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Do you really believe that number is accurate?

😂
No, the number is pure fantasy crap. They need to make it look big in order to justify bigger action. At some point anti-theft will be costing more than any real “loss” - probably is already
 
What people really want(ed): "a la carte" selection, easy to use, for a good price, available wherever they live, at the same time as in other regions/countries.

The big media conglomerations wanted a piece of the digital/on demand pie as well, which is only fair, but as each wall themselves in their own service, it's basically back to the old cable packages... just with streaming.

That the big music/media corps mostly take a too big cut for themselves and hand out "peanuts" the creators and artists is another topic.
 
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For piracy to stop I think two things need to happen.

1. Lower the cost of digital movies and TV shows.

Sopranos box set is currently £80 on iTunes. £80!. Its completely ridiculous. It's cheaper to buy the physical discs which have production costs, shipping costs and will one day end up in landfill. For something that is just sat on a server waiting to be downloaded the cost should be 1/3 of physical media. The same goes for movies. I have a load of movies in iTunes but ive never paid £14 for a single one as its too expensive. Most 4k HDR blu rays can be picked up now for £10 so why pay more for something with no production and shipping costs etc.
You then also have the fact you're paying more for something you can't lend to a friend of even give your kids one day etc.

2. Make everything available in every country.

So much stuff is limited to certain countries and the only way to watch things is to find them illegally. Look at Doom Patrol. I was dying to watch that then discovered there was no way to watch it in the UK when it first started in the US. By time it arrived here they hype had gone and I still haven't watched it.
Many movies have different digital/blu ray release dates by a good few weeks. If something reaches the UK 3 weeks before the US then you're pretty much asking people to go and find it elsewhere.
 
Completely agree. I’m not going to make a huge deal about pirating, but I don’t understand arguments like “well they should just make things cheaper or more accessible”

No one is entitled to anything and it isn’t your right to get something just because you want it

It actually is your right to do just that, provided you’re able to get it. That’s the entire point of digital piracy.

Copyright was originally intended to last a maximum of 28 years. Today, it is essentially permanent with modern works likely never to enter the public domain.

This whole issue has nothing to do with right and wrong. It’s a simple matter of power and the ability to enforce copyright law.
 
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For piracy to stop I think two things need to happen.

1. Lower the cost of digital movies and TV shows.

Sopranos box set is currently £80 on iTunes. £80!. Its completely ridiculous. It's cheaper to buy the physical discs which have production costs, shipping costs and will one day end up in landfill. For something that is just sat on a server waiting to be downloaded the cost should be 1/3 of physical media. The same goes for movies. I have a load of movies in iTunes but ive never paid £14 for a single one as its too expensive. Most 4k HDR blu rays can be picked up now for £10 so why pay more for something with no production and shipping costs etc.
You then also have the fact you're paying more for something you can't lend to a friend of even give your kids one day etc.

2. Make everything available in every country.

So much stuff is limited to certain countries and the only way to watch things is to find them illegally. Look at Doom Patrol. I was dying to watch that then discovered there was no way to watch it in the UK when it first started in the US. By time it arrived here they hype had gone and I still haven't watched it.
Many movies have different digital/blu ray release dates by a good few weeks. If something reaches the UK 3 weeks before the US then you're pretty much asking people to go and find it elsewhere.

1. free market. If you don’t like the price, don’t buy.

2. not possible. The tv/movie content distribution rights have been in effect for decades. You are effectively asking XYZ company to void the rights to distribute X content in X region. Rights they paid a lot of money for just to satisfy people who believe they have a right to consume it their way. Prepare for lengthy legal actions if any country tries to steamroll a new distribution model that voids legal contracts.

BTW the reason Apple, Netflix, Prime and others created their own distribution is that they can offer it to everyone around the world at the same time.
 
Digital music stores + streaming music services killed music piracy. Make it easier and cheaper to consume your video content and piracy will go away.

Bundling your TV channels/content into expensive packages with the exclusion of a few channels/shows that most people want is not the way to go.
Piracy was never killed, reduced maybe, but far from killed! But yeah, I see a resurgence as the subscription game has gotten out of hand.
 
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Amazon will not let me sign up to prime. Just doesn’t work. It used to work and I cancelled it. Then the grand tour season 2 started so I wanted to start it up again. Nope. Will not let me. Raised a request through support and they couldn’t help.
So I found a channel on YouTube that uploaded the grand tour.
 
Piracy is bad and artists should be paid for their work and unfortunately, so long as corporations are in charge, the artists will always be paid through the corporation which takes their huge cut first. The record labels weren't exactly pioneers but that model is unchanged. I pay Netflix and they pay some money to the people responsible for creating the content. I read recently that Amazon's Direct Prime which allows creators to upload series and collect money on the backend based on views pays insanely low prices - https://videocentral.amazon.com/home/royalty-rates 1 to 12 cents per hour of viewing so if you upload a 1 hour movie to Amazon and 1 million people watch the entire thing, yo've made $60,000 or a paltry $10,000 at the low end. That's assuming you convince a million people to watch with enough production quality keep them around the full hour.

My point is, Piracy is bad but so long as corporations play the crap they're playing now, it's not going away. The $120 Comcast Bill is now the $100 streaming bill with Comcast Internet on top of it.

CBS for $9
Peacock for $9
AppleTV = $5
Netflix - $12
Hulu - $10
Disney - $5
HBO Max - $15
Apple Music or Spotify thrown in for good measure

then every month, the consumers will give Comcast $60-$100 for access to those streaming services and cord cutters still can't watch NFL games on Sunday.

So yeah, of course they're pirating. Instead of giving CBS $10 a month, they're just downloading Picard and instead of giving AppleTV $5, they're going to download See and For all Mankind and probably Netflix doesn't have a huge piracy issue except for countries where its blocked because most people have an account of access a friend's but if you remove Netflix and Amazon Prime from the piracy discussion, I bet the rest of the networks have a TON of their content stolen online because when a huge number of the country is unemployed and people's salaries are growing slower than inflation and phones are $1,0000, cord-cutting is more expensive than just having cable.

Piracy is really bad but the corporations need to stop being so greedy. I have little faith that this will change.
"people's salaries are growing slower than inflation" - yep, and the world's billionaires increased their wealth on average by 25% since covid started. Guess who owns the lion's share of stocks in all these streaming services... yep, the billionaires. They are crying about piracy because it's stopping them adding a few more millions to their piles of wealth.
 
It's so cheap and simple, if you like a show just find out whether HBO, Starz, Hulu, Disney+, AppleTV+, Amazon Prime.....is playing it.
 
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Keep creating new independent streaming platforms, I’m sure everyone will be happy to pay 5 subscriptions just to watch your stuff.

Not to mention, there’s still no Disney+ where I live, so even if I want to pay, I can’t 🏴‍☠️
 
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Digital music stores + streaming music services killed music piracy. Make it easier and cheaper to consume your video content and piracy will go away.

Bundling your TV channels/content into expensive packages with the exclusion of a few channels/shows that most people want is not the way to go.
Exactly! Right now I am subscribed to TV because the TV Internet bundle is cheaper than the Internet and 3 different streaming services I would need.
 
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Piracy is theft, no doubt about it. And it doesn't harm billionaire owners of media conglomerates it harms rank and file people working in the industries. Keep that in mind. But, as others have pointed out, you'll never get rid of piracy you can only minimize it. And there are ways to do so, but it seems the owners and distributors of the content would rather try to get the most money out of those willing to pay for it, rather than compromise and disincentivize piracy.

Number one, and I think someone already said this in the thread, but it is cheaper to subscribe to cable than all the different streaming services. Netflix worked because you could get a bit of everything for a relatively reasonable price. It's not reasonable to have to subscribe to a different service for each hit show. Solution:let people buy access to your network's shows individually. Not everything has to be a subscription based "service". Unfortunately I don't see this going away anytime soon unless it is legislated away, or a disruptor comes in and changes the model; bean counters are too enamoured with it. There's a good chance a car you "buy" in the next 10 years will charge you a fee monthly or yearly to use features that it has, like heated seats or fog lamps, etc.

Number two, why don't they consider a spotify like model? Have a free tier of access that allows people to watch the content with ads, reduced quality, limited number of views for free or a "premium" paid access that eliminates that.

Number three, old TV and movies could be a goldmine as nostalgia sells, especially as the world progressively goes to hell. But old series and old movies are ridiculously priced. No reason to do so, and I firmly believe distributors are leaving money on the table by pricing them such so high. Most people will spend $20 without batting an eye. $70 or more seems expensive to most people. Its like the old app store model of $0.99 cent apps and songs: you'll make the money in volume of sales.
 
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They say:
“The goal is to disrupt the piracy ecosystem that harms creators”

so what I read is that they are doing this for the creators.

Then I read:
“with streaming piracy representing 80 percent of all piracy today, costing companies as much as $71 billion annually.”

ahh but if it was all for the creators, why don’t they state what it cost them in lost revenue?
 
They say:
“The goal is to disrupt the piracy ecosystem that harms creators”

so what I read is that they are doing this for the creators.

Then I read:
“with streaming piracy representing 80 percent of all piracy today, costing companies as much as $71 billion annually.”

ahh but if it was all for the creators, why don’t they state what it cost them in lost revenue?
You get out of here with that logic and critical-thinking!

/s 🤣
 
Corporations: "Stop stealing our stuff!"

Users: "If you make your stuff easier to get, we wouldn't have to steal it."
 
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Don't be that guy. don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. As the world of consumers discovered years ago the steaming dream is over. You want one service? Fine, it's not much. You want shows on multiple services? And then add in sports? You'll end up paying more than cable ever was. It's ridiculous. Music piracy effectively ended the day Spotify and others got their act together. Imagine Warner and Sony and all the labels had their OWN music streaming service that they wanted people to pay for. It would be ridiculous.

If these poor big mega rich corporations want to end piracy then they'll need to make it as easy as possible or people to get their products and that includes not each having their own little world. People will do what's easiest. And if that means piracy then so be it.
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It's either a bot, or someone trying to start a brand. It's supremely irritating. Don't mention it though or the mods will delete your posts.

If being ”that guy” means being the guy who pays for his stuff and doesn’t expect it to be given to him for whatever arbitrary price he decides. Then I guess I am that guy.

20 years ago the excuse was that people couldn’t find content anywhere and studios made it too hard to get their content.

Now the excuse is that people can’t get everything they could possibly want for $14.99/month.
 
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Piracy will never go away. If they focused their efforts on having a coherent streaming presence instead of trying to fight a losing uphill battle while charging an arm and a leg for everything it wouldn't be a problem.
So a “coherent streaming presence” is an effective counter to streaming piracy? Good to know. Thanks for clearing that up.
 
They are not losing money, who can afford they pay, who can't afford find a free way or don't watch, I'm on disability, I'm barely hanging from month to month, these shows kinda keep me alive, the only thing to look up to, I have such miserable life, there is like one or two shows on each different streaming platform or channel that I like, if I couldn't watch them for free I wouldn't, at best I would get only Netflix and split the payment with couple people if I lived in USA, but I tried netflix in my country and nothing was there, so I would need to pay for VPN on top of that. Why they pretend like people that pirate are rich people? Is not it obvious that it's the poorest?

And I also like to speed up the shows, increase contrast, gamma (because so much of the old shows have no dynamic range and are so dark hard to see anything) and saturation a lot (why so many shows have such dull color grading, I'm already so depressed, these make m even moe depressed, some I could not even watch if I couldn't increase saturation, in most shows 50% in is enough in IINA, but some I go even 100%) also I add sharpening, a lot of sharpening on old content, no of this options available on streaming websites.
 
They say:
“The goal is to disrupt the piracy ecosystem that harms creators”

so what I read is that they are doing this for the creators.

Then I read:
“with streaming piracy representing 80 percent of all piracy today, costing companies as much as $71 billion annually.”

ahh but if it was all for the creators, why don’t they state what it cost them in lost revenue?
Why does it have to be one or the other?
 
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