[shirro]

There are so many advantages to turning off and disconnecting these days. Avoiding TOS is just a small part.

There are too many demands on our attention and our wallets and most of us aren't getting more money or time. I cancelled all the family's streaming services in 2025. Everyone adapted. It turns out a lot of things we are told we need, we really don't. People lived without them as recently as a few years ago. A lot of the novelty of mobile, streaming, social media and weird tech nobody needs has worn off and the value has been eroded. There are so many better things to do and experience and you don't need to hand over your privacy or sign your soul away.

[tzs]

> It turns out a lot of things we are told we need, we really don't. People lived without them as recently as a few years ago.

It also often turns out that when some new way comes along to do something that people like to do, the ways they used to do those things go away. If you don't like the new way you can't go back to how it used to be done.

The last physical media video rental store within a reasonable drive of me closed around 8 years ago. Redbox went away in 2024. There is still rental by mail, but that is slow.

Those who liked being able to be able to rent a movie without planning days ahead are stuck with streaming now.

Another example is cell phones. It used to be that there were pay phones all over the place. Nearly every public place had a payphone nearby. In most cities there was a good chance there was a street payphone on every block, and nearly every restaurant and gas station had one. On freeways there were call boxes to summon help.

Pay phones peaked in the US in 1995. When cell phones went mainstream in the early to mid 2000s, pay phones rapidly went away, and in about 10 years were almost all gone. Around 90% of freeway call boxes also disappeared. They now are mostly only in areas with poor cellular coverage.

If you want to be able to make calls while out and about now doing it the way it was done before cell phones quite likely is not feasible.

[jgwil2]

> Those who liked being able to be able to rent a movie without planning days ahead are stuck with streaming now.

Just want to point out that public libraries often have great DVD collections (also music, games, and more) and are often underutilized. Definitely still a viable way to watch a movie for many folks.

[darkhorse222]

Perhaps this makes a very big difference to you, but I often have to remind myself that iTunes movie rentals are very much alive and function just as they do some ten years ago. No subscription required. Not physical, sure, but a normal rental experience.

Though I do miss old Netflix. That was fun.

[TremendousJudge]

it's interesting that if you want to watch a movie, torrenting is pretty much the same it was 20 years ago. at this point I torrent movies that are on Netflix (that I have a subscription for) simply because it gets me a better bitrate much more reliably.

[gosub100]

It's way better today thanks to advancements in video codecs.

[pests]

While not exactly the same as freeway call boxes... pretty much every state requires any business that are listed on the food/gas/hotel/recreation signs for off ramps to have a free phone for public use.

[everdrive]

Every single ToS is written to benefit the company, and when necessary, harm the consumer. The answer is to enter into as few service contracts as possible. Use open source software. Control when your software updates. Really, never use the cloud version of anything whatsoever except where unavoidable. (eg: email and such)

They feel like the legal equivalent of Calvin Ball. So long as you just stash it in a ToS, you can apply any stupid rule your lawyers can imagine.

[throwaway27448]

> The answer is to enter into as few service contracts as possible

Even the idea that TOS qualifies as accepting a contract makes a farce of the entire concept of contract law.

[killbot5000]

Right? A “contract” that only one party needs to abide by is not a contract… it’s an abusive relationship.

[palmotea]

> Right? A “contract” that only one party needs to abide by is not a contract… it’s an abusive relationship.

I think you're absolutely right morally, but I think you've made a pretty important technical error: they're not abusive because "only one party needs to abide...by the contract", they're abusive because only one party can unilaterally change the deal. The companies that make these "contracts" can actually follow them, but since they can change them at a whim, it only really binds the other party.

[wat10000]

There are plenty of other abusive aspects besides the fact that they can be changed unilaterally.

What I really don't understand is how it's supposed to be a fundamental part of contract law that there's a "meeting of the minds" where both parties agree to the same thing, and there are these click-through agreements that nobody reads, and everybody knows that nobody reads them, but they're still enforceable. I get why there needs to be a general presumption that you've actually read a contract that you've signed, otherwise you'd be flooded with people saying "actually I didn't read that" to get out of contracts they don't like anymore. But that presumption doesn't make any sense when one party doesn't read the contract, the other party knows nobody reads it, and everybody knows nobody reads it, but we all just sort of pretend.

[falcor84]

I particularly love the pretend play of software forcing you to scroll the dozens of pages of contract text all the way to the bottom before the Accept button is enabled. Because obviously the reason I didn't read through the entirety of these eulas before is because I wasn't sure of how scrolling works.

[pocksuppet]

This is true and for this reason sometimes TOS are not very effective in court.

[_alternator_]

Wonder how a court would treat it if users just reply to the email updating the terms of service on our behalf and claiming that they have accepted the terms by not doing anything. (Eg add stringent PII protection, no tracking requirements…)

My guess is that you would probably get kicked off the service if anyone reads your TOS, so make sure to add onerous cancellation charges due to the user in your updated TOS.

[kmoser]

In the US at least, the courts would probably side with the big corporation, since doing so seems to be the legal precedent.

[sowbug]

I could imagine an AI sidekick that does all this work for you, and always has the last word because it'll never give up.

A place like Meta or Microsoft would tell you to pound sand, but an aligned army of collective-bargaining agents might succeed in removing a specific term from a smaller service.

[thephyber]

If the company violates their ToS, you can take them to court (or arbitration).

It is bi-directionally enforced contract, just not a symmetrically beneficial one.

[thayne]

But generally the ToS has few, if any, requirements for the company. Usually the ToS is just a list of demands they make of the user in exchange for the service. But the company usually reserves the right to terminate service for any reason, as well as change the serice in any way they want, and change the terms of the "contract" at any time.

[throwaway27448]

Ok that's no way to build a functional society, though. Humans are certainly not the entities in this conflict with the time or resources to go to court.

[avs733]

>If the company violates their ToS, you can take them to court (or arbitration).

This is my favorite...how exactly can I monitor compliance? No evidence of non-compliance - get tossed out of court. No court order for discovery - no ability to monitor/gather evidence compliance.

The idea that this is even a potential for mutuallity on a TOS is just farcical.

[parineum]

The benefit is the product. If the TOS is onerous, you can not use the product.

[mox1]

What happens when Ford updates the ToS on my vehicle (via an OTA update) and I cannot see the backup camera until I "accept"?

(Insert about 1000 other examples of very awkward ToS updates)

[gopher_space]

So just endless account churn?

[throwaway27448]

Good luck with that, buddy. Let's see what kind of shithole society you build with this sort of worldview

[anonym29]

You think that's bad? Imagine being unironically held accountable to the unenumerated terms of a "social contract" that you never even signed or had a right to refuse in the first place.

[xnyan]

The difference is that a social contract is a concept and not literal contract.

The actual reality behind "the social contract" is simply that people have the capability to act in ways that can and do affect other people. Because of this, most people find that it's beneficial to moderate our actions in relation to other people based on their preferences.

[anonym29]

I'm referring to very real obligations that we are all held to under the justification of "the social contract" such as taxation and being drafted into military service, not social niceties.

We are held to these obligations as seriously and as legally as we are held to real contracts, but unlike the bedrock that constitutes the basis for the legitimacy of all real contracts, these obligations are imposed upon us with no opportunity for consideration, consent, or rejection.

[Leno1225]

That’s not the social contract, that’s the dual contracts of residency (protection from fellow residents) and citizenship (protection from foreign elements). You have the opportunity of consent; on your majority you can leave the country for another that’ll have you. There’s a cost to it, but it’s fairly minimal in most places.

[pocksuppet]

That's not the social contract. That's the government trying to trick you into thinking bombing Iran is part of the social contract.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>The answer is to enter into as few service contracts as possible.

Any contract where the other party performs so little seeking of my agreement (none at all really) that no representative talks to me in person or even electronically in an individual capacity, where no one witnesses me put my mark on the paper or hears by verbal assent, is in fact no contract at all. Despite what the courts may say. Should they say otherwise, they're wholly illegitimate.

That any of you have let something else stand as the norm is bizarre and alarming. Contracts require explicit, sought agreement, by their very definition. Nothing can be implied. If their business model relies on implicit agreement because anything else would be too difficult, then they simply shouldn't be allowed to remain in business.

[dsr_]

READ CAREFULLY. YOU HAVE ALREADY AGREED TO THIS.

1. By reading the message that referred you to this page ("randomstring.org/~dsr/eula.html") you agree, on behalf of yourself and your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that you believe I have entered into with you or your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges.

2. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

[ByThyGrace]

I wonder if appending something like this to the user agent string could work in court as a justification.

"Your Honour, the plaintiff's webserver engine thoroughly accepted my client's cookie which expressly stated the waiver of terms brought forward, and continued to serve requested content instead of stopping or refusing further interactions."

[seabass-labrax]

Isn't that a bit extreme? As a counterpoint, I find it useful to be able to pay for a train journey by tapping my card on an electronic reader - no representative of the company is there or otherwise witnesses me doing so - but I have entered into a contract whereby I am entitled to travel to a distant location. And I do want it to be a contract, because the transport company agrees to get me to my destination somehow even if the trains are cancelled. Perhaps the conditions of carriage may be somehow unsatisfactory to me, but the way in which I enter into the contract is almost entirely unrelated.

[rlpb]

There is well established case law on the contract that forms when you buy something from a store (say with cash). There is a contract, on implied terms . I think what we’re talking about here is entering into a contract (or not) on explicit terms dictated by one party where the other party has not explicitly considered them and barely given the opportunity to do so if at all. I don’t think anybody is denying the ability of contracts coming into existence on implied terms.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>but I have entered into a contract whereby I am entitled to travel to a distant location. I'm not sure why you drape this in the clothing of "legal contract". If the train fails to take you to your destination, they certainly aren't in breach. It seems really one-sided. Why do they need it to be a contract? Will you come and claw back the fare from them with them having no legal recourse?

[tialaramex]

In the UK, where I live, it's completely usual to treat this as a contractual obligation. If there's a problem which means the train can't take you there, the operating company will do everything reasonable to achieve the offered service, exactly because otherwise they'd be in breach.

Example: there are a series of scheduled trains from London (St Pancras) to Nottingham. One day maintenance works meant the line would partly close overnight and the last train would run very slow. Since tickets were already sold the company intended to get passengers to Nottingham by Taxi, reasoning that few would take this already slow train and so a coach hire or other arrangement weren't cost effective.

Unfortunately an unavoidable incident elsewhere meant instead of a half dozen sleepy passengers arriving at the blocked line and being allocated a few taxis, hundreds of us turned up on that last train. The employee paid to order taxis made a few calls and was told too bad, the company will just have to eat the cost of hundreds of taxi fares, call all the city's taxi firms.

[rootusrootus]

Taxis for a 2+ hour drive? That's wild. In the US when this happens they just charter a bus or three.

[masfuerte]

That's a statutory obligation. It works for the consumer because it's not the rail company that gets to choose the terms.

[tsimionescu]

This is somewhat fair, but only as long as you agree that you then have no right to use these services.

I think there is a big difference between the EULA that comes attached to a product you've already paid for, that represents additional terms to what you had already agreed to when paying, and the T&C of a free service or a subscription, presented before payment.

You can't seriously claim that you have a right to use, say, YouTube without any restriction whatsoever. It is a private service, and you can either use it under the terms and conditions that its private owner establishes, or you can avoid using it at all.

[fc417fc802]

> You can't seriously claim that you have a right to use, say, YouTube without any restriction whatsoever.

I think it would be reasonable for the regulator to establish hard limits on what any such restrictions are permitted to entail.

You know, basic consumer protection laws.

[tsimionescu]

Absolutely, but that's a completely different claim than what GP was saying. They were saying that there is no binding agreement that you enter to just by using a product that has T&Cs shown on the screen.

[malfist]

> Despite what the courts may say

When the rubber meets the road, what the courts say is all that matters.

[tialaramex]

The reason for that phrase is that no, Mother Nature's laws are all that matters, unlike our puny laws, hers are inherent properties of the universe, no need for enforcement because you literally can't break them. A court can insist that up is down, but it ain't.

[malfist]

Where, pray tell, do physical laws of nature come into relevance in a discussion about Terms and Agreements?

[fc417fc802]

They come into relevance about the time the phrase "despite what the courts may say" was uttered. The intent behind the phrase "you can pry it from my cold dead hands" is roughly the same.

Of course I think that armed revolution over ToS is utterly laughable. But I'm merely answering your question.

For an example of a situation the phase actually applies to, consider "despite what the courts may say we are removing the flock cameras".

[kwar13]

> Every single ToS is written to benefit the company, and when necessary, harm the consumer.

If only more people actually understood that.

[matheusmoreira]

Let's make it easy for everyone. Here are the terms of pretty much every legal document people scroll through without reading:

> you own nothing

> the company owns everything

> you have no rights

> you promise not to try and exercise any right you think you have

> if you ever convince yourself that you actually do have rights, you agree to binding arbitration with the firm we pay

> you cannot do anything the company doesn't like

> the company can do literally anything it wants whether you like it or not

> the company is not responsible for anything, ever

> the company makes absolutely no guarantees about literally anything

> in case of any damages it's exclusively your fault and you agree to indemnify us in all possible circumstances

[Forgeties79]

I canceled all of our subscriptions about two years ago and set up a Plex server. I don’t love the direction Plex is going in so I’m teeing up to flip to Jellyfin, but still, it has been so much better than dealing with all of these companies and nonsense.

I feel like we can’t even call it “advertising“ anymore. It’s such a misnomer. It’s basically data fracking and psychological warfare to make us all into little addicts. This whole industry built around chasing “the attention economy” is a social blight.

[Imustaskforhelp]

Jellyfin is nice but I could never understand how to setup when all I wanted was to watch videos from server for example.

So I used copyparty[0] and used VLC and set a username and password.

I recommend copyparty if you just want something quick and easy actually. Just try it out on cheap VPS and just run it and forget it.

https://github.com/9001/copyparty

[RiverCrochet]

Jellyfin isn't a simple viewer over a filesystem, you have to make a library and give it folders to ingest. It enforces an artist-album-track structure of media, so if you don't like that structure you'll be fighting Jellyfin more than using it.

[Forgeties79]

The big thing is being able to stream outside of my home network. Running stuff locally is easy enough with basically any system luckily

[Imustaskforhelp]

Yes but you can actually have Copyparty run as a server similar to Jellyfin and have the same thing too?

Am I missing something that I am not looking at? But won't jellyfin have the same issue, I think that plex has servers that you can connect from outside but the GP wanted to move to jellyfin and I was talking about that.

And, you can even have plex like thing by just having Cloudflare Tunnels/Tailscale + Copyparty too.

[dpoloncsak]

Similar boat...I'd also like to swap off Plex but a few of my less techie friends use it and I'm worried about the compatibility/ease of setup of Jellyfin on their devices.

Thought about running both in parallel but that seems like a waste. Think I just need a migration day eventually

[devilbunny]

I've never run Plex, or Jellyfin for that matter. There's a video share on my NAS.

I point Infuse on Apple TV 4K's at it. It works, and cleanly.

Downsides: you have to pay for Infuse Pro to play some formats and deal with some audio codecs. It's IIRC $17 for a year, though, so pretty reasonable for continued development. Your non-technical friends and family can't do the initial setup themselves (it's shared over Tailscale, they can all use the same limited account on your plan), but anyone I'm going to let do this can ship me their Apple TV 4K and let me set it up for them.

[darkhorse222]

It's just weird that it's this complicated. We should get a static IP from our DNS. We should use standard open source streaming conversion mechanisms. It should go over basic video codecs.

Lately I've been working towards just using a webserver to host video files. Sure, it's not adaptive, but for goodness sakes it's simple.

[devilbunny]

Well, my ISP doesn't support IPv6 for home use, at all. My IPv4 is essentially static - I can't recall the last time it changed - but while Tailscale is a single point of failure for my home network security, it's also one that I can expect to be updated faster than practically any other package.

VLC will play anything I throw at it, but it's not going to go and fetch all the metadata for me and present it in a nice way to the non-technically-oriented users around.

[TremendousJudge]

yeah I'm on the same boat. I just have an old laptop hooked up to the tv, which can access a shared folder on my main computer that has all the media. I control it with a wireless mouse, and get an actual fast UI with a web browser instead of the usability nightmare that is a smart tv UI. this is all Windows though, I guess it's possible to have Linux access a Windows shared folder, I've been meaning to look into it for a while

[devilbunny]

> I guess it's possible to have Linux access a Windows shared folder

It is, and while it's not hard, this was really my first experience running Linux in a long while, and boy do I now understand why people did not like systemd when it came out. It's not bad, per se, but it's not just "stick a line in /etc/fstab". However, even Copilot can put together a couple of scripts for you.

[bombcar]

Jellyfin has been fine "around the house" but I don't know about remote access as I've not needed it.

Jellyfin + Infuse + AppleTV is basically bulletproof; however Swiftfin as a client has been working fine.

[Forgeties79]

Yeah nothing is as turnkey as plex, hard to give that up if you’re running a little streaming service for friends and family haha

[cityzen]

I had a lot of issues with plex on Apple TV and switched to Infuse. I haven’t tried jellyfin but figured I would mention it.

[Forgeties79]

Huh that’s surprising. So fer Plex has run on everything I’ve ever encountered

[tedggh]

As an avid reader and outdoors enthusiast, I feel there’s a lot of value on “wasting” time with a movie or limited series.

Absolutely, there are so many better things to do and experience than watching TV, but no one should be stressing out about maximizing their time doing them.

In fact, going against that mindset once in a while, and allowing yourself to not do the thing you think you should be doing, is an experience by itself.

Also, it doesn’t need to be a complete waste of time. If you like history or art, there’s a lot of content both as fiction and non fiction that you would find intellectually stimulating (I highly recommend Criterion for this)

One cold November night my wife picked a movie called Babette's Feast. I absolutely loved the photography. I did some research and found it was inspired by Danish painter Hammershoi, which I never heard of. For Christmas, my wife gave me a beautifully printed, limited edition of his work by the Jacquemart museum in Paris.

Later this year we plan to make a stop in Copenhagen on our way to Sweden to visit friends, so we can see Hammershoi work at the museums.

[ericmcer]

Seriously you can have a very pure experience interacting with media. I did a mushroom trip ~5 years ago and was having a not great time walking around outside. Cars, other people, sun, bugs etc. were all not sitting right. I went home and watched "Life in Colour", an Attenborough documentary about amazing uses of color in animals. It was a top experience and I still remember scenes from it years later.

Anyway don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and all that, there is a reason we developed digital entertainment.

[officeplant]

Drugs and Attenborough night is basically my university experience. Fantastic combo.

[darkhorse222]

Wasted time should not be defined as unproductive time, it should be time you did not experience, time you were completely clocked out, not even enjoyed, not relaxed or relished. Wasted. It is a subtle difference but critical to remember if you want to reclaim your time rather than claiming it for capitalism.

[hirvi74]

> allowing yourself to not do the thing you think you should be doing, is an experience by itself.

In my life, I have a term for that. It's called everyday.

[dfxm12]

Counterpoint: fighting for consumer protections is a fight worth not avoiding. Interacting with some of these systems is simply unavoidable (think payment systems, health care portals, email, etc.) & larger corporations already enjoy a huge power imbalance in this relationship. We will just get run over further if we hide from it.

[juleiie]

I don’t live in US or five eyes so I pirate all the stuff basically Scot free.

I understand that it’s not so easy for Americans whose internet activity is constantly scrutinized. I’ve had the privilege of choosing exactly who and what I pay.

I usually don’t subscribe to any streaming service, but when I do choose to pay for something, my money goes to smaller entities that I don’t actively want to see fail.

In my book, none of the Hollywood deserves a single cent. It’s an amazing feeling to be in the power to dictate this.

[WarmWash]

>In my book, none of the Hollywood deserves a single cent. It’s an amazing feeling to be in the power to dictate this.

Then you don't consume it...you boycott it. Freeloading on honest consumers isn't some kind of moral high ground. If Hollywood is corrupt and full of shitheads, letting someone else pay for your ticket doesn't make you a morally pure viewer.

It's fine if you just own that you don't want to pay for what you consume. But don't try and paint yourself like some kind of saint, lol

[chrischen]

The whole concept of intellectual property rights is a social and legal construct designed to promote innovation in an economy. If you don't care about that, then there really isn't any moral or immoral aspect to it. The immorality of it and associating it with stealing was just MPAA propaganda to try to shame people into paying for stuff.

If I found some DVD lying on the ground and watched it and I didn't pay for it, it's really up to me to decide if I want to pay the creator so they can continue to produce content. If I don't pay then obviously it doesn't help them produce more content... but the consumption of the content itself neither felt nor heard by the creators.

[WarmWash]

The bedrock of the argument is that you give for what you take. This is very fundamental, not just some capitalist drivel. You'd be hard pressed to find a single level headed individual who could form a coherent argument against it (generally speaking, not just protracted edge cases). Even your most hippie communist commune requires giving in order to receive.

People act (many even think) like this doesn't apply to digital goods, since copying has no material cost. But producing that digital good costs time and money (anyone on HN care to disagree?). So then you have to decide who are the ones who pay and who are the ones who get free copies. Conveniently, everyone who is getting a free copy thinks that they have a rightful stake to it for free. And because nothing is actually free (see the first line), the ones paying are the ones also covering the cost for those who get is free.

I wouldn't expect teenagers to grasp this, after all we were the teenagers who devised this "piracy as a moral crusade" back in the 90's/00's (how convenient that a side effect of this moral crusade was all the free content your dead broke ass could imagine). But now, if you are in your 30's or older and still haven't logic'ed this out, it's time to catch up.

[ndriscoll]

Simple: people who want it to exist can fund its creation. People who are indifferent or don't want it to exist can choose not to, and once it exists, there's obviously no moral question either way. We already have lifetimes of media available. It costs nothing to replicate infinitely. Do we need to specifically incentivize more?

I think the world would also be a lot better off if software could all be freely distributed and if warranty law required software sales to come with source as well. If you need the computer to do something, you pay a programmer to make it so. You or that programmer can then share the solution with others. The goal is to solve more problems and build a wealthier society for our children, not create rent extraction machines.

Likewise with things like the textbook racket. The government should just commission updates for k-12 books (including AP, so basic uni) every ~15 years or so. Most of this stuff is not changing. It should be "done".

[47282847]

> Even your most hippie communist commune requires giving in order to receive.

I was born into a hippie commune/network and the basic premise was that everybody gives voluntarily by mere existence and free desire to do so, and that whatever ends up being given can be taken/distributed. There was no “requirement to give” since what you provide often cannot even be identified or accounted for (and there was explicitly no interest in doing that). Maybe you’re a good listener, or good in helping with the kids. And so on. Actually, I know plenty of open communities that more or less work that way. In the US, they generally need a bit more safeguards against random external freeloaders (hurt people not familiar with community care) than in Europe but they exist just fine.

Apart from commune experiences: I do believe every human has a deep-seated desire and need to contribute positively and “give back” to their social environment. You don’t need to be forced or nudged to do it; you get sick/depressed if you’re not allowed to bring your talent to the table. (I understand that sometimes there’s too much pain/hurt on the surface that needs recognition before people can return to more natural ways of “giving back”; but more often than not, it is related to the desire to give but being rejected than any taking.)

And more back to your point: I disagree with the notion that every giving and taking is (or needs to be) a distinct and direct transaction. Even in capitalism. The money/time/talent a person “saves” on “freeloading” will be “spent”/given back elsewhere.

[grep_name]

> But producing that digital good costs time and money (anyone on HN care to disagree?)

Not disagree, but it is more nuanced than this I think. I spend a fair amount of money going to movie theaters, usually independent movie theaters but sometimes big ones, to see new releases. As I understand it, the production and funding model relies almost entirely on the box office numbers. I think when dealing with older releases, the waters are much murkier.

I end up seeing new things in person and paying a huge premium to do so. I won't pretend I do it for moral reasons or even strictly to support the creators (although I do it in part to support the independent theater itself). It does keep me from feeling bad for also running a media server, on which maybe 1% of the content is newer than 5 years old, though.

I have almost never bought a physical copy of a movie -- and in my mind the IP holders are usually terrible curators of their own content. Physical media is provided in a horribly limited and anti-consumer format, tied to ephemeral standards and technology and often embedded with advertisements and few subtitle options. Digital products are, somehow, worse. Tied to a walled garden, with no true 'ownership', sometimes platforms like Amazon video will even make their own edits to movies, removing crucial parts for no apparent reason (the wicker man, avatar) and without marking it as abridged. They often make decisions that scream 'cash grab' (i.e. years ago when TNG came on netflix, I went to stream it and was shocked at the potato quality. Later re-releases were released in an un-cropped widescreen that included things like boom mikes because of the original intended aspect ratio of the show.) DRM is a nightmare. The product I want -- a file containing the media and only the media, which I can view however I want without logging into anybody's servers -- does not exist. And if it did exist, well, I do also take issue with paying full price for a file of a 40 year old movie, for example. I know there are costs associated with remasters, etc, but most of these are not remasters (and those costs are also much much lower than outright movie production).

A notable exception is outfits like Vinagar Syndrome, who as a labor of love dig up lost media and often re-cut or remaster / distribute it, and due to the low scale and lack of demand likely do not make much if any profit off it. I often do see showings of Vinegar Syndrome releases at my indie theater though or rent them from the one remaining video rental place (I'm unsure whether or not that benefits the production company).

It probably gets more hairy for people who watch a lot of new serialized media, which I do not.

I kind of wish people would think critically about the gradient of potential consumption habits when making their media choices rather than separating into pro / anti piracy stances, because it's an interesting and multi-faceted topic with a lot of considerations to be made.

[ndriscoll]

I don't consume it because it's crap, but IMO someone who doesn't give money to Disney (a company that pushes gambling on people and is a major reason our copyright laws are broken in the first place) is more moral than someone who does, and the downloading itself is amoral. So if you're going to watch it, might as well pirate.

[3form]

>But don't try and paint yourself like some kind of saint, lol

They didn't do that. Listed considerations were purely practical.

[dpoloncsak]

Any $10/mo VPN solves this, and probably advertises it as a selling point.

Of course, then you're spending $10 to save $10....

I have the whole *arr stack setup with Plex running in the US just fine, but that's for sure not for everyone and was a few headaches to get up and running

[gruez]

>Of course, then you're spending $10 to save $10....

Most VPN subscriptions are around $5, whereas netflix with ads costs $8, and $18 without ads. Even at $18 though, it's still not 4K, whereas you can easily pirate 4K versions with your VPN subscription.

[encom]

Netflix won't even sell me 4K content at any price, because don't use any of their approved spyware operating systems. But the Torrent Store will.

[dpoloncsak]

Appreciate the reality check. Mullvad has been a bill I don't think about twice when it comes around, and I cancelled streaming services years ago.

To your point though, as I'm running my plex server on an old ~midrange laptop, 4K is pretty rough for me to stream as well. I'm sure better hardware fixes this, but that's higher cost. YMMV based on what hardware you have on hand to repurpose

[gruez]

>To your point though, as I'm running my plex server on an old ~midrange laptop, 4K is pretty rough for me to stream as well.

Unless you're doing reencodes processing power shouldn't matter. You can serve 4K video on a 2010s router if you wanted to. If you're doing reencodes, why bother? Download an encode that's appropriate for how you're watching it. 4K for the big screen and 1080p for mobile. Skip reencoding altogether.

[dpoloncsak]

Huh...maybe I'm just doing something wrong then. I'll re-examine tonight, thanks for the tip!

[Forgeties79]

Plex is as turnkey as it gets and manually adding content isn't that bad tbh.

[quickthrowman]

Piracy is dead simple these days. Search for “[media name] free streaming” on Yandex and you get a high quality stream with subtitles and multiple audio choices. This works for most stuff, though not everything is available this way.

[dfc]

If you think Hollywood content is worthless why bother pirating it at all? It seems like you would just not consume it.

[juleiie]

I don’t think it’s totally worthless. I think people who make it, producers, are extremely corrupted friends of Jeffrey Epstein with each one sooner or later turning out to be a sex offender.

There is a difference.

If you have any sort of conscience you simply don’t want to fund these people. Don’t enable them. Let it wither. Nothing of particular value will be lost.

[bombcar]

You let it wither by not consuming it at all; saying "At least I didn't pay for the corrupt sex-propaganda" isn't really an amazing high-ground.

[juleiie]

I actively derive pleasure from stealing it and watching for completely free.

[gruez]

>I think people who make it, producers, are extremely corrupted friends of Jeffrey Epstein with each one sooner or later turning out to be a sex offender.

This applies to everything that comes out of Hollywood?

[juleiie]

This applies to every big corpo that exists and especially degenerate cesspit of Hollywood.

Big corporation - just inhumane greed beyond mortal comprehension.

Holywood - not only greed but also complete moral decay

It would even apply twice if it could but you cannot really steal a movie twice. Unfortunately.

[parineum]

These greedy, inhumane and morally decayed people produce content that you enjoy consuming after stealing. What does that say about you?

[jmye]

> Don’t enable them. Let it wither.

Then why consume the stuff at all? What a weird stance. "They're all vile and evil, but I like watching shows, so whatever, tee hee - piracy is morally good now as long as I have this invented fiction in my head!"

[05]

Surely even the poorest of Americans can pay a couple bux a month for a seedbox?

[arvid-lind]

The way I see it, you can get a top tier VPN (mullvad) and a seedbox for the cost of one streaming service per month.

[juleiie]

This is a good question. If it is so cheap and easy then why not? I think it is a matter of american government and corporate terror tactic.

They make these few rare cases when they catch somebody so loud and showy that the rest of the flock prefers to sign all the TOS and don’t have this additional worry. It is a success story of manipulative scare techniques that copyright corpos mastered.

Most people prefer to be civilians than to be anti corporate combatants, even if it is perfectly safe in practice. This is normal.

[dfedbeef]

Surely these tent dwellers have a few dollars a month for streaming content

[blharr]

Sure, but even the specific case isn't about TOS within the limits of screen time or online browsing. It's about tracking your physical location via Tile trackers. Sure, you can get off streaming services, but you're still signing a TOS or waiver by using any service. Meta/Google/etc has a profile on you even if you've never logged in based on others sharing their contacts and pictures that may include you.

[gruez]

>It's about tracking your physical location via Tile trackers.

1. If the complaint is about non-consensual tracking, using a gadget that's specifically designed and advertised for tracking, and that you have to specifically go out and buy and put on your body is a terrible example.

2. Tile trackers have more or less been replaced with airtags and whatever google's equivalent is, which is designed in such a way that prevents companies from knowing its actual location.

[blharr]

It's a completely grotesque point you've got. Tiles are advertised as used for personally tracking your devices. To the average person its the same technology as a Bluetooth earbud. Not a device for tracking at a central whatever 100 companies want that data.

And for 2... thats completely irrelevant. "More or less"? So... a hundred of millions of tiles still out there is "more or less"?

[KellyCriterion]

The only reason why I bought a smartphone (first time!) in 2013 was because everyone aronud me had one and they were asking for WhatsApp - util then I was fine with my 4-color-crap phone :-D (and I didnt even know what WhatsApp was)

[testing22321]

I don’t have one.

Sure it’s inconvenient from time to time, but the positives far outweigh the negatives.

[larodi]

This news came as I was clicking unsubscribe to all the weird mails that somehow keep piling up in my inbox, with LinkedIN being the leader, and then some by bandcamp. More than ever I enjoy turning off the mobile data while on the go.

Very soon I'll do another round terminating most subscriptions, as Goog showed me what happens otherwise - it still owes me these 500$ that somehow miraculously flew out of my ads account when a campaign decided to suddenly come to live and start converting into obsolete project like 2 months after its designated final date. Nobody ever came back to my complaints.

[ericmcer]

Did you set up any alternatives?

I have a todo to take a day and hook my external SSDs filled with movies/shows up to a plex server, then shutdown all my streaming services.

[dugidugout]

[Jellyfin](https://jellyfin.org/) is a great alternative to Plex if you haven't taken a look!

[LiquidSky]

>Everyone adapted.

I like the phrasing of this because it tells us nothing of whether your family liked the change (or felt better off with it) or not. You can adapt to a lot.

[javier2]

Is there some place I can still buy TV shows or movies? Preferably DRM free

[c0balt]

You can try to buy physical media. A surprising amount of shows and movies are still published as Blu-rays.

The release there is usually a bit delayed to streaming releases though and will set you back more if you buy it new. The used market can be your friend here, especially for older media. IME local libraries might also have quite a good offering depending on their funding and priorities.

The clear downside here is that you can't really follow along with others though (if that's your jam) as these releases are mostly in-full and not per-episode.

The only DRM-free video TV media sources are usually non-legitimate (torrents etc.). Many shows/movies are also interestingly ripped from streaming sites first though. You can of course legally format shift your physical media for private use to non-DRMed files depending on your region.

[pocksuppet]

Doubtful, but there are [redacted to comply with the rules]

[javier2]

the what?

[datsci_est_2015]

This ruling taken in conjunction with “in the future you will own nothing, and you will be happy” paints quite the dystopian picture where not even “turning off and disconnecting” will save you.

[mghackerlady]

the way we're headed (and largely already are) "turning off and disconnecting" will be a privilege of the rich and dream of the stubborn

[datsci_est_2015]

Indeed. “Privilege of the rich” could be the subtitle for the biography of America. Perhaps founded on the basis of rights for all men, but always denying or chipping away at those rights for the classes of labor.

I’m always cheering for the farmers who are taking on John Deere for the right to repair.