piracy? lets solve it with a letter!

Haggisman said:
Indeed, my son would certainly get a good talking to about his illegal downloading if I got one of these letters.

A good talking to about using VPN/proxies, along with a pat on the back for figuring out how to torrent stuff at the age of 2.5 :p

I had an interesting problem last month actually.

Wanted to watch GoT season 4, but I forgot to Sky+ it. No problem, I'll get it on catch up.

Unfortunately my internet connection was being flaky, and Sky catchup doesn't work without a broadband connection. No problem, I'll tether the Sky+ box to my mobile and use that instead.

No luck, Sky catchup doesn't work with a 3G connection.

Solution? Tether phone to laptop and torrent it. Sorted :)

Now technically I was pirating it, but considering I had a right to watch it (through my Sky subscription), and was only prevented from doing so due to technical issues (deliberate or otherwise). I don't really see that I did anything wrong, opinions?
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I hear ya, I use torrents for TV series all the time I will if I get one of those letters consider my options till then I will assume it's ok. I have a netflix sub and If I can I use netflix I use Hola to get to US netflix too and watch some stuff on that. (walking dead etc is on netflix US), but some things it's just easier to download. Personally TV is least of their concerns it's Movies and music that the issue is really about.

I have to say too that the film industry has gotten much better at preventing Screener releases and other leeks. I won't watch Web rips or TS's or Cams and although I rarely download films I can see on the private trackers I use that the number of DVD quality releases before the stuff goes to DVD has decreased dramatically.
 
We only like globalisation when it benefits the company, not the end consumer.

As seen with the US VPN to Hulu.

The world should no longer be bound by borders of countries. Why not allow TV shows to be shown at the same time all over the world?
 
You know it would be funny if one of the people from these rights holder and associations that are heading this new system got a letter from their ISP about downloading content illegally :D:D
 
glen8 said:
To get access to all the content I would like to watch i'd need

Sky Now TV Sub
Netflix Sub
Amazon Prime Sub
Unblock-us Sub
Router capable of using DNS proxy (or DD-WRT)

If for some reason, in a paticular month I don't get round to watching anything.....I still have to pay.

Then I do not find out well enough in advance that the tv show I have just started, will be removed due to the company not renewing their licence.

To be honest, it's easier just to pirate it. How will my ISP know I am downloading illegally from the dutch SSL usenet server I use, which has been encrypted at source, double compressed and passworded :confused:
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This is the problem for me. The way the rights are spread out you need to end up having about 10 different subs to this and that and it's just ludicrous.
 
One thing i am concerned about is that people will have no recourse it will be guilty until proven innocent. The content providers could simply pick ip addresses and content at random and generate loads of these letters and people will be in a position like the tv license where they are unable to prove there innocent because the whole thing will be designed in such a way that it will generate as much money for the content providers. This incentive will result in false positives and people will be unable to defend themselves. Maybe if people had the resources and time and knowledge they could defend themselves, but most people will just pay the fine even if they didn't do just to avoid a prosecution or being disconnected from the internet. In the end it turns in to nothing more than an extortion racket.
 
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I haven't seen a single film in years i'd want to spend £8 at the cinema to go and watch. Maybe if Hollywood started making an effort again then people would pay to watch their films. Remake after shoddy remake is why they are losing money. For instance the new Robocop, 10x the budget and it was so bad I almost turned it off half way through. Glad i didn't pay £8 and waste one of my nights off.

Always buy games as I get my moneys worth from them, especially in Steam sales.

I used to have a subscription with Lovefilm, but all the new release films I had on my list would never get delivered and i'd just keep getting the lower priority films. Absolute waste of time and money.
 
Hahaha. Excellent. This is about as good as making you need proof of age to watch porn :D I stream everything these days, I watch several US Shows and I refuse to go to the cinema
 
Stretch said:
People are mocking, but it's just the thin end of the wedge.

The media industry are establishing a protocol all the big ISP agree to, and then they'll slowly ramp up the pressure to make the enforcement progressively more draconian.
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The more draconian it gets, the more more average people will towards things like VPN and other privacy solutions.
 
JHeaton

A fair point - although you are arguing that you would only pay for a sky subscription for one program (and therefore not watch anything else on it ever) which is unlikely

Mrk

oh I agree - get people hooked on your product then only let some people see it after many months of spoilers and web discussions - is asking for it really


but yeah I don't like how spread out programs are across streaming services, not very many people are going to sub to all of them
 
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tibbsey said:
How is this legal?

Also LOL to the whole thing, obviously.
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what do you mean? you realise by "listening in" they mean they just join the group of downlaoders and by the way the technology works everyone then sends them thier details so they can share the file.

they arn't hacking in or anything they're just loading the torrent with something like utorrent and being handed al lthe details by everyone else
 
If I could buy a subscription to stream anything be it US or UK, new releases etc then I would and wouldnt download. I certainly won't be signing up to multiple services. I already pay for Steam/Origin games, regular cinema goer, occasional boxsets and Sky HD.
 
Judgeneo said:
I don't even know HOW to watch some of our programs legally.
I pay for Netflix, and watch things on there when I can.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/game_of_thrones
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JHeaton said:
I disagree. Whilst things like Netflix and Hulu (and now Amazon) are a step in the right direction, there's still a bunch of issues. The biggest one for me, at the moment, is cost.

Let's take someone who wants to watch just Game of Thrones, since it's reported as the most-pirated TV show. To get this in the UK, you have to take out a Sky subscription for £21.50 per month. You get ten episodes per series, one series per year so far, running over three months. That's £64.50 for ten episodes of a show, £6.45 per episode, if that's the only thing you watch (I don't know if there is a minimum contract length with Sky). How is that a good deal? You can buy a whole film on DVD for around that much. :(

Compare that to Instant Video from Amazon. You can pay £2.49 for an episode in HD, or £1.89 for SD - the cheapest option to get an entire series is £16.99; that's much better value. The downside, of course, is that you can't get it as it is being shown.

So, best deal for someone who wants to watch it as it is shown? Download it from other sources without paying. The amount of money the film and music industry puts into fighting piracy is obscene. If they invested just half as much of it into providing ways for people to get just the content they want, at reasonable prices and without any silliness, piracy would be an ever smaller problem (which is debatable anyway) than it is right now. The gaming industry, whilst not perfect, has certainly done a good job so far. I don't know anyone who resorts to piracy for their games any more, with the exception of those that are no longer available to buy.
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This is it exactly, downloading things illegally works because of the cost saving and for some it is purely for this and no matter what other ways there is will always download. However I do think for many it is down to because downloading illegally provides a better service through worldwide availibility, better quality, faster downloads and even in some cases provided content you simply cannot buy. If a company like Netflix or the copyright holders provide a service of equal or better sevice than downloading illegal then people will pay for it. It is almost comical that in trying to strangle downloads and enforce copyright the companies are pushing more people to download illegally.
 
They just don't get it do they ? millions will not pay for broadband if you stop piracy.If were all limited to just gaming and web browsing whats the point in having anything over about 1mb speed ? thankfully the isps know the score.Just because someone downloads something doesn't mean they'll pay for it if you remove their ability to download it, they still wont pay for it they'll go without it.
 
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Tefal said:
what do you mean? you realise by "listening in" they mean they just join the group of downlaoders and by the way the technology works everyone then sends them thier details so they can share the file.

they arn't hacking in or anything they're just loading the torrent with something like utorrent and being handed al lthe details by everyone else
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Oh, no I didn't think it would be that simple. To me, "listening in on traffic" makes it sound more nefarious than that, packet sniffing or w/e.
If that's all they do though, how do they get the downloader's information from that, surely they'd only be able to get info on the seeder/s? (I don't torrent, so don't really know what occurs or what information would be available to them)
 
Leprechaun312 said:
You know it would be funny if one of the people from these rights holder and associations that are heading this new system got a letter from their ISP about downloading content illegally :D:D
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I always used to be a bit iffy about copyright theft but then I got to know an actor who would theoretically be one of the ones losing money and he had 5 big Case Logic folders full of stuff he took everywhere and he was hardly short of cash - he did want the convenience however.
 
gettothechopper said:
JHeaton

A fair point - although you are arguing that you would only pay for a sky subscription for one program (and therefore not watch anything else on it ever) which is unlikely
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Well, that really depends on the person. I'm fortunate in that each member of my family has something they want to watch on Sky (although we have more than just the basic package to get it), but most of the things we watch are available on the channels which also broadcast on Freesat/Freeview, or else are on Netflix/Amazon Prime. There are people I know who have only gone ahead with a Sky subscription for one or two shows, or F1, which is really bad value for them; there are also others who either miss out or else download because they don't feel like they can justify the cost.

I don't know if that is in any way representative of the overall situation, but surely you can agree that it's far from ideal that you have to purchase a relatively expensive subscription for one show, or at the very least gamble on some of the other content being something you want to see? I would much prefer someone to set up an online streaming/download service where I can add on only the things I want to watch.

When Amazon integrated the streaming side of Lovefilm, I was quite happy. Being able to download quality copies of stuff at a reasonable price is something I've wanted for a while, although their library leaves a lot to be desired at present. I wouldn't even mind paying slightly more for good shows on release. A HD episode of GoT, as I said in my previous post, is £2.49; I'd be happy to bump that up to something like, say, £3.50 per episode of such a high-quality programme to be able to download it on release day.
 
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