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'F1: The Movie' Coming to Apple TV+ on Friday, December 12
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Well... they make these movies to make money. Making money can be a slimy business all right 😂. But I agree that all these streaming services with their ads and ever rising prices will bring us right back to where we started: public sharing (or piracy as those scummy corporate lawyers call it 😉)
There's no need to imagine anything, we had this exact situation in the movie market. Everybody was pirating. Then along came Netflix making it easy to watch everything you wanted with a simple subscription that wasn't even that expensive. It single-handedly destroyed piracy because it was just so much easier to pay a small monthly fee and access everything you wanted instead of having to deal with torrents, slow downloads, bad quality rips, rar files and such.
But now the price for this has at least quadrupled because you need several subscriptions for a decent catalog. And not just that, you also have the constant hassle of switching between apps, checking where you can find what, working around geo blocking, and turning subscriptions on/off because they have become way more expensive and aren't worth it for that one show you like. Unsurprisingly, what happens is that pirating is on the rise again. What's for sure the best way to counter this development? According to streaming service execs, the universally accepted best and most sustainable solution is to make their product even less compelling: increase prices like crazy, limit number of devices without paying double, crack down on account sharing (adding annoying barriers for legitimate use), limit availability of shows even more, split shows across multiple services to increase subscriptions, etc. Makes sense.
That is a very big “if” though. Some percentage of those pirating would definitely buy some percentage of the content they were pirating, if pirating didn’t exist.
Also, just because the content creator doesn’t lose anything doesn’t mean you get to leech off of their work. Whether they lose anything from your particular act of pirating is irrelevant and completely besides the point. Anyone doing any kind of work has the right to decide at which price you should benefit from their work. If you don’t like the price, sod off. You are not entitled to a copy, just because it is not technically “stealing”.
These are the same people getting free demonstrations in specialty stores “because they are there anyway, so they don’t lose anything”, go home and buy the product online, and then complains when the specialty stores close down.
Just because you don’t want to pay the price doesn’t give you the right to grab a free copy. It gives you the right to bugger off and watch something else. Or spend some more time in the real world instead of staring at your TV all day.
No, it doesn’t.Music (iTunes) was introduced to combat piracy, therefore it follows that
No, it doesn’t.
No, it isn’t.I'm not advocating piracy, but the whole thing is counter to why streaming services were created in the first place, specifically
You don’t get to decide how I choose to distribute my product. Just because you like shopping at Walmart, doesn’t mean I MUST put it on their shelves. You’re free to buy something else if you don’t like my price or distribution method.
This argument is quite flawed by the way. I looked it up, and piracy is estimated to have been consistently increasing since 2000. Netflix did absolutely not “destroy piracy”. It did “destroy” sales and rental though. It was simply a different distribution method for people already actually paying for content. Number of box office tickets AND home office units PEAKED just before Netflix launched. Netflix did not save a dying business, the business was in a very healthy state.
The thing is, pirates always think “everyone does it”. No, they don’t. But, if the industry didn’t fight it, it would certainly end up that way. Which means no movies to pirate. Everybody loses.
It is of course more nuanced than that. Everybody has a certain willingness to pay. And a certain willingness to spend time/effort to work around paying. When a movie costs $1000, almost everybody will be either not watching or pirating. When a movie is available for 10 cents at the click of a button, nobody goes through the troubles of pirating. Where the threshold is is different for each person based on their financial situation and their technical ability/knowledge, time at hand, moral ideas, etc.
There are two main groups:
- G1: People who are generally willing to pay price X to see the movie
- G2: People not willing to pay X to see the movie
- G1.1: People willing to pay rather than pirate (because pirating is not worth it)
- G1.2: People who pirate rather than pay (because pirating is easy enough for them)
Subgroups of G2:
- G2.1: People who don't watch the movie at all (don't want to see the movie, don't know how to pirate, etc.)
- G2.2: People who pirate the movie (desire to see the movie is bigger than the costs of pirating)
Each member of G1.2, G2.1, G2.2 is a potential lost sale. If piracy is made more "costly" (harder, lower availability, crackdowns, etc.), people from Gx.2 flow into Gx.1. But it must be clear that only G1.2 -> G1.1 bring additional revenue. G2.2 -> G2.1 is useless as these will still not be paying and are "not gettable as customers" without changing the value proposition. On the other hand, lowering the price would move people from G2 to G1 in general (at the cost of less revenue from G1.1) and also move some people from G1.2 to G1.1. So, there are definitely things a creator/distributor can do. But it's not that everybody who pirates is a thief (as no sale is "stolen" by people in G2), and on the other hand it's also not the case that there are no "gettable customers" as G1.2 definitely exists. I just think that group's size is constantly exaggerated and it also shrinks every time a service gets more expensive or less attractive in other ways.
Which, of course, is irrelevant other than to set a floor on price. Companies price at marginal plus desired profit margin, something Apple has clearly done with F1.
As others point out, if you don't like the price, don't buy. If enough people do that, pricing will change.
You are underestimating technological literacy of younger generations and the digital transformation in general. There was nothing preventing people from shifting to those new "different distribution methods", paid or unpaid. While in absolute numbers piracy may have grown, relatively, compared to how media is or would have been consumed without it, Netflix destroyed piracy (for you: kept it in check). They have created millions of paying customers who would never have bought anything otherwise.
What do you mean by "right". Are we talking laws or ethics? Then explain why – if I would never pay the price for it under any circumstances – it is not "right" (legitimate) that I watch something nice when no sale is lost either way.
What a bizarre argument! So you're saying that if I wouldn't ever pay a high price for, say, a Lamborghini, it's OK for me to steal one because I was never going to buy it so no sales were lost?
Or does your statement only apply to digital product because it's easy to steal, so it's ok to just steal it?
Unlike a car, digital goods can be copied without incurring any cost.
You can't think about stealing in the physical sense. It's all pretty abstract.
Yes, I'll give you that when you click "duplicate" on an MP4 file in the Finder, it will use up a tiny amount of CPU and and logicboard and SSD energy - for which someone has to pay.
I hope we can agree that the scale of these costs is negligible compared to the raw materials and labour required to build a car?
Any cost you might feel duplicating a file is incurring (loss of potential revenue for the rights holder of that file etc.) is something abstract, not tangible.
I hope we can agree that the scale of these costs is negligible compared to the raw materials and labour required to build a car?
Any cost you might feel duplicating a file is incurring (loss of potential revenue for the rights holder of that file etc.) is something abstract, not tangible.
It all depends on the implied contract you have with the content owner. If the terms of use are that the item is for sale at a price, that contract applies in law. If the owner makes it available for free, you are good, with possible other restrictions on distribution.
Look, it's easy to steal apples from an Amish farm stand, but decent people put money in the tin box.
Look, it's easy to steal apples from an Amish farm stand, but decent people put money in the tin box.
I'll try one last time, then I'll drop it.
If you take an apple and eat it, that apple cannot be eaten by anyone else.
If you copy a music file, the original can still be played.
That's the big difference between the real world and the abstract.
One of these things is a crime because there's a societal framework about licenses and rights holdings etc. These frameworks are not part of the physical world, they are part of a system that can be changed by society.
The legislative branch cannot pass a law that makes it so the same apple can be eaten by several people.
(Yes, I know there's conditions where it's perfectly legal to steal food, just as there's conditions that make it legal to copy an MP3. I'm trying to talk about the most basic case here.)
I'll shut up with this derail now, I don't think we'll get anywhere without several pages of defining concepts so we're talking about the same things.
If you take an apple and eat it, that apple cannot be eaten by anyone else.
If you copy a music file, the original can still be played.
That's the big difference between the real world and the abstract.
One of these things is a crime because there's a societal framework about licenses and rights holdings etc. These frameworks are not part of the physical world, they are part of a system that can be changed by society.
The legislative branch cannot pass a law that makes it so the same apple can be eaten by several people.
(Yes, I know there's conditions where it's perfectly legal to steal food, just as there's conditions that make it legal to copy an MP3. I'm trying to talk about the most basic case here.)
I'll shut up with this derail now, I don't think we'll get anywhere without several pages of defining concepts so we're talking about the same things.
I'm totally with you!!
Please tell me you feel this way about AI absolutely horrendously ripping off content from nearly everyone!
Apple is literally partnering with one of the worst offenders (OpenAI).
What do you think of that?
@Selena Agna: Hogwash! It's simple theft. Always has been unless the copyright owner terms state otherwise.
@turbineseaplane: Great point re AI, that may hopefully become the next big battle. Scooping up previously uncopyrighted material for profit is, IMNSHO, likewise theft. Enforcement of penalties will be difficult though.
@turbineseaplane: Great point re AI, that may hopefully become the next big battle. Scooping up previously uncopyrighted material for profit is, IMNSHO, likewise theft. Enforcement of penalties will be difficult though.
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I was replying to @Selena Agna, your post crossed over with mine, apologies. I've edited my post accordingly.
I already gave an answer to that argument, and I’m not going to repeat it. I’ve had these arguments for 25 years, and there are no new angles you or anyone else can come up with, that will change my opinion - which is, whatever words you use to describe it, pirating is wrong - period. I don’t care if you call it stealing or not, it’s irrelevant.
Proponents of pirating constantly derail the debate by arguing about semantics instead of the subject matter, because all they want to do is make excuses why it is okay for specifically them, in their particular “unique” (spoiler: totally not unique) use case to not pay for their content. And why specifically in their case they are actually helping the content providers by not paying them. Sorry - need to find my barf bag.