Is this talking about stuff like private torrent trackers and Usenet providers, or are there more Netflix-like things out there that people are paying for?
Can someone list those piracy subscription services so we can avoid them as responsible citizens?
IPTorrents is even worse at iptorrents.com for only $10/mo
Hey man I have a question for you! Is this service download only or does it offer streaming too? Seems like a traditional torrent site to me, but just wanted to ask! Limited info on the site obvi.
Yes. It seems to do IPTV as well.
Seems to be invite only at the moment according to their sign up page. Any way for you to send an invite?
You should definitely avoid XtremeHD IPTV (http://xtremehdiptv.org/). For $15 a month, it’s way too cheap to offer all the live TV, movies, and series that it does. The article specifically mentions low pricing as a red flag, and I can definitely say that compared to what you’d normally pay for every live channel (including the premium ones and pay per view), series, and any just about any movie you can think of, this is most definitely a service that you should steer clear of.
Hey friend, I’m gonna PM you for some intel if you don’t mind!
People need to expect to pay for art and entertainment. People should. It’s immoral and unethical to not pay for art and expect art to be there.
People also should be able to pay the artist directly and not some billion dollar company who continue to try to squeeze the artists and limit creativeness all in servitude to the almighty dollar (or any other currency)
Imagine paying $1 to each name that appears in the credits of a movie or tv show, which would be paying the artists directly for their work. It’s not feasible, but that’s what I read when folks toss out paying the artist directly.
Let’s assume that this hypothetical movie had 2,000 people working on it, which isn’t a crazy number to assume. You think people should pay $2,000 to watch a movie?
No, that’s exactly the point they were making.
But if we assume a movie that made a billion dollars, and assume a high ticket price like $20, then that’s 50 million tickets sold. That math only checks out if each person paid $0.01 per worker. If we cut out useless executives, that number goes way the fuck down. So yes, let’s pay artists directly, and we’ll save money at the same time. Even if it were a tenth of a penny to each credit per viewer, that’s $50k on average, which is higher than the actual average wage for crew.. I know actors and directors make more, but that’s why I’m not going so far as to say we should only pay $2 for a ticket.
So yes, let’s pay artists directly
Where does the money come from to actually make the movie?
Based on actual ticket prices, from producers that expect to triple their investment I guess. Us idiots are fantasizing about ~10% while they’re hitting triple digit percentages.
People need to expect to pay reasonable prices on a reasonable basis for art and entertainment, and pretending everyone should be cool with fifty different streaming services and never owning anything again is its own sort of immorality and lack of ethics.
Exactly, we’re not paying for the art, we’re paying for a limited license to view art that has already been made.
Not to mention I don’t mind paying when I know the artists who do the work will get a bigger cut than the guy who owns the servers they’re hosted on.
And art should be accessible to everyone, not just the wealthy. There’s a reason that piracy almost died out completely and then came back with a vengeance. People don’t mind paying a reasonable price for art, the prices and accessibility of art has just become unfeasible.
I agree with you.
But we had a situation where consumers were happy and were paying for content, piracy dropped off, and it was insanely profitable for Netflix.
Then everyone got greedy and stuck their dicks in the pie and ruined it, and this is the backlash.
If you buy content digitally, it gets pulled from your library without your consent or recourse. If you steam you’re paying more and more for less.
What we had was good, now none of my friends talk about TV shows because it starts with “hey, did you watch X, it’s on paramount?” “No”, “oh, nevermind”.
I don’t disagree, but isn’t there something to be said for denying people access to the popular culture based on their ability to pay for it?
Not particularly. Things generally cost money. It’s not a human rights violation to say you can’t see a movie if you have zero dollars.
So then we don’t worry about people’s ability to engage in their communities through shared experiences and exposure to arts and culture, we just leave people out? Exclude them if they’re poor. I don’t think I care for that to be honest.
It’s a tragedy of the commons - as an economics problem it matters, sure, but copyright is an artificial monopoly, not a human right. We could provide these more efficiently with public funding of the arts or crowdfunds, without the need to make up imaginary property with imaginary ethics.
But if you want to sign up for a bunch of subscriptions because some might trickle down to the writers, be my guest.
I have no problem paying for such things.
But when the distributors block access, and tell me buying ain’t owning by removing access to what I’ve paid for, well fuck 'em.
I think most people would agree that artists should be fairly paid for their work. But when greedy, profiteering corporations are the ones commissioning and profiting from art, then IMO we have a moral duty to fuck with their exploitative business model.
😈
there’s a special place in heaven for people that link to archive sites to avoid paywalls
It’s so funny to me that we have to circumvent the site’s paywall in order to read an article about pirating.
Based as hell.
Lol, so true.
Though anymore I archive pretty much any article I share. I have a Macrodroid script to grab the link from my clipboard and send it to archive.ph and open it in a browser.
I’m currently setting up ArchiveBox for my own use too.
That illustration with the hook through the film reel is so clever, I love it.
I was hoping someone else would mention it. It’s quite cool.
They keep telling us that we can’t own or preserve media. We strongly disagree.
Wtf, how can a post in a piracy group be a link to a site that won’t let you read an article unless you subscribe or create an account…?!
The same way I haven’t seen an ad in years, I also use a paywall bypass extension.
So I guess it skips my mind sometimes; when none of these sites have had paywalls for years.
I would argue a good chunk of the people here would prefer the OG link so they can archive it themselves (or make an offline .html copy directly)
Could you possibly share the extension? Asking for a friend
I am 100% unaffiliated w/ OP, but I would guess they use Magnolia’s bypass.
However; I am on v3.0.8.0 (2023-03-05), so I can’t speak for anything newer than that out of his/her repo or in the extension mentioned.
A fun reminder: always read what your extensions can do before yolo-clicking a download by a burner account.
I just spent like an hour trying several methods to install this on Android, sadly I was not successful. If anyone can inform me on how to install this on Firefox for Android (not a fork), please let me know.
Firefox does not support all extensions on Android yet. But should be soon I think.
Aren’t they still releasing mostly to cinemas?
If you follow some of the links to pirate sites in the article you’ll get redirected to some anti-piracy site which amongst other things tells you this:
Bitch … that’s literally the reason I pirate.
The problem isn’t the number of providers, the problem is exclusive licensing deals.
If it was like music, then (theoretically), more choice is better. AFAIK all the platforms have pretty much all the music, so there is some choice available.
With TV and film, it’s so fractured that it’s literally easier to just pirate things, even for shows I (potentially) have ad-free paid access to already. With Stremio + Torrential + a Debrid service, I just launch one app and everything’s available in seconds. With paid services, I need to search Netflix, then Prime, then CBC Gem, by which point I’d already be watching.
Plus, torrentio let’s me pick the video quality I want, so I can force 4K H265 on my big screen for films or just pop on a 720p H264 on my small underpowered laptop (that can’t decode H265 fast enough for smooth playback).
It’s not even about price, it’s just a better experience to pirate. And that’s a Big Problem for the industry.
Now only 1400$ a month to watch any show at 480p! Upgrade now to 2100$ per month for the high resolution videos? Can’t afford it? Just get another job you lazy hobo!
Not so fast now! High resolution video only available on edge on windows
unintelligible screaming
Or, fill your phones, laptop and streaming devices with 1000 of our proprietary apps! Your personal information and viewing habits get sent 1000 ways from Sunday thanks to all the Privacy Policies you agreed to~
Say it louder with me for the people in the back.
Piracy is not stealing.
i dunno i heard that you wouldn’t steal a car
Correct. I wouldn’t steal a car. But I would absolutely make a perfect copy of a car for free.
It sure is fascinating how surges in the usage of pirate platforms tend to coincide with eras of worsening value proposition in entertainment. We should really get some top notch analysts on this to get an explanation.
Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao
Real-debrid is worth paying for imo
Convenience, I’d imagine. Not everybody wants to deal with ads or self-hosting.
I also know someone that subs to a pirate streaming site that they use for learning English. It has a solid library but also has dual subtitles on everything and categories based on vocabulary difficulty and accents. It’s cheaper than a single legit subscription, but has way more value (both the language stuff and the massive pirated library).
Why would people pay for pirated media? lmao
For several years (at least half a decade) I used a service that provided live TV for most major networks, and reliable, easy to access streaming of literally every televised sport I ever heard of, and many that I didn’t know existed or didn’t expect to be televised.
It was easy to use, had all the live TV we cared for (incl and especially sporting events, which was the only thing we weren’t already getting by legit streaming services or other means, and which we cared about watching live vs later ) for 30 bucks a month. I started using it right after I forked out a couple hundred bucks to the NHL only to find that doing so just made it so that it cost me a lot of money to be blacked out from the games we cared to watch.
It was what we all want streaming services to be - reliable, comprehensive, high quality, easy to use, and cheap.
That’s why.
Edited to add - the service went down last year. I know of no similar replacement, but given this article they must exist.
You should definitely avoid http://xtremehdiptv.org/ It’s about half the price you were paying and has live TV, movies and series.
How do younpay for these services? I’d imagine you might not want to use your credit cards.
Subscriber fees? Who’s paying for pirated content?
EDIT:
Lots of people are. Real Debrid is the shit! It’s about $2.80 per month for the ability to stream pretty much everything. But ads? Nah, man. There are ads on the torrent sites, but none on streaming. Pirates are pretty ad-adverse.
Huh, never heard of that, it sounds pretty cool since it covers not just streaming movies, but downloads of games as well. I can definitely see the appeal.
Check out Stremio+Real-Debrid+Torrentio. It’s honestly better than any paid subscription you can get from the studios. Install it on something like a Chromecast 4k, or a Shield TV device, hook it up to your home entertainment system, and you’ve got yourself a bonafide real solution.
So I live in Germany and as such I avoid torrents. The thing with torrents is, that as soon as you’re on a tracker, you’re sharing content illegally. There’s an entire industry of law firms built around fucking up torrent users.
That’s why I used to use real-debrid to download stuff from one click hosters manually. How does stremio and torrentio work? Is it a safe alternative for German pirates? I really want to cancel some subscriptions here, especially now that they’re planning on using ads.
You should be using a no-logging VPN, even if only as a question of principle (I’m afraid that in Germany, it’s highly likely common people’s Internet activity is already under dragnet state surveillance: things like the mandatory providing and recording of ID when buying a phone SIM in Germany - which is unusual elsewhere in Europe - only serve for there to be a centralized record linking communication streams to people).
Something like Mulvad will cost you €5 a month, way cheaper than any streaming service.
I got used to using a VPN back when I live in the UK (which is probably the worst Surveillance State in Europe after Russia, as show by the Snowden Revelations which in Britain only led to politicians making laws to rectroactivelly make their massive civil society surveillance practices legal) and as it so happenned it was perfect at hiding my sailing of the high seas from those law firms (which were very active there) for more than a decade there.
The way things are fast decaying in so-called Democracies when it come to the actually practice of democracy in governance, it’s probably a good idea to start doing your online life behind a VPN (not that it suffices, but it’s a start).
Thanks for the reply! Sorry I didn’t get around to answering earlier. I have been too preoccupied with work, so my Internet activity was limited to streaming and gaming for a very long time now. Gaming is still fine, having GoG and Steam around. But streaming is becoming less and less attractive and more complicated due to fragmentation (granted, it’s not as bad as in the USA yet).
I’ll check out Mulvad and some other VPNs, thanks for the hint. I just keep hearing that torrenting in Germany still is dangerous, despite using a VPN. Does Stremio with real debrid work without the torrent part?
I’m old school and just download torrents with something like BiglyBT and put them in my local NAS (which is really just a bunch of portable HDs connected to my router), from where I can access them anywhere in my home, most importantly from a cheap media player connected to my TV.
Been doing this for over a decade and it works for me. Also I know how to do it in a way that keeps me safe from such legal firms extorting money from people pirating digital works, whilst if you thrown “convenience” software into the mix, it’s harder to make sure it’s not leaking your IP address or other personal data even when using a VPN.
The rule with running under a VPN is to:
- Use a VPN provider which does not keep logs, hence my recommendation of Mulvad but there are others that the community considers reliabled in that respect (look around)
- Do not register for any pirate anything using your e-mail.
- Configure your torrent application to only connect via the VPN (settings depend on the program) so that it doesn’t “leak” by using your ISP connection directly if, for example, you forgot to start the VPN.
- Personally I also tend to chose a VPN exit point outside my own country to make things harder from a legal point of view: complex legal cases involving multiple legal jurisdictions aren’t worth the trouble for the legal system to catch a person torrenting for personal use.
If your torrenting goes via a VPN (hence it’s important to make sure it’s not leaking) all that those law firms have is an IP address to an exit point of the VPN provider. Unless the VPN provider is willfully cooperative (i.e. a letter in legal language merelly asking is enough for them to give the data, and the whole point of the likes of Mulvad is that they are not cooperative) those legal firms need to get a Court Order to force the VPN provider to give them the IP address of the machine using that VPN exit point at that time (i.e. your machine) and if the VPN provider doesn’t keep logs they can’t give that data since they don’t have it anymore, plus is both the VPN provider and the exit point are in a different country - i.e. a different legal jurisdiction - it gets even harder because, for example, German Courts can’t directly issue valid court orders for other countries (it’s pretty simple when the target is your local ISP, not so much if it’s, say, a company in Sweden)
It’s simply not worth it for those law firms or the courts to go after common torrenting in such a situation, especially as there is a vast number of easy to extort people torrenting from their home connection directly, what the Americans would call “low hanging fruit”.
Certainly this is how it worked in the UK which had the same kind of situation.
A VPN is not a protection for people committing actual real crimes (say, murder for hire) because it’s definitelly worth it for the Justice System to jump through the hops needed to get such a person (in this case they would need a court order to wiretap the VPN provider to catch that person on the act and other legal jurisdictions would definitelly cooperate in a timelly manner to catch a murderer), but for people just doing normal torrenting for personal consumption it’s absolutelly not worth it to overcome that many hurdles to give somebody a fine. For those law firms too, it’s just easier to send legal letters to the ISPs of people torrenting via their home connection directly to get their name and address (without even involving a Court) and then send those people threathening legal letters than to try and legally force an uncooperative VPN provider in a different country to give them the IP address of the home user whilst they still have it (if I remember it correctly, Mulvad’s logs are in-memory only and last only 24h).
