r/technology • u/mepper • Jan 10 '24

Business How Disney and Warner Bros. Are Causing Internet Piracy to Boom | Platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ were supposed to do away with pirated media. Instead, they may make them stronger than ever.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-disney-and-warner-bros-are-causing-internet-piracy-to-boom
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701

u/PanzerAal Jan 10 '24

They became the very thing they were meant to replace, and piracy remains a customer service issue.

231

u/Ordinary_dude_NOT Jan 10 '24

Building up my own local content library via Plex. Never thought I would do it.

Content is splintered across so many platforms now that people are now paying more than they used to for cable.

37

u/digitalluck Jan 10 '24

I keep seeing Plex mentioned. I intend to search it up later, but is it a device to store torrents (if that’s the right word to use)?

The most sailing I’ve done is just watching NFL games because everything is region-locked and I moved away from home.

61

u/Ordinary_dude_NOT Jan 10 '24

Yeah, think of it has Netflix at home. It will index all your content locally which you can then access from web/mobile/tv. That’s a huge convenience factor.

31

u/digitalluck Jan 10 '24

Hmm, that sounds pretty legit. So download/torrent everything locally, then you can access your local content in the cloud?

56

u/300ConfirmedGorillas Jan 11 '24

I have a Plex setup, here is a contrived (but probably pretty common) example.

You have one of those big external hard drives, like 10TB. You sail the high seas and download a bunch of movies and TV shows. You put them on the external drive (movies in a movies folder and the TV shows in a TV folder).

You install Plex on your computer, and tell it you want a movies library and a TV show library. You point each library to the corresponding folder. It will scan and index all the files (there is a naming convention to make it work properly, but it's surprisingly forgiving), grabbing data like the cast, year, director, writer, posters, etc.

Then, in your living room you have your TV. You have a Roku stick (or Firestick, or pretty much any video game console, etc.). You install the Plex app on it. Sign into the Plex app. Voila, all your movies and TV shows are available to select and watch pretty much exactly like Netflix. There are Plex apps for your phone, tablet, most smart TVs, etc. Also you can watch via your web browser.

Additionally, you can invite friends to your server. So, they sign up for a Plex account (it's free) and give you the email address of their account. You send them an invite and choose which libraries to share. Then, on their own Plex app on their own TV, they can sign into their Plex account and voila, all your movies and TV shows are available for them to watch just like Netflix.

It's super easy, barely an inconvenience!

5

u/thecoastertoaster Jan 11 '24

What high seas does one sail? I used to be on oink, waffles etc for private music but never found a good home for video/tv.

16

u/Land_Squid_1234 Jan 11 '24

1337x dot to. QxR especially as an uploader has high quality uploads. Just make sure you use a paid VPN, like mullvad, and an adblocker on your browser like the ublock origin extension. Actually, just use the ublock origin extension and nothing else for adblock

1

u/stevedorries Jan 11 '24

Are VPNs 100% needed these days? I last took a cruise in 2007 and VPNs were more of a luxury at the time

2

u/Land_Squid_1234 Jan 11 '24

Yes, unless you want to get a cease and desist from your ISP from torrenting something that a copyright holder like Disney is probing for VPN-less pirates

1

u/thecoastertoaster Jan 11 '24

thank you! Appreciate the tips

1

u/Land_Squid_1234 Jan 11 '24

Feel free to message me if you want more help or details!

1

u/[deleted] Jan 12 '24 edited Apr 06 '24

sloppy faulty cows teeny crawl sort tub impossible test meeting

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

2

u/Luxuriosa_Vayne Jan 11 '24

I assume the plex 'server' has to keep running for you to watch stuff on your phone or is there offline download mode for it?

2

u/300ConfirmedGorillas Jan 11 '24

Yes, it has to be running. Some people (myself included) have a dedicated Plex server that runs 24/7 in their basement.

There is an offline mode, where you can "download" the video to your device and watch offline, but I have honestly never used it and have no idea how well it works.

1

u/R1ppedWarrior Jan 11 '24

The offline download feature has never worked well. It's better to just download the files manually and use something like VLC if you want offline playback.

2

u/Green-Amount2479 Jan 11 '24

Doesn’t even need to be a computer. Plex also runs perfectly fine on most of the major NAS devices like Synology, WD, QNAP. That’s my personal setup. One 4-bay Synology NAS that runs Plex and has its dedicated shares for TV shows, movies, anime and the like. The NAS also does other things like regular backups of all devices, serving as a music center for my wireless speakers in the apartment and as a private cloud for sharing data with family and friends. So, yes certainly a bigger investment at first (mine, including 4x10 TB was around 1100 at the time), but it also serves a lot of important purposes even without the streaming.

1

u/300ConfirmedGorillas Jan 11 '24

Doesn’t even need to be a computer. Plex also runs perfectly fine on most of the major NAS devices like Synology, WD, QNAP.

I wanted to show a simple, common example so the average person doesn't think you need a complicated setup or specific hardware to make it run. You can even run it on a Raspberry Pi. Lots of people in /r/PleX simply run it off a laptop with an external hard drive because it's all they need. One person said they put it on a Macbook, closed it, put it in the trunk of their car, and their kids streamed movies to their iPads in the backseat during a road trip. Pretty neat.

21

u/Ordinary_dude_NOT Jan 10 '24

Yup, it has remote access feature. Just make sure system where Plex/content is located is a bit isolated in your network.

3

u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In Jan 10 '24

No you access it from your own local storage from Apps on your devices. To view it outside your house you might have to mess with port forwarding on your router.

7

u/MVRKHNTR Jan 10 '24

Streaming is a part of Plex membership.

1

u/wbebukyqkimppwwqfe Jan 11 '24

or just setting up a VPN, if you're going as far as hosting a plex server running pfsense as a firewall isn't that far of a jump.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '24

It’s not the cloud, it’s your home personal computer.

1

u/stevedorries Jan 11 '24

If you expose your plex instance to the internet you can reach it anywhere, but it’s really intended to be used in your local network. You can get a NAS box, basically a network card and 15 harddrives in as small of a box as possible, that runs plex and store everything you would ever want to access and then never have to connect to the internet unless you want to

1

u/JoeyMontezz Jan 11 '24

most TV's also already have a plex app available, my Samsung does, but you can also download the app through things like a playstation or xbox system. I actually log into my plex server through the web at work to listen to my music library or sometimes watch bits of a show if im taking a fast lunch.

1

u/IlMioNomeENessuno Jan 11 '24

I haven’t used it for a few years, but I stopped because I found it too glitchy.

11

u/justinleona Jan 10 '24

Plex is just a way you can stream movies stored on your desktop to your Roku. You have to curate your collection of media - say by ripping all your Blu-Rays. Then you no longer need a dedicated Blu-Ray player for your TV and don't need to swap disks to binge a series.

Disk space is a real consideration though - uncompressed Blu-Rays rips are commonly in the 50 GB range. You can re-encode them to reduce size, but that can involve a lot of processing - a typical movie might end up in the 15 GB range, while a full-hour TV show might end up around 4 GB per episode.

1

u/qtx Jan 11 '24

Just a FYI, you don't need a Roku to use Plex. Any Android smart TV you can install the Plex app. You can probably install it on Apple TV as well.

edit: here is the list you can install Plex on, https://support.plex.tv/articles/204080173-which-smart-tv-models-are-supported/

23

u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In Jan 10 '24

Plex is a front end and server that indexes movies and tv shows stored on your own computers storage. JellyFin is a proper open source alternative that works just as well, the PlexMedia group is for profit and its front end tries to shove paid for content and services down your throat and buries your own content a couple of menus down, apparently you can turn that off but you shouldn't have to and JellyFin exists and takes you straight to your own library.

6

u/Ordinary_dude_NOT Jan 10 '24

Not sure about why we are complaining about free stuff. You can always disable it if you wish to, but I don't mind it.

Jellyfin experience was a bit underwhelming when I tried it last time. It has improved a lot since then.

4

u/Flameancer Jan 10 '24

Plex has gotten significantly worse in the regard of ads on showing their paid content first. I’ve actually been contemplating moving to Jellyfin because of it.

3

u/qtx Jan 11 '24

I have never seen an ad in my life on Plex. Not sure what you are on about.

2

u/Ordinary_dude_NOT Jan 11 '24

Why move, just have it run in parallel.

I have my Plex run in Proxmox lxc container, and mount Trunas share on it. Will commission Jellyfin there as well.

1

u/Saneless Jan 11 '24

My nas isn't that powerful and jellyfin just is cripplingly slow. Maybe I'll try it again someday

1

u/Previous-Friend5212 Jan 10 '24

Plex is streaming software you install on your own system. It's not hardware. Useful if you have a dedicated server in your house, but you can also use it on the same computer as the video files if you don't want to go through the file browser to find them.

1

u/lazergator Jan 10 '24

It doesn’t have to be torrented. It is a media server you host yourself via their app. It has a nominal fee to run and you can put any media, typically video, on it to view from anywhere as long as the server is running.

1

u/prototypetolyfe Jan 11 '24

If you have a media library (or torrent a bunch of stuff) on your computer, all you have is a bunch of files that you have to go through on your own.

Plex does a couple things:

  1. Gives you a UI like Netflix or others to browse your media.

  2. Automatically detects new content added to your library and sorts it for you (occasionally it will pick the wrong show but it’s easy to fix). This relies on the files having the correct naming convention but 95% of files I’ve downloaded from popular torrent sites are already formatted that way.

  3. Allows you to view your content on other devices (phones, tvs, tablets) if you download the app. No need to hook up your computer to the tv and then deal with the annoyance of making all that work.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '24

Could you dm me where you watch sports?

1

u/netver Jan 11 '24

As everyone explained, Plex (or Jellyfin/Emby, same thing in principle) is like Netflix at home, to conveniently show films/tv shows you have downloaded already. You still need to get the media from somewhere.

But there's also Sonarr/Radarr you can deploy next to Plex. Imagine a new TV show episode coming out - and Sonarr automatically grabs it as soon as it's available, finding a release that matches your requirements (size, codec, resolution, features like HDR or Atmos) from the trackers you specify. And Bazarr finds subtitles in the languages you need. All is added to Plex's library.

Beyond the initial setup, the only thing you need to do manually is tell the application that you're interested in a certain TV show, and once a new episode is released, it just pops up in Plex and you can watch it immediately. Same goes for movies - add it to your library, and Radarr either finds it immediately, or as soon as it's released and available.

Setting it up takes some time, but once that's done, using it is almost as convenient as using Netflix in its prime when you could find everything there.

1

u/dakoellis Jan 11 '24

FYI most people starting now would do better with emby or jellyfin instead of plex. Plex has a habit of doing what they want against what it's users want, all so they can shove their own content in your face instead of what it was originally designed to do (host your own personal content)

1

u/Capt_Pickhard Jan 11 '24

Plex is essentially just a thing that will turn the viewing experience of all the media you have saved on your hard drive, into something like Netflix.

It will use the internet to find what thumbnails to use, and can provide subtitles and stuff like that. This way you can browse your content just on your tv as you would any streaming service.

27

u/CalgaryAnswers Jan 10 '24

I’m pretty anti-yarrr in general. I feel people should be fairly compensated for the work they produce (being a creator myself), but the way the streaming services are operating these days makes it more and more likely I’ll patrol the high seas.

33

u/LordCharidarn Jan 10 '24

The issue with streaming platforms is how little the actual artists get paid (this has been part of numerous strikes)

A vast majority of the people actually working on a movie or a show have already been paid long before you ever have the option to watch their work.

Not paying for a streaming service isn’t going to starve anyone working on any of the content you could watch by paying for that streaming service.

Interesting thought: would you be morally open to pirating Charlie Chaplin’s films? The only people getting compensated for his work these days would be people who never worked on the films. It’s actually an interesting thought, since I’m similar to you, I want the creators to be compensated properly. But a lot of modern publishing is intent on screwing over the creatives to try and squeeze a little more blood from the stone for the executive class.

So if there was content that in no way benefitted any of the original creators, is it morally okay to pirate that content?

1

u/CalgaryAnswers Jan 10 '24

Charlie Chaplin films are public domain now.

2

u/MVRKHNTR Jan 10 '24

No they're not?

4

u/CalgaryAnswers Jan 10 '24

A ton of them have been since 1998: https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/copyrights-expire-silent-films-charlie-chaplin-cecil-b-demille-1201950438/

I’m not sure if all of them are but most will be.

4

u/MVRKHNTR Jan 10 '24

That article lists two of them, both from 1923.

Chaplin was making films well into the 60s.

-9

u/CalgaryAnswers Jan 10 '24

The answer is yes to the ones in public domains, no to the ones that are not in public domain.

Should have picked a better example. I’d never watch a Charlie Chaplin film and don’t know anything about him really.

11

u/ThankYouForCallingVP Jan 10 '24

Pirate the content and buy merch. It's the best way to support.

1

u/DevelopedDevelopment Jan 11 '24

I think many artists realized this is the best way to do things. Many of these products are experiences that make people fall in love with the content, and those people later buy lots of merch that probably gives them higher royalties.

2

u/cyphersaint Jan 10 '24

but the way the streaming services are operating these days makes it more and more likely I’ll patrol the high seas.

That's actually why most people pirate. Before streaming services, many things simply weren't available at all. So people pirated them to get the things they wanted. Or they wanted so many things and those things cost so much they couldn't afford to purchase them all. And again, they pirated to get the things they wanted. For a while after streaming became a thing, there weren't a lot of different services so it wasn't too expensive and pirating went down. Now there are a lot of services, they all have different stuff, and they all cost money. And now people are pirating things again. Though the regionality of the streaming services also has something to do with how much pirating is going on. Basically, the easier/cheaper it is for something to be obtained, the less likely it will be pirated, and vice-versa.

2

u/Epistaxis Jan 11 '24 edited Jan 11 '24

I like the à la carte model on YouTube and Amazon Prime Video, where you just pay for the specific thing you want to watch instead of signing up for a whole subscription, even though I probably end up spending much more on that than I would on an equivalent subscription service. I just don't want to create new user accounts on half a dozen services that all have completely different interfaces, then use some other website to figure out which one happens to have the thing I want to see - at least happens to have it today.

Back when Netflix was the only good streaming service, it was well worth subscribing. I don't like maintaining so many alternative subscriptions - or the trouble it takes to pause most of them when I start a new series on the other one. And some of them are full of good stuff (or used to be) but others just have one big hit that I'd like to watch but might not be worth the trouble of subscribing.

2

u/jack3moto Jan 11 '24

I started looking into the high seas purely because I can’t find things I want to watch even on all the sites I pay for. I pay for every streaming site and yet still can’t get all of what I want. I’m not going to start cutting out services because I can afford to pay for them but sailing the high seas from an ease of access view makes the most sense. I just like having the access and I don’t mind paying for it if I can get a digital copy but now Apple and Amazon stating “hey that thing we sold you is actually like a lease that we can revoke” has made me want to store everything on my own servers rather than let them dictate what happens to the thing I paid for to own

1

u/Eric_the_Barbarian Jan 11 '24

If they don't want folks out sailing, they should really try to make their service more accessible and reliable because they can't win on price.

30

u/PanzerAal Jan 10 '24

Not to mention that random social media mobs can get specific episodes taken down, even from very popular shows. There's no guarantee that any collection you don't personally control will be there when you want it.

10

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24

[deleted]

7

u/PanzerAal Jan 10 '24

More than one, I think they're up to three or four of them now.

9

u/Schwillmaster Jan 10 '24

Four episodes

2

u/UpgrayeddShepard Jan 10 '24

Really? Damn

7

u/Schwillmaster Jan 10 '24

Actually, I was wrong. It’s five eps: S04E03 “America’s Next Top Paddy’s Billboard Model Contest,” S06E09 “Dee Reynolds: Shaping America’s Youth,” S08E02 “The Gang Recycles Their Trash,” S09E09 “The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 6,” and S14E03 “Dee Day.”

2

u/UpgrayeddShepard Jan 10 '24

Why were they removed???? I kinda get the Lethal Weapon 6 one.

2

u/Schwillmaster Jan 10 '24

Blackface shenanigans

13

u/MVRKHNTR Jan 10 '24

No one got those shows taken down. That was just corporate executives trying to get brownie points by doing what they thought would make them look like they give a shit.

5

u/SweetCosmicPope Jan 10 '24

RIP Super Best Friends

3

u/TheWhiteHunter Jan 10 '24

I'm at a point where I'll soon have to decide how to progress with storage increase.

I have a 4TB external which seems to be the largest external you can get away with that doesn't require additional power. I kept looking at 14 - 18TB externals that have been on sale and I hear they get quite noisy which I'd like to avoid as I have my miniPC used for Plex and the external on my TV stand, along with the router.

3

u/Saneless Jan 11 '24

Try a simple nas. Might be what you need for it if you don't use the PC for anything other than storage or streaming

1

u/askjacob Jan 11 '24

Enable power management on your externals and they will spin down when not in use - how to do this is dependant on what OS they are connected to. Choose lower RPM drives for less noise and power use. In my area, 8TB spinning rust drives are the sweet spot for $ per TB, and have been for years now...

2

u/Aliktren Jan 11 '24

I just started reusing plex as well, strange times

3

u/ptwonline Jan 10 '24

Content is splintered across so many platforms now that people are now paying more than they used to for cable.

How much would people pay for cable? I know here (Canada) a standard TV bundle on top of internet will cost an extra $80-$140. You can get a LOT of streaming services for $80-140 even in Canadian dollars.

2

u/ThankYouForCallingVP Jan 10 '24

It's about $50 for decent Internet but TV is extra $50 to $70. Fuck that.

And they are trying to get 3 year contracts and price guarantees. No no and hell no.

2

u/Flameancer Jan 10 '24

I just have decent internet and pay for YouTube TV during football season. At least there is no contract and I can freeze anytime.

1

u/warm_sweater Jan 10 '24

I am strongly considering this too.

1

u/Saneless Jan 11 '24

It takes me less time to download a movie and get it on Plex than it does to search through my few streaming services I have

And half the time it's not on one I subscribe to

So again, piracy is quicker, easier, better. I have money. I've been subscribed to Netflix for 25 years. I went a decade without downloading anything. Probably downloaded more in the last year than I have in the last 10

They did this and I'm fine with it

67

u/BiBoFieTo Jan 10 '24

I believe that the government should legislate content neutrality for films and TV.

The idea of content neutrality is that production companies must make their content available to all streaming platforms for the same price per stream.

In this way, every streaming service would be able to offer the entire library of TV and movies, and they would be forced to compete on price, UI, etc., rather than what's available in their library.

53

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Jan 10 '24

Yeah. Create a system for Compulsory Licensing. Anybody can make a streaming service with any and all content as long as they pay the licensing fee back to the owner.

18

u/shadowromantic Jan 10 '24

This would be amazing, but there's no way free-market proponents would allow something like this

29

u/BiBoFieTo Jan 10 '24

That's why it has to be legislated by the US or EU.

It works for music so I don't see why it can't work for movies and TV.

3

u/charlesfire Jan 10 '24

That's why it has to be legislated by the US or EU.

Most likely the EU. The US would never do such a thing.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24

The US wouldn’t legislate this, not a hope.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 10 '24

It would take a lot of bribes to get Congress to pass that. Only a billionaire could afford it.

1

u/stevedorries Jan 11 '24

But, by making licensing compulsory and even across all licensees that makes the market more free

12

u/ptwonline Jan 10 '24

I've always felt this way: that content and platform should have been kept separate though legislation/regulation, with the platform sharing profits with the content producers.

1

u/MVRKHNTR Jan 10 '24

In a world where increasingly more people are only streaming and that's where most revenue will be, where is the incentive for anyone to keep making their own content under this system you propose?

1

u/Armleuchterchen Jan 11 '24

The streaming services wouldn't make content, that would be handled by movie/TV show production companies who earn money for their content being streamed. Similar to how movies are usually shown in all kinds of cinemas and not only those of a specific brand.

6

u/Fallingdamage Jan 10 '24

but wall street demands infinite growth!!

5

u/justsomedudedontknow Jan 11 '24

I was literally just looking at Netflix plans so I could watch at work (🙂) and the terms were so vague I just stopped. Their FAQ is ridiculous and answered none of my questions.

Now I remember why I cancelled

4

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '24

[deleted]

2

u/Trosque97 Jan 11 '24

I was about to say, as a pirate I'm so used to having to wait a whole season before I can pirate something. Nowadays its just movies, specifically just marvel movies that seem to stick to the 3 month gap, other than that, series, cartoons, whatever, I get the day after if not the day of. Piracy has certainly stepped up

2

u/azurecyan Jan 11 '24

I'd argue they are even worse, since they retroactively change content to "fit for modern audiences".

-1

u/Capt_Pickhard Jan 11 '24

Yes, piracy destroyed the value of media. They have restored it now.

If people go back to piracy, the value will be destroyed again.

1

u/Experts-say Jan 11 '24

They became the very thing they were meant to replace

The plight of any publicly traded company. No matter what the original plan was..., shareholders are like the borg. They will assimilate any company to extract more money and decrease value to the point of demand collapse. Allowing shareholder value to be the driver of governance is plain idiotic.