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Comment by montroser | Hacker News Reader

Affect

I am a little bit indignant because it does affect me. When a small number of people abuse the system it means the rest of us can't have nice things.

If there were not rampant piracy, I would not have to know what is DRM and all of its associated inconvenience, because it wouldn't have to be a thing.

Not that the current solution isn't broken -- I do pay for (nearly) a dozen different streaming services. But I can't help feeling that I'm subsidising your lawless, anti-social approach, and it doesn't seem exactly fair that you get the better experience.

You have to acknowledge that if everyone did like you, then the whole thing wouldn't be able to sustain itself. It only works because most people take the hit and play by the rules.

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>You have to acknowledge that if everyone did like you, then the whole thing wouldn't be able to sustain itself. It only works because most people take the hit and play by the rules.

Except there's no data proving that people pirating movies/music/... are not also paying the industry.

Anecdotally, the persons I know in the habit of pirating entertainments are also some of the biggest spenders I know on the same things.

So, it's entirely possible that if everyone did like him, the whole thing would sustain itself. And if you have something tending to prove the contrary, I'm quite curious.

Yet if region locks and other nonsense didn't exist to begin with, piracy may never have had such a foothold. The history of commercial games and digital downloads is one of insane abusive behavior of consumers.

I still have a large list of games that I have legally bought but can't play because some manner of native drm or protection - having to practice piracy is the only way I can play those games.

Denuvo, the Sony rootkit, the finite number of installs that was a thing for a while, the list goes on.

DRM would be a thing even if piracy weren't, and despite piracy, DRM needn't be a thing. I buy music because music is sold without DRM, despite music being easier to pirate that movies (being a fraction of the size means it can be downloaded many times faster.)

Why would DRM be a thing even if piracy weren't? Because the companies that employ it are control freaks who, among other things, would like to sell people the same product numerous times.

> I do pay for (nearly) a dozen different streaming services.

This truly is a 'You' problem. Getting upset with other people because you choose to do that is senseless. It's doubly senseless to be upset about this since dozens of streaming services would be a thing even if piracy weren't. Dozens of streaming services are a thing because these companies are control freaks that want to reinvent Netflix rather than license their content to Netflix. They want complete control over how their media is promoted and distributed, they don't like delegating any of that control to another company. Bittorrent really has jackshit to do with dozens of streaming services existing. If anybody is to blame, it's the clueless pliant consumers that reward media companies for creating netflix clones.

"Damned consumers, paying for their goods and services... Idiots!"

I pay for Spotify, reluctantly. But it does have almost all the music I want. I also buy games on Gog, if they are not on Gog I use Steam (reluctantly).

I rarely pay for a movie bar a few cinema trips and blu-rays for something I really wanted to support . The reasons:

I want a well encoded DRM free file.

I don't want to be ripped off, or at least the "Steam Sale" model should be there so you can get it at a reasonable price a few months later.

I absolutely want the high quality download option. Steaming is fine for music. I'm confident I could find my Spotify playlists fairly easily elsewhere if I needed too (legally or otherwise). Maybe they are 500GB max.

I wouldn't be confident I could replace terabytes of my favorite movies quickly. I want those archived for myself without DRM.

I will pay when the product is better than a torrent site, it is possible when the lawyers and execs allow it to happen.

Piracy seems to have arisen mostly because the commercial options were really hard to work with -- and the subsequent forceful adoption of DRM didn't help either.

Consumers want convenience. I have convenience in the cinema so I pay for movies there quite often.

As for digital distribution, I don't feel confident in any platform. You basically pay to be severely inconvenienced. Plus what happens if you want to load up 10-20 movies on your laptop and go camping? Tough luck.

The movie industry should stop trying to sell us the same thing several times. If I paid for a cinema ticket once I should have the right to download that movie and have it stored offline forever.

Almost nobody who pirated movies (of those I spoke with) did so out of being cheap or poor. Almost everybody told me "I can't even figure out how I can download the movie I paid for" and just opted for torrenting.

Sure some people will do anything and everything to pirate. But I argue they are much less compared to those who are unhappy with the current streaming offerings.

> But I can't help feeling that I'm subsidizing your lawless, anti-social approach

No, you're subsidizing rich CEOs and their shareholders.

> But I can't help feeling that I'm subsidizing your lawless, anti-social approach

yeah thanks bro

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