[calinet6]

Pirating has become a much higher quality entertainment experience than any other. The pace of development is insane, and the things you can do with pirated content these days are, in a word, wonderful.

Let's say I pirated a show called Fest of Kings. The hour Fest of Kings aired, it would already be on my home media server. It would have downloaded at about 6MB/second (that's MegaBytes) over a secure SSL connection and be done in about 5 minutes flat in 720p HD. The moment it finished downloading, it would be available to watch on a beautiful media center in my living room, as well as on any internet-connected computer, as well as on my phone (Plex is amazing).

This is better than DVR, it's better than On Demand, and it's a breeze to use (it's not a breeze to set up, but whatever).

It's also not free. You pay for certain services you download from, you pay for the Plex Pro subscription to be able to stream your content to your phone, you pay for the Plex app, you pay for various management apps. It's not ridiculously expensive, but it's not free.

If there was a legitimate content source that did all this well, and gave me the content I wanted when I wanted it (right when it airs), I would be paying for it. But there isn't. This is a far better experience than any alternative. It's just awesome.

And that's why piracy is a problem.

[Samuel_Michon]

“It's also not free.”

Sure, but the creators also don’t receive any compensation from you. It’s like jumping the turnstile at a subway station, figuring that because you bought NewBalance sneakers you're already paying the government for providing public transport.

That said, if I could pay, say $100 a month for ‘all you can eat’ pirating (providing that money would go to the studios and artists) I’d love to.

[josteink]

I think his point was that people aren't pirating purely because it is free, but because the experience is superior in every way measurable, even to the point that people will pay for pirating.

User experience counts. You'd thought companies like Apple and Google had taught us that by now.

[alan_cx]

Indeed. Even in the UK were we have the brilliant BBC iPlayer, downloading from other places is still a better experience. Quality and speed win out.

Of course, the BBC gets it funding from a licence fee, so it kinda doesn't matter (I pay the licence fee there for I have already paid up, so what does it matter how I see it?) apart from the fact that the BBC cant include a non BBC download in its figures.

I think that to be honest the experience point is a red herring. Its really about it being free. My position here is that in show or movie advertising, or product placement, is the best way to go. That way we get the show for free, and the producers get their advertising money.

If I in the UK was able to go to, say, HBO in the US and download a show for free, I would. Even if that meant a special international free version that was non HD and contained adverts in the middle, or even product placement. But I cant, so I would go for other sources.

This will only settle down when they release shows for free at the point of watching, and find other ways to make their money.

Capitalists: this is supply and demand. Its very basic and the fact that so many huge businesses and politicians seem to have forgotten the most basic law of economics is frankly contemptible and offensive to any one with half a function brain. Worse still is the government interference that seems to want to use law to criminalise citizens who are obeying the laws of supply and demand, while offering a protection racket to the very organisation who should be primarily guided by it, but chose to ignore it. This, IMHO, is a vile and disgusting abuse of law, society and government. Its up to the business to adapt, not have their old control freak behaviour endorsed and protected by government, who's election funding depends on such organisations.

And BTW, this betrays the biggest flaw in US democracy, which has become little more than those with money get to buy the government and dictate legislation. The military industrial lot paid for Bush and we get war. The media pay for Obama and we get draconian protection rackets.

Oppps, again, longer than I intended......

[Samuel_Michon]

Definitely, and I agree.

Going back to OP’s post: just because I pay for cable (which I hardly watch) doesn’t give me a pass to download freely. Netflix is a good alternative, but it’s unfortunately not available where I live. My only legal option to get the TV shows I want to watch is iTunes (which is fine, but it doesn’t have everything, and sometimes you have to wait.)

[calinet6]

I am definitely not justifying it—just saying that people are paying something for it, thus would probably be willing to pay for a service that offers similar functionality as well.

It is absolutely jumping the turnstile. No doubt about it. I have no legal or moral justification for this other than it is achieving a really high quality experience that you can't get any other way.

[CognitiveLens]

Your analogy doesn't really work, because with the setup the OP is talking about, the claim is that the media companies could provide the same services and get the revenue directly.

No one would claim the subway operators should be providing sneakers, or that people would pay for sneakers from the subway operators.

[toddrew]

I pirated it as well. I could have watched it on tv, but I opted for my laptop. The content creators were paid long before I made that decision. They would not have received any more money had I turned on my tv or not.

[noptic]

Look over there! The Point! Oooooo you missed it.

[EthanHeilman]

Netflix does under certain circumstances does provide a better experience than piracy.

* You don't have to wait 5 minutes to watch the show, it starts playing instantly.

* You don't have to worry about storage or codecs.

* If you don't know what to watch, netflix can help with that.

* If you are on a train or bus, generally you can get netflix and watch movies on your phone. I do this quite regularly.

This isn't to say there aren't serious advantages to piracy or legal downloading (it doesn't work on linux), there are. Steaming can be a disaster if the internet is having a bad hair day. It depends on circumstance and goals. I invested in netflix the day I saw someone unwilling to wait for a show to download and use netflix instead.

Steam combines the best of both worlds. I just wish they would add a DRM free at 365 days from launch feature + price drops to 5 dollars.

[calinet6]

Yep, I agree. Plex integrates with Netflix nicely and provides many options. When I can go through Netflix, I definitely do—but it is not providing instant new releases when they air.

And their interface is ugly and near unusable. It's a testament to the value of the service that people love it despite its disorganized interface, just because they can easily watch about 30% of the content they really want.

[EthanHeilman]

Oh neat, I did not know about plex.

[Ntrails]

I torrented all the DvD's I own a few of months ago, because they are too much hassle to watch compared to a simple .avi file in my neatly ordered media folders. There is no place in my life for physical media anymore, it just doesn't fit.

The solution, for me, is to integrate movies and series into Steam. When it airs, it becomes downloadable through Steam. I probably can start watching about 5 minutes after everyone else, only instead of adverts I pay ~$1-2 for the episode.

If I want to keep it on my hard drive, I can. If I want to dump it, I know I can re download at any time. It offers the exact freedoms and ease I get from torrents, but without needing to be a pirate.

The key thing, though, is the delay. I won't wait 2 months after the series ended to be able to buy it, because I don't want to and I don't have to. Compete on speed and ease of use, and price becomes less of an issue.

[crazytony]

I'd rather pay the content producers than the content providers.

In my case I can't pay either producer or provider to see the same content my brother saw last night so it's a moot point. He's my brother and I'm going to do whatever it takes to be able to start a conversation with him.

[cdrux]

This is very true. The current experience of legal tv content delivery is terrible. It is stuck trying to squeeze the customer for every dollar possible, while not delivering the service that people really want.

The music industry is finally starting to get it, even if they are being dragged kicking and screaming by Rdio, Spotify, iTunes, etc. But still, these are all great services that are giving customers what they want when they want it. I just hope people like Netflix, Hulu and now Vdio will do the same thing for movie and TV content.

[calinet6]

That's the key—I think video content providers are not going easily into this new world. I'm sure Rdio/Vdio, Spotify, and others would love to provide a similar service to how music offerings work today, but the content providers will not have anything to do with it.

It's really sad. So shortsighted. The first company to do this right will bring media into the future and revolutionize the industry. The profits to be had are insane, and they're going down the drain.

[rplnt]

> If there was a legitimate content source that did all this well, and gave me the content I wanted when I wanted it (right when it airs), I would be paying for it.

I won't be available for everyone and for a fair price. So piracy will still exist.

[crusso]

fair price

Where "fair price" is an amount that's so low as to be effectively free or at most substantially lower than it costs content creators to produce it.

[calinet6]

I think you're vastly underestimating the effect of a quality user experience.

If they do it right, people will pay for it. People will want it to an irrational degree.

But they probably won't do it right.

[rplnt]

That wasn't my point exactly. What I meant by fair price was a price that would be somehow accommodated to a market. If someone makes $20 a day, you can't expect him to pay $40 for a game (or $5 for a 30min TV show). And sellers won't risk setting a lower price for certain market ...even if it meant bigger income in the end. It's a risky business since Internet is a global market by default.. whatever content providers try to do about it.

[rplnt]

In many cases yes. That's why content owners won't sell for such price and piracy will continue.

[grapjas]

But not because of technical reasons. See: Steam.

[rplnt]

Mostly because of copyright holders. Even with steam you can't buy many games thanks to publishers having exclusive deals with local distributors. It's even worse with tv/movies. Then there are different laws around the globe, but I guess that just takes some effort to solve.