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

Time to cancel netflix

[zedaroca]

I canceled cable for this reason. It's morally wrong to finance the fight against freedom on the Internet. And destroying freedom on the Internet is the only way to enforce the their laws.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[thundercattt]

I cancelled the day they started the battle vs VPN's and their geoblocking. Kodi has filled the void nicely, I tried to pay for things but some company kept telling me what I could or couldn't do.

Re:Time to cancel netflix

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I canceled cable because most (not all) of what was offered is pure shit.

Sports, home decorating, sports, celebrity crap, hunting bigfoot, cooking, cooking, sports, cooking, game shows, shopping channel, honey boo boo, ice truckers, reality TV shows, more shopping, more celebrity crap, fishing, golfing, more bigfoot, more game shows....and on and on. It's drivel, replicated over and over and over.

Re: Time to cancel netflix

[Anonymous Coward]

Only people with money deserve access to culture. Fuck the poor! Long live financial tyranny!

That's remarkably LOW downloading

[gurps_npc]

Less than 1 download per person. If this was a food try before you buy) , that means not everyone took one.

Sounds to me like people are most likely trying to get reasonable service that is not available for sale, rather than pirating.

Copyright gets no respect in this country

[Anonymous Coward]

and thats because the social contract has been nullified. The deal was that we give them a temporary monopoly and in return they add to the public domain. Sonny Bono & Mickey Mouse suspended public domain indefinitely, and thus have reneged on their side of the social contract. Why should we continue to uphold our end of the bargain?

This is why no one has any respect for copyright, nobody feels the slightest twinge of guilt bypassing your paywalls & getting your content for free. Perhaps someday you'll be able to get society at large back to the table to discuss a new contract, but i doubt it.

Until then I guess you'll just have to keep suing your customers, thats a sure way to win back their loyalty.

Re:Copyright gets no respect in this country

[AthanasiusKircher]

To be fair, it's not just the U.S. It's the Berne Convention that established long international copyright terms (minimum of 50 years after author's death). In some ways, the U.S. arguably just brought its copyright terms up to the "international standard" in recent decades. I agree with you that such lengthy terms are preposterous and almost completely negate the original concept of "public domain."

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.

User experience and quality first

[daffy951]

I would say they should focus on providing the same quality as pirated material on all markets at the same time.
They can never provide better quality, since what they provide will be copied. But make sure all customers with good enough connections can stream/download as high quality as possible, for a fair price.
Don't geo block. The ones who get blocked will get it some other way.
No need for big investments in DRM. What can be seen & heard can and will be replicated. Accept that. You're just making it annoying for legitimate customers, while the pirates enjoy DRM free versions from torrent sites.

Re:Alliance blah,blah,blah

[BlueStrat]

Like just about every other "alliance" of large corporations, they give themselves some bullshit name to window dress the fact that they are looking to screw people over one way or another.

In another day and age, back before crony-capitalism passed the tipping-point and jumped the shark, they had another name for a group of leading corporations in an industry working together to control a market, set prices, and lobby for laws.

A "cartel".

But, that was before the money and resources the corporations offered those in power made them realize that "cartels" are really "alliances" in many cases and are now a good thing.

Strat