Game of Thrones (the most pirated show of last year) comes out in March. Still not for sale at any price unless you have a cable package AND one of their authorised ISPs (plus $18+tax/month).
Maybe companies like HBO should update their business practices to something roughly compatible with 2013, instead of trying to legal threat everyone into submission.
If they sold it on iTunes, YouTube, or Hulu+ they'd convert tons of pirates into paying customers. People want to give HBO their money but HBO literally won't take it...
HBO knows it's 2013. It's built a Netflix competitor. They have the whole tech stack for subscription internet streaming running and proven. They're signing 10-year content deals with exclusivity agreements that simultaneously give them a future catalog to rival Netflix while locking Netflix out of acquiring the same top-quality content. HBO has all its ducks in a row, it's playing the long game.
All they're waiting for is the tipping point in consumption habits. Today, most of their subscribers are paying $17+/month via bundling with cable TV, and every major cable provider in the country is heavily advertising them for free. The moment they can go independent and accept subscribers without going through a cable company is the moment the trickle of people dropping cable TV in favor of internet media turns into a tide. It's not today. If they split from cable today, they'd lose free advertising to hundreds of millions of people a year, and they'd likely earn far less per month from each subscriber they pick up.
The game is protecting cable TV from total disruption by the Internet. Cable is the big cash cow. That's also why there's such a powerful, almost jihad-like effort to keep sports off the net. A lot of sports fans have cable to watch the game.
How is HBO "trying to legal threat everyone into submission"?
I've purchased seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones on Bluray. I don't have cable yet HBO managed to take my money just fine. I bet those seasons are still heavily pirated despite being available for purchase, just as people pirate movies, TV shows, and music that has been available for legal purchase for years or decades. People just want to get shit without paying for it.
This is a tired argument born out of ignorance. You have no provided no evidence that the pirates would pay for it if they could, nor have you provided any evidence that HBO would make more money selling Game of Thrones to individuals than selling their network to the cable companies as an exclusive option for consuming their content.
When they'll start selling their videos without any DRM and in timely manner (and not months after the release) - then you can say they are actually competing with pirates. Until then - they aren't even trying to compete.
It's more complicated than sticking to outdated business practices. It's a classic innovator's dilemma.
People pay to subscribe to HBO (tv). If people could get a lot of that content by subscribing online, for cheaper, then lots of people will switch over. Which means HBO disrupts it's own cashcow moneymaker with something that makes less money.
These types of systems are highly susceptible to fog of war style mitigation. I'd like to find out who's providing the hardware behind the DPI.
Having worked for a subsidiary of Comcast (250k subs) within the past few years I saw a handful of closed door meeting with the FBI and a few locked 'Do Not Touch' racks. The US government is spinning out of control in overreach with regard to the Internet.
Whoever wants to fund an open access network with user protection and security as its core competency feel free to reach out. We'll seasoned network and security engineer waiting in the wings...
With SOPA destroyed by the combined efforts of giant internet companies and internet users calling their congressmen, Hollywood was able to engage another group: ISPs.
Note: this is done completely without government. It is one of the best illustrations to date of what I was saying, about nannies curtailing liberties being possible even if government doesn't do them.
To all libertarians that single out the government for special thrashing, I have a question: doesn't this show that wherever power concentrates, you will find stuff like this. Government is just an example. We always knew they didn't need the government, just all the major ISPs.
This absolutely was not done with no government, but was created as part of a partnership put together with the direction of the White House.
Also, there's no reason for a libertarian not to oppose concentration of power in anybody's hands, whether it's government or corporations. Let's let this thread focus on the issue at hand instead of derailing it into another fight between different quadrants of the political plane.
The telcos are government controlled, sponsored, and protected corporations. The entire industry is practically one giant government sponsored monopoly system.
We live in an era in which the US Government has the power to directly control every single aspect of the economy. Either directly or indirectly via threats. There are laws on the books to dictate everything and anything, using one agency or another.
This is nothing but government in action. Classic state sponsored corporatism, aka fascism lite.
We have a Hollywood sponsored President for crying out loud. They own him, every bit as much as people liked to claim big oil owned George W. And we have a VP that likes to break international law to fulfill Hollywood's demanding lobbyists.
One of the primary reasons this can even happen is because all the internet infrastructure in the US is already government granted monopoly on the local level. It isn't free market at all, which is why ISP's can collude like this and get away with it. Nobody has an option.
Though I am usually libertarian, I don't know a good way to see the mass deployment of essential 21st technologies like fiber / high speed rail / automated transport without the traditional forced violence method employed by government. You won't get those gifted through inheritance and chance with obscene wealth offering to build the next generation of infrastructure.
Almost all residential ISPs operate under government-granted monopolies, though. If this were not the case it's a lot less likely that "Hollywood" could get thousands of smaller competing ISPs on board.
This violates my perception of my ISP as a dumb pipe.
I want to pay a fair price (whatever that may be) for an internet service provider that exists only to connect subscribers to the internet, at reasonable speeds near their advertised rates.
The entire telecoms industry is digging everything it can into absolutely not being that. It's entirely not a market they want to be any, as it's a commodity service and therefore yields poor profit.
Well, here come the Dark Nets: "The RetroShare network allows people to create a private and encrypted file-sharing network. Users add friends by exchanging PGP certificates with people they trust. All the communication is encrypted using OpenSSL and files that are downloaded from strangers always go through a trusted friend.
This strikes me as a scary first step. The whole "re-education" spin is extra-scary; if I had a kid who downloaded something and was exposed to this kind of treatment, I'd be pretty loudly wondering who Comcast thinks it is to be "educating" my child with its propaganda.
What can we as techies do to combat this? How can we add a layer of encryption and anonymity that's so dead easy that it becomes ubiquitous?
TLDR: VPN's, I2P, VPS's, Usenet, Retroshare, Alternative ISPs, and spreading awareness of CAS and its countermeasures via active grassroots outreach and communication.
A seedbox is really the way to go. There are definitely a few additional steps you will need to get used to between you and your content, but its definitely worth it for peace of mind. There are also some nice benefits like being able to stream most media on demand rather then waiting for it to download.
A couple keys:
1) Get an extension for your browser that will automatically submit .torrent files to your seedbox.
2) Get a good multi threaded download manager for transferring from your seedbox to your pc. Regular browser downloads will not max our your connection. One linux I use aria2c (command line) and for windows, "free download manager" cannot be beaten.
VPN software, even setting up tunnelbrick on OSX is pretty easy for techies, but I imagine it can be pretty tough for newbs.
It'd be nice if there was a one-click type of process. Maybe where the credentials are transferred via web service using a login auth from the desktop client?
The technology for anonymity is there and adequate, just needs some proper UX design and user education.
I really wish business practices would change to meet this demand.
I recently came across crunchyroll [1] which has a huge amount of japanese animation available to watch online 'for free' if you can put up with ads, or you can pay $7/month to have ad free (as well as higher def).
What I find really awesome is that for many shows it is available online an hour after it is shown in japan (this is for paying members, free members have to wait a week).
I apologize if this seems like nothing special to you, but living in New Zealand I can really appreciate sites that are both affordable and don't lock me out because of my region.
Crunchyroll is a unique case. It started out as a typical pirate video site that basically streamed and profited off anime fansubs, then later managed to go legitimate by licensing anime from Japanese studios (presumably because it had a large audience and the studios decided to experiment with streaming to the international market). It's a one-off occurrence that I don't think has been duplicated by any other site since.
It'd be great if more pirate streaming sites started up and became legitimate, but it's unlikely to happen so easily with content owners who are more protective of their copyrights (e.g. US studios/channels). They'd probably sue instead of discuss licensing terms.
Hulu and Netflix need to go everywhere, but content licensing by region will always stand in their way. Here we're stuck with high-priced cable TV packages that I don't find appealing, and Amazon's ebook store isn't even available.
I'm not familiar with how that side of things works, how will they differentiate between legitimate torrent traffic, and traffic which contains pirated material? The video says that you'll be able to challenge alerts after you've received them, but is throttling pre or post that alert being filed?
Legitimate use from about an hour ago: Downloaded a fan remix album of some video game music (A torrent is the method they give on their website for downloading). Will that activity result in any kind warning flags?
Is this something that services like hidemyip circumvent? Or is it different since, I assume, my actual IP is visible when torrenting?
Welcome to fascism. Where corporate-government interests strictly control everything (Verizon and AT&T = US Government, since they've been granted government monopoly protections, they are in fact an arm of the Federal Government).
Obviously this is ridiculous, but I find it just absurd.
Who are the ISPs to tell their customers what is morally and legally right or wrong?
Are we not allowed to have a reverse method where we penalize the ISPs for their crimes? Of course not.
Guys, this is Hacker News, the breeding ground of entrepreneurship. One of you may to (for lack of a better buzzword) disrupt the ISP market. At least we have Fiber hopefully coming soon.
Personally I see this as another overbilled project on the part of the snake oil DRM industry to part content owners from their money. None of these schemes work long-term, as there are tons of different strategies for defeating them.
They don't even work short-term. In fact, this gives users the means and incentive to figure out how to pirate without it being visible to the ISP. Imagine you're a clueless user that keeps getting alerts about torrenting. Maybe you get a VPN or switch to a private torrent network, or whatever technological next step you need to take. Now the alerts stop and you're pirating safely (or at least, safer).
Seems like an automated version of current practices. "Owners" join a network of peers for a specific piece of content, and alert the ISP about offending IPs; ISP sends notices. Now it seems all this can happen automatically.
This is really bad. I don't care for piracy, but I'm really worried.
This is a prediction of the internet.. year 2020:
TOR, freenet or some new network is in size like p2p was 2013. It has got a lot of attention from ordinary people and developers and it's actually pretty fast now days. Pretty much everyone runs a relay, it's basically like it was running
uTorrent back in 2005 - not a big deal. While everything is free, which is quite nice for the pirate, it's also hell. Since everyone is basically untraceable, even Megan, the twelve year old who wants the new Disney movie. It's now totally impossible to trace down the terrorist, online drug-dealers, etc. The cyber-police is drowning in false positives, this because Megan and her classmates are using the same crypto-network.
Is this what we want? I think we should tackle the piracy problem from another angle. Let's start more services like spotify and hulu. Make it not worth it to pirate stuff because there is a awesome legal alternative.
If they know what you pirated, why don't the content providers just get your ISP to shut off your internet until you watch enough ads to make up for the cost (they could do a little rev-share to incentivize comcast). Piracy will exist as long as content providers insist on selling something that can no longer be sold.
> "it will issue escalating punishments to suspected pirates, severely reducing their connection speeds after five or six offenses" //
How would you punish person A but not punish person B who uses the same connection. How can you establish person A is guilty rather than person B in order to decide that A should be punished.
Why is copyright infringement now suddenly no longer to be decided by a proper legal process instead being decided by the plaintiff?
How will the legal system protect against the innocent being punished and ensure that due punishment for false claims made by plaintiffs is forthcoming.
Without a proper process to punish false (or evidentially unsupported) claims this surely breaches basic legal rights.
When companies share libellous legal claims about a person without evidence surely the USA legal system would punish those companies?!?
[+] [-] UnoriginalGuy|13 years ago|reply
Maybe companies like HBO should update their business practices to something roughly compatible with 2013, instead of trying to legal threat everyone into submission.
If they sold it on iTunes, YouTube, or Hulu+ they'd convert tons of pirates into paying customers. People want to give HBO their money but HBO literally won't take it...
[+] [-] dangrossman|13 years ago|reply
All they're waiting for is the tipping point in consumption habits. Today, most of their subscribers are paying $17+/month via bundling with cable TV, and every major cable provider in the country is heavily advertising them for free. The moment they can go independent and accept subscribers without going through a cable company is the moment the trickle of people dropping cable TV in favor of internet media turns into a tide. It's not today. If they split from cable today, they'd lose free advertising to hundreds of millions of people a year, and they'd likely earn far less per month from each subscriber they pick up.
[+] [-] api|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|13 years ago|reply
Looks like HBO was able to take my money just fine.
[+] [-] biot|13 years ago|reply
I've purchased seasons 1 and 2 of Game of Thrones on Bluray. I don't have cable yet HBO managed to take my money just fine. I bet those seasons are still heavily pirated despite being available for purchase, just as people pirate movies, TV shows, and music that has been available for legal purchase for years or decades. People just want to get shit without paying for it.
[+] [-] chimi|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zacharycohn|13 years ago|reply
People pay to subscribe to HBO (tv). If people could get a lot of that content by subscribing online, for cheaper, then lots of people will switch over. Which means HBO disrupts it's own cashcow moneymaker with something that makes less money.
[+] [-] beedogs|13 years ago|reply
I'm not about to wait a year to watch shows here in Australia that aired ages ago in the US. Get with the fucking times, HBO.
[+] [-] erichocean|13 years ago|reply
It's at Costco for $33.
[+] [-] guelo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reustle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agotterer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] windexh8er|13 years ago|reply
Having worked for a subsidiary of Comcast (250k subs) within the past few years I saw a handful of closed door meeting with the FBI and a few locked 'Do Not Touch' racks. The US government is spinning out of control in overreach with regard to the Internet.
Whoever wants to fund an open access network with user protection and security as its core competency feel free to reach out. We'll seasoned network and security engineer waiting in the wings...
[+] [-] EGreg|13 years ago|reply
With SOPA destroyed by the combined efforts of giant internet companies and internet users calling their congressmen, Hollywood was able to engage another group: ISPs.
Note: this is done completely without government. It is one of the best illustrations to date of what I was saying, about nannies curtailing liberties being possible even if government doesn't do them.
To all libertarians that single out the government for special thrashing, I have a question: doesn't this show that wherever power concentrates, you will find stuff like this. Government is just an example. We always knew they didn't need the government, just all the major ISPs.
[+] [-] nitrogen|13 years ago|reply
Also, there's no reason for a libertarian not to oppose concentration of power in anybody's hands, whether it's government or corporations. Let's let this thread focus on the issue at hand instead of derailing it into another fight between different quadrants of the political plane.
[+] [-] adventured|13 years ago|reply
The telcos are government controlled, sponsored, and protected corporations. The entire industry is practically one giant government sponsored monopoly system.
We live in an era in which the US Government has the power to directly control every single aspect of the economy. Either directly or indirectly via threats. There are laws on the books to dictate everything and anything, using one agency or another.
This is nothing but government in action. Classic state sponsored corporatism, aka fascism lite.
We have a Hollywood sponsored President for crying out loud. They own him, every bit as much as people liked to claim big oil owned George W. And we have a VP that likes to break international law to fulfill Hollywood's demanding lobbyists.
[+] [-] zanny|13 years ago|reply
Though I am usually libertarian, I don't know a good way to see the mass deployment of essential 21st technologies like fiber / high speed rail / automated transport without the traditional forced violence method employed by government. You won't get those gifted through inheritance and chance with obscene wealth offering to build the next generation of infrastructure.
[+] [-] ams6110|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] carbocation|13 years ago|reply
I want to pay a fair price (whatever that may be) for an internet service provider that exists only to connect subscribers to the internet, at reasonable speeds near their advertised rates.
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] richardwhiuk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] digitalengineer|13 years ago|reply
In other words, it’s a true Darknet and virtually impossible to monitor by outsiders. http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/
[+] [-] wmf|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thefreeman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kostya-kow|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acabal|13 years ago|reply
What can we as techies do to combat this? How can we add a layer of encryption and anonymity that's so dead easy that it becomes ubiquitous?
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|13 years ago|reply
http://www.reddit.com/r/evolutionReddit/comments/193m6k/six_...
TLDR: VPN's, I2P, VPS's, Usenet, Retroshare, Alternative ISPs, and spreading awareness of CAS and its countermeasures via active grassroots outreach and communication.
[+] [-] thefreeman|13 years ago|reply
A couple keys: 1) Get an extension for your browser that will automatically submit .torrent files to your seedbox. 2) Get a good multi threaded download manager for transferring from your seedbox to your pc. Regular browser downloads will not max our your connection. One linux I use aria2c (command line) and for windows, "free download manager" cannot be beaten.
[+] [-] dmix|13 years ago|reply
It'd be nice if there was a one-click type of process. Maybe where the credentials are transferred via web service using a login auth from the desktop client?
The technology for anonymity is there and adequate, just needs some proper UX design and user education.
[+] [-] cjh_|13 years ago|reply
I recently came across crunchyroll [1] which has a huge amount of japanese animation available to watch online 'for free' if you can put up with ads, or you can pay $7/month to have ad free (as well as higher def).
What I find really awesome is that for many shows it is available online an hour after it is shown in japan (this is for paying members, free members have to wait a week).
I apologize if this seems like nothing special to you, but living in New Zealand I can really appreciate sites that are both affordable and don't lock me out because of my region.
[1]http://www.crunchyroll.com/
[+] [-] creamyhorror|13 years ago|reply
It'd be great if more pirate streaming sites started up and became legitimate, but it's unlikely to happen so easily with content owners who are more protective of their copyrights (e.g. US studios/channels). They'd probably sue instead of discuss licensing terms.
Hulu and Netflix need to go everywhere, but content licensing by region will always stand in their way. Here we're stuck with high-priced cable TV packages that I don't find appealing, and Amazon's ebook store isn't even available.
[+] [-] kaybe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goostavos|13 years ago|reply
Legitimate use from about an hour ago: Downloaded a fan remix album of some video game music (A torrent is the method they give on their website for downloading). Will that activity result in any kind warning flags?
Is this something that services like hidemyip circumvent? Or is it different since, I assume, my actual IP is visible when torrenting?
[+] [-] adventured|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mehrzad|13 years ago|reply
Who are the ISPs to tell their customers what is morally and legally right or wrong?
Are we not allowed to have a reverse method where we penalize the ISPs for their crimes? Of course not.
Guys, this is Hacker News, the breeding ground of entrepreneurship. One of you may to (for lack of a better buzzword) disrupt the ISP market. At least we have Fiber hopefully coming soon.
[+] [-] api|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maqr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tbeseda|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] james4k|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a1a|13 years ago|reply
TOR, freenet or some new network is in size like p2p was 2013. It has got a lot of attention from ordinary people and developers and it's actually pretty fast now days. Pretty much everyone runs a relay, it's basically like it was running uTorrent back in 2005 - not a big deal. While everything is free, which is quite nice for the pirate, it's also hell. Since everyone is basically untraceable, even Megan, the twelve year old who wants the new Disney movie. It's now totally impossible to trace down the terrorist, online drug-dealers, etc. The cyber-police is drowning in false positives, this because Megan and her classmates are using the same crypto-network.
Is this what we want? I think we should tackle the piracy problem from another angle. Let's start more services like spotify and hulu. Make it not worth it to pirate stuff because there is a awesome legal alternative.
[+] [-] chucknibbleston|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] D9u|13 years ago|reply
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/07/nasa_dmca_takedown/
Who's to say there won't be more of the same with this system?
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|13 years ago|reply
How would you punish person A but not punish person B who uses the same connection. How can you establish person A is guilty rather than person B in order to decide that A should be punished.
Why is copyright infringement now suddenly no longer to be decided by a proper legal process instead being decided by the plaintiff?
How will the legal system protect against the innocent being punished and ensure that due punishment for false claims made by plaintiffs is forthcoming.
Without a proper process to punish false (or evidentially unsupported) claims this surely breaches basic legal rights.
When companies share libellous legal claims about a person without evidence surely the USA legal system would punish those companies?!?
[+] [-] yaddayadda|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html
[+] [-] bigphishy|13 years ago|reply