[thomasmarton]

Piracy is justified especially when it comes to movies!

If I am buying a DVD, I own that copy regardless of the studio and the distributor being in legal trouble or not. If I "buy" or "purchase" something online, I expect the same thing.

I'm not always a fan of the EU over-regulating some things but I feel like they should start fining companies who want to re-define the meaning of the word purchase

[gherkinnn]

> If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-jame...

[0x0000000]

Piracy isn't stealing regardless of whether or not buying is owning.

[Manuel_D]

Correct: it's copyright infringement, not theft.

[danpalmer]

Which is on the side of the distributor, not the end recipient.

[Manuel_D]

For streaming yes, but downloads are still copyright infringement on the part of the downloader. An unauthorized copy is being made on the recipient's machine. It's true that copyright holders rarely pursue cases against individuals, and tend to focus on distributors though.

[VohuMana]

Have there been any cases since the Meta ruling with the books they torrented? If I understood it right they argued and won that they didn’t seed any of the torrents so is fair use and the judge agreed. That case made it seem like as long as you don’t seed/distribute the copyrighted material then it is legal

[Manuel_D]

It's quite clearly explained on the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_aspects_of_file_sharing

> In the case of file sharing networks, companies claim that peer-to-peer file sharing enables the violation of their copyrights. File sharing allows any file to be reproduced and redistributed indefinitely. Therefore, the reasoning is that if a copyrighted work is on a file sharing network, whoever uploaded or downloaded the file is liable for violating the copyright because they are reproducing the work without the authorization of the copyright holder or the law.

Both uploading and downloading is a violation. All the major cases are against distributors, because those are the big fish. But rights holders have gone after individuals: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/lit...

[pseudohadamard]

> PlayStation Store users who bought movies

"PlayStation Store users who bought a limited license to play a movie on approved devices and approved displays, revocable at any moment with no or minimal notice".

There, FTFY.

[nerdsniper]

Jellyfin + Jellyseer + PassThePopcorn has served me and my friends/family well. I pay $50/mo now for a seedbox with 16TB but it serves 20 people. I would self-host for $0/month but my current apartment only has Xfinity, not AT&T and the upload isn’t enough to self-host.

It’s less about the money and more about:

1) Having a single place to go for any TV show or movie. I found it very frustrating trying to figure out what service had which show - sometimes none of them have it (a few things are still not streamable at all - e.g. “Sharky and George”)

2) Knowing that my streaming service isn’t downgrading the video quality. Even my lay friends notice the picture quality improvement vs Amazon / Hulu etc.

3) Jellyseer lets my friends request media that gets auto-downloaded. So it’s a curated list of content which helps me discover high quality stuff to watch.

[shepherdjerred]

How did you get a private tracker?

[jamesponddotco]

Personally, I got my first invite by signing up for a seedbox accepted by the tracker. Then I got invites to other trackers from the same group by being a good seeder.

[throw2ih020]

All the most popular stuff is easily available on public trackers. For older/obscure stuff, you can run your own tracker easily enough that scrapes the DHT, although you'll probably burn through an SSD doing it. https://bitmagnet.io is one such self-hosted piece of software.

[OptionOfT]

You don't need a private tracker for stuff that comes out now.

In fact, for those things, I'd say a private tracker isn't that interesting because of the share requirements.

[platevoltage]

You find someone who is already a member and ask for an invite.

[Retr0id]

However, you will stop owning that copy the moment the DVD deteriorates to the point of becoming unreadable. Physical media is a good start, but DRM-stripped digital is the ideal.

[munk-a]

If you buy a DVD you have the right, in every sane jurisdiction I'm aware of, to rip the movie from the DVD into an iso. You can then discard/recycle the media and retain the digital copy you have the right to view privately in perpetuity. It is a single consumer license though, as is logical, so it's likely illegal for you to continue to watch the ripped iso if you resell the media with the content still on it or resell the media with any portion of the value coming from the markings from the content or the fact that it used to contain that content. You probably want to shove it in a closet somewhere or just reuse it as rewriteable media for whatever purpose you need - retaining physical ownership of the media makes things simplest legally.

[Retr0id]

You are only able to do this because the DRM was cracked long ago.

[munk-a]

DRM is like a vibe, man - if you have the ability to output a video stream to an arbitrary display device you can always bypass DRM and it's never been illegal[1] to do so (though publishing approaches to defeat it often is).

1. To my knowledge, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

[Retr0id]

"bypassing DRM" is explicitly illegal according to DMCA. Don't conflate "unenforce{d,able}" and "legal".

[munk-a]

Gosh, I didn't know the DMCA went that far. I had assumed it was in line with Canada's TPM related laws which do disallow direct circumvention of DRM but do specifically except format shifting if the copy will be used for a legal purpose. I guess be careful and check your local jurisdiction.

[kevin_thibedeau]

You don't have that right on the US. The AHRA is the only law which permits format shifting and it only applies to audio.

[throwaw12]

> DVD deteriorates to the point of becoming unreadable

If I am the reason for damaging my purchase then I am fine with that characteristic of the purchase.

Same happens with books, you buy the copy and if you don't take care of it, soon it will become unreadable.

[Retr0id]

DVDs degrade naturally. Good care will extend the lifespan but not indefinitely.

[throwaw12]

Other things as well degrade naturally, some faster, some slower, some depending on the use.

I am fine with that characteristic of the purchase, I am not fine when my purchase can be taken away from me abruptly by the decision of random Joe

[Eric_WVGG]

punishing customers for not using BitTorrent seems like a weird strategy but I’m not an MBA so what do I know

[plagiarist]

The amount of people who are willing to tolerate the "cable-ization" of streaming services is far larger than those who will torrent

[sublinear]

They'll combine the "buy" and "rent" buttons if there's ever any realistic pressure to change. The typical consumer doesn't care.

It's almost already like this. Buying a movie is sometimes the exact same price or only a dollar more. They know what they're doing.

Initially, the new button might say "buy license" and then eventually it will go back to just "buy".