[patrickaljord]

I beg to differ. I used to have a Netflix subscription here in France (not anymore), my wife is from Latin America and wanted to use English subtitles instead of French ones (and so did I), funny thing is, English subtitles were not available in France, the only way to get English subtitles was to use a proxy and a US Netflix account (not possible anymore as many proxies are blocked) or just use torrent.

There are many services that streaming companies refuse to offer even to paying customers. Now you may say "streaming companies depend on hollywood licensing per country", sure, but this case also happened on Netflix produced shows...

[sudosysgen]

If you got paid for torrenting, a lot less people would torrent because of the much increased legal liability and massive increase in lawsuits.

[vageli]

As someone with no knowledge on the subject, why would accepting payment increase liability? As in, the target of the lawsuit would also be liable for the money they received, or something else?

[sudosysgen]

Most countries have much different penalties for piracy and selling pirated goods.

For example, in Canada, the penalty for non-commercial infringement is generally about 100$, and it can go up to 5000$ maximum (repeat offenders and so on). For commercial infringement, the penalty is of 20 000$.

Furthermore, in Canada, seeding downloaded files via P2P service is of ambiguous legality, with some interpretations saying that as long as you don't advertise or try to share it with as much people as possible (positive action) required to make it illegal. Receiving payment for this would torpedo that defense, which means even higher liability. All in all, it's not a good idea.

[monokh]

It's probably worth noting the horrible privacy characteristics of Ethereum. With the right resources, It's straightforward to track down the identity behind the seeders.

[Sargos]

Yeah, this will probably be integrated with AZTEC or some kind of zk scheme before it becomes a full mainnet protocol due to the risky nature of torrents.

[joosters]

Double criminality! If you are having to launder your micropayment income, you probably should start to question your morals...

[Sargos]

I doubt many people have a moral quandary over torrenting. It's like video games with the ease of use of Steam and how game piracy is no longer a big problem since it's easier to just buy them, if there was a simple one-stop shop where I could watch movies and TV shows with one click I would pay for it no problem. I'm not going to pay to jump through hoops and remember 5 different passwords to 5 different services.

[Acrobatic_Road]

This uses state channels for payment which is more secretive than using regular ethereum transactions. To take the cake, the funds can be mixed on tornado.cash or AZTEC or whatever the latest ETH privacy tech is.

[LockAndLol]

There are anonymous torrents thanks to I2P. If those were to become more popular, then it might be more interesting to embed payments there.

[imhoguy]

There is low chance to find a peer in I2P for some already niche material. Tor with clearnet exit nodes is better although still less peers due to NAT.

[LockAndLol]

Bittorrent over Tor isn't a good idea

https://blog.torproject.org/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-id...

[duxup]

I always wondered why I see such limited options for subtitles sometimes. Some of it I'm sure has to have more options but Netflix only offers a couple...

[VWWHFSfQ]

I always wonder how normal, presumably honest, people go from "I can't watch my shows with the subtitles that I like" to "I'll just steal it."

[patrickaljord]

Oh but I was still paying for my netflix subscription at the time. So technically I was just stealing the subtitles license. When I did cut my Netflix subscription, I also stopped watching shows even on torrent, haven't watched a show since 2016 when I had my kids. Youtube, twitter, facebook and now tiktok offer free alternatives and are more entertaining in my opinion. Not to mention the heavy political agenda Netflix has been pushing on their shows lately, already get enough of that on social media, no need to also get it on my show when just looking for entertainment.

[Findeton]

Because we don't agree with copyright laws. When you steal something in the physical world, you are depriving someone of the stolen object. In the digital world that doesn't happen, you are just producing yet another copy. For this reason I can't agree with these laws where the government is giving someone/a company a monopoly on ideas or digital things, it's creating scarcity artificially. Patent and copyright laws should not exist.

[VWWHFSfQ]

sounds like some gymnastics