As a guy from Russia, I must admit that vpns are not a big problem for censors. They can be easily blocked, including self-hosted ones by protocol detection. And DNS would not do much with IP and clienthello-based blocks. And most users are not enough tech-savvy to constantly switch to new protocols as old ones get blocked.
VPNs can't be categorically banned in the US without major first amendment issues. It's not a huge technical issue, but unless the courts just throw out the Constitution (a risk that we're seeing too much of, but still a meaningful bar to cross), there are huge legal barriers to doing so.
Your government doesn't need to care about legal barriers because you have a dictator who can act unilaterally.
I think the shareholders with enough shares to have influence are the ones who encourage this sort of behavior - if it's a long-term profit at the expense of short term, they aren't interested
He also told the audience that pirate-site operators "aren't teenagers playing an elaborate prank. The perpetrators are real-life mobsters, organized crime syndicates—many of whom engage in child pornography, prostitution, drug trafficking, and other societal ills.
I'm honestly surprised they didn't throw the word 'terrorist' into that description as well.
...Many of whom engage in child pornography, prostitution, drug trafficking, murder, terrorism, poisonings, Hentai, bad DIY, unsolicited advice, telling women to smile, wearing JNKOs, hacking banks, and NOT FLOSSING!
Especially eye-roll-inducing considering the pedophile problem in Hollywood hasn't really gotten better, let alone been solved. Many of the exec types demanding things change are likely to be either perpetrators themselves, or sympathisers with the perpetrators of this behavior, and they tell us what we should believe is right or wrong based on the almighty dollar? Fuck Hollywood in general, but especially fuck the movie industry executives in charge. Greedy bastards.
Aren’t those things already illegal? Wouldn’t the solution be to just go after the pirate-site owners for those reasons? Then the only pirate-site owners remaining will be regular people—the vast minority, they would have you believe.
Are we surprised that the people that make up fantastical scenarios are selling a fantastical scenario? The people pirating are every day people that don't want to pay so much for entertainment. You inept dolt.
I have found and become a big fan of tv shows that I would have never had the chance to see because of piracy, one of my favourite shows 'Corner Gas' never once aired in my home country. Thank you piracy for helping me find good entertainment.
Yup, I go to movies when they look good. But movies are so expensive these days that the bar is raised enough that I rarely go. If you're going to ask $10-15 for a single viewing, you need to make a really good movie.
And adjust the fucking business model so that theatres can make money from people just buying tickets at reasonable prices and don't have to try to gouge them at the concession stand or treat them like criminals for bringing their own food.
I've been to one movie in the theatre since the pandemic and the main thing it did was remind me that seeing movies in a theatre just wasn't really worth it anymore.
Companies “demand” shit and then just literally write the laws and hand them to legislators who pass them.
Well, Congress only hears one side, they don't read Lemmy to get the other side.
They have no respect for their constituency, because they think their constituency doesn't care enough to engage them about it, and are 'dumb' enough to vote them back in the office again.
There was a study recently that showed legislators’ votes are affected by like .3% by input from constituents. I’ll try to find it again, but I can’t say I’m surprised.
What year is this? 2008?!? Now we have Netflix and piracy is not a problem, right? Oooohhhh right they decided to kill the golden egg chicken but they still want the eggs
Streaming services went complete degen mode (exclusives that require you 6 different subscriptions). So people went back to pirating. Old rule - you are less convinient than pirate sites, people will just pirated instead.
That and quality of the shows going downhill, especially on Disney and Netflix
I still don't understand why they keep going after piracy when it is a symptom of the bigger problem. Movies today are expensive and often made inaccessible through BS digital services that periodically just make films and TV unavailable to save server space or avoid paying for licensing.
I would guess that the vast majority of people are not pirating content. I'd also guess that if digital providers and studios would actually try to change the distribution model that allows customers to buy content that is later turned off on a whim, they would see meaningful change in piracy activity.
Because piracy is the boogieman that allows them to wrestle more power and profit from everyone around them like the parasites they are. They want a cut every time anyone ever watches something, ever. And they want to control if you even have the option of what to watch.
Once Neuralink's installed adn they start selling off our thoughts to information collection bureaus, they're gonna want us to pay a license for everytime we think about someting not in the public domain
I live in the EU, have all major streaming subscribtions within the family, and we couldn’t watch Terminator 2 anywhere. One of the most famous classic action movie, not even available for purchase on Apple TV.
I still don’t understand why they keep going after piracy when it is a symptom of the bigger problem.
It doesn't have to be rational "profit-maximization". Look at comments in threads that pertain to AI training, web scraping, etc. A lot of ordinary people seem to believe that this is how it's supposed to go.
I demand laws requiring the movie industries to throw any IPs they don't want to use or any movies they don't give reasonable and simple access straight into the public domain
No. Copyright laws originally allowed creators to profit of their work for 28 years, which is perfectly fair and reasonable. Corporate lobbying extended copyright to 70 years past the author's death, which is obviously insane, since creators can't profit off their work after they die. But just because corporations perverted the law in an attempt to retain IP indefinitely, it doesn't mean that copyright law itself is bad, and wanting reasonable protection for an authors IP doesn't make you a useful idiot.
Wage theft and fraud poses a larger threat to the economy. Rather than hiring 20 million dollars of internet policing to save zero dollars of the economy could we get 20 million dollars of police that prosecute fraudsters and shitty employers?
Oh no, now I will have to pay $50/mo to re-watch marvel movie 832 and an action movie where the main character has to go on a 2hr quest for revenge after someone shot their pet.
...I barely watch movies anymore, there's not been a ton of great new stuff imo. I'm so sick of subscriptions, too.
I would propose a law that states " All companies must keep their data away from the Internet. If the data ends up in the Internet then it's up for grabs by anyone"
Nah, but definitely limit it to 10-15 years. The original term in the US was 14 years, with an optional, one-time extension for another 14 years. I'd be down with that.
Half a year later, additional categories are added for CSAM. And another year later for illegal copies and cracks. All the while some states openly missuse it against porn and abortion. We know that game already!
For all the random crap American ISPs have done, the one thing they usually don't do is piracy monitoring unless they get paid a premium to do it.
Like Disney pays ISPs and other data companies to track torrent peers and report any IPs in the USA. But I bet you at&t would not care at all if they weren't being paid for it lol.
If it's that big a deal go after the service providers for the servers, this type of shit just makes inhibiting free speech easier.
If I don't want people using Truth Social I guess making a bunch of accounts to share torrent links would be enough to shut it down?
The MPAA still has never been able to demonstrate that privacy even has actual impacts on movie and ticket sales... When Netflix was super convenient and had a lot of content piracy went down. Turns out splitting to dozens of streaming services made it difficult enough that people just went back to sailing the high seas. So lower your prices, make it more convenient to pay for services and people will just do that instead.
Frankly combining the recent and less recent events - I think fuck them.
I can understand selling a book or a movie and it being theft to download a copy. It's at least logically consistent - you show someone something with a condition that they pay you, it's dishonest to look and not pay.
But owning characters and universes and their names and so on?
And these laws not being used against "AI" firms?
All at the same time?
No. Right is about compromise. They don't do that, so we don't owe them anything. And let them obey what is made for their benefit first.
Instead of being contempt with one yacht, they're gonna do what they can to have zero.
When A24 and state run film studios like Vicscreen are the only ones making anything remotely worth the box office, you have a problem, and burning down the barn to stop the foxes from all those delicious hens aren't gonna fix it. Just more socialized losses.
While TOR does accept funds from the U.S. federal government it is not a honey pot. Given tor is free and open source it is easy to verify the security of the software.
I use fedora btw (use open source software you fools)
Been doing torrents for about.. I don't even know now. 25 years? I've got the same setup. What makes use et better? I still don't get it. I tried it once. It was weird, I had to grab a bunch of files and combine them or something, and I'm mystified how it's any different than downloading off someone's server and how they're able to skirt around site takedowns. You have to pay for it too. Is the lifetime of files even any good? When I tried it I remember you had to take what you could get while it was still there.
I’m mystified how it’s any different than downloading off someone’s server
A huge difference is you actually are downloading off someone's server - unlike torrents where you're actively participating in the distribution of pirated material. If you ever do end up on the wrong end of a copyright case.. that difference will be important.
Depends on your country’s laws, but where I live you get busted for PROVIDING copyrighted material for download - not for downloading it. Unlike a torrent, you aren’t sharing with anyone else.
Couple years ago when I first set up Radarr, I found the same shit was on Usenet as the private trackers I was on, so I just stopped torrenting.
Honestly these movie companies are doing it to themselves.. When I was a kid in the 90s movies would take 3-6 months for home media, now it is like 1-2 months tops combine that with $15 tickets and I'll give it a wait and see.
Holiday movies wouldn't see a release until the following year.
Hmmm, yes. Build a whole generation of tech savvy people with knowledge of VPNs and that activelly hate your guts.
I cannot foresee any way this could backfire.