There are many other reasons people pirate, it's not all about convenience and cost. Personally I would never pay a cent to Disney again, because I do not like them and do not want to support their business. A lot of people would not pirate anything if they could pay the creators directly, without the questionable middlemen.
The good news is that many of the problems can be solved with a single solution. Bring back pay-to-own, make it convenient by having marketplaces where you simply pick and payments are done automatically in the background. Give artists and creators the ability to self-publish on the platforms. That in turn will bring down the cost, because now the money goes directly to them.
What's that you say, a team of hundreds of people has worked on a movie? That can all be baked into the token if payments are handled by a smart contract and they can each get their exact percentage with each sale.
Seems a lot fairer for everyone involved. It will also increase quality again, or at least give a boost to productions people want to see. The issue with the current model is that viewers are not directly voting with the wallets anymore, the studios do it for them. That will not stand, there is a growing disconnect between what these corporations produce and what people actually want to see. You can hear people complain all over about how the quality of movies and TV shows is declining. The subscription model is flawed, sooner or later it will die.
making a movie requires upfront investment. either through crowdfunding or through dedicated investors like those studios.
so i see no way to completely eliminate the middlemen, because they will want to recoup their investment.
we could argue that everyone should get a share of the profits, but with that argument comes the downside of everyone also needing to take a cut when a film makes a loss.
i am not sure if i wouldn't prefer just get paid a fair salary for the work and let someone else take that risk.
Studios like money and will produce what makes money. When that changes, they’ll slowly adapt. Slowly being the key word. People love their blockbusters, though, so that’s less likely to change.
lol. I scrolled to find “smart contact” and found it. This is completely unrealistic, utopian thinking. I’ll risk the egg on my face when indie Iron Man 4 comes out.
> Sure enough, The Software Alliance—a Washington, D.C. anti-piracy organization—claimed digital piracy declined by 37 percent in 2017.
Since The Software Aliance only estimates piracy of PC software, this seems like a weird source to quote in an article about media piracy.
I also wonder, now that people get scary notices from their ISP whenever they torrent anything, if more people are turning to less-easy-to-track alternatives?
> I also wonder, now that people get scary notices from their ISP whenever they torrent anything, if more people are turning to less-easy-to-track alternatives?
Do people still get these notices? I recall getting one many years ago, but after starting to use a VPN for any torrent traffic, I haven't gotten one.
As an aside, the moment a streaming service removes the ad-free plan, or drastically increases price of ad-free, will be the moment that service is canceled for many people. I've recently canceled Prime and am now downloading the shows I hadn't yet finished or wanted to watch again.
Additionally, I fully understand this is my own entitlement, but if I've paid licensing fees[0] for content for a period of time then I feel zero guilt about downloading that content if the service changes the terms of the deal, such as by removing ad-free viewing.
I bring this up fairly often but I do not understand why people’s default privacy mental image is torrenting and not the perfectly convenient Netflix clones like Sflix that require no software
[+] [-] trompetenaccoun|2 years ago|reply
The good news is that many of the problems can be solved with a single solution. Bring back pay-to-own, make it convenient by having marketplaces where you simply pick and payments are done automatically in the background. Give artists and creators the ability to self-publish on the platforms. That in turn will bring down the cost, because now the money goes directly to them.
What's that you say, a team of hundreds of people has worked on a movie? That can all be baked into the token if payments are handled by a smart contract and they can each get their exact percentage with each sale.
Seems a lot fairer for everyone involved. It will also increase quality again, or at least give a boost to productions people want to see. The issue with the current model is that viewers are not directly voting with the wallets anymore, the studios do it for them. That will not stand, there is a growing disconnect between what these corporations produce and what people actually want to see. You can hear people complain all over about how the quality of movies and TV shows is declining. The subscription model is flawed, sooner or later it will die.
[+] [-] em-bee|2 years ago|reply
so i see no way to completely eliminate the middlemen, because they will want to recoup their investment.
we could argue that everyone should get a share of the profits, but with that argument comes the downside of everyone also needing to take a cut when a film makes a loss.
i am not sure if i wouldn't prefer just get paid a fair salary for the work and let someone else take that risk.
[+] [-] cocacola1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Grimblewald|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cqqxo4zV46cp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwalton|2 years ago|reply
Since The Software Aliance only estimates piracy of PC software, this seems like a weird source to quote in an article about media piracy.
I also wonder, now that people get scary notices from their ISP whenever they torrent anything, if more people are turning to less-easy-to-track alternatives?
[+] [-] hightrix|2 years ago|reply
Do people still get these notices? I recall getting one many years ago, but after starting to use a VPN for any torrent traffic, I haven't gotten one.
As an aside, the moment a streaming service removes the ad-free plan, or drastically increases price of ad-free, will be the moment that service is canceled for many people. I've recently canceled Prime and am now downloading the shows I hadn't yet finished or wanted to watch again.
Additionally, I fully understand this is my own entitlement, but if I've paid licensing fees[0] for content for a period of time then I feel zero guilt about downloading that content if the service changes the terms of the deal, such as by removing ad-free viewing.
[0] - A subscription to a streaming service
[+] [-] jncfhnb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sweetdekker|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sapere_Aude|2 years ago|reply
The EU Suppressed a 300-Page Study That Found Piracy Doesn’t Harm Sales https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-...