Game of Thrones (the most pirated show of last year) comes out in March. Still not for sale at any price unless you have a cable package AND one of their authorised ISPs (plus $18+tax/month).
Maybe companies like HBO should update their business practices to something roughly compatible with 2013, instead of trying to legal threat everyone into submission.
If they sold it on iTunes, YouTube, or Hulu+ they'd convert tons of pirates into paying customers. People want to give HBO their money but HBO literally won't take it...
HBO knows it's 2013. It's built a Netflix competitor. They have the whole tech stack for subscription internet streaming running and proven. They're signing 10-year content deals with exclusivity agreements that simultaneously give them a future catalog to rival Netflix while locking Netflix out of acquiring the same top-quality content. HBO has all its ducks in a row, it's playing the long game.
All they're waiting for is the tipping point in consumption habits. Today, most of their subscribers are paying $17+/month via bundling with cable TV, and every major cable provider in the country is heavily advertising them for free. The moment they can go independent and accept subscribers without going through a cable company is the moment the trickle of people dropping cable TV in favor of internet media turns into a tide. It's not today. If they split from cable today, they'd lose free advertising to hundreds of millions of people a year, and they'd likely earn far less per month from each subscriber they pick up.
HBO knows it's 2013. It's built a Netflix competitor.
They have the whole tech stack for subscription internet
streaming running and proven.
I guess (failed to find how I can check it so far) that this is again US only. Of course we're talking about a US anti 'piracy' law, so that kind of makes sense. But the GP still has a point: Making content available, in a reasonable way, would make people like me shell out a good amount of $currency (in this case, USD?) to get access.
I love a couple of TV series. In Germany everything is dubbed (Yeah, Sheldon Cooper sucks if he talks German.. Don't even get me started on Dexter, who sounds like the most uninteresting guy ever on the German show). I'd love to pay for timely access to good content, in its original language.
All of Netflix, Hulu (and, with the disclaimer that I couldn't check yet, probably HBO as well) play that braindead, stupid 'Not in your country' game. Which isn't 2013 and something I have problems to accept since the 90s.
The service is built, but does not work, unless you already have a cable subscription, even in the US.
There's no way, to the best of my knowledge to legally watch Game of Thrones, besides buying it on DVD/Blu-Ray or actually subscribing to HBO (and using that subscription to watch it on-line).
Download a service like Hotspot Shield. It will run your IP through a proxy and make it look like you live in the US. Boom - US HULU, US Netflix, no problem
That's a band-aid until the copyright maximalist bandwagon expands its jurisdiction to your local government, and at that point they'll be sending notices to you or cutting off your internet access.
OT: I've seen a few of these dubbed shows across Europe and Asia. And you know what I found fascinating? Most of these dubbed shows from Europe are done really well. Of particular note is how much pains go in choosing the the dialogues in order to lip-sync with how the original is spoken (Check some HK action films to see the contrast (-;)...
>> who sounds like the most uninteresting guy
In most cases, I noticed they take pains to get similar sounding actors/actresses from the original, perhaps this was one of those occasional poor choices.
I challenge you to compare a couple of 'well-known' German voices.
- Bruce Willis in any movie
- Kirk
- Dexter
These samples are picked for being quite different. While one might argue that Kirk is an improvement (cue the protest!), Bruce Willis has a very different voice and Dexter sounds so. damn. boring.
The production quality is usually alright. Still, depending on the content a lot of context/humor is lost and voices regularly don't match the original, at all.
Edit: For fun - someone on Youtube allows you to compare Bruce (and more.. ;-p) directly here [1]. So these voices are ~fixed~ in our heads as the normal voices of the actors. It's actually pretty hard to find non-dubbed content here (TV? No way, unless on discs. Cinema? Hardly. Some movie theater show originals, but usually just a very limited/blockbuster selection. And I'm living in/near a 1000000 citizen city here, so that's already the bright side).
I'm wondering if partnering with Netflix and taking the potential flak from TV would be worth it. I don't see the reason for HBO to have HBO Go other than the tie in with TV companies.
Would it be more profitable to pair up with Netflix or to sell their shows drm free easily online? I know I'd pay for that service in a heartbeat, and I wonder how many people who own cable (I don't) would switch to paying for the few channels they actually want. However, I don't want to buy cable for one or two channels / shows, so they lose out from all money I'd willingly give them. I don't want them to cancel an amazing show because of the perceived lack of profit (Spartacus) if they could in fact double their profit from people who would buy their shows directly.
I'm hoping the idea of exclusives goes away - as long as the producer gets paid, who cares how the actual video was delivered (cable, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Vudu, DVD etc). Unfortunately in the battle for market share it is worth some of those video deliverers to pay more to lock out competitors, but it doesn't benefit the consumers.
This seems like wishful thinking, though: most of the attempts of media companies to take on "disruptive" technologies end up looking fairly ridiculous.
The game is protecting cable TV from total disruption by the Internet. Cable is the big cash cow. That's also why there's such a powerful, almost jihad-like effort to keep sports off the net. A lot of sports fans have cable to watch the game.
Right, and it is not just the cable companies that are fighting the disruption. Television networks are now getting a major chunk of their income from cable companies by increasing the carry and retransmission fees. This revenue source has become much more important as ad revenue has declined. So a healthy cable company business is in their interest of the big media companies as well.
Sports is the only thing right now that does not fear piracy. After all, there isn't much value in a day-old game. It needs to be a live broadcast. Torrents, newsgroups are always "yesterday news" to real sports fans.
Unacceptable.
If my friends/family are watching some awesome show like say, LOST, I'm not waiting for TV companies/netflix/whoever to get their act together. The moment people around me want to discuss the show is the moment I want it and not a second later. I will pirate it if need be. I won't "wait a few months". I'm not here trying to justify piracy either; think whatever you want of me - I'm not waiting, that's all I'm saying. You want me to pay for it? You better be ready to give it to me the same time people around me are talking about it. And it needs to be in a friendly format. Netflix/HULU/whatever or downloadable files for my cyanogenmod KindleFire.
Unacceptable? It's a tv show. I think some perspective is needed. It's also a tv show that HBO owns the full rights to and is free to do with it as they please.
Sure, they can do what they want. But I thought we were sorta discussing piracy. Again, I'm not trying to justify myself. I'm just going to pirate it, end of story. What prevents me from doing that is if they make it available for download or stream before piratebay does.
I'm not arguing any point here, I'm just providing one data-point. There are people like me who want to have fun discussing shows with his friends/family while they're watching it. Not 6+ months later.
>>There are people like me who want to have fun discussing shows with his friends/family while they're watching it. Not 6+ months later.
Correction: there are people like you who feel ENTITLED to consume every piece of entertainment and will jump through whatever hoops necessary to do so. Because at the end of the day that's what it comes down to: entitlement.
> Correction: there are people like you who feel ENTITLED to consume every piece of entertainment and will jump through whatever hoops necessary to do so.
You're acting like typing "http://thepiratebay.se into a web browser is somehow a Herculean feat that people are challenged with.
I'm not sure if you've noticed, but it's actually easier than pretty much any other method of media consumption, by a fucking lot.
Also, frankly I'm tired of people using the word "entitlement" in situations where it's really far too strong of a word to be using. I download shit because it's fucking simple to do and because there's literally no other way to consume said content (since, before some imbecile starts throwing accusations around, I don't live in the US.) If there were a way to pay for it that was comparably simple to piracy, I probably would choose to do that some of the time.
People use the word "entitlement" because when you say this...
I download shit because...there's literally no other way to consume said content
...you're making the assumption that you are entitled to consume that content simply because it exists, and that not consuming the content isn't even an option.
To me this sits on the edge of discrimination. Take the example of literature / books being banned from N. Korea, or the internet being filtered in Saudia Arabia; we criticizes these actions, how is this any different?
I like the part where you quoted me out of context to make me seem unreasonable.
The content is right there, for the taking. So I take it. If it weren't there, I wouldn't take it. (Duh.) How's that "entitled" activity? Are you that obtuse, or are you just trolling?
I like the part where you quoted me out of context to make me seem unreasonable.
I don't know what you mean. I'm trying to show you why people perceive you as having an unreasonable sense of entitlement: it's the things you say that makes people think that. If your own words strike you as unreasonable, you may be close to understanding why other people see them that way.
I don't know what context you want me to have included. The reasons you give (e.g. "I want it", "it's available" and "it's fucking simple to do") don't make you seem any less like you have an unreasonable sense of entitlement. It's like saying "I eat because I'm hungry and there is food." Those things are obvious. But neither of them explain why you feel justified in taking from somebody else's plate.
The difference stands out even more without the analogy: Hunger is an actual human need, whereas watching Game of Thrones the night it's first broadcast in another hemisphere is actually very far from being a need.
>>The content is right there, for the taking. So I take it. If it weren't there, I wouldn't take it. (Duh.) How's that "entitled" activity? Are you that obtuse, or are you just trolling?
You know, seeing this level of sophistry in a post on Hacker News is fucking embarrassing.
"If it weren't there, I wouldn't take it." Are you fucking kidding me. Most human beings have their thought process extend a little further than this, but apparently not you. Mindlessly pirating content and not thinking about its moral implications is just a lot more convenient, right? And when people call you out on your fucking bullshit, just put the blame on the content provider for not making it available to you - even though it is, you know, their fucking content and their fucking choice.
Heh, everyone reading this thread. All I asked for is downloadable/streamable content at the same time as CableTV.
Look how hostile the replies to me have become.
So far I've been identified as entitled, absurd, in need of some perspective and unwilling to pay for content.
Oh, not just seems like. It is. I baited them all.
Notice how they completely dismiss my point of view with terms like "entitled","absurd","unwilling to pay",etc. and don't even begin to acknowledge the problem with the delay between cable-tv and legal internet availability. This pretty much happens with every major change that disturbs the status quo cash cow, but the change ultimately happens anyway ;)
>>Oh, not just seems like. It is. I baited them all.
So you're basically admitting to trolling? Nice.
>>and don't even begin to acknowledge the problem with the delay between cable-tv and legal internet availability.
We acknowledged it. We also pointed out that it is not a valid justification for you or anyone to pirate said content, because nobody is entitled to instant access to stuff that comes out. I don't know how to put it more simply than that.
If TV shows are such an important part of your social life, why don't you watch the shows with your family and friends? You know, as in go over to their house, bring some munchies, and socialize? The argument that you have no option but to pirate it in order to be socially relevant is absurd.
No, it requires me to purchase a completely separate cable TV subscription.
I don't have, can't get, and don't want a US cable TV subscription. Even if I lived in the US, I wouldn't want to have to pay $100 a month for cable TV just for the privilege of paying an additional fee to stream HBO. (Feel free to now call me "selfish" or "entitled" or whatever the rest of the trolls in this thread have settled on to describe the actions of rational people.)
I don't have, can't get, and don't want a US cable TV subscription.
I never said you do, could, or did. I responded to a comment by smtddr. I had no way of knowing you trying to redirect the thread to be about yourself, personally. My reply was not directed to you, personally.
Even if I lived in the US, I wouldn't want to have to pay $100 a month for cable TV just for the privilege of paying an additional fee to stream HBO.
There are two things wrong with this.
One: HBO Go is free with the subscription. The cable subscription is why it's free. If you're going to get angry with me for even mentioning it, please try to familiarize yourself with what it is. Better yet: don't get angry with me.
Two: smtddr (the person I responded to initially) specifically said he was willing to buy something which sounds almost exactly like HBO Go. I don't understand why that option is overlooked by him, as it sounds very similar.
(Feel free to now call me "selfish" or "entitled" or whatever the rest of the trolls in this thread have settled on to describe the actions of rational people.)
I don't believe anybody has referred to you as selfish and I don't believe that anybody is trolling. I'm sorry you feel you've been attacked.
How do you sign up for HBO Go? I can see how to sign up for Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Instant but HBO Go appears to require a few other accounts than just signing up and paying them money.
I'm over the top self-entitled? Because I don't think it's reasonable to discuss a TVshow with people who have probably forgotten the details months after they saw it?
I don't think it's fair for you to reach that conclusion. What's okay for you isn't okay for everyone. I think you're the one who's failing to see things from other people's view.
But again, I'm not here to debate. I'm just 1 tiny data-point. Provide me streamable/downloadable content the same time the CableTV gets it. That's what I need. That's all I came in this thread to say.
If my friends/family are watching some awesome show like say, LOST, I'm not waiting for TV companies/netflix/whoever to get their act together.
Lost is among the worst examples you could have chosen. It was one of the first shows available for day-after purchase on iTunes, and from the third season on had free day-after streaming on ABC's own site. And it was literally broadcast over the air for free.
So to be clear: You really are saying that even eight hours is too much of a delay. You really are saying that you want exactly what cable TV customers get, but that you don't want to pay anything for it.
Since you like getting free things so much, here's some free advice: If your relationships with your friends and family can't transcend such a trivial incompatibility as having not watched the same television show at exactly the same moment, maybe you should try watching it with them. Surely between all of you, somebody is willing to actually pay for something that is allegedly so crucial to how you interact with one another. (If none are willing to pay for it, that raises the question of how any of you are able to afford the time involved.)
> If your relationships with your friends and family can't transcend such a trivial incompatibility as having not watched the same television show at exactly the same moment, maybe you should try watching it with them.
Great idea; let's all fly cross-country once a week to watch a TV show. (You really haven't considered the feasibility of your 'solution' very much, have you?)
I contend that I have thought about this a lot more than you have, and that your incredulity stems directly from choosing not to think about it. But to respond, anyway:
If your relationships with distant friends and family depend on you watching television shows at the same time, and you're unwilling to pay the asked price for those television shows, then yeah, maybe you should fly cross-country to see them.
Because what does it say about how much you value those relationships if the thing that is allegedly so important to them is not only ephemeral and impersonal but also thought of as not worth paying for?
Personally, I think the better option is to not feel like you have to watch all the same television at the same time as other people, but that seems to be a wildly unpopular notion these days.
This logic might work in a utopian world, but think about it practically; were talking about business. If you have a product that is in demand, and people willing to pay for it. Find a way to connect your product with the intended buyer.
A practical solution is not to geographically exclude areas and markets and then argue that they should be flying to said countries to watch these shows.
This is the equivalent Republican style argument that the answer to poverty in the inner city is for students to obtain a MBA's.
This works fine if you don't talk to anyone about the show for six months. Otherwise, the conversation goes something along the lines of, "Oh. Yeah, I haven't seen that yet," and you become slightly less worth talking to.
That's the magic of exclusive content, selling something where people don't want a replica. That doesn't justify copying. They made content you want, why should you take it on your terms instead of theirs?
M-W's third definition of entitlement, which is the only one that even remotely fits, goes something like this:
"3: belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges"
So, your contention is that people who torrent movies believe they deserve the privilege of watching them, rather than that they may be doing it for any of a number of other reasons, such as the ones I and others have mentioned all throughout this thread.
It's a real stretch to say that, because the content I want to watch is unavailable to me in any other format at any price, that I must be some sort of spoiled prima-donna for typing something into a search engine and downloading something with a BitTorrent client. Pretty laughable line of argument.
Note the second-to-last example of a sense of entitlement:
* An irate customer demands products and services
that they have not paid for.
Unfortunately, attempting to argue logically with a person who has a sense of entitlement never works. They just want what they want and, to them, it's normal behavior.
You are mischaracterizing my argument. I'm saying this:
1) This movie is available for sale.
2) I want to purchase it.
3) Therefore, they are obligated to sell it to me. Or, alternatively, I feel I am entitled to purchase a copy.
This is what I fundamentally disagree with. I do not believe that you have any sort of right to purchase a product. Just because they make it available for sale does not mean that they are in any way obligated to sell it to you, even if you want it very badly and are willing to pay quite a lot of money.
I'm not actually talking about torrenting at all; that comes after the 'entitlement'.
How is HBO "trying to legal threat everyone into submission"?
I've purchased seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones on Bluray. I don't have cable yet HBO managed to take my money just fine. I bet those seasons are still heavily pirated despite being available for purchase, just as people pirate movies, TV shows, and music that has been available for legal purchase for years or decades. People just want to get shit without paying for it.
This is a tired argument born out of ignorance. You have no provided no evidence that the pirates would pay for it if they could, nor have you provided any evidence that HBO would make more money selling Game of Thrones to individuals than selling their network to the cable companies as an exclusive option for consuming their content.
I'm not sure about HBO making more money one way or another, but there's ample evidence at least some people would pay for movies they are now downloading if they could download them in the same convenient manner with good quality and reasonable timeframe and price. I, personally, would gladly ditch my TV subscription and pay the same - or even slightly more - say, $50/month to an internet solution that would deliver me the same dozen or so of shows I am watching in a convenient manner. I'm not using 99% of the channels I'm paying for anyway. In fact, I am regularly checking current offers from various places - Hulu, Amazon, etc. - but none can offer enough coverage and convenience for me to go with them. And if my brain-dead DVR (my punishment for being cheap and getting into Dish contract I can't wait to end) misses an episode or they decide to run a baseball game over the time and the brain-dead DVR doesn't know how to adjust, I'm pretty much out of options when online solutions won't feature it for a year or so and I can't continue watching the series since whole story arc will be messed up. That unless I do the obvious thing and just download it - because unlike what Dish or Amazon could offer, somehow those pirate guys actually can deliver convenient, easy to use and reliable way to get the content to me, and I could watch it anywhere any way I like. I'd pay money for something like that if somebody would bother to do it for me for money.
I am going to assume that you are an older person who has no real experience with "piracy" because the tone of your comment suggests a misconception about how it works. "Pirates" absolutely will pay. They pay to get the content as soon as it comes out and in high-definition.
There are large and influential companies that have come to recognize the piracy is the result of failures of distribution, not pricing. The prime example would be Valve, which since it made Steam its primary distribution channel, had paid very little attention to piracy (compare to EA). The CEO, Gabe Newell, has discussed this publicly, and you can find him discussing it on YouTube.
His example, which is particular to the gaming industry, but applies also to feature films, is that it is not reasonable to think that individuals who can afford $40/month internet connections and $2000 gaming rigs are pirating games because of money. They pirate games because they cannot get them legally conveniently and readily. This is particularly true in countries where English is not spoken. It takes months for a game to be released in Russia in Russian after the game is released in the United States. If a gamer can get a version in Russian faster via piracy, he's going to do it. The same rule holds for feature films, where again, release dates are not universal.
As to your second point, if you cannot see the common sense in the idea that the millions of American and foreign young people who do subscribe to cable or to HBO but who enjoy Game of Thrones want to be able to watch it online in high def the same way that they watch every other show, I think you're just trying to argue for the sake of it. Even if only 10% of these people paid to watch it on HBO/iTunes/Amazon, that is money that HBO is not getting now. Being able to pay a few bucks to watch the episode the same night that it is released in high-definition is well worth it. To take just one demographic, college students living in dorms do not have cable subscriptions. They all watch the show by streaming from sites that violate copyright or via file-sharing.
Perhaps you do not know this, but it is trivial to watch shows online. You can stream video from dozens of sites, with more of these appearing every month. These sites upload new episodes with hours of their original airing. That being said, Netflix has millions of subscribers, including very many young people who know how to watch shows like this. Young people also spend lots of money renting movies and television shows on iTunes that they could find for free online with a little effort. People pay for a high quality stream without the annoyance of pop-up ads and banners, and they like fast downloads and ease of use.
Rather than running about insulting old people by assuming they have "no real experience with piracy" you might want to change your argument to "old people have a different experience of piracy than the one I am trying to replace".
Last time I checked the backbone of the early release scene was still Usenet - clearly the playground of the hip, young & funky - no old people there.
Usenet is very much not the backbone of releases. The majority of releases happen on [0]topsites, with a growing portion of releases happening through large private torrent communities.
I don't see how what I wrote is any way insulting to old people. I am drawing a distinction between how young people use the internet and how older people use it. This distinction exists in reality. It also appears to account for much of the huge difference in tone one hears coming people in different generations when discussing this issue.
I don't have a link handy, but HBO has come out and said that they are not being ignorant or stubborn regarding GoT. They are completely aware of the market opportunities they are passing up. But, they have run the numbers and at the current time it is still more profitable for them to tie GoT to cable subscriptions than it is to open it up to a wider distribution. When the numbers change enough, so will their business plan.
The fact that you decided to make this into some sort of young versus old thing is rather hilarious.
Piracy is older than the internet. Some of us don't have the moral flexibility -- or quite honestly the time or the inconvenience -- to pirate. If you do, good for you, but the notion that it's new is utter hubris.
It took me less than two minutes to get the latest episode of the walking dead from a torrent site in 1080p quality about 20 minutes after it aired on cable tv tonight (commercial free).
I think your argument really highlights your advanced age and disconnect with modern technology.
I think your argument really highlights your advanced age and disconnect with modern technology.
I think your argument really highlights that you are an obnoxious, ignorant prat, with an extremely loose sense of morals (people trust you with their business? Tell them that you proudly thieve. Worse, on a completely public network that literally screams your identity). There are a lot of people whose time is much more important and valuable than yours, so your experience differs. Exult in your worthlessness.
This is exactly my point. If you grew up in a time when all you needed to do to watch a TV show online was google "watch Game of Thrones online" and go to the first link, you would feel much more relaxed about it than you obviously do.
I made the age distinction because many older think piracy means that these people are using filesharing and bittorrent to watch these shows. These technologies are obsolete when it comes to television and movies. You can do it all directly through the browser. It is as easy and convenient as YouTube.
If you grew up in a time when all you needed to do to watch a TV show online was google "watch Game of Thrones online" and go to the first link, you would feel much more relaxed about it than you obviously do.
That takes me to a site that has endless scamware ads, tries to get me to download a hilarious dubious "codec" from a third party site, has various false-starts while it solicits memberships, etc.
That is easy? In contrast if I want to watch GoT on my cable box, it's right there under on-demand (included with premium services).
After having dealt with the fallout when people "easily" watched videos online, I have become suspicious of any notion about the easiness of piracy.
Obviously I am not going to link you to sites where you can watch without these issues, but the third link that comes up on Google is one of them. Visit it with Firefox with Adblock installed and you'll have no problems. This is extremely common practice.
Maybe it's regional, but third site here is another B.S. site that tries to get you to install their custom "downloader", etc.
It is hardly a common practice, and such sites usually operate on the edges of criminality, with all that such entails (scamware, trojans, etc. There is no honor among thieves and all). Now there are a lot of very ignorant people who think it's great, completely oblivious to the fact that they've completely compromised their PC.
Which really is the point. You can talk about how "easy" it is if you have all the time in the world to filter and find appropriate sites between take downs, and avoid all of the bullshit that comes along with them. I'd rather just watch it on HBO, and have zero troubles with that. The other guy referred to a show that you can buy an iTunes season pass, which is how I watched the last season of Mad Men. Zero risk or hassle, and episodes appear after one ten second purchase. Time is money.
When they'll start selling their videos without any DRM and in timely manner (and not months after the release) - then you can say they are actually competing with pirates. Until then - they aren't even trying to compete.
It's more complicated than sticking to outdated business practices. It's a classic innovator's dilemma.
People pay to subscribe to HBO (tv). If people could get a lot of that content by subscribing online, for cheaper, then lots of people will switch over. Which means HBO disrupts it's own cashcow moneymaker with something that makes less money.
So who says it has to be "cheaper"? Charge the same amount for the streaming service as they get from the cable companies.
The problem is not HBO, the problem is Comcast. If HBO offered all their premium content a la carte over the internet for competitive prices, HBO would be fine. They would make even more money than they do now -- except that the cable companies would collectively go berserk and retaliate, the fear of which is what stops them.
If the DoJ had any interest in not looking like a collection of apathetic former RIAA lawyers there would be an antitrust probe into this sort of thing by now.
Have you seen the Netflix streaming catalog? It's terrible. People would pay substantially more than that just for current episodes of the HBO original series, to say nothing of the movies -- which they already do pay for the cable package. Why do you suspect they wouldn't do the same over the internet if the choice was available? Once again, they would likely pay even more, because they could then more easily cancel their entire cable subscription while paying HBO more than HBO is currently receiving today from the cable companies and come out ahead.
The primary problem is that HBO would have to transition their subscribers to their internet service all at once or they would lose subscriptions. There are still plenty of HBO subscribers watching on analog TVs with no internet attached to them, and HBO can't take steps to make itself independent from the cable companies without causing them to retaliate by depriving it of all that subscription revenue.
"Still not for sale at any price..." which is 100% false.
The problem is, you want it now... because, well, you are entitled to it when and how you want it.
The only issue is you aren't willing to pay the price. So, instead of availability, this because one of pricing. You feel the product costs too much, and you want the lower price to come sooner.
Another problem is you are looking at GoT as the product. It's not. It's a feature of the entire product: HBO.
And the cable contracts provide basically guaranteed revenue as opposed to the risk of trying out online publishing. Execs want to cover their asses, not risk them. The potential payoff of going fully online is probably not high enough to justify risking their entire revenue base.
HBO is just a publisher, their expertise is sifting through and finding great creative talent to produce great shows. There's not a big difference between cable TV and internet, they share the same last mile, even. It just takes a long time for incumbents to adapt to change.
These types of systems are highly susceptible to fog of war style mitigation. I'd like to find out who's providing the hardware behind the DPI.
Having worked for a subsidiary of Comcast (250k subs) within the past few years I saw a handful of closed door meeting with the FBI and a few locked 'Do Not Touch' racks. The US government is spinning out of control in overreach with regard to the Internet.
Whoever wants to fund an open access network with user protection and security as its core competency feel free to reach out. We'll seasoned network and security engineer waiting in the wings...
Are they doing DPI? Or are they just responding to the notices they've always gotten from 3rd parties about infringement on their network with these educational/throttling responses instead of merely passing on the notices. A graduated response system need not involve new surveillance. Most of the notices were from movie studios and record labels hiring companies that participate in torrent swarms, produce logs of all the peers sharing pieces of the torrent with them, then send out notices to the ISPs associated with those IPs.
With SOPA destroyed by the combined efforts of giant internet companies and internet users calling their congressmen, Hollywood was able to engage another group: ISPs.
Note: this is done completely without government. It is one of the best illustrations to date of what I was saying, about nannies curtailing liberties being possible even if government doesn't do them.
To all libertarians that single out the government for special thrashing, I have a question: doesn't this show that wherever power concentrates, you will find stuff like this. Government is just an example. We always knew they didn't need the government, just all the major ISPs.
This absolutely was not done with no government, but was created as part of a partnership put together with the direction of the White House.
Also, there's no reason for a libertarian not to oppose concentration of power in anybody's hands, whether it's government or corporations. Let's let this thread focus on the issue at hand instead of derailing it into another fight between different quadrants of the political plane.
>a partnership put together with the direction of the White House //
I'm wondering when the people of the USA voted for this in their great democracy?
OT:
As an outsider USA politics appears more and more about satisfying corporate desires and very little about government by the people and for the people.
The telcos are government controlled, sponsored, and protected corporations. The entire industry is practically one giant government sponsored monopoly system.
We live in an era in which the US Government has the power to directly control every single aspect of the economy. Either directly or indirectly via threats. There are laws on the books to dictate everything and anything, using one agency or another.
This is nothing but government in action. Classic state sponsored corporatism, aka fascism lite.
We have a Hollywood sponsored President for crying out loud. They own him, every bit as much as people liked to claim big oil owned George W. And we have a VP that likes to break international law to fulfill Hollywood's demanding lobbyists.
One of the primary reasons this can even happen is because all the internet infrastructure in the US is already government granted monopoly on the local level. It isn't free market at all, which is why ISP's can collude like this and get away with it. Nobody has an option.
Though I am usually libertarian, I don't know a good way to see the mass deployment of essential 21st technologies like fiber / high speed rail / automated transport without the traditional forced violence method employed by government. You won't get those gifted through inheritance and chance with obscene wealth offering to build the next generation of infrastructure.
Almost all residential ISPs operate under government-granted monopolies, though. If this were not the case it's a lot less likely that "Hollywood" could get thousands of smaller competing ISPs on board.
This violates my perception of my ISP as a dumb pipe.
I want to pay a fair price (whatever that may be) for an internet service provider that exists only to connect subscribers to the internet, at reasonable speeds near their advertised rates.
The entire telecoms industry is digging everything it can into absolutely not being that. It's entirely not a market they want to be any, as it's a commodity service and therefore yields poor profit.
Well, here come the Dark Nets: "The RetroShare network allows people to create a private and encrypted file-sharing network. Users add friends by exchanging PGP certificates with people they trust. All the communication is encrypted using OpenSSL and files that are downloaded from strangers always go through a trusted friend.
True, but for a lot of people it is a new technology. I expect darknets to grow, perhaps helped by social media. That will also bring more content. Most VPN's will happily provide the police your real IP... I first heared about Darknets from tech-guys in France, where they have a "3strikes and you're offline" law, compliments of Sarkouzy. Any French guys here wish to chip in?
This strikes me as a scary first step. The whole "re-education" spin is extra-scary; if I had a kid who downloaded something and was exposed to this kind of treatment, I'd be pretty loudly wondering who Comcast thinks it is to be "educating" my child with its propaganda.
What can we as techies do to combat this? How can we add a layer of encryption and anonymity that's so dead easy that it becomes ubiquitous?
TLDR: VPN's, I2P, VPS's, Usenet, Retroshare, Alternative ISPs, and spreading awareness of CAS and its countermeasures via active grassroots outreach and communication.
A seedbox is really the way to go. There are definitely a few additional steps you will need to get used to between you and your content, but its definitely worth it for peace of mind. There are also some nice benefits like being able to stream most media on demand rather then waiting for it to download.
A couple keys:
1) Get an extension for your browser that will automatically submit .torrent files to your seedbox.
2) Get a good multi threaded download manager for transferring from your seedbox to your pc. Regular browser downloads will not max our your connection. One linux I use aria2c (command line) and for windows, "free download manager" cannot be beaten.
VPN software, even setting up tunnelbrick on OSX is pretty easy for techies, but I imagine it can be pretty tough for newbs.
It'd be nice if there was a one-click type of process. Maybe where the credentials are transferred via web service using a login auth from the desktop client?
The technology for anonymity is there and adequate, just needs some proper UX design and user education.
Plenty of these exist on the marketplace. Personally, I use HideMyAss (http://hidemyass.com/vpn/) (no affiliation other than a happy customer.) I use it for privacy reasons, although I'm sure there are plenty of folks who also use it for downloading. It's an OpenVPN client with its own configured servers and a friendly, easy-to-use GUI for Windows and Mac. It is so fast that sometimes I forget I have it on when I'm doing normal web surfing.
It's also come in handy for me with troubleshooting. For instance, once I was able to track down an issue with Cloudflare's CDN where customers in certain parts of the world could not access a website, by using it to appear as though I was coming from that area of the world. Cloudflare support confirmed the issue and fixed it once I was able to screencap with my home connection vs. my HideMyAss proxy IP in a different "location."
That's part of the problem, but the other part is that regular people just don't care. I don't think they will care until it's too late, and even when it's too late they might not care to realize it. (I.e. in the future where the internet only works for Comcast-approved sites, and folks are happy with it because at least they can pay Comcast $80/month to watch Game of Thrones in their browser.)
Technology has to step in and make anonymity and encryption basic on some fundamental browser, os, or protocol level, so that the average user doesn't even need to actively search out anonymity solutions.
I don't know what the answer is. I suppose if it were that easy, we would have figured it out by now.
Edit: VPNs are still not a perfect solution, because your activity on them could be logged. (The TOS says they don't keep logs? Then you're just trusting the company to do what they say in their TOS, because when the government comes knocking it'll go right out the window.)
Running a p2p protocol like BitTorrent over a VPN is pretty horribly inefficient. At that point, I'd just use a seedbox and download my final product over https (optionally on a VPN, too)
You don't even need to use https to transfer to from your seedbox to your home. They aren't scanning the content of your transfers. They just have people collecting IP's from public (and probably various private) trackers, which they then distribute to the ISP's.
I really wish business practices would change to meet this demand.
I recently came across crunchyroll [1] which has a huge amount of japanese animation available to watch online 'for free' if you can put up with ads, or you can pay $7/month to have ad free (as well as higher def).
What I find really awesome is that for many shows it is available online an hour after it is shown in japan (this is for paying members, free members have to wait a week).
I apologize if this seems like nothing special to you, but living in New Zealand I can really appreciate sites that are both affordable and don't lock me out because of my region.
Crunchyroll is a unique case. It started out as a typical pirate video site that basically streamed and profited off anime fansubs, then later managed to go legitimate by licensing anime from Japanese studios (presumably because it had a large audience and the studios decided to experiment with streaming to the international market). It's a one-off occurrence that I don't think has been duplicated by any other site since.
It'd be great if more pirate streaming sites started up and became legitimate, but it's unlikely to happen so easily with content owners who are more protective of their copyrights (e.g. US studios/channels). They'd probably sue instead of discuss licensing terms.
Hulu and Netflix need to go everywhere, but content licensing by region will always stand in their way. Here we're stuck with high-priced cable TV packages that I don't find appealing, and Amazon's ebook store isn't even available.
I wasn't actually aware of their history as a less-than-legitimate site, I guess that helped with the chicken and egg problem of content and audience.
Region licensing is definitely one of the big killers, I find it odd (read: sad) how companies can buy all the rights to a product for a region, and then not do anything useful (at least not to me) with it.
I'm not familiar with how that side of things works, how will they differentiate between legitimate torrent traffic, and traffic which contains pirated material? The video says that you'll be able to challenge alerts after you've received them, but is throttling pre or post that alert being filed?
Legitimate use from about an hour ago: Downloaded a fan remix album of some video game music (A torrent is the method they give on their website for downloading). Will that activity result in any kind warning flags?
Is this something that services like hidemyip circumvent? Or is it different since, I assume, my actual IP is visible when torrenting?
Welcome to fascism. Where corporate-government interests strictly control everything (Verizon and AT&T = US Government, since they've been granted government monopoly protections, they are in fact an arm of the Federal Government).
Obviously this is ridiculous, but I find it just absurd.
Who are the ISPs to tell their customers what is morally and legally right or wrong?
Are we not allowed to have a reverse method where we penalize the ISPs for their crimes? Of course not.
Guys, this is Hacker News, the breeding ground of entrepreneurship. One of you may to (for lack of a better buzzword) disrupt the ISP market. At least we have Fiber hopefully coming soon.
Personally I see this as another overbilled project on the part of the snake oil DRM industry to part content owners from their money. None of these schemes work long-term, as there are tons of different strategies for defeating them.
They don't even work short-term. In fact, this gives users the means and incentive to figure out how to pirate without it being visible to the ISP. Imagine you're a clueless user that keeps getting alerts about torrenting. Maybe you get a VPN or switch to a private torrent network, or whatever technological next step you need to take. Now the alerts stop and you're pirating safely (or at least, safer).
Seems like an automated version of current practices. "Owners" join a network of peers for a specific piece of content, and alert the ISP about offending IPs; ISP sends notices. Now it seems all this can happen automatically.
I don't think this new system is any more automated, is it? The change is that the ISPs have agreed on various ways to penalize users who are accused of copyright infringement.
Encryption has been the default setting in most bittorrent clients for a while now. The fundamental problem is that no matter how good you encryption is, if some simply attempts to download the file themself, they can see what IPs are supplying them the pieces. In order to solve this, you would need to add an additional layer to the protocol, where a user downloads and uploads files not related to the ones they want for themselves, so knowing the IP that is uploading the file to you does not help you find someone who is actually responsible. At this point, you are probably better off running existing clients through a TOR proxy.
Yes, but it's possible to have a network of peers that exchange data (almost) anonymously - TOR is a great example, but it is not scaleable - more users using it means it gets slower, not faster. AFAIK, there are protocols that have scalability built-in, like I2P and another bittorrent like protocol whose name I forgot; political measures such as this will increase their development and adoption and therefore make them useful and practical.
The default number of tor hops in a tor circuit is 3. What would be 2GB (1GB + 1GB) of potentially metered/limited bandwidth for the sender(s) and receiver combined in a point to point connection, becomes 8GB of potentially metered/limited network utilization: 1GB for the downloader, 1GB for the uploader, and 1+1GB (down+up) each for the tor nodes in the circuit.
Given that tor node bandwidth is a precious commodity, it shouldn't be difficult to see how downloading large files through tor is a problem.
It's not just tor; downloading large files by any means through tor hurts the tor network. Tor happens to be by far the most popular means of redistribution of large files for which people would like to gain anonymity.
The Tor anonymity router is run by volunteers like myself. I donate several megabyte a second of my bandwidth to relay data for people avoiding censorship and protecting their anonymity. By torrenting through the onion router, you not only waste mine, but three other nodes bandwidth. It causes unnecessary load and attention to the last (exit) router.
For every megabyte transferred over the network, at least 6 is used (in and out) to ensure that the connection is completely anonymous. It's a waste of my money if its being burnt by asshole pirates.
If you want to know more about what the router is, there's lots of technical information on the projects website[1].
Which means you rely on anonymous friends of friends of friends of ... to not accept a few thousand dollars from the RIAA to add their network as friends.
If the RIAA sponsor that person to upload the data then how can they say you're receiving unauthorised data from that person?
Also, isn't this a form of entrapment. If I offer to sell you drugs and you accept then it strikes me that I'm more guilty than you - same if I offer to send you works I know are copyright.
This is really bad. I don't care for piracy, but I'm really worried.
This is a prediction of the internet.. year 2020:
TOR, freenet or some new network is in size like p2p was 2013. It has got a lot of attention from ordinary people and developers and it's actually pretty fast now days. Pretty much everyone runs a relay, it's basically like it was running
uTorrent back in 2005 - not a big deal. While everything is free, which is quite nice for the pirate, it's also hell. Since everyone is basically untraceable, even Megan, the twelve year old who wants the new Disney movie. It's now totally impossible to trace down the terrorist, online drug-dealers, etc. The cyber-police is drowning in false positives, this because Megan and her classmates are using the same crypto-network.
Is this what we want? I think we should tackle the piracy problem from another angle. Let's start more services like spotify and hulu. Make it not worth it to pirate stuff because there is a awesome legal alternative.
Short answer: Yes - but not for the reason you stated. The "cyber police" have been getting far too powerful and chummy with ISPs as of late. Any measures an average person can reasonably take to make surveillance hard if not impossible to conduct should be happening.
Police can rely on old fashioned police work. They do not need DPI gear in every datacenter to trace down kiddie pornographers, "terrorists" and online drug dealers (which is a section of law enforcement which needs to shrivel and die anyways).
If they know what you pirated, why don't the content providers just get your ISP to shut off your internet until you watch enough ads to make up for the cost (they could do a little rev-share to incentivize comcast). Piracy will exist as long as content providers insist on selling something that can no longer be sold.
> "it will issue escalating punishments to suspected pirates, severely reducing their connection speeds after five or six offenses" //
How would you punish person A but not punish person B who uses the same connection. How can you establish person A is guilty rather than person B in order to decide that A should be punished.
Why is copyright infringement now suddenly no longer to be decided by a proper legal process instead being decided by the plaintiff?
How will the legal system protect against the innocent being punished and ensure that due punishment for false claims made by plaintiffs is forthcoming.
Without a proper process to punish false (or evidentially unsupported) claims this surely breaches basic legal rights.
When companies share libellous legal claims about a person without evidence surely the USA legal system would punish those companies?!?
This is the perfect example of a result that arises when people disconnected from the internet think "OK, what can we do against piracy? Wait, piracy is a crime, and the best thing we can do to reduce crime is education. So why not educate users?" Why ISPs are complying with this bullshit is beyond me.
1) The top ISPs and the top media companies are one and the same. They're all cable providers and some of them are subsidiaries of entertainment conglomerates. It's their own content and their own cable TV revenue piracy threatens.
2) They're getting paid. Instead of handling infringement notices being a cost center, it can be an additional revenue stream for them, in exchange for a little throttling of the customers costing them the most in paperwork.
If I understand this correctly, someone who claims copyright on a software can sign up for an alerts system on a P2P, at which point any infringement of copyright is automatically forwarded to the ISP.
The ISP then reprimands the alleged pirate via email/alert, and if the consumer continues to receive warnings, they will have to play a video on their computer and/or receive restricted internet access.
The "you must watch a video" thing doesn't seem too bad, considering that it'll probably be possible to just run it in its own tab and ignore it, and speed restrictions are already being put in place by some ISPs.
Would be sort of decent of them to actually, perhaps, reach out to their customers to let us know this is coming. Not had anything in my bill for the past several months that this new system was coming down the pike.
Is there some reason why there isn't an inexpensive Chinese-made device that people could buy that creates totally decentralized urban and suburban mesh networks over public spectrum?
Private Internet Access[1] has been serving me well for a long time and they've got endpoints all over the place, from Oh Canada to the Netherlands. Things are consistently fast and reliable, their customer service is responsive, and you can log in from multiple devices at a time which is great. They're cheap too.
I like most of their policies, but they really need to be explicit about their usage limits.
"You can only use a reasonable amount from our service.
How much is reasonable? You'll find out when you hit
it and we decide to drop the hammer, take your money,
and never speak to you again."
"Additionally, we may impose usage limits to our services,
suspend or block services, or cancel any and all services
at our sole discretion at any time. Finally, we do not
guarantee the accuracy and timeliness of any data received."
"Subscriber understands that Privateinternetaccess.com
also reserves the right to scale back or throttle
bandwidth originating from subscriber accounts that may
breach the present Agreement or in the event of
excessive usage on the Privateinternetaccess.com network."
Same page, under Our Rights
Which is REALLY ODD that they would have those terms, because on their contact page:
"Are there any limitations on usage or bandwidth?"
"We do not impose any restrictions or limitations on usage
and/or bandwidth consumption. Please feel free to engage in
any legal activity. "
That's very different to what you originally quoted! Having said that, yes, there is a discrepancy there, although I've got a feeling it's a CYA provision in case someone with Google Fiber decides to download all of YouTube.
The http://torguard.net/ SOCKS proxy service works quite well if all you care is bittorrent. They also offer a VPN product. They don't keep logs, which is something to look for in any decent VPN or SOCKS proxy.
I have to say after using other ISPs, I'm quite happy with Cox Communications in the Midwest. It wasn't always great, but the reliability of service is much better than the others I've had the displeasure of using. It's a bit pricey, but they have a monopoly here so it could be worse. Other than frying my modem once (it was documented and others had the exact same problems on the same date), it's been good. With other ISPs I've had to lease their hardware that inevitability has fundamentally-broken Wifi functionality.
And, more relevantly, they've stood up for consumers in these cases and their name is notably absent from the list of participants.
It isn't about encryption, since if a content provider can get a hand on a torrent file or a tracker + magnet, they can get all the IPs of everyone in the swarm. The only way to avoid that is having your traffic routed through someone else so you can't be directly visible, which is expensive in the broad sense.
Maybe companies like HBO should update their business practices to something roughly compatible with 2013, instead of trying to legal threat everyone into submission.
If they sold it on iTunes, YouTube, or Hulu+ they'd convert tons of pirates into paying customers. People want to give HBO their money but HBO literally won't take it...