Movie Company Sues Pirates Who Used an Anonymous VPN (PIA)

[Mark Kaine]

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

Sure but is your ISP or the VPN going to fake those logs?

For Torrents, how they generally "prove" it's you is that they will join the swarm, and just start logging which IP's are connected to the piece of the movie they have (they usually just download a piece of it and then act as seeds - normally they're not providing the full movie lol).

 

But even with an IP Address - that does not, and cannot prove a specific person. Due to NAT, all they'll ever get is your WAN IP at best - and that could have been you, your brother/sister/wife/parent, it could have been a friend that came over, it could have been someone that guessed your WIFI password, etc.

 

And that defense has been used successfully before.

Yeah, ok so they can "proof" it somehow (I still think the way they're getting the ips in the first place is at least *questionable *lol) but you see that's why I asked this is all really difficult to prove without doubt. 

 

And yeah I get the isp *has* to give them the data if required by law, and that I also find rather questionable... (in this case) 

 

"so we sniffed out that guy/girl and they definitely pirated our movie from a pirating website so will you give us the name / address / ip..." 

 

It's just weird all around - again I get isp is obligated to give out the info to law enforcement... But the way this seemingly goes is, rather suspicious imo... 

 

And then why don't they go after the torrent site, didn't they" pirate" it a million times...? And the seeders too... Like wow, if I was law enforcement they better have really good proof before I do anything!  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

 

 

PS: if it goes like you said the copyright owner themselves seeds parts of the movie... then the "pirates" didn't even pirate the whole movie, shouldn't that make it somehow much less severe? 

 

Damn, I really should have become a laywer.

[Jito463]

8 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

How do you even proof that "some" ip address watched or downloaded your movie? 

 

Serious question because I doubt that is actually possible, especially not bullet proof... 

The thing is, most of the time they limit these lawsuits to people who are SEEDING the torrent, not just those who are downloading it.  This is how the RIAA operated, when they were suing people left and right.  I've no doubt this case is handled the same way.

[dalekphalm]

17 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

Yeah, ok so they can "proof" it somehow (I still think the way they're getting the ips in the first place is at least *questionable *lol) but you see that's why I asked this is all really difficult to prove without doubt. 

 

And yeah I get the isp *has* to give them the data if required by law, and that I also find rather questionable... (in this case) 

 

"so we sniffed out that guy/girl and they definitely pirated our movie from a pirating website so will you give us the name / address / ip..." 

 

It's just weird all around - again I get isp is obligated to give out the info to law enforcement... But the way this seemingly goes is, rather suspicious imo... 

 

And then why don't they go after the torrent site, didn't they" pirate" it a million times...? And the seeders too... Like wow, if I was law enforcement they better have really good proof before I do anything!  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

They do go after the torrent sites when they can - I mean, how many times has TPB changed hosts and URL's over the years?

 

But most of the time, they can't - the torrent sites are often hosted outside of their jurisdiction in places that don't have extradition/cooperation treaties with the US.

 

But on top of that, Torrent sites do not host the pirated content - that's actually literally the whole point of torrents. All you're doing is downloading a link, when you download a torrent file. That link connects you to the Peer to Peer network.

 

Sure, I'm certain they can still nail torrent sites for some violation of copyright law, but it won't be over technically hosting copyrighted content, because they don't.

17 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

PS: if it goes like you said the copyright owner themselves seeds parts of the movie... then the "pirates" didn't even pirate the whole movie, shouldn't that make it somehow much less severe? 

 

Damn, I really should have become a laywer.

Others have mentioned that apparently they must seed the entire file - I don't know if that's correct, so take it with a grain of salt. But either way, you don't necessarily need to be seeding the entire file to be able to tell how much of the file other peers have. I doubt that would affect things legally much.

[Mark Kaine]

@dalekphalm yeah, I guess you're right... I just find it absurd going after a few people who dl "alledgely" your stuff...

 

And also I don't quite get how a company is even allowed to do all that, shouldn't that be the job of law enforcement? Probably depends on country too I don't think that this would be technically allowed here (EU) I mean that must go against a million of privacy laws lol.

 

I think the normal way here is they would tell law enforcement "this website hosts links to our copyrighted products (hey *that's* actually easy to prove) do something!" 

 

(and then law enforcement usually would just laugh them out, lol... hence such cases rarely or ever happen here, well I think it's just really rare) 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

19 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

@dalekphalm yeah, I guess you're right... I just find it absurd going after a few people who dl "alledgely" your stuff...

They go after people that upload their stuff. Remember that, while torrenting, you are simultaneously seeding every bit of the file you already got. All they do is to start the torrent, like anyone else downloading it, and see who offers them bits of the file: all of them are guilty of uploading content infringing copyright.

 

19 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

And also I don't quite get how a company is even allowed to do all that, shouldn't that be the job of law enforcement?

What, torrenting?  I mean, there's nothing special they need to be "allowed" to do, they are just registering some information about something that's happening, then using it to formally sue -if it ever gets to that, since most of the time they don't. More on that later.

 

19 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

Probably depends on country too I don't think that this would be technically allowed here (EU) I mean that must go against a million of privacy laws lol.

It happens all the time in the EU, although it varies by country. It certainly is commonplace in Germany, and if challenged in court, it very much depends on your State: in some of them, the courts are known to rule in favor of the "pirate" unless he's proven to be massively seeding files, one movie won't do. In other states you're screwed no matter what, and taking it to court is a waste of time and money.

 

19 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

I think the normal way here is they would tell law enforcement "this website hosts links to our copyrighted products (hey *that's* actually easy to prove) do something!" 

 

(and then law enforcement usually would just laugh them out, lol... hence such cases rarely or ever happen here, well I think it's just really rare) 

The way it actually works for the "common pirate" is that they send you a letter, detailing what they found, and requesting you pay them X amount as compensation and promise not to do it again. This is not a legal mandate, this is just the company directly proposing you some terms out of court to "ignore what you did this one time". In return they give up the option to sue you. If you reject, they take you to court, and if you lose, regardless of the compensation decided by the court, you probably spend at least the same amount they asked for in lawyer fees. That's why people in states with stricter requirements for "piracy", and who know about the details, don't pay and face the lawsuit, if it ever comes, while people in pro-GEMA&Co states just pay up as a lesser evil (I know of a case where they requested close to €800 for one episode of Family Guy ).

 

None of this is against privacy laws, because they don't need to invade your privacy to register the IP address you are broadcasting while you publicly offer bits of copyrighted files to the world (including them). What makes the difference between states (and countries within the EU for that matter) where they would win if they ever got to court vs. those where they would lose is not privacy protection, but the criteria to consider an act as piracy. Contrary to what people sometimes believe, there is more to its definition than simply passing copyrighted material to someone else. In some places you literally have to run a piracy business, copying a CD for your brother certainly would never get you in trouble, and the border between what constitutes a massive uploader vs. a simple "sharer" varies from place to place. It's usually also required that you make it for profit, but again how strict a definition of profit is used varies from place to place: some take it to the extreme that anything you give to someone else for free is a gift, a gift you would have had to purchase, and therefore you are profiting from giving it away for free, while others require it to be more substantial than that, either by quantity (like the German states I mentioned, requiring that you are recurrent source of copyrighted material, rather than some dude exchanging files with others), and the most extreme requiring that you literally charge something for the material you provide.

That's also why in some EU countries (and around the world) torrenting without a VPN is not an issue, while in others it is a certain path to bankruptcy.

[niofalpha]

On 10/26/2020 at 2:29 PM, MewMew said:

Morgan Freeman is in every stereotypical patriotic B-movie now with the word Fallen in it, isn't he?

Morgan it's time to stop.

This is apparently a direct sequel to both Olympus and London has fallen.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, niofalpha said:

This is apparently a direct sequel to both Olympus and London has fallen.

Yes it's a literal direct sequel (Olympus was movie #1, and London was the first sequel).

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

On 10/27/2020 at 1:22 AM, Shorty88jr said:

Why people continue to torrent is beyond me. There are much better and more secure options that don't log like connecting to a swarm does.

and almost all involve your wallet. 

[jagdtigger]

On 10/29/2020 at 5:32 AM, Jito463 said:

people who are SEEDING the torrent, not just those who are downloading it

Then they can sue the whole site because everyone is seeding (its how torrent fundamentally works, leechers will get booted out if they dont seed).

[Jito463]

51 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

Then they can sue the whole site because everyone is seeding (its how torrent fundamentally works, leechers will get booted out if they dont seed).

They could, but they typically will put their focus on the heavy seeders.

[Kisai]

On 10/29/2020 at 9:52 AM, dalekphalm said:

 

Others have mentioned that apparently they must seed the entire file - I don't know if that's correct, so take it with a grain of salt. But either way, you don't necessarily need to be seeding the entire file to be able to tell how much of the file other peers have. I doubt that would affect things legally much.

For it to count as "piracy" it has to be the entire copy, otherwise even intermediaries like proxies and reverse proxies (cloudflare) would be infringing.

 

However nothing stopping a private individual, RIAA or MPAA companies, the FBI, CSIS, GCHQ, etc from monitoring torrent fragments of content they want to monitor. And the amount of fragments that someone needs to count as "an illegal copy" is whatever would be required to make a usable copy.

 

Hence you tend to see some large pirated content wrapped in a zip/rar file or password protected zip/rar file, with obfuscated filenames so that search tools can't look inside them. But the average pirated thing that isn't software tends to just be the a torrent with the bare files, which means all the MPAA/RIAA needs to as proof of illegal file sharing is one whole copy of any audio file. So music has a very low threshold, since you only need one file, but the charges increase with more whole audio files shared. Also when people download entire TV series or albums, only one file is needed to count. Some people don't download everything. So that complicates the piracy lawsuits should it ever get that far. "Did X at Y IP share one file, or 100? If they didn't share the entire torrent, which files did they share?" Hence the lowest hanging fruit is to go and take out the seeders rather than the downloaders. 

 

[kpluck]

On 10/26/2020 at 12:24 PM, agatong55 said:

So ether these guys didnt have there there VPN turned on or PIA is acting goofy again…

 

Source:

https://torrentfreak.com/movie-company-sues-pirates-who-used-an-anonymous-vpn-201026/

 

WTH? Can you elaborate when they "acted goofy" in the past? It appears to me you aren't understanding what was written about PIA's involvement.

 

-kp

[Jito463]

5 hours ago, kpluck said:

WTH? Can you elaborate when they "acted goofy" in the past? It appears to me you aren't understanding what was written about PIA's involvement.

What involvement are you referring to?  Per the OP, they've only been mentioned because the external IP was traced back to them.

On 10/26/2020 at 2:24 PM, agatong55 said:

According to the complaint, several defendants used the VPN service 'Private Internet Access,' which can expect to be subpoenaed.

If PIA did their jobs right, then there shouldn't be any logs to subpoena.  That won't stop the lawsuit from attempting it, though.  I don't see how that implies any behavior - good, bad or otherwise - on the part of PIA.

Edited October 31, 2020 by Jito463
Additional thoughts appended

[Thaldor]

So many concentrate on the whether or not VPN is even useful with torrents...

 

Most likely, when they are going after single users and not actual seeders or leakers, they are copyright trolls working under the same old Maverick Eye, Prendan Law, Patrick Achache and whatever scheme (at least in EU). This means they are not going to go anywhere more demanding than getting IPs from the node and checking only small part of them through downloading few kB's worth of data from a IP. Going through securitycam videos and access logs and asking Facebook/Google for their tracking datas? Fuck no, that would be too much work. All they want is fast and easy cash, get IP-address, get court to order ISP to give the person behind that IP, send them a very aggressive and demanding letter and hope they are dumb enough to right out pay.

 

They are pretty much dying out because demanding 100 - 10 000 IP addresses in a single demand is kind of translucent when the actual sues against these "pirates" through whole EU is in tens and probably every judge and lawyer who is a little bit less in the pockets of copyright holders know exactly what is going on. They could try to go against VPNs if they had logs to give just because that would be a very huge bank vault for them, but going with actually more demanding tracking and stuff, no way, that would cost them too much in time and resources, because all they want is the fast cash and the least courts as possible for that cash.

[Kawaii Koneko]

On 10/26/2020 at 2:44 PM, Jumballi said:

Pretty sad that they feel that because of their ailing movie franchise that they need to sue to get money from people who probably won't end up paying anyway.
Waste of time, money, and resources.

 

But principle does have a value IMO. Thieves should be prosecuted for their crimes.

 

It is a waste of time though considering they likely won't track any of these people down. 

  

On 10/26/2020 at 10:20 PM, Trik'Stari said:

When will they learn?

 

You cannot, and will not, stop piracy. There is no real discussion on this. People like myself will find a way around your bullshit.

 

I try to be fair. If I find your content worthy, I will purchase it even after pirating it, if not, I will not.

 

End of fucking story. Either go commercial and make it "free", or piss off. I'd purchase the movie Greyhound, if it was available on a platform that was reasonable. But because it is not, I will not.

 

Fantastic movie, but whoever thought it would be a good idea to lock it down to Apple, is a freaking moron. Just sell me your goddamned product directly and stop trying to establish walled gardens that I have no interest in, I'd rather take my chances pirating, or just never see the content to begin with.

 

You  can make legal arguments all you want, but the reality is that this is a discussion of value. If your content isn't valuable enough to pay for, I'm not going to pay for it, and in this day and age of shitty content, I'm going to put time and effort (of which I have an abundance) into viewing it without paying for it, to save money (of which I have very little).

 

Essentially, they vastly overvalue their content, and are continually surprised by how many people don't care enough to pay.

 It isn't "end of story". This is also about morality and no amount of "Let me buy it where I want" or "If I think it's good I'll buy it' can justify what is in reality theft. 

 

The only real defense is if you legitimately cannot get it in your region or language and have to resort to piracy and even then, I only begrudgingly can look the other way.

 

  

On 10/27/2020 at 11:35 AM, Ashley said:

their objective is probably to scare away people from pirating. fines for that in the USA are insanely high so it will probably work. 

Exactly.

 

They can't get everyone but at least they can instill fear in some of them.

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

11 hours ago, Thaldor said:

So many concentrate on the whether or not VPN is even useful with torrents...

 

Most likely, when they are going after single users and not actual seeders or leakers, they are copyright trolls working under the same old Maverick Eye, Prendan Law, Patrick Achache and whatever scheme (at least in EU). This means they are not going to go anywhere more demanding than getting IPs from the node and checking only small part of them through downloading few kB's worth of data from a IP. Going through securitycam videos and access logs and asking Facebook/Google for their tracking datas? Fuck no, that would be too much work. All they want is fast and easy cash, get IP-address, get court to order ISP to give the person behind that IP, send them a very aggressive and demanding letter and hope they are dumb enough to right out pay.

 

They are pretty much dying out because demanding 100 - 10 000 IP addresses in a single demand is kind of translucent when the actual sues against these "pirates" through whole EU is in tens and probably every judge and lawyer who is a little bit less in the pockets of copyright holders know exactly what is going on. They could try to go against VPNs if they had logs to give just because that would be a very huge bank vault for them, but going with actually more demanding tracking and stuff, no way, that would cost them too much in time and resources, because all they want is the fast cash and the least courts as possible for that cash.

See I knew its a scam! Thx for the explanation! 

[Trik'Stari]

4 hours ago, Kawaii Koneko said:

But principle does have a value IMO. Thieves should be prosecuted for their crimes.

 

It is a waste of time though considering they likely won't track any of these people down. 

  

 It isn't "end of story". This is also about morality and no amount of "Let me buy it where I want" or "If I think it's good I'll buy it' can justify what is in reality theft. 

 

The only real defense is if you legitimately cannot get it in your region or language and have to resort to piracy and even then, I only begrudgingly can look the other way.

 

  

Exactly.

 

They can't get everyone but at least they can instill fear in some of them.

 

 

It's end of story because nothing they do will ever stop piracy. People will continue to engage in the practice no matter what.

 

As for morality, what about situations where my only choice is to purchase a movie from a company that is in many ways morally egregious, such as Apple? The only way I can purchase and watch the movie Greyhound would be to get it from Apple, but I consider giving Apple money a morally egregious act because of their horrible business practices. I'd happily purchase the movie (it really is a good movie) from anyone else but them.

 

If a company wants money they need to earn it, and some segment of the market will always choose to go elsewhere, for a variety of reasons.

[Orange1]

8 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

purchase a movie from a company that is in many ways morally egregious

Like Weistein and his corp.

 

8 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

because of their horrible business practices

slave labor is not kosher

 

 

8 hours ago, Trik'Stari said:

If a company wants money they need to earn it,

Not sure how that will work out. They earn it by making it and putting labor into it, they earn it by risking putting up money for it and earn it by distributing it and seeing if the public likes what they see to earn their money at the box office markets and regional and country markets for dvd release.

[dalekphalm]

On 11/1/2020 at 8:39 AM, Trik'Stari said:

It's end of story because nothing they do will ever stop piracy. People will continue to engage in the practice no matter what.

 

As for morality, what about situations where my only choice is to purchase a movie from a company that is in many ways morally egregious, such as Apple?

While in practice, many people will simply pirate the content in such a situation.

 

However, the "morally correct" answer is simple: If giving Apple money is morally egregious to you, then you simply do not buy the product. Do not consume it. Do not watch it.

 

This is called boycotting. Does it work? Sometimes. Certainly not always, but also certainly not never either.

On 11/1/2020 at 8:39 AM, Trik'Stari said:

The only way I can purchase and watch the movie Greyhound would be to get it from Apple, but I consider giving Apple money a morally egregious act because of their horrible business practices. I'd happily purchase the movie (it really is a good movie) from anyone else but them.

That's fair enough - but if that's the case, if you want to have the moral high ground, you should simply not consume that content (ideally while also making a public social media post tagging Apple and the production studio and letting them know why you won't watch that content - if enough people follow suit, the studio will strive to work with a different partner next time).

On 11/1/2020 at 8:39 AM, Trik'Stari said:

If a company wants money they need to earn it, and some segment of the market will always choose to go elsewhere, for a variety of reasons.

Sure, but if they don't "earn it", that's not really a right to just take the content for yourself.

 

I know that piracy is easy. And frankly that's why most people pirate - because they can. Doesn't mean they should though.

[Master Delta Chief]

27 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

While in practice, many people will simply pirate the content in such a situation.

 

However, the "morally correct" answer is simple: If giving Apple money is morally egregious to you, then you simply do not buy the product. Do not consume it. Do not watch it.

 

This is called boycotting. Does it work? Sometimes. Certainly not always, but also certainly not never either.

That's fair enough - but if that's the case, if you want to have the moral high ground, you should simply not consume that content (ideally while also making a public social media post tagging Apple and the production studio and letting them know why you won't watch that content - if enough people follow suit, the studio will strive to work with a different partner next time).

Sure, but if they don't "earn it", that's not really a right to just take the content for yourself.

 

I know that piracy is easy. And frankly that's why most people pirate - because they can. Doesn't mean they should though.

Boycotting does NOT work for large corporations thus making that argument invalid. There are exceptions, but they are very rare. In fact whenever a company has received some form of boycott, their image was only temporarily tainted with people still buying some of their products. 

 

This moral argument that I've seen on many occasions is flawed. You as a consumer don't always have 'choice' in choosing. This can go from the services that they only provide or particular products they sell. Companies in my opinion are suppose to serve the people, not vice versa.  Of course that's obviously not how it currently works in the real world, but I think that it should. 

 

Regardless, 'piracy' on the internet will never end unless the system itself changes as to how things are are done on the internet in terms of movies and software, making it more available to others. 

[Kisai]

On 11/1/2020 at 5:39 AM, Trik'Stari said:

It's end of story because nothing they do will ever stop piracy. People will continue to engage in the practice no matter what.

People who grew up pirating content, will not cease. If I nagged any of my relatives about it, they would just never bring it up just to get me off their back. For the most part I said my peace and if they want to watch pirate stuff when I'm not visiting them, I don't care.

 

On 11/1/2020 at 5:39 AM, Trik'Stari said:

As for morality, what about situations where my only choice is to purchase a movie from a company that is in many ways morally egregious, such as Apple? The only way I can purchase and watch the movie Greyhound would be to get it from Apple, but I consider giving Apple money a morally egregious act because of their horrible business practices. I'd happily purchase the movie (it really is a good movie) from anyone else but them.

 

That's where you're in the wrong. If it's legally available in your region, you are obligated to buy it from the legal source, regardless if you watch a pirate rip of it ultimately. I usually rip my non-4K BD's to the hard drive to watch because BD/DVD software players on windows have a huge problem getting their DRM ducks in order, and it would be less effort to buy a dedicated BD player, if only I had a TV. The 4K discs are sadly unwatched unless I take them to my mom's place.

 

 

On 11/1/2020 at 5:39 AM, Trik'Stari said:

If a company wants money they need to earn it, and some segment of the market will always choose to go elsewhere, for a variety of reasons.

Some people just don't prioritize entertainment. Your entertainment will stop being made if people choose to pirate it exclusively. There can be arguments made that certain channels, you are unwilling to pay for (HBO, AMC) that ONE TV show you want to watch doesn't justify the monthly subscription, as this happens a lot, and I would rather just wait for the show to appear on Netflix, as the amount of hoops to jump through to get HBO in Canada is aggravating. Likewise Hulu is not available in Canada, VRV is not available in Canada, and the local cable/dsl companies seem to have completely given up having useful "VOD/DVR" systems and want you to pay more for CraveTV (yes, the minute Showmi and Crave came out, both the cable and dsl systems went from having entire TV seasons to watch for free with your cable sub, to having only the last one or two episodes, and with cartoon channels, not even that, just random episodes.)

 

Like between everything, there is more of an argument to pirate children's content than adults content, because children's content keeps being chucked behind paywalls that children can't climb (eg Sesame Street on HBO.) Or the channels aren't available, or the channel is available, but the show isn't in your region. Like the people I follow on twitter keep talking about the latest episode of something, and then I go check my DVR, and the show isn't even on it, or that episode isn't going to air for another 4 weeks. In the mean time, completely spoiled online. It's faster to just go "watch (show)" into google and it'll end up being on the front page somewhere.

 

When we talk about trying to protect children from garbage content, this is why garbage content keeps ending up in front of them. Hey, this site that shows Sesame Street and Adventure Time, also shows The Simpsons and South Park. Not to mention all the popups, malware and garbage ads on these garbage sites.

[dalekphalm]

35 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

Boycotting does NOT work for large corporations thus making that argument invalid. There are exceptions, but they are very rare. In fact whenever a company has received some form of boycott, their image was only temporarily tainted with people still buying some of their products. 

Yes it does work with large corporations.

 

Not always, no. But definitely sometimes.

 

Some examples:

The Body Shop ended animal testing on one of it's products after boycotts.

Ivanka Trump had to shut down her fashion brand after boycotts.

Picturehouse agreed to negotiate with it's workers trade union following strikes and boycotts of the chinema chain. Previously before the boycotts it refused to meet with the union.

Seaworld announced it would end Orca breeding programs due to boycotts.

 

Will boycotting Apple+ make Greyhound's studio release the movie elsewhere? Maybe. Maybe not. Won't know until you try.

 

35 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

This moral argument that I've seen on many occasions is flawed. You as a consumer don't always have 'choice' in choosing. This can go from the services that they only provide or particular products they sell. Companies in my opinion are suppose to serve the people, not vice versa.  Of course that's obviously not how it currently works in the real world, but I think that it should. 

A company is there to serve it's bottom line, assuming we are talking about a capitalist society (which most of us live in, and even the "non-traditional" countries like China still engage in capitalism to one degree or another).

 

How they serve that bottom line is usually by providing products and services that customers want.

 

Piss off the customer enough and it will affect your bottom line.

 

And let's be clear, the specific argument is about the movie Greyhound. You do have a choice. To not watch the movie.

35 minutes ago, Master Delta Chief said:

 

Regardless, 'piracy' on the internet will never end unless the system itself changes as to how things are are done on the internet in terms of movies and software, making it more available to others. 

I agree that changes need to be made - particularly regarding geoblocking and some of the rather silly license agreements that are holdovers from the pre-internet distribution days. I also agree that piracy will not end before that time.

 

But, let's be honest with each other, it'll never end as long as it's physically possible to pirate stuff. There will always be people that will pirate, even if that movie or software is available in their region, at a reasonable price, with reasonable terms.

 

Hell, I KNOW people in Canada - one of the wealthiest nations on Earth - people who have money and jobs, who refuse to buy any games, period. They pirate every single game. Even ones that are frequently on Steam for less than $5 during steam sales. Those kinds of people will never stop pirating, because the reason they do it is usually "because I can", or "why wouldn't I save that money?" It doesn't matter that they can afford the games. It doesn't matter that buying the games legally is stupid easy and very accessible already.

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

People who grew up pirating content, will not cease. If I nagged any of my relatives about it, they would just never bring it up just to get me off their back. For the most part I said my peace and if they want to watch pirate stuff when I'm not visiting them, I don't care.

I agree overall with this sentiment - but I must say that those people in the older millennial/younger Gen-X generation (early 80's to late 80's babies) often have a change of heart when they reach their 30's and have a stable job and disposable income. I know plenty (myself included) who used to pirate incessantly, and now either don't pirate at all, or do it very seldom.

 

Often it just takes time for the person to mature enough for them to understand the value of what went into making that product, and that there is no entitlement to that product. If you can't afford it, or don't think it's worth the price they are asking, you're mature enough to understand the response is "okay then, I will not play that game or watch that movie".

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

That's where you're in the wrong. If it's legally available in your region, you are obligated to buy it from the legal source, regardless if you watch a pirate rip of it ultimately. I usually rip my non-4K BD's to the hard drive to watch because BD/DVD software players on windows have a huge problem getting their DRM ducks in order, and it would be less effort to buy a dedicated BD player, if only I had a TV. The 4K discs are sadly unwatched unless I take them to my mom's place.

I don't see ripping your legally owned Blu-Ray as piracy personally. You paid for that disc, and the disc contains a digital video file that your computer or Plex Server can easily play (with the help of ripping software anyway).

 

But if you just pirate every movie that comes out and never pay for any of them, that's a lot different.

 

Pirates essentially rely on everyone else to pay for the content. If everyone pirated stuff, things like Greyhound and games like The Witcher would never get made, because there would be no incentive for a massive company to make an expensive thing if they will not get their money back plus some.

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Some people just don't prioritize entertainment. Your entertainment will stop being made if people choose to pirate it exclusively. There can be arguments made that certain channels, you are unwilling to pay for (HBO, AMC) that ONE TV show you want to watch doesn't justify the monthly subscription, as this happens a lot, and I would rather just wait for the show to appear on Netflix, as the amount of hoops to jump through to get HBO in Canada is aggravating. Likewise Hulu is not available in Canada, VRV is not available in Canada, and the local cable/dsl companies seem to have completely given up having useful "VOD/DVR" systems and want you to pay more for CraveTV (yes, the minute Showmi and Crave came out, both the cable and dsl systems went from having entire TV seasons to watch for free with your cable sub, to having only the last one or two episodes, and with cartoon channels, not even that, just random episodes.)

I assume you know this already but to get HBO shows in Canada, you can sub to CraveTV + the HBO add-on - it's about $20 a month. That's a lot, if you're subbing for one specific show - particularly if the show comes out on a weekly basis rather than being binge-able (in that case, you're probably better off waiting for it to be released on iTunes/Google Play/Amazon/Netflix or to simply buy the show on disc or rent it - or hell, check your local Library - we pretty much carry all new releases on DVD).

 

But it's not a lot if you're going to enjoy all the other content on Crave (which has a lot of what would be on Hulu) plus all the HBO content too.

 

I typically sub to Crave for Star Trek Discovery, then cancel my sub after I've watched what I want to watch. I did sub to the HBO add-on for the final season of GoT but did not renew once the show was over.

 

[Kisai]

11 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I agree overall with this sentiment - but I must say that those people in the older millennial/younger Gen-X generation (early 80's to late 80's babies) often have a change of heart when they reach their 30's and have a stable job and disposable income. I know plenty (myself included) who used to pirate incessantly, and now either don't pirate at all, or do it very seldom.

All it took for me to change my mind on some of these things was having a software developer literately explain all their input costs. It won't endear me to a software publisher that crunches their workers, but it will certainly work on indies (games, software, music, streamers, comics, etc) over a big company (eg Disney, WB(AT&T), etc) 

 

And having worked at eBay taking down copyright infringing listings, the sheer gall of what people try to sell is pretty disheartening. Preloaded hacked consoles, counterfeit/recordable media copies of movies and games, with a lot of it coming straight out of markets that those copyright holders ignored. 110-movie-in-one boxes of disney movies, yeeeah I don't think that's legal in any sense. Some of those counterfeits get pretty creative too, in packaging that looks more legit than the official releases until you see it in person.

 

 

11 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Often it just takes time for the person to mature enough for them to understand the value of what went into making that product, and that there is no entitlement to that product. If you can't afford it, or don't think it's worth the price they are asking, you're mature enough to understand the response is "okay then, I will not play that game or watch that movie".

 

I think what really changed peoples minds, at least on the software front was Microsoft releasing the community version of Visual Studio. Now nobody had any excuse at all for pirating software because they can see exactly how much effort is required just to compile things on Windows (spoiler: less difficult than Linux, but only if all the software libraries come with windows projects. cmake is hell on windows.)

 

11 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I don't see ripping your legally owned Blu-Ray as piracy personally. You paid for that disc, and the disc contains a digital video file that your computer or Plex Server can easily play (with the help of ripping software anyway).

While I may have implied that ripping your own discs is piracy, I actually just glossed over the breaking the DRM aspect. I see nothing wrong with playing your own backups of anything provided you still own the physical media or device that the digital store is tied to, in which case is my desktop PC anyway.

 

 

11 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

But if you just pirate every movie that comes out and never pay for any of them, that's a lot different.

 

I don't download movies. If I want to watch a brand new movie, I watch it in the theatre like it was intended, otherwise it can wait till it lands on Netflix.

 

11 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

I assume you know this already but to get HBO shows in Canada, you can sub to CraveTV + the HBO add-on - it's about $20 a month.

 

Yep, but that glosses over how much it costs to get there.

$145/mo JUST for the internet and "Basic" TV ($40 being TV, $105 being internet)

+ $20 to add Crave, "Movies", or pick "4 theme packs" and it's $10 (or get Netflix instead for $0, or Amazon Prime for $0)

 

Shaw is worse

$185/mo, minimum. So add Crave to that and it's $205/mo.

 

I'm actually looking at this going "what, seriously?"

[Akolyte]

I'm glad the idea that a VPN is the ultimate key to privacy is becoming less prevalent. 

 

VPN's might hide your IP address at the remote server after you exit the tunnel, but they don't ensure the provider of the VPN is securing the VPN correctly, or that the server they are using isn't compromised. 

 

VPN's are most useful if you are trying to connect to a remote and would like to use an encrypted tunnel so as to prevent unauthorized parties from gaining access to the network and protecting network security. 

 

If you want true privacy get a burner laptop, and a set of fake credentials, drive hours away and use some free wifi that doesn't require any identification, afterwards chucking the laptop. 

[jagdtigger]

*yawn*

This getting boring, companies either adapt to changing tech and consumer preferences or they will loose more and more money regardless what thy do...