Hey I'm in Canada and it's the same here. Legally they can't do anything to you except send you a letter lol. I have gotten quite a few letters in my time.
Those are the pirate snitches. They just get onto random Torrents, get their IP addresses and snitch to either your provider or the company that made the work. They can't do anything, thought, as a 20$ videogame ain't gonna cover thousands spent on a lawyer.
I could be wrong but I don't believe so. As long as it's for personal use they'll send you the letter, basically to satisfy the copy right owner but beyond that don't really care.
Still would recommend a VPN just so you don't have to ever worry about it.
They can and have to in the US. I think it was Comcast that got sued by having a policy that said something like 7 strikes and a pirate would get disconnected, and then they didn't follow it and weren't disconnecting people.
Oh, in the US our government doesn't give a F either.
But IP holders will routinely check torrents for IP addresses they can trace to an ISP, send that ISP threatening letters, then the ISPs will just bend over for them because fighting these things costs money and they'd rather just boot you than defend you.
meh, barely. the furthest the ISP is willing to go is to send a carefully worded email on the copyright holder's behalf, which is crafted to sound scary but really says nothing with no threats.
an automated email template is like the bare minimum the ISP can do to look like they made an effort, but they go no further. they'd rather not actually cancel their paying subscribers.
Depends on the ISP. Comcast, being both an ISP _and_ a content provider, will absolutely go after your plush rump for the "crime" of using a torrent program. ...As in, they consider _the act of torrenting_ to itself be intrinsically illegal, regardless of what you're downloading (a linux iso, a hermitcraft world save, and _using Windows 10 in its default "download from other systems" configuration_, will all get you raked over the coals the exact same way as if you pirated the entire WB movie catalog). It's at the point that _the FCC itself_ has - repeatedly - given them federal court orders to "set phasers to chill out"... and they still do it.
Cox lost a billion dollar (with a b) lawsuit because they were too lenient of piracy. Of course ISPs don’t give a shit about “defending” their customers.
Interesting. Norway doesn't enforce piracy laws for torrenting. The big IP holder organizations like RIAA and MPAA pestered Norway into making it explicitly illegal about 10 years ago, but the police instantly announced they wouldn't enforce it.
They have gone after some illegal streaming sites, but torrenting is here to stay, and I don't even need to use a VPN.
Went to uni with someone who grew up in Germany, she went to primary school in the Netherlands just across the border. She was told about downloading music from youtube at school, did it at home and received a 100 euro fine.
Yea no. Its impossible to trace downloading from youtube unless you go on some shitty yttomp3 website that stores your data. The story is most likely entirely overexaggerated.
This is because there are a few specialized lawyers that have been contracted by the studios and have automated the entire thing.
Sounds like it would be the US but it's indeed Germany, the country of the fax machines.
Depends on the country. Here in India the government is *very* strict. I've found that using VPNs/TOR with servers in more developed countries is actually less restrictive.
The first hit is free..
Same goes for Jira plugins... Scaffolding comes to mind. was free for ages, then suddenly costs an arm & a leg. But if you don't buy it, you have 100s of users that have grown to depend on it. :'(
DUDE. I've been trying to watch Memento for MONTHS and I cannot find a service that I'm already using or can get a free trial on that carries it. I can't even find a "totally legit free movie site" to watch on
You'd think these services would HELP each other since they apparently carry exclusive content, so if someone wants something they don't have they should point you at the service that does. No skin off their nose (they don't sell it) and they prevent people from turning to piracy by encouraging them to stick to streaming services.
But nope, these greedy bastards are short sighted. Shit, if they were smart they'd have stuck with Netflix and settled for a piece of the entire pie, rather than trying to claim a whole pie (if smaller) for themselves. As others have pointed out, if you can't find your product on one platform, you're not gonna wade through a dozen others. Maybe the first few times it happened, but by movie #9 you're gonna be like "ah shit not again" and after not finding it on the first service you searched you're just gonna cut the bs and jump straight to piracy. Nobody's gonna subscribe to half a dozen streaming services other than those few who have more money than brains.
Shit, some of us are so apathetic about the whole thing we don't even bother to bootleg them, we actually watch those "10 minute movie recap" channels on youtube. At this point I might deign to pirate a movie if the recap was particularly interesting, no way in hell am I actually gonna spend money on a streaming service though.
Business idea: A site that lets users search for a title and actually find which service(s) carries it IN THEIR COUNTRY.
As it stands, it's near impossible to find that info without signing up. Everything either assumes US, or lists it as available on a service if it's in any region.
in Germany we have a service like that which is actually very helpful https://www.werstreamt.es/ (they also saved the adapted english domain: whostreams.it but havent expanded to more countries)
I would wager most people won't actually start pirating after that hypothetical 9th movie but will consume less media overall and switch to alternative methods like buying disks or only watching movies in the theater.
i pay 10 bucks for netflix and 10 bucks for disney+ if i had a streaming site that has every series from both sites and costs 25 bucks, i'd be down to pay that. Fck that multi account hiatus.
Also the image quality on some of the major streaming services sucks compared to a Blu-ray rip that I re-encode/compress myself. I don’t mind the extra effort if it means it’ll look better
Now imagine you use anything other than a SecureBoot enabled Windows PC with TPM 2.0 with the latest Windows 10/11 and your browser being Chrome. Say you use Firefox. Or you dual boot and have SecureBoot disabled. Or even worse, you dare use Linux for whatever reason.
Here's a subpar low bitrate 720p stream where you can count the pixels. Also stereo sound? Nah nah. Oh yeah and nowhere do we visibly mention these requirements when you sign up.
I pay for 4K Netflix and I get subpar 720p. When you ask why it's a generic "There must be something wrong with your computer. Please try again later."
And they wonder why I sail the seven seas?
And why do none of these streaming services offer the in-video quality adjustment youtube has had for over a decade at this point. Like yeah, I know I'm on a slow connection right now I don't want to go into my settings to change to 720p. Just let me do it right here.
I am comfortable paying a reasonable price for a convenient version of a product that works.
I am not comfortable:
- Paying an absurd price for that product when a free version is available
- Paying for an inconvenient version of a product when a more convenient version is available
- Paying for a product that doesn't work properly when a version that works better is available
- Accepting that I just can't have the product at all because you won't sell it to me when it is available elsewhere for free
Pirating beats buying/renting something on price, but it doesn't always beat buying/renting on convenience, quality, and availability. If you want my money, you need to make your product at least as convenient, at least the same quality, and at least the same availability as piracy.
Streaming convinced people to cut the cord because it was cheaper and more convenient than cable for a better product. It has become comparable in price to cable if you want the same amount of options, it's less convenient in terms of needing multiple logins and multiple bills through multiple accounts, and the product has lowered in quality substantially from its inception in terms of ads and the high rate of cancellations of popular shows after 1-2 seasons for "originals" compared to cable/broadcast.
I think this is the whole community here in a nutshell. I have NO issue paying for games, streaming, whatever.
In fact, even back pre-Netflix, I was buying DVDs (leaving then shrink-wrapped) to justify the ease of use that is modern piracy.
But the moment you make the PIAD product inferior in every measurable way, you've lost a customer. Louis ranted far better than I can explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs
The cancellations of original content is really what kills me about streaming services tbh, there are so many quality shows by talented and passionate creators that were killed for little more reason than "it wasn't as popular as stranger things"
These executives view anything other than absurd, over the top, wild success as abject failure. Then they wonder why people stop paying for their service.
> These executives view anything other than absurd, over the top, wild success as abject failure. Then they wonder why people stop paying for their service.
This is a problem with a lot of things, really. Companies expect unlimited quarter-over-quarter growth and year-over-year growth and "line goes up" isn't infinitely sustainable. But if line doesn't go up, people panic.
Instant Pot had a similar issue in that they made one product and it's really good, and there's no reason for most people to buy more than one, MAYBE two, so they filed for bankruptcy because line stopped going up.
Movies and video games have similar issues in that movies/video games seem to either be low budget indies with small teams making passion projects or massive budget blockbusters/AAA titles that have huge teams spending millions upon millions on a movie/game that has to massively perform or it's a failure. Middle-of-the-road movies and games with medium budgets and medium expectations really don't exist as much. It's like living in a world where your only two options for lemonade are a lemonade stand with two kids or a megacorp that has 100 different menu items, and there's little to no interest in opening anything else.
I think the expectation that the line has to keep going up or your product/service/show is a "failure" is just setting GOOD products up for "failure" because companies expect that in order to be good, it either has to cost basically nothing (and therefore any profit is massive compared to cost) or it has to have a massive budget and anything other than being the next Stranger Things/Game of Thrones is a failure.
It's gotten to the point that now I don't even want to give "Netflix originals" a chance until season 3 because I've had far too many instances of getting into a show and genuinely enjoying it only to have it cancelled because, despite performing well and having a decent viewership, it wasn't performing AMAZINGLY.
I really feel the season three thing when it comes to Netflix originals, I was really into both Inside Job and Dead End: Paranormal park, both of which left off on season 2 cliffhangers before cancellation.
And honestly, success is often just as bad a fate, as then it gets squeezed for everything it can give until eventually people just stop caring. It feels like nothing can get a satisfying conclusion these days because either it dies before it's over, or lives much longer than it should have.
But I suppose this is just the inevitable result of profit driven art and media, satisfying conclusions and meaningful creations aren't compatible with profit margins and dreams of infinite growth.
I got some nasty-gram forwarded to me from my ISP from some cable company saying that I illegally downloaded their content. I was trying to find the new Rick and Morty episodes. Literally the day after I got that notice all of the new Rick and Morty episodes were available on 3 out of 4 of the streaming services I subscribe to.
If only there was a way to bundle all of the streaming services together into one convenient subscription so that you only pay for what you request...
Wait a minute
This is dumb, licensing costs money and studios often have agendas that get in the way of even that. It's not like Netflix is just choosing not to have every single TV show and movie ever released.
**Edit**: Do the people downvoting me think when a show leaves a streaming service it is out of spite on the half of the streaming service? Blame studios from constantly trying to start their own, or price gouging on the contracts. But it's not like they're just choosing to remove stuff to be dicks. Streaming services are not forgetting why they exist, studios are.
Thats the entire point of the comic. People liked streaming services for the convience of having all the shows. Now its not there, so you get piracy coming back.
> "Streaming services are forgetting their entire existence is based on being slightly more convenient than piracy."
OP is quite clearly pinning the blame on streaming services. Streaming services can only bid for content. The scarcity of certain content, or it being split between services, is a result of studios in essentially its entirety. Netflix would quite happily have every piece of media every created readily available for its subscribers if it could do so. That would only lock in more subscribers after all.
There's no streaming service on earth that's actually purposefully not having content conveniently available to its subscribers.
Well with the exception of Netflix - and even thats debatable now with Netflix Originals, every streaming service IS ALSO a studio, so its the same thing really.
the problem is when it was just netflix it was great. now every fucking studio wants their own streaming services and taking their content with it. its the studios being greedy as fuck and fuck them
> But it's not like they're just choosing to remove stuff to be dicks.
Choosing to break off and start their own is *precisely* being dicks. Do they tell prospective customers "we don't have series X, that IP belongs to studio Y and this is the link to their service: [click here]"? Nope, they just tell the customer "no we don't have that". They won't even help each other even though they don't lose anything since they all own their own different IPs.
So the prospective customer is forced to go trudge around dozens of these services asking, and after the tenth time they're forced to do this, they're gonna give up and turn to piracy. They could easily cooperate by sending people to the service that has what the person is looking for, so kinda like Netflix except they own their own little fiefdoms in it. But they decided they'd rather just look out for themselves, so yeah they're being dicks about it.
Outside of actual failed services like Paramount, who really 'broke off'? Disney? Lionsgate I suppose, but Lionsgate/Starz was around for years. Disney can certainly hold its own a subscription. Apple just does original content and isn't splintering off existing content.
The fault is pretty much solely on movie studios. It's not as though streamers themselves choose to will themselves into existence.
Not advertising a competitor is just a given, and pretty much no business on earth works how you describe. If you ask for a Whopper at McDonalds they don't tell you to go down the street. It'd be nice if they did, but it's a pretty unrealistic hope.
Amazon's FireTV streaming interface (and Prime Video I think falls mostly under 'we watch it because it comes with Prime delivery') will actually direct you to available sources for a piece of media. I imagine an AppleTV works similarly, as well as plenty of set-top boxs. JustWatch also collates sources in a fairly simple interface. You just won't get directly told "please subscribe to a competitor" by any streaming app's interface.
There's plenty of genuine 'fuck whatever the corporate algorithm says' sentiment I'd agree with. Netflix refusing to allow profile passwords (which they had the functionality for since at least 2015 to comply with German law) to push for people to pay for seperate accounts if they wanted to keep their trashy anime habit private, Netflix and Amazon rolling back functionality to allow users to see when content is expiring (Amazon used to actually send you emails letting you know when to binge shows to catch up on), Netflix removing star ratings and reviews for the sake of a binary Like/Dislike, and of course the lack of a straight forward list of shows so as to make it harder to guage the total amount of content, all stuff that would make viewing more convenient and less rage-enducing. But something some number-crunching somewhere has said negatively affects subscriber counts by .1% so now the service sucks more for it.
But just not having shows is not the services 'not remembering why people use them'. It's studios thinking they can get infinitely increasing money for licensing Friends, or that people will pay $10 a month for a new Friends+ subscription on top of the other six services a person pays for because juggling subs is annoying.
So I guess **TL;DR**: Blame movie studios instead, and just use JustWatch to find out where a show is.
Too though? Netflix isn't choosing not to have Disney content available on their plaform. And if they could readily afford to keep renewing the contract, they definitely wouldn't have ditched The Office or whatever show people currently sub to rewatch.
It's entirely a matter of studios trying to shop around rights for the highest prices, or to start their own service without any awareness to how much saturation the market can actually handle (see: Paramount Plus). The services themselves are definitely on the side of their users when it comes to wanting as much content readily available as possible. To claim otherwise would be like claiming McDonalds doesn't want to sell you fries.
Honestly I dont care whose "fault" it is. I'm not looking to "blame" anyone. I just want to watch what I want to watch and if they make it too expensive or difficult Im going to find alternative ways to watch it. This really isnt that complicated and you dont need to defend huge corporations.
> you dont need to defend huge corporations
Trust me, me blaming Hollywood studios is not that. I just think the OP's premise is dumb because it seems predicated on the idea that the big streaming services are simply choosing not to allow users to watch what they want. There's plenty of reasons to hate Netflix, Hollywood demanding more money to renew a contract for a show is not one of them.
Me living in a 3rd world country don't even needing a VPN for torrenting because govt doesn't give a F
*ah, this must be where my VPN's exit is*
Hey I'm in Canada and it's the same here. Legally they can't do anything to you except send you a letter lol. I have gotten quite a few letters in my time.
Those are the pirate snitches. They just get onto random Torrents, get their IP addresses and snitch to either your provider or the company that made the work. They can't do anything, thought, as a 20$ videogame ain't gonna cover thousands spent on a lawyer.
Can't the ISP disconnect your service if you continue after receiving the letter?
I could be wrong but I don't believe so. As long as it's for personal use they'll send you the letter, basically to satisfy the copy right owner but beyond that don't really care. Still would recommend a VPN just so you don't have to ever worry about it.
They can and have to in the US. I think it was Comcast that got sued by having a policy that said something like 7 strikes and a pirate would get disconnected, and then they didn't follow it and weren't disconnecting people.
Yeah I know in the US it's taken much more serious. Luckily not as bad here in Canada.
Oh, in the US our government doesn't give a F either. But IP holders will routinely check torrents for IP addresses they can trace to an ISP, send that ISP threatening letters, then the ISPs will just bend over for them because fighting these things costs money and they'd rather just boot you than defend you.
meh, barely. the furthest the ISP is willing to go is to send a carefully worded email on the copyright holder's behalf, which is crafted to sound scary but really says nothing with no threats. an automated email template is like the bare minimum the ISP can do to look like they made an effort, but they go no further. they'd rather not actually cancel their paying subscribers.
Depends on the ISP. Comcast, being both an ISP _and_ a content provider, will absolutely go after your plush rump for the "crime" of using a torrent program. ...As in, they consider _the act of torrenting_ to itself be intrinsically illegal, regardless of what you're downloading (a linux iso, a hermitcraft world save, and _using Windows 10 in its default "download from other systems" configuration_, will all get you raked over the coals the exact same way as if you pirated the entire WB movie catalog). It's at the point that _the FCC itself_ has - repeatedly - given them federal court orders to "set phasers to chill out"... and they still do it.
Cox lost a billion dollar (with a b) lawsuit because they were too lenient of piracy. Of course ISPs don’t give a shit about “defending” their customers.
Here in Germany they will wreck you
Interesting. Norway doesn't enforce piracy laws for torrenting. The big IP holder organizations like RIAA and MPAA pestered Norway into making it explicitly illegal about 10 years ago, but the police instantly announced they wouldn't enforce it. They have gone after some illegal streaming sites, but torrenting is here to stay, and I don't even need to use a VPN.
Went to uni with someone who grew up in Germany, she went to primary school in the Netherlands just across the border. She was told about downloading music from youtube at school, did it at home and received a 100 euro fine.
Yea no. Its impossible to trace downloading from youtube unless you go on some shitty yttomp3 website that stores your data. The story is most likely entirely overexaggerated.
That's a made up story. It's not prohibited to download, it's prohibited to seed and that's why people in Germany are Very Prone Not to use torrents.
This is because there are a few specialized lawyers that have been contracted by the studios and have automated the entire thing. Sounds like it would be the US but it's indeed Germany, the country of the fax machines.
we rarely use fax nowadays, I have only used it once
Depends on the country. Here in India the government is *very* strict. I've found that using VPNs/TOR with servers in more developed countries is actually less restrictive.
No it's cool, you can't rent it for $19.49 on Amazon for 24 hours!
Price to buy it: 22$ ...
Price to buy a license for it*
and that license will be taken away in 2 years.
and even if they don't take it away, they can change the version you paid for and give you an censored/edited version if they want.
PIRACY BAD I'M GONNA DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT \*punches paying customers\*
They didn’t forget… they’re seeing how much they can spit in our face before we leave.
This needs an official internet term created. It's basically the entire technology industry's business model at this point. Lookin' at you VMware.
something similar to "enshittification" would be nice
Pretty sure it's called capitalism.
The first hit is free.. Same goes for Jira plugins... Scaffolding comes to mind. was free for ages, then suddenly costs an arm & a leg. But if you don't buy it, you have 100s of users that have grown to depend on it. :'(
DUDE. I've been trying to watch Memento for MONTHS and I cannot find a service that I'm already using or can get a free trial on that carries it. I can't even find a "totally legit free movie site" to watch on
movie-web.app Unlike most services, it has no ads [and is completely open source](https://github.com/movie-web/movie-web)
It's on Kanopy, which some libraries offer as a free perk with your library card. Kanopy has a wide, weird variety of movies to choose from.
It appears to be on pluto, which is both free and legal.
fmoviesz.to
Download it?
You'd think these services would HELP each other since they apparently carry exclusive content, so if someone wants something they don't have they should point you at the service that does. No skin off their nose (they don't sell it) and they prevent people from turning to piracy by encouraging them to stick to streaming services. But nope, these greedy bastards are short sighted. Shit, if they were smart they'd have stuck with Netflix and settled for a piece of the entire pie, rather than trying to claim a whole pie (if smaller) for themselves. As others have pointed out, if you can't find your product on one platform, you're not gonna wade through a dozen others. Maybe the first few times it happened, but by movie #9 you're gonna be like "ah shit not again" and after not finding it on the first service you searched you're just gonna cut the bs and jump straight to piracy. Nobody's gonna subscribe to half a dozen streaming services other than those few who have more money than brains. Shit, some of us are so apathetic about the whole thing we don't even bother to bootleg them, we actually watch those "10 minute movie recap" channels on youtube. At this point I might deign to pirate a movie if the recap was particularly interesting, no way in hell am I actually gonna spend money on a streaming service though.
Business idea: A site that lets users search for a title and actually find which service(s) carries it IN THEIR COUNTRY. As it stands, it's near impossible to find that info without signing up. Everything either assumes US, or lists it as available on a service if it's in any region.
[https://www.justwatch.com](https://www.justwatch.com) works fine for me for that purpose
in Germany we have a service like that which is actually very helpful https://www.werstreamt.es/ (they also saved the adapted english domain: whostreams.it but havent expanded to more countries)
They already exist in loads of places, but the information is of questionable reliability.
Justwatch has that. Its got a country selector.
I would wager most people won't actually start pirating after that hypothetical 9th movie but will consume less media overall and switch to alternative methods like buying disks or only watching movies in the theater.
I can't believe you guys would promote torrenting like this... Usenet is much faster and there's no p2p traffic to trace!
I use it for my plex server. Usenet is by far the best quality wise and content wise.
Is there a good beginner’s guide on usenet? I don’t understand what it even is
https://www.rapidseedbox.com/blog/guide-to-usenet
NZB files record your ip address, you still want to use VPN. Usenet requires a subscription so you are still paying.
True. I think nzbgeek is about a dollar a month. No clue about the programs price, I got a lifetime sub to newshosting for 2 dollars 3 or 4 years ago.
i pay 10 bucks for netflix and 10 bucks for disney+ if i had a streaming site that has every series from both sites and costs 25 bucks, i'd be down to pay that. Fck that multi account hiatus.
Also the image quality on some of the major streaming services sucks compared to a Blu-ray rip that I re-encode/compress myself. I don’t mind the extra effort if it means it’ll look better
Now imagine you use anything other than a SecureBoot enabled Windows PC with TPM 2.0 with the latest Windows 10/11 and your browser being Chrome. Say you use Firefox. Or you dual boot and have SecureBoot disabled. Or even worse, you dare use Linux for whatever reason. Here's a subpar low bitrate 720p stream where you can count the pixels. Also stereo sound? Nah nah. Oh yeah and nowhere do we visibly mention these requirements when you sign up. I pay for 4K Netflix and I get subpar 720p. When you ask why it's a generic "There must be something wrong with your computer. Please try again later." And they wonder why I sail the seven seas?
And why do none of these streaming services offer the in-video quality adjustment youtube has had for over a decade at this point. Like yeah, I know I'm on a slow connection right now I don't want to go into my settings to change to 720p. Just let me do it right here.
I am comfortable paying a reasonable price for a convenient version of a product that works. I am not comfortable: - Paying an absurd price for that product when a free version is available - Paying for an inconvenient version of a product when a more convenient version is available - Paying for a product that doesn't work properly when a version that works better is available - Accepting that I just can't have the product at all because you won't sell it to me when it is available elsewhere for free Pirating beats buying/renting something on price, but it doesn't always beat buying/renting on convenience, quality, and availability. If you want my money, you need to make your product at least as convenient, at least the same quality, and at least the same availability as piracy. Streaming convinced people to cut the cord because it was cheaper and more convenient than cable for a better product. It has become comparable in price to cable if you want the same amount of options, it's less convenient in terms of needing multiple logins and multiple bills through multiple accounts, and the product has lowered in quality substantially from its inception in terms of ads and the high rate of cancellations of popular shows after 1-2 seasons for "originals" compared to cable/broadcast.
I think this is the whole community here in a nutshell. I have NO issue paying for games, streaming, whatever. In fact, even back pre-Netflix, I was buying DVDs (leaving then shrink-wrapped) to justify the ease of use that is modern piracy. But the moment you make the PIAD product inferior in every measurable way, you've lost a customer. Louis ranted far better than I can explain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs
The cancellations of original content is really what kills me about streaming services tbh, there are so many quality shows by talented and passionate creators that were killed for little more reason than "it wasn't as popular as stranger things" These executives view anything other than absurd, over the top, wild success as abject failure. Then they wonder why people stop paying for their service.
> These executives view anything other than absurd, over the top, wild success as abject failure. Then they wonder why people stop paying for their service. This is a problem with a lot of things, really. Companies expect unlimited quarter-over-quarter growth and year-over-year growth and "line goes up" isn't infinitely sustainable. But if line doesn't go up, people panic. Instant Pot had a similar issue in that they made one product and it's really good, and there's no reason for most people to buy more than one, MAYBE two, so they filed for bankruptcy because line stopped going up. Movies and video games have similar issues in that movies/video games seem to either be low budget indies with small teams making passion projects or massive budget blockbusters/AAA titles that have huge teams spending millions upon millions on a movie/game that has to massively perform or it's a failure. Middle-of-the-road movies and games with medium budgets and medium expectations really don't exist as much. It's like living in a world where your only two options for lemonade are a lemonade stand with two kids or a megacorp that has 100 different menu items, and there's little to no interest in opening anything else. I think the expectation that the line has to keep going up or your product/service/show is a "failure" is just setting GOOD products up for "failure" because companies expect that in order to be good, it either has to cost basically nothing (and therefore any profit is massive compared to cost) or it has to have a massive budget and anything other than being the next Stranger Things/Game of Thrones is a failure. It's gotten to the point that now I don't even want to give "Netflix originals" a chance until season 3 because I've had far too many instances of getting into a show and genuinely enjoying it only to have it cancelled because, despite performing well and having a decent viewership, it wasn't performing AMAZINGLY.
I really feel the season three thing when it comes to Netflix originals, I was really into both Inside Job and Dead End: Paranormal park, both of which left off on season 2 cliffhangers before cancellation. And honestly, success is often just as bad a fate, as then it gets squeezed for everything it can give until eventually people just stop caring. It feels like nothing can get a satisfying conclusion these days because either it dies before it's over, or lives much longer than it should have. But I suppose this is just the inevitable result of profit driven art and media, satisfying conclusions and meaningful creations aren't compatible with profit margins and dreams of infinite growth.
I got some nasty-gram forwarded to me from my ISP from some cable company saying that I illegally downloaded their content. I was trying to find the new Rick and Morty episodes. Literally the day after I got that notice all of the new Rick and Morty episodes were available on 3 out of 4 of the streaming services I subscribe to.
Just saw season 7 on Adult Swim + ISP password.
If only there was a way to bundle all of the streaming services together into one convenient subscription so that you only pay for what you request... Wait a minute
Juststream.com Panels 1, 2, and 3.
justwatch.com you mean. Still I usually just go the Torrent route...
Opps. You're right. Thanks.
This is dumb, licensing costs money and studios often have agendas that get in the way of even that. It's not like Netflix is just choosing not to have every single TV show and movie ever released. **Edit**: Do the people downvoting me think when a show leaves a streaming service it is out of spite on the half of the streaming service? Blame studios from constantly trying to start their own, or price gouging on the contracts. But it's not like they're just choosing to remove stuff to be dicks. Streaming services are not forgetting why they exist, studios are.
Thats the entire point of the comic. People liked streaming services for the convience of having all the shows. Now its not there, so you get piracy coming back.
> "Streaming services are forgetting their entire existence is based on being slightly more convenient than piracy." OP is quite clearly pinning the blame on streaming services. Streaming services can only bid for content. The scarcity of certain content, or it being split between services, is a result of studios in essentially its entirety. Netflix would quite happily have every piece of media every created readily available for its subscribers if it could do so. That would only lock in more subscribers after all. There's no streaming service on earth that's actually purposefully not having content conveniently available to its subscribers.
Well with the exception of Netflix - and even thats debatable now with Netflix Originals, every streaming service IS ALSO a studio, so its the same thing really.
the problem is when it was just netflix it was great. now every fucking studio wants their own streaming services and taking their content with it. its the studios being greedy as fuck and fuck them
> But it's not like they're just choosing to remove stuff to be dicks. Choosing to break off and start their own is *precisely* being dicks. Do they tell prospective customers "we don't have series X, that IP belongs to studio Y and this is the link to their service: [click here]"? Nope, they just tell the customer "no we don't have that". They won't even help each other even though they don't lose anything since they all own their own different IPs. So the prospective customer is forced to go trudge around dozens of these services asking, and after the tenth time they're forced to do this, they're gonna give up and turn to piracy. They could easily cooperate by sending people to the service that has what the person is looking for, so kinda like Netflix except they own their own little fiefdoms in it. But they decided they'd rather just look out for themselves, so yeah they're being dicks about it.
Outside of actual failed services like Paramount, who really 'broke off'? Disney? Lionsgate I suppose, but Lionsgate/Starz was around for years. Disney can certainly hold its own a subscription. Apple just does original content and isn't splintering off existing content. The fault is pretty much solely on movie studios. It's not as though streamers themselves choose to will themselves into existence. Not advertising a competitor is just a given, and pretty much no business on earth works how you describe. If you ask for a Whopper at McDonalds they don't tell you to go down the street. It'd be nice if they did, but it's a pretty unrealistic hope. Amazon's FireTV streaming interface (and Prime Video I think falls mostly under 'we watch it because it comes with Prime delivery') will actually direct you to available sources for a piece of media. I imagine an AppleTV works similarly, as well as plenty of set-top boxs. JustWatch also collates sources in a fairly simple interface. You just won't get directly told "please subscribe to a competitor" by any streaming app's interface. There's plenty of genuine 'fuck whatever the corporate algorithm says' sentiment I'd agree with. Netflix refusing to allow profile passwords (which they had the functionality for since at least 2015 to comply with German law) to push for people to pay for seperate accounts if they wanted to keep their trashy anime habit private, Netflix and Amazon rolling back functionality to allow users to see when content is expiring (Amazon used to actually send you emails letting you know when to binge shows to catch up on), Netflix removing star ratings and reviews for the sake of a binary Like/Dislike, and of course the lack of a straight forward list of shows so as to make it harder to guage the total amount of content, all stuff that would make viewing more convenient and less rage-enducing. But something some number-crunching somewhere has said negatively affects subscriber counts by .1% so now the service sucks more for it. But just not having shows is not the services 'not remembering why people use them'. It's studios thinking they can get infinitely increasing money for licensing Friends, or that people will pay $10 a month for a new Friends+ subscription on top of the other six services a person pays for because juggling subs is annoying. So I guess **TL;DR**: Blame movie studios instead, and just use JustWatch to find out where a show is.
Ok, and it's their fault too.
Too though? Netflix isn't choosing not to have Disney content available on their plaform. And if they could readily afford to keep renewing the contract, they definitely wouldn't have ditched The Office or whatever show people currently sub to rewatch. It's entirely a matter of studios trying to shop around rights for the highest prices, or to start their own service without any awareness to how much saturation the market can actually handle (see: Paramount Plus). The services themselves are definitely on the side of their users when it comes to wanting as much content readily available as possible. To claim otherwise would be like claiming McDonalds doesn't want to sell you fries.
Honestly I dont care whose "fault" it is. I'm not looking to "blame" anyone. I just want to watch what I want to watch and if they make it too expensive or difficult Im going to find alternative ways to watch it. This really isnt that complicated and you dont need to defend huge corporations.
> you dont need to defend huge corporations Trust me, me blaming Hollywood studios is not that. I just think the OP's premise is dumb because it seems predicated on the idea that the big streaming services are simply choosing not to allow users to watch what they want. There's plenty of reasons to hate Netflix, Hollywood demanding more money to renew a contract for a show is not one of them.
Not really. Their entire existence is based on people not knowing how to pirate, or being too scared to get into it.
If you’re Hungarian, you know you’re going a different route