Piracy always has been my go to for everything, I even have a modded version of TH-cam app on my iPhone to skip ads and sponsors as well as downloading videos in mp4 and mp3 format for free
Heres the ironic thing, my family has a spotify prenium subscription and the offline functionality is actually competent. You get offline acess enabled for 30 days and that allows me to conserve my (shitty by other pepoles standards) 4GB of data. i was considering buying youtubes bs but when i discovered that it was going to be this shit by this video, i have made a u turn and im actually now considering paying for more data. Funny how things work, huh google?
@@peepoHappyy piracy has been your go-to for a good reason. When a business gets gigantic enough, not only does it have capital, but that capital gives them power over the consumer, which will inevitably lead to these shitty practices we're seeing now. Remember, it's ALWAYS morally justified to steal from adobe.
@mason6300 - YES & it´s nothing new at all, it was even the same for 20+ years with DVDs & music "un-CDs" incl. Sony-XCP malware & Alpha-DVD malware etc. (there is a picture of what honest paying customers have to suffer vs. what pirates can enjoy)
My grandfather once told me, "Never pay anyone who's gone out of their way to inconvenience you." He told me this over forty years ago. He truly had wisdom beyond his years.
My grandfather always said if you want to make money, sell nothing. I didn't get it at first when I was young, but being much older now? Boy was he spot on. A lot of nothing being sold for cash hand over fist.
As Gabe Newell (the creator of Steam) once said: "One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue [...] The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates."
There's a reason some people spend $10,000 on hardware and disk storage but won't pay for Netflix,Amazon Prime,HBO,D+. With certain softwares and community sharing website accesses, they can offer BETTER service and quality.
Prime example, when Netflix became available in Australia, the amount of Torrington went down, because people who weren’t tech specialists, could get what they wanted for a reasonable price without exposing their computers to viruses or malware. Then, all the other competitors got on board, they started selling the rights between themselves, they started doing the territorial release restrictions, just like with movies. And now the rate of illegal streaming and torrenting has gone back up.
Half right. When Netflix streaming came to Australia, it was pretty restricted on what was available. So VPN sales went sky high. But piracy soon rose when everyone else came because as much as it cost, they still didn't have a lot of the content that people wanted
I was thinking of pirating the VST plugins that I bought and own because of those damn launchers that forces me to be connected to the internet in order to run the plugins. Such plague! I'm not decided yet, but I strongly consider it.
@@SaintMatthieuSimard No harm if you already paid them. There are lots of things where the pirate has more consideration for the user than the company who wrote it. There are versions of Windows where they stripped out all the crap. Illegal but much nicer to live with. Who needs news about the Kardashions popping up when they are trying to concentrate on some boring and difficult work. It's as if Windows is designed to stop you getting things done.
That’s certainly the philosophy of every thief. What’s a better deal? Paying something or paying nothing? Sounds like stealing is always the better deal!
@@Creshex8 It's not about the money you spend on the product, it's about the product being "yours". If you have to be connected to the internet and receiving ads in order to use something you paid for, what's the point? A better "version" is available for free and the only dissuasion that exists is a message from your ISP saying "Pls stop ):" So you take the better product and it just so happens to be provided for free.
@@justandhans Not necessarily, actually. As someone who has bought movies off of TH-cam, they also appear in your Google Play account for what it's worth. Still anti-consumer as heck, though...
@@justandhans I don't get why anyone would buy a movie on TH-cam if TH-cam could just ban your account and thus erase your movie purchase? I generally only buy physical media if there's an option, and then use the digital code to add that as backup. The only time I've bought digital is when it's something like an older TV show that hasn't been released on physical media.
The whole “can’t use downloaded things offline” is ridiculous and I was amazed no one seemed to be talking about it. You’re totally justified, vote with your wallet.
This is probably because of music videos, I doubt TH-cam could keep charging 10$ a month if you could download 1000 mp3 songs on a single month and I don't think we can genuinely say that this would be reasonable. They could probably work on a way that restricts songs but give you offline access to regular videos though.
@@goncaloduarte4683 I mean, their movies that are free with adds already have DRM that prevents third party software from downloading them, not sure why they can't do the same with music.
What I find the most appalling regarding TH-cam ads, are the actual ads. There are so many scams being advertised and a company of this size letting that happen boggles my mind.
@@joshuavarghese619 Not having digital literacy does not naturally select anything. Nobody was born with the skills to be able to detect scam out of millions of ads they see.
History is repeating itself. I remember in the PC Gaming era where EVERYONE downloaded no-cd cracks and DRM-removal software just to play games comfortably on their PCs. This also became a gateway into piracy since buying games offered lesser versions compared to pirated ones. Valve single-handedly fixed piracy by offering Steam (their online game store) with convenient extra features that consumers appreciated. To quote Gabe Newell: “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost ALWAYS a service problem...” And he is completely right.
It's incredible that anti-piracy measures have become even worse over the years. Especially in the last few years, when DRM systems would noticably impact the performance of a game. What a better way to advertise piracy than to cripple or break the game of paying customers just in order to defend from those filthy pirates.
I remember when I was 13yrs, I didn't have a job, and couldn't buy anything. Back in my day, 1980s, we called the software cracked, and waited hours to download a game over 1200 baud modem onto a 5 1/4" floppy, and then 3.5" floppy disks. Of boxes on boxes full of 3.5" floppy disks, easily, >98% was pirated. I would disagree with the thought, "Piracy is almost always a service problem", but I can understand and respect the perspective. When I got older, had a job, worked in engineering to create stuff, I had a stronger view against piracy, and an even stronger view than that, on IP theft (cough) ch*na (cough). As the same time, I'm greatly against the trend of no true ownership of digital content that you purchase.
Arrr. I started paying for TH-cam red when it came out about 7 years ago. Imagine The rage when I realized 7 years later the first time I actually needed to use the download feature that it doesn't work! Never make someone feel like they are foolish for having paid you!
i used to to pay for netflix and hulu and be able to watch almost anything that i wanted, but then disney plus, amazon prime, hbo max, and many others showed and now my options are pay 50 + dollars per month to have to search through many websites to maybe watch or go to free streaming site and stream pretty much any tv show or movie immediately.
Over the years I've bought Dr Strangelove (the movie) on DVD, Bluray and 4K. Last night I saw Dr Stranglove on Prime. I clicked it to watch and it told me to fork over $2.99. That is not convenience and it's not my job to find a way to tell these platforms they don't get to double dip. I exited prime got off my a$$ and found the 4K copy and slipped it into my player. It gets worse and worse by the day. Let's not go into the dark pattern where mp4's that I created from CD's I own somehow go locked into Amazon music and once I stopped paying that media was gone from my phone.
I used to have a youtube playlist that I'd listen on my phone while cleaning around the house. Then they decided that "you can't play if your phone's screen is not turned on, you scum!" So, now I just use those handy sites that allow you to download "videos" as mp3s and I just listen to those on my phone.
I would have to be subscribed to every content provider(netflix, HBO, etc) in order to have access to a fraction of what I would have ''elsewhere'' from a single location... And then I'd still suffer things like either not being able to even download anything at all or having it heavily restricted, at a lower quality, and have to deal with whatever horrible UI that company has put out on top of it. The piracy websites that aren't even corporate entities have more impressive and intutite UX design than these billion dollar companies lol, which is almost reason enough for me to want to go elsewhere.
Yeah, but that’s more than enough for their jingles and logos to make their way into your head. They don’t think you’re likely to see an ad and then go buy their products, but, if you’ve been shown advertisements with catchy music and colorful logos, when you’re eventually looking to buy a product in that category, you’re like 70% more likely to buy their products because of the familiarity that’s been programmed into you.
“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” - Gabe Newell
How could the service ever be better (or even equal) when pirates don't pay for anything? People who quote Newell like that just use it as a crutch - they were never going to pay anyway!
"better than what they're receiving" would be "more convenient" in this case. in large part, i reckon that dominant services are only dominant bc they make their services easy to access and use
@@DisgruntledDoomer clearly you were not around, or didn’t participate, in the hayday of game and software piracy. Steam came along and made it so much easier, so much more organized, so much simpler to be a gamer. Particularly once playing online became more and more complex for pirates. Steam literally offers so much value just as the software alone, that it makes perfect sense to just buy games from them. It’s convenient, there’s rarely any complications, and it just works. Modding rarely requires a third party website and frustrations trying to get mods to work. Tech support can be handled in steam itself when you have a problem with a game, rather than having to go to yet another forum somewhere. Were it not for steam, piracy and the workarounds to play online would be much more popular. Getting something for free doesn’t always outweigh the benefits that come with paying, and often it doesn’t. Particularly when it comes to steam.
Piracy is the reason a lot of previously considered "lost" media actually isn't lost. Without piracy, the first half of internet history as we know it would be almost entirely eradicated in a few years' time.
You are being 100% REASONABLE, RATIONAL,AND LOGICAL. We live in an era where people have been groomed, conditioned and absolutely brainwashed to be shills for corporations, to pay maximum dollar for the minimalist level of quality in the product, content or service they are receiving. Keep up the good fight & educating everyone you can, you’re doing incredible work with the arguments you bring up to the discussion(s) it really helps against the narratives these corporate shills constantly regurgitate.
When things you buy are only licensed for use, not something you actually own, piracy should be a way of life regardless what your financial situation is.
Agreed, big fan of steam and things like that but even they have some garbage issues, I wish we had a place where you can download load stuff and actually have it with no restrictions, I'd love to buy and play older games and movies and have them a ssd but since companies worship money over moral and ethical practices then starve the beast out, I'm very grateful for pirates and everything they do and soon digital stuff is going to be changed by ai to fit what ever propaganda the state wants to promote
@@kirerunte1046 Good Old Games sells lots of old games, the majority of which have no DRM at all and no download restrictions. Humble Bundle also - as long as you don't buy Steam keys or stuff from EA - sells DRM-free games. A lot of Indie games on Humble Bundle come with raw download files as well as optional Steam keys if you want them.
Time to buy a second computer and set it to guest mode to download all those stuff, and having second computers should help you in containing all those threats out of your main computer in case something is wrong when you pirate stuff (infected by viruses, ransomware, etc.) as long as it's not connected to the same network
@@sihamhamda47 You do know you can set up virtual machines, separate drives or partitions on one machine right? Maybe having another PC wouldn't be necessary?
This is why I don't even nab the free games on Epic Games Store. Can't use the content unless online. If you treat me like a pirate, I prefer to be a pirate
This is why the lawsuits against the internet archives are so concerning. I agree with every word said here and am old enough to remember what a free internet promised
@@DennisHolmberg-sl1hz Ah yes, the people who change a few dozen words in a 1000 page book, call it a "new version" and charge you $100 for it. And you can't use last year's book, because it's "outdated."
This is absolutely true. Also when too many companies split up in a field of media and require dozens of independent subscriptions for lesser services that have been partitioned into near oblivion, that also tends to put a final nail in the coffin. For example when I pay for Netflix and some shows or movies I want to watch suddenly drop out of my region's "content cycle", I jump straight to piracy - and will do with other services too. If they could just fix their shit, have decent and consistent libraries that don't prioritize some markets over others despite an equal cost for all, and the next-door piracy site offers a full unlimited library with no regional requirements, no signups, good quality, and no bs while also being up to date on all content.. Yea, piracy all the way. I'd love to pay for subscriptions that actually offer what they pretend to be in their marketing campaigns. Sadly, 99/100 services fail to live up to their marketing standards (and I haven't found that last 1/100 yet).
Gabe Newell is a legend. I know many people here in Brazil that dropped piracy because of Steam. If you know anything about piracy in Brazil, that alone deserves some sort of achievement award. Just as a hint, some people take piracy as the default way to acquire things. Some of them don't even remember genuine hardware/software/media is a thing.
gabe newell is so cool, he says so much righteous shit. so glad a guy like that has been able to be successful. what valve and the steam deck have done for Linux gaming is unbelievable! Linux is now so close to being able to play all the games u can play on windows, and many old games which are not even playable on modern windows machines are playable on proton. god bless gabe newell!
You are highly rational. Just recently found your channel and am absolutely loving all the content. I'm fully on board with what you're doing and wishing more of the common people would stand against the abuse that most companies have eased us into.
Piracy has been pretty vital in the preservation of culture on so many fronts. I listen to lots of indie music from the 80s and 90s and in many cases I simply cannot legally purchase or listen to that music. I want those artists to get music but I simply have no other option. The same thing happens with movies, literature and video games. Massive corporations are uninterested in giving people legal access to products that mere hundreds or thousands will purchase. But they also don't want us to "steal it". Absolutely absurd.
Not to mention media that's out of print, like retro console games. Some of those sell for obscene amounts of money on sites like eBay just because they aren't being made anymore. If you want to play a certain game without having to empty your bank account (assuming you can find a copy at all), the most logical course of action is to download a ROM and play it on an emulator. But we're not supposed to do that, because it's technically stealing, even though the company wouldn't be making money from the title either way, _because it's no longer being manufactured._ The only person making any money from the sale of said game is the person selling a copy they already owned.
Yeah, i‘ve also searched some game once and found it on this piracy site who‘s explicit goal it was to preserve games for future generations, and i LOVE that. There should be such a „library“ site for every kind of medium where they just put the digital version of whatever Book/Film/game/Music/etc. that‘s gone out of production or isn‘t supported anymore.
Same with videogames, especially Nintendo. You can't buy games from like the 90's or whatever anymore, but if you download them you're supposedly a criminal. Fuck corporations.
Companies seem to narcissistically believe that they "defeated" piracy and that's why it went way down. They don't realise that piracy only waned because streaming was way more convenient at the time. But at the point that it becomes just as big an inconvenience as dealing with region-locked DVD's with unskippable built in ads were, people can and will start pirating again.
Piracy defeated ? How and when ? I have pirated hundreds of GBs movies alone (not counting softwares, games etc). Literally pirating is just so convenient and easy and they claim they defeated it? I never paid for a streaming service, never paid for youtube premium, never paid for an app, never paid for a software.
@@devendrapoonia1 Because there was a time when piracy wasn’t just mainstream, it was the default. I expect you know people - possibly as close as your very own family - who couldn’t pirate content, even if they wanted too. Let me introduce you to the 80’s where pirated video games, videos, cassettes etc were sold in shops on the high streets of every city in the Western world, and everybody bought their games, music and movies from there because why wouldn’t you. There was a brief revival in the Napster days, with it often coming complete bundled on prebuilds with a one click “get the top 40 this week” icon on the desktop. They know they will never stop you pirating, they don’t care - they also know that it’s a mosquito bite into their profits. What they really fear is people like you making it so easy for people like my mum that they can also pirate.
Thank you Louis for saying it better than I could. It's definitely not the first time. I'm not a "regular" but I keep coming across your thought-provoking content year-after-year. I don't do TH-cam Premium because that would require me to stay signed into a Google account all day, every day, just to avoid ads. I'm not prepared to do that. So, consider this a personal cumulative "Thank you" gesture.
@@KhanJoltrane Yeah, Louis should just publish some account number where people can send money directly without having to share "service fees" (probably at least 30%) with Google.
I absolutely agree, I went the legal route to watch anime and subscribed to crunchy roll and Funimation. Crunchy constantly was missing the shows I wanted to watch on a particular season and Funimation constantly locked me out of the content, there was some kind of error with their apis but it would randomly block my access to stream even when I was paying and not using any VPNs and they were shows I already started watching. On top of all this crap, Disney goes and decides to pull some marvel shows out of Disney+ and in left hanging 3/4 of a season into a show. I'm really trying to access things the good way but they keep pushing me in the other direction
@@vaibhavkumar-us8tw don't remember all of them because it was a few years ago but I remember wanting to watch Bofuri and was not available on crunchy, went to Funimation and it was giving me errors and not letting me play anything on my account so I had to pirate it
@@rightsdontcomewithpermits7073 Um, yes there is, it's called downloading torrents, which is the entire subject being discussed in this comment section. Is your brain not functioning? Furthermore, no, not all streaming is identical. Some is legal through official streaming providers, other streaming is illegal through foreign websites that stream that content to you for free without legal permission. Again, this is the entire topic being discussed. How this managed to elude you is beyond my understanding (and seemingly beyond yours as well.)
This quote is great. Lets be real here, it can be a pricing issue, but more often than not it is not. Most people (atleast here in finland) have high enough income to be able to afford to buy a few games or pay for a streaming subscription. But people dont like paying to make their lives harder. Companies need to realize this.
And yet Steam still has their halfassed DRM on every release. Sure, it is up to the publisher, but I am pretty sure the publisher has to opt out. Gabe is WRONG, it is a "Cost/service issue" the price is generally too high for the service provided. When the cost/service ratio is favorable enough, piracy ceases to be a big issue. It is easy to see, many "indie" and DLC driven games costs 20-30 bucks, while AAA games are pushing 70 bucks. AAA games still get heavily pirated because they are not worth the 70 dollar price tag, if the price was slashed in half I predict they would make more money. And Paradox realized that DLC is where the real money is at, that and workshop integration.
Exactly. As a proud pirate, services like Spotify are worth paying for because until today they don't limit where, when and how I listen to my music (I still buy cd's, records to support my fav artists, and I still download my flacs.)
Iirc that was first said by Gabe N, head of Valve. It's no coincidence that Valve's Steam, as many problems as they've had over the years, is probably the most consistently liked distribution platform out there, despite being one of the oldest.
it was a money problem when i was a kid, now im paying more for electricity, internet connectivity, hardware and time to maintain my pirate vessel than i'd pay for a bunch of streaming services, but nobody provides DRM free files at a competitive price point (or at all, to my knowledge), so clearly they don't want my money anyway. Doesn't bother me, I'm getting exactly what I want. (talking about tv/movies here. drm free music is plentiful, so that I'm buying.)
The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates. Gabe Newell
And notice piracy largely stopped/slowed when all the streaming content was on netflix. Now dispite having access to almost every platform i pirate because its easier on looking through a dozen services to watch possably only 1 or 2 seasons only to repeat for season 3 and so on.
It has been pointed out that people who pay for things like BluRay and DVD's have a worse experience than people who just pirate movies, since they don't have to sit through ads, and warnings, and don't worry about scratched disks and such.
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket This exactly. Steam's so damned convenient I have games I bought 2 years ago sitting, never even having been opened once. Why? Because it was on my wishlist and there was a hella good sale! I came from not being able to afford games and pirating them to buying ones I have no intention of playing in the near future because Steam has made it convenient. I don't worry about whether or not a game has a virus. The reason I don't pay for streaming services is because their selections are too limited. They should take a lesson from cable and all offer each other's original titles and pay them based on view or a percentage of ad revenue. Everyone wins. No customers misses out entirely. Might get it a week or a month late if it's through another service. That would retain the motivation from hardcore fans to switch to your service or pay for both.
That reminds me of when someone online pointed out that if you bought a movie on a physical disk, you had to put up with the anti-piracy warnings, trailers, and other extraneous crap. But if you pirated the movie, you could skip all of that and jump right into watching the movie and was overall a much better experience.
Thankfully we had, still have and use actually an education focussed DVD player and HDD based VCR combo device, that could skip the adverts just fine. It's interface is clunky as all heck and I'm basically the only one in the household who can properly use that thing, but we are keeping it in our setup for that reason. Nowadays PCs can skip the adverts too in e.g. VLC, but the fact they tried to prevent that is insane and indeed reason to pirate over buying it.
Cinemas are even worse, 20 minutes of ads, crying kids, laughing teenagers and that person who bought 5 plates of nachos sitting behind you. (+ you can't pause the movie when you need to pee)
@Bartosz Domagała plus its over priced and movies are just woke propaganda, I stopped going almost a decade ago, I'm very grateful for pirates and I hope they maintain the original stuff cuz eventually ai and the people in power will want to rewrite history
@@Theranthrope yeah, I tend to agree with your assessment. And when I paid for an ad to promote my music, that didn't count towards my eligibility. But organic growth is actually really difficult, and perhaps partly because Google controls the game. There's just so many win-lose scenarios with them, and they're always on the winning side.
Well I draw the line there. I can use TH-cam as a free video cloud hosting service that runs pretty damn well. I can still make an unlisted recording of the leak in my window to send the landlord. I figure putting ads on my crappy playthroughs that barely anyone watches anyway is a way of them getting some money back for the free hosting.
YT putting ads on videos of creators who don't qualify for ad revenue makes sense to me. They still have to pay to host the videos, and from their perspective it isn't worth the accounting hassle to pay out small creators $1.37 once a year for the tiny number of views they've received.
@@NeilHaskins Something is either monetizable or it isn't, but TH-cam, a for-profit corporation, is lying about what isn't mobilizable (often for biased religious reasons) and ripping off the creators the platform _would not even exist_ without. This is never "fine" even if it's a fraction of a cent of un-earned ad-revenue.
I'm 100% backing this. If a business wants to be petty and greedy and try to not give a fair exchange of value, then they don't deserve our money. Jeremy Boreing said it best when he said "Stop giving your money to companies who hate you." If TH-cam wants to stop hating their viewers, customers and the content creators who made their platform take market share away from TV, then they should stop hating us. If they're going to insist on hating us, I'll block ads, not pay for them for content and not give my money to a company that hates me.
Why be surprised and angry that companies under capitalism are mainly looking to build capital.... companies and structurally designed to try and strike the perfect balance or shift you over slowly to whatever form will build up the most capital in the long run.
@@rg6427LMAO yeah CCP China and Socialist Venezuela NEVER take advantage of their people. One thing to argue its Corporate Crony Capitalism, to blame Capitalism as a whole is woefully ignorant
@@rg6427 The lobbyists and regulatory policies that limit competition to these companies are the problem, not "capitalism". If companies were allowed to compete fairly someone would have already dethroned these bonehead corporations screwing their customers. The way it's supposed to work is company screws their customers, customers go to a competitor that doesn't screw them. The way it actually works is competition is controlled and when a company screws their customers they can go to a "competitor" who is doing exactly the same thing.
I'm 100% on board with you my friend. I'm an old guy older than you. But I've been working with tech for 40 years. Ever since I saw a download button..... Download has meant that I can have the file locally and run it locally without an internet connection..... I may be forced to use some app, but I can use it offline. Anything else is crap. 💪
As Steam taught us, the best way to stop piracy is not to try and make piracy harder (which pirates will find a way to ignore anyways) but to make purchasing it the easier and more convenient option. Amazon and co are clearly doing the opposite.
I have to admit steam does make video games easy and the fact that they have or are developing a halfway decent Linux library of game compatibility is actually pretty damn cool Even if it doesn't match what's on Windows the fact that the starting to do it you know they started to do it they set off you know a set of falling dominoes that are that are continuing to fall and they're getting bigger and bigger it's like Elon musk with Tesla everyone gives him a hard time but but he started this revolution with electric cars there would not be electric Hyundai's and fucking electric key is and electric Ford explorers and f-150s if Elon didn't bring out the model s I mean come on we know this somebody has to be a pioneer and stand up and speak out against a crowd and they're going to be shouted down at first they have to have the perseverance to keep going
@@cancan-wq9un if you look at things from a platform perspective, steam actually has to compete with other services like the epic games store, or cdprs store. And steam rarely enforces exclusives to maintain their position. However PC gaming's isn't the end all of gaming. Infact it's a small slice of gaming. With the majority being mobile (monopolised by apple and Google), and consoles (exclusive stores and what not). Even when valve built a console, they allow you to just install windows and do whatever you want on it. And mind you the base version of the steam deck is just as functional but sold at a loss. Valve have demonstrated that good service begets a goodarket position. The fact that they're one of the sole players is solely on the competition.
@@thej3799 yeah, steam still feels like a company run by some gamers. Which absolutely doesnt fit with any other out there at all. like epic is purely out for money, u can smell it.
@@polaris911 That is an amazing thought, that they never learned that bit of tech. However I see it differently. Us Gen X had to learn such things if we were to use computers but not all of us can use computers. Plenty of Gen X and Boomers think computers are some new thing, heck you've had about 30 years to get a clue. Where as the Zoomers all use computers even the ones who have no interest. Only nerds used computers in the 1980's and '90's but now everyone does. Nerds would learn about file systems but average people don't.
"I did the crime because it was more convenient than doing the right thing" is not a valid legal argument. With that being said, I certainly do not agree with the fact that these services are treating us in this way. If only people didn't keep rewarding their greed, they would soon revert back to a more acceptable model.
I use to pay for a popular anime service. I paid for years all while they failed to improve the service, failed to even provide the content on time, and silenced the customers by removing comments on videos because they would be criticized there. I justified paying because I wanted to support the creators, which is debatable if they even see any meaningful returns from that company. It got so bad that when a new episode came out I would get a 404 page, and would have to go to an illegitimate site just to watch the new episode when it released. So I thought to myself, "what is the point of paying for this if I have to go to these sites every week?"
I ad to drop netflix after 2 decades when they hired obama. I put up with slower and slower deliveries, but damned if I will support a company paying that crook. They even started using edited movies. If I want that i'll watch it over the air.
I used to have both Crunchyroll and Funimation but got rid of them because their Roku apps were absolute dogsh**. Then I go onto 9anime or any of the other dozen or so anime sites and get a better experience on all of them. I'd be stupid to pay for that.
Used to pay for CR but got frustrated with service issues, like buffering and then timing out mid-episode. Went back to fansubs. I have fibre internet, I can just download that episode in two seconds and I don't care about your copyright protections.
That resolution issue is a big part of the reason I cancelled my Netflix. It's likely because your monitor is not HDCP compliant, a DRM technology these idiots use to protect their content from piracy, which ironically funnels more people to piracy since all they're doing is punishing paying customers.
The level of corpo dronery just amuses me at this point. They still don't understand that all it takes is ONE dump to get into the wild, and their entire multimillion dollar layered technical annoyance stack is defeated, and attackers treat extracting and liberating that content like it's a fun puzzle to solve.
My Chromebook cannot play any streaming service in 4k despite having a 4k OLED screen due to DRM. So I cancelled all my subscriptions and now pay less than $3 a month for a debrid service which allows me to stream and download all the 4k content I want.
just now I'm obtaining John Wick 4 through unlegitimate means because I can't afford buying multiple streaming subscriptions cuz the content is scattered everywhere, I already have a netflix subscription, why do I need more.
I remember I had a conversation with a Russian friend one time. He told me the reason piracy is so rampant in Russia is not because people don't want to pay for shit, but because companies simply don't make their products available in a convenient matter, or at all. If you're literally not given a way to legally purchase a game/movie, people are not going to just sit there and not get it.
And also those retarded companies can no longer claim that it's lost sales. YOU NEVER MADE A LEGAL SALE POSSIBLE. Region locked content needs to be pirated and that piracy needs to be legalized as well.
That's not necessarily the case. It's: a) lack of culture of paying for digital products; b) piracy is easy and while technically not legal, *effectively* it is; c) people are just poor and cannot justify paying for something so easily obtained for free. All of these apply to me and given the current media landscape - seems like it has pushed me towards the better choice.
You're NOT wrong Louis...Nothing today is owned by the consumer, only rented until the company you paid your hard earned money to has decided to disable its functionality and until some sort of serious class action suit comes along with enough publicity/coverage to finally force these greedy corporations to give their customers the product they'd promised them in the first place, then unfortunately nothing's going to ever change :/
It's more of a question of creators choosing that particular service. When I learned about the ad block ban, I first considered alternatives like internet archive. But there are barely any creators uploading their videos there. Like the main reason why pirates get better experience is that TH-cam isn't a platform where permanent downloads are an intended feature. Like for example one could imagine a GOG equivalent but for videos where one buys videos DRM-free for 1-to-few Dollars. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as cost-effective as TH-cam Premium. Also almost no one actually seems to want to sell downloadable videos. Personally I won't even bother using the download feature of TH-cam Premium.
And hence why I have never supported drm shit and never will I have actively worked against it instead since it's not justifiable It's the same bs as the MPAA has tried for decades with region coding which serves zero real purpose other than their attempt to divide up the planet and use such bs to prefix things starting the consumer Like old DVDs retail in the US for say $40 yet they sell the same content with dirr region code in say india for $5 and are making a big profit none the less The only reason the code is that is to stop most imports from working and therefore poof price fixing in a supposed legal manner DRM since has only made it worse
Or you pay a service provider a subscription for something and then the company that owns whatever it is starts their own service and it's removed from the original so you have to pay another provider s subscription.... endless loop and no wonder people are giving them all the middle finger and saying F YOU.
The most asinine thing is that TH-cam doesn’t pay their creators enough, so premium users still have to sit through ad reads in the video. At that point, the only benefits are playing in the background and downloads.
Most ironical, that TH-cam tried to force buy premium buy increasing length and amount of commercials. But they just pushed people to installing addblock
I'm getting close to installing an adblocker again, cause man... the ads experience is getting terrible. Two ads to start the video, two minutes in i get another ad, this one unskipable, then 15 seconds later another ad break.
Reminds me of what Gabe Newell said: "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."
And you know what? If a game is on Steam it is often a better experience than pirating the game as Steam actually protects users from viruses. Not only that but you don't even have to buy directly from Steam and still use their service to download a game you bought from a 3rd party, which is why I keep coming back to Steam. If only Google or Apple were to allow that, but since they don't I'll never buy a single game from their app stores.
@@kingzach74 On that note I buy my games on Steam because I know that i am going to get great support if I have any problems, easy refunds, really good launcher, good service overall
@@alierengam1749 Another benefit of steam is the steam workshop. It's so easy to install and play mods for a lot of games. It's a lot more conveneint than dowloading, then copy-pasting stuff.
So true. I remember paying for so many DVD's and being forced to sit through ads which is insanity. Much better experience for people that bypass the gatekeepers. They just want to punish people that already pay them money. I hope all these companies get crushed someday.
@@joeboo8626 Yeah I NEVER understood why they put them on the frigging BOUGHT films, cause miraculously the pirated versions never have them attached 😂
@@platty9237 it's a fun hobby and upscaling on good tvs make them look pretty good. You can also get DVDs very cheaply with a huge selection right now at thrift stores.
@@blacky_Ninja "Lets throw a little bit of menacing propaganda that threatens to ruin peoples lives before they relax with a movie, that'll really set the mood!"
Thank you for what youre doing. The reason so many services are absolutely awful is because we let them get away with this shit. And to see people defending theae companies that are just railing then is genuinely disturbing
"One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates." ~ Gabe Newell
Fun fact, I pay for Steam games and I'm happy they allow me to "start in offline mode" or whatever. I remember once being MAD at C* Games because I couldn't launch GTA: SA that was DOWNLOAD ON MY DEVICE just because I wasn't connected to the internet, so the C* Launcher couldn't verify that I own the game (even if I got it for free because it was for free for whoever downloaded their launcher at the time, doesn't make it right to not allow me to use it offline). It was in december 2019 BTW, and GTA: SA was the only game that would run on my gaming laptop while on battery power.
@@retrocomputing i live in the country with local prices, but if in 2010 the only licensed game I owned was a u-boat sim on compact disk, in 2015 almost every game I played I had on steam just because it was more convenient (cloud saves, guides and stuff) and rewarding (achievements, cards and stuff) steam is the perfect example of defeating piracy via proper service but very often it's way easier to use cracked software than licensed (fuck you Adobe) cracked Photoshop literally works better and faster than ligit one supposedly because all of the license and autbentity checks
@@ser_igel or you were too young in 2010 which can explain why you had not enough money for a big game collection. Would you pay 60 USD for steam games if it's so convenient?
nobody is talking about how louis is a fantastic presenter. minimal editing and almost nil jumpcuts and i was completely attentive and interested the whole way through. he speaks concisely, is entertaining and gets his point across very clearly and then some. a rare skill nowadays
I mean between the very comfy-looking arm-chair, his soft and deep voice, the cats wandering around and the overall lack of movement, it's such a relaxing thing to watch it feels a bit like ASMR to me XD but it IS a very nice change of pace, compared to how most videos try to be "as engaging" as possible.
Simple let the pirate win and as for the companies ether they back down and try remove every bs they added in their system unless a company try use the Public Service aka Government to interfere and attack the pirate site.
Few months ago I wanted to show Lupin the Third movie to my GF, and since she's not from my country, we wanted to see it in English so that we could both understand and enjoy it. I decided to rent the view on TH-cam itself, since it was available. I was *shocked* to find out TH-cam does NOT offer multiple language support for movies. It was only in my language, and neither English dub OR subtitles were available. It's stuff available on DVDs since what, 1997? And TH-cam was just too oh-so precious to waste 30MB of audio file incorporated so that its customers could watch a movie like in any other platform. And I was able to figure out this ONLY after I paid. Because it was not written anywhere that it was only available in my language. Guess what? 3 minutes of search. Pirated version. 4K. 7 Languages. All possible kinds of subtitle languages. 20 minutes download, no loss of quality, no lag of any sort caused by internet loss. Why in the hell would I rent on TH-cam ever again at this point, Google?
At that point it's not even piracy. You paid for the product, how you then watch it is up to you. Same reason running nintendo switch games on an emulator is technically legal if you bought the games in the first place
_Few months ago I wanted to show Lupin the Third movie to my GF, and since she's not from my country, we wanted to see it in English so that we could both understand and enjoy it. I decided to rent the view on TH-cam itself, since it was available._ To be fair, that sort of thing might be caused by licensing issues. TH-cam may have licensed the right to show the movie in your country, but the studio which owns the movie only allowed it to be shown there in your nation's language. This sort of thing pops up with streaming services like Netflix. While the U.S. version might have certain shows or movies available, in another country it may not because another provider already purchased the streaming rights and thus Netflix can't show it.
@@primmakinsofis614 You are probably right but that isn't my problem, as a streaming service licensing is your problem and, in essence, it's one of your own making anyway, so you'll have to forgive me if I can't summon the urge to care. 😁
Ive run into the same problem with anime. Sometimes the dub or sub you want isnt available, also you have to put up with BS censorship. Fansubs are usually the best way to go.
You're not alone in preferring pirated works over legal ones, even though you're willing to pay for it. Copyright lawyer Leonard French on his channel speaks about how some people will purchase a legitimate copy of a work, to be sure that the creator is paid, but will obtain a pirated copy to use because the user experience is better with it.
One shouldn’t forget about (non)availability of dubbed tracks or at least subtitles in various languages in those services - they are just not there. Most of the time it’s just the ‘main’ local language and English - that’s it. When “Pirated’ copies give you tracks in all the possible languages
I remember buying an Electronic Arts game for my C64 in 1985. The copy protection made it take almost 5 minutes to load on my C1541 disk drive as it hammered the drive head out of alignment and made the drive hot enough to fry an egg. I went to user group meeting and a guy there had a program to strip copy protection. We made a copy for everyone at the meeting and my new copy loaded in 28 seconds with no hammering. I felt zero guilt because EA were bastards.
Be it entertainment or information-wise, ads are never worth it for me Part of why i love "borderline" content creators or music is because monetization is impossible on them, so it's a bit of really interesting content without needing to hear that "this is not a car, it's the future" It is indeed a more enjoyable experience for me and i also agree with my mother that says that the roadside and the streets should be ads free so you can really appreciate the architecture and landscapes
Idgaf if you block ads but your justification doesnt make sense. The service provider decides the cost.. i dont wanna seem like a bootlicker but its not up to you to decide what the compensation for the service is
@@bigPauliee I stopped watching TV because of ads decades ago.. the internet was cool for a while then it became worse than television.. I'll be damned if something unwanted pops up on my screen and I agree with smokey glasses it's pollution, visual pollution in the landscape, and mental pollution to persuade you to something, it's vile and agressive and they spent the millions and the research to get to you... I'll allow myself any countermeasures available.
@@kirerunte1046, so stop using the service. Creators are entitled to ask for compensation (you surely don't work for free) and you are not entitled to free content.
You ARE the product. You have a duty to block/mute/ff ads, especially when they are deliberatly embedded into the content. I prefer to donate straight to the provider. Now, even if you want to disallow ads on your channel, Google screw you over by putting ads there anyway. Google play dirty, play dirty back!!!
I'm a low value product cuz money doesn't buy much so I just buy the necessities and do nothing but save money and use cheap free entertainment to pass the time
@@kirerunte1046 his point is that you are the product by consuming. it has nothing to do with your identity, ego or personality - especially not your roundabout method of defending being cheap XD
There is one theoretical argument. Since now advertisers pay for youtube, youtube censor content as they pleases eg don't promote videos with guns and "violence". Theoretically if viewers paid for youtube, youtube would promote content based on viewers preferences, not advertisers. I however do not believe that could ever happen.
People are paying for TH-cam, they're paying with their time and more directly some are paying through YT Premium. If Premium allowed you to watch a class of content that wasn't tailored to suit advertiser sensibilities, which unfortunately makes up 99.99% of content today, it might be a more compelling buy. Instead, they expect you to pay for sponsored videos and content sanitized for corporations.
@@Dafuqinator7 Ah... That reaffirms me a touch. Thank you for explaining. I didn't want to assume anything, considering their own published games are easy as pie to run and archive.
Exactly this. Buying, managing and playing a huge number of games across multiple devices is so goddamn convenient now that I don't even remember the last time I've pirated a game. However my pirate hat is still working overtime on TV shows and movies.
At this point I cope by telling myself "oh, you're paying for service and convenience", but you're right. I just realized that the file CAN be downloaded normally, you CAN have it and watch it however you want. Why don't they give me the file? Why do we just get a "license" for as long as we pay? There's no technical justification other than "we will inconvenience you into paying". It's not service, it's a shakedown.
@@PoutingTrevor If a company has a monopoly on Shoulder Press machines and won't sell anything other than gym membership, I'm gonna go get one illegally anyway just so I don't have to get harassed by personal trainers mid set.
@@PoutingTrevorYes and no. Information, unlike physical items, doesn't have scarcity. If I watch a Netflix movie, I'm not occupying one of several limited seats of a movie theatre on the server. The server is copying that movie, and sending a new copy to my computer. One that didn't exist before you asked to watch that movie. Now you and the server both have the movie. Except your copy is enclosed under several layers of encryption that only specific programs and hardware on your computer understand how to work with, to create artificial scarcity out of something that inherently doesn't have any. Because if you also knew how the decoder worked, you could make additional copies out of the one the server gave you, and they don't like that. They'd compare it to you stealing the movie roll at the cinema and leaving everybody without movie, but that's just not how this works. The server still gets to keep the movie regardless of what you do.
@@PoutingTrevor yea, but......the word "MEMBERSHIP" is literally on your gym receipt 🤣but when I "Buy a movie"...... I AM NOT BUYING A MEMBERSHIP BRUV lmaooo 🤣
I completely agree with you. This type of idiocy is creeping into too many spheres. We no longer buy things but license them for specific usage parameters that can be changed at the licensor's whim. I believe it's a direct result of public corporations and the quarterly growth model. Rather than innovating and producing new and better products, it's much easier to just slap usage fees on the same old products. Maybe people will wake up when they start having to pay licensing fees in order to change the settings on their toasters.
Also, if you somehow get an exceptionally good quarter for some reason, going back to normal will be seen as a failure and people on top are currently required by law to match the earnings. So, having a sudden positive period will actually spell doom for any company, since they would then be coerced in doing shady, idiotic and anti consumer/worker stuff to not get destroyed by the markets and shareholders.
This will never stop. Piracy is too convenient of an excuse for CEOs. It is impossible to track how many lost sales resulted from it. CEOs can excuse their incompetence by blaming piracy for low sales numbers. Shareholders are too incompetent to call them out.
lost sales is a fallacy. I divide movies into categories: 1) big budget spectacles that need to be seen in the movie theatres (these are rare now but were common 10-15 years ago), movies I'd pay to see, movies I'll see if they happen to cross my path, movies I'll never see. If I pirate a movie that falls into the last two categories, I would have never paid for it in the first place and would have just skipped it if it came with a price tag, so there is no lost sale, I just happened to watch it because I was on a plane at the time or a friend hired it or something. So lost sales is actually far smaller than they would have you think because it assumes the user would have paid for that movie or content willingly if piracy wasn't an option.
Rather than incompetence it is a money grab. The lie that every copy made is a lost sale allows them to engage in extortion using the courts. They also use the lie to get egregious laws passed. The lie is even more extreme when they apply it to developing countries.
@@dragonstooth4223 actual studies have been conducted multiple times, including by commission from the media giants. every one has turned-up the same results that there is little to no [likely NO] correlation between piracy and lost sales. the public is not made aware of these results because it's unfavorable to the false narrative the companies need us to buy. it's absolutely a fallacy. specifically, counting chickens before they hatch. something that at least some of us had drilled into our brains well before having the overall concept of fallacies explained to us.
A TH-camr once said in a video I watched "You have limited time on earth, don't spend it watching ads." So I don't anymore. I promise it's nothing personal if you're reading this and genuinely helped by the ad revenue, but that line stuck with me and I hope it sticks with you too. Supporting creators if you can is always great and can go a long way, but don't watch ads.
I think what most companies forget is that a lot of people were only willing to pay them because their services were slightly more convenient than piracy. The moment they decided that they wanted to put barriers on everything that you'd already paid for was the moment they decided to make piracy more convenient than paying them, and they probably should see a loss in revenue because of that.
The California Cannabis trade is dying on the legitimate side because of over regulation, very high license and taxing - they are unable to compete with the street product. Even the cartel bosses understand markets these days.
People don't seem to understand this in the comment sections and there are people legitimately siding with big businesses and their anti-consumer practices. They would rather have a bad, overcharged service than a cheap and convenient service because they want to virtue signal that they are "good people." There is nothing good about supporting bad business models, and if a business can't provide a better service than someone else can, they should be ready to deal with that competition, legitimate business or not.
@@trevormoney8126 I see this every day, where people bend over backwards to protect multi billion dollar companies greedy and shitty business model, and then just go like: If you dont like it dont buy it. And they dont realise that things get worse for consumers precisely beacuse of them. I wish we lived in the world where the masses would vote with their wallet and stand up to corporate greed, but that's why most companies aim to become monopolies so that you really dont have the option to go elsewhere. Capitalism is supposed create healthy competition, but when you allow a few players to set the rules for everyone else is when you get to where we are today.
@@fredericrike5974 I don’t know the ins and outs nor the logistics, but maybe Cali should go the Oklahoma route? It’s medically legal there but atp it’s such a huge ass thing it might as well be recreational. Doesn’t hurt that in the small town I lived in you could get 7 solid pre rolls for 20, 5 blunts for 20, hell you could get damn near an ounce of some decent flower for yet another 20. Of course there’s things I’m likely missin but hey, I just want more weed shops across the globe tbh lol. Place would a lot happier and a lot hungrier.
As somebody who works in an industry where I spend a lot of time outside of an internet connection, I fully agree with you. I've started seeking "pirated" versions of content that I wish to listen to or watch while on the road, because the paid services generally do NOT work for me. I'd happily pay for these services the same way I always have, but being limited with my offline use of downloaded content simply does not work. It renders me paying money for something that doesn't even work for my use case.
I completely agree that we need to do more plain value exchange and not go out of our way to go through all these workarounds and restrictions just so we can feel like we're getting something for "free". It is really annoying that in this day and age companies still punish people for trying to pay for things.
I used to actually buy physical CD's back in the day. You'd get the cool box art, the little booklet thingy with lyrics and pictures of the band, CD's genuinely had better sound quality, and you could play the CD whenever, wherever you wanted. You were proud of your CD collection and held it dear to your heart. You probably even enjoyed the music more because of it. Today it just baffles me why anyone buys digital music aside from "supporting the artist" (more like supporting the greedy music industry). You get the same quality files that pirates do, and you're paying for a bunch of anti-features that make it objectively worse than downloading the physical files and storing it on your device.
I still buy the CDs, and if I can't, I'll pirate the music. Seriously; I have a bunch of Audiophile gear, rip all my CDs to .FLAC and use the same IEMs and Headphones between my Desktop PC, my Audio system (CD, Records, Tapes, Minidiscs) and my Sony Walkman, and then they want to sell me a bunch of lossy MP3s (or M4As) for the same price as a CD? Hell No.
totally agree. I feel like, around 10 years ago or so, when netflix was starting to become very popular it was a genuine better experience than piracy. and we all jumped on the boat because it was good now we need around 10 different types of services to acess the content we used to have in a single place because company got greedy. and the experience is much worse than renting DVD used to be. I'm not surprised that piracy is becoming a thing again
I haven't been using any of these services, but hearing you say it's worse than renting a DVD is something that I have to keep in mind as a warning in case of weak moment. I'm over 40 so I pretty much remember the DVD era, and last time I recall it used to be pretty annoying: especially in later years, it became "normal" to have to watch 10 minutes of "you would not steal a car" BS, just to get to the main menu. I knew people who would buy a DVD and just immediately go and rip it just so that it was usable :-D At that point, piracy almost feels like just helping your mom fix her broken TV.
I stopped piracy and had a Netflix account during that time, and I agree. When all these other companies started pulling there content from Netflix to force you into the old cable package style pricing scam I rebuilt a media server and went back to piracy. I'm not going to pay for 11 different services just for movies and TV. I still pay fort Spotify, because almost all the record labels licence to them, I don't need a streaming service for each record label
@@AloisMahdal One of the things I found very enjoyable about 4K bluray movies is that they would have none of that preview and anti-piracy garbage. Put the disc in, it goes directly to the main menu, press play and it plays the movie. Until I got a Sony 4K bluray, of course Sony of all companies would be the see-you-next-Tuesdays to put previews on a 4K bluray. But yeah, I'm slowly in the process of ripping my movies to skip all that crap. Need to figure how much disk space I need in a NAS/media server. Screw all of this streaming crap.
I was devastated when Adobe started renting their software and held your work files to ransom if you stopped paying. It was the thin end of the wedge, now everyone is trying to find ways to control your work and pleasure. The “phone home” embedded in apps violates your privacy, as having paid outright for an app, I should not have to prove ownership each time I use it, or let the company know when and how I’m using it. Having been in art production, and now retired, am still against not paying the creator for their work, but these new paradigms of inequitable control are encouraging users to justifiably find a way to use the products with equity for themselves. Hopefully this insidious need for spying and control, along with cynical profiteering over service will cause a reaction that will force companies to act with respect to the people that make them unethically wealthy: the consumer. I actively monitor and block all “phone home” traffic.
You can pirate the entire CS suite, no cracks, straight from Adobe's own servers. It's a monumental pain in the arse, and you need to set up your own DNS server, reverse proxy, and create and install a self signed SSL cert to do it, but it is possible. Unfortunately, that time is more valuable to me creating content, so I don't go to the trouble. But yea, you're over a barrel, it's a tax. Economic rent-seeking just because through some quirks of legacy they happen to have some patents on a file format. To be completely fair, Apple have a more "Pay Up Front" model, with great software at reasonable prices, with updates included. But I just can't get over how overpriced their hardware is, even if the software ecosystem is better.
You nailed it. It’s ridiculous that you are allowed to download BECAUSE you are a paying customer then have to “prove” you have the right to play it AFTER downloading it.
And its absolutely laughable what basic functions youtube premium has, twitch is free and can play in the background, youtube needs 10 dollars a month for that, and its horrendous that if I watch a youtube video, pause it, go to my pc, open youtube and click the same video that I was just watching either replays completely or starts 5 minutes ago from where I was just at and if I pay 10 dollars I can watch it from the same second I was just at, and lastly the watchlist feature is not even that useful as i just open multiple tasks on my pc anyway
TH-cam and Amazon are the worst when it comes to this... As a fellow content creator, I too agree. Fix the service, or watch people exploit it without being paid. These people are pulling a blockbuster in a Netflix era.
ikrr!! every time i use amazon prime its baffling just how much worse it is than netflix. Netflix does some stupid shit too but the overall experience is leaps and bounds better than any other streaming service.
man, you’re completely reasonable, don’t even question this fact. it’s been countless times when i want to pay for the content ‘cause of genuine preference to reward creators, but the experience built around it just sucks so unapologetically that it makes no freaking sense.
Just got an email from a friend complaining about the EU Ursula, he has TH-cam Premium, I do not and have 3 Adblockers, once I opened the link, a commercial played and it would not end, so I shut down the video, but since I knew what he was complaining about, I responded to him without watching the video. By the way, I use Chrome and Firefox, each has a different TH-cam account, but of Firefox, it takes forever to open a video, sometimes, enough for me to download the video even if if the screen is black, shut down TH-cam then watch the download.
Do you remember when youtube used to be ad free and you used to be able to play a music video on your phone and turn the screen off so you could just listen to music on youtube? It really angers me when companies think that intentionally removing basic features and forcing me to pay for them is somehow providing me value. You are not alone in your resistance to this behavior I don't think its petty at all in fact I think its nessecary to uphold our principles by not rewarding companies for this behavior.
Remember how our phones used to have headphone jacks? There isn't enough room anymore now with all our advanced technology, so we'll just have you pay for the brand new wireless earphones in order to listen to music while your phone is in your hand and screen still on..
I can relate to both of you. I have a headphone jack for credit card reader and a $2 pair of ear buds in every vehicle. My internet used to be so slow, I could tell youtube to buffer/download at selected quality and come back after finishing an errand to watch video. Both errand and video completed without interruption :-)
@@Sybob15 Hey the headphone Jack was removed mostly as a trade off for making newer phones waterproof, you can drop your phone in the tub and it’ll be fine where as before you had to leave it in rice
@@Kaiyats Except that's bullshit, because the Samsung something or other (S7? S8? I forget) actually had a headphone jack AND was still waterproof. Media even mocked Apple for saying that you can't waterproof a phone with a HPJ, Samsung et al. did it for a generation or two but then they realised they can make more money by selling you 30-200 dollar wireless headphones than by selling 3 dollar wired ones, so they ditched it themselves.
I hate how TH-cam removes features or makes you waste time for no good reason. When they removed the "Sort by Oldest", in the TH-cam Insider video they said "If you want to check out older content from the creator, just scroll down" - What?
TH-cam has been delusional for a while now and that was the most recent I remember. there were community captions which they took away and basically limited what the community could give back to the creator.
"If you want to see older videos just scroll down" They don't even care about our pain of scrolling through a video feed in channels who are already uploaded thousands of videos just to find the first video uploaded on every channel
@@homework8969 Yep community captions REALLY annoyed me. Was doing captions for a foreign creator I liked, now they don't get any translations anymore. Good fkn job google, pissing on all deaf and foreign viewers.
I had a verbatim experience last month and I came to the exact same conclusion. Resentment eventually steps in when you realise you aren't being met halfway by the content producers who are actively putting roadblocks in the way of me getting the experience I want. My food was almost cold by the time I decided just to take the 5 mins to get the movie via other means. Companies can't compete with that kind of access and convenience. They are literally turning people away who are queuing up to hand over their money.
I pirate for a different reason: I get angry at all the nickel and dimeing corporations get away with so I see this as my opportunity to nickel and dime them back
I agree and the service they provide is worse then what the pirates provide, I would love a thing like steam for old games and movies but even they have link to garbage stuff like uplay and ea and the drm is trash, pirating is the only way until these garbage companies start worshipping morals and ethics over money
@@kirerunte1046 steam is great when you dont play games by shitty devs The DRM is unintrusive, the support does their job, Proton for Linux is wicked, and you can add games to your library that you have pirated/obtained DRM free It is an example of a service worth paying for, which isnt conducive to piracy. You only pirate steam games when you dont wanna pay the cost, or when the dev included their own DRM layer, which is always clunky
I think the major issue here is that "download" no longer means "here's a copy you can have without any restrictions". It's a DRM-bound file that allows whatever platform is providing it with the ability to maintain control and prevent users from circulating it to other users without using their platform. This is what digital media has moved to for years, and most people don't know/understand that their "ownership" of DRM-enabled media is actually a fancy rental system that can be revoked at any time. I'm definitely not a fan of this system, but it's been this way for years at this point. It's why I don't bother with youtube's official download system... it's not a "real" download, in the sense that we know downloads used to be. At this point, the best you can do is download the videos with a third party tool, rip DVD's yourself, etc. All of the methods to actually have a restriction-free digital copy of media skirt the legality line, but restriction-free digital media is going the way of the dinosaur, unfortunately.
yea yt-dlp on pc, newpipe on android. also Revanced for regular yt browsing, it even adds a download button that sends you right to newpipe if it's also installed. Super handy!
It's not a digital-only issue either. The DRM itself is the problem, and even "physical" media can be rendered useless. Piracy truly is the best option. No DRM means you own it without lawsuits.
As a person about to travel overseas for work to a very remote area, ***thank you*** for bringing this to my attention. I was counting on my downloaded videos to keep my morale up for 3 weeks of training in the field. Knowing that it will not work completely invalidates why I subscribed to the servive in the first place. Thank god I still have time to download them properly. That would have sucked.
Louis ... Right to repair ... Free Choice ... Fair Use and Fair Ownership .... The right to privacy... and many other legitimate entitlements are being taken away and being eroded by the Interests and policies of the elite, Pharma, and Corporate greed ... I am with you bro ... keep up the Good work and never stop what you are doing ... we need more people like you.
Because most people accept it and defend it. Im just like Louis, i also talk a bit similar 😂 and most people dont see the problem or believe it is dangerous or what ever.
Just the fact that they are advertising downloading a video as one of the main selling points of the service is already a huge red flag. They are basically selling bottled water in front of a well. You already have to download any video you watch, It goes to a temporary memory on your computer, but it's still downloaded, it's really not difficult to give the option to download it to permanent memory.
The problem with this "download" feature is: If any video you download is taken down by TH-cam or unlisted/privated by channel owner, your downloaded video would disappear from your download list as well
@@ragingfred One of the first things I noticed disappearing from YT were chemistry channels, usually people doing stuff that's a generic synthesis route that's a step or two away from Walter White territory. Started dumping chemistry channels to local disk after that.
100% Justified. My DVDs work, my CDs work, my Vinyl records work all without an internet connection. I wonder if the younger generations just don't know about owning something.
I was held back in unniv and had a younger gen classmates. I learned that they buy Vinyl releases and most of them dont have record players because Spotify is convenient to them. Yes you read that right.
My hundreds of GB of unencumbered, locally-stored MP3s and FLACs work just fine, and counting the server they live on take up about a cubic foot of space. Collecting physical is fine if you like it (I have some vinyl too), but not the only option.
@@treelineresearch3387 Physical doesn't run up your electricity bill whilst not being used though, unless you only startup the server when you want to play anything...
i have my music in form of MP3/Flac Files, Older media like CD's, Tape, Vinyl is just too unpractical for me as i need many of them. An 8GB Flashdrive will hold a ton of Songs and isn't fragile. Stick it into my Car Stereo and have endless music for roadtrips. Further on i don't need to fiddle with anything, just hit play and music happens. That to be said, i'll grab one of these 90's Era 6-CD Changers for the Trunk long before i'll fiddle with some App that needs mobile internet and distracts me from driving. i wouldn't even use Spotify if it was free, didn't need an account and had no Ad's, just for the fact that it's not nearly as convenient as my Flashdrive with 400+ Tracks (i'm 27, for the record)
This is what they - they don't want you owning anything, they want you to rent everything - so they can keep milking a monthly pay day from you. Hence why I use pirate sites, among other reasons.
Did you know that Netflix will only let you play 4k content on you PC IF YOU HAVE A 4K MONITOR FOR EVERY MONITOR. So a triple monitor setup and oops one of them is 1080p... I would have to unplug that monitor just to watch a movie in 4K and added bonus even though you pay for 4K you don't get 4K unless you even have a 4K monitor. Have fun up-scaling your 2k monitor using DSR on nvidia control panel just to watch a movie in 4K (don't ask me how I know that)
I'm 25. One of the examples I can give, and it's the one that especially pisses me off, is this: when I was in school I used to pirate videogames 'cause I never had the money to buy them. Now I have the money to buy videogames and I choose to buy stuff I like on Steam. One of the games that I wanted to buy and revisit from my teenage years is Borderlands 2. I remember pirating the whole game + DLCs that came out at that time. There are also cosmetic DLCs as well. Now, there's one cosmetic DLC that is available for the game, and it's included and working in the pirated version, BUT I CAN'T BUY IT ON STEAM BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING REGION LOCKED. And it costs like 1 dollar! What the fuck? I really, REALLY would like to buy it. I want to buy the stupid thing but they don't want my money apparently because I'm not in their preferable region. So what I ended up doing is buying the whole game on Steam, and playing the pirated version anyway because it has more stuff in it. Fuck this so much, honestly.
And now imagine being a member of EU, have one of the strongest currency in world and one of the easiest accessible banking system with world known credit cards(VISA, Mastercard) and you can NOT access Netflix, Amazon etc just because(geoblocking), and when we finally got access to Netflix(Amazon still NOT in the list, Xbox Game Pass was added to us as a beta couple of month ago) we get fraction of the content than other countries. We don´t pay the companies in goats or vegetables, it IS the same money that everybody else in our region is using, the connection is good, WiFi in EVERY coffee shop and can NOT stream content even if I WANT to PAY for it. Im always checking 3-4 different sites to pay for the movie, but I just can NOT. And switch to alternative methods. I got some DVDs which I could watch back in the day, but they are protected by some BS DRM which doesn´t work on modern machines anymore. And I can´t watch the DVD that I PAID for and I even can´t re-buy it in internet... How stupid is that.
The reason for the region block could also be that the region has some restrictions for content in said DLC. Companies want your money, trust me on this, lol
If we think dealing with the paperwork & laws in our own country is bad….I can’t imagine doing the paperwork for 194 countries. 🙀 I remember being a teenager in 2009 politely pleading with Paypal to come to our country. Since the system was so “ugh” almost no one had a credit card that would work with the internet then. Customer service was nice enough to reply in detail to a teenager. It was basically paperwork. The legal team & the international infra couldn’t penetrate the bureaucracy, laws, permits, regulations yet. Especially when it comes to international money. Took even a rich VC-funded well-connected company several more years to come into our market. And now that I know enough of business, I’m guessing not enough manpower to prioritize certain countries. There’s only so much lawyers, paralegals, and workers in a team. Maybe even protracted legal battles in some parts of the world. Plans and ideas are unfortunately easier than executing them.
I used to work in royalties for video games, which include licensing of the games in different countries. Many times the reason a game isn't available in a region is that the company which makes the game doesn't have the rights to sell their own game in other countries. For example I've seen games that were created by a company from Japan. That company can sell the game in Japan, but for the US and Canada a different company sells the game. The reason for this is that maybe the developer of the game doesn't have a presence in said country, or they just don't want to deal with publishing in general since they just want to focus on the game creation. There are many companies out there which deal with publishing things. In this example the publishing company in the US sometimes might decide to not sell for whatever reason... Sometimes royalty payments don't even cover the costs needed to pay the accountants to document that there was sales. So at some point they just remove the product from the store so to not have to worry about those payments. Or maybe the contract with the publisher expires and the developer doesn't want to renew the contract with the publisher. Again the developer might not even have a presence in the specific markets, so again the costs to keep the game going is to much for the developer to incur. I've seen both scenarios multiple times in my tenue at that job, there is a lot of things that go on behind the scenes with copyright which people don't think about.
Nope, you are absolutely right. I was happy when Netflix started, it was affordable, easy, and made me think that my piracy days were over. Boy I was wrong. And about TH-cam, I do pay for premium (for kids shows) but still use pipe and vanced. Because they are still way better value than the official app with the subscription. I am worried about the new generation, they seem happy not to own anything, not even the personal data they have...
@@michaelwtm In my opinion, all sides are missing this crucial fact and I feel that (at least in my country), the kids know more about this than parents.
I remember reading or seeing a documentary where Apple was forced into making sure you could only play a song on five devices. The deal that probably saved the record labels was almost turned down, because iTunes was promoted as a one stop shop for rip, download, and burn. An executive thought “rip” was meant to be “rip off” instead of extracting the data off of you purchased cd.
I totally agree. I expect things to "just work". If paying for it makes me jump through hoops and piracy doesn't, then you've lost my money. I remember years ago that I used to play a computer game and religiously bought all the expansion packs they came out with... until one of them refused to install because I had an ISO mounting program on my machine. That was the last expansion pack I bought. I pirated that pack and all packs after that because they'd actually install.
The thing is... you can have an ISO mounting program on your computer for totally legit reasons. "I want to make backups of my physical media with an ISO maker. I want to put as many of these ISOs on a Flash Key. Oh, damn, my case doesn't have support for 5.25" DVDs anymore, system can't play older games on physical DVD, etc." and some games will still think "ISO mounting = piracy" which is total BS.
This is why this whole thing is so bizarre to me. You didn't like something so you decided to pirate it and you justify it by saying you didn't like something. This can apply to pretty much any kind of piracy and any kind of theft. I didn't like that my favorite candy was way in the back of the store so to make up for it I stole it. I mean yeah but its stealing. Its just bizarre that we can build pretty crazy technology and then in a small amount of time get used to it as if its a part of nature. We think its just normal for it to work perfectly and when it doesnt something is terribly wrong and we are being ripped off. So we don't like ads on youtube but we don't want to pay creators either so we pay for youtube premium to not have ads and then say that we "totally would give to creators but we already pay for premium." But we already tried that avenue and it doesn't work, at all because again people just expect stuff to work and be free. As part of premium we can download videos to our youtube profile but not locally (even though there are supers easy ways to do so if you know a little bit of coding, just go to github lol) because youtube tried to allow us to download videos locally and it wasn't feasible. What youtube ultimately does is provide an absolutely insane amount of data to be available to its users. This translates to a lot of energy, space, hardware, technology, and resources like water to keep all of it cool but since we don't see any of that think its just supposed to show up magically on our phones and computers. All of this to say. We want shit for free, we don't want to pay people for anything, we want it to work 100% right 100% of the time and if we don't we throw a fit. We can make fun of "mommy and daddy youtube making decisions for us" all we want but maybe it should be that way because the vast majority of their customers are entitled toddlers and they just realize that.
Not quite the same but I had an Xbox One and played Skyrim with DLCs etc, all of which I’d purchases through Microsoft Store. When bought a new Xbox series X, it then turned out I had to buy the game and all the DLCs again if I wanted to play them on the new console. Like, why is Microsoft punishing me for spending £££ of my money on their new console?? It’s literally the same game! If I had bought the game discs I would not have had this problem so I learned my lesson. I don’t purchase downloads anymore, I only buy the physical game discs.
@@Ryan-093 Entitlement would be when one refuses to pay. If anything, they are ready to give money to the service to use. Except when they give money, the company rewards them with a stupid behavior. At that point, they just withdraw their money, yet keep using the service. Because at that point, the company is punishing themselves for not doing what they sell their service to do. It's not narcissistic. It's reality. If they wanna give you money but you don't give them back what you claim you're gonna give, they just gonna loot what they want at that point
@@Ryan-093 that's bullshit. Google doesn't give a crap about us quitting the platform. They're much more mad about people watching ad free content without paying premium. And that's what I do. More features than YT Premium for 0$/yr. And I can customize the app features to revert Google's stupid mistakes. ✨ ReVanced ✨
@@Ryan-093 for example Amazon says they have a show. And it's available to watch. I'm able to watch the preview and everything. I like it, so I pay a subscription. After paying, just about to play the actual video, Amazon tells me the content isn't available in my country. Wait whaaat? Guess where I'll be heading next after cancelling my subscription
TH-cam has so many ads now that I refuse to give them my money for premium because of how much the unskippable nature and shear quantity of their ads pisses me off
Gabe Newell Quotes The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.
The easiest why to stop piracy is actually pricing the content according to that country needs because paying 100$ for a game where the salary is 300-400$ makes 0 sense
You are absolutely right. This crap is happening more and more. Companies are no longer trying to provide value for money, but instead they're finding more ways into your wallet WITHOUT providing a fair value. There used to be competition to take care of stuff like that. It seems like now competition had gone rogue.
Ridiculous. Businesses have been trying to milk people for money for as little work as possible since the dawn of civilization. The only difference today is that straight robbery is more easily conflated with some ridiculous monetization scheme.
I don't normally take the time to comment unless I feel genuinely compelled to and in this case, I do. I completely agree with you on this, and it's entirely absurd that these companies think think this is in any way ok. Hopefully things change direction in the future before it gets to a breaking point. Thanks for the work you've been doing, please keep it up. Your efforts mean a lot.
The "breaking point" was them losing cable subscribers to streaming. They had a perfect system - nearly every household had a TV subscription and it made them billions, but they got too greedy with pricing, segmentation, and ads. Now these companies are trying to do the same thing to streaming.
I'm not watching ads. I have never for one second feit bad about it. I use Patreon to support favored creators. Most of the channels I watched are demonized anyway. I can't stand utube I wish they didn't have a monopoly on content.
An enterprise like TH-cam really should have to live up to extended legal requirements once they grow so big in a popular field of media that their service effectvely becomes a monopoly in multinational markets. Nobody is able to police TH-cam's own policies and that's a major threat to society as a whole. The EU legislative bodies are sadly too preoccupied with Apple and other tech giants to bother with online content unless it's outrageously oppressive, and YT is very well versed in sailing right under the radar.
The funniest part of "you can't watch this in HD" is because you have something that doesn't support DHCP attached to your PC so they can't be sure that you are not recording the movie ... Yes, it's anti piracy. They are trying to stop you from pirating stuff by giving you the incentive to go out of your way to pirate stuff. Good job guys!
I am not sure how HDCP would stop people from copying the movie (at least the experts). If you understand things then you can make a device which is able to read the signals going to LCD displays (I am sure there are easier ways to do this, probably capture the whole thing when it's still compressed with codec) but it should be possible). And they are low-level signals which are not encrypted. But maybe I am wrong, maybe they did already something that even LCD panel signals are now encrypted, who knows.
@@gpsoftsk1 There's literally zero way to stop the raw HDMI signal from being ripped. You'd need to also make the TV, Cable and Device that it's watched on, and if any of those aren't yours the signal could be intercepted at any point.
@@gpsoftsk1 yup. You can get some DHCP compliant recording devices if you don't mind a bit of sketchiness (if I understand correctly it steals the ID of a DHCP compliant screen, so you're computer is sure it's a screen when it's a recording device) It's just a small inconvenience, that will stop the least dedicated of people. It will not stop the teams that basically spend their free time uploading HD torrents. Yes, it's dumb. It can leads to stupid issues. For instance I only know about DHCP because I was trying to use a TV box with a 20m passive hdmi cable to connect to my projector, and sometimes because of the length of the cable the handshake would fail. Yes, it's sketchy to use a passive cable for those distances, but it works just fine 99.9% of the time... I am not going to be spending active cable money when I KNOW it stopped working because of a firmware update on the TV box ! DHCP is stupid, and probably forced onto streaming services by distributors, and it just increase the pros for piracy and the con for being a functioning part of the system...
@@gpsoftsk1 actually now that I think about it it is likely that the DHCP compliant recorders are just repurposed s monitor driver with a capture card attached. Basically a screen but you replace the pixels by a capture card, so it just appears as a screen to anything connected to it.
The irony of trying to stop piracy by making it so difficult to access content people just end up doing it anyway is in a way beautiful.
Piracy always has been my go to for everything, I even have a modded version of TH-cam app on my iPhone to skip ads and sponsors as well as downloading videos in mp4 and mp3 format for free
Heres the ironic thing, my family has a spotify prenium subscription and the offline functionality is actually competent. You get offline acess enabled for 30 days and that allows me to conserve my (shitty by other pepoles standards) 4GB of data. i was considering buying youtubes bs but when i discovered that it was going to be this shit by this video, i have made a u turn and im actually now considering paying for more data. Funny how things work, huh google?
Do you have a website just in case they try to censor your videos? Thank you 🙏🙏🙏
@@peepoHappyy piracy has been your go-to for a good reason. When a business gets gigantic enough, not only does it have capital, but that capital gives them power over the consumer, which will inevitably lead to these shitty practices we're seeing now. Remember, it's ALWAYS morally justified to steal from adobe.
@mason6300 -
YES & it´s nothing new at all, it was even the same for 20+ years with DVDs & music "un-CDs" incl. Sony-XCP malware & Alpha-DVD malware etc. (there is a picture of what honest paying customers have to suffer vs. what pirates can enjoy)
My grandfather once told me, "Never pay anyone who's gone out of their way to inconvenience you." He told me this over forty years ago. He truly had wisdom beyond his years.
@niktonic5379yeah it’s nearly impossible to follow his principals in today’s world
Your grandfather is wise
hah, that's a good one ❤
@@Macheako that grandfather is truly wholesome :)
Hopefully people would have followed similar principals to protect them their family and society
My grandfather always said if you want to make money, sell nothing. I didn't get it at first when I was young, but being much older now? Boy was he spot on. A lot of nothing being sold for cash hand over fist.
As Gabe Newell (the creator of Steam) once said: "One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue [...] The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates."
Amen. If what is easily accessible is a good service then people won't feel the need to pirate. People only pirate when things are bad
That's why people were using Netflix at the beginning and why people now prefer to pirate than use Netflix
That's for the first world. For developing countries it's definitely a pricing issue. Both are VERY important
@@DeadStawker That's why pricing discrimination exists.
There's a reason some people spend $10,000 on hardware and disk storage but won't pay for Netflix,Amazon Prime,HBO,D+. With certain softwares and community sharing website accesses, they can offer BETTER service and quality.
Prime example, when Netflix became available in Australia, the amount of Torrington went down, because people who weren’t tech specialists, could get what they wanted for a reasonable price without exposing their computers to viruses or malware. Then, all the other competitors got on board, they started selling the rights between themselves, they started doing the territorial release restrictions, just like with movies. And now the rate of illegal streaming and torrenting has gone back up.
beautifully said and sadly true
Half right. When Netflix streaming came to Australia, it was pretty restricted on what was available. So VPN sales went sky high. But piracy soon rose when everyone else came because as much as it cost, they still didn't have a lot of the content that people wanted
"Illegal " streaming and torrenting??
What is that?
@@rightsdontcomewithpermits7073 just downloading a movie online, u dont need to get more specific
well said
"If paying for your service gets me a worst experience than piracy, you deserve piracy" is a great way to approach this problem.
I was thinking of pirating the VST plugins that I bought and own because of those damn launchers that forces me to be connected to the internet in order to run the plugins. Such plague! I'm not decided yet, but I strongly consider it.
@@SaintMatthieuSimard No harm if you already paid them. There are lots of things where the pirate has more consideration for the user than the company who wrote it. There are versions of Windows where they stripped out all the crap. Illegal but much nicer to live with. Who needs news about the Kardashions popping up when they are trying to concentrate on some boring and difficult work. It's as if Windows is designed to stop you getting things done.
Funimation in a nutshell
That’s certainly the philosophy of every thief. What’s a better deal? Paying something or paying nothing? Sounds like stealing is always the better deal!
@@Creshex8 It's not about the money you spend on the product, it's about the product being "yours". If you have to be connected to the internet and receiving ads in order to use something you paid for, what's the point? A better "version" is available for free and the only dissuasion that exists is a message from your ISP saying "Pls stop ):" So you take the better product and it just so happens to be provided for free.
I paid TH-cam for a movie ONCE and couldn't view it in the resolution I paid for. Never, ever again.
Ain't HDCP great?
What happens if you buy a movie on TH-cam. And then later they decide to ban your TH-cam account? Do you also lose the movies you've bought on TH-cam?
@@colt5189 Of course!
@@justandhans Not necessarily, actually. As someone who has bought movies off of TH-cam, they also appear in your Google Play account for what it's worth. Still anti-consumer as heck, though...
@@justandhans I don't get why anyone would buy a movie on TH-cam if TH-cam could just ban your account and thus erase your movie purchase?
I generally only buy physical media if there's an option, and then use the digital code to add that as backup. The only time I've bought digital is when it's something like an older TV show that hasn't been released on physical media.
The whole “can’t use downloaded things offline” is ridiculous and I was amazed no one seemed to be talking about it. You’re totally justified, vote with your wallet.
It's all about controlling you. We are getting this from all sides anymore.
Corporations: You will own nothing and you will be happy.
Open source: Allow me to introduce myself.
The reason I don't talk about it, is because I don't care. You do this, I just use another application. 😅
This is probably because of music videos, I doubt TH-cam could keep charging 10$ a month if you could download 1000 mp3 songs on a single month and I don't think we can genuinely say that this would be reasonable.
They could probably work on a way that restricts songs but give you offline access to regular videos though.
@@goncaloduarte4683 I mean, their movies that are free with adds already have DRM that prevents third party software from downloading them, not sure why they can't do the same with music.
I remember the “Do not pirate this DVD” message that you couldn’t skip on official discs. Never had that problem with a rip.
What I find the most appalling regarding TH-cam ads, are the actual ads. There are so many scams being advertised and a company of this size letting that happen boggles my mind.
Some are even illegal content. I don't know how Google gets away with this nonsense
yer you ate spot on about scam ads scam this qr code n so on bareskin joody tat I am surprised google dont stop them
I wish I could just pay for the no ads on TH-cam and download to watch listen off line. I am not interested with all the other
If you think about it, isn't it also a form of natural selection?
jokes aside, I think those scam ads are what is paying for youtubers
@@joshuavarghese619 Not having digital literacy does not naturally select anything. Nobody was born with the skills to be able to detect scam out of millions of ads they see.
History is repeating itself. I remember in the PC Gaming era where EVERYONE downloaded no-cd cracks and DRM-removal software just to play games comfortably on their PCs. This also became a gateway into piracy since buying games offered lesser versions compared to pirated ones. Valve single-handedly fixed piracy by offering Steam (their online game store) with convenient extra features that consumers appreciated. To quote Gabe Newell: “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost ALWAYS a service problem...” And he is completely right.
Solving piracy is easy...make the service/product cheap enough or value for money enough so that there is no incentive for piracy.
It's incredible that anti-piracy measures have become even worse over the years. Especially in the last few years, when DRM systems would noticably impact the performance of a game. What a better way to advertise piracy than to cripple or break the game of paying customers just in order to defend from those filthy pirates.
The consumer is happy but not the devs. There are stolen keys on gray market sites ripping off the devs. Thats the new age.
couldn't agree more. i pirate damn near everything. but you know what i pay for? steam and xbox gamepass. because they offer a good service.
I remember when I was 13yrs,
I didn't have a job, and couldn't buy anything.
Back in my day, 1980s, we called the software cracked, and waited hours to download a game over 1200 baud modem onto a 5 1/4" floppy, and then 3.5" floppy disks.
Of boxes on boxes full of 3.5" floppy disks, easily, >98% was pirated.
I would disagree with the thought, "Piracy is almost always a service problem", but I can understand and respect the perspective.
When I got older, had a job, worked in engineering to create stuff,
I had a stronger view against piracy, and an even stronger view than that, on IP theft (cough) ch*na (cough).
As the same time,
I'm greatly against the trend of no true ownership of digital content that you purchase.
I will always see all of these providers as providing a convenience. I'll pay for that. If you remove the convenience, I'm heading for the seas.
Arrr.
I started paying for TH-cam red when it came out about 7 years ago. Imagine The rage when I realized 7 years later the first time I actually needed to use the download feature that it doesn't work!
Never make someone feel like they are foolish for having paid you!
i used to to pay for netflix and hulu and be able to watch almost anything that i wanted, but then disney plus, amazon prime, hbo max, and many others showed and now my options are pay 50 + dollars per month to have to search through many websites to maybe watch or go to free streaming site and stream pretty much any tv show or movie immediately.
Over the years I've bought Dr Strangelove (the movie) on DVD, Bluray and 4K. Last night I saw Dr Stranglove on Prime. I clicked it to watch and it told me to fork over $2.99. That is not convenience and it's not my job to find a way to tell these platforms they don't get to double dip. I exited prime got off my a$$ and found the 4K copy and slipped it into my player.
It gets worse and worse by the day. Let's not go into the dark pattern where mp4's that I created from CD's I own somehow go locked into Amazon music and once I stopped paying that media was gone from my phone.
I used to have a youtube playlist that I'd listen on my phone while cleaning around the house. Then they decided that "you can't play if your phone's screen is not turned on, you scum!"
So, now I just use those handy sites that allow you to download "videos" as mp3s and I just listen to those on my phone.
I would have to be subscribed to every content provider(netflix, HBO, etc) in order to have access to a fraction of what I would have ''elsewhere'' from a single location... And then I'd still suffer things like either not being able to even download anything at all or having it heavily restricted, at a lower quality, and have to deal with whatever horrible UI that company has put out on top of it.
The piracy websites that aren't even corporate entities have more impressive and intutite UX design than these billion dollar companies lol, which is almost reason enough for me to want to go elsewhere.
nobody watches ads. everyone looks down in a small corner where the seconds are counting down
They gave up on the adblocker war lol. Been using Brave and haven't run into that stupid adblock warning screen in months
Yeah, but that’s more than enough for their jingles and logos to make their way into your head. They don’t think you’re likely to see an ad and then go buy their products, but, if you’ve been shown advertisements with catchy music and colorful logos, when you’re eventually looking to buy a product in that category, you’re like 70% more likely to buy their products because of the familiarity that’s been programmed into you.
@@mikefamm5712 Have you any basis for saying 70%? I can confidently say I have never bought anything because of an ad. Mostly because I'm broke..
@@mikefamm5712that’s why I turn my volume to mute when an ad plays
some of us use adblock and have never watched an ad on youtube
“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.” - Gabe Newell
SPOT ON.
How could the service ever be better (or even equal) when pirates don't pay for anything? People who quote Newell like that just use it as a crutch - they were never going to pay anyway!
"better than what they're receiving" would be "more convenient" in this case. in large part, i reckon that dominant services are only dominant bc they make their services easy to access and use
@@DisgruntledDoomer I wouldn't pay you. I pay people who are worth paying.
@@DisgruntledDoomer clearly you were not around, or didn’t participate, in the hayday of game and software piracy.
Steam came along and made it so much easier, so much more organized, so much simpler to be a gamer. Particularly once playing online became more and more complex for pirates.
Steam literally offers so much value just as the software alone, that it makes perfect sense to just buy games from them. It’s convenient, there’s rarely any complications, and it just works. Modding rarely requires a third party website and frustrations trying to get mods to work. Tech support can be handled in steam itself when you have a problem with a game, rather than having to go to yet another forum somewhere. Were it not for steam, piracy and the workarounds to play online would be much more popular.
Getting something for free doesn’t always outweigh the benefits that come with paying, and often it doesn’t. Particularly when it comes to steam.
Piracy is the reason a lot of previously considered "lost" media actually isn't lost. Without piracy, the first half of internet history as we know it would be almost entirely eradicated in a few years' time.
especially when youtube has its way - its sad that the quality of the content get diminished as well
You are being 100% REASONABLE, RATIONAL,AND LOGICAL.
We live in an era where people have been groomed, conditioned and absolutely brainwashed to be shills for corporations, to pay maximum dollar for the minimalist level of quality in the product, content or service they are receiving.
Keep up the good fight & educating everyone you can, you’re doing incredible work with the arguments you bring up to the discussion(s) it really helps against the narratives these corporate shills constantly regurgitate.
When things you buy are only licensed for use, not something you actually own, piracy should be a way of life regardless what your financial situation is.
Agreed, big fan of steam and things like that but even they have some garbage issues, I wish we had a place where you can download load stuff and actually have it with no restrictions, I'd love to buy and play older games and movies and have them a ssd but since companies worship money over moral and ethical practices then starve the beast out, I'm very grateful for pirates and everything they do and soon digital stuff is going to be changed by ai to fit what ever propaganda the state wants to promote
@@kirerunte1046 Good Old Games sells lots of old games, the majority of which have no DRM at all and no download restrictions. Humble Bundle also - as long as you don't buy Steam keys or stuff from EA - sells DRM-free games. A lot of Indie games on Humble Bundle come with raw download files as well as optional Steam keys if you want them.
Time to buy a second computer and set it to guest mode to download all those stuff, and having second computers should help you in containing all those threats out of your main computer in case something is wrong when you pirate stuff (infected by viruses, ransomware, etc.) as long as it's not connected to the same network
@@sihamhamda47 You do know you can set up virtual machines, separate drives or partitions on one machine right? Maybe having another PC wouldn't be necessary?
This is why I don't even nab the free games on Epic Games Store. Can't use the content unless online. If you treat me like a pirate, I prefer to be a pirate
This is why the lawsuits against the internet archives are so concerning. I agree with every word said here and am old enough to remember what a free internet promised
Right
What? Whoa suing Internet archives? Omg that's bad
@@SmedleyButler1 Publishers, especially those 'servicing' the education sector.
I'm old enough to remember the propaganda campaign that claimed cassettes were going to destroy the music business.
@@DennisHolmberg-sl1hz Ah yes, the people who change a few dozen words in a 1000 page book, call it a "new version" and charge you $100 for it. And you can't use last year's book, because it's "outdated."
To quote gabe newell, “One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,”
This is absolutely true. Also when too many companies split up in a field of media and require dozens of independent subscriptions for lesser services that have been partitioned into near oblivion, that also tends to put a final nail in the coffin. For example when I pay for Netflix and some shows or movies I want to watch suddenly drop out of my region's "content cycle", I jump straight to piracy - and will do with other services too. If they could just fix their shit, have decent and consistent libraries that don't prioritize some markets over others despite an equal cost for all, and the next-door piracy site offers a full unlimited library with no regional requirements, no signups, good quality, and no bs while also being up to date on all content.. Yea, piracy all the way. I'd love to pay for subscriptions that actually offer what they pretend to be in their marketing campaigns. Sadly, 99/100 services fail to live up to their marketing standards (and I haven't found that last 1/100 yet).
@@Real_MisterSir Steam and GOG are 2. Both for games, though. Totally different approaches to the problem. Both solved it wonderously.
Gabe Newell is a legend. I know many people here in Brazil that dropped piracy because of Steam.
If you know anything about piracy in Brazil, that alone deserves some sort of achievement award.
Just as a hint, some people take piracy as the default way to acquire things. Some of them don't even remember genuine hardware/software/media is a thing.
gabe newell is so cool, he says so much righteous shit. so glad a guy like that has been able to be successful. what valve and the steam deck have done for Linux gaming is unbelievable! Linux is now so close to being able to play all the games u can play on windows, and many old games which are not even playable on modern windows machines are playable on proton. god bless gabe newell!
Gaben the GOAT
You are highly rational. Just recently found your channel and am absolutely loving all the content. I'm fully on board with what you're doing and wishing more of the common people would stand against the abuse that most companies have eased us into.
Piracy has been pretty vital in the preservation of culture on so many fronts. I listen to lots of indie music from the 80s and 90s and in many cases I simply cannot legally purchase or listen to that music. I want those artists to get music but I simply have no other option. The same thing happens with movies, literature and video games. Massive corporations are uninterested in giving people legal access to products that mere hundreds or thousands will purchase. But they also don't want us to "steal it". Absolutely absurd.
Not to mention media that's out of print, like retro console games. Some of those sell for obscene amounts of money on sites like eBay just because they aren't being made anymore. If you want to play a certain game without having to empty your bank account (assuming you can find a copy at all), the most logical course of action is to download a ROM and play it on an emulator. But we're not supposed to do that, because it's technically stealing, even though the company wouldn't be making money from the title either way, _because it's no longer being manufactured._ The only person making any money from the sale of said game is the person selling a copy they already owned.
Yeah, i‘ve also searched some game once and found it on this piracy site who‘s explicit goal it was to preserve games for future generations, and i LOVE that.
There should be such a „library“ site for every kind of medium where they just put the digital version of whatever Book/Film/game/Music/etc. that‘s gone out of production or isn‘t supported anymore.
What do you mean by "I want those artist to get music"
Same with videogames, especially Nintendo. You can't buy games from like the 90's or whatever anymore, but if you download them you're supposedly a criminal. Fuck corporations.
@IP3278 oh okay! thanks
Companies seem to narcissistically believe that they "defeated" piracy and that's why it went way down. They don't realise that piracy only waned because streaming was way more convenient at the time. But at the point that it becomes just as big an inconvenience as dealing with region-locked DVD's with unskippable built in ads were, people can and will start pirating again.
Piracy defeated ? How and when ? I have pirated hundreds of GBs movies alone (not counting softwares, games etc). Literally pirating is just so convenient and easy and they claim they defeated it? I never paid for a streaming service, never paid for youtube premium, never paid for an app, never paid for a software.
@@devendrapoonia1
It's a numbers game. You're just one person.
@@devendrapoonia1 Because there was a time when piracy wasn’t just mainstream, it was the default. I expect you know people - possibly as close as your very own family - who couldn’t pirate content, even if they wanted too. Let me introduce you to the 80’s where pirated video games, videos, cassettes etc were sold in shops on the high streets of every city in the Western world, and everybody bought their games, music and movies from there because why wouldn’t you.
There was a brief revival in the Napster days, with it often coming complete bundled on prebuilds with a one click “get the top 40 this week” icon on the desktop.
They know they will never stop you pirating, they don’t care - they also know that it’s a mosquito bite into their profits. What they really fear is people like you making it so easy for people like my mum that they can also pirate.
@@rookievideos8865 we are many, i have it in good authority that half of the country i live in, pirates everything and i'm all for it.
Oh weren't the "don't pirate this content" videos on bought dvds the best 😒
Thank you Louis for saying it better than I could. It's definitely not the first time.
I'm not a "regular" but I keep coming across your thought-provoking content year-after-year.
I don't do TH-cam Premium because that would require me to stay signed into a Google account all day, every day, just to avoid ads. I'm not prepared to do that.
So, consider this a personal cumulative "Thank you" gesture.
thanks for watching 500 years worth of ads on behalf of the comment section ❤
And giving google a cut of your super thanks
@@KhanJoltrane Yeah, Louis should just publish some account number where people can send money directly without having to share "service fees" (probably at least 30%) with Google.
you should've just buy his merch as it goes directly to him, this 25 you did mostly goes to google
He probably makes less on products,here he probably will make 40%. Definitely not making 40% of products
I absolutely agree, I went the legal route to watch anime and subscribed to crunchy roll and Funimation. Crunchy constantly was missing the shows I wanted to watch on a particular season and Funimation constantly locked me out of the content, there was some kind of error with their apis but it would randomly block my access to stream even when I was paying and not using any VPNs and they were shows I already started watching.
On top of all this crap, Disney goes and decides to pull some marvel shows out of Disney+ and in left hanging 3/4 of a season into a show.
I'm really trying to access things the good way but they keep pushing me in the other direction
Which shows ?
@@vaibhavkumar-us8tw don't remember all of them because it was a few years ago but I remember wanting to watch Bofuri and was not available on crunchy, went to Funimation and it was giving me errors and not letting me play anything on my account so I had to pirate it
Streaming is Streaming there is no "other" direction.
@@rightsdontcomewithpermits7073 Um, yes there is, it's called downloading torrents, which is the entire subject being discussed in this comment section. Is your brain not functioning?
Furthermore, no, not all streaming is identical. Some is legal through official streaming providers, other streaming is illegal through foreign websites that stream that content to you for free without legal permission.
Again, this is the entire topic being discussed. How this managed to elude you is beyond my understanding (and seemingly beyond yours as well.)
I use 9anine and watch cartoon online with ad blockers lmao
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It's a service issue!” -Gabe Newell
Thanks to gaben and valve, the only games I torrent are abandonware
This quote is great.
Lets be real here, it can be a pricing issue, but more often than not it is not. Most people (atleast here in finland) have high enough income to be able to afford to buy a few games or pay for a streaming subscription. But people dont like paying to make their lives harder. Companies need to realize this.
And yet Steam still has their halfassed DRM on every release. Sure, it is up to the publisher, but I am pretty sure the publisher has to opt out.
Gabe is WRONG, it is a "Cost/service issue" the price is generally too high for the service provided. When the cost/service ratio is favorable enough, piracy ceases to be a big issue. It is easy to see, many "indie" and DLC driven games costs 20-30 bucks, while AAA games are pushing 70 bucks. AAA games still get heavily pirated because they are not worth the 70 dollar price tag, if the price was slashed in half I predict they would make more money. And Paradox realized that DLC is where the real money is at, that and workshop integration.
Absolutely agree. Workshop service is what made me never pirate again.
This happens with anime all the time. There are shows id love to buy but they just don't release them in america so you have to pirate them.
"Piracy isn't a money problem, it's a *service* problem." Is absolutely accurate.
Now that's a T-shirt or mug I'd buy...
Exactly. As a proud pirate, services like Spotify are worth paying for because until today they don't limit where, when and how I listen to my music (I still buy cd's, records to support my fav artists, and I still download my flacs.)
Iirc that was first said by Gabe N, head of Valve. It's no coincidence that Valve's Steam, as many problems as they've had over the years, is probably the most consistently liked distribution platform out there, despite being one of the oldest.
its a money problem for us Third worlders too.
it was a money problem when i was a kid, now im paying more for electricity, internet connectivity, hardware and time to maintain my pirate vessel than i'd pay for a bunch of streaming services, but nobody provides DRM free files at a competitive price point (or at all, to my knowledge), so clearly they don't want my money anyway. Doesn't bother me, I'm getting exactly what I want. (talking about tv/movies here. drm free music is plentiful, so that I'm buying.)
The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.
Gabe Newell
And notice piracy largely stopped/slowed when all the streaming content was on netflix. Now dispite having access to almost every platform i pirate because its easier on looking through a dozen services to watch possably only 1 or 2 seasons only to repeat for season 3 and so on.
Even some added ads on premium subscription so what was the point of buying the subscription😂.
It has been pointed out that people who pay for things like BluRay and DVD's have a worse experience than people who just pirate movies, since they don't have to sit through ads, and warnings, and don't worry about scratched disks and such.
@@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket This exactly. Steam's so damned convenient I have games I bought 2 years ago sitting, never even having been opened once. Why? Because it was on my wishlist and there was a hella good sale!
I came from not being able to afford games and pirating them to buying ones I have no intention of playing in the near future because Steam has made it convenient. I don't worry about whether or not a game has a virus.
The reason I don't pay for streaming services is because their selections are too limited. They should take a lesson from cable and all offer each other's original titles and pay them based on view or a percentage of ad revenue. Everyone wins. No customers misses out entirely. Might get it a week or a month late if it's through another service. That would retain the motivation from hardcore fans to switch to your service or pay for both.
Exactly why I got Crunchyroll premium. I was tired of all the invisible virus ads on pirating websites.
Great content, Louis! I share your frustration with digital media and hardware restriction.
That reminds me of when someone online pointed out that if you bought a movie on a physical disk, you had to put up with the anti-piracy warnings, trailers, and other extraneous crap. But if you pirated the movie, you could skip all of that and jump right into watching the movie and was overall a much better experience.
It’s really nasty here. Unskippable ads on a purchased hard copy that is so spiteful it makes me want to get it from international waters.
Thankfully we had, still have and use actually an education focussed DVD player and HDD based VCR combo device, that could skip the adverts just fine.
It's interface is clunky as all heck and I'm basically the only one in the household who can properly use that thing, but we are keeping it in our setup for that reason.
Nowadays PCs can skip the adverts too in e.g. VLC, but the fact they tried to prevent that is insane and indeed reason to pirate over buying it.
Cinemas are even worse, 20 minutes of ads, crying kids, laughing teenagers and that person who bought 5 plates of nachos sitting behind you. (+ you can't pause the movie when you need to pee)
Taking your input and forwarding it to EA (Electronic Assholes)
@Bartosz Domagała plus its over priced and movies are just woke propaganda, I stopped going almost a decade ago, I'm very grateful for pirates and I hope they maintain the original stuff cuz eventually ai and the people in power will want to rewrite history
What sucks is that even if we don't qualify for ad revenue, YT can just put ads on our videos.
That isn't "this sucks"; it's fraud.
@@Theranthrope yeah, I tend to agree with your assessment. And when I paid for an ad to promote my music, that didn't count towards my eligibility. But organic growth is actually really difficult, and perhaps partly because Google controls the game. There's just so many win-lose scenarios with them, and they're always on the winning side.
Well I draw the line there. I can use TH-cam as a free video cloud hosting service that runs pretty damn well. I can still make an unlisted recording of the leak in my window to send the landlord. I figure putting ads on my crappy playthroughs that barely anyone watches anyway is a way of them getting some money back for the free hosting.
YT putting ads on videos of creators who don't qualify for ad revenue makes sense to me. They still have to pay to host the videos, and from their perspective it isn't worth the accounting hassle to pay out small creators $1.37 once a year for the tiny number of views they've received.
@@NeilHaskins Something is either monetizable or it isn't, but TH-cam, a for-profit corporation, is lying about what isn't mobilizable (often for biased religious reasons) and ripping off the creators the platform _would not even exist_ without.
This is never "fine" even if it's a fraction of a cent of un-earned ad-revenue.
I'm 100% backing this. If a business wants to be petty and greedy and try to not give a fair exchange of value, then they don't deserve our money. Jeremy Boreing said it best when he said "Stop giving your money to companies who hate you." If TH-cam wants to stop hating their viewers, customers and the content creators who made their platform take market share away from TV, then they should stop hating us. If they're going to insist on hating us, I'll block ads, not pay for them for content and not give my money to a company that hates me.
Which is why I gave no money to Viz Media. I hate that company because that company hates my country, Canada.
Thing is though the big companies are their customers for Google and by extension TH-cam , We are the product lol!
Why be surprised and angry that companies under capitalism are mainly looking to build capital.... companies and structurally designed to try and strike the perfect balance or shift you over slowly to whatever form will build up the most capital in the long run.
@@rg6427LMAO yeah CCP China and Socialist Venezuela NEVER take advantage of their people. One thing to argue its Corporate Crony Capitalism, to blame Capitalism as a whole is woefully ignorant
@@rg6427 The lobbyists and regulatory policies that limit competition to these companies are the problem, not "capitalism". If companies were allowed to compete fairly someone would have already dethroned these bonehead corporations screwing their customers. The way it's supposed to work is company screws their customers, customers go to a competitor that doesn't screw them. The way it actually works is competition is controlled and when a company screws their customers they can go to a "competitor" who is doing exactly the same thing.
I'm 100% on board with you my friend. I'm an old guy older than you. But I've been working with tech for 40 years. Ever since I saw a download button..... Download has meant that I can have the file locally and run it locally without an internet connection..... I may be forced to use some app, but I can use it offline. Anything else is crap. 💪
As Steam taught us, the best way to stop piracy is not to try and make piracy harder (which pirates will find a way to ignore anyways) but to make purchasing it the easier and more convenient option. Amazon and co are clearly doing the opposite.
I have to admit steam does make video games easy and the fact that they have or are developing a halfway decent Linux library of game compatibility is actually pretty damn cool Even if it doesn't match what's on Windows the fact that the starting to do it you know they started to do it they set off you know a set of falling dominoes that are that are continuing to fall and they're getting bigger and bigger it's like Elon musk with Tesla everyone gives him a hard time but but he started this revolution with electric cars there would not be electric Hyundai's and fucking electric key is and electric Ford explorers and f-150s if Elon didn't bring out the model s I mean come on we know this somebody has to be a pioneer and stand up and speak out against a crowd and they're going to be shouted down at first they have to have the perseverance to keep going
but some stupid boomer suits just cant get their heads around that.
Steam become a monopoly. Monopolies are never good in a capitalist system.
@@cancan-wq9un if you look at things from a platform perspective, steam actually has to compete with other services like the epic games store, or cdprs store. And steam rarely enforces exclusives to maintain their position.
However PC gaming's isn't the end all of gaming. Infact it's a small slice of gaming. With the majority being mobile (monopolised by apple and Google), and consoles (exclusive stores and what not).
Even when valve built a console, they allow you to just install windows and do whatever you want on it. And mind you the base version of the steam deck is just as functional but sold at a loss. Valve have demonstrated that good service begets a goodarket position. The fact that they're one of the sole players is solely on the competition.
@@thej3799 yeah, steam still feels like a company run by some gamers. Which absolutely doesnt fit with any other out there at all. like epic is purely out for money, u can smell it.
This is 100% true. When the paid experience is so inferior to piracy, why would you pay?
Worse yet, the only people who suffer are the authors.
this is what you get when zoomers don't understand file systems
@@polaris911 That is an amazing thought, that they never learned that bit of tech. However I see it differently. Us Gen X had to learn such things if we were to use computers but not all of us can use computers. Plenty of Gen X and Boomers think computers are some new thing, heck you've had about 30 years to get a clue. Where as the Zoomers all use computers even the ones who have no interest. Only nerds used computers in the 1980's and '90's but now everyone does. Nerds would learn about file systems but average people don't.
"I did the crime because it was more convenient than doing the right thing" is not a valid legal argument.
With that being said, I certainly do not agree with the fact that these services are treating us in this way. If only people didn't keep rewarding their greed, they would soon revert back to a more acceptable model.
I use to pay for a popular anime service. I paid for years all while they failed to improve the service, failed to even provide the content on time, and silenced the customers by removing comments on videos because they would be criticized there. I justified paying because I wanted to support the creators, which is debatable if they even see any meaningful returns from that company. It got so bad that when a new episode came out I would get a 404 page, and would have to go to an illegitimate site just to watch the new episode when it released. So I thought to myself, "what is the point of paying for this if I have to go to these sites every week?"
I ad to drop netflix after 2 decades when they hired obama. I put up with slower and slower deliveries, but damned if I will support a company paying that crook. They even started using edited movies. If I want that i'll watch it over the air.
Funimation for those who are wondering.
@@giantdad1661 crunchyroll also applicable
I used to have both Crunchyroll and Funimation but got rid of them because their Roku apps were absolute dogsh**. Then I go onto 9anime or any of the other dozen or so anime sites and get a better experience on all of them.
I'd be stupid to pay for that.
Used to pay for CR but got frustrated with service issues, like buffering and then timing out mid-episode. Went back to fansubs. I have fibre internet, I can just download that episode in two seconds and I don't care about your copyright protections.
Thanks!
That resolution issue is a big part of the reason I cancelled my Netflix. It's likely because your monitor is not HDCP compliant, a DRM technology these idiots use to protect their content from piracy, which ironically funnels more people to piracy since all they're doing is punishing paying customers.
I just discovered that I cannot stream 2160p to my monitor because video streaming services are worried about ripping the movie and sharing.
The level of corpo dronery just amuses me at this point. They still don't understand that all it takes is ONE dump to get into the wild, and their entire multimillion dollar layered technical annoyance stack is defeated, and attackers treat extracting and liberating that content like it's a fun puzzle to solve.
My Chromebook cannot play any streaming service in 4k despite having a 4k OLED screen due to DRM. So I cancelled all my subscriptions and now pay less than $3 a month for a debrid service which allows me to stream and download all the 4k content I want.
just now I'm obtaining John Wick 4 through unlegitimate means because I can't afford buying multiple streaming subscriptions cuz the content is scattered everywhere, I already have a netflix subscription, why do I need more.
@@dubl33_27 Because the CEO needs a new yacht you filthy peasant
I remember I had a conversation with a Russian friend one time. He told me the reason piracy is so rampant in Russia is not because people don't want to pay for shit, but because companies simply don't make their products available in a convenient matter, or at all. If you're literally not given a way to legally purchase a game/movie, people are not going to just sit there and not get it.
And also those retarded companies can no longer claim that it's lost sales. YOU NEVER MADE A LEGAL SALE POSSIBLE.
Region locked content needs to be pirated and that piracy needs to be legalized as well.
also because russia doesn't give a shit about the laws so they let all the russian piracy sites continue to operate with impunity.
The Russian also encourages it's people to pirate, hack, and steal anything they can from anyone besides Russia and China.
That's not necessarily the case. It's: a) lack of culture of paying for digital products; b) piracy is easy and while technically not legal, *effectively* it is; c) people are just poor and cannot justify paying for something so easily obtained for free. All of these apply to me and given the current media landscape - seems like it has pushed me towards the better choice.
I only see one of the supposed 4 answers to the original comment.
You're NOT wrong Louis...Nothing today is owned by the consumer, only rented until the company you paid your hard earned money to has decided to disable its functionality and until some sort of serious class action suit comes along with enough publicity/coverage to finally force these greedy corporations to give their customers the product they'd promised them in the first place, then unfortunately nothing's going to ever change :/
It's more of a question of creators choosing that particular service. When I learned about the ad block ban, I first considered alternatives like internet archive. But there are barely any creators uploading their videos there.
Like the main reason why pirates get better experience is that TH-cam isn't a platform where permanent downloads are an intended feature.
Like for example one could imagine a GOG equivalent but for videos where one buys videos DRM-free for 1-to-few Dollars. But it wouldn't be anywhere near as cost-effective as TH-cam Premium.
Also almost no one actually seems to want to sell downloadable videos.
Personally I won't even bother using the download feature of TH-cam Premium.
And hence why I have never supported drm shit and never will I have actively worked against it instead since it's not justifiable
It's the same bs as the MPAA has tried for decades with region coding which serves zero real purpose other than their attempt to divide up the planet and use such bs to prefix things starting the consumer
Like old DVDs retail in the US for say $40 yet they sell the same content with dirr region code in say india for $5 and are making a big profit none the less
The only reason the code is that is to stop most imports from working and therefore poof price fixing in a supposed legal manner
DRM since has only made it worse
Its true. Even my college’s digital textbooks were RENTED. I rented the pixels of a book for $130….
AND when they can "expire" your "unused" money, then we're in deep sh!t.
Or you pay a service provider a subscription for something and then the company that owns whatever it is starts their own service and it's removed from the original so you have to pay another provider s subscription.... endless loop and no wonder people are giving them all the middle finger and saying F YOU.
The most asinine thing is that TH-cam doesn’t pay their creators enough, so premium users still have to sit through ad reads in the video. At that point, the only benefits are playing in the background and downloads.
And you can use command line tools to do the latter
@@Vekstar not on mobile
@@CookingWithJackDanielsyes on mobile, apps like seal make it a gui but termux always works too
It is a lot more convenient to only have to skip one sponsor read in a video versus sit through dozens of auto-play ads depending on the video length.
@@CookingWithJackDaniels new pipe:🗿🗿🗿🗿
Most ironical, that TH-cam tried to force buy premium buy increasing length and amount of commercials. But they just pushed people to installing addblock
The adage: "don't cut off your nose to spite your face" comes to mind.
I'm getting close to installing an adblocker again, cause man... the ads experience is getting terrible. Two ads to start the video, two minutes in i get another ad, this one unskipable, then 15 seconds later another ad break.
@Reagan Harder youtube vanced my man.
@@reaganharder1480 Dont wait Reagan, it was a game changer for me.
@@JamesGrim08 YT is essentially unusable without AdBlock..
Reminds me of what Gabe Newell said: "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."
And you know what? If a game is on Steam it is often a better experience than pirating the game as Steam actually protects users from viruses. Not only that but you don't even have to buy directly from Steam and still use their service to download a game you bought from a 3rd party, which is why I keep coming back to Steam. If only Google or Apple were to allow that, but since they don't I'll never buy a single game from their app stores.
@@kingzach74 On that note I buy my games on Steam because I know that i am going to get great support if I have any problems, easy refunds, really good launcher, good service overall
GOG preferred, Steam second, and pirate third. F denuvo games and Epic Store games.
@@Maxrepfitgm This is the way
@@alierengam1749 Another benefit of steam is the steam workshop. It's so easy to install and play mods for a lot of games. It's a lot more conveneint than dowloading, then copy-pasting stuff.
So true. I remember paying for so many DVD's and being forced to sit through ads which is insanity. Much better experience for people that bypass the gatekeepers. They just want to punish people that already pay them money. I hope all these companies get crushed someday.
Un-skippable ads on dvds should be a crime. Ugh I hate that with a passion.
Perhaps I should rip them to digital and create a digital media library.
My favorite are the anti-piracy ads that play on DVDs ...that I purchased.
@@joeboo8626
Yeah I NEVER understood why they put them on the frigging BOUGHT films, cause miraculously the pirated versions never have them attached 😂
@@platty9237 it's a fun hobby and upscaling on good tvs make them look pretty good. You can also get DVDs very cheaply with a huge selection right now at thrift stores.
@@blacky_Ninja "Lets throw a little bit of menacing propaganda that threatens to ruin peoples lives before they relax with a movie, that'll really set the mood!"
Thank you for what youre doing. The reason so many services are absolutely awful is because we let them get away with this shit. And to see people defending theae companies that are just railing then is genuinely disturbing
They are beta cucks who would even defend clothing companies if they provide clothes on subscription
"One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates."
~ Gabe Newell
Steam has local pricing. It is a pricing issue sometimes
Fun fact, I pay for Steam games and I'm happy they allow me to "start in offline mode" or whatever. I remember once being MAD at C* Games because I couldn't launch GTA: SA that was DOWNLOAD ON MY DEVICE just because I wasn't connected to the internet, so the C* Launcher couldn't verify that I own the game (even if I got it for free because it was for free for whoever downloaded their launcher at the time, doesn't make it right to not allow me to use it offline).
It was in december 2019 BTW, and GTA: SA was the only game that would run on my gaming laptop while on battery power.
@@retrocomputing i live in the country with local prices, but if in 2010 the only licensed game I owned was a u-boat sim on compact disk, in 2015 almost every game I played I had on steam just because it was more convenient (cloud saves, guides and stuff) and rewarding (achievements, cards and stuff)
steam is the perfect example of defeating piracy via proper service
but very often it's way easier to use cracked software than licensed (fuck you Adobe)
cracked Photoshop literally works better and faster than ligit one supposedly because all of the license and autbentity checks
@@ser_igel or you were too young in 2010 which can explain why you had not enough money for a big game collection. Would you pay 60 USD for steam games if it's so convenient?
@@retrocomputing I mean yeah, if 60 bucks is literally a third of your monthly income
nobody is talking about how louis is a fantastic presenter. minimal editing and almost nil jumpcuts and i was completely attentive and interested the whole way through. he speaks concisely, is entertaining and gets his point across very clearly and then some. a rare skill nowadays
I mean between the very comfy-looking arm-chair, his soft and deep voice, the cats wandering around and the overall lack of movement, it's such a relaxing thing to watch it feels a bit like ASMR to me XD but it IS a very nice change of pace, compared to how most videos try to be "as engaging" as possible.
You are :) thank you ! He is very good.
I bet someone will make a video about his way of presenting someday, maybe Charisma on Command.
Jump cuts every 2 seconds are BRAIN MELTING! And they're EVERYWHERE! I miss the old internet.
Keep fighting the good fight - this video resonated with me enough where I felt compelled to donate.
Thank you!
Thank you Louis!
You're completely right, it's shameful companies limit your ability to enjoy content after paying.
It's as almost as if they treat their paying customers as potential pirates.
If the shoe fits ......
Simple let the pirate win and as for the companies ether they back down and try remove every bs they added in their system unless a company try use the Public Service aka Government to interfere and attack the pirate site.
Few months ago I wanted to show Lupin the Third movie to my GF, and since she's not from my country, we wanted to see it in English so that we could both understand and enjoy it. I decided to rent the view on TH-cam itself, since it was available.
I was *shocked* to find out TH-cam does NOT offer multiple language support for movies. It was only in my language, and neither English dub OR subtitles were available. It's stuff available on DVDs since what, 1997? And TH-cam was just too oh-so precious to waste 30MB of audio file incorporated so that its customers could watch a movie like in any other platform. And I was able to figure out this ONLY after I paid. Because it was not written anywhere that it was only available in my language.
Guess what? 3 minutes of search. Pirated version. 4K. 7 Languages. All possible kinds of subtitle languages. 20 minutes download, no loss of quality, no lag of any sort caused by internet loss. Why in the hell would I rent on TH-cam ever again at this point, Google?
At that point it's not even piracy. You paid for the product, how you then watch it is up to you. Same reason running nintendo switch games on an emulator is technically legal if you bought the games in the first place
_Few months ago I wanted to show Lupin the Third movie to my GF, and since she's not from my country, we wanted to see it in English so that we could both understand and enjoy it. I decided to rent the view on TH-cam itself, since it was available._
To be fair, that sort of thing might be caused by licensing issues. TH-cam may have licensed the right to show the movie in your country, but the studio which owns the movie only allowed it to be shown there in your nation's language.
This sort of thing pops up with streaming services like Netflix. While the U.S. version might have certain shows or movies available, in another country it may not because another provider already purchased the streaming rights and thus Netflix can't show it.
@@primmakinsofis614 You are probably right but that isn't my problem, as a streaming service licensing is your problem and, in essence, it's one of your own making anyway, so you'll have to forgive me if I can't summon the urge to care. 😁
This is why they want to make VPNs illegal, so it's easier to enforce their BS.
Ive run into the same problem with anime. Sometimes the dub or sub you want isnt available, also you have to put up with BS censorship. Fansubs are usually the best way to go.
You're not alone in preferring pirated works over legal ones, even though you're willing to pay for it. Copyright lawyer Leonard French on his channel speaks about how some people will purchase a legitimate copy of a work, to be sure that the creator is paid, but will obtain a pirated copy to use because the user experience is better with it.
Denuvo left the chat.
@@wayland7150 and CEI
Linus from LTT does this to some Nintendo games.
@@ajbp95 Pokemon fan here. That's what a lot of romhackers do.
I do exactly that!
One shouldn’t forget about (non)availability of dubbed tracks or at least subtitles in various languages in those services - they are just not there. Most of the time it’s just the ‘main’ local language and English - that’s it. When “Pirated’ copies give you tracks in all the possible languages
I remember buying an Electronic Arts game for my C64 in 1985. The copy protection made it take almost 5 minutes to load on my C1541 disk drive as it hammered the drive head out of alignment and made the drive hot enough to fry an egg. I went to user group meeting and a guy there had a program to strip copy protection. We made a copy for everyone at the meeting and my new copy loaded in 28 seconds with no hammering. I felt zero guilt because EA were bastards.
*are bastards.
Fixed it for you.
i guess the current year version of that drm would be denuvo.
I dunno why you'd ever do that. Fry that egg to have a tasty snack for your upcoming gaming session!
Inglorious bastards...
Fast forward til 2023 and now you need 2 intrusive spyware programs constantly running on your PC to play any EA game.
Be it entertainment or information-wise, ads are never worth it for me
Part of why i love "borderline" content creators or music is because monetization is impossible on them, so it's a bit of really interesting content without needing to hear that "this is not a car, it's the future"
It is indeed a more enjoyable experience for me and i also agree with my mother that says that the roadside and the streets should be ads free so you can really appreciate the architecture and landscapes
Idgaf if you block ads but your justification doesnt make sense. The service provider decides the cost.. i dont wanna seem like a bootlicker but its not up to you to decide what the compensation for the service is
@Paulie sure it is, we don't have to compensate at all if the price is too much or the product isn't worth the cost
@@bigPauliee I stopped watching TV because of ads decades ago.. the internet was cool for a while then it became worse than television.. I'll be damned if something unwanted pops up on my screen and I agree with smokey glasses it's pollution, visual pollution in the landscape, and mental pollution to persuade you to something, it's vile and agressive and they spent the millions and the research to get to you... I'll allow myself any countermeasures available.
@@kirerunte1046, so stop using the service. Creators are entitled to ask for compensation (you surely don't work for free) and you are not entitled to free content.
what are you talking about?! the streets and roadside ARE ads free...
oh, wait! youre from MURICA aren't you?! xD
You ARE the product. You have a duty to block/mute/ff ads, especially when they are deliberatly embedded into the content. I prefer to donate straight to the provider. Now, even if you want to disallow ads on your channel, Google screw you over by putting ads there anyway. Google play dirty, play dirty back!!!
I wonder if the copyright deadlock still works 🤔
I'm a low value product cuz money doesn't buy much so I just buy the necessities and do nothing but save money and use cheap free entertainment to pass the time
What's even worse where the video is demonetized over something silly absolutely silly TH-cam will still run the ads only they'll keep the money
@@Vinlaell yup and therefore stealing is justified
@@kirerunte1046 his point is that you are the product by consuming. it has nothing to do with your identity, ego or personality - especially not your roundabout method of defending being cheap XD
I love the irony that I had never heard of you until you just popped up in my feed of suggested videos. Thanks for the content.
It is baffling to me how people are willing to pay to get a worse experience than I get for free.
There is one theoretical argument. Since now advertisers pay for youtube, youtube censor content as they pleases eg don't promote videos with guns and "violence". Theoretically if viewers paid for youtube, youtube would promote content based on viewers preferences, not advertisers. I however do not believe that could ever happen.
People are paying for TH-cam, they're paying with their time and more directly some are paying through YT Premium. If Premium allowed you to watch a class of content that wasn't tailored to suit advertiser sensibilities, which unfortunately makes up 99.99% of content today, it might be a more compelling buy. Instead, they expect you to pay for sponsored videos and content sanitized for corporations.
I think it's worth it. Ad free videos, and I get TH-cam Music along with it. And I'm a student so it's cheap
i paid for youtube music.
yes on my laptop i still use adblock anyway.
@@defiik as a student, I get it for a dollar. It’s hella cheap
This isn't unreasonably petty, this is exactly what Gabe was talking about when launching Steam.
May I ask for elaboration? I hold favor to his name but wish to know if I am buying into something not pleasant after so many years.
@@fattestroyal198 Gabe's take is that Piracy is a Service problem; If you provide a legitimately good service, people would prefer it over piracy.
@@Dafuqinator7 Ah... That reaffirms me a touch. Thank you for explaining. I didn't want to assume anything, considering their own published games are easy as pie to run and archive.
Exactly this. Buying, managing and playing a huge number of games across multiple devices is so goddamn convenient now that I don't even remember the last time I've pirated a game. However my pirate hat is still working overtime on TV shows and movies.
@@DriantX Ya-harr. I think the modern media consumption methods should be rated arrr for ret-arrrr-ded
At this point I cope by telling myself "oh, you're paying for service and convenience", but you're right. I just realized that the file CAN be downloaded normally, you CAN have it and watch it however you want. Why don't they give me the file? Why do we just get a "license" for as long as we pay? There's no technical justification other than "we will inconvenience you into paying". It's not service, it's a shakedown.
@@PoutingTrevor If a company has a monopoly on Shoulder Press machines and won't sell anything other than gym membership, I'm gonna go get one illegally anyway just so I don't have to get harassed by personal trainers mid set.
@@PoutingTrevor except that they literally advertise it as though you can watch it offline.
@@PoutingTrevor 🤦
@@PoutingTrevorYes and no. Information, unlike physical items, doesn't have scarcity. If I watch a Netflix movie, I'm not occupying one of several limited seats of a movie theatre on the server. The server is copying that movie, and sending a new copy to my computer. One that didn't exist before you asked to watch that movie. Now you and the server both have the movie. Except your copy is enclosed under several layers of encryption that only specific programs and hardware on your computer understand how to work with, to create artificial scarcity out of something that inherently doesn't have any. Because if you also knew how the decoder worked, you could make additional copies out of the one the server gave you, and they don't like that.
They'd compare it to you stealing the movie roll at the cinema and leaving everybody without movie, but that's just not how this works. The server still gets to keep the movie regardless of what you do.
@@PoutingTrevor yea, but......the word "MEMBERSHIP" is literally on your gym receipt 🤣but when I "Buy a movie"...... I AM NOT BUYING A MEMBERSHIP BRUV lmaooo 🤣
Thanks!
I completely agree with you. This type of idiocy is creeping into too many spheres. We no longer buy things but license them for specific usage parameters that can be changed at the licensor's whim. I believe it's a direct result of public corporations and the quarterly growth model. Rather than innovating and producing new and better products, it's much easier to just slap usage fees on the same old products. Maybe people will wake up when they start having to pay licensing fees in order to change the settings on their toasters.
Also, if you somehow get an exceptionally good quarter for some reason, going back to normal will be seen as a failure and people on top are currently required by law to match the earnings. So, having a sudden positive period will actually spell doom for any company, since they would then be coerced in doing shady, idiotic and anti consumer/worker stuff to not get destroyed by the markets and shareholders.
Yea this is supported by political economists and ex bankers
@@Anankin12 what about youtube music. dont tell me you pay for spotify
@@imDavina1331 I use ReVanced, I don't use Spotify at all and I don't pay.
@@imDavina1331 but what does that have to do with anything
This will never stop. Piracy is too convenient of an excuse for CEOs. It is impossible to track how many lost sales resulted from it. CEOs can excuse their incompetence by blaming piracy for low sales numbers.
Shareholders are too incompetent to call them out.
Less incompetent, more they only care about the bottom line and will take whatever convenient excuse is fed to them
The execs and shareholders are the rich idiots who have no idea how a "normal" person lives and is not interested in doing so.
lost sales is a fallacy. I divide movies into categories: 1) big budget spectacles that need to be seen in the movie theatres (these are rare now but were common 10-15 years ago), movies I'd pay to see, movies I'll see if they happen to cross my path, movies I'll never see. If I pirate a movie that falls into the last two categories, I would have never paid for it in the first place and would have just skipped it if it came with a price tag, so there is no lost sale, I just happened to watch it because I was on a plane at the time or a friend hired it or something.
So lost sales is actually far smaller than they would have you think because it assumes the user would have paid for that movie or content willingly if piracy wasn't an option.
Rather than incompetence it is a money grab. The lie that every copy made is a lost sale allows them to engage in extortion using the courts. They also use the lie to get egregious laws passed.
The lie is even more extreme when they apply it to developing countries.
@@dragonstooth4223 actual studies have been conducted multiple times, including by commission from the media giants. every one has turned-up the same results that there is little to no [likely NO] correlation between piracy and lost sales. the public is not made aware of these results because it's unfavorable to the false narrative the companies need us to buy.
it's absolutely a fallacy. specifically, counting chickens before they hatch. something that at least some of us had drilled into our brains well before having the overall concept of fallacies explained to us.
My motto: Companies criticize the little guy when he goes a bit off the system, but companies exploit the system in order to get a lot of money.
A TH-camr once said in a video I watched "You have limited time on earth, don't spend it watching ads." So I don't anymore. I promise it's nothing personal if you're reading this and genuinely helped by the ad revenue, but that line stuck with me and I hope it sticks with you too.
Supporting creators if you can is always great and can go a long way, but don't watch ads.
I think what most companies forget is that a lot of people were only willing to pay them because their services were slightly more convenient than piracy. The moment they decided that they wanted to put barriers on everything that you'd already paid for was the moment they decided to make piracy more convenient than paying them, and they probably should see a loss in revenue because of that.
The California Cannabis trade is dying on the legitimate side because of over regulation, very high license and taxing - they are unable to compete with the street product. Even the cartel bosses understand markets these days.
People don't seem to understand this in the comment sections and there are people legitimately siding with big businesses and their anti-consumer practices. They would rather have a bad, overcharged service than a cheap and convenient service because they want to virtue signal that they are "good people." There is nothing good about supporting bad business models, and if a business can't provide a better service than someone else can, they should be ready to deal with that competition, legitimate business or not.
@@trevormoney8126 I see this every day, where people bend over backwards to protect multi billion dollar companies greedy and shitty business model, and then just go like: If you dont like it dont buy it.
And they dont realise that things get worse for consumers precisely beacuse of them.
I wish we lived in the world where the masses would vote with their wallet and stand up to corporate greed, but that's why most companies aim to become monopolies so that you really dont have the option to go elsewhere.
Capitalism is supposed create healthy competition, but when you allow a few players to set the rules for everyone else is when you get to where we are today.
@@fredericrike5974 I don’t know the ins and outs nor the logistics, but maybe Cali should go the Oklahoma route? It’s medically legal there but atp it’s such a huge ass thing it might as well be recreational. Doesn’t hurt that in the small town I lived in you could get 7 solid pre rolls for 20, 5 blunts for 20, hell you could get damn near an ounce of some decent flower for yet another 20. Of course there’s things I’m likely missin but hey, I just want more weed shops across the globe tbh lol. Place would a lot happier and a lot hungrier.
As somebody who works in an industry where I spend a lot of time outside of an internet connection, I fully agree with you. I've started seeking "pirated" versions of content that I wish to listen to or watch while on the road, because the paid services generally do NOT work for me. I'd happily pay for these services the same way I always have, but being limited with my offline use of downloaded content simply does not work. It renders me paying money for something that doesn't even work for my use case.
I completely agree that we need to do more plain value exchange and not go out of our way to go through all these workarounds and restrictions just so we can feel like we're getting something for "free". It is really annoying that in this day and age companies still punish people for trying to pay for things.
👍🍻🇿🇦😎
I used to actually buy physical CD's back in the day. You'd get the cool box art, the little booklet thingy with lyrics and pictures of the band, CD's genuinely had better sound quality, and you could play the CD whenever, wherever you wanted. You were proud of your CD collection and held it dear to your heart. You probably even enjoyed the music more because of it. Today it just baffles me why anyone buys digital music aside from "supporting the artist" (more like supporting the greedy music industry). You get the same quality files that pirates do, and you're paying for a bunch of anti-features that make it objectively worse than downloading the physical files and storing it on your device.
You can still buy CDs. It’s less convenient than streaming them but that’s why most people dont
I still buy the CDs, and if I can't, I'll pirate the music.
Seriously; I have a bunch of Audiophile gear, rip all my CDs to .FLAC and use the same IEMs and Headphones between my Desktop PC, my Audio system (CD, Records, Tapes, Minidiscs) and my Sony Walkman, and then they want to sell me a bunch of lossy MP3s (or M4As) for the same price as a CD?
Hell No.
totally agree.
I feel like, around 10 years ago or so, when netflix was starting to become very popular it was a genuine better experience than piracy. and we all jumped on the boat because it was good
now we need around 10 different types of services to acess the content we used to have in a single place because company got greedy. and the experience is much worse than renting DVD used to be. I'm not surprised that piracy is becoming a thing again
I haven't been using any of these services, but hearing you say it's worse than renting a DVD is something that I have to keep in mind as a warning in case of weak moment.
I'm over 40 so I pretty much remember the DVD era, and last time I recall it used to be pretty annoying: especially in later years, it became "normal" to have to watch 10 minutes of "you would not steal a car" BS, just to get to the main menu. I knew people who would buy a DVD and just immediately go and rip it just so that it was usable :-D At that point, piracy almost feels like just helping your mom fix her broken TV.
I stopped piracy and had a Netflix account during that time, and I agree. When all these other companies started pulling there content from Netflix to force you into the old cable package style pricing scam I rebuilt a media server and went back to piracy. I'm not going to pay for 11 different services just for movies and TV. I still pay fort Spotify, because almost all the record labels licence to them, I don't need a streaming service for each record label
@@AloisMahdal One of the things I found very enjoyable about 4K bluray movies is that they would have none of that preview and anti-piracy garbage. Put the disc in, it goes directly to the main menu, press play and it plays the movie.
Until I got a Sony 4K bluray, of course Sony of all companies would be the see-you-next-Tuesdays to put previews on a 4K bluray.
But yeah, I'm slowly in the process of ripping my movies to skip all that crap. Need to figure how much disk space I need in a NAS/media server. Screw all of this streaming crap.
I was devastated when Adobe started renting their software and held your work files to ransom if you stopped paying. It was the thin end of the wedge, now everyone is trying to find ways to control your work and pleasure. The “phone home” embedded in apps violates your privacy, as having paid outright for an app, I should not have to prove ownership each time I use it, or let the company know when and how I’m using it. Having been in art production, and now retired, am still against not paying the creator for their work, but these new paradigms of inequitable control are encouraging users to justifiably find a way to use the products with equity for themselves. Hopefully this insidious need for spying and control, along with cynical profiteering over service will cause a reaction that will force companies to act with respect to the people that make them unethically wealthy: the consumer. I actively monitor and block all “phone home” traffic.
You can pirate the entire CS suite, no cracks, straight from Adobe's own servers. It's a monumental pain in the arse, and you need to set up your own DNS server, reverse proxy, and create and install a self signed SSL cert to do it, but it is possible. Unfortunately, that time is more valuable to me creating content, so I don't go to the trouble. But yea, you're over a barrel, it's a tax. Economic rent-seeking just because through some quirks of legacy they happen to have some patents on a file format.
To be completely fair, Apple have a more "Pay Up Front" model, with great software at reasonable prices, with updates included. But I just can't get over how overpriced their hardware is, even if the software ecosystem is better.
*ahem*m0nkrus*ahem*
This is why democracy is oppression by idiots and the poor.
They out number common sense.
I agree with everything except your "unethically wealthy" that isn't a thing.
Phone home? What is this? E.T.?
I watch your videos to remind myself not to get comfortable in surrendering my liberties and privacy. Thank you for keeping us up to date!
You nailed it. It’s ridiculous that you are allowed to download BECAUSE you are a paying customer then have to “prove” you have the right to play it AFTER downloading it.
And its absolutely laughable what basic functions youtube premium has, twitch is free and can play in the background, youtube needs 10 dollars a month for that, and its horrendous that if I watch a youtube video, pause it, go to my pc, open youtube and click the same video that I was just watching either replays completely or starts 5 minutes ago from where I was just at and if I pay 10 dollars I can watch it from the same second I was just at, and lastly the watchlist feature is not even that useful as i just open multiple tasks on my pc anyway
TH-cam and Amazon are the worst when it comes to this... As a fellow content creator, I too agree. Fix the service, or watch people exploit it without being paid. These people are pulling a blockbuster in a Netflix era.
We will exploit it whether or not it’s fixed.
The internet will always be free
“Pulling a Blockbuster” 😂
ikrr!! every time i use amazon prime its baffling just how much worse it is than netflix. Netflix does some stupid shit too but the overall experience is leaps and bounds better than any other streaming service.
man, you’re completely reasonable, don’t even question this fact.
it’s been countless times when i want to pay for the content ‘cause of genuine preference to reward creators, but the experience built around it just sucks so unapologetically that it makes no freaking sense.
Just got an email from a friend complaining about the EU Ursula, he has TH-cam Premium, I do not and have 3 Adblockers, once I opened the link, a commercial played and it would not end, so I shut down the video, but since I knew what he was complaining about, I responded to him without watching the video. By the way, I use Chrome and Firefox, each has a different TH-cam account, but of Firefox, it takes forever to open a video, sometimes, enough for me to download the video even if if the screen is black, shut down TH-cam then watch the download.
Do you remember when youtube used to be ad free and you used to be able to play a music video on your phone and turn the screen off so you could just listen to music on youtube? It really angers me when companies think that intentionally removing basic features and forcing me to pay for them is somehow providing me value. You are not alone in your resistance to this behavior I don't think its petty at all in fact I think its nessecary to uphold our principles by not rewarding companies for this behavior.
Remember how our phones used to have headphone jacks? There isn't enough room anymore now with all our advanced technology, so we'll just have you pay for the brand new wireless earphones in order to listen to music while your phone is in your hand and screen still on..
I can relate to both of you. I have a headphone jack for credit card reader and a $2 pair of ear buds in every vehicle. My internet used to be so slow, I could tell youtube to buffer/download at selected quality and come back after finishing an errand to watch video. Both errand and video completed without interruption :-)
Newpipe is great
@@Sybob15 Hey the headphone Jack was removed mostly as a trade off for making newer phones waterproof, you can drop your phone in the tub and it’ll be fine where as before you had to leave it in rice
@@Kaiyats Except that's bullshit, because the Samsung something or other (S7? S8? I forget) actually had a headphone jack AND was still waterproof. Media even mocked Apple for saying that you can't waterproof a phone with a HPJ, Samsung et al. did it for a generation or two but then they realised they can make more money by selling you 30-200 dollar wireless headphones than by selling 3 dollar wired ones, so they ditched it themselves.
I hate how TH-cam removes features or makes you waste time for no good reason.
When they removed the "Sort by Oldest", in the TH-cam Insider video they said "If you want to check out older content from the creator, just scroll down" - What?
🍻 makes it easier to hide controversial opinions
And that's another way of fucking with us.
YT dgaf. Never will again.
Time to migrate.
TH-cam has been delusional for a while now and that was the most recent I remember. there were community captions which they took away and basically limited what the community could give back to the creator.
"If you want to see older videos just scroll down"
They don't even care about our pain of scrolling through a video feed in channels who are already uploaded thousands of videos just to find the first video uploaded on every channel
@@homework8969 Yep community captions REALLY annoyed me. Was doing captions for a foreign creator I liked, now they don't get any translations anymore. Good fkn job google, pissing on all deaf and foreign viewers.
I had a verbatim experience last month and I came to the exact same conclusion. Resentment eventually steps in when you realise you aren't being met halfway by the content producers who are actively putting roadblocks in the way of me getting the experience I want. My food was almost cold by the time I decided just to take the 5 mins to get the movie via other means.
Companies can't compete with that kind of access and convenience. They are literally turning people away who are queuing up to hand over their money.
Their content ends up on hte pirate sites in the end anyway. They inconvenience paying customers for no good reason.
The problem is that they can compete. They just don't want to.
Thank you for giving me content of value.
I pirate for a different reason: I get angry at all the nickel and dimeing corporations get away with so I see this as my opportunity to nickel and dime them back
hear hear
I agree and the service they provide is worse then what the pirates provide, I would love a thing like steam for old games and movies but even they have link to garbage stuff like uplay and ea and the drm is trash, pirating is the only way until these garbage companies start worshipping morals and ethics over money
@@kirerunte1046 steam is great when you dont play games by shitty devs
The DRM is unintrusive, the support does their job, Proton for Linux is wicked, and you can add games to your library that you have pirated/obtained DRM free
It is an example of a service worth paying for, which isnt conducive to piracy. You only pirate steam games when you dont wanna pay the cost, or when the dev included their own DRM layer, which is always clunky
@@cooked.gaming Can you play them offline? All of the existing single-player games on steam, offline?
Based.
I think the major issue here is that "download" no longer means "here's a copy you can have without any restrictions". It's a DRM-bound file that allows whatever platform is providing it with the ability to maintain control and prevent users from circulating it to other users without using their platform. This is what digital media has moved to for years, and most people don't know/understand that their "ownership" of DRM-enabled media is actually a fancy rental system that can be revoked at any time.
I'm definitely not a fan of this system, but it's been this way for years at this point. It's why I don't bother with youtube's official download system... it's not a "real" download, in the sense that we know downloads used to be.
At this point, the best you can do is download the videos with a third party tool, rip DVD's yourself, etc. All of the methods to actually have a restriction-free digital copy of media skirt the legality line, but restriction-free digital media is going the way of the dinosaur, unfortunately.
I've used youtube-dl and it's successor, yt-dlp, for years to get music, have over 5k songs now)))
yea yt-dlp on pc, newpipe on android. also Revanced for regular yt browsing, it even adds a download button that sends you right to newpipe if it's also installed. Super handy!
@@dirankomorov I've heard that the bitrate is shit compared to conventional rips.
@@ThePickledsoul not everyone is an audiophile. its good enough as radio quality.
It's not a digital-only issue either. The DRM itself is the problem, and even "physical" media can be rendered useless. Piracy truly is the best option. No DRM means you own it without lawsuits.
As a person about to travel overseas for work to a very remote area, ***thank you*** for bringing this to my attention. I was counting on my downloaded videos to keep my morale up for 3 weeks of training in the field. Knowing that it will not work completely invalidates why I subscribed to the servive in the first place. Thank god I still have time to download them properly. That would have sucked.
Fully agree. Not petty, just good principles and more people need to do the same
Louis ... Right to repair ... Free Choice ... Fair Use and Fair Ownership .... The right to privacy... and many other legitimate entitlements are being taken away and being eroded by the Interests and policies of the elite, Pharma, and Corporate greed ... I am with you bro ... keep up the Good work and never stop what you are doing ... we need more people like you.
Big ups for Louis 💗🌻
I'm not liking this "neo-aristocracy who would presume to rule over us" at all.
Because most people accept it and defend it. Im just like Louis, i also talk a bit similar 😂 and most people dont see the problem or believe it is dangerous or what ever.
Just the fact that they are advertising downloading a video as one of the main selling points of the service is already a huge red flag. They are basically selling bottled water in front of a well.
You already have to download any video you watch, It goes to a temporary memory on your computer, but it's still downloaded, it's really not difficult to give the option to download it to permanent memory.
You can also screen record anything you want as well, pretty handy tool on the android
The problem with this "download" feature is:
If any video you download is taken down by TH-cam or unlisted/privated by channel owner, your downloaded video would disappear from your download list as well
@@sihamhamda47 Meanwhile I have mp4s of youtube videos that were taken down and no longer exist on the internet and those work just fine to this day.
@@ragingfred One of the first things I noticed disappearing from YT were chemistry channels, usually people doing stuff that's a generic synthesis route that's a step or two away from Walter White territory. Started dumping chemistry channels to local disk after that.
100% Justified. My DVDs work, my CDs work, my Vinyl records work all without an internet connection. I wonder if the younger generations just don't know about owning something.
I was held back in unniv and had a younger gen classmates. I learned that they buy Vinyl releases and most of them dont have record players because Spotify is convenient to them. Yes you read that right.
My hundreds of GB of unencumbered, locally-stored MP3s and FLACs work just fine, and counting the server they live on take up about a cubic foot of space. Collecting physical is fine if you like it (I have some vinyl too), but not the only option.
@@treelineresearch3387 Physical doesn't run up your electricity bill whilst not being used though, unless you only startup the server when you want to play anything...
i have my music in form of MP3/Flac Files, Older media like CD's, Tape, Vinyl is just too unpractical for me as i need many of them. An 8GB Flashdrive will hold a ton of Songs and isn't fragile. Stick it into my Car Stereo and have endless music for roadtrips. Further on i don't need to fiddle with anything, just hit play and music happens.
That to be said, i'll grab one of these 90's Era 6-CD Changers for the Trunk long before i'll fiddle with some App that needs mobile internet and distracts me from driving.
i wouldn't even use Spotify if it was free, didn't need an account and had no Ad's, just for the fact that it's not nearly as convenient as my Flashdrive with 400+ Tracks
(i'm 27, for the record)
This is what they - they don't want you owning anything, they want you to rent everything - so they can keep milking a monthly pay day from you. Hence why I use pirate sites, among other reasons.
You are a hero my friend thank you for all your hard work, people do not realise how much you have done❤️
Did you know that Netflix will only let you play 4k content on you PC IF YOU HAVE A 4K MONITOR FOR EVERY MONITOR. So a triple monitor setup and oops one of them is 1080p... I would have to unplug that monitor just to watch a movie in 4K and added bonus even though you pay for 4K you don't get 4K unless you even have a 4K monitor. Have fun up-scaling your 2k monitor using DSR on nvidia control panel just to watch a movie in 4K (don't ask me how I know that)
I'm 25. One of the examples I can give, and it's the one that especially pisses me off, is this: when I was in school I used to pirate videogames 'cause I never had the money to buy them. Now I have the money to buy videogames and I choose to buy stuff I like on Steam. One of the games that I wanted to buy and revisit from my teenage years is Borderlands 2. I remember pirating the whole game + DLCs that came out at that time. There are also cosmetic DLCs as well. Now, there's one cosmetic DLC that is available for the game, and it's included and working in the pirated version, BUT I CAN'T BUY IT ON STEAM BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING REGION LOCKED. And it costs like 1 dollar! What the fuck? I really, REALLY would like to buy it. I want to buy the stupid thing but they don't want my money apparently because I'm not in their preferable region.
So what I ended up doing is buying the whole game on Steam, and playing the pirated version anyway because it has more stuff in it. Fuck this so much, honestly.
And now imagine being a member of EU, have one of the strongest currency in world and one of the easiest accessible banking system with world known credit cards(VISA, Mastercard) and you can NOT access Netflix, Amazon etc just because(geoblocking), and when we finally got access to Netflix(Amazon still NOT in the list, Xbox Game Pass was added to us as a beta couple of month ago) we get fraction of the content than other countries.
We don´t pay the companies in goats or vegetables, it IS the same money that everybody else in our region is using, the connection is good, WiFi in EVERY coffee shop and can NOT stream content even if I WANT to PAY for it.
Im always checking 3-4 different sites to pay for the movie, but I just can NOT. And switch to alternative methods. I got some DVDs which I could watch back in the day, but they are protected by some BS DRM which doesn´t work on modern machines anymore. And I can´t watch the DVD that I PAID for and I even can´t re-buy it in internet... How stupid is that.
The reason for the region block could also be that the region has some restrictions for content in said DLC. Companies want your money, trust me on this, lol
If we think dealing with the paperwork & laws in our own country is bad….I can’t imagine doing the paperwork for 194 countries. 🙀
I remember being a teenager in 2009 politely pleading with Paypal to come to our country. Since the system was so “ugh” almost no one had a credit card that would work with the internet then. Customer service was nice enough to reply in detail to a teenager. It was basically paperwork.
The legal team & the international infra couldn’t penetrate the bureaucracy, laws, permits, regulations yet. Especially when it comes to international money. Took even a rich VC-funded well-connected company several more years to come into our market.
And now that I know enough of business, I’m guessing not enough manpower to prioritize certain countries. There’s only so much lawyers, paralegals, and workers in a team. Maybe even protracted legal battles in some parts of the world. Plans and ideas are unfortunately easier than executing them.
Did you try with VPN?
I used to work in royalties for video games, which include licensing of the games in different countries.
Many times the reason a game isn't available in a region is that the company which makes the game doesn't have the rights to sell their own game in other countries. For example I've seen games that were created by a company from Japan. That company can sell the game in Japan, but for the US and Canada a different company sells the game. The reason for this is that maybe the developer of the game doesn't have a presence in said country, or they just don't want to deal with publishing in general since they just want to focus on the game creation. There are many companies out there which deal with publishing things.
In this example the publishing company in the US sometimes might decide to not sell for whatever reason...
Sometimes royalty payments don't even cover the costs needed to pay the accountants to document that there was sales. So at some point they just remove the product from the store so to not have to worry about those payments.
Or maybe the contract with the publisher expires and the developer doesn't want to renew the contract with the publisher. Again the developer might not even have a presence in the specific markets, so again the costs to keep the game going is to much for the developer to incur.
I've seen both scenarios multiple times in my tenue at that job, there is a lot of things that go on behind the scenes with copyright which people don't think about.
Nope, you are absolutely right. I was happy when Netflix started, it was affordable, easy, and made me think that my piracy days were over. Boy I was wrong. And about TH-cam, I do pay for premium (for kids shows) but still use pipe and vanced. Because they are still way better value than the official app with the subscription. I am worried about the new generation, they seem happy not to own anything, not even the personal data they have...
Vanced stopped working a few weeks ago sadly 😭😭
@@AConquerorsVendetta Revanced. Nothing more, nothing less.
Tech-literate parents need to explain these things to their kids.
@@michaelwtm In my opinion, all sides are missing this crucial fact and I feel that (at least in my country), the kids know more about this than parents.
If you pay youtube for premium,
YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
I remember reading or seeing a documentary where Apple was forced into making sure you could only play a song on five devices. The deal that probably saved the record labels was almost turned down, because iTunes was promoted as a one stop shop for rip, download, and burn. An executive thought “rip” was meant to be “rip off” instead of extracting the data off of you purchased cd.
I totally agree. I expect things to "just work". If paying for it makes me jump through hoops and piracy doesn't, then you've lost my money. I remember years ago that I used to play a computer game and religiously bought all the expansion packs they came out with... until one of them refused to install because I had an ISO mounting program on my machine. That was the last expansion pack I bought. I pirated that pack and all packs after that because they'd actually install.
I would love to know what game this was. That’s crazy
i would like to know the game too
The thing is... you can have an ISO mounting program on your computer for totally legit reasons. "I want to make backups of my physical media with an ISO maker. I want to put as many of these ISOs on a Flash Key. Oh, damn, my case doesn't have support for 5.25" DVDs anymore, system can't play older games on physical DVD, etc." and some games will still think "ISO mounting = piracy" which is total BS.
This is why this whole thing is so bizarre to me. You didn't like something so you decided to pirate it and you justify it by saying you didn't like something. This can apply to pretty much any kind of piracy and any kind of theft. I didn't like that my favorite candy was way in the back of the store so to make up for it I stole it. I mean yeah but its stealing.
Its just bizarre that we can build pretty crazy technology and then in a small amount of time get used to it as if its a part of nature. We think its just normal for it to work perfectly and when it doesnt something is terribly wrong and we are being ripped off. So we don't like ads on youtube but we don't want to pay creators either so we pay for youtube premium to not have ads and then say that we "totally would give to creators but we already pay for premium." But we already tried that avenue and it doesn't work, at all because again people just expect stuff to work and be free. As part of premium we can download videos to our youtube profile but not locally (even though there are supers easy ways to do so if you know a little bit of coding, just go to github lol) because youtube tried to allow us to download videos locally and it wasn't feasible.
What youtube ultimately does is provide an absolutely insane amount of data to be available to its users. This translates to a lot of energy, space, hardware, technology, and resources like water to keep all of it cool but since we don't see any of that think its just supposed to show up magically on our phones and computers.
All of this to say. We want shit for free, we don't want to pay people for anything, we want it to work 100% right 100% of the time and if we don't we throw a fit. We can make fun of "mommy and daddy youtube making decisions for us" all we want but maybe it should be that way because the vast majority of their customers are entitled toddlers and they just realize that.
Not quite the same but I had an Xbox One and played Skyrim with DLCs etc, all of which I’d purchases through Microsoft Store. When bought a new Xbox series X, it then turned out I had to buy the game and all the DLCs again if I wanted to play them on the new console. Like, why is Microsoft punishing me for spending £££ of my money on their new console?? It’s literally the same game! If I had bought the game discs I would not have had this problem so I learned my lesson. I don’t purchase downloads anymore, I only buy the physical game discs.
I agree with this completely. Don't reward bad behavior by a company.
The way you don't reward bad behavior is by not using the product or service. Using it anyway is your entitlement and narcissism.
@@Ryan-093 Entitlement would be when one refuses to pay.
If anything, they are ready to give money to the service to use. Except when they give money, the company rewards them with a stupid behavior. At that point, they just withdraw their money, yet keep using the service.
Because at that point, the company is punishing themselves for not doing what they sell their service to do.
It's not narcissistic. It's reality. If they wanna give you money but you don't give them back what you claim you're gonna give, they just gonna loot what they want at that point
@@Ryan-093 that's bullshit. Google doesn't give a crap about us quitting the platform. They're much more mad about people watching ad free content without paying premium.
And that's what I do. More features than YT Premium for 0$/yr. And I can customize the app features to revert Google's stupid mistakes.
✨ ReVanced ✨
@@Ryan-093 for example
Amazon says they have a show. And it's available to watch. I'm able to watch the preview and everything.
I like it, so I pay a subscription. After paying, just about to play the actual video, Amazon tells me the content isn't available in my country.
Wait whaaat? Guess where I'll be heading next after cancelling my subscription
@rosskrt so you are an entitled / narcissist. If i don't like the price or service then I abstain from the product/service.
TH-cam has so many ads now that I refuse to give them my money for premium because of how much the unskippable nature and shear quantity of their ads pisses me off
Gabe Newell Quotes
The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.
The easiest why to stop piracy is actually pricing the content according to that country needs because paying 100$ for a game where the salary is 300-400$ makes 0 sense
Double post. Mod, plz delete
all the devs ramming Denuvo into games missed the memo. GabeN the goat
Not unlike most organized crime ventures. The same logic applies.
what gabe didn't know is that pirates almost always have better service. because they aren't scared of lawyers or SJWs.
You are absolutely right. This crap is happening more and more. Companies are no longer trying to provide value for money, but instead they're finding more ways into your wallet WITHOUT providing a fair value. There used to be competition to take care of stuff like that. It seems like now competition had gone rogue.
nah the competition is now who can dime you for more...
Ridiculous. Businesses have been trying to milk people for money for as little work as possible since the dawn of civilization. The only difference today is that straight robbery is more easily conflated with some ridiculous monetization scheme.
I don't normally take the time to comment unless I feel genuinely compelled to and in this case, I do. I completely agree with you on this, and it's entirely absurd that these companies think think this is in any way ok. Hopefully things change direction in the future before it gets to a breaking point. Thanks for the work you've been doing, please keep it up. Your efforts mean a lot.
The "breaking point" was them losing cable subscribers to streaming. They had a perfect system - nearly every household had a TV subscription and it made them billions, but they got too greedy with pricing, segmentation, and ads. Now these companies are trying to do the same thing to streaming.
Thanks
I'm not watching ads.
I have never for one second feit bad about it.
I use Patreon to support favored creators.
Most of the channels I watched are demonized anyway.
I can't stand utube I wish they didn't have a monopoly on content.
And there we go. I will NEVER support a creator monetarily unless I realize I can afford it, AND can donate to them.
*demonetized
Agreed. People should be more pissed off about how they're being treated by corporations.
Ya bring it upon yourself.
@@prettyshortshorts We didn't land in Sherwood Forest, Sherwood Forest landed on us.
Too many NPCs playing live service video games leads to live service everything else.
An enterprise like TH-cam really should have to live up to extended legal requirements once they grow so big in a popular field of media that their service effectvely becomes a monopoly in multinational markets. Nobody is able to police TH-cam's own policies and that's a major threat to society as a whole.
The EU legislative bodies are sadly too preoccupied with Apple and other tech giants to bother with online content unless it's outrageously oppressive, and YT is very well versed in sailing right under the radar.
The funniest part of "you can't watch this in HD" is because you have something that doesn't support DHCP attached to your PC so they can't be sure that you are not recording the movie ...
Yes, it's anti piracy.
They are trying to stop you from pirating stuff by giving you the incentive to go out of your way to pirate stuff. Good job guys!
Btw, do you what 'schizo' browser Louis was using?
I am not sure how HDCP would stop people from copying the movie (at least the experts). If you understand things then you can make a device which is able to read the signals going to LCD displays (I am sure there are easier ways to do this, probably capture the whole thing when it's still compressed with codec) but it should be possible). And they are low-level signals which are not encrypted. But maybe I am wrong, maybe they did already something that even LCD panel signals are now encrypted, who knows.
@@gpsoftsk1 There's literally zero way to stop the raw HDMI signal from being ripped. You'd need to also make the TV, Cable and Device that it's watched on, and if any of those aren't yours the signal could be intercepted at any point.
@@gpsoftsk1 yup.
You can get some DHCP compliant recording devices if you don't mind a bit of sketchiness (if I understand correctly it steals the ID of a DHCP compliant screen, so you're computer is sure it's a screen when it's a recording device)
It's just a small inconvenience, that will stop the least dedicated of people. It will not stop the teams that basically spend their free time uploading HD torrents.
Yes, it's dumb.
It can leads to stupid issues. For instance I only know about DHCP because I was trying to use a TV box with a 20m passive hdmi cable to connect to my projector, and sometimes because of the length of the cable the handshake would fail.
Yes, it's sketchy to use a passive cable for those distances, but it works just fine 99.9% of the time... I am not going to be spending active cable money when I KNOW it stopped working because of a firmware update on the TV box !
DHCP is stupid, and probably forced onto streaming services by distributors, and it just increase the pros for piracy and the con for being a functioning part of the system...
@@gpsoftsk1 actually now that I think about it it is likely that the DHCP compliant recorders are just repurposed s monitor driver with a capture card attached. Basically a screen but you replace the pixels by a capture card, so it just appears as a screen to anything connected to it.