Again, it might be news for you, but it’s a huge business with many layers. There are plenty of professional rippers and crackers who earn a living one way or another. There are plenty of underground translators and streamers. Ads, hostings, seed boxes, TV boxes, different partnerships - there’s a lot of money flowing.
Just go to any public tracker and you will see ads. Download some subtitles and they often contain ads as well. And then you have partnerships like targeted attacks on software developers, etc. Then there are normies who are getting scammed into buying pirated content for full retail price by physical media vendors. All kinds of handy people who will install you a dish to receive pirated satellite TV “for free”.
This has to be stopped. Just look at what Napster did to the music industry. That’s right, there used to be a music industry and now it’s just…gone. No more music, no more money to be made in music. Don’t let these evil streaming services do the same to poor defenceless Hollywood, bastion of women’s rights!
Jokes aside, I have paid for Google’s music service since it launched (RIP Play Music), but I am a millisecond away from canceling my subscription because Google does not provide me with any way to randomize playlists. I don’t mean shuffle play. That shit is broken and always has been. It would not be a big deal if I could randomize my playlists on demand, but no.
The people who are stealing our movies and our television shows and operating piracy sites are not mom and pop operations,” says Charlie Rivkin, chief executive officer of the MPA, who adds that some of the operators also engage in drug trafficking, child pornography, prostitution and money laundering. “This is organized crime.”
I like how they always have to fabricate a connection to organized crime. Trying to convince the reader that is not just copyright infringement.
Hollywood was founded on IP theft of European filmmakers’ work and funded by various mobs, which then went on to lobby (bribe) politicians into changing certain regulations on gambling in AZ, et al, to pave the way for Vegas and the like.
I just spent like an hour trying several methods to install this on Android, sadly I was not successful. If anyone can inform me on how to install this on Firefox for Android (not a fork), please let me know.
Is this talking about stuff like private torrent trackers and Usenet providers, or are there more Netflix-like things out there that people are paying for?
So Hollywood copyright lawyers will target illegal subscription services rather than individual downloaders? Fine by me.
I can understand paying for a legal streaming service where at least a tiny percentage of profits goes into producing new material. I pirate out of convenience and availability, because movies and series aren’t released immediately in my region.
Paying somebody for streaming film and TV shows that they have no hand in producing, and thus not supporting new productions — same as I can download for free myself? — that makes no sense to me.
Paying somebody for streaming film and TV shows that they have no hand in producing, and thus not supporting new productions — same as I can download for free myself? — that makes no sense to me
It makes sense for me. The one i’m using is $20 per year. I just think of it as convenience fee. It has netflix features but for all movies and tv shows.
And like I said, I get convenience/availability. I guess paying for stolen goods is one step too far for me. Like, “Dude, pass it around, but it’s not yours to sell”.
If someone makes it so I can stream all the shows and all the movies and such in one convenient place, without having to find them myself, hunt down the right versions, etc, I’m good with paying them for that.
It’d be better if it was from a legal service, but as long as exclusives are allowed that can’t happen. If the owners of the content were required to allow anyone who wants to distribute it to do so, at the same cost with no special deals for one distributor over another, then every streaming service could have everything, if they choose. They could then compete on quality of service and which content they choose to have, not on what content they can lock down for themselves alone.
I don’t use these services, but after learning a bit about them I have to say I’d rather pay an honest thief than one who lies about ownership ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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