this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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cross-posted from: https://yiffit.net/post/1072752

For a moment, it seemed like the streaming apps were the things that could save us from the hegemony of cable TV—a system where you had to pay for a ton of stuff you didn't want to watch so you could see the handful of things you were actually interested in.

Archived version: https://archive.ph/K4EIh

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[–] fckreddit@lemmy.ml 19 points 1 year ago

Trusting promises of corporations is like believing that a wild cobra won't bite you. It's definitely possible, highly unlikely they will keep the promise.

[–] Reocken@kbin.social 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

24 years of continuous piracy. All I pay for is a seedbox. Paying these scummy corporations nothing each month feels great!

[–] orca@links.hackliberty.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

May I ask what are the benefits of a seedbox?

[–] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So with a seedbox its basically an offsite swrver that you tell to download the files you want, rhen you download them direct from the seedbix. Because theyre dedicated servers you get better download and upload speeds for preserving your ratio, you don't have to use local storage to seed things, and it can be safer if your seed box is in another country because your isp doesn't see any torrent traffic.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

...but if you're paying for that seedbox with your credit card, aren't you creating a pretty clear paper trail between you and your piracy?

[–] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

If the seedbox is in a country that doesn't care about torrenting and is hosted by a company that doesn't care, they're the only ones who would be aware of it. It's not illegal to pay for a server or to download files from your server.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What countries don't care about torrenting? Surely most countries with decent bandwidth are signed up to WIPO?

[–] emeralddawn45@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lots of countries don't care about torrenting , at least not the way the US does. Without the riaa/mpaa going after individual users can you point me to a single high profile legal case involving an average downloader? People in alot of other countries don't even bother with a VPN. Not sure why you're bringing up a un group as I'm pretty sure that's mostly for diplomatic disputes, I've definitely never heard of it used to prosecute someone for downloading movies. This info is all widely available online. I'm happy to have answered a one off question for you but if you're just trying to be difficult I have no interest in continuing to answer your questions when the info is very easy to obtain with a quick search. There's lots of torrent friendly countries out there where the movie studios don't make legal policy.

[–] danielquinn@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm honestly not trying to be difficult. I live in the UK and used to live in the Netherlands so my concerns are largely with European jurisdictions. In both countries the government has taken steps to prevent piracy and the UK recently changed its laws to ensure 10 years prison time, though that's for "commercial" piracy only. They've also brought in Draconian new surveillance laws explicitly to combat piracy.

I bring all this up because I'm honestly confused. A lot of the seedboxes I see are based in the Netherlands (fantastic bandwidth there!) but I know that people living there are generally quite fearful of being caught torrenting (newsgroups are more popular for this reason). It seems reasonable to me that given that the authorities across Europe generally play well together that they'd share enforcement of this sort of thing, so I don't understand how feralhosting manages to function then.

I mention WIPO just because it's an international agreement that all signatories would make efforts to prevent IP violations, so I assume that this means that most countries would at least share information on this stuff.

It just seems weird is all. A seedbox in Egypt, sure, they're not likely to care about American copyrights all that much, but the Netherlands? Germany? How does that even work?

Idk I think it's just not worth those countries time to waste resources on individual piracy, just to enforce American copyright. The Netherlands is probably worried about protecting their own content, and regardless, it's the seedbox company taking most of the risk. You lived there so you'd probably know better but I haven't heard of anyone in the Netherlands being prosecuted, and definitely not anyone in North America being prosecuted for what's on a NL server. Idk its always risky I guess but seedboxes seem to minimize the risk similar to a VPN and come with other benefits if you're into private trackers etc.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 13 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Discovery's David Zaslav have also indicated that their services were initially priced "too low" in an effort to draw a huge and unendingly expanding subscriber base.

In the early-to-mid 2010s, a subscription to Netflix and Hulu and your friend’s borrowed HBO password could get you access to the vast majority of all the TV that was worth watching.

Netflix had a huge archive of older shows plus a slowly growing library of its buzzy releases like Orange Is the New Black, Jessica Jones, and Stranger Things.

Not content to let Netflix have what looked like a lucrative new market all to itself the companies that made and distributed TV decided one by one as the decade wore on that it was time to create their own apps and generate their own subscription revenue.

Tech companies also decided to jump in, with Amazon Prime Video pushing into expensive scripted dramas and Apple TV+ becoming relevant by dint of throwing untold gobs of money at all kinds of projects.

Netflix announced its first subscriber loss in a decade in early 2022, cratering its stock; despite some recovery, it's still only worth about two-thirds what it was at its peak in late 2021.


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