[ruthmarx]

> Companies like Google and Cloudflare just really don't care that they host malicious content and have stopped taking meaningful action to take down reported content.

Honestly I find it incredibly silly companies are still sending out notices to take down copyrighted content. Give up already. The battle is lost and now it's purely a waste of time and money.

[jazzyjackson]

The pirates lost, I know one other person besides me that collects movies to watch offline outside of subscription services. The legal actions against free streaming sites prevents any serious competitor to Netflix, Disney-Hulu etc, which are hugely valuable properties.

[ruthmarx]

The pirates remain triumphant and unshakeable. Why? Because you can go to any number of torrent sites you want right now and download anything you want, and as long as it's not too obscure it will probably not take more than 10 or 2 minutes.

Trying to shut down piracy is playing whack-a-mole with one hammer, 10,000 moles and 100,000,000 holes.

> The legal actions against free streaming sites

The only people using those are people too scared or lacking in knowledge of how to download.

[ben_w]

> The only people using those are people too scared or lacking in knowledge of how to download.

That's most people.

Also, most laws aren't perfectly enforced; part of the reason for disproportionately high penalties is to create that fear.

[ruthmarx]

Well, there's a lot of opinion on the subject but personally I'm er much against disproportionately high penalties as a deterrent because it's comes at the cost of justice to the individual.

That aside though, there isn't any chance of stopping piracy with the way the current internet is. SO all they do is spend disproportionate amounts of money, i.e. throw that money down the drain, just to take down a website here and there, and maybe, comparatively rarely, get a few people thrown in jail here and there.

That isn't deterring anything, not remotely, so it just seems like revenge.

[ben_w]

> personally I'm er much against disproportionately high penalties as a deterrent because it's comes at the cost of justice to the individual.

Likewise.

I think that as we've already developed the technological capacity for mere organised crime to build a surveillance system that would make the actual literal Stasi jealous, it's important for the legal system to catch up, and move to the combination (because neither would work in isolation) of (1) penalties that are much much smaller and directly match the offence with (2) so much surveillance that basically everything is caught.

Now, is there a way for this to avoid falling into a horrific dystopian nightmare? Because it's one thing for an internet pirate getting an illicit copy of one episode of Space 1999 getting dinged for $0.99, and quite another if the same capabilities are used to interfere with or supress political opponents a-la the Watergate scandal.

> That isn't deterring anything, not remotely, so it just seems like revenge

I know what you mean, I think that's also part of it, and that kind of attitude in parts of the legal system also interfere with the thing I've just suggested.

[appplication]

I used to pirate years ago, and have tried pirating again recently and I find it too difficult to get into any of the private communities (some of which require you to pay?). There’s some stuff outside of those communities but the quality and consistency of content is quite poor and it seems to be constantly getting taken down, and finding torrents with search engines isn’t as effective anymore.

Sometimes it does feel like the pirates did lose. At the very least it seems almost impossible to casually pirate something like you used to in the late 2000s. Now it feels like you don’t have a homelab setup with plex/jellyfin/arr/arr/arr and a network of private trackers and god knows what else the. You’re not really going to be able to find much.

It feels like piracy morphed from being like stealing a pack of gum at a gas station to being more of a time and equipment intensive hobby.

[behringer]

I think you're doing it wrong. You don't need private. You just need to find the right "release groups" and the right software to use.

[appplication]

I’m almost certain I’m doing it wrong, but that’s sort of my point. As a dev, I spend all day working with software, but then I try to do something I used to easily do as a 12 year old and it’s almost impossible to achieve an even half-decent experience without significant knowledge and research now.

It may be obvious to you what the right release groups and software are but this isn’t how it used to be. You used to be able to just search for torrents, and find high quality ones for just about anything. It’s not the case anymore. Even going to TPB and searching there feels like I’m missing something because of how poor the catalog and average health is.

[ruthmarx]

If you're out of touch, then you can monitor sites like torrenfreak that report relevant news and discussion forums that are seemingly legal like r/piracy on reddit.

> it’s almost impossible to achieve an even half-decent experience without significant knowledge and research now.

The thing you have to learn is how to find resources at short notice. That skill is adaptable and should never require significant knowledge and research. Most of what you learned as as 12 year old should still apply.

[behringer]

I definitely hear ya. Try out qbittorrent and it's built in search system for an old time kazaa feel.

And don't forget a good VPN like proton VPN

[dxbednarczyk]

>The pirates lost

I believe this is not mainly due to big companies and/or governments cracking down on piracy, but a massive loss in knowledge and shift in perspective about piracy, especially in younger generations.

It's true that piracy numbers have been declining, but this largely comes as a result of "piracy is dangerous, don't do it! you'll get viruses!!1!"

[leoedin]

I can only speak for myself - but the convenience and relatively low cost of Netflix killed piracy for me. It wasn’t really a moral reason, or a fear of prosecution. But Netflix is truly easy, and the cost isn’t significant.

Spotify did the same for music piracy. I just stopped bothering with files.

I think as others have said, the increased balkanisation of the tv streaming world might change that.

[drekipus]

Netflix has the worst quality and selection that I've seen.

I'm about to pick up piracy again so I can watch good shows that I like

[dylan604]

It does now. Back when it was the only streaming service and all of the different studio's content was on it, it was the best fight against piracy. Now that the streaming ecosystem is so fragmented requiring subscription upon subscription, Netflix' selection has atrophied to the realm of mediocrity with the occasional gem like every other studio out there.

I can absolutely see where piracy surges again as people fight back against the onslaught of YASS (yet another streaming service).

[Ekaros]

I think Gabe was entirely right, it is in the end service problem. And services can be wrong at multiple ways. For a moment video content got it right. But this was naturally unstable equilibrium. Free market capitalism is naturally greedy so everyone wants their own piece of the pie and not just give it away for someone else.

[troupo]

Pirates kinda lost when Netflix was more or less the only game in town.

Now with 10+ streaming services gatekeeping their content piracy is likely to be back on the rise

[dariosalvi78]

Agreed. It's what brought me back to piracy. I can pay one or two subscriptions max and happy to do it, but if the content I'm looking for is not there guess where I go to? And I suppose that many others do the same. In addition, many streaming websites have content that disappear for no apparent reason, or have the content only in some countries etc.

Streaming has reduced the need for piracy a lot, and that's probably a good thing, but it hasn't made it completely obsolete, because of silly models that media companies still enforce.

[zapkyeskrill]

It's what irks me, you travel outside the borders and suddenly everything stops working. Often when you need it the most. Looking at you Amazon kids plus.

[olddog2]

Plex with a couple of decent paid subscription servers ($20 a month total) is fantastic and is equivalent in usability to netflix except basically everything is available.

It is funny listening to podcasts with billionaires who have unlimited financial resources but can’t watch a show recommended to them because they haven’t downloaded or subscribed to a particular streaming service.

[LaundroMat]

It's also a question of IP valuation.

Media companies have IP as an asset on their books. Battling piracy is a means to defend the valuation they attach to that IP.

[ruthmarx]

It's wasted money though. They're literally just losing more money on whatever money they think they lost due to piracy.

[LaundroMat]

Well, maybe.

You can maintain or increase the value of your IP (and therefore tour company) by _showing_ you're investing in the protection of your IP.

After all, the value of IP in your books is subjective. That perceived value increases if you can report you've "removed thousands of links to pirate versions of our content". So in that regard, battling piracy is money well spent.

[smallnix]

Depends on where you fight it.

Got it removed from most Google page 1's? -> probably worth it

Trying to take down all torrents? -> probably not worth it

[ruthmarx]

Google's been removing torrent links for years now.

People share these links in Discord, Reddit, Telegram etc - companies are not taking them down anytime soon. It's literally an unbeatable hydra.

[immibis]

There's money and there's "money". You know when a crypto grifter mints a billion tokens, sells a thousand for $1 each and then claims to be a billionaire? Then borrows half a billion from a bank, using his almost-billion "$1" tokens as collateral? This is like that.

[dr_kiszonka]

Malicious doesn't mean copyrighted.

[ruthmarx]

True, but the submission refers to something called 'Piracy Shield', so copyrighted material seems pretty relevant.

[behringer]

I get what you're saying but I don't think it's true at all. Except for my tech friends, literally nobody I know is aware of how to pirate content if it isn't on Google or YouTube.

[johnnyanmac]

As long as the potential impact exists (and that impact can be huge), they have the time and money to do those takedowns

[ruthmarx]

I don't think the impact has ever truly been huge, although it is almost always overstated.

[johnnyanmac]

It's huge enough risk that they still choose to invest in fighting it. Overstated or not in public, that's all that matters to a business.

I don't know why when it comes to piracy that suddenly we forget that companies have entire wings (or hire entire companies) dedicated to figuring out how much piracy is occurring and what's most profitable. Will it put them out of business to ignore it? Probably not. But clearly they determined it's cheaper to fight than let it go rampant.Even if "cheaper" means "give executives and shareholders peace of mind so they throw more money at them".

And for small businesses and projects it absolutely hurts them. It's not even worth much debate there. A few thousand sales can make or break a decision to keep supporting a small business compared to going back to a normal job. But they lack the funds to fight piracy so it's a damned of you do... Situation for those people.

[ruthmarx]

> It's huge enough risk that they still choose to invest in fighting it.

It's not a risk though. Movies still make over a billion dollars regularly. All it is is greed and ignorance.

> But clearly they determined it's cheaper to fight than let it go rampant.

This is due to poor decision making, like companies like Coke continuing to pay for advertising at the scale they do.

> And for small businesses and projects it absolutely hurts them. It's not even worth much debate there.

It doesn't hurt them like you might think. It's well established at this point that pirates are the group that spends the most on content, and also frequently leads to an increase in sales.

[johnnyanmac]

>Movies still make over a billion dollars regularly

And if they make a million more fighting piracy rather than not then they'll do it. It's a risk to their expenditures.

Risk is obviously relative. Hacked movies don't kill anyone, a hacked game server of cheaters can kill the entire game.

>companies like Coke continuing to pay for advertising at the scale they do.

Honestly that's such a discussed topic with so much literature that I don't have more to add. It comes down to how fast you think people would forget about coke of they stopped, or how quickly the next generation would pick a new coke. Remeber that advertising includes making sure soda machines have coke on the front, as well as plastic cups with the same label. It's clear the Coca Cola company made it's decision there.

>It doesn't hurt them like you might think. It's well established at this point hat pirates are the group that spends the most on content, and also frequently leads to an increase in sales.

Word of mouth for product 1.0 doesn't matter if the single dev can't afford to get to product 2.0. Thars how "pirates spend the most" work Survivor bias is playing a huge role here, and most pirated services doit survive. And "we'll pay you on exposure" is just as insulting to hear from a pirate as it is from a conglomerate.

But again. Most small businesses don't have much choice because they can't chase needles in haystacks full time. Giving away your 1.0 for free works at the scale of Microsoft or Adobe where you can reel them in later (by shutting off the very piracy they benefitted from). Small businesses can't sit on rent or debt anywhere near as long.

[ruthmarx]

> And if they make a million more fighting piracy rather than not then they'll do it.

Right, but they don't. That's the point.

> It's clear the Coca Cola company made it's decision there.

The question is to what extent was that decision based on real research and data, versus being influenced by being taken out for a nice lunch by some admen and because "that's how we've always done it".

> Word of mouth for product 1.0 doesn't matter if the single dev can't afford to get to product 2.0.

Piracy isn't going to impact that reality at all.

> Thars how "pirates spend the most" work Survivor bias is playing a huge role here, and most pirated services doit survive.

There's no bias, nor is this speculation. This is a topic that has been researched for more than 20 years at this point and consistently shows that pirates spend more and lead to an increase in sales.

> And "we'll pay you on exposure" is just as insulting to hear from a pirate as it is from a conglomerate.

Only in the context of certain expectations, which people can't accept were wrong and maybe shouldn't have been ingrained into them.

People rewarding what like, especially in the context of art, is how humanity has done it for the vast majority of history. You could say, perhaps, that sharing and rewarding is more in line with human nature.

I don't really have a problem with the involuntary shareware situation pretty much every dev has been forced into. I don't believe it's ultimately harmful at all.

> Giving away your 1.0 for free works at the scale of Microsoft or Adobe where you can reel them in later (by shutting off the very piracy they benefitted from).

I mean, most software these days that home users use tends to be open source with a donation button anyway.

Any software developer heavily dependent on commercial sales of a first version software product would likely already have some sale contracts in place, because it would be foolish to take out loans or be wasting money for something that might not sell.

> Small businesses can't sit on rent or debt anywhere near as long.

Then they shouldn't have ventured into software if they were unaware of what the market is like. This has little to do with piracy, unless you assume every pirated instance would be a loss sale, which is obviously never the case.