7/31/2026 at 10:31:48 PM
The same argument applies to DRM and piracy. DRM only disadvantages people who want to consume content legally. Only one person has to bypass it (be it through cryptographic or software failings or the good old fashioned analog hole ala telesync) then upload the resulting unencumbered media file to a piracy site.As a result, it's not just cheaper, but also easier and more reliable to steal media than it is to buy it legally.
What would happen if media were offered without DRM? Everything would be on a piracy site? It already is.
by aftbit
7/31/2026 at 10:36:11 PM
Drm is not targeted at the hardcore pirate, it's targeted at a potentially larger percentage of people who would be tempted to get the thing for free if it was easy. Drm may be circumventable, but any complex set of steps for doing so is enough to deter that target audience.by belinder
7/31/2026 at 11:22:00 PM
Piracy is a service problem. Copyright monopolists always defeat themselves with their obnoxious greed.Things were easy enough when Netflix had a complete catalog, now every studio wants to roll their own shitty streaming services in order to cut Netflix out. Result is a fragmented mess where you want to watch a great film but you have no idea where the hell it even is, and even if you find it you discover it doesn't work because your computer isn't locked down to their tastes, and even if you buy a TV appliance they stream you some shitty horribly compressied "high definition" video with artifacts in pure black frames, all on their homegrown laggy borderline unusable video players with zero features.
Meanwhile the pirates offer Blu-Ray remuxes with commentary tracks, subtitles for every language, DRM free files that just work on your video player of choice. It's the sort of thing that makes me feel like a total moron for giving money to these corporations.
by matheusmoreira
8/1/2026 at 12:08:53 AM
Apple TV has a search function that allows you to find a film or series irrespectice of whatever service it's on, and launch the appropriate app to play it.by bitwize
8/1/2026 at 12:37:47 AM
Some times I read these mental gymnastics comments about piracy being easier and wonder if these people have actually tried to learn how to use something like an Apple TV.I think the services part they really dislike is just the part where your credit card gets charged when you click the buy or rent button. Doing all of the piracy stuff with VPNs and navigating torrent sites and getting a setup where you can play files on your TV is an order of magnitude more work.
by Aurornis
8/1/2026 at 3:04:01 AM
> I think the services part they really dislike is just the part where your credit card gets charged when you click the buy or rent button.You think wrong. My Steam account has 300+ games on it. I pay for several streaming services. I have a physical media collection that even includes a copy of windows vista, to my eternal regret.
> Doing all of the piracy stuff with VPNs and navigating torrent sites and getting a setup where you can play files on your TV is an order of magnitude more work.
And yet that's what you have to do if you don't want to pay to get total garbage in return for your money.
The pirates compete with each other to release the best encodes, to the point they mix multiple Blu-Rays together into an ultimate release because some region somehow received a better version of some scene or whatever. Normal files you get to play using mpv.
Netflix ships horribly compressed nonsense where color gradients are so full of artifacts it hurts my eyes. Highly dynamic segments are painful to watch. Amazingly enough it's still the least bad option, the other services have even worse quality and a borderline unusable video player software to boot.
Service isn't just about ease, it's also about quality. If you want quality, piracy isn't just easier, it's almost always the best option, if not the only option. It's sad that the copyright industry can't seem to match what's essentially a bunch of amateurs but what can you do?
by matheusmoreira
8/1/2026 at 3:59:19 AM
If you don’t mind paying for things and your only concern is the quality, then presumably you pay for the source material and then also download the best quality pirated version you can find, right?That would satisfy both of your claims: That you don’t mind paying for things and you only do piracy to seek out the highest quality.
If you selectively choose not to pay for things where you can get away with it (e.g. not Steam games) then this claim doesn’t hold the slightest amount of water.
by Aurornis
8/1/2026 at 4:03:45 AM
> presumably you pay for the source materialI do. Multiple times, even.
by matheusmoreira
8/1/2026 at 4:10:19 AM
Okay great. Then can you acknowledge that when everyone else is talking about piracy, none of us are talking about you?You are the 0.001% of pirates, but you make assertions here like all pirates are high minded people who are secretly actually paying for the content and are only interested in some extra video quality. That describes such a vanishingly small number of pirates that it’s meaningless in the broader discussion about piracy.
by Aurornis
8/1/2026 at 4:18:35 AM
I acknowledge nothing. Especially not those made up numbers.by matheusmoreira
8/1/2026 at 8:39:46 AM
No, he's still a pirate.If he doesn't like what the distributor releases, he shouldn't watch the movie or show at all. Paying for a legitimate copy does not grant you infinite legal or moral use of the work, only permission to view the version of the work provided under terms set by the OWNER of the work.
by bitwize
8/1/2026 at 2:00:58 PM
If that's what you actually believe, it's either because you have financial ties to the owners, or you are in the authority-obeying Kohlberg stage. There is no simple universal answer to whether piracy is moral. It is easy to argue that giving money to rich corporations who fuck everything up is worse than not giving them money.by inigyou
8/1/2026 at 2:46:09 PM
Here’s an idea: some suit in an office somewhere doesn’t get to dictate how I engage with art. My moral obligation ends where the people who made the movie get paid.by nearlyepic
8/1/2026 at 10:03:00 AM
Nobody cares about the owner's "terms".The whole point of this thread is the fact the owners keep getting outcompeted by a bunch of pirates precisely because of those idiotic "terms" nobody really cares about. The more "terms" they add, the more their product sucks. No one wants to read a dozen pages of legal boilerplate just to have a shitty experience watching some film. Thanks to piracy, they don't have to.
Literal rent seeking monopolists don't get to preach about morals either. Knock copyright duration all the way back to 20 years and maybe the monopoly becomes tolerable enough for us to listen to the plight of creators.
by matheusmoreira
8/1/2026 at 7:09:37 AM
> but you make assertions here like all pirates are high minded people who are secretly actually paying for the content and are only interested in some extra video qualityyou are replying to comment "I do. Multiple times, even."
Not a native speaker, but as far as I know in English "I" in this context refers to a single person, specifically someone writing this referring to themselves.
If anything you made assertions referring to general population and it is quote easy to guess that "Some times I read these mental gymnastics comments about piracy being easier and wonder if these people have actually tried to learn how to use something like an Apple TV." will have nonrepresentation on HN.
> when everyone else is talking about piracy, none of us are talking about you?
piracy-related laws often miss exemptions for cases like this
by matkoniecz
8/1/2026 at 7:00:52 AM
> Doing all of the piracy stuff with VPNs and navigating torrent sites and getting a setup where you can play files on your TV is an order of magnitude more work.Not really, decent chunk of my MP3 collection is abandoned media not sold literally anywhere at all. Or was never published in public in the first place.
> if these people have actually tried to learn how to use something like an Apple TV
no, as I am not interested in Apple's walled garden, and so far I have not used any of their devices or products
(OK, I used Mac for about one hour helping neighbor to fix their printer, and I tested Mac-specific bug on website for hour or two)
> I think the services part they really dislike is just the part where your credit card gets charged when you click the buy or rent button.
Not in my case, I regularly try to buy MP3 that are in my collection already but I have not paid for them.
It costs me mostly in time to find them and create accounts and pay for them and deal with various hoops. Far more than it costs me in actual payments.
by matkoniecz
8/1/2026 at 1:49:41 AM
Sometimes I read these mental gymnastics comments about being leashed to half a dozen providers for “convenience” and wonder if these people have actually tried to learn how to use something like a NAS.I think the part they really dislike is the undermining of the moral superiority they claim by donating their money to corporations that contribute ~nothing to the actual evolution of culture. Inventing strawmans about how difficult it is to click one button in Jellyseer and have a max-quality, buffering free copy of what you want to watch in perpetuity is an order of magnitude more work than renting a poor-quality subset of the media that publishers consider it profitable to provide.
by vermilingua
8/1/2026 at 3:47:54 AM
> I think the part they really dislike is the undermining of the moral superiority they claim by donating their money to corporations that contribute ~nothing to the actual evolution of culture.My local farmers and grocery stores contribute ~nothing to actual evolution of culture. I still think they deserve to get paid for what they do. I don’t think this is as smart of a point as you thought it was.
Regardless, the content can’t both be worthless and worth pirating at the same time.
This boils down to “I want free stuff but I want to feel morally superior about it”
by Aurornis
8/1/2026 at 3:56:43 AM
> the content can’t both be worthless and worth pirating at the same time.More commonly, at least in Australia which at various times has had record level piracy, content can be worth _something_ and also not worth "that much" and hence worth pirating.
This has been seen with games - once charged in Australia significantly more than in Europe or the US. Game piracy was rife and didn't really drop in volume until Australian game prices fell more in line with elsewhere.
With the coming of Netflix TV and movie piracy dropped a lot - as prices rose and sheer number of providers rose making it impossible to see whatever caught your eye all on the one source subscription, piracy volume in AU increased again.
This boils down to "We'll pay for stuff .. but only so far".
by defrost
8/1/2026 at 4:04:13 AM
You’re moving the goalposts from “contributing nothing” to “actually it’s valuable but I don’t want to pay that much but I also don’t want to not watch it”This is still a silly argument. If the price of something is higher than you want to pay, that doesn’t justify taking it.
This has come all the way back to supporting what I said above: The only service problem is that people don’t like the part where it charges their credit card. Piracy lets them skip that part.
by Aurornis
8/1/2026 at 4:08:37 AM
> You’re moving the goalpostsNope. I'm a first time commentator in this subthread I'm stating a position held in one part of the world.
Maybe it'd require moving your "goalposts" to get there .. but I'm not moving anything, just pointing out exactly how the ground has lain here for decades.
by defrost
8/1/2026 at 4:36:17 AM
I never said the content was worthless, I said the distributors are worthless. If I can get the same content, at a higher quality, more efficiently and cheaper (free) through piracy than legal means, the distributors are by definition not providing value.I absolutely pay for physical media, for which a much higher share of revenue goes to the actual creators of content than the leeches who extract rent from it.
This is exactly why Steam has and continues to dominate the gaming market, they made it easier than piracy, and didn’t fall victim to the terminal-stage capitalism that has turned every previously decent streaming platform into hot garbage.
by vermilingua
8/1/2026 at 6:01:30 AM
I would be happy to pay to buy or rent a single show or movie. The problem is that a lot of that content is only available with a monthly subscription. Screw that, those monthly bills eat you alive. I hear that the For All Mankind series is pretty good but there's no way I'm signing up for Apple TV just to watch that. So I'll skip it and watch something else.by nradov
8/1/2026 at 8:36:47 AM
And that's the appropriate response to have. If you don't want to pay according to the copyright owner's terms, then you don't watch the show. Not liking the copyright owner's terms for watching the show does not give you the right to steal it.Yes, I know copyright infringement is not stealing per the technical legal definition. But splitting those hairs is like splitting hairs between pedophiles and ephebophiles: anyone doing it is very likely just telling on themselves as the exact sort of criminal under discussion.
by bitwize
8/1/2026 at 2:01:50 PM
Where do rights come from?by inigyou
8/1/2026 at 7:21:36 AM
> Doing all of the piracy stuff with VPNs and navigating torrent sites and getting a setup where you can play files on your TV is an order of magnitude more work.
Apple TV and other commercial offerings are a steaming pile of shit in comparison and I can't imagine people like the CEO of Apple watching stuff off Apple TV and not a proper arr-stack setup. It's like eating McDonald's every for every meal when a chef is readily available. Why would you do this to yourself.
With Apple TV, you can't even do something as mundane was fixing translation errors in subtitles before you show a movie to a friend. You're stuck with what some cheap outsourced translation service came up with. It reduces the owner of the library to a passive mouthbreather who has virtually no control over their experience; can't choose which cut of the movie to see; can't replace an ugly poster with a nicer one; can't edit movie description to remove spoilers; and so on and on. In essence, you're watching someone else's library, and that someone has not put much effort into proper curation to present every item from the best possible side.
by mopsi
8/1/2026 at 5:13:11 AM
you bought a smart tv maybe you got a dumb tv and then plugged in a dongle? Or maybe you bought a smart tv and also purchased another home media device thingy and you gotta remember to switch to w the apple tv for this thingy. you signed in to it you created dozens ? Hundreds? Of accounts to watch all the content you want, try to figure out what plan you need to watch the content? Will you subscribe for a bit and cancel later ah ok siri set a reminder to cancel the subscriotion ill take care of that. Wait oops i went on vacation and netflix is mad that im. Not watching from home do i need a different plan? How do these amazon prime video channel subscriptions work how many do i have?All that instead of a jellyfin server and a single search? It’s all gymnastics just different gymnastics
by etdznots
8/1/2026 at 2:20:32 AM
Every time this argument comes up, it doesn’t explain why piracy rates are much lower, despite having a lot of service problems. Piracy is a cultural thing. And I’m saying this as someone who kinda understands the pirate’s position.by tokioyoyo
8/1/2026 at 5:31:55 AM
> it doesn’t explain why piracy rates are much lower, despite having a lot of service problems.Can you explain why you think piracy rates must be higher? Piracy isn't “free” after all.
by laserlight
8/1/2026 at 3:33:50 PM
Very common for some movie, tv shows or music not be available here. Or also, fairly expensive to buy/rent for some. If it was service issue, this would drive people who want to enjoy the media to piracy.Yet it doesn’t.
by tokioyoyo
8/1/2026 at 6:17:29 PM
Piracy has its own costs. It's likely that given the trade-offs, piracy rates don't increase.PS: I have no idea whether piracy rates are up or down.
by laserlight
8/1/2026 at 6:17:28 AM
I think something that worked well (against privacy) is in the US ISPs work with the studios, and you will get a letter threatening to be sued if you download a torrent. My country doesn't have that... And everyone I know uses torrents.Netflix etc is also popular, as it's easier if the content is there. But if it's not... people know where to find it.
by fy20
8/1/2026 at 1:58:16 PM
IIRC most of the US ISPs are simply owned by the movie studios now. They bought them to fight piracy.by inigyou
8/1/2026 at 5:59:32 AM
Isn't the explanation self evident? Piracy requires nonzero technical competency (not much but still), dedicated computing hardware, and a decent chunk of storage. It's a fairly low barrier to entry but it is nonetheless a barrier and your typical person off the street these days doesn't reliably know what files and folders are.by fc417fc802
8/1/2026 at 3:31:54 PM
I know Japanese people who can easily pull it off, but ideologically very against it.by tokioyoyo
8/1/2026 at 10:43:45 PM
Sure, there are those who ideologically oppose it in most or all scenarios. But there are also obviously those who don't exhibit such unconditional opposition to it.So what is the answer to your original question? I don't believe it to be some large cultural shift on a global scale regarding its acceptance (as I took you to be suggesting) given that such opposition clearly is not itself universal.
My impression of cultural acceptance of it in the US is that it is highly dependent on (at least) one's socioeconomic situation as well as the effectiveness of the solutions on offer. As a concrete example, if you're well off and everything you watch is available on netflix people will probably judge you if you're bragging about how you pirate it all in order to avoid a few dollars a month. Meanwhile I know plenty of people who preface their explanation with "well I do have several subscriptions, however ..." and no one seems particularly bothered by this.
by fc417fc802
8/1/2026 at 1:25:43 PM
That would be because "piracy rates" are not, in fact, much lower.by jrm4
8/1/2026 at 12:25:06 PM
The main problem is that media doesn't cost enough. It's all bundled so the true price is hidden. I'd gladly play thousands to watch a movie/series if studios could take that signal and work with it. $15 or whatever is the same as free most of the content is for people who don't care (or care way to much about miscellaneous trivia)by casey2
8/1/2026 at 12:35:41 AM
> Piracy is a service problem> Meanwhile the pirates offer Blu-Ray remuxes with commentary tracks, subtitles for every language, DRM free files that just work on your video player of choice.
I think the only people who believe that pirating is easier than using the streaming services are people who spend so much time with computers that they round the mental overhead of navigating torrent websites, finding the correct file you want, downloading it with your torrent client behind the VPN they set up, and getting files to a point where they can watch it on TV to zero. When you think that stuff is fun you don’t count it.
I am technically capable of doing all of those things. I also have a rotation of online streaming services. Nobody is ever going to convince me that pirating is actually easier than finding the thing I want to watch and putting it on my credit card.
I think this is all just mental gymnastics to try to avoid the elephant in the room, which is that some people don’t want to pay for things and, of those, some get a little fun out of doing all the steps and setup to pirate things.
by Aurornis
8/1/2026 at 1:09:23 AM
Yep, same. I still pirate media from time to time, but it’s become increasingly infrequent that each time I think to do it I end up putting it off for months because I’d rather gargle broken glass, or watch politicians give state their opinion on topic or another, than go through all the rigmarole of pirating media.Watching something on a streaming service, or using Apple / Google to “rent” it for a few days is like, what, three clicks away.
Rather than my media server updated over night and won’t boot, I’ve got it booting to a terminal session but the database is corrupted, fuck it I’ll just buy $2000 worth of new hard drives and then re down everything in Ultra 16k 96 bit colour with 4000 gigabit Dolby 400 channel surround-surround and upgraded to all gold plated fibre cabling and have this fixed in no time. Or my torrent site account got hacked or blocked, or the site changed URL again, or they updated their database and “hope to be back up soon”, or a Three Letter Agency seized the their hardware because they were also a involved in human trafficking of blood diamond child sex slaves, again.
It’s all too hard. I’d rather just listen to the footy on AM radio, or maybe read a book. Or occasionally complain about there being too many, or not enough, clouds / rain / sun / wind.
by perpetuallunch
8/1/2026 at 2:27:47 AM
> mental overhead of navigating torrent websites, finding the correct file you want, downloading it with your torrent client behind the VPN they set up, and getting files to a point where they can watch it on TV to zero. When you think that stuff is fun you don’t count itHeh, that’s what you think modern piracy is? How quaint. In reality I have my own “Netflix”, with access to effectively all media ever created and I click play. That’s it. That’s the entire process. No credit cards, no finding which service has it, no finding out that the service doesn’t have it in my country at this time, no ads. I punch in what I want to watch, I click play, and it plays.
> Nobody is ever going to convince me that pirating is actually easier than finding the thing I want to watch and putting it on my credit card.
Sounds like your problem. Though again, that’s already more steps than it is for me.
> which is that some people don’t want to pay for things
I was happy to pay, and did so for years. Then the services got worse, increasingly fragmented and ever increased in price as service got poorer. Now I’m no longer happy to pay; and have a superior service to boot. The industry successfully convinced me to give piracy up, before driving me back to it a decade later.
by theshackleford
8/1/2026 at 3:23:24 AM
> Nobody is ever going to convince me that pirating is actually easier than finding the thing I want to watch and putting it on my credit card.That's just because you're fine with consuming the low quality slop they stream out. Doesn't mean people who care more than you do are engaging in "mental gymnastics". We don't want the same things.
I want the best version of everything. The highest quality version. The uncensored version. The uncompressed version. The lossless version. The DRM-free version. The best version.
The copyright holders just aren't providing it. They only provide slop, and only on their terms, take it or leave it.
Then a bunch of fans gather together, hunt down an old film roll, drop tens of thousands of dollars on equipment to scan it and somehow it becomes a better version than the one the industry released. It's not fair to dismiss that level of commitment as "it's just people who don't want to pay for things". Industry should probably hire more people like that. People who give a shit.
by matheusmoreira
8/1/2026 at 5:21:37 AM
That's true, but a lot of the time the best version is available on a blu ray you can buy.by tr4656
8/1/2026 at 6:11:55 AM
The best version isn't some cumbersome Blu-Ray disc, it's the Blu-Ray's data remuxed into an mkv you can play with mpv.Sometimes the best version just isn't sold anymore. See the 4K77 project for a concrete example.
by matheusmoreira
8/1/2026 at 3:53:59 AM
> Then a bunch of fans gather together, hunt down an old film roll, drop tens of thousands of dollars on equipment to scan it and somehow it becomes a better version than the one the industry released. It's not fair to dismiss that level of commitment as "it's just people who don't want to pay for things".This is absurdity. The average pirate is not downloading content that some fans spent $10K digitizing from an original film roll.
The average pirated content wasn’t even shot on film.
These piracy justifications are some of the weirdest mental gymnastics that happens on this site. I’m not taking about the pirate connoisseurs who only download the finest encoded sourced from artisanal film rolls to complete their collection. We’re talking about the average pirate who searches for a torrent or stream because they don’t want to pay a couple bucks.
This constant attempt to glorify pirates into the true, most moral, purest content consumers is so weird.
by Aurornis
8/1/2026 at 4:01:13 AM
> This constant attempt to glorify pirates into the true, most moral, purest content consumers is so weird.Why? You just said that they have to put more effort into it than the average person. Normie just signs up for netflix and watches whatever shows up. The pirate has to set up a torrent client, join private trackers and get connected with the so called scenesters, only to end up scrutinizing film grain of different encodes on screenshot comparison sites so he can spend his ratio budget on the best possible version.
It's true, that's a ton of work. Why would anyone put up with that nonsense, if not because they want higher quality than the industry is putting out? Netflix is not that expensive, and even if it was you can always share an account with some family members or something. Trivial.
by matheusmoreira
8/1/2026 at 4:40:23 AM
> I want the best version of everything. The highest quality version. The uncensored version. The uncompressed version. The lossless version. The DRM-free version. The best version.Basically the same greed that every billionaire has, just with negligible economic impact.
by antonvs
8/3/2026 at 10:09:05 AM
If all billionaires wanted are copies of data which can be created at no cost there would be no problem with them.by account42
8/2/2026 at 2:29:22 PM
Appreciation of the arts getting compared with greed of billionaires ..... How the times have changed.by Timwi
8/3/2026 at 1:56:51 AM
“Appreciation of the arts” = “stealing someone’s creative work”.Nothing has changed, people are just trash.
by antonvs
8/1/2026 at 2:05:59 PM
If billionaires are allowed to be extremely greedy then why aren't hundredaires allowed to be extremely greedy?by inigyou
8/3/2026 at 1:55:58 AM
Sure, as long as they don’t have any moral concerns about society’s support for billionaires.by antonvs
8/1/2026 at 12:49:16 AM
There's apps for that these days. Not going to names them, but if you're still downloading a torrent file on a computer, you're behind the times. It's as easy as Netflix on an Android TV with a remote these days.by bladeacidic
8/1/2026 at 1:23:28 AM
Don’t all those apps also expose you to VPN services using your connection as a gateway, or enrol you in a botnet, or exfiltrate your watch history to this weeks popular bad-actor, or expose everything on your local network to the internet?by perpetuallunch
8/1/2026 at 4:09:33 AM
No there are services that provide global cdn access to torrents. Your provider sees https traffic from your closest cdn edge. You don't share back at any point. These things are a couple of steps more to setup than getting a Netflix subscription and work almost an any device.by kyriakos
8/2/2026 at 4:20:47 AM
So all of these free (or paid apps? I don’t know, I don’t use any) that offer access to pirated content…They’re all above board? Not doing anything nefarious?
That’s obviously not an argument anyone would intentionally make.
by perpetuallunch
8/2/2026 at 4:31:45 AM
They are making money out of this. Subscription is like a month's Netflix for a year's access to everything. Multiple "providers" offering this which means there is money to be made.by kyriakos
8/2/2026 at 5:20:15 AM
So their business model is to profit off pirated content, and that’s why you trust them?by perpetuallunch
8/2/2026 at 5:32:03 AM
I don't think I said anything about trust. I was talking about content delivery. All the things you mentioned before are avoided using this method of delivery.by kyriakos
8/2/2026 at 7:24:01 AM
So you’ve audited the code of these apps, apps published by active criminals, and confirmed in a via reproducible build that none of these apps are a vector for VPN access, nor try to take advantage of vulnerabilities in any of the other software installed on that system.by perpetuallunch
8/2/2026 at 7:27:06 AM
I think you are either pretending that you don't understand or can't understand what I'm saying.At which point did I mention apps?
Anyway this discussion is over.
by kyriakos
8/1/2026 at 2:49:45 AM
[dead]by ziiinq
8/1/2026 at 2:04:08 PM
Or ask your savvy friend for a copy on DVD-R. That's quite easy.by inigyou
8/1/2026 at 7:31:23 PM
And to be clear: this was the original piracy, friend-to-friend networks. This was the original "scene" before torrenting and can still work this way with torrenting, or Usenet or whatever. We've just become more atomized and less group-oriented in general so chances are you aren't a member of a friend group that has a piracy guy, and you have to learn it yourself to get it done.by inigyou
8/1/2026 at 12:11:37 AM
Issues and topics that are reduced to a single idea are oversimplified to were lost of reality can take hold.Example, say person chooses to never fund Amazon. Amazon owns MGM. The only way that person can watch an MGM movie is through piracy. The only alternative would be to buy second hand content so MGM / Amazon do not get a finical cut.
As media corporations become more monopolistic, like Paramount buying Warner Bros, I could see more people pirating so they do not fund David Ellison and people like him.
by yndoendo
8/1/2026 at 5:56:38 AM
So just watch something else. We have more video content available than anyone could possibly watch in a lifetime.by nradov
8/1/2026 at 1:43:47 AM
[flagged]by perpetuallunch
8/1/2026 at 6:12:47 AM
I think there’s a difference between what people think they’re aiming at and what they actually aim at.Media DRM makes it harder for the person who can already legally access it to use it or share it in an unapproved manner. Or maybe to avoid ads, but that’s pretty rare.
So DRMing a media file or stream has approximately no effect on the ability of a non-paying customer to get pirate it, because anyone searching for a pirated copy can find a DRM-free version anyway.
by amluto
7/31/2026 at 11:08:17 PM
DRM also intensively targets the new-release window during which much of the returns on any piece of IP are made; the latency with which high-quality copies hit mainstream sites has monetary value as well.by tptacek
7/31/2026 at 11:00:23 PM
> Drm is not targeted at the hardcore pirate, it's targeted at a potentially larger percentage of people who would be tempted to get the thing for free if it was easyspotify and netflix are both prime examples of making it easier for a larger population to access drm enabled content compared to pirated content (at the time they started getting popular anyway).
with the advent of streaming services you no longer needed to download potentially dodgy files to your computer (viruses/malware), wait for the download to finish, realise they’re a dodgy video cam recording of the cinema screening, download another one etc.
napster/limewire et. al were originally examples for the opposite case. pirating via those was super popular. there were fewer steps to access the media compared to going to a physical shop to buy a CD/DVD. (*)
(*) i can’t remember when the itunes store came along. might have been after these services? or around the same-ish time?
by dijksterhuis
7/31/2026 at 11:41:09 PM
I think that's also wrong. I think that the primary reason media publishers use DRM is not to prevent copyright infringement. It's really to exert power over the entire ecosystem and use that power to implement rules around content distribution and use that are much more restrictive than the actual copyright law itself.by tshaddox
7/31/2026 at 11:48:27 PM
To copyright owners, there really is no difference. In many countries, notably not the USA, copyright is bound up with the broader concept of authors' rights, including the right to control whether, where, when, and how a work is exhibited. Rightsholders in the U.S. still believe in authors' rights from a moral standpoint; Jack Valenti wanted to outlaw VCRs because he was afraid of the rise of bootleg tapes, sure, but he also believed that movies were intended to be shown in theaters, and maybe only much later, licensed for television. Copyright and control over the distribution network were indistinguishable to him.by bitwize
8/1/2026 at 2:16:14 AM
Jack Valenti wanted to ban VCRs because he didn’t have more advanced DRM technology at that time. Publishers now have HDCP, so they don’t need to lobby the government to ban VCRs. They can just make sure to never license HDCP to any device manufactures that want to sell a recording device.by tshaddox
7/31/2026 at 11:29:18 PM
“Locks only keep an honest man honest.”-Most people’s grandfather
(I’m not saying these things are equal — just that this concept and the old saying share a perspective on securing things.)
by DrewADesign
7/31/2026 at 10:54:24 PM
But why would this larger percentage of people rip it themselves when the hardcore pirate already did it and made it accessible[1]?by Cider9986
7/31/2026 at 11:08:15 PM
The average user would probably pay more for a different video streaming platform if their current one started requiring 4 or 5 more clicks per view. “Complex set of steps” for most people could involve finding a website that wasn’t explicitly advertised to them, using an interface that wasn’t AB tested into oblivion, and inexplicably having to “update their flash player” every single time they want to watch Barney Miller. Never mind bit torrent: you might as well ask them to build themselves a TV from scratch. They could figure it out— they aren’t (necessarily) dumb— but they really don’t want to have to figure it out. They just want it to work without friction.by DrewADesign
8/1/2026 at 8:59:24 AM
But its all available easily with the DRM already stripped off by the hard core pirates.My best friend used to download pirated movies all the time - because it was easier than trying to get what he wanted by legal channels. It wasnt even the cost. When Netflix took off, he stopped pirating and paid the subscription.
by MattPalmer1086
8/1/2026 at 4:51:41 PM
While i agree, certain DRM (video streaming) has gotten to the point where its made getting a show legally, at 1080p+, more trouble than pirating. And not from lack of DRM. There's a certain good middle ground and I think we've passed it.by xboxnolifes
7/31/2026 at 10:43:35 PM
The point is: DRM is circumvented once, by some grizzled pirate captain. Everyone else just gets to plunder their downloads DRM free, nice and easy.DRM is ineffective because the pirate uploaders are competent enough to break it, and an average end user only downloads - rank and file pirates wouldn't make their own releases even if DRM never existed and making them was easy.
by ACCount37
7/31/2026 at 10:56:50 PM
But it is easy to get the thing for free, because the free one doesn't have DRM.by inigyou
8/1/2026 at 6:12:24 AM
>> complex set of steps for doing so is enough to deter that target audience.Finding and playing what I want via netflix or amazon is far far more complex than downloading and playing a video from a pirate website. Want to watch the original non-upgraded Star Wars, good luck even finding it on any streaming service. But it is instantly available via any number of pirate sites.
by sandworm101
8/1/2026 at 12:08:34 AM
Cheaper & easier - not by much. Australia blocks all the good torrent sites, so now I need a VPN, a reputable one. Also need terabytes of network connected storage, and usually I need more and more of it over time. Better and more networking equipment to buy and maintain. Media management and streaming software that works locally and remotely, to (maybe buy) and maintain.Or I can usage discount offers for the various streaming platforms, and pay for each one I want to watch something on from time to time.
The streaming services also don’t come with who knows what malware like pirated media can.
And a YouTube Premium subscription because you get ad free YouTube Music and ad free YouTube.
by perpetuallunch
8/1/2026 at 12:22:43 AM
This is true for music because the labels decided that they would upload their catalogs to every streaming service.It's not true for movies, because the movie industry decided to sign exclusivity deals or make movies only available on their own platforms. Thus piracy is still the only reliable way to watch movies: you might get access to some subset of movies depending on which streaming service you subscribe to, but certainly not to all of them.
by zarzavat
8/1/2026 at 12:46:41 AM
How does that negate needing a VPN, storage, networking, media management, remote access, malware?I’ve never met even a data hoarder who has “all of them”, and I tend to watch them one at a time anyways, so I’d argue “not all of them” isn’t really a problem anyone has.
Having said that, I do tend to pirate a relatively small collection of movies and series, just the ones I could watch over and over and never get tired off.
by perpetuallunch
8/1/2026 at 1:05:54 AM
You can access streaming (not torrenting) sites without a VPN and just watch whatever movies you want and there's no hastle or malware? If you like something particularly you can download it and then storage becomes a factor, and if all streaming sites are blocked a VPN subscription (reputable just mulvad) costs less than any streaming service and gives you access to every single movie and show, impossible to debate that it's not more convenientby sureMan6
8/1/2026 at 2:10:38 AM
> now I need a VPN, a reputable one. Also need terabytes of network connected storage, and usually I need more and more of it over time. Better and more networking equipment to buy and maintain. Media management and streaming software that works locally and remotely, to (maybe buy) and maintain.Literally none of these things are reality other than for the very specific means you are aware of.
> The streaming services also don’t come with who knows what malware like pirated media can.
What is this, an MPAA pitch from 2007?
by theshackleford
8/1/2026 at 3:03:40 AM
I don't see how you would need more and more space for media with time.You don't have to take it upon yourself to archive the entire history of Hollywood, you know.
You can get _very_ far with 20TB, hell, even with just 10TB.
by pdimitar
8/1/2026 at 12:15:38 AM
It’s cat and mouse game. Australia blocks sites, sites move urls. If you don’t keep up, then they have caught you too.Streaming sites can just delete your purchases whenever they want to. Sony already has.
by reactordev
8/1/2026 at 12:21:02 AM
It's only a DNS block fwiw. If you set your DNS to 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 everything works fine.by AussieWog93
8/1/2026 at 12:49:07 AM
I recently realised even the build in iOS Private Relay gets around the Australian Government site blocks.by perpetuallunch
8/1/2026 at 7:37:44 AM
> Cheaper & easier - not by much.I spent a total of $150 for my entire homelab setup two years ago with not a single investment made since then. Used to pay $80 per month for streaming back then, bet it would be >$100 now
by bean469
8/1/2026 at 1:24:39 AM
> The streaming services also don’t come with who knows what malware like pirated media can.How does one put malware in media? Are we talking exploiting unlatched vulnerabilities in codecs, or are we talking random exe files?
by Pfhortune
8/1/2026 at 7:50:53 AM
If you randomly make up issues and limitations then yes of course it is hard to circumvent those non-existing issues and limitations.I have to use a free DNS over HTTPS in any case, thanks to my amazing government's censorship (italy), so that's something that needs doing in any case.
There's no need for terabytes. You just made it up.
by LtWorf
8/1/2026 at 1:20:21 AM
I often buy content to support the creators, then download it on torrent sites because the UI and experience is better. I can use whatever player I want, modify the screen size more and have no branding bloat (Amazon Prime! Youtube! Netflix! etc) and have a better, more focused, and even off-line friendly experience.It gets deleted, I move on with life.
But man the experiences in branded players really sucks, and I wish it were better.
by mannanj
8/1/2026 at 5:43:39 AM
> As a result, it's not just cheaper, but also easier and more reliable to steal media than it is to buy it legally. > > What would happen if media were offered without DRM?You kind of answered your own question. What you should have asked instead was - What would happen if media and payment was a straight forward offer we would have Netflix
by alfiedotwtf
7/31/2026 at 11:33:00 PM
Yet Netflix is as profitable as Disney. Having loved through netflix and popcorn tv that wouldn’t be the case without drm.by conception
7/31/2026 at 10:54:41 PM
Users hate it, but DRM is vastly more powerful than that since you ultimately control user access.DRM - which all online services with user profiling automatically have - can also let you ban users, retarget users for ads, abuse, and other things beyond the basic function of running the software.
by starrybreak
7/31/2026 at 11:29:00 PM
Such as bypassing parliament -the people responsible for managing your rights-. And subverting democracy and the rule of law too, by punishing you or otherwise manipulate you into desired behavior without going to court. Code is Law. DRM is violence.by coretx
8/1/2026 at 1:06:27 AM
> What would happen if media were offered without DRM? Everything would be on a piracy site? It already is.But the media ARE offered without DRM. At least many video games, the big ones too. And somehow they sell just fine
by PunchyHamster
7/31/2026 at 11:41:27 PM
DRM does the job it's supposed to which is prevent casual piracy and increase the amount of effort it takes to pirate something. A thief could rob your house if they bumped your lock or just smashed your window. But that doesn't make door locks useless as those have large costs in terms of effort and risk. So the lock is still effective at preventing someone from just walking in and taking your stuff.It's the same with DRM. Without it, media would appear on piracy sites instantly upon release. DRM makes things harder to pirate, and pirated editions harder to get. And the DMCA makes defeating DRM a felony under U.S. law, so pirate networks are riskier to establish, driving piracy underground. It's doing the job it's supposed to do. It's not going anywhere.
by bitwize
8/1/2026 at 1:13:29 AM
You wouldn’t steal a Claude!by VeninVidiaVicii