That was a fun watch. My friends give me shit when I complain that Netflix looks terrible on their huge expensive TV, and yet my pirated content looks perfect every time. I will never pay for a service that delivers a lower quality product than what I can get for free. And like this guy says, I’m a grown-ass man that can afford a Netflix subscription. But why the hell would I pay for a subpar product, when sailing the high seas has always allowed me to watch super-high quality content whenever I want?
Because people behind the content would like to pay bills and live?
I’m more than willing to pay for content, and frequently do whenever there’s DRM-free media available as an option. I’ll happily pay even more than the other options if there’s a DRM-free version (Baldurs Gate on GOG for example). But that’s so rarely possible. I’m not willing to risk losing access to a favorite old show or some super-obscure thing I love for a corporate tax technicality.
And call me old fashioned, but I like the option of watching a tv show or movie straight off my own hard drive. No internet to rely on, instant 4K playback no matter what. Streaming just isn’t how I want to consume my media. I get that a lot of people love it, and that’s totally fine, no judgement. But for me, if companies can’t make guarantees about resolution and content availability then there’s no reason for me to buy in when I can get by perfectly well without their blessing. I’ll continue to support local artists and larger media companies whenever they give me a fair way to do it.
I get it, but all of that still doesn’t give you the right to pirate it.
If they wanted us to stop pirating, they should provide a decent service at a reasonable price.
Sorry, but content creators should decide by themselves how to sell their goods. If that’s unfair with you, then simply don’t buy them. I really don’t get it why do you guys think you are entitled to them at your conditions. It’s not like they are essential goods for survival.
Because we’ve been fighting off having conditions imposed on us for generations now. The us government tried to enforce conditions on the drinking of alcohol a while back. Didn’t go so well. Imposing restrictions in this regard has never worked. People have been trading copies for a very long time now. Hell, the BBC is calling for people to hand over their tapes of early doctor who episodes cos they have lost the originals, and those who have them are still wary of handing them over cos it goes against the very idea of why they made the copies in the first place. You’ll also find that most pirates are spending way above the norm for media they love. Myself, I pirate a shit load of music. My biggest expense after rent is music, 90% of that going to digital and physical copies (I’d love to spend more on gigs but I can only to go to so many in a week). I literally spend more on it than I do on food and utilities.
Sorry, but content creators should decide by themselves how to sell their goods.
and i should decide for myself if i want to buy it.
Absolutely.
Then they should gives us options to give them money. I’ll happly pay for all the songs I want to have, but this is not real now. The only way to legally buy music in my country are CDs. For best bands I buy them and rip, but what about a radio song stuck in the head for a week? I don’t want to order a whole album in CD box, carry it home and rip just to delete month after. So I record internet radio stations, download from YouTube, etc. which is not much illegal like torrenting, but I would much rather have an app with search bar and “buy” button on songs for buck or two than play in gray areas.
oh yeah look at them actors and directors struggling to buy food!
Who makes most of the money? Disproportionately at that…
Fuck a corporations but let’s not act like piracy is the modern version of Robin Hood or righting a huge injustice
I mean yeah it’s selfish, but it is definitely righting a huge injustice:
There is literally no customer centric way to watch these shows, or most modern media at all. Where can I literally buy shows that I can then resell. Where can I get a subscription service that’s focused on giving me the best content possible and not trying to squeeze value out of me by influencing what I watch or selling my metrics or up selling me to a bigger plan after killing the previous plan or any number of other dark practices. Where can I buy DRM free offline files of these shows so I can watch them on an airplane on my own hardware without Internet?
It’s fucked up that there is literally no way for people to buy their entertainment and not be fucked over more for trying to do it the legal way and spending money. And piracy needs to exist as a breaking point to stop these companies from getting even worse.
Hence why the people on the internet needs to reject people coming here to profit.
There’s no middle ground in trying to keep the internet good and having it be a platform to hock stuff.
We should go back to the roots. Promote collaboration and be hostile to those people trying to manufacture scarcity online
I get the spirit of that, but actual creators (not executives and investors) still need money. We can’t fully rid the internet of monetizable platforms without harming them.
For sure. We all need money. But I’m not willing to accept all the stuff that comes with it. Which is why I believe there isn’t a middle ground. I think what the internet could be and evolve into is much greater than some creator making money by exploiting its spaces.
But also, they can make money in what I’m proposing. What I’m saying is it shouldn’t be a place where that is the creators main motivation for being here.
These creators end up with the same behaviors as any Spotify, twitter, Facebook executive. There are inherent barriers with modern online creators that work against the good internet we all want. Its insidious and not as evident as it is with the bigger players. But they are all the same.
I’ve been buying movies and series on Bluray, which I can rip and resell. Not every show has a physical release, but the most popular do and you do not have to watch every show there is.
It’s not about percentages or watching everything. It’s about I want to watch what I want to watch, and usually that’s the opposite of the popular stuff.
Also let’s be real if we have to resort to going out physically to buy plastic disks that I’ll just immediately throw away after ripping, something is still drastically wrong.
It is civil disobedience, which I think is a valuable part of a functioning society.
No, it’s just stealing stuff. I’m a shameless pirate, but stop pretending that this is some noble resistance. The reality is that its a luxury someone is selling for a price, and we don’t want to pay the price, so we steal it. You could always just not consume it. That would be the noble move.
They’re assholes so I just don’t give a fuck.
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Maybe, just maybe, that “justifies” it for some content, but certainly does not justify it for all, or even most, content. I know I’m not out pirating old Disney shit that should be open to all for free. And just looking at what’s popular on trackers, this seems pretty common. So even if nothing had changed most, if not all, of the content that is pirated would be protected.
Again, they’re shit, and I don’t care. But why not admit what you are doing? Why try to justify it? Just accepted it for what it is: you’re a dirty pirate happy to steal from them because they are shit.
It’s not stealing, it’s unauthorised redistribution. They don’t lose anything from piracy, except for potential customers, which is a pretty intangiable concept. Don’t think it’s even remotely as bad as going into a tech store and taking all their DVR’s, or even literal piracy by chasing down another boat with guns and taking their cargo.
Don’t think it’s even remotely as bad as going into a tech store and taking all their DVR’s,
We’re getting into the pedantic weeds, but I never said nor implied it was this bad. I don’t even think it’s bad at all, as I said elsewhere, it’s chaotic neutral. it’s just trying to paint it as justified is ridiculous.
We want something, we aren’t willing to pay the price to the person who actually owns it, and because no one gets hurt, we don’t have moral qualms taking it. But at the end of the day we are illegally taking something just because we want it. There’s no “justified” in that at all.
I wouldn’t use the word “noble”. Probably “just” would be more correct.
Most of these companies are terribly unethical so I don’t feel bad about not supporting them.
sharing is literally not stealing
It’s more like Civil Disobedience on account that Copyright is an entirelly artificial construct (the idea that you can’t copy - not take, just copy, with your own resources - something is pretty anti-natura, which is especially obvious in the more traditional domains like storytelling) and even the one reasonable rationalle for it - that it incentivises creation in a way that enriches society - has been entirelly nullified by making the entering of copyrighted works into the Public Domain take longer in average from the time of creation than the lifespan of the longuest living human ever: it mainly enriches a tiny fraction of people, not society as a whole, even though the costs of compliance are bourne by society as a whole.
It’s about not obbeying unfair laws in a way that doesn’t harm anybody and only damages the interests of those whose gain comes entirelly from the unfairness of said laws: so not selfless like a Robin Hood situation, but also not the pure selfishness of trying to get more than others.
It kinda is though.
in a pretty limited, cultural archival and dissemination point of view, mayyyyyyyyybe.
the vast majority just want free entertainment.
Right now, I pirate mostly because I can’t afford paying for my entertainment (like the vast majority of people where I live). But even if I had disposable income, I would not pay for some media because I don’t want to spend money and be restricted more than if I didn’t. I would not mind spending money for DRM-less copies. And even if this wasn’t possible, I would rather pay for the piece and then pirate it DRM-less to truly own it (like I already did with some games when I was better-off).
There’s definitely people only looking for free content, but others like me pay a fair amount of money for the services needed to get going a Plex server, for example. I pay for a VPN to stream outside my network, I pay for JDownloader, a MediaFire account, a Plex subscription, etc…
It’s cheaper to just stick to Netflix and their horrible catalog and practices than to run my server the way I do, but it’s not just about the money.
Sorta.
At a very narrow per-tree level it’s indeed about a selfish desire of the pirate.
At a broader forest-wide level it’s about the available choices having been artificially narrowed by legislation that creates a monopoly on copying. As seen more in the gaming world (mainly with GoG, Steam and indie titles) and even streaming video a few years ago, even with artificially narrow choices by law if the competition is still broad enough to provide lots of options at good prices, far fewer individuals will engage in Piracy, though as we see with streaming video, the artificial monopoly legislation ends up being sooner or later leveraged to narrow the available choices and Piracy flourishes in response.
It’s not by chance that the very same individuals who have simpletion takes on just about every subject (not saying you, just some commenters here) also seem have the simpleton “piracy is bad because the law says so” take when commenting on this.
Hollywood put billions into the next generation disc, blu-ray, and you would still pay extra at Blockbuster for being late if it wasn’t for piracy.
While piracy isn’t without problem it is the closest we get to “supply and demand”. Piracy balances the scale.
At some level it happens due to people wanting stuff for free… but if it’s the consequence of that is that works are preserved and disseminated, that’s more valuable for our culture than when companies vault them and lose them, or when they never release them at all, like Warner has been doing lately.
One might say that these companies have all the right to make these works unavailable, but this is clearly a situation where the “proper” is more detrimental than the “clandestine”. After all, the way these companies handle it, when the ridiculously excessive copyright length is over and the works are supposed to cease their artificial monopoly and be returned to the Public Domain from which everyone takes inspiration, there might be nothing left. A DVD is unlikely to last 100 years.
This is not a matter of life and death but culture has its value.
Exactly. The bottom line is it’s still stealing. Do it all you want but don’t pretend you’re some hero, steal it with a smile on your face.
It’s illegal but not immoral, is the argument. Those two are a Venn diagram.
I may have missed it, but does he (or anyone else) have recommendations for options to simply pay for content and get high quality DRM free files (edit: I mean legally)?
And how much of a pain in the ass is it to buy DVD box sets and rip them? Presumably that’s legal for personal use? Is that the only way? :(
I have some additional frustrations with Netflix:
- they have removed some shows that I like
- if you travel to another country, you can’t always watch the same shows— even if you downloaded them within the app
- they completely remove some episodes: the episode of community where they play Dungeons and Dragons, and (other streaming services) remove the Michael Jackson Simpsons episode.
- extremely user hostile way to browse content. They always move your list around and show the same show in multiple places
- I absolutely hate how all these streaming services auto play to the next episode. You can often change this behaviour. But my partner sometimes casts it to our TV and the damn app (Disney+ in this case, I think) changes the interface just as you get to the credits. I want to sit in peace and let the credits play, and discuss the episode. But it tries to shove another one down your throat, presumably to “maximize engagement”. (I get it for content that you’re binging or are re watching. But this is horrible if you’re just watching an episode during dinner and don’t want to have to scramble to stop the autoplay as soon as it ends)
I believe ripping your DVDs is technically illegal because breaking CSS is a violation of the DMCA. It is quite easy to do though. MakeMKV is great.
There is actually a DMCA exemption (1201) for ripping DVD’s and bypassing the DRM for copyright that falls under fair-use otherwise. The Librarian of Congress has the power to grant these exemptions to the DMCA and grants quite a few other things. Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies
These exemptions are good until October 2024 but just like previously, the same exemptions and perhaps even more will likely continue.
the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works shall not apply for the next three years to persons who engage in certain noninfringing uses of certain classes of such works.
Do they define “noninfringing uses” anywhere?
Sure. Scroll down.
Huh, I guess I’m not the bad-boy who plays by his own set of rules that I kept telling myself I was.
Thanks for the correction.
Some vinyl comes with a download card for lossless files.
Companies need to make it clear which and I would personally pay full price. As it is I only buy on sale and the cards are a bonus.
Ripping discs sucks but it’s a one time thing.
Some of the end credits on netflix are longer than the show. I would kill for auto skip in jellyfin.
Ah, I actually have bought a few music CDs a while ago, and they were actually fairly easy to rip myself. I can’t complain about that at all. If ripping DVDs was that easy then I would probably enthusiastically buy a few DVD boxsets. But I don’t really want to buy dedicated hardware just to read DVDs on my PC to do a cumbersome ripping process, and also probably lug that hardware (or the entire PC) to my TV now and then to watch a movie.
I’ve been interested in vinyl for a while, does it really sound better?
Vinyl is just a way to be intentional about listening and actually owning your media.
The dirty secret about vinyl is that everything since the 80s was recorded digitally anyway. a CD will always have better audio fidelity and record collectors hate this fact.
For audiobooks I recently discovered libro.fm and it works great. You can use their app to listen to it like any other service, but you can also just download the plain drm-free mp3s. For music there is bandcamp if the artist is on there, but for movies and series I’m not aware of any vendors like that. DVDs I don’t see as an option because their file size limit is too low, the quality on a modern TV looks really bad. And Blurays are a whole other level of DRM hell.
There WAS bandcamp…
I know it got sold twice and I am worried about the future but I believe they still have the same purchase and download options for now.
Thanks for this! I’m so glad to see an audible alternative.
EDIT: I signed up for a free trial and will give it a go. Bummed to see they have a much smaller selection but I guess that’s expected with Amazon’s muscle.
Awesome, thanks for sharing this! I haven’t gotten into audiobooks yet, but it’s good to know that there are user friendly options out there.
Vaguely related: it’s also possible to listen to audio books through local libraries in some cases. I think the app is not as friendly, and does a lot to prevent you from getting DRM free mp3s, but at least there’s no charge.
I don’t know about the value of libro.fm… Seems to me that the monthly subscription is the price of a physical book and you only get one per month?
I get a much better deal with my city’s library which offers a large catalogue of audio books for free. It’s not owning, it’s borrowing like you would from a library but at least it doesn’t cost anything.
I think the pricing of their subscription is roughly the same as audible’s, but you get your books DRM-free. They also have some great books on sale sometimes that you don’t need a subscription for, and you can choose a local bookstore to share revenue with. That said, city libraries are an amazing option as well.
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In the US, you can make an archival copy of software for yourself.
However, you can’t legally sell it, give it away or use someone else’s archival copy for something you do have already.
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EDIT: Sorry, I replied to the wrong reply here. However, if you’re interested in these exemptions, you can read through them.
/EDIT
Audiovisual works fall under Section III (1) of the exemptions, including video.
Computer Programs fall under Section III (5 - 12).
Explicitly software isn’t even mentioned until Section III (6) though E-Books falls under Section III (1D) which is obviously software.
Under PROPOSED CLASS 1: AUDIOVISUAL WORKS—CRITICISM AND COMMENT, DVD CCA, screen captures and viewing the media in a classroom as part of the concerns of those that were against the exemption in Section III (1) specifically.
These exemptions definitely do not just encompass software only.
The DMCA and copyright law does not allow any of this without the exemptions. These are exemptions to those laws and what is contained in them is legally allowed.
If you are torrenting anything, you’re seeding that data, period. So therefore you’re uploading. It’s just the nature of the beast. It’s why you may end up with a letter from your ISP if you raw dog it with no VPN. This may differ depending on what country you reside in.
That being said, best thing I ever did was set up a NAS a couple years ago. I seed all day long and build ratio on private trackers. I watch whatever I want in the quality I want via Plex.
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Yeah you can set up an auto-stop ratio at 0 and it stops without uploading anything. I should probably VPN too but I haven’t cared enough for like 8+ years and nothing’s happened yet
options to simply pay for content and get high quality DRM free files (edit: I mean legally)?
Lmao. Heard of geoblocking? My Jellyfin instance has no geoblocking tho. 🙆
Ah, good point. I had briefly heard of this and was shocked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code
For anyone who hasn’t heard:
This is achieved by way of region-locked DVD players, which will play back only DVDs encoded to their region (plus those without any region code).
This definitely furthers the original post’s point. And he may have even mentioned it.
It’s infuriating that you can pay for something and then move, and lose your collection. This comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/488/
This is way the piracy is the only way to enjoy content without any bullshit.
And how much of a pain in the ass is it to buy DVD box sets and rip them? Presumably that’s legal for personal use? Is that the only way? :(
It can be a pain at first when you figure out a schema, look for software etc., then just a matter of inserting a disc and pressing a button. DVDs are easy to rip, there are fully open source programs to do it, for example libcss from VLC team. And DVDs don’t require using leaked decryption keys like BluRays.
It is legal depending on the country. In US it’s in gray area as you strip down DRM. In country I live in (Poland) from my research there are no such measures and copyright works differently. In Poland the movie/music is untied from medium you bought it on, so copying is legal but selling or giving those copies without destroying other copies you have is illegal.
My advice is that for first dozens of movies don’t play with Jellyfin and storing them. DVD player on USB is the best and rip just to have movies for a trip or on a phone. Just out of simplicity, why spend time managing backups, storage shares and additional machines when there is only a few titles to manage.
Thanks, this is somewhat reassuring. Maybe some day I’ll try it. I used to like tinkering with things, but lately I haven’t had as much patience or free time.
Even assuming ripping is legal (it usually isn’t ,though it should be), the effort required is significantly higher, the cost is significantly higher, and at least for TV shows, you usually suffer from huge delays as you wait for the season box set to be released. This is even assuming they bother to release a bluray in 4k with HDR.
Netflix and other services (assuming it even has the content you want) have fixed these issues, with the massive downside of no 4k, lower bitrate, and no ownership at the end of it.
Piracy, while more illegal, has the content you want, at 4k, usually a higher bitrate, with minimal effort, no cost, and no delays. Now that I’m employed, I don’t pirate music or games anymore, because the services offered are good enough that piracy isn’t worth the effort. But for movies & TV shows, the services offered are simply terrible.
Ripping your locally purchased content for ripping is a fun hobby and can be addicting to getting everything to look just right in your media player of choice. Also, ripping gives you control over codecs as you can reencode as needed for different clients. This works for music, movies, and TV shows. I will say that ripping TV shows is a chore, so start with movies and music first.
stremio solves most of that
Scam and enshittification as always.
i like the Google play model where i can pay $3 to download the whole movie before watching it. I also like the band camp model where I’m paying a few bucks to the artist to download the music in whatever format i want. i think this is the way.
I don’t like Louis very much, because while we’re on the same team, he’s usually extrem in his opinion, and most importantly, he takes 30 minutes to explain a 3 minutes argument.
But on this, he’s right 100% I watched the whole thing! I’m an ex Netflix customer, btw.
Remember when Netflix used Silverlight? Couldn’t get it to work on linux back in the day.
Anyways, I don’t think this makes piracy completely justified. It just means the best user experience for desktop, or for super privacy related folks, is not supported by netflix. It was a weird self defeating ending to say at the end if it’s on netflix only, it’s just not worth watching, but also say it’s justifiable to pirate.
I think there’s a weird sense of irony in being both pro piracy and pro sag aftra. Although they didn’t win big, their payout is directly tied to streaming metrics. Piracy instead of streaming is going to screw them.
While I am not advocating for regulations or for people to stop I don’t think that we are entitled to someone else’s work. I guess you could try to justify it for works of art that were publicly funded.
