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Comment by bmelton | Hacker News Reader

I suppose what's interesting about this to me is that the pirates are presumably paying for VPN service? Which means that I guess we've figured out the threshold where they are and aren't willing to pay for things -- to keep out of jail.

I should launch a Piracy as a Service app. Each month, you send me $100, and I will send you back copies of hot movies of varying quality, but all perfectly legal. You stay out of jail, I stay out of jail, and the pirates can rest assured that they never had to actually pay for the media they're consuming.

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> Each month, you send me $100, and I will send you back copies of hot movies of varying quality, but all perfectly legal

Your snide comment is way off the mark. By your tone I'm assuming you're staunchly anti-piracy and don't pirate stuff, so you don't have experience with the actual quality of pirated media.

As a long-time pirate (10+ years), I can unequivocally tell you that pirated media is lightyears ahead of anything available legally. By using just 1 (one) torrent site, I can gain access to pretty much every single movie, music album, video game (console or PC), piece of software (all platforms), and book. The downloads almost always max out my connection.

As for quality - it's better than if you buy the media. Netflix and iTunes are just now bringing out 1080p content, and it's almost definitely going to be compressed in a lossy way. I can torrent the original Bluray disc image (~50 GB) if I want to, or get a high quality X264 compressed version to save space/bandwidth. You're not forced to go with the one thing that's offered to you. Both options have been available ever since Bluray (and HDDVD) first came out. I've been watching 1080p content for years without ever buying a Blu-ray drive or any other special hardware.

And the best part of all - both the downloading process and the files I get are in standard & open formats that I can run & view on my Linux PC. What's available for download is browsed via a normal web browser, the BitTorrent protocol is open and has been implemented on Linux many times over, and I've never had any issues playing back content once it's been downloaded - the formats are open and are supported by a variety of open source media players.

Let me know when I can run iTunes or Netflix on Linux. I doubt it'll ever happen.

Oh, and VPN services don't cost $100 a month. You can get them for less than $20/month. When I was sharing a seedbox with a friend, it was $10/month for unlimited data transfer and 250 GB of storage space.

Not to mention you can enhance all sorts of playback stuff. Simple one: Subtitles. Netflix took forever to add subtitles, and even now the coverage is spotty, and languages are very limited. And if sync is off, tough luck.

Also, if there's any problem with playback, you can fix it. A few things I use often: Brightness control, dynamic range compression (nighttime mode), subwoofer support (2 channel audio on Windows just goes out L and R; ffdshow lets me easily split low freqs to the sub).

I didn't imply that VPN services did cost $100 a month, nor did I think they did. I would honestly be surprised if I had to pay more than $5 a month for one.

The $100 a month figure I threw out was what I thought it might cost me to buy assorted 'hot media' on the market and resell it at a small margin.

I also didn't imply that your pirated media was of poor quality, but since you so proudly brought it up, looking over a single torrent site shows a broad range of quality options for a given download, which fits with my earlier snide comment.

As for your remarks about Netflix/iTunes and Linux, I consider that a feeble response. I can't buy a Ford transmission that fits my Jeep Wrangler, but that doesn't entitle me to steal cars, even if Ford makes a better transmission that fits more vehicles. And before we get into the whole "can't pirate a transmission" rhetoric, let's get out of the way that there are iTunes-like services and Netflix-like services for Linux. They exist. Sure, they aren't the exact same thing, but I honestly suspect that their non-existence is just another strawman excuse to justify pirating whatever you want without having to consider that it might actually be a harmful thing -- or you're too caught up feeling entitled to care that your cop outs are just that.

Also, these things never go anywhere. I'll just go ahead and apologize now for hitting the reply button, because I know I'm going to, but I will not respond to this. If you want to pirate things, go ahead. But I frankly am not interested in hearing how you've justified how great and open and free it is. Either you're willing to pay for the things you consume or you aren't. By my opinion, if you aren't, you aren't entitled to consume them. That's my opinion. You're welcome to yours.

As my colleague commented last week, "'You wouldn't steal a car?' Feel free to copy my Range Rover."

I'm not naive enough to believe that copying your friend's Range Rover takes anything away from him. I understand that.

It takes away from the people who design, manufacture and sell Range Rover vehicles.

To turn that analogy on its head -- identity theft is also not 'stealing'. I haven't taken anything away from the original holder of that identity, as they are decidedly still who they are. That doesn't make it victimless, and it certainly doesn't make it right.

Doesn't turn it on its head, in fact, supports my point. Copying your identity info doesnt hurt you in any way. Using that ID for commerce does.

Copying a movie you'd truly never pay for doesn't hurt. Reselling your copy does.

Making a copy uses resources and work. Copying a Land Rover would cost you more than buying a new one. Mass production and distribution lowers the price enough you can buy it cheaper than you can make it.

Studios should be thinking the same way, realizing that people will pay for convenience. To get paid more, make it more convenient. Just look through these comments to see how much "piracy" is actually about convenience.

"I can unequivocally tell you that pirated media is lightyears ahead of anything available legally"

I find this unlikely. Piracy is just a copy. It's not like anything new is actually created in the process. You are getting a very nice duplicate of the original.

You are part of the entitlement generation. Since you are so used to just getting things for free, you will just keep making excuses to pirate when the company doesn't give you exactly what you want.

This will have many consequences in the future, including:

1) Commercial software will only be serviced-based. So, instead of paying one-fee for software, you will be required to pay for it every month/year. IE: the "cloud".

2) Software developer salaries will be much lower. Although not directly related to piracy, open source being so freely available means that businesses only need people to do updates (software mechanics not engineers).

3) DRM and more protections schemes. DRM was a direct result of piracy, not the other way around.

Continue to pirate all you want, but don't be shocked at the future you helped create.

> I find this unlikely. Piracy is just a copy. It's not like anything new is actually created in the process. You are getting a very nice duplicate of the original.

As unlikely as you may find it, it's a fact. Pirated media has none of the restrictions that legitimately obtained media does. For example, I don't have to worry about whether a new device that I've just bought will be compatible with all the media I already possess - since it's not DRM-encumbered, I'm free to do whatever neccessary to get the file onto the device.

Acquiring the media is the same - I can torrent music on my Linux PC, but I can't download music using many legitimate sources.

> You are part of the entitlement generation. Since you are so used to just getting things for free, you will just keep making excuses to pirate when the company doesn't give you exactly what you want.

Wrong. I buy media when it's provided in a cross-platform and non-DRM encumbered manner. I've purchased every single Humble Indie Bundle until now (and paid more than the average), not only because Linux & Android versions are available, but also because I can download the games from my web browser. I haven't really played the games that much, but that's not the point.

When Louis CK announced his $5 comedy special that was available online (from a web browser) in a non-DRM encumbered manner, I went and purchased it immediately, even though I don't particularly enjoy his comedy, and did the same with Aziz Ansari's comedy special as well.

"Pirates" usually aren't unwilling to pay, but unwilling to pay for an inferior product.

Well they still watch/use/listen to the "inferior" product, so if it's worth watching/using/listening to, why is it not worth paying for? Or should people be able to set their own prices on what they get?

The inferior part is the file format (DRM ridden and weird) and the convenience, not (usually) the sounds and the sights.

No, pirates constantly get a superior product to anything you can buy.

That's because the DRM is stripped, the DRM often have many compatibility/integrity/security issues etc. that pirates never have to worry about. They are not forced to watch through FBI warnings before watching a movie.

The experience of downloading something is vastly superior to buying it in most cases, and that's assuming you can buy it at all (pirates don't have to wait/hope for a TV series to be released outside of US, for instance).

To add to the points made by previous responses, you can see for yourself the benefit of unencumbered files by ripping your own legally obtained Blu-ray movies. Once you have a DRM-free file on your hard drive, everything is better: there are no forced trailers, the movie loads nearly instantly (the standalone Blu-ray player I've used took about 5 minutes to load a disc), and seeking is practically instantaneous. You can even watch your legally obtained full-quality movies on non-HDCP-capable projectors and monitors.

For me, being able to avoid TV ads, forced movie ads, and ads on services like Pandora are some of the greatest advantages to piracy.

Furthermore, you know things like Bitrate before you download. On Netflix, you don't know how a movie has been compressed. Even 1080p movies can have noticeable quality differences depending on the method of compression. Using a private tracker, you can see the exact program and settings used before downloading.

They do pay for them: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pira...

Don't buy into the RIAA/MPAA lies. Piracy is not just about getting stuff for free.

Pirates pay for media as well: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/apr/21/study-finds-pira...

Actually I was thinking that should be the content industry's next business model. People subscribe to torrent/content services. The services buy licenses for content. People download content.

It's almost the same thing as radio, the difference being that you have a copy.

If the service is affordable, it won't have what you want. If it has what people want it will cost $100/month. This is basically the Netflix dilemma.

how about having "donate" buttons on torrent sites that would allow you to donate either to studio, or actor, or producer. That money would go to a offshore account where they would wait to be claimed by the cast or copyright holder. And the only condition for transferring money from this account would be to sign a carefully worded document that would mean that copyright holder agrees to such distribution model?

I've been wanting a service like this for anime for years. Instead of paying ridiculous import prices for DVDs without English subtitles, let overseas fansub watchers pay what they want, directly to the studio, anonymously. Admittedly this might discourage some buyers who previously imported DVDs from Japan, but I'd bet there'd be an overall net increase in revenue for the studios.

Too bad it won't happen anytime soon.

Better get started soon, these guys: http://put.io/ have been at it for years.

If you want to pay to improve your piracy experience, Usenet is the way to go. For about $20 a month you can get unlimited downloads of whatever, as fast as your home connection can handle, non-peer-to-peer. It's not as general a solution as VPN, but it's kind of amazing to me that Usenet doesn't get more attention, at least if VPNs are now starting to.

Megashares is half that.

Just saying.

And excellent file search engines exist for all those sites (www.filestube.com).

I know Astraweb and others charge less. I agree, it's significantly cheaper and easier to use Usenet. Plus I believe it to be more legal, since you aren't actually sharing copywrited material. Just downloading it, and I don't believe anyone has been sued for just downloading.

> it's kind of amazing to me that Usenet doesn't get more attention

Perhaps because the saying "the first rule of Usenet is that you don't talk about Usenet" has helped prevent it from going viral.

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