[duskwuff]

> If you want to "stop pirates", make it easy for them to give you money and watch their favorite sport.

I don't disagree, but that isn't something Mux is in a position to do. They just provide video streaming infrastructure -- they're in no position to demand that various sports broadcast rightsholders change their policies.

[emacdona]

That's fair. My main objection is labeling _everyone_ as "pirates". Technically, yes, they are pirating the steam.

But some of those people are also PAYING to watch plenty of games in whatever sport they are "pirating" streams for. Calling these people "pirates" fails to acknowledge that they are also "paying customers" who are frustrated with how complicated it has become to pay for the product they want to watch.

[derefr]

The people that Mux are applying the word “pirate” to here are the people doing the streaming, not the people watching the streams. The people doing the streaming aren’t only “making paid content free to access”; they’re also putting up ads on these sites, making a profit off of IP they didn’t create.

It’s analogous to bootlegging: buying a fake Gucci bag is not unethical; but producing one is.

[kmeisthax]

More importantly, for-money streaming pirates are terrible customers Mux doesn't want to do business with. The kinds of pirates we're thinking about from a decade ago weren't trying to make a quick buck, so they were using things like BitTorrent that had everyone sharing bandwidth.

[duskwuff]

> More importantly, for-money streaming pirates are terrible customers Mux doesn't want to do business with.

Yep. Their entire business is illegal, so breaking a few more laws by signing up for CDN service with a stolen credit card is no big deal.

[PragmaticPulp]

> My main objection is labeling _everyone_ as "pirates". Technically, yes, they are pirating the steam.

They (Mux) aren't doing that. The blog specifically talks about going after the people using their platform to distribute the streams, not the people trying to view them.

Having your service used to distribute pirated material is not good. Becomes a big liability, especially if you aren't proactive in trying to stop it.

[matsemann]

But they're not paying Mux. Why so angry at Mux for shutting down abuse of their system?

The whole comment section is weird. Is people not realizing Mux has nothing to do with sports rights? They're just a streaming provider that gets misused and have to foot the bill when people use them to stream stuff illegally.

[TulliusCicero]

Fair, but that's not the consumer's problem either.

Gaben is right. Piracy is a service problem.

[seb1204]

I agree, since Netflix and others are around I don't see much point in spending time and effort on finding a pirate copy of movie X that I can't find on the streaming platforms. i typical move on.

[elliottcarlson]

There's definitely a trend of moving back to pirating, just because all the studios and channels are opting for their own service and removing content from Netflix. I don't want to pay for Netflix, Peacock, HBO, Disney+, etc. Not to mention, the tools for finding, downloading, and locally streaming content has become super easy.

[marcus_holmes]

Can confirm.

We had a shared-house discussion recently about this. Everyone put their hand up to pay for one streaming service, except for the people who said they'd prefer to pirate their video because it's so painful to pay for.

They did not do the same for music because it's unnecessary - everyone has their own Spotify/Apple subscription that gives them access to all the music.

[zamnos]

Heads up that a Spotify family plan is cheaper for 6 people than 6 individual plans.

[marcus_holmes]

What happens to that if one of us moves out and has to go back to a single plan?

[Etrnl_President]

I just want to buy reasonably priced DVDs.