Netflix-like Pirate Sites Offered More Video Than the Real Netflix, Feds Say (arstechnica.com) 31
A federal grand jury yesterday indicted eight people who allegedly ran two pirate streaming services that "offered more television programs and movies than legitimate streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime Video," the Department of Justice said. From a report: Jetflicks, which operated from 2007 to 2017, obtained its video from torrent sites and Usenet sites "using automated programs and databases such as SickRage, Sick Beard, SABnzbd, and TheTVDB," the indictment said. Jetflicks made "those episodes available on servers in the United States and Canada to Jetflicks subscribers for streaming and/or downloading," the indictment said. Torrent sites that Jetflicks operators relied on allegedly included the Pirate Bay, RARBG, and Torrentz.
With this method, defendants often "provid[ed] episodes to subscribers the day after the shows originally aired on television," a DOJ announcement yesterday said. Jetflicks charged subscription fees as low as $9.99 per month, letting subscribers "watch an unlimited number of commercial-free television programs," the indictment said. The service claimed to have more than 37,000 subscribers.
One of the eight defendants, 36-year-old Darryl Julius Polo, left Jetflicks to create another site called iStreamItAll, which was still online today. iStreamItAll likely won't stay online long, though, as the indictment said the site's domain names are subject to forfeiture. The Jetflicks domain names were also subject to forfeiture orders, and the website is offline. Jetflicks "claimed to have more than 183,200 different television episodes," while iStreamItAll "at one point claimed to have 115,849 different television episodes and 10,511 individual movies," the DOJ said. iStreamItAll "publicly asserted that it had more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime," the DOJ said. (Netflix offered 4,010 movies and 1,569 TV shows as of 2018, according to Netflix search engine Fixable.)
With this method, defendants often "provid[ed] episodes to subscribers the day after the shows originally aired on television," a DOJ announcement yesterday said. Jetflicks charged subscription fees as low as $9.99 per month, letting subscribers "watch an unlimited number of commercial-free television programs," the indictment said. The service claimed to have more than 37,000 subscribers.
One of the eight defendants, 36-year-old Darryl Julius Polo, left Jetflicks to create another site called iStreamItAll, which was still online today. iStreamItAll likely won't stay online long, though, as the indictment said the site's domain names are subject to forfeiture. The Jetflicks domain names were also subject to forfeiture orders, and the website is offline. Jetflicks "claimed to have more than 183,200 different television episodes," while iStreamItAll "at one point claimed to have 115,849 different television episodes and 10,511 individual movies," the DOJ said. iStreamItAll "publicly asserted that it had more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime," the DOJ said. (Netflix offered 4,010 movies and 1,569 TV shows as of 2018, according to Netflix search engine Fixable.)
You mean (Score:3)
It was television entertainment the way it should be?
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Exactly
iStreamItAll (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the eight defendants, 36-year-old Darryl Julius Polo, left Jetflicks to create another site called iStreamItAll, which was still online today. iStreamItAll likely won't stay online long, though, as the indictment said the site's domain names are subject to forfeiture.
Quick. Someone register uStreamItAll
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Did you suffer a stroke while typing that?
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It appears to have happened before, rather than during.
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Even better than Hulu or broadcast TV (Score:2)
there weren't commercials.
Anybody have good pricing for a Usenet account? I was heavily using the free one my ISP had, until they very suddenly stopped providing that service with no warning (yeah it was a while ago)
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Good again (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds great (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like the perfect service, where can I sign up?
They keep complaining (Score:3)
Hollywood keep complaining about pirates, but they don't want us to watch their damn content.
The number one annoying thing with pirated material is hunting for it, hope it's encoded correctly for your particular device, hope the subtitles will sync or even match what's being said and hope the quality is good enough since it varies a lot between different release groups.
So hint to Hollywood: make your damn contents available in all countries, at the same time, avoid fucking exclusive deals, ask a decent price but don't insert ads on top of it, and people will pay for it.
Netflix, Amazon Prime? Available in Canada.
Hulu and the others? Nope.
Guess which ones are not owned by the medias.
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High quality, as in include the same damn video and audio you've included on the best global blu-ray release but let others select the quality levels they prefer with something more reasonable as the out of the box default to subsidize those who want/need it and know how to enable it.
Yes, couldn't agree with this more on the selection. Unfortunately a fair price isn't any higher than the cable companies charge for what they give. But if you crack their lock on local region sports you can upsell the sports d
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Think of like a 'meta' plural. Like the second derivative.
Medium -> Media -> Medias -> Mediases ... etc
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No, medium is the plural of small. And large is the plural of medium.
I should know, I worked at Pizza Hut.
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There's something horrible to corporations owning our culture.
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Re: They keep complaining (Score:2)
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They've also helped companies sell more HDDs than ever before.
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People subscribed... (Score:5, Insightful)
The mere fact that people subscribed to this service shows that these people are not freeloaders who only want content for free, they are willing to pay for the content if you make it convenient and accessible.
No DRM
No regional discrimination
Media in open formats i can play on any device or transcode to other formats if i so wish
Media that doesn't expire
Provide a good service and people will pay for it, provide a service with stupid arbitrary restrictions and people will be turned away.
There are now many cases where there is no legal way for people to get certain content, so piracy is simply the only option available in these cases.
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Pirate Sites Offer More Video Than Netflix (Score:2)
Before you go defending these guys (Score:2)
They were set up to make the owners filthy rich on someone else's work, and they succeeded.