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MPAA Silently Shut Down Its Legal Movies Search Engine (techdirt.com)
Back in 2015, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) released its own search engine to combat the argument that people pirate films because there are too few legal alternatives. According to TorrentFreak, the search engine, WhereToWatch.com, has since been quietly shut down by the movie industry group, stating that there are plenty of other search options available today. From the report: The MPAA pulled the plug on the service a few months ago. And where the mainstream media covered its launch in detail, the shutdown received zero mentions. So why did the site fold? According to MPAA Vice President of Corporate Communications, Chris Ortman, it was no longer needed as there are many similar search engines out there. "Given the many search options commercially available today, which can be found on the MPAA website, WheretoWatch.com was discontinued at the conclusion of 2017," Ortman informs TF. "There are more than 140 lawful online platforms in the United States for accessing film and television content, and more than 460 around the world," he adds. "That is all absolutely true today, though it was also true three years ago when the site was launched," adds Techdirt. "The simple fact of the matter is that the site did little to serve any real public customer base. Yes, legal alternatives to piracy exist. Everyone knows that, just as they know that there are far too many hoops and restrictions around which to jump that have nothing to do with price. The MPAA and its client organizations have long asserted strict control over their product to the contrary of public demand. That is, and has always been, the problem. On top of all that, the MPAA showed its no better at promoting its site than it was at promoting the legal alternatives to pirating movies."
Most of these legal outlets were pointless. You either had to sign up to some ridiculous streaming service that didn't work with your smart TV anyway, or you pad to pay full retail price for a digital rental that also wouldn't play on your smart TV.
The physical disc was usually cheaper, but also quite awkward thanks to DRM.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I rented the VHS tape of it. Put it in the VCR, it wouldn't play. I tried about 3 other copies (from Blockbuster) and none of them would play. Finally found out there was a new Macrovision (copy protection) version on the tape that was "Incompatible" with my 1 year old VCR.
I find most of my legal movie and television needs can be met using archive.org and an antenna, and Netflix.
When I go to watch a movie or start a new series, I usually check to see if it's already showing on any of the various services I'm already paying for. Why go searching for a movie if I can just fire up Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video or Crunchyroll? Sites that track what's currently playing on the major services are useful, since you can quickly "search" all of your services at once. It kind of reminds me of the old "Dogpile" search engine (which I literally just found out is still somehow a thing) that searched the other search engines for you, back when there was no parity in the sites they returned.
I agree with the above sentiment that the service wasn't incredibly useful a lot of the time, since it did tend to point to a bunch of random services that I'd never heard of, and therefore didn't really trust. Still, a site that can keep track of the content offered on your streaming services IS still useful, in my opinion.
At least in my sphere of the world, JustWatch has cornered the market for streaming listings. There hasn't really been a need to use anything else. So while the MPAA's effort was half-hearted to begin with, there really isn't a need to keep it up when there are other, better options.
I'm honestly surprised that the **AAs haven't been forcibly disbarred yet. Jack Thompson got disbarred for frivolous lawsuits against violent video games, you'd think that groups who frequently file suits in the range of 8-14 digits for minor cases of filesharing would have had an entire library worth of books thrown at them at supersonic speed.
I still pirate 100% of the movies that I watch at home (though I do still go to theaters once or twice a year). If you make movies for a living, I am basically an ex-customer who is waiting for you to re-open for business. (But by "waiting" I sure as fuck don't mean that I've stopped watching your movies.)
AFAIK there is currently not a single way to legally buy a movie that you can legally play. There is proprietary streaming, where you don't really buy a copy of the movie and you also have to run weird, unaudited, unmaintainable software to play them. Then there's optical disks, which you actually can buy but it's illegal to play the movies.. unless (here we go again) you use unusually shitty and unsafe software, which no reasonable person would ever do.
Meanwhile, pirates supply perfectly-working files. You can play them legally (though the acquisition is illegal). Furthermore, you can play them sanely. By pirating, I avoid all the malware, orphaning, and generally unpleasant experiences that you get with having to use proprietary players. Nothing else even comes slightly close to the convenience, safety, and elegance of piracy.
THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE. MPAA members should sell un-DRMed files, or else resign themselves to the fact that they are still encouraging piracy and lots of people are susceptible to their encouragement. One thing's for sure: they obviously give zero fucks about sales and revenue. If you own stock in an MPAA company, you should probably be suing their management for not being open for business yet. Customers exist: why don't you take their money? Opening for business is what anyone would do if they were trying to perform their fiduciary duty.
Like say how Mission Impossible 2 and 4 are available on Netflix, but not 1 3 or 5? Or maybe those legal alternatives like the show I was in the middle of watching when it suddenly disappeared from the library? Or maybe we're talking about me hitting a download button on something I've downloaded but wasn't able to watch on a previous flight only to get a warning saying that I am only allowed to download this thing Netflix knows has never been watched one more time, only for that download to fail and lock me out of the system preventing me from downloading it again.
Are those the legal alternatives?
There was an easy solution to all three scenarios:
1) Torrents
2) Torrents
3) Torrents
All have served me far better than the legal "alternatives" which is a big stretch of the word.
So when you pay to rent a DVD, you want it in your possession too?
When you pay to watch a movie in the theatre, you want it in your possession too?
There's this thing called "renting", you might want to look it up.
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I think you could just read before replying. From OP : "I don't rent things, I buy things."
When Netflix streaming came out I said "This could end piracy. Finally." Then the stupid movie companies decided it wasn't good enough and spun up 400 different streaming services. Defeating the very solution that would have fixed the problem.
I refuse to have multiple streaming subscriptions just so I can watch one show on your service.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
He may hate DRM but nothing prevents him from buying movies and TV shows on DVD, Blu-ray or downloads. What he wants is unencrypted files and nobody in the industry is going to sell it that way.
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I'm often looking for weird and obscure things, and WhereToWatch actually did point me toward some, in places I never would have found.
It also had listings for things that just aren't out there anywhere, so at least I'd know to stop looking for a legit copy.
Wouldn't it be better to be able to buy what we want once and then watch them when ever and where ever we want?
For things you repeatedly rewatch, such as a single-digit-year-old child's favorite animated movie, that would be better. Otherwise, you're paying $10+ to watch a movie or a TV season once, and it's cheaper to binge, switch, binge, switch. And once you switch back, you end up seeing a different selection with new stuff to binge watch.