[delroth]

> It's impressive how much internet censorship in Europe is currently being caused by this one group of extremely greedy people.

How is this greedy? It's clearly illegal behavior, both from illegal re-broadcasters and from users. Most of those re-broadcast services aren't even free either, they're directly making money from the broadcasts they're replicating.

The problem is that we still haven't figured out a way to properly enforce laws on the internet. Even for completely egregious violations there's no way to do anything once you track down the website to a bulletproof host in Russia or Ukraine or similar countries that don't cooperate. After 20 years of getting nowhere the courts have to find new and creative ways to enforce laws. I think everyone agrees that ideally this shouldn't be DNS blocks or IP blocks but rather these services getting removed from the internet and/or having to implement regional blocks to comply with laws. But there's just no way at all to make this happen right now.

[bakugo]

> How is this greedy? It's clearly illegal behavior, both from illegal re-broadcasters and from users. Most of those re-broadcast services aren't even free either, they're directly making money from the broadcasts they're replicating.

Because piracy is a service problem. Pirate streaming sites attract users because they provide a better, more convenient service than the paid options.

We've recently seen this happen in real time with TV/movie streaming services: If you simply tell users "Pay us this single, simple and affordable fee every month and we will provide you with unrestricted access to the content you want, whenever you want", the users will come. But then the investors come knocking. It's not enough that you made N money last quarter, you have to make N+1 next quater. The line has to go up. So the subscription prices go up, the number of subscriptions required to access everything goes up, you start getting ads even though your subscription was originally ad-free, and suddenly the service doesn't seem so appealing anymore.

I've heard endless stories of people having to pay for multiple subscriptions just to watch all of their favorite team's games, and still missing out on some due to whatever new money-making scheme sports companies came up with this month. It's not hard to see why so many people resort to just going online and finding a pirate stream.

[nine_k]

From the revenue extraction POV, the optimum price is such that user is unhappy to pay it, but is still paying, while raising the price even by a small amount would convince the user to cancel the service.

This means that the companies are constantly testing this edge, and check whether too many subscribers start to fall off the edge when the price rises.

[Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe]

This is only true in economics model that do not take any morality or the customer's satisfaction into account.

[nine_k]

Customer satisfaction is priced in: the customer is still satisfied enough to keep paying, by their own free will.

Entities like corporations aren't conscious and have no morality. They often discover and apply such things much like the biological evolution discovers and applies things. The closest proxy to morality that affects corporations is law; I assume here a completely legal, free interaction where the customer is not even held by an imperfect, monopoly-dominated market, like suburban internet access, or, well, sports events broadcasting.

[Vampiero]

That is literally any economic model that assumes capitalism as the underlying system.

Morality and ethics are just a way to hurt profits.

[wruza]

When being a douchebag becomes a proper economic principle.

[Vampiero]

If only someone had warned us...

[tonyedgecombe]

>Pirate streaming sites attract users because they provide a better, more convenient service than the paid options.

Pirate streaming sites attract users because they are cheaper. People are using them because they can’t or won’t pay.

[lurking_swe]

disagree. in the US my family would need to sign up to 5 different streaming platforms to be able to view everything that we watch. So that’s 5 separate accounts i need to create, 5 separate apps to install, and i need to remember which app each TV show or movie is in on my apple tv.

And then sometimes only 1 or 2 seasons of a show are available for free on amazon prime, and i need to pay PER EPISODE for the remaining content. It’s also fun when a show my wife wants to watch is not available in our region - even if we wish to pay for it.

Talk about a garbage experience!

There’s a reason _some_ people with the technical chops set up something like plex or jellyfin, and source the content (via torrents or usenet) using sonarr, radarr, etc (the “ARR” stack). For some its cost savings. Others just can’t be bothered.

We can argue about the ethics of doing so all day, but it’s truly a failure on the industries part that they make things so complicated.

[tonyedgecombe]

Which all sounds like a post hoc justification to me.

[tourmalinetaco]

Just because you lack the capacity to understand something does not mean you are morally superior for it. It means you need to re-evaluate yourself and find why you cannot understand the fallibility of service providers.

[lurking_swe]

i’m not doing it to save money. really. streaming is cheap as it is. But “content rights” are a dumpster fire. I refuse to use 5 different apps to watch tv / movies. the only one i pay for is apple tv+, because the quality is fantastic and i want to reward that.

I don’t understand why the rights holders can’t partner with apple, netflix, whoever, and offer EVERYTHING in their catalog. And just let me pay for it! In a single app. Kind of like how i used to be able to walk into a blockbuster and pick any DVD.

anyway we clearly disagree. i personally don’t feel guilty worrying about how Hollywood actors will get paid. Have a nice day. :)

[Mindwipe]

This is bollocks.

Netflix gained popularity because they sold their service artificially cheap at a loss for many years to build market share and Kill off their competition, and that's it.

[rstuart4133]

Can you point to the year Netflix made a loss for me? I don't see one in the last 12 years.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NFLX/netflix/gross...

[Mindwipe]

That's because they don't declare taking out long term bonds as part of their p/e calculations, just the cost of servicing the loan.

Netflix were borrowing circa $4 billion dollars a year to license content until two years ago. There's nothing wrong with that, but you aren't making a genuine profit.

[TeMPOraL]

> How is this greedy? It's clearly illegal behavior, both from illegal re-broadcasters and from users. Most of those re-broadcast services aren't even free either, they're directly making money from the broadcasts they're replicating.

It's both. The re-broadcasters may be violating the laws and laws themselves could be unjust, nonsensical, yet existing and enforced because of a group of greedy benefactors actively keeping them that way.

[immibis]

You were a significant contributor to a DMCA circumvention measure for playing pirated Nintendo games. What changed since then?

[AdrianB1]

So basically the problem is reduced to "how can Italy fight against a crime happening somewhere in Russia or Ukraine"? Imagine there is a TV broadcast from Russia, how can Italy forbid it? They can definitely disrupt it (by electronic jamming), but not forbit it. Similar to Internet, the difference is the medium of transmission, not the facts of the matter.

In Communist times in my country I was watching cartoons broadcasted from the neighboring country. Adults were watching adult content at night from the same source. There was no way to stop that.