[microcolonel]

Just think for a second about the hyperbole involved in even calling it piracy. Piracy implies not only theft, which isn't applicable since there is no deprivation, but the pillage of a vessel on the high seas, and the kidnapping (and possibly enslavement, slaughter, rape, or drowning) of its crew.

I think that this (and a whole system of) hyperbole has made it impossible to even talk about it. The MPAA and other similar organizations clutch to legalism, in my opinion, at the cost of revenues to rights holders.

On-demand (Netflix, Hulu, HBO's online thingy, iPlayer, what have you) has been the most effective way to actually recover rights-holder revenues. If rights holders would standardize licensing, and allow a wide variety of distributors to make consuming their content more convenient and a better experience than torrenting, then their revenues would recover; and since there are more people willing and able to pay for a service like this today than when the recording industries came to be, revenue per head can be lower while still funding better content than ever.

Added: Another working model is paid DRM-free downloads. I only buy music in open and lossless formats, which in practice means Bandcamp, a few independent online publishers (like Hospital Records), and CDs. I pay for it because I don't want to feel used while listening to music, and I don't want to rely on ongoing permission to listen to something I've paid for explicitly. This is a different stage of the on-demand/streaming userbase, when they want to have a copy of a record which lasts longer than Spotify Inc.

[kensey]

> On-demand (Netflix, Hulu, HBO's online thingy, iPlayer, what have you) has been the most effective way to actually recover rights-holder revenues.

And yet those same rights-holders seem hell-bent on squandering the opportunity they were given, by splintering their offerings among their own pay services instead of offering them multiple places. I already pay for Netflix. I'm considering paying for Hulu. But there's no way I'm going to pay Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Google, CBS, HBO, Showtime, etc., etc., et-frigging-cetera just to get access to content I care marginally less and less about. (Sorry, CBS, I'm not paying your monthly fee just for Star Trek Discovery no matter how much you think that show is worth it.)

You have the content. People want the content. Offer it on your own services if you really feel that degree of vanity about it, but also offer it on enough other major services that any mix of two or three has one that has your stuff on it. You'll make more money, they'll make more money, and I'll get to watch everything I want.

[kodablah]

> [...] but also offer it on enough other major services that any mix of two or three has one that has your stuff on it. You'll make more money, they'll make more money, and I'll get to watch everything I want.

I think the prevailing theory is that exclusivity and opaque per-provider contracts actually make more money. I am not sure if it is true or not, but as long as the content creators believe it is and the providers cower to them, there will be no transparency and there will be little cross-provider access.

[Buttes]

Who remembers when everyone complained about TV bundles and paying for shit you don't watch...

[djrogers]

> On-demand (Netflix, Hulu, HBO's online thingy, iPlayer, what have you) has been the most effective way to actually recover rights-holder revenues.

And yet those are the very services being pirated ^h^h^h excuse me, whose revenue models are being bypassed.

[cmiles74]

The comment about the language is important and, in my opinion, often overlooked. We can joke about how no one pirating "Modern Family" has ever made anyone "walk the plank", but the fact is this language lets the media paint anyone who downloads content without paying (often, they cannot pay) as someone deserving of harsh punishment. Like it or not, the criminality of the pirates of the high seas is being associated with anyone that visits a Bittorrent tracker and downloads some content. In the eyes of many, "hiding" behind a VPN service only compounds this criminality.

I think microcolonel is making an important point: it's all hyperbole and in almost all cases, there is no injured party. Certainly I am not arguing that it is right, or without a moral gray area. But it's certainly not on the same level as physical theft.

[stonogo]

Yeah, turns out language changes. The TRIPS agreement defines piracy in terms that have nothing to do with shivering timbers.

As for "standardized rights", that kind of shit is what leads to taxes on media like blank CDs or, before them, cassette tape, and -- worst of all -- organizations like ASCAP getting royalty payments by default, whether they're entitled to them or not.

Any effort to "standardize" rights management generally turns into a club with which entrenched interests beat down innovation or dissent.

Just let them burn out with their shit business models; we don't need them anyway.

[microcolonel]

> Any effort to "standardize" rights management generally turns into a club with which entrenched interests beat down innovation or dissent.

...then don't license your rights in that format, are you thinking I'm saying the government of the United States should be responsible for determining the licensing terms of media? I'm just thinking that there could be some standardized package with official masters, metadata, and rates, which any old streaming provider could register for, download, reencode, and start sending the revenues their way. Beyond that, rights holders obviously retain the right to strike cheaper or higher-service deals with specific providers, or to stop licensing their content, just like before. I don't mean sell every TV show and movie at the same price, I don't mean forfeit your rights, I don't mean anything of the sort, I mean standardize the agreement format.

> Just let them burn out with their shit business models; we don't need them anyway.

But in the future, how will we access media from the on-demand age, or which is no longer available DRM-free?

[rhino369]

>On-demand (Netflix, Hulu, HBO's online thingy, iPlayer, what have you) has been the most effective way to actually recover rights-holder revenues.

Are they though? Only 2 out of 49 million HBO subscribers are HBO Now users. And Americans still pirate HBO content in large numbers.

People are canceling $100/month revenue cable plans and getting $10 netflix. That's a large loss of revenue.

It's not clear to me that streaming can actually support the television ecosystem we have now.

[microcolonel]

> People are canceling $100/month revenue cable plans and getting $10 Netflix. That's a large loss of revenue.

But we can't pretend that that revenue is still up for grabs. The moment people are aware of the true market value of a copy of one episode of Game of Thrones, the price they're willing to pay for the convenience of watching it anywhere is going to be lower than the cost of cable. The upshot could be that what money they do end up paying is allocated almost directly to what they're actually watching, rather than a thousand channels of garbage they would never be caught dead watching.

The people who are cutting the cable can do one of three things: 1) watch it on-demand, 2) don't watch it, or 3) watch it without licensing it. If you don't have a convenient means of watching it at a price which satisfies consumers, consumers can only really justify doing 2 or 3 (which basically means you'll go out of business). That's what I mean by recovering revenues. If you don't do on-demand and paid downloads right, then you will have no revenue once all the cables are cut.

> It's not clear to me that streaming can actually support the television ecosystem we have now.

It's not clear to me either, though we must keep in mind that a) that revenue is going to dry up no matter what, and b) more direct licensing, and viewership-based licensing will make the entertainment industry more lean, and fewer shows will be basically money laundering schemes.

[icelancer]

>>But we can't pretend that that revenue is still up for grabs.

Exactly.

Just because your service no longer enjoys the massive margins it once does doesn't make it unviable, or dead. Learn to adapt. Not everyone can, or will, but these companies were not and are not entitled to huge fees, prices, and margins - just like the rest of us.

[kelnos]

> Only 2 out of 49 million HBO subscribers are HBO Now users.

Why would a HBO subscriber be a HBO Now user? Now costs money; HBO subscribers can use HBO Go for free.