• @mlg@lemmy.world
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    2249 months ago

    every pirate related theme song getting increasingly louder in the background

    • Czeron
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      349 months ago

      I just bought 16 TB to expand my media server :)

      • andrew
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        489 months ago

        You must have a lot of Linux ISO backups. Doing your part to preserve open source software history.

    • Yurgenst
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      239 months ago

      I have a feeling part of their plan is to sink all the pirate ships.

      • Bobby Turkalino
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        79 months ago

        Nintendo has been putting anti-piracy protection in all of their consoles since the NES in the 80’s. Every single one was cracked eventually. Oh, but surely they must be getting better? Nope, the Switch was cracked less than a year from release.

        And Nintendo controls the hardware in this situation. Streaming services do not.

    • Colonel Sanders
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      169 months ago

      Yar har, fiddle de dee Being a pirate is alright to be Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free You are a pirate!

  • @stonedemoman@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    streamers are currently being forced to reckon with their profitability — or lack thereof.

    Netflix’s 2023 2nd quarter revenue: 8.1 billion dollars BTW

    • @underisk@lemmy.ml
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      609 months ago

      Brace yourself for a tidal wave of corporate apologists rushing to point out that “revenue isn’t profit!,!”

          • Billiam
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            209 months ago

            What’s that? You want to share your four-screens-at-a-time account with three other people outside your house?

            Fuck you, pay us more.

      • @HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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        -19 months ago

        …but it’s not. And I really think people either don’t understand that or they are intentionally misrepresenting the situation.

        Being level-headed and fact-driven isn’t “corporate apologist”, it’s how you maintain integrity and don’t derail your own movement by being dishonest about shit that doesn’t even matter.

        It’s like when Trump lies about his golf games. No one cares about his golf games but it makes you realize that if he’s willing to blatantly and badly lie about something so trivial, he’s probably also lying about absolutely everything else about him that might even remotely appear negative.

        • @underisk@lemmy.ml
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          9 months ago

          Plenty of people understand it, and some of them understand that profit is so malleable that it’s not really a useful measure of a company’s financial health. What really matters is how much they make over their essential production operational expenses. They can tailor their non essential expenses to seem as profitable or unprofitable as they want and use stock valuation tricks like buybacks to make money for shareholders regardless.

          What does it matter if the company is profitable or unprofitable on paper when certain people can make lots of money off it either way? Twitter was “unprofitable” it’s entire life but somehow I bet the executives still got their bonuses, I doubt the shareholders were dissatisfied with their stock valuations or the buybacks, and it sure didn’t stop them from acquiring other companies.

          • @stonedemoman@lemmy.world
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            29 months ago

            Thank you for putting this more eloquently than I could. I must admit, I was losing my cool with people being irrational about this.

            I don’t know if people are ignoring expense scaling and stock buybacks or purposely choosing to hide it.

    • @ramblinguy@sh.itjust.works
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      329 months ago

      On a tangent, and nothing to do with you, but I don’t like how these streaming companies are being called “streamers”. Streamers are those people streaming on twitch, not a company like Netflix damnit.

    • rebul
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      -19 months ago

      To be clear, revenue does not equal profit.

  • Jo Miran
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    1159 months ago

    Welcome back to the high seas mateys!

    🏴‍☠️

    • @elscallr@lemmy.world
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      139 months ago

      I even upgraded my pipe to fiber so I can share Plex with my friends and family. Built a machine with 16TBx6 RAID. Cost me a shit ton more than a year of all the streaming services but fuck them.

      • sebinspace
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        89 months ago

        cost me a shit ton

        Yes but now you have an elephantine Silicon Schlong

    • @pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works
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      59 months ago

      Was talking with a friend over lunch about this. I don’t mind paying for media, but the greed I’m seeing from the streaming services now makes me feel like the more ethical choice is to pirate content and just contribute directly to the arts where I can.

      They’re getting to the point where they think that just because they have the platform and the licenses, they can soak their customers. Only a matter of time before the ad men move in. Anyway, fuck all that

    • @spirinolas@lemmy.world
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      39 months ago

      I never left ye lady-dressin’ barnacle. Leekin’ forward to sail with ye to meet those corporate scallogs for some happy fightin, lootin and rapin’

      R

  • @hightrix@lemmy.world
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    1139 months ago

    The slow march back to cable is unstoppable.

    Pirate everything. Share everything.

    Piracy is an access problem, not a consumer problem.

    • @enbee@compuverse.uk
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      219 months ago

      dismantle capitalism. I bet in like 24 years some disruptor is going to come along and buy up rights to the shit thats on peacock Hulu etc now and offer 9 bucks a month to stream it to you. rinse repeat. fuck this corpo nightmare.

    • Ready! Player 31
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      149 months ago

      It turns out cable wasn’t some unique product or way of doing things, it’s just the natural form media delivery takes under capitalism. Streaming services are convergently evolving to take that shape too.

    • @HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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      -29 months ago

      I mean that’s not even a little correct.

      Streaming allows you to watch videos on demand, and allows you to choose from a littany of providers, where you were previously limited to whoever laid cable in your neighborhood.

  • @notannpc@lemmy.world
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    859 months ago

    If I’ve learned anything about corporate lobbying groups it’s that they only exist to fuck you and ruin any legislation that attempts to protect you from them.

    Eat shit SIA.

    • @Asafum@feddit.nl
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      269 months ago

      Corps form “unions” and use money gained by preferential treatment by government to create propaganda shitting on unions.

      Funny that.

      No wait, infuriating. That’s the word.

      • @ours@lemmy.film
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        159 months ago

        They cry about the “free market” and then run to the Government to ask for “protection”.

      • @DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Wait, what? What corporations form labor unions designed to undermine labor unions? Are you calling a lobbying group a union? Are you using terminology creatively or is there something I hadn’t heard about? EDIT: I guess I never get to find out. :(

        • @Asafum@feddit.nl
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          29 months ago

          Sorry for the late reply, I’m not on all the time.

          I was using it creatively which is why I used quotation marks. They act as a collective for their own benefit as a union does.

  • @foggy@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Get rid of them. Socialize their service. Host all content at media.gov and take costs out of taxes. We could pay artists more, have 0 ads, all for like $15 per paycheck. Those taxes would fund grants for artists and cover platform costs. No ads. No corporations.

    P.S. you already pay taxes on media through various 3 letter institutions and licensing. It’s not different from what we have other than eliminating the things we all dont like.

    Watch the video. Benn Jordan has done a lot of the heavy lifting for us. This lobby exists to stop that from ever happening and nothing more. Fight them to the death.

    • LimeWire
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      169 months ago

      $15, that sounds like so much…now let me refuel my truck up and buy another beer.

    • Obinice
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      9 months ago

      How do we socialise these globally important services? Let’s say the Americans socialised all of the services we use heavily every day here in Europe. Netflix, Amazon, Disney, etc etc.

      How will that affect our access to these now internal US National Services? How will it affect our rights and ability to take those services to court - now taking the US State to court instead, when they do something bad?

      How does that increase my rights as a consumer, rather than stifle them?

      You’re forgetting that the USA doesn’t live in a bubble. Other countries exist. This is a global issue.

      • @foggy@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Well, we would have the content we own. We would pay to lease the content we don’t. If any non US residents want a media.gov account, they can pay for one out of pocket what Americans pay in taxes.

        Problem solved.

        It increases your rights as a consumer because it consolidates the location and entity at/to which you pay for that content. You get all the content in one place as opposed to via 12 different accounts.

        • @Metatronz@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I can only imagine the delicious conversations about what objectionable art other people are enjoying that ‘their’ tax dollars paid for. Sure, let’s do it.

          And when the GOP holds enough power again we could finally have real US branded State TV! The Trump News Network will live, lol

  • @underisk@lemmy.ml
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    749 months ago

    Could they, instead, band together to offer a service that’s more user friendly than piracy? I suppose bribery is cheaper and easier.

    • LimeWire
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      139 months ago

      It would be such a wonderful thing wouldn’t it? Now where was I again about profits and squeezing the customers?

    • @Petter1@lemm.ee
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      39 months ago

      Imagine not being able to force set the resolution and bitrate on your stream, even tho you pay for 4k. (Btw. Same goes for YT) Plex and jellyfin are just superior.

        • @Petter1@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          What client do you use? I mostly use the iOS client and there they only give you the illusion of a choice: „higher quality“ and „lower quality“ maybe there are still clients which allow force set resolution/bitrate.

    • Avid Amoeba
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      -69 months ago

      What you’re asking for is a monopoly. It rarely is cheaper or easier. Sometimes, when heavily regulated, it could be. But history shows most of these are eventually privatized and deregulated and then we know what happens.

      • @underisk@lemmy.ml
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        89 months ago

        Don’t put words in my mouth. Industries get together and set standards and form partnerships all the fucking time. It’s as much a “monopoly” as this lobbying project is.

    • timkmz
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      89 months ago

      Spotify also recently raised their proces, but tbf they kinda had to with the inflation. The depressing thing is that creators are rewarded for borting. (See slightly Sociables “the dark side of spotify” vid for indepth)

      • @bobman@unilem.org
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        79 months ago

        but tbf they kinda had to with the inflation.

        So, they used inflation as an excuse to charge people more money for an already-profitable product?

        Wow.

        • @TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world
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          59 months ago

          Corporations keep talking about inflation as if the regular users aren’t already being screwed by it. “Here, since you have less disposable money, lets charge even more.”

  • @Metatronz@lemmy.world
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    589 months ago

    Streaming has ultimately taught me how little I ‘need’ to watch since it trains you to really only seek out a couple things per service. I’ve also become very advertisment sensitive being blessed with tools to avoid that and companies honeymooning people for a while with fewer ads compared to what cable did.

    Obviously, the dipshits are springing their ‘trap’ but I’m not bullish on the strategy of forcing consumers to suddenly tolerate a return of ads everywhere and always on entertainment. I just see folks running away again/further disconnecting from traditional media.

      • @ours@lemmy.film
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        169 months ago

        And the tools to emulate the good parts of streaming with a home setup have never been better.

    • @CosmoNova@feddit.de
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      19 months ago

      The search for something to watch and to evaluate what streaming service I should subscribe for the next 2 months or so has become so tedious and the overall quality so low that I’m simply giving up on them as a whole. The price increase and ads weren’t even necessary to drive me away. They only ensure I will not come back.

  • circuitfarmer
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    569 months ago

    “Guillotine sales soar as citizens band together for lobbying power”

    One can dream

    • prole
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      09 months ago

      What’s the famous quote? Something about how a capitalist will sell you the rope from which you plan to hang them? Something like that?

  • Not A Bird
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    519 months ago

    Laws like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), which features overly broad definitions of the platforms it targets and has troubling privacy implications thanks to surveillance requirements, could sweep companies like Netflix or Disney up into its dragnet.

    Streaming companies are usually pro-net neutrality, and that’s been a difficult concept for lawmakers and regulators in DC to fully grasp.

    For those that read just the headline. Not everything is black and white.

    • @spudwart@spudwart.com
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      449 months ago

      Every now and again, their interests align with the average person.

      But make no mistake, the companies forming a coalition like this for one or two good causes won’t make up for the long term damage it will no doubt cause.

    • @pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz
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      39 months ago

      It doesn’t matter; they’re controlling media and entertainment and that makes them always bad regardless of any extenuating circumstances.

      All of those problems can be solved by breaking apart all of those corporations, putting all modern franchises in the public domain and legalizing pirating. Change the law solely for our benefit and not theirs. If they don’t make content anymore, great; we’ll shut off their shitty AIs and make shit ourselves like we were supposed to be doing the whole time.

    • @Caminsky@lemmy.world
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      229 months ago

      I think this is why net neutrality is so important. Back in the days the electromagnetic spectrum was not as heavily regulated as it is now. Technically anyone with the technical know how could set up a broadcasting station. Then CBS, ABC, NBC all got together and did exactly what these companies are doing. They banded together to make it harder for the average person to get access to technology. This is their primariy goal. To give their companies priority at the network level (seconds matter) and also, most likely what they want is to 1. Find ways for their content to be regulated differently and be sold as network packages 2. Probably allow their content to be delivered through means that require people pay THEIR ISPs. Now, i will be honest. I have not read the article but i knlw this has been the intended goal for many years.

      • @Aggravationstation@lemmy.film
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        109 months ago

        Yea, the logical next step is sadly for the streaming services to just buy the ISPs with the amount of money they have and lobby so they can block Torrent, Usenet and VPN traffic to stop piracy. Most people will keep paying for the services whilst there’s signs of this happening because they actually believe all the “you wouldn’t steal a car, so why would you steal the 9th shitty Star Wars spin off series” propaganda. Then they’ll block porn tube sites too, for the children of course. The first one to do it will get all of the Christians on-side immediately who will accuse the others of being evil and allowing such awful filth so the others will quickly follow suit. After time passes I’m sure they’ll bring out their own almost porn type content that will prove very popular. I could be wrong, but it’ll be interesting to see how things turn out.