Comment by ryandrake
4 days ago
Another thing that always needs pointing out: that ad-free, copyable, unencumbered, pixel perfect 4K drm-free rip with multiple language audio streams, hand crafted accurate subtitles, chapter tags, and embedded poster art cannot be bought from the movie industry at any price. That's why piracy is a product problem, not a price problem. The industry refuses to produce and offer the superior product, so regardless of the price, piracy is the only way to get it.
There used to be this funny anti pirate advertisement, that tried to raise awareness in people to check if they maybe have a pirated DVD and not the original.
Somehing like, make sure your DVD
- has unskippable advertisment - long intro, also unskippable - ...
If you don't have all that, but just a video that just plays the movie, you got to rush to the store and buy the legal obstructed version.
I actually remember getting so frustrated that I ripped some of my DVDs, made a copy without that, and put it in the same case so that I could just enjoy the movie. VHS you could always fast forward, which is not something I thought I would miss as much as I do. Physical goods that work offline are my default.
When you watch on vhs or laserdisc the loss of resolution only bothers you til the movie sucks you in.
At that point it’s irreverent because your eyeballs are not watching a long sequence of pretty still pictures, but rather your brain is watching a story in a way similar to reading a good book.
This is so true, I pirated movies that I was ready to pay for so many times, just because they weren't available in my area, or there were no subtitles, or they only offered 720p.
You can download a MTK file at 4K with multiple audio tracks and subtitles and more often than not there are enough seeders to just start watching it while it downloads in the background.
They need to wake up.
Despite paying for Netflix and Disney+ and Prime and etc, I have pirtated 1080 copies, with subtitles, of all our favorites because network access is unreliable and service provides add and remove media without warning.
As has been said before, the pirated copies are frequently a higher quality product than is available for purchase or rent.
Disney+ is notorious for this. Disney also has a number of shows that they refuse to provide on physical media. If they are removed from their platform and not licensed elsewhere they effectively become lost media.
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Pirated media also can't be silently and remotely censored or edited. It's also increasingly the only way to consume media where somewhere somebody isn't keeping a highly detailed record of every time you access it (when, where, how long, how often, etc.).
You can't even watch a DVD or bluray these days without a record of what you're watching and when being stored and sent over the internet. Companies like Roku are doing multiple screencaptures every second and uploading those to content recognition systems.
Can't you use bluray players without a network connection?
Not really. If the discs you have play today, they may or may not continue to work offline depending on the player, but every so often discs are released your player won't have the right keys for and those won't play until you connect your player to the internet so it can download the newest set of keys. Some keys will expire after a certain amount of time (for example the PS3 warned they'll only last 12 to 18 months https://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/vide...) and you'll have to connect the player to the internet to watch content that used to work. The manufacturer of your player could also shut down their server and stop providing updated keys and then you'd have to buy a new player to play any new discs. New discs can also break your old players (https://old.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/vcaniv/help_wi...). The capability is also there for them to revoke keys entirely which will stop your old discs from working even if you connect to the internet and you'll be forced to repurchase your movies, but I haven't seen that used so far.
It's also a usability thing.
Downloaded stuff comes into one service on a server I own (Jellyfin or Plex) and I can see _everything_ there. Every movie and TV show.
On the official services, that I pay for, I need to go through a good half dozen trying to see what's where this time.