What a wondrous age of ingenuity we live in! We could use some of that composting software here in the MacRumors forums!
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Leaked Aquaman Movie Suggests iTunes 4K Stream Cracked for First Time
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Why would anyone pirate this movie? It was laughably bad. And the underwater CGI was terrible. Like Star Wars prequels bad....
1-I thought torrents were as good as dead after digital downloads and digital streaming era.
2-Who is spending his free time to hack other people's creation that they invested millions in to give away for free online and risk the danger of being caught and going to jail... for a movie?!
I used to understand why they did this back when a single DVD might costs you $30(no shipping), a boxset complete series could cost you $100+ . The online surveillance was much less too.
Are you saying my retina macbook 2015 does not play video in 4K? I thought retina is clearer than 4k?!
2-Who is spending his free time to hack other people's creation that they invested millions in to give away for free online and risk the danger of being caught and going to jail... for a movie?!
I used to understand why they did this back when a single DVD might costs you $30(no shipping), a boxset complete series could cost you $100+ . The online surveillance was much less too.
Are you saying my retina macbook 2015 does not play video in 4K? I thought retina is clearer than 4k?!
For one:
It's a challenge. Why do people risk their lives climbing Mount Everest?
If you use an anonymous VPN, there is much less risk in being caught.
Wow!!
It's a challenge. Why do people risk their lives climbing Mount Everest?
If you use an anonymous VPN, there is much less risk in being caught.
Wow!!
You can rip them as long as you don't circumvent encryption and still only for backup purposes, not space-shifting. That's the piece people always seem to ignore. Other than a handful of old DVDs, nearly all movies are encrypted. Using keys, bypassing drive firmware, HDMI streaming, screen capture and removing DRM are all circumventing encryption. The only legal way to have a movie in digital form is to buy it in some way.
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Congrats on your films! I'm sorry you've had to struggle with piracy. I'm consistently stunned at the volume of people who don't care about how their actions may negatively affect others. I wish you all the best and good luck with your next film!
Absolutely. I've purchased a few movies from a service that allowed you to download them into your computer so that you can watch them during a trip, etc.
a) As the movies were DRM protected, they only played in their app/player which I loathed.
b) They went out of business - so the movies I bought will only play for as long as I have their app installed, the app works and I don't need extra free HDD space.
This is what was happening with the audio business a long time ago - buy a song on iTunes. Got a different player than iPod? Too bad, buy it again. I understand that the companies want to protect their content - but to what end? It will get shared anyway and their policies only hurt the people who want to buy content legally.
I want to buy the movie, download it and store it on my hard drive in case I decide to watch it and there's no decent Internet connection available. Yes, there are still such places. And I want to play it in a player of my choice.
It isn't an analogy - piracy is theft and you know that. Otherwise you wouldn't have agreed that it's immoral.
You keep shifting the reason you participate in piracy and now you're saying it's ok for "some movies." I get it, it sucks not being able to see a movie that you want when the owner of that movie hasn't made it available. That's their right though. You can't decide that for them. What you can do is contact them, start petitions and wait. I waited for years to get a movie that I saw as a kid and it only just became available recently on DVD after a long campaign requesting to release it.
There are so many legal alternatives for watching these movies. While Spotify and other streaming services are great for the consumer, they are not that great for the studios or artists. In fact, Spotify itself struggled with making profits. Regardless, the Spotify solution for movies is already here. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. Disney is making a streaming service as well but that was bashed saying it was just another service and streaming services are out of control.
You can rationalize it all you want but it doesn't change the fact that what you're doing is wrong.
Now that their DRM is useless anyway, can we please download movies we purchased from iTunes in 4K?
Even at h.265 it's very big. I'm sure someone has already offered the 1080 version as well.
Wait a minute....Apple might be releasing a car this year? That is huge news, let's talk more about that.
Why do you keep dodging the question? Yelling "wrong," "immoral," and "theft" does nothing to reduce piracy. Not all immoral things are theft. It can be both immoral and not theft. It seems to me you care more about pointing fingers than actually participating in a good-faith discussion about how to reduce piracy.
Also, if you want to get literal - it is infringement. Theft is not a synonym of infringement.
I disagree that I've done any shifting. I've been consistent that it's a form of civil disobedience for me. Release the content on terms I can agree with, or I'll get it elsewhere.
Cool. We agree on that. What I am doing is wrong. Now what? You know arguments about morality won't work, so what else can we do as a society to reduce piracy? I have suggested a thing several times that you've so far ignored, so I can only assume you have no counterargument against it: analogize piracy to competition.
If you actually care about this issue, I suggest you read the book called "Thirteen Ways to Steal a Bicycle" by Stuart Green. It does not argue that piracy is good or ok, and it's written by a legit academic. There are other good legal papers out on the topic as well. Basically, the thesis is that the legal constructs around the idea of theft are inadequate to address the issue of intellectual property infringement on the internet.
Lots of talk saying piracy isn’t theft.
Do you really think content creators give a **** about the plastic discs they melt our content onto?
Honestly, royalties are extremely low on those plastic discs, so you’d be doing less damage to actually steal a physical than to pirate digitally... IF that means a loss of sale digitally.
I’ve been through all these arguments a hundred times including the argument that most pirated copies would have never been paid customers under any circumstances. And I agree they wouldn’t. But there are lots of things I wouldn’t pay for but would take for free, but that doesn’t mean I can just have them.
It also has a very bad side effect that few people speak of... movies DO have an intended audience and they are mostly marketed to the people that are going to like them. When someone simply downloads all movies because they pop up on their piracy site of choice, they end up watching things just because they’re free. When they dislike them, they share their dislike on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, etc, lowering the movie’s score. This dissuades potential people from the actual target audience from actually paying to watch the movie, even though they may have actually enjoyed it.
So there are actually people that can both not pay to watch a movie, but also cancel out other possible customers as well.
The proof is in how many 1-star reviews of my movie said “thankfully I didn’t pay to watch this”. The problem is that those reviews usually start with “there’s not even any blood”. People see horror and they pirate, but we don’t actually market to the usual horror audience in the traditional channels.
Do you really think content creators give a **** about the plastic discs they melt our content onto?
Honestly, royalties are extremely low on those plastic discs, so you’d be doing less damage to actually steal a physical than to pirate digitally... IF that means a loss of sale digitally.
I’ve been through all these arguments a hundred times including the argument that most pirated copies would have never been paid customers under any circumstances. And I agree they wouldn’t. But there are lots of things I wouldn’t pay for but would take for free, but that doesn’t mean I can just have them.
It also has a very bad side effect that few people speak of... movies DO have an intended audience and they are mostly marketed to the people that are going to like them. When someone simply downloads all movies because they pop up on their piracy site of choice, they end up watching things just because they’re free. When they dislike them, they share their dislike on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB, etc, lowering the movie’s score. This dissuades potential people from the actual target audience from actually paying to watch the movie, even though they may have actually enjoyed it.
So there are actually people that can both not pay to watch a movie, but also cancel out other possible customers as well.
The proof is in how many 1-star reviews of my movie said “thankfully I didn’t pay to watch this”. The problem is that those reviews usually start with “there’s not even any blood”. People see horror and they pirate, but we don’t actually market to the usual horror audience in the traditional channels.
I wonder how many pro gender anti racial references are in this movie? Who even goes and watches movies any more?
I'm not dodging the question. You originally asked me to define why piracy is the same as theft. When I gave you the reason you shifted and said calling it theft won't stop piracy. You effectively gave me a task to equate it to theft but I'm not allowed to call it theft. So why ask me in the first place?
So, I'll take another stab from what I hear as your argument. This requires me to suspend the fact that it is theft but continue to agree it's immoral... We're left with a reality where it's acceptable to freely consume anything that doesn't have a physical presence even if the owner of the item in question is asking for you to pay them for what they created. The only thing stopping you from paying for it is that it isn't exactly what you want even though you want to consume it anyway... and do. You define this as inconvenient.
Back to my soap box... Is that the singular rationalization behind this, simply being inconvenienced? They've offered you numerous ways to consume these movies with various and fair price points through many methods but that somehow is still not convenient for you. You're not going to change your mind because you have consistently indicated you don't care that people who make the thing you are enjoying are not getting paid for it. For the record, I've defined that as the immoral piece.
Further, Spotify and other streaming services (which are arguably a platform and not competitors to the artists or studios) just appealed to stop the mandated increase in royalties to artists and labels. Their reasoning is that they would have to pass that cost to the consumer. Based on your arguments, you will be more inclined to pirate music now if you arbitrarily decide that cost is too high.
If you truly want piracy to end you would not pirate and just accept that you can't always get what you want.
*sigh* Yes, you did answer my original question. The other question I've been asking over and over again, which I asked in bold many posts ago is What is the end game in convincing people that piracy is the exact same as theft of a physical object? In other words, what's the point? Suppose you're right: piracy = theft. Now what? That thinking brings us no closer to reducing piracy than we were before. You still haven't really explained this to me.
Yes, Spotify understands that this is still a very fragile market. They're correct that raising prices will drive some people to pirate again. Spotify correctly understands that piracy is a competitor. Piracy has barriers as well though (special software needed, not well organized, takes up storage space, etc.). Spotify has almost none of those barriers, which is why it's great. Spotify's sole barrier is cost. The cost barrier of Spotify has be less than the other barriers of piracy, or else people pirate. It's economics. You think it's arbitrary, but it's not. I can't say exactly where the line is in dollars, it varies from person to person (some people think paying $20/month of Tidal HiFi is worth it, some people just listen to the music included in Amazon Prime) but there is a line for everyone.
Also, I don't want piracy to disappear. I want piracy to be reduced, because at the end, I do care about the economic incentive for content creators to create content. As I said, I'm no hypocrite. I pay when it's a fair deal. For example, that dude above with the horror movie; I bought it on his site after reading his article and watching the trailer. $5 for a DRM-free download is precisely how I want more movies to be sold. Also, if you read the comments on his movie, apparently some people purchased it after seeing it on thepiratebay. We're not all monsters.
Piracy serves a vital role too. It's the best archive that exists today. Star Wars Despecialized Edition wouldn't exist without piracy, and it's necessary because George Lucas is a dick and refused to release the original cinematic version of Star Wars in any good format. Tons of content is preserved essentially for eternity thanks to pirates and the internet.
Also want to talk morals and theft? How about Disney single-handedly depriving the public domain of thousands of works, not just their own, by lobbying for and getting multiple copyright extensions passed into law? That company has single-handedly caused the public, you and me and everyone, to miss out on nearly half a century of of art (music, movies, literature, plays, etc.) that should belong to all of us by now but it doesn't. Is that "theft?"
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This warrants a response too. Spotify and Amazon are appealing increases to the statutory rates of songwriters, which is a defined legal category. First, not all musicians are songwriters in the legal royalty sense.
Second, did you wonder why songwriters got a rate increase but other musicians didn't? Most musicians actually make their money from the performance royalties (recorded performance). There are a ton of songwriters out there too, but they get totally screwed by the labels because usually to write songs for a label they sign over all their rights to any songwriter royalties. Other than the billboard top 100 in any category, songwriters are royally screwed most of the time by the labels. The same labels that control NMPA which convinced CRB to increase the category of rates that get labels paid the most. Hmmm, real moral behavior there.
Here's a good rule of thumb, if a 4-letter acronym entertainment industry group wants something, it's almost certainly self-serving for the corporations that control them and bad for actual artists and consumers.
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Wow!!
no really, I have been around and I remember when torrents where as popular as Netflix is today. It was probably the main source of entertainment.
After gov. were hunting down torrent sites and closing them, the popularity of streaming, and TPB had some sort of internal feuds... its just not the same.
I am sure it survives, and I hear its more popular in "private" form but yeah... the less people use it the less seeders the less it works.
And I believe gov. are a little bit smarter to catch you than just obscuring your IP.
I suspect hacking a streaming service is like climbing a mountain that also has a road to the top. It's the challenge not the dollars.
This is factually untrue. Piracy is indeed theft. If you illegally copy a movie, you've stolen the $15-$20 that the owner of the movie should be receiving. It's true that stealing intellectual property is different from stealing a car, but it's still stealing.
I guess I thought it was implied that proving piracy is theft was answer enough. Since this concept of right and wrong seems to be lost on you... The whole reason you get people to realize piracy is the same as theft is that knowing it's theft should be enough to stop them. Even if you don't care about the people you affect, you don't steal food, CDs or cars for that reason. Or is it that you know you only get caught when you steal a physical thing? You've deprived someone of their profits either way. The day the law cracks down on people who hide behind torrents and VPNs to download movies, music and software is the day piracy goes down.
If you think for one second that Lucas Films just threw away the original versions of those movies after remastering them, you truly are deluding yourself. They archived them and you know it. Besides, it's their content and his creation. Just because you don't like his new vision doesn't make him a bad person or give you the right to steal from him.
Disney can do with their material whatever they want. They made it and own it. Again, just because you want it for free doesn't mean you get to decide that. They decide that and they decided they like protecting their creations and making money off them. There is nothing even remotely immoral about protecting their property.
Just like there's nothing even remotely vital about pirating. It's just a criminal act that validates the need for DRM.
Try announcing that you're leaving your doors unlocked, sharing your PIN codes, setting all your passwords to "password" and see how long it takes for someone to pirate off with your stuff. There's a reason we have locks and passwords and codes... history proves dishonest people take other people's stuff without their permission and without payment. That's why people try to protect their stuff. That's why DRM exists. Pirating doesn't exits because of DRM.
But I'm done with this. It's impossible to debate with someone who (without any real concern for the those they hurt) picks out the pieces that fit nicely into their view of what they have decided is acceptable civil behavior and ignore the parts that don't.
Here's a good rule of thumb, if a pirate wants something, it's almost certainly self-serving for the pirate and bad for actual artists and honest consumers.
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Not in the United States.
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Oh, hey - I hadn't heard about LibreDrive either until now. I'll have to check it out.
MakeMKV + Handbrake works reasonably well to rip my purchased movies... but I'm always looking for ways to streamline the process.
FWIW I used to buy movies and TV shows direct from Apple, back when Requiem was still a thing. When that went away, so did my purchases from the Apple Store. Apple will probably be around a long time, but - as we've seen with Ultraviolet, a person has to be a fool to depend on the content owners for continued access to their purchased content.
Edit: LibreDrive appears to be an open-source library developed by the MakeMKV dev. As far as I can tell, it's not a stand-alone tool in its own right. Which is too bad, in a way - a Blu-Ray tool similar to FairMount (which lets you mount a DVD as an unencrypted image without having to rip it separately) would be handy... not that it couldn't be written, since this is all open source.
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