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Online Piracy Is More Popular Than Ever, Research Suggests (torrentfreak.com)
An anonymous user writes: A broad and detailed report from piracy tracking outfit MUSO shows that visits to pirate sites went up last year. The company recorded more than 300 billion visits in 2017, which suggests that "piracy is more popular than ever." TV remained the most popular category and most pirates prefer streaming over torrents or direct downloading.
So, an outfit that makes it's money fighting "piracy" releases a report that "piracy" is on the upswing. Who woulda thunk it?
Haven't really posted at /. for awhile. What happened to including a submitter's username on their submission? I kinda enjoyed seeing the different usernames on the front page, now all I see are the username of editors and senior editors. When did this change? And why?
So, it comes to this.
People want things without paying for them. It's really not that much of a surprise.
I will pirate what's not on Netflix. Netflix has a lot though.
And if Kodi 18 allows me to stream from multiple legitimate services then I might subscribe to them as well.
Sharing is not a crime.
The media industry supports criminals, rapists, and other scrum, but sharing is bad?
fuck off.
Also fuck miicrosoft, apple, etc...
I know lots of people who pirate. They also pay for lots of media. They go to concerts and fan events. The popular artists and companies tend to get money one way or another.
The content on legal services is shrinking all the time, so we are forced to pirate to get what we paid for. Plus the BBC dosen't get to complain about piracy because we pay our licence fees.
The reason the streaming options are popular is because it's entirely possible for nontechnical people to call up their technical friend (and by "technical" I mean "can follow a Youtube tutorial"), hand them a Fire Stick, and add streaming plugins. These people aren't doing anything terribly different than what they do with Netflix or Hulu, just a different icon.
Moreover, the experience involves "having all the things in one place". No going to Netflix for this show (except that one episode where there's a license discrepancy over a song's usage so it's unavailable), then Hulu for that one, Crackle for the next, then CBS All Access for yet another one, HBO Go for still another...it doesn't matter what show someone wants to see, all the episodes are available, on demand.
Netflix mostly-had this situation under control, then everyone wanted their pound of flesh, which turned Netflix into half original content, and half "the refrigerator the night before grocery shopping". Even if the content producers wanted to charge a premium for their section of content, but still allow Netflix to handle the streaming, I think that model would make everyone happy..but alas, it does not.
Finally, I've always kinda wondered what's in it for the sites who serve the streaming files. At least torrent sites can say "community" and "advertising/donation revenue", but the sites that serve the streams can claim none of the above, have to pay the bandwidth and server bills, and have a bullseye painted on them from the *AA...so, all of the liability, none of the perks. I don't get it :/.
P.S. in case anyone was wondering, I don't own one of these devices, nor have I ever modded such a device for anyone.
I remember my last "piracy fix", it was a cd called BOI (best of Internet). After that, I just went opensource for everything.
What piracy? We have Netflix and a dozen other services without ads served for less than 10 bucks a month? I don't get it. And for software, we have TONS of open source equivalents. In fact - I made a good living of Blender 3D (which where an open source alternative to 3D studio Max and Maya) and made a good living of it doing 3D work for some of the bigger companies for years (I just never told them it was made using that software), etc.
Piracy...so quaint and old fashioned now.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Content producers make it so hard (and expensive) for consumers to purchase their wares,
The existence of multiple separate disjointed competing services makes it harder and more expensive to watch things that are freely broadcast in most places.
If you have paid for content, there is no long term plan allowing access when that content provider inevitably fails.
They're still trying to get rid of actual physical media so everything is "in the cloud" When is the last time you "bought a CD/DVD/Blu-Ray?
Netflix has probably done more good than harm in reducing "unauthorized viewing" than any anti-piracy group.. But even their content disappears over time.
While I appreciate the sentiment, rich powerful people don't normally pay for their crimes. Expect a slap on the wrist in exchange for a easy transition after impeachment. The Senate is likely to negotiate away charges like Treason, Seditious conspiracy, or Misprision of treason in exchange for a resignation. We're not likely to see a 5-20 year prison sentence or death penalty against any elected official, because D.C. doesn't work that way.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If I download a TV show and pay for cable or satellite AND a DVR, then what exactly am I doing wrong?
What am I "pirating" except to use more of the bandwidth I paid for so I don't have to manually skip commercials? Or to get a version of a TV show that ISNT cut off at the beginning or end by 5 minutes due to schedule skew? Or a version of a TV show without a quarter-screen radar image because somewhere near me is rain?
Where is the moral wrong?
FunOne
copyright is corrupt, piracy is a duty
corporations are evil
I dunno about all that bullshit, but you antifa commies will definitely get yours if you keep up with the violent rhetoric.
The whole world is watching.
At the same time there are more people that ever on the internet as well - I mean, what are the odds?
I would prefer to pay for ease of access but more often than not the tv show or movie i'd like to watch isn't on the platform I pay for, don't really want to have to pay for amazon hulu and netflix to get the content I want, and feel forking out $180 for a dvd box set or $1.99 per episode rental on is justified.
You have Cable TV struggling to bring the average cable bill to $200/month.
But you have cord cutters and people downsizing their TV package as they realize they don't need 200 channels plus 17 variants of ESPN, plus their high-def digital versions.
So networks are all rolling out their own streaming services.
"ONLY" $10-20/month. With one or two shows apiece per network that are actually worthwhile.
So, if you're an avid TV watcher, your bill for Internet + streaming just so HAPPENS to be around $200/month.
Is it REALLY that surprising that people are turning to piracy to cut down a luxury bill whose price is being artificially inflated?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Gee, when people can't buy their favorite 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's TV shows ... what do you think is going to happen? A certain percentage of people will always resort to piracy.
Piracy just shows that there is a _demand._ Let me buy the entire series, say Mash, for $20 instead of price-gouging me $120 / season like ST:TNG used to do.
What I don't understand is how the "long tail" is completely ignored in film / television but the games industry has embraced with sites such as Good Old Games (gog.com) and Steam.
..assuming this article isn't clickbait of some sort, or like someone else commented, it's bought-and-paid-for by a so-called 'anti pirating company'.
Around 10 years ago I dumped cable and started using an antenna, contenting myself with what I could get for free, because the economy sucked, wasn't making much, and it finally got to the point where I decided paying for hundreds of shitty channels, compressed within a millimeter of their lives, when I only actually watched a small fraction of them, made no sense anymore. Never looked back once. Then there's the people who tell me I should pay for streaming. Well guess what, now we're back to paying for TV again. No thanks, I haven't heard of anything worth paying another monthy fee for. Have I downloaded some stuff in the past? Sure I have. I've also paid a rental fee for some things I did want to see. But too much isn't worth paying for, and I'm sure I'm far from alone in that sentiment. If I didn't have a DVR, and had to adhere to someone else's broadcast schedule, I'd probably not even own a TV anymore. Again, someone will come along and say, "Well, why don't you get a Hulu/Netflix/Amazon/whatever subscription, it's only $xx per month." Now we're back to paying, and whatever it is, isn't worth it to me.. and again, I'm sure I'm far from alone in feeling that way about it. So if 'piracy' is actually up, and it's not just hype and FUD from some company that can benefit from FUD, then I'd believe it.
So now they're trying to label streaming as "piracy?" You've got to be kidding me! These people will stop at nothing to maintain their 1950s business model and tarnish public perception with misinformation.
What you're referring to as piracy, is in fact, unauthorized copying, or as I've recently taken to calling it, unauthorized sharing. Piracy is not the act of obtaining an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work, but rather robbery or criminal violence at sea.
Many computer users make unauthorized copies every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the act which is widely performed today is often called piracy, and many of the people who do it are not aware that it is basically copying, and not stealing.
There really is a piracy, and some people are doing it, but it is just robbery at sea. Piracy is an act of theft: an action at sea in which goods are forcefully transferred from one ship to another. Piracy is important to be aware of, but unrelated to unauthorized copying; it can only function at sea. Piracy is normally not used in combination with unauthorized copying: the two acts are basically separate. All the so-called piracy is really unauthorized copying.
Not everyone who hates what Trump is doing to America is with "AntiFa". You dumb redneck Nazis and hating bigots will be getting yours, too.
The World is watching, and they're tired of your act.
LOL go back to CNN they are never wrong.
Funny how all Trump rages never include proof.
Must be a special world you live in where Hillary is a pristine career politician no scandals or dead people in her past?
People, keep safe from piracy : don't travel by boat.
They evenade a law that says they can leech on artists, pay them once (since they only worked once too; duh), but then magically declare the information tesulting from that service work a "good", and even more sillly, claim it to be *their* "property", and install an artificial scarcity monopoly for it (something that is crime in not one but two ways for any other business!), even though that directly conflicts with causality of actual reality, making it completely imaginary, ... ... and "sell" worthless because infinitely abundant mere *copies* that nobody lifted a single finger for, in return for real actual money, that the victims/clients had to work for each damn time!
Imagine you and me doing that! Putting our money on the copier, and not only attempting to buy actual work with the copies, but making a law that makes it a /crime/ to refuse to play along, calling them seafaring rapist thugs, and suing them for /literal/ trillions in "damages"!
And all because they snort so much cocaine (I worked in the industry. For CEO-level business deals, cocaine and prostitutes are just about mandatory! [Yes hello there, former boss of EMI! Yes, I am looking at you! Not that the others were better.])
that they became hyper-arrogant and ultra-paranoid, and now think they are entitled to free cocaine monry for the est of their pathetic leech lives!
The true /actual/ pirates.
I apologize for the typos. I hope you judge the arguments; not the bad spelling. :)
If you wish to stream movies, you have to get an account at Netflix for $10/month (or whatever). Then, a new interesting show comes out on HBO, that's also $10/month. Then Amazon Prime has even more interesting content at $10/month. And then you want ESPN because gotta have that football coverage... For $10 a month. Et cetera.
So if I were to get all of this legally I would need to easily burn $50-$70 a month, which amounts to $300-$400 a year. I would be willing to pay say $2 per episode of a certain series and only that series however, or $10 for say a two-time viewing of an entire season. Also, I do not watch Netflix consistently - sometimes I am on Amazon and sometimes I am on HBO, if I spend an entire month without looking at any series I'm burning money for no reason. Et cetera.
The problem here is that the infrastructure is crazy conservative, and instead of fixing the infrastructure the companies are content to let piracy rule.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
Since they started moving everything off of netflix again and requiring who-knows how many active subscriptions at $10-15 a piece, each to its own uniquely flavored netflix clone, then how is this any fucking surprise to anyone?
Is Kodi considered piracy? I was thinking about getting Amazon Fire Stick and getting Kodi, but didn't want to get in trouble for watching pirated content. Or is this a whole different ballgame.. Just curious for any input.