had it as a kid, but they never really saw much value in it. I think Tivo changed the equation a bit, but by the time Tivo became normal in Australia it kind of was feasible to download movies and TV shows.
I have Netflix, Disney+, and Prime Video (cost shared with family) and I still have to resort to pirating. Even if I also had Stan, Binge, Paramount, 7, 9, 10, ABC, SBS, Foxtel, Hayu, some content is still literally not available on any Australian service.
Spotify covers my music needs. Sports, don't watch much but I will pirate or pay when I really want to see something then cancel. Anime that's not on the above services, I'll pirate. Manga, I pirate. Books, Prime gives me some of Kindle and I prefer physical books. Audiobooks, subscribe then cancel to Audible. Patreon, I'll pirate unless I want to support the creator and plan to consume their content long term.
Audiobooks, subscribe then cancel to Audible.
Is this feasible repeatedly? Do you need to use new accounts/credit cards?
I hoard love audiobooks (and the kids do too) and I usually borrow them from the library, but sometimes when they don't have a book I'd really like to listen to, I wonder about Audible. I don't want to "waste" my free trial, but the flip side of that is that I never end up using it… 🤔
I recently found out there are tools that let you "jailbreak" Audible .aax audiobooks so you can convert them to DRM free Aac (M4b) or mp3 or another format. Most Audible books now are either 63kb aac or 126kb Aac in an encrypted container.
I availed the free trial, enjoyed the book I wanted and then cancelled the subscription. Amazon keep sending me deals for discounted price for 3 months if I resume. I guess I can avail offer and then cancel again before the discount period ends. Pretty sure they will try to lure me again.
Copyright infringment is not stealing. Your legal knowledge is lacking. Non-commercial, small-scale copyright infringement in Australia isn't even a crime, it's a civil offence.
Can you explain where in my comment I indicated that it’s a criminal activity literally categorised as ‘stealing’? If somebody calls traffic fines ‘theft’ do you interject with a citation of the statute that gives them legal authorities to levy fines? Get a life.
@CommuterPolluter: You said ‘stealing’ in the first sentence of your comment, which is a criminal offence. Of course someone can correct you, it’s OzB.
@ColtNoir: So when you tell a friend something and they say “hey, you stole my idea” do you think that it means you committed statutory theft? Or, do you go around correcting anybody who calls OJ Simpson a murderer?
Why are you trying to impose jargonistic definitions into everyday speech? I’m just a bit confused as to if you two are being intentionally obtuse.
@CommuterPolluter: Because you sound like the guy who wrote the anti piracy ad ‘you wouldn’t steal a car, you wouldn’t steal a bike’.
Using the correct terms in particular with written form should be done to avoid confusion and embedding of misinformation.
I think you need to understand what stealing means.
stealing definition
the action or offence of taking another person's property without permission or legal right and without intending to return it; theft.
You cant TAKE software or a digital file, the owner never loses anything.
I almost never pirate, I pay for Prime, Disney+, and a month a year of some others.
But if they literally refuse to LET me give them money to stream a show or old movie, I can't come up with a moral reason not to pirate.
Why do you have an inherent right to watch somebody else’s movie, even without their consent?
Why are you championing for Disney ?
They are not your friend…they dont care about you.
SmartTube Next means I rarely watch movies or free to air tv these days. So many YouTubers creating production quality content on topics I have a genuine interest in.
and yet you don't support them by blocking ads.
If my regular favourites have patreon I join the lowest tier as a sign of support. My understanding is that they get more of my money that way rather than a few cents from Google.
boom
What about supporting YouTube? You don't think that they deserve some of the ad revenue? If YouTube wasn't around then your content provider would not be able to produce content on the world's largest and best sharing platform, earn a living and you would have nothing to watch.
@iguana: What you’re saying isn’t untrue. But their use of an ad blocker is a drop in the ocean. YouTube generated US$29b in revenue in 2022 (quick online search). They have plenty of money.
I block ads on YouTube, it’s barely usable otherwise.
Nobody is doing anyone a favour by watching ads.
Ads doa. lot of social and environmental harm
Starting to think I might have to do this.
Previously the YouTube ads were reasonably on point for me, except google seemed to not realise I was a poor who couldn’t afford a $150k caravan or a new 4x4.
The last few months have been garbage ads and the last few weeks they have increased both the frequency and length of time before they are able to be skipped.
ADS are the biggest con and a tax on everyone. Companies are wasting lots of money on ads that nobody cares about or needs. THis cost is only passed onto the consumer in the end.
I just like to say arghhh!!!
nothing quite like prowlarring the high seas with your trusty sonarr and radarr.
It's more convenient. If streaming services were cheap enough, and had everything on them, then that would be more convenient.