Netflix Deals Another Blow To Piracy With Mobile Video Downloads

[alidan]

The justification of "because it's free" for why piracy is acceptable is silly. This stuff doesn't get made without money. You don't want to pay for it and insist on pirating things? Great, you do you. But don't try to act like you're entitled to free content. The cost to access the content may be exorbitant in a lot of cases, but that doesn't make theft okay. You don't need this content to live. It is a luxury. Luxuries are paid for.

Personally, I argue for just cutting the costs, trim the fat, do the actors need to really be paid THAT much for their work?
Look at gaming as an example, tomb raider at selling 5 million some copies was a disappointment/borderline failure, while demon souls at less than 1 million was a runaway success.

If you cant make money at an already high price point, you are doing something horribly wrong.
I look at shows or movies or even games with good voice actors, and they paid them FAR less than a named actor, yet the nameless voice actor usually does such a better job that its honestly wasted money.

Oh, I definitely agree there, but on the flip side, it is a business and the goal is to make as much money as you can, and the actors, as workers, will obviously try to get paid as much as they can. It's a compounded issue, in that actors with recognizable names will draw in more viewers, thus resulting in larger gains, but those actors command a higher salary by virtue of their ability to draw people in.

There are definitely flaws to it all, but it irks me when people justify their piracy solely on the idea that they shouldn't have to pay (or pay as much). Media productions are large undertakings. Even if you don't think the actors themselves should be paid that highly, there are other staff involved who put in large amounts of work. Piracy hurts them, too.

That's not to say I agree with the way the industry tries to curtail piracy, with their DMCA takedown notices and endless legions of lawyers. Simply making the content conveniently accessible is the best way. What Netflix is doing may not be perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.

True, but if your movie/project is only being sold by the actors in it you are taking a massive risk that their star power overrides a sub par story.

on the side of people pirating because its free, I honestly love these people the most. They take the hits for me. I want to buy a AAA game for less then half price, I usually only have to wait 6 months, maybe a year after the last dlc comes out for a sub 20$ price... meanwhile on the consoles. one of the oldest ps4 games, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, still goes for 20$ even used,

here, bought doom for 20$ a bit ago, cheapest console price is 35$ used.
Piracy, especially in entertainment is the only reason we get to own movies or tv shows at all.
Back in the day the studio that made jaws had this argument "Why should you be able to pay once and watch it till it breaks? Why should I not be paid every time you see it"
They fight tooth and nail every single time new tech came around, possibly only giving into dvd because it was cheaper then vhs. They have to keep putting out better higher quality products because if they don't, someone else will.

 

[targetdrone]

I give it a week until someone hacks it to convert the downloads into mkv/mp4 files.

Yeah, because it's otherwise impossible to find pirated versions of anything on Netflix currently.
How did we ever find pirated shows before Netflix allowed downloads?

Just because it's not practical doesn't mean someone won't try to hack it for just the challenge.

Just look at the NES Classic. Why hack it(or even buy one) when there are 100s of ways to play ROMs.

 

[problematiq]

I give it a week until someone hacks it to convert the downloads into mkv/mp4 files.

You can already do this with anything you stream. Wireshark, then take the pcaps and pull the stream out into a mp4 format. Take the mp4 and distribute or convert to MKV and distribute.

 

[blazorthon]

Even if there isn't a software workaround (There almost certainly is), there is no way to stop people with a little hardware know-how from putting a capture device between a larger Android device's board and its display. It will be hacked, and there is no stopping the hackers. There's barely any slowing them down these days.

Regardless, being able to locally download some Netflix content is a very nice feature. Some streaming woes can be solved that way.