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Netflix Is Not Going to Kill Piracy, Research Suggests (torrentfreak.com)
Even as more people than ever are tuning to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and other streaming services to look, piracy too continues to thrive, a research suggests. An anonymous reader shares a report: Intrigued by this interplay of legal and unauthorized viewing, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Universidade Catolica Portuguesa carried out an extensive study. They partnered with a major telco, which is not named, to analyze if BitTorrent downloading habits can be changed by offering legal alternatives. The researchers used a piracy-tracking firm to get a sample of thousands of BitTorrent pirates at the associated ISP. Half of them were offered a free 45-day subscription to a premium TV and movies package, allowing them to watch popular content on demand. To measure the effects of video-on-demand access on piracy, the researchers then monitored the legal viewing activity and BitTorrent transfers of the people who received the free offer, comparing it to a control group. The results show that piracy is harder to beat than some would expect. Subscribers who received the free subscription watched more TV, but overall their torrenting habits didn't change significantly. "We find that, on average, households that received the gift increased overall TV consumption by 4.6% and reduced Internet downloads and uploads by 4.2% and 4.5%, respectively. However, and also on average, treated households did not change their likelihood of using BitTorrent during the experiment," the researchers write.
simple as that: if you can't find it on netflix, what then?
hulu? amazon? youtube?
when you run out of options it comes back to torrent (or whatever the kids are using)
A 45-day temporary trial account isn't the same thing as free. This no doubt had a huge effect on adoption numbers. Its seen more as an advertisement than anything else.
Overall I expect that legal services have had a huge impact on piracy but lots of people simply cannot afford them and so piracy will always be preferable. If we want to fix that we need to raise minimum wage.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
*rant on*
First, give an average person a 'free' thing but with a very finite time horizon and expect them to change their behavior is ridiculous.
Widely differing amounts and types of self interest drives most peoples motivations, trying to derive a conclusion based on a single type of 'carrot' is again ridiculous.
*rant off*
I appreciate that they may actually be able to make a useful prediction from their test but on the surface I find it weak.
I would use legit services if they offered the same functionality as torrents, but they just don't...
Most limit you to streaming rather than downloading... My connection isn't fast enough to stream at any decent quality, especially at times of day when i'll actually be awake. I can happily torrent overnight and watch the following day.
Sometimes i want to watch when i don't have internet (eg while travelling), downloading and watching later is useful.
Netflix has limited content and arbitrary limitations on where it can be accessed from, most other services are the same. Useless when travelling. A lot of these services don't walk at all in some of the countries i regularly visit.
DRM restricts what kind of devices and players you can use, the content available from torrents can be played on anything.
So long as the legit services are inferior to torrents, people will torrent. Make them as good or better and people will have little excuse for using torrents.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
It does not seem like the article addresses the fact that Netflix content can be pirated as well. As far as I can see, the only way that Netflix or another online streaming service would cut into piracy is if their DRM was so strong, and their content so compelling, that the pirates were forced to pay to access it.
For example, Game of Thrones seems pretty popular among people who are tech savvy enough to pirate content. If there were a way to lock down Game of Thrones, some subset of pirates would choose to pay for it because they want it THAT badly. (I know that GoT is on HBO not Netflix, I'm just using an example of popular content).
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
My wife does not like the 'difficulties' of dealing with torrents, so we have a subscription to HBO. That comes with HBO Go, their online content portal.
I wanted to watch one of their new shows (The Deuce. If you liked the Wire, check it out. It's pretty good.) I was able to watch the first couple episodes online just fine. Then one night, I had a glitch with my USB port and I pulled my headphones out in the middle of watching an episode. After I reconnected them, the sound didn't work.
I worked with HBO tech support. They pointed the finger at Frontier, my ISP. They pointed the finger at Adobe (who makes the Flash Player plug-in required to watch their stream). They pointed the finger at Microsoft (I was using IE because Chrome doesn't support Flash). I tried Firefox as well, but the problem persisted. (Sound worked just fine everywhere else. Windows. Browsers. Games. Applications. Just not the HBO Go website / Flash Player on the site.)
After spending the better part of 3 hours over the course of a week troubleshooting the problem, I gave up and torrented the show. I am only going to jump through so many hoops to watch content, that I am PAYING FOR, on my computer. I pay the monthly fee to HBO. If they can't deliver the content to me on the device I want to watch it on, I will do it myself.
The thing with piracy is that it is the best technical option. Computers want to play the media. The content companies try to lock it behind layers of DRM and other hurdles. Those layers are flakey and cause problems. In the end, the content becomes more difficult to consume legally. And that is a problem. People want simple. As human beings we will always take the path of least resistance.
Every film and tv show ever made, with no DRM (so it works on Linux and BSD) in all countries, on one service, for a reasonable monthly fee. Until that service exists, piracy will fill the gap.
So I'd been a Netflix customer and firm proponent since they went online. Not a heavy user, by any means, but I did enjoy shows at the gym, and I spread the gospel to anyone I met who still had legacy Cable TV.
About 6 months ago, Google added an option in the Play Console (for app developers) to exclude devices that fail to pass their so-called "SafetyNet" provisions.
Unfortunately, I and many others are unable to meet that requirement. "SafetyNet" isn't some simple checkbox agreement like "device modified; I know what I'm doing [Y]," but rather a set of secret scripts Google runs as root on your device to determine if Google has full control. Activities like patching security vulnerabilities, rooting, running AOSP, or even unlocking your bootloader disqualify you. The entire list of checks is, to date, secret. Their code updates happen automatically, in the background, without user control if you have the Play Store installed.
Once upon a time, the excuse for "SafetyNet" was that soon, Android devices could be used to pay for things. Fair enough. Just like my PC.. but it's mobile, so I guess different rules apply (?) ... I can use cash, or a credit card. Frustrating, but not a huge deal.
Of course that wasn't the end goal, as we've seen. The end goal was to discourage rooting, so that they could guarantee that their products (also known as users) would be forced to watch ads. Ad blocking is designed to be incompatible with "SafetyNet."
Lo and behold, back in June, Netflix started requiring "SafetyNet" certification in the Play Store. If your device doesn't qualify for any reason, you're excluded. Sideloading may still be an option, but I'm not sure.
Lucky for me, there are alternatives; I went to Amazon Video and YouTube, and cancelled my longstanding Netflix account. If the others follow suit, I will abstain from mass media and spend my money elsewhere.
Not everyone is willing to jump through such hoops though, and it's entirely possible this little stunt will bring back piracy from its death throes. All so that Google (and one day, surely, Netflix) could force more ads on us all.
Side note: yes I know Magisk can help. It's an arms race, for sure... but a great departure from what made Android successful in the first place.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
If Netflix was thought to possibly kill piracy it would mean that pirates were supposed to saturate their pirating urges with Netflix services. So the research was in a nutshell asking "Is vast majority of pirates going to pay for Netflix?"
Duh!!!
Well, I've got to get back to work. When I stop rowing, the slave ship just goes in circles.
Pro-tip: words in English can have multiple meanings. Typically you can figure out which one by context, although if you can't, it's not usually considered rude to ask (ignorant maybe, but not rude).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
1) What was this premium service? Did it have a good selection of content? A nice interface? Did it let people binge-watch a series?
2) If I was getting a premium service for free for 45 days I might binge watch some things or watch some movies, but I wouldn't use it to watch a regular series since I'd lose it after a few episodes.
3) Habits are hard to break. I'd expect the torrenting to decrease more over time as they grew more familiar with the subscription service and developed new viewing habits.
I stole this Sig
I haven't bought any physical or digital media since I got Netflix a while ago.
I have only purchased used physical media for about 20 years. So MPAA and friends don't make a cent off of me, except what they can extort from Netflix.
The difference is that I will not be controlled. I don't mind paying a FAIR price for content. I will view the content on the operating system and player of my choice legally, or I'll do so illegally. I will not be charged twice for same content. If I paid for it once I will not pay for it again under any circumstance. i.e. a CD of music. If I am charged the same for "un-owned/rented/streamed" content as I am for owned content, I'll just have to be illegal. The streamed/rented content needs to be WAAAAY cheaper. There is a better/cheaper alternative, although illegal so they have zero negotiating power. But even if I had to do without, I would not be forced to Windows or Apple. I just cancelled my Spectrum cable, not because I have gone completely over to Netflix or something else, but because I can no longer run a home grown DVR on linux with a cablecard tuner because of the encryption. I'll be illegal or even do without before I would give them my money.
I am ALL for a completely unencrypted, unblocked open format that is uniquely fingerprinted and traceable back to me. If I give the content away to someone else, by all means come after me. But I simply will not be sandboxed into using any operating system or player that is not open and under my control.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
Piracy will always exists. The only thing that could kill it is to make all movies freely available (and without pub) for all (which will not happen).
I can't call that English
Where netflix actually HELPED pirating... 'nuff said.
We're just playing a stupid game where nobody gets harmed, we do what we must because we can and there are an infinite copies of the universe because that's what more means, and if it hurts you to hear that it really hasn't harmed you because everything but one must be protected until someone notices and fixes it.
Most of what's out there isn't even worth pirating. Why would I waste my bandwidth or storage space?
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
Did the confirm whether or not the shit being pirated was also available on one of the free premium services that were gifted? Was there a spike in the downloading as the period started to come to an end?
Not available to most of the world. The UK had Lovefilm but Amazon shut that down unfortunately.
Of course you aren't going to get rid of ALL piracy. You will always have the persistent degenerates that will pirate no matter what. They aren't really worth bothering with. They aren't even worth punishing. The only reasonable thing you can do is just write them off and deal with the part of "the problem" that you can actually solve.
This "study" sounds like an excuse to discount what progress has already been achieved with "the problem".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It doesn't have all the content, it's missing episodes, seasons, movies, and shows disappear...
To get everything you are eventually going to have to spend more than cable at the rate that steaming services are splintering off.
Twinstiq, game news
And they were cleverer and funnier, too. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/g...
The movie / TV industry needs to follow the music industry's lead. It took years, but today nearly any song you might want to listen to is available on Spotify, Apple Music etc. If I want to hear "Tarzan Boy" by Baltimora followed by some Fats Waller I just punch it into the search and there it is.
There needs to be a similar service for video - $30 a month (or whatever) and everything is there. Everything. Betwitched episode? It's there. Star Trek Discovery? It's there. Wonder Woman movie? There. The Goonies? The Sopranos? You name it. I realize it's a licensing nightmare the music industry figured it out. Time for TV / Movies to do the same.
Remember CD's?
When Downloading or streaming music became a thing (Napster), the music industry panicked, and did all kinds of bad things in order to get their users back to their drug of choice (music industry's choice), they where old fashioned, not with the times and actually totally out of touch with their user base.
Same with traditional media like newspapers and television, it was the hardest time for them to realize everything is up to the customer and not what THEY want to sell you.
Televison and Newspapers as we know it - is a dead horse. No use trying to revive it. Get on with the program already. Netflix was at least innovative and went with the movie concept online, and every connected device could let you watch your (limited) favorite movies everywhere, The reason I say Limited...every netflix owner in the world already knows, it's because they're themselves fighting all the traditional media (that also happens to own a lot of the content netflix want's to show you), and licenses are only available in certain countries at a certain time, this is why you so often experience eg. that there's much more movies to watch in the U.S. version of Netflix rather than say...the Swedish version (or insert smallish country of your choice here). It's all about the population (larger numbers of people = more movies & serie) because the number of subscribers in that particular area is the ones who foot the bills for the license/rights to the show and availability.
And the price of Netflix is STILL low for what you get, you have a certain amount of freedom - you can watch it whenever you feel like it, on whatever you feel like watching it on. Traditional TV is not like that.You've gotta pay huge cable-fees and get tons of channels you don't even need or want, but you'll still have to pay these huge hook-up fees and licenses - traditional media LOVES that, because it gives them a guaranteed source of revenue, and they control the content.
This is when pirating occurs, because people want to be in control of their own content, and lo and behold...most don't even mind paying for the content.
But Traditional TV don't want you to be in control, they want to control WHAT you watch WHEN you watch it and WHERE you watch it, and they want to feed you advertisement you can't run away from or skip. They say it's for your own good and for the content quality - but Netflix proves that that's far from the actual truth, since you can pretty much get pretty good quality content for a 3rd of the price and totally without the advertisement.
The money is simply too good to resist, and almost certainly (to them) worth the fight against you,
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
It's not piracy, it's copyright infringement. The media owner still has possession of the original content. A better solution is to let copyrights expire after 18 years, just like patents. Copyrights assigned to corporations and not held by the original artist should have a much shorter life - no more than 3 years.
Remember CD's?
Yup. Still use em. Remains the cheapest way to give someone (in person) an album, or likewise a DVD for a movie. Sure, I could upload them to a cloud storage and share from there, but burning uses no bandwidth, and USB drives are not yet as cheap as disks if you are giving them away.
That's what does it for me, Netflix is moving towards their "original content" so older programs n movies gone. Amazon, least in Canada has a piss poor selection. Hulu geolocation for Yanks only. Only other choice to watch Magnum P.I on a Sunday afternoon is stream or torrent.
I was enjoying amazonâ(TM)s music service and listening exclusively to it. Then Iâ(TM)d notice I hadnâ(TM)t heard a song in a while. They removed it from my play list to Iâ(TM)d have to pay more for another service. So after 5 or 6 iterations of this I ga e up and went back to the torrents.
What killed dvd? Having to watch previews before the movie menu. Unskippable commercials. Annoying.
The cable and copyright cartels saw those un-cool Silicon Valley types doing well and decided to try to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
1) Comcast and Verizon broke with standard ISP peering to extort money they weren't due from Netflix. This caused Netflix to have to raise prices. And some people who used to, or still would, pay for Netflix left. And now that they have their puppet running the FCC, this problem is unlikely to be fixed for at least 3-7 years.
2) The copyright cartels decided to launch a bunch of their own fake Netflix-like services. To go along with these, they pulled a bunch of shows and movies away from Netflix and made them exclusive to their own knock-offs. This made even FINDING the show you want to watch into a royal PITA. And it made it necessary for Netflix to start producing their own content; which, of course, costs money and raised the price, driving more people off the service.
People don't like being nickel-and-dimed to death. They don't want to have to maintain a dozen different subscriptions just to watch the one show they want from each. They want to just turn on Netflix and watch their shows. And they DON'T want to have to waste their time hunting through Hulu, HBO Go/Now, CBS All-Access, Disney streaming, Amazon Prime, Crunchyroll, Dramafever, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah. For more than a few people; if something is not on Netflix, the next step isn't a quest to find which fake Netflix it IS on. The next step is The Pirate Bay. This should come as a surprise to no one.
Imagine all the people...
Oh my fucking god, really? Seriously? I've seen the same pirate debate for about 40 years. I'm sure it's older than that. I'm not.
I have never seen anyone justify piracy based on "my friends will be talking about a show I haven't seen if I don't pirate it!"
Please tell me you're some dumb ass millennial idiot. It would be twice as shameful if you're a real adult saying completely idiotic nonsense like that.
Real pirates steal because they just fucking want to. They don't justify it with "but then my friends will be a few e-Isolde's ahead of me! Wah!"
Grow up and just steal shit like we used to and stop with the lamest justification ever seen in the never ending piracy debates.
In nearly every technological household that I know there is Netflix. In those same households there is little piracy as compared to before. But there is piracy of any crappy streaming systems like CBS's. Not that Disney makes much other than crap, they too will see that their crap streaming service will not reduce piracy. Organizations like CBS don't seem to realize that the old is unacceptable. You can't put bugs on the screen, you can't relentlessly market at people through a service they are paying for. You can't abuse your customers to fit you needs. Sell them a great product and they will pay you. Sell a completely half assed MBA driven attempt at manipulation and pirates will cherry pick the few good bits and leave you empty handed.
It is those little things that Netflix does like skip intro that completely shows that they are tuned into their customers. With organizations like CBS they dole out the shows one a week and there is no skip intro because some MBA long ago identified that you could literally show 2 minutes of the exact same crap to people and it cost nothing more to make and filled 2 whole minutes of your 44 minutes.That is like 5% of your show for free. (frat boy MBA chest bump time).
So this should read, bad old school streaming does not reduce piracy, good healthy streaming does.
First, the offer was for a temporary discount on a service.
Once that temporary status expires, who here wouldn't drop the pay-for-service option and go right back to torrenting their content? Besides, who'd grab the free service knowing it would cost them later?
Second point: Bell has had their system available on their PVR boxes for restarting a show, but you can't rewind or fast forward any program you restarted.
Seriously.
This also applies to any show you're watching where you have rewound past a certain point (seems random to me) thus ruining the experience.
Personally, I'l stick to recording what I want to watch, and downloading the rest to watch when I am good and ready for the content, and most of the downloaded stuff has the added bonus of not having any commercials to skip!
Just sayin'
Since you cannot find everything on Netflix, how many subscriptions would someone need to see everything he's interested in?
And what about countries for which Netflix blocks its contents?
It's not "netflix" vs "free", it's "netflix + VPN, amazon, hulu..." vs "single source".
I stopped using netflix because the content I was planning on watching would disappear before I had to chance to watch and DRM will always be a headache.
The 45-day window is nowhere near enough time to be able to determine a change in behaviour. Talking about shows, in particular, I will usually watch a show in the same pattern for the entire season. The download and search before watching the show is part of the viewing experience.
I won't try to assume I am the same as the rest of the population, however, I do know that context and patterns are important for people. I think I can make a pretty safe assumption that a lot of people watch TV in the same way.
If you want to be able to see a change in behaviour, you will have to release shows in the same time frame that they are released in both streaming and TV (no binge-watching on streaming, or all binge-watching on TV), and give people enough of a window to finish the season for a few different shows from beginning to end (90 - 120 days).