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'F1: The Movie' Coming to Apple TV+ on Friday, December 12
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Right now, TV+ seems to be getting a lot of buzz over the quality of its original content, though that does not necessarily seem to have translated into subscriptions (I wonder how many people mistakenly believe you need to own an apple device to view TV+ content?).TV has to stand for something to gain traction in the streaming service wars (currently down about no. 8 with no back catalogue of note) & what better to keep thing as exclusives, the only place to see the content - the only place to watch the content.
I suspect that Apple deliberately does not want to invest in a back catalogue in order to keep costs low. Their endgame is like to give users a reason to open the TV app, subscribe to channels and purchase iTunes content (of which Apple gets a 30% cut). In a sense, users do have the opportunity to customise their own catalogue of shows, just not for free. You get to pick and choose, but have to pay for everything Ala-carte.
I also have no idea how profitable TV+ is. I suppose Apple makes more than enough money that they can keep funding original content indefinitely, but I really would like to know just how many people are still opting to buy movies on iTunes as compared to just watching it on another streaming service? 🤔
The problem is that Netflix wasn't profitable until recently. There's probably some sweet spot between the price charged and the number of people willing to subscribe at that price point that will maximise profits, I honestly don't know which is better for Netflix (should they have priced lower to attract more users, or continue to raise prices and trust that most of their user base will stick around), but I feel that the low prices Netflix started out with was never sustainable to begin with.
Personally, I feel that the streaming model has been a net negative for society. It has destroyed a lot of value for creators, it prioritises quantity over quality (since a minute of video is a minute of video regardless of how much effort went into creating it), and nobody really owns anything at the end of the day. When I stopped paying for Disney+, I lost my entire back catalogue of Marvel content, but I still have that Captain America: Civil War movie which I purchased on iTunes many years ago that I can still stream in my Apple TV.
Everybody wants low prices. I totally get that, and I also feel that what many don't realise is that customers and studios alike are jointly threatened by this race to the bottom. The internet is bad news for content creators with outsized costs. This in turn threatens their long-term viability, which could potentially mean less quality content for us in the long run, if we are just going to continue to demand that everything be made available at rock bottom prices.
Sure, there's still piracy, which only works so long as there remains a critical mass of paying customers keeping the studios afloat. So I don't think it's the panacea you think it is.
Though I am one to speak. I haven't stepped into a movie theatre since Spiderman: No Way Home (and my last movie prior to that was Endgame), I have also dropped all my subs saved for YouTube premium, and I just don't see myself hopping back on board anytime soon.
Again, objectively false. By all accounts, piracy have steadily increased since Netflix streaming started. You can theorise about how it may have been worse without Netflix, that doesn’t matter. We will never know, and it doesn’t make piracy right. What we DO know is, Netflix shifted people from paying for individual movies to paying for a subscription, and unit sales declined sharply. There is no evidence whatsoever that Netflix shifted people from piracy to paid content. Only theories, that are not based in historical facts.
There is a law against piracy. There is no law against giving things away for free. If a content provider believes it is good business to give their content away, nothing prohibits them from doing so. Many do, and there is nothing wrong with that. I am not against free distribution. I am in favour of people deciding for themselves how they want to distribute their work. It’s not your choice to make.
I just can't go with you here. Not this 100% firmly at least.
There is content where there is no way to ever even get it through legitimate means.
I don't mean "for a while" -- I mean literally ever.
I really don't think anyone is being harmed if that is digitally acquired by someone who otherwise literally never would (can't -- ever).
If the alternative is "XYZ don't ever even see it and it's disappears totally", I struggle to find many people involved with such a creation who wouldn't agree.
It's really a shame licensing and geo releases continue to make this a "thing" in 2025.
(This topic is not just about mainstream studio level releases -- I'm thinking more in niches)
I recognize you won't agree as you're an absolutist on this.
All good.. 👍 ✌️
I just wanted to add my perspective.
For me this can have some nuance to it.
The only parallel I can come up with right now is the insurance industry's concept of "moral hazard". A simple definition of this is that because it's so easy to burn down one's own barn it creates a potential "moral hazard" which can be investigated as such. If it is found to be a factor your claim gets denied as fraudulent and you may also be prosecuted.
One effect of this is the price of everybody else's insurance goes up, if only to pay for investigators, lawyers, additional staff and so on. So the more insurance fraud that occurs, the more all other consumers pay, it's simple economics. I'm no apologist for insurance companies by the way, clearly there are abuses on both sides.
Digital piracy "moral hazard" is a different can of worms due to the sheer scaling factors in play. In other words it's mostly small scale ($$ value) theft by huge numbers of people. This is hard (expensive) to prosecute individually. The big companies tried to do so back in the Nineties by prosecuting only the most egregious offenders and heavily publicizing the consequences.
Clearly, since shaming and bankrupting people's grandmothers for relatively small individual losses is such a blunt weapon it has thus far only worked partially and is no longer considered cool. Which leaves the question open of "what comes next?"
One effect of this is the price of everybody else's insurance goes up, if only to pay for investigators, lawyers, additional staff and so on. So the more insurance fraud that occurs, the more all other consumers pay, it's simple economics. I'm no apologist for insurance companies by the way, clearly there are abuses on both sides.
Digital piracy "moral hazard" is a different can of worms due to the sheer scaling factors in play. In other words it's mostly small scale ($$ value) theft by huge numbers of people. This is hard (expensive) to prosecute individually. The big companies tried to do so back in the Nineties by prosecuting only the most egregious offenders and heavily publicizing the consequences.
Clearly, since shaming and bankrupting people's grandmothers for relatively small individual losses is such a blunt weapon it has thus far only worked partially and is no longer considered cool. Which leaves the question open of "what comes next?"
Continue to make the paid offerings as appealing as possible.
Making the paid offerings more compelling is always the best way to get the most mainstream uptake.
The vast majority of people will pay if the value and convenience are there.
Carrots are so much more effective than sticks in this space.
Ah yes I buy that argument to some extent. But the moral hazard still exists, and the same "because it's so cheap & easy to copy" excuse.
For example, if it were so easy to walk into a supermarket and shoplift without getting caught there would be more folks doing it. Improving the value of said pilferable goods without improving security just increases the moral hazard for those who are easily tempted.
Net effect, the producer loses even more money. COGS increase while sales diminish as more people are sucked into considering "liberating" these more attractive & worthwhile items.
For example, if it were so easy to walk into a supermarket and shoplift without getting caught there would be more folks doing it. Improving the value of said pilferable goods without improving security just increases the moral hazard for those who are easily tempted.
Net effect, the producer loses even more money. COGS increase while sales diminish as more people are sucked into considering "liberating" these more attractive & worthwhile items.
You really can't map digital to physical as you're doing here.
The marginal cost being nearly zero matters a LOT in terms of producer downsides.
There's no tangible loss occurring.
I'm not making an ethical or moral statement, but simply a factual one as it relates to impacts on the production bottom line.
The key, again, is to worry about making a compelling value prop for the mainstream.
That's really all that matters here.
One will never stop all forms of piracy and it really doesn't actually impact the production/creative side if the vast majority are using legal means because they've become so ubiquitous and appealing.
I disagree. I think the mapping I'm doing is underpinned by legal and business principals, independent from differences in format.
And anyway, "digital" actually is physical if you think about it. The compiled code or image is physically stored and transmitted. Copying it doesn't magically remove its dependence on kickable objects to view it. A photocopy is undeniably "physical", as are computers and everything attached to them. So we might have defined a new term here "digiwashing".
I believe the solution is out there, and it likely involves producers securing their products better. Crypto currency type blockchain solutions could be envisaged to provide the more nuanced, layered system that you mentioned earlier perhaps. Or they could create a complete nightmare. One or the other.
Until then, theft is theft. Easy for me to say, my last theft was copying a cassette tape in 1972
To each our own. I'm just not interested in morally policing other people and their choices in general, not just on this topic.
I'm just not worried about it and I think services should stay focused on creating the most compelling offerings and value propositions for consumers and the situation basically takes care of itself.
No, because this causes harm. Watching a movie doesn't if there is no lost sale. False analogy amd you know it.
So, are you now talking about the law? I specifically asked what kind of "right" we are discussing. So far your arguments have been allover the place, and you weren't able to grasp the concept of a digital asset to engage in a meaningful discussion about ethics.
But since we're now arguing lawfulness:
Regarding contract laws: I don't have a contract with the creator. Regarding copyright/IP laws: These are not universal and vary from country to country and often change over time. It is therefore not valid to just proclaim in an absolute manner that people "don't have the right" to do this or that when it comes to content consumption. For example, in Switzerland citizens absolutely have the right to watch pirated movies or download and listen to an artist's music for legitimate personal use. It is THEIR RIGHT BY LAW.
I am thinking more in terms of opportunity cost.
Say you release a film. 100 people pirated your movie. Out of these 100 people, 40 of them may have paid to see your film if BitTorrent or alternative streaming websites were not readily available. The other 60 would not have paid to see your movie under any circumstances whatsoever (feel free to adjust that percentage). So I have actually made less money that what I otherwise could have had people not recorded my film in the cinema and uploaded it online.
It's not so straightforward as to say that you have lost nothing simply because no physical loss was incurred. If it can be proven that the presence of piracy led to fewer people paying for your product (and you making less money as a result), does that not account for anything? In the same vein, I don't think it's realistic for proponents of piracy to claim that not a single software pirate would not have paid to access your content in the first place.
On a tangent, this is why I feel the iOS App Store is justified in taking 30% from developers, because the central App Store model has helped to greatly reduce the incidence of software piracy (in that people who want to access a paid app usually have to purchase it the honest, old fashioned way compared to Android where sideloading is far more accessible). This allows developers to make more money and grows the overall pie in the process, even after giving Apple their cut, because 70% of something is better than 100% of nothing.
At the same time, the impact that efforts to combat piracy has had on software design is also debatable. For example, it would be easier to sideload a hacked APK of a paid app, vs a freemium app or a subscription-based one (which may be why we see more apps pivoting towards the latter). More games require their users to be online constantly, even for single-player mode. Legitimate users have to contend with invasive kernel-level anti-cheat software if they want to be able to play their favourite games. The end result is a worse user experience for genuine, paying customers.
The reality is that we simply don't know. It's not possible to prove a hypothetical, and there's nobody I can go to claim for lost earnings (the same way I could go after a thief who made off with a physical good). It's also easy to say to just ignore the pirates when it's not our earnings on the line. I feel that at the end of the day, the only thing a creator can do is to go subscription and pitch this as paying to support the continued creation of valued content.
But the one thing I don't think we should ever do is downplay the impact that pirates have on businesses, be it social, economic or otherwise.
It absolutely DOES matter. Netflix managed that countless "pirates" started to pay for movies. I don't need to "theorize" any more than you with your made-up piracy numbers. "by all accounts" lol.
What law, which country, what is "piracy"?
I’m absolutely not an absolutist 😉Everything has grey zones. But again this is just skewing the debate, since the statement that kicked off this discussion was very clearly not in that grey zone.
Every time this discussion comes up, pirates come up with every single outlier and exception that they can find on Google, to justify how piracy in SOME cases can be said to be OK. As I said before, you cannot bring to the debate an argument I haven’t heard before (including the Switzerland laws by the way).
But in case you forgot, we were talking about whether one is morally allowed to pirate F1 just because it comes out two months later than one would like. All these outlier arguments are completely irrelevant, because F1 is not abandonware. They are nothing more than diversions.
Good points, however I prefer not to use parallels at all in this discussion, because everyone will start debating the validity of the parallel, instead of the actual subject. And, it assumes that the other person has more knowledge about the topic you are making a parallel to - in this case insurance - than the topic at hand. It makes me wonder whether people discussing insurance costs use pirating as analogy to understand opportunity costs…
I could easily make- and defend that argument actually. But clearly it would be a waste of my valuable time and would just enrage the people who don't want to discuss this subject, for whatever reason. Bye bye to this thread.
That was literally my point. I don’t think you have a clue what I meant with it though.
If your time is too valuable to be here, why did you engage in the first place?
I’m perfectly happy to discuss this issue, that is why I am here. That doesn’t mean I am willing to change my stance on the matter. At least not without someone actually presented a compelling argument that I should. Which hasn’t happened in the 25 years I have debated it.