They’re so close to getting it. So close. They almost understand that this is a response to a completely unusable, expensive and user shitty experience.
Build something that integrates all streaming providers and many people will already stop pirating. But even then, people are still expected to pay rent to n different streaming companies. It just doesn’t work. They’re being too greedy.
As Gabe Newell put it, piracy isn't a legal problem or a revenue problem, it's a customer-service problem. Serve the customer, or someone else will.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect...
TV still doesn't get this for TV shows. Yes, I can type the name of a show. There are two options, one is some streaming service, the other is Prime. So I select Prime. Psych! It offers me the option to go to that streaming service. And subscribe. Which means thinking about the long term, not this show I want to watch.
Or I open the lid of my Mac, type the name of a show, and almost right away I can watch it on my Apple TV.
Netflix and Amazon (maybe?) always require a separate journey
They're not being "too greedy". No single streaming company makes you pay multiple subscriptions. Just the one. But you like the shows, and lots of companies want to make shows, so you end up liking shows from multiple companies. You're the one that wants multiple subscriptions, you just dislike the cost/inconvenience. Economically speaking, there's no solution here that can satisfy you... the cost to negotiate with all of them and consolidate on a single platform would be extraordinarily expensive, because that's what convenience often is: exorbitantly expensive. There's no game theory strategy here where you get everything you want, where all the production companies get everything they want, and it all happens at modest prices.
Personally, I can't even pretend to imagine what goes through the heads of people who want to having "streaming subscriptions". Even you, you want those too, you just want a single everything-in-it subscription that's cheap. It's the same thing that people complain about with video games with the "why do I have to have internet for a single-player game" gripes. In 1985, if I wanted shows, I did have to subscribe to cable... the infrastructure for shows was absurdly expensive, no individual could have it. Now? The big 12-bay NAS filled with hard drives, and I have copies of movies and television (and music and software and games and books) that my great-nth-grandchildren will be able to enjoy for free (16K ultra-giga-mega-gold-bluray re-re-remasters notwithstanding).
>Also, it used to work like that in the early days of Netflix
Back when producers thought Netflix was some sort of joke that would soon blow over. Now that they realize that it's the only way forward, they don't want to be on Netflix, they want to *BE* Netflix. And so it can't work anymore.
And you wouldn't want that anyway. Netflix doesn't fund any of their own shows longer than 2 years, and that's for their own. Why the hell would they fund some other producer's show for longer, what with the added overhead of it being NIH? "Netflix with everything" would be the Soviet cornucopia of television.
Yes there is, it's called piracy
> ... the cost to negotiate with all of them and consolidate on a single platform would be extraordinarily expensive, because that's what convenience often is: exorbitantly expensive. There's no game theory strategy here where you get everything you want, where all the production companies get everything they want, and it all happens at modest prices.
The music industry can do that just fine and there's a ton more content and parties to talk to.
> t's the same thing that people complain about with video games with the "why do I have to have internet for a single-player game" gripes.
Why is this an invalid complaint? I don't understand. I buy most of my games on GOG anyways. No DRM crap.
> In 1985, if I wanted shows, I did have to subscribe to cable... the infrastructure for shows was absurdly expensive, no individual could have it. Now? The big 12-bay NAS filled with hard drives, and I have copies of movies and television (and music and software and games and books) that my great-nth-grandchildren will be able to enjoy for free (16K ultra-giga-mega-gold-bluray re-re-remasters notwithstanding
Exactly! It's become accessible to everyone so companies like netflix and Amazon have to compete with piracy whether they like it or not. The sooner they get their heads around licensing content to each other, the sooner people will go back.
It's not even about cost. People pay fortunes for cable channel packs.
You can go like "business doesn't work that way" but yeah if it doesn't then it'll just get bypassed. It's as simple as that.
The movie/TV companies sell their show to the SVOD platform that offers the most in the territory. Or it's developed by the service themselves. So if you have to subscribe to a handful of services to watch everything your friends recommend.
Most of us can afford one music service. If you're forced into 5 streaming services a lot of people will just pirate. And even for those that do pay - the "we'll show this in the UK a week later than the US" means unless you pirate it, it's spoiled on social media within a few days.
The economics work out just fine: the net result would be paying the entertainment industry less, which may be what people want.
But all the complaints I see are about not wanting to pay more for more content.
If you want to argue about copyright infringement, do, but don't equate it to theft. That's an old and tired argument that isn't useful for setting policy.
I'm sure you'd feel this way about someone stealing your identity, right? After all, your SSN can be copied exactly without taking away the original. Just ignore all externalities to the specific act of copying.
Plagiarism is another thing that's super cool under this strictly "immediate and physical" worldview of morality. There's no reason anyone would ever want to stop it, since it isn't tangibly destructive and we don't think of secondary effects when setting policy.
I know it's because you personally get something out of it, but I cannot even fathom trying to say this trite with a straight face. At least be a grown up and just say you want free stuff and don't care if it hurts upstream, like the rest of us. I really can't stand this new-age moral grandstanding piracy where you pretend you aren't a petty thief.
As for the rest: I have consistently argued that copyright should not exist, and I will continue to do so. I think it's a net loss.
When these companies make their services so painful and inconvenient, of course people are going to go to (less ethical but more convenient) alternatives.
If you look back at American TV in the 20th century, so much of it was samey and bland because there were only 3-4 programs to choose from at any given time. It was hard to get networks to greenlight anything that didn't fit an already proven formula.
This started to change with cable and streaming. Consumers suddenly had a lot more options, and were also spending a lot more money. You had a lot more networks trying to stand out, and they put out riskier shows that rejected decades of TV norms.
Now that the industry is consolidating again, networks and studios are back to being much more risk averse, and that is hurting the quality of their output.
Personally, I don't think the answer is more all-you-can-eat subscriptions, it's frustrating for consumers and even moreso for creators. I wonder if some kind of usage-based compensation would work, where users can choose between watching a show with ads, or paying 25 or 50 cents per episode to watch ad-free.
And for video it wouldn't have to be $15. People easily pay $50-80 for cable channel packages. A comprehensive streaming service could cost similar. The willingness to pay is there. I'm just really sick of this shit paying for tons of different services.
When Netflix was the only game in town I subscribed to it. And prime later. But now I've dropped all my subs and gone back to the jolly roger. As have many people I know.
We have a saying in Holland: he who looks too deep in the can gets the lid on his nose. It's a bit akin to the American saying of having your cake and eat it. But the thing is there's lucky so many profits you can extract especially if you're competing with free but more hassle.
If music piracy hadn't essentially died, how would you know?
You can go to several different streaming services right now and listen to the music of your choice. They'll send you the file and you pinky-swear that you aren't saving a local copy. But if you do save a local copy, that will look identical to you not saving one.
So we have several things going on:
1. You can purchase DRM-free mp3s from major vendors;
2. You can stream the music in a notionally non-lasting way, also from major vendors, for free;
3. If you pirate music directly from the major streaming platforms, that doesn't show up in the piracy statistics.
I suggest that points (2) and (3) are more significant than point (1). Point (2) depresses piracy because the benefit of having a copy of your music is lower when you can use someone else's copy for free whenever you want. Point (3) artifactually depresses piracy by not counting it when it happens.
Point (1)... doesn't do much to depress piracy.
My guess is it's higher.
It was new+exciting, I was discovering lots of new music. But at that point, casual piracy over slow connections (low-bitrate often-poorly-encoded MP3s) wasn't quite good enough to replace real CDs. And back then, MP3 was still a 'nerdy computer thing' and CD players were everywhere - and by far the most convenient way to play music on a proper hi-fi, in a car, etc.
But these days, there isn't really the same upgrade path from a lower-quality pirated copy to an authentic copy. Especially with TV/movies, now tied to subscription services and encumbered by increasing levels of ads.
But you can't get the same subscription with movies/TV shows. You get a fraction of content with each subscription. When there will be a reasonably priced subscription for most of the video content - it will change the situation.
So in my opinion, it's not about DRM. It's about convenience.
similarly I used to be able to download my kindle books and read them on non-kindle readers. Now you can't do it anymore. And some books seem to have further restrictions. I have had several phones and the kindle reader app has complained that I have reached sort of limit on the number of downloads some books have.
The trend is towards locked down devices where a corporation decides what you're allowed to do with it, using excuses like piracy, safety, security, privacy, etc. The unfortunate thing is that most people don't mind, and keep purchasing them.
It's not like FireTV is the only game in town. These days you can buy an RPI Zero or next to nothing and program it to basically the same thing as a FireTV with zero restrictions and no possibility for future restrictions.
And they allowed piracy apps until now, so I was overestimating how fast the frog was boiling anyway. Must have been a good deal while it lasted.
Weird how people are acting like this is a collapse: everything was always locked down until FOSS alternatives came to free you. Megacorps invited you back by letting you pirate a bit, for a while, and now that the alternatives have been adequately starved it's time to get in line again.
Why in the hell would Amazon let you pirate the things it sells (rents?), forever? I think a lot of people got caught up in a free promotion handing out samples of a zero-marginal cost product. It didn't cost them anything to pretend like you were going to have any real control over their completely controlled device.
This is of course more effort than just building and signing the app once, but doable.
Of course you can't have any api keys or functionality in the app, that is bound to a specific app id or signing key.
I think I'm going to just trash it and get a Onn. 4k Pro and install projectivy on it.
I now use an NVIDIA Shield in basically the same way. Projectivity Launcher set to default and advert-buttons on the remote control overridden in software. Jellyfin & SmartTube as primary apps for streaming. VLC & FCast Receiver for random video thrown around the network. LocalSend to easily sideload apps (sadly ending within a few years). Moonlight for game streaming from my PC (via gigabit ethernet). HDHomeRun app as a backup for any Jellyfin failures with live OTA TV streaming. Other apps from Google Play only as absolutely necessary (Google Play TV apps include a number of popular VPNs, along with tailscale).
It's honestly better than my experience with Apple TV 4K. And if Google continues to close down and wall off AOSP, there's already at least one community build of Lineage OS with Android TV for the Raspberry Pi.
Flix Vision
Live Net TV
UK Turks
FileSynced
Blink Streamz
Ocean Streamz
Cinema HQ
https://www.nationalworld.com/culture/television/dodgy-amazo...
Can we see what's on the blacklist? I haven't been able to find it despite searching everywhere.
Tell people what they are and are not allowed to install on their device, then use piracy as the reason, when in reality it's simply because Amazon wants control over the device they sold to you.
Also, app store revenue splits.
I wish there was a FOSS AOSP distro for android TV, just like lineageos for phones.
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