HBO, Netflix, Other Hollywood Companies Join Forces To Fight Piracy (theverge.com)

New submitter stikves writes: It looks like media and technology companies are forming a group to "fight piracy." The Verge reports: "A group of 30 entertainment companies, including power players like Netflix, HBO, and NBCUniversal, have joined forces today in an effort to fight online piracy. The new group is called the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), and the partnership, while somewhat thin on specifics, will allow the content creators involved to pool resources to conduct research and work closely with law enforcement to find and stop pirates from stealing movies and TV shows. The first-of-its-kind alliance is composed of digital media players, networks, and Hollywood outfits, and all recognize how the internet has paved the way to an explosion in quality online content. However, piracy has boomed as a result: ACE says that last year saw 5.4 billion downloads of pirated films and TV shows." I'm not sure how these statistics hold against real revenue loss (or the imaginary one), however this might be a development to watch for.

Comments

Easy way to stop piracy

[hawguy]

Want to stop piracy? Then make all content available everywhere. Don't make me sign up for Netflix, Amazon Video, HBO Now, Hulu, and a half dozen streaming providers just to watch the content I want to see.

If you make it easier to pirate content than to purchase it legally, you're going to lose the battle.

And don't nickel and dime me, don't make me pay $3.99/episode for a show that will cost $20 when all 20 episodes come out on DVD, stuff like that is what make people decide to click on the torrent instead of the "Purchase" link.