'Piracy Is Coming Back' (thegamer.com) 187
Tessa Kaur, writing at The Gamer: This week, Disney removed a film called Crater from Disney Plus, which had been released on May 12, 2023. This means it was on the streaming platform for just 48 days, or about seven weeks. Disney hasn't said why, but it seems most likely that it didn't perform well enough and the company decided to remove it to write down the value of its "content assets," therefore lowering their taxes. It's all about the money, and always has been, and there are unfortunate consequences that come with this.
Disney isn't the only streamer that's guilty of this -- every streaming service, including Netflix and HBO Max (now just Max), has taken shows and movies off their platforms without warning. Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney, as was the well-loved Single Drunk Female from Hulu. HBO pulled Westworld and Snowpiercer. Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies was cancelled and pulled from Paramount Plus just last month. It seems like anything could be pulled at any time, and that sucks.
It's bad enough that streaming services are cancelling shows left and right because they don't meet arbitrary sales targets, but when they are pulled from these platforms, many of them disappear forever. A lot of these shows are made for streaming, never aired on cable, and were never physically released. Bigger prestige shows like Westworld and Snowpiercer appeared on cable originally and are more likely to have Blu-ray releases, but those Disney shows are gone. There is no legal way to watch them anymore, and these companies are not interested in even selling you access.
Disney isn't the only streamer that's guilty of this -- every streaming service, including Netflix and HBO Max (now just Max), has taken shows and movies off their platforms without warning. Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney, as was the well-loved Single Drunk Female from Hulu. HBO pulled Westworld and Snowpiercer. Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies was cancelled and pulled from Paramount Plus just last month. It seems like anything could be pulled at any time, and that sucks.
It's bad enough that streaming services are cancelling shows left and right because they don't meet arbitrary sales targets, but when they are pulled from these platforms, many of them disappear forever. A lot of these shows are made for streaming, never aired on cable, and were never physically released. Bigger prestige shows like Westworld and Snowpiercer appeared on cable originally and are more likely to have Blu-ray releases, but those Disney shows are gone. There is no legal way to watch them anymore, and these companies are not interested in even selling you access.
"Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:4)
And nothing of value was lost.
I stopped watching halfway through because the banter got really tedious. But that should be easy to fix with a re-edit.
Re: (Score:3)
And nothing of value was lost.
Indeed, and vote with your feet, get entertainment elsewhere.
Re: "Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:3)
The whole thing seemed like it was slapped together by a middle-aged marketing team that wanted to make it 'edgy, for teens'.
Re: (Score:3)
... that's because it's a tween show. What did you expect? That's its intended audience.
Re: (Score:2)
P.S. Never saw willow. Time bandits knockoff is what I thought. Geo. flailing away at trying to stay relevant, the early years. Davis is fine but overrated and overexposed by then too-Typecast into boringness. I'm quite frankly a little horrified it came back at all.
Re: (Score:2)
>Never saw willow. Time bandits knockoff is what I thought.
Not even close. Willow was a low-budget fantasy movie with mediocre effects... but with some compelling performances and an ineffable 'fun' to it.
If you like fantasy movies and can stand the old production values, it's kind of a must-see.
The new series was an abomination.
>I'm quite frankly a little horrified it came back at all
Well, I wouldn't say 'horrified', but I wish I'd been left wanting more instead of served up something that failed t
Re: (Score:3)
Re:"Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:5, Informative)
Willow was THE WORST.
It followed the usual 90's sitcom trope of "The adults are out of touch, the kids are with it and know what's up" In addition to that, it strayed way too far off the path of fantasy adventure, everything from contemporary music in the show to shoehorning in issues not relevant to the story or the original universe. There was so much that just serves as filler, and not even good filler at that. I had to stop watching as well.
It wasn't *just* the story and filler. The acting was atrocious. Granted there was some decent acting to be found, Joanne Whalley reprising her role as a mature, grown Sorsha was nice, but most of the other Cameo's were kind of sad like the Brownie Rool. Instead of the wild creature he was he's now living in what looks like a standard suburban home. This goes back to the 90's trope I mention in the first sentence. It's horrible. I want to see my Rool flying through the air, landing in a beer, drinking love potion and falling in love with a cat like he did in the movie.
It was just so bad, and I never pirated it. I still have a D+ subscription.
Re: (Score:3)
But that should be easy to fix with a re-edit.
Madmartigan shot first!
Re:"Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:5, Interesting)
And nothing of value was lost.
That's actually not the point. It's a troubling trend to see content alter or disappear or both.
Lucas is quoted as saying that his shit upgrades to the original Star Wars trilogy were "what everybody is going to remember" and that "the other versions will disappear ... a hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be [the special edition]". He figured he could rewrite the story, change it, litter his shit CGI on every scene, and that is what people would remember. That the original would disappear.
It's only the efforts of projects like 47kk/4k80/4k83 that professionally digitize existing movie theatre prints that are turning that into a lie and keeping the original versions alive and well.
Content copyright holders are not content dictators. Preserving Willow, Crater, original Star Wars... bad content and good which the copyright holders want to shred, that's important. I originally wrote that as "content creators are not content dictators", but the writers and actors and directors of all those shows, they are the content creators and I suspect Ellie Bamber and Warwick Davis and John Bickerstaff have very different opinions on whether WIllow should get pulled.
The other point is, if they get one penny of tax break for doing this, then that content should be seized by the IRS. If they are claiming it's valueless in order to take a tax writedown, then tax laws should be such that the property becomes forfeited. Then the IRS can sell and distribute it to recover their loss. Either that, or copyright laws re-written to exclude copyright on abandoned works.
Preserving these things is not piracy.
Re: (Score:3)
It's only the efforts of projects like 47kk/4k80/4k83 that professionally digitize existing movie theatre prints that are ... keeping the original versions alive and well.
Thank you, I was unaware of these efforts. +1 informative if I could.
The other point is, if they get one penny of tax break for doing this, then that content should be seized by the IRS. If they are claiming it's valueless in order to take a tax writedown, then tax laws should be such that the property becomes forfeited. Then the IRS can sell and distribute it to recover their loss. Either that, or copyright laws re-written to exclude copyright on abandoned works.
Preserving these things is not piracy.
The spirit of this idea is bang on. Let's stay away from the IRS "seizing" more than it needs to, and let's avoid having the IRS getting into the streaming business. But absolutely, the material should become public domain (or copyright ceded to the Crown/Library of Congress etc. as applicable by country).
Sadly, depending on the country, preserving these things may well be piracy, but you're right, it definitely should not be.
Re:"Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:5, Insightful)
You'll have to forgive me for being frustrated with how streaming is reverting us to the days prior to a VCR. Being born in 1984 I've never lived where I couldn't make a bootleg copy of something if I really wanted to.
As it is, I still buy dvds/blurays just so I can have physical copies (which I can copy to my computer so I can watch them on all my devices easily). That this is getting harder to do is very unfortunate and seems like we are essentially leaving a golden era of media.
You never want your only source of entertainment completely controlled by some big corporation precisely for this reason.
I of course think copyright is completely broken and has been my entire life. It's not unreasonable for something that's more then 14 years old, even 28 years old, to enter into the public domain. Old media shouldn't be locked away for anywhere near as long as it is these days.
Thanks Disney!
Re: (Score:2)
your only source of entertainment
TV is your only source of entertainment? There's the problem right there.
Re:"Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:5, Interesting)
And honestly, I don't use the collection that much either. Even with it all available on my home Sonos system, we all still use Spotify to play songs rather than playing it from the library. I equate this to the rise of cameras in phones. The best camera is the one you have with you. It's pretty much the same for music and media in general. And nowadays, the streaming services are always with you.
Re: "Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:5, Interesting)
My own CD collection is closer to 2TB. Some stuff isn't on spotify. I don't subscribe to it. I use a VPN and a Plex server at home, so the music is always available. It's not as well organized as I would like. That takes time with a collection this large. Then again my husband has got 15000 CDs he hasn't even ripped and won't do so.
Re:"Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:5, Insightful)
And if the streaming service goes away or removes your favorite artist because he said something stupid, you have your file collection.
Re:"Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:5, Insightful)
You forget copyrights. The very core of the idea behind copyrights is that authors/etc were allowed to restrict copying in order to make profits but have to make their works public after a fixed period*. So while media can be a business, they still have their part to play and just locking up content forever is against the very law they keep hiding behind.
* that fixed period quickly got out of hand and into absurdness, but that's another story which I'm sure Hollywood would like to create and sell you tickets to.
Re:"Willow was cancelled and removed from Disney" (Score:4, Informative)
It's true that it may have sucked, I haven't watched it (and I thought the movie was pretty dire as well), but this notion that, on a streaming service, any movie to series has to hit some level of viewership in some limited amount of time, or it's time to remove it and take the write off, just demonstrates how short sighted these decisions are. There have been many promising TV series and films over the years that weren't huge hits on first release, and yet gained considerable following in the years to come. Night of the Hunter, probably one of the most extraordinary thrillers (if you can even call it that, it's an oddball that's hard to categorize) was a commercial failure that ended up being Charles Laughton's directorial outing, is now considered one of the greatest films ever made, and probably made its money back many times even just being shown on TV. By streaming logic, it would be yanked and disappear into a void.
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
here's another list, also sans your movie.
https://www.empireonline.com/m... [empireonline.com]
and another list: https://au.rollingstone.com/10... [rollingstone.com]
And none of those lists contain your movie as a 'greatest films ever made'. We all like movies that others don't but just because we and a few friends like something doesn't mean it is objectively a greatest of all time.
We need a rule for tax-writeoffs of media... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you (as a content owner) remove media from a streaming service to get a tax writeoff, you should be required to release said media into the public domain to obtain that writeoff. In addition to that, it should be made available DRM-free for a specified amount of time.
It's unfair for them to have it both ways. If they refuse to make it available legitimately, it kind of ruins the argument against piracy.
Zero sympathy for these greedy companies.
Re: (Score:3)
Simply don't support their revenue stream. If company X isn't ethical, don't support it, or their upstream.
Re: (Score:3)
Then you starve to death... I don't know of any ethical company that will supply anything when they don't profit.
How about changing copyright to content that is available at the price it was released or less.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
I don't know of any ethical company
There aren't any. See the post "there is no ethical consumption"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Network television shows make an enormous amount of money because of the ads that run during the shows. Back in the 90s when Seinfeld was originally on television it was generating more than $300 Million in profit per season, and that doesn't include re-runs and syndication.
There are a few very good shows on Netflix, Hulu and Apple TV. But you only get 8-10 episodes for a "season", and then you have to wait a year, sometime two years, f
Re:We need a rule for tax-writeoffs of media... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you (as a content owner) remove media from a streaming service to get a tax writeoff, you should be required to release said media into the public domain to obtain that writeoff. In addition to that, it should be made available DRM-free for a specified amount of time.
It's unfair for them to have it both ways. If they refuse to make it available legitimately, it kind of ruins the argument against piracy.
Zero sympathy for these greedy companies.
I wonder what the precedence is for damages in copyright infringement cases when the work has been written off and would there be any other punishable offence involved? For physical goods (in my part of the world, non-US), I'm pretty sure theft has to have some value attached to the goods but this obviously doesn't make burglary, etc legal.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I wonder what the precedence is for damages in copyright infringement cases when the work has been written off
It would be funny to be sued for copyright infringement because you distributed a cancelled copyrighted movie, only for you to point out to the judge that Disney owes you money for the costs of distributing the content they said was worthless but you found demand for.
Re:We need a rule for tax-writeoffs of media... (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder what the precedence is for damages in copyright infringement cases when the work has been written off and would there be any other punishable offence involved? For physical goods (in my part of the world, non-US), I'm pretty sure theft has to have some value attached to the goods but this obviously doesn't make burglary, etc legal.
You'd still be on the hook for statutory damages, but you could presumably easily convince the judge that actual damages are zero, so that would be it. Since it presumably would be a willful violation, it could be up to a maximum of $150,000 per work, at the discretion of the court, and since it can't realistically be unknowing infringement, the court can't drop it to $200 per work (unless you could successfully argue that you didn't know that a written-off title was still protected by copyright), which means the bottom end for damages would be $750 per work.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I wonder what the precedence is for damages in copyright infringement cases when the work has been written off and would there be any other punishable offence involved?
The supreme court very specifically overturned this part of the constitution in a way to ensure there would not be precedence.
Congress is barred from issuing unlimited copyright terms.
Instead, they now issue 120 year terms (for works made for hire) specifically so no one alive can have standing to sue when a company doesn't release their work to the public domain when the terms expire.
Anyone with standing is long dead.
Despite nearly all companies outright saying they have no intent to follow copyright law a
Re: (Score:3)
I'm pretty sure theft has to have some value attached to the goods but this obviously doesn't make burglary, etc legal.
This isn't burglary though. This is more like dumpster diving. The law has long held that, if someone throws something away as garbage, it is free for anyone to claim. If, instead of throwing it away, they're actually just warehousing it , then they never should have gotten a tax write off in the first place.
So the "lost sale" argument is out the window (Score:5, Insightful)
If I cannot buy something from you, you cannot lose a sale when I get it from another source.
Re: So the "lost sale" argument is out the window (Score:2)
Difficult to argue damages for something you've decided is worthless.
But they'd do it - most likely by claiming the reason the show was valued that way was due to your piracy. A couple of bribes later and the politicians will legislate it that way, or have a regulatory body agree.
Re:So the "lost sale" argument is out the window (Score:5, Interesting)
I've thought for some time that copyright needs some sort of abandonment provision. That is, if a previously publicly available work isn't made available for some period, it automatically enters the public domain.
There are quite a few works for which ownership is difficult or impossible to establish, or where the rights holder isn't aware that they own the work. That isn't benefiting the public at all and is counterproductive to the whole purpose of copyright "to promote the useful arts and sciences."
Write your congress critter.
Re:So the "lost sale" argument is out the window (Score:5, Insightful)
That would actually be sensible. I would even go a step further and require them to re-register it ever, say, 7 years. If your content is still worth it, cough up the dough. If you don't think your content is worth the re-registry fee, I guess it's time for it to enter PD and let someone else have a run with it.
Re: (Score:3)
And once it enters public domain, nobody can get it back. Once it's done, it's done.
Re:So the "lost sale" argument is out the window (Score:5, Interesting)
copyright needs some sort of abandonment provision
I call that "copyduty". If to every right corresponds a duty, then to a right to restrict copying corresponds a duty of making copies available. Fail your duty, lose your right.
Re: (Score:3)
It's more complicated than that.
If I write a book and it's published by a publisher, and 10 years later it's out of print, there's often little I can do about that because the publisher owns the rights to publish it. It doesn't matter if there is demand.
Re:So the "lost sale" argument is out the window (Score:5, Insightful)
If I write a book and it's published by a publisher, and 10 years later it's out of print, there's often little I can do about that because the publisher owns the rights to publish it. It doesn't matter if there is demand.
That's not your book any more, that's the publisher's book. Don't sell it to them next time. (Even if you didn't literally, if only they have the rights to republish, then you might as well have done.)
Re: (Score:2)
On the age of digital publishing, that is just _wrong_. It needs to be fixed.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. There could be a process where if something is not available for a year, it goes on a public list. If it stays on that list for a year by not being offered to the public under reasonable conditions, it becomes public domain. That should really be enough time and warning.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, and if the owner ever comes calling, the 14th Amendment says they deserve fair compensation.
Re: (Score:3)
On one side this would make a lot of sense, though I fear that the end result of that would just be that the big companies would scoop up a lot of works for free, put their watermark on it and resell it.
You can't take a public domain work and claim copyright, you know. Once it's public domain, it remains that way forever. Sure, those evil "big companies" can scoop up whatever they want and put it up for sale, but so can anyone else. That's a good thing. It keeps works people want available and solves the problem of abandoned works.
While the average small author, who is busy with other aspects of their life would end up forgetting to renew their copyright and have their works slip into the public domain against their will.
Did you read what I wrote? I didn't say anything about renewals. The point is to keep works available while dealing with the problem of abandoned works. All your "average
Re: (Score:2)
The claim will be that it's their creation and they can do what they want with it. For example, they could develop a show with similar plot ideas/characters and wouldn't want the pirated version competing with that new show. Of course it's contrived reason, but good enough for one of their bribed politicians to use as cover for voting on legislation.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. It is time to make that the law: Either provide it at a reasonable price under reasonable conditions or lose copyright and the thing goes into the public domain. Also require them to deposit a copy in a reference library to get copyright in the first place. That library can then provide the the public domain version (if it happens) as well.
Here's a secret: (Score:2, Informative)
It never went away.
ARRRRRRRR!!
Public Domain (Score:5, Insightful)
Any content written off and given tax credits (money that should have gone back to the general population) should mean said content is now owned by the general population and should therefore be in the public domain.
Re:Public Domain (Score:5, Informative)
"Any content written off and given tax credits" You are mixing two financial/tax terms that are fundamentally different principles. A write off is a "loss". It counts against your total profit and thus is a tax deduction. It lowers the total amount that can be taxed, whereas a credit lowers the intended tax bill. Government stimulus often comes in the form of tax credits, and is a key tool in how governments fund things that then should be owned by the public domain. But an asset loss that deducts from your overall taxable income is just a loss and is still funded and paid for by the company (or person).
"Money that should have gone back to the general population" - define "Should". While one can argue the morality all day long and have as many opinions as there are stars in the sky, we live in a society governed by the rule of law. The only thing any one or any company "should" do is follow the law as written. If they did, they did what they should do. If the law creates something that is not moral to society, then the law should be changed. But a company is only obligated to follow the law as written; if you suggest they should go above and beyond the tax code as written then that's equivalent to suggesting that the Rule of Law should be replaced with "your opinion" and I think no one wants that.
"content owned by the general population" - how is that exactly? The general population doesn't own anything. Someone owns something, even if it's the government. But again you're making an absolutist statement based on your opinion; there's no legal way to implement this easily as even things owned by the government, ostensibly by the people, are not public domain.
While that last part was a bit weak, the problem with this is public domain. Do you even know who you're screwing with this? Have you followed the Writer's Strike [latimes.com]; do you know what it's about? Let me help you then: it's about residuals and how streaming has taken away a big piece of their income. You see, if a writer writes an episode of Seinfeld, then every time that episode airs on syndication they get a small check. Given enough, particularly on content that is popular like Friends or Sienfeld or many other shows, that can be an ongoing source of income. What's happened is streaming services don't see ongoing revenue nearly as much by hosting content for a long time, but by hosting it they are required to pay residuals. Why do streamer's take content down? Because the current contracts via the WGA and SAG and DGA require them to pay a fixed residual as long as it's available, but having that content doesn't increase their revenue as it's subscription based. Before on TV syndication every time an episode aired it generated ad revenue, now there's no correlation to quality and revenue. As a result, streamers take down content so they don't have to pay residuals that cannot be easily correlated to subscription revenue.
Why do I diverge in the WGA strike? Not to take sides in that argument; there's a mismatch in the business and the expectations of writers and it's tricky to sort out. But the reason i say that is any form of content put into the public domain will result in no one paying for it, which means the writers definitively lose their residuals. They will be up in arms over this and will fight it every step of the way. You would actually be more likely to unify the WGA, the SAG, and the DGA with streamers as that would directly hurt all of their potential revenue.
So no what you're proposing would be fought at all levels of the industry and never pass any law whatsoever.
Public Domain (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. And a high-quality copy must be provided to some reference library for distribution.
Re: (Score:2)
Uggh. This again.
The taxpayers didn't "pay" for anything. The company lost money on the project. Why would you pay tax on money you didn't earn?
Re: (Score:2)
That's not what it means. It's not really a "writeoff", that's just the media friendly phrase that's being thrown about. There were costs involved in the creation of this work, they chose not to recuperate those costs through releasing the item so they have less profits. Those costs were ALWAYS going to come off their bottom line, but now they have less overall "profits" since they aren't licensing the content they created to themselves or others to stream.
But the thing is if they ever release it in the
Nice examples lol (Score:3)
Here is a list of dreg that no one would willingly invest effort into obtaining.
Re: (Score:2)
And then you have shows like Firefly...
They did pick some pretty atrocious examples.
Re: (Score:2)
Here is a list of dreg that no one would willingly invest effort into obtaining.
And yet a 2 second search will show Crater has >10 concurrent running torrents with literal 1000s of seeders across them. Williow has multiple pages worth of torrents for people getting individual episodes, and a whole season torrent currently has 490 seeders with 290 leechers. Single Drunk Female has just shy of 100 seeders for each of the episodes and that number again for the whole season. Snowpiercer is back in the thousands. Westworld unsurprisingly is well over the 10k mark in seeders, and even Gre
Frustrating (Score:2)
It is particularly frustrating. A guilty pleasure of mine are "ghost shows" on the educational channels. "A Haunting" is one of my favorites. Currently on Discovery Plus there's like seasons 1,4,5,7,10 and 11. Now, its an anthology show so episode release order is irrelevant, but still the whole point of streaming libraries was supposed to be that you can watch what you want when you want.
Honestly I've started keeping a local media server (Jellyfin) that has a corresponding Roku client and anything I li
It isn't just about taxes (Score:5, Interesting)
This post is awful (Score:2)
I will ignore the headline and instead gripe about shows being pulled, I will offer no evidence to support the claim either.
Exactly my arguments (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can't wait to see what they do about Steamboat Willie, it will show their true colors.
You don't have to wait and see. They made Steamboat Willie a part of their logo and registered it as a trademark so it'll continue to enjoy protections that way. I'm not an expert on trademark law but I don't think they care if they'll even be in the right here. They only need a case good enough to not get thrown out by a judge and then they can bankrupt their targets arguing and then hold up the corporate corpse of their victim as a scarecrow to anyone else who wants to take a shot so whatever protectio
IP Needs and Overhaul (Score:3)
We need to overhaul the way copyright works for digital media. There should be a compulsory licensing regime where anyone who wants to archive digital works would pay into a fund to compensate creators. Archivists would have the right to download, break DRM, whatever is necessary to archive a clear copy of anything that is generally released. The cost should be affordable, i.e. less than the annual maintenance cost of basic media NAS setup, maybe low hundreds annually. They would be required to maintain an accurate list of everything that they have archived, so the licensing fees can be dispersed correctly. Cap the amount that studios can legally make the creators sign over, so the creators actually get a non-trivial piece of this. Allow public libraries to facilitate lending of media from this distributed archive, they could pay fees similar to what they currently pay for physical media that wears out after some number of uses, which would go into the fund.
Re: (Score:3)
Or make copyright and drm mutually exclusive.
Either you have legal protection in the form of copyright, or technical protection in the form of drm - but not both.
If you've taken to technical measures then clearly you don't consider the legal measures adequate.
Han shot first! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Remember Syndication? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why make money later when I can improve this quarter with a write-off now?
These shows are investments, like any investment you cut the losers and focus on the winners.
This, plus Youtube... (Score:2, Interesting)
This, plus Youtube continually removing "dissident" content it disagrees with (try finding much of anything about alternate history theory, whether it's about Nazis or ancient Europe or prehistory or even more recent American events), has me and many others resorting to using services/tools like Plex to create our own informational/educational archives.
Wish I'd started before things started getting banned ad hock.
Re:Alternative history? (Score:2)
Alternative history is another word for fiction.
Re: (Score:2)
Said the person who has absolutely no awareness of how whitewashed all of history is.
If you still believe half the things you learned in public school, you've got no idea what actually happened in recent history, nevermind further back.
Re: (Score:2)
If it's factual, cited, peer-reviewed accounts of what happened in the past, that's just history. 'Alternate History' is where people try and fit a view around history such that it supports their beliefs.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To be fair, we really don't know exactly how much of anything REALLY went because we were not there to see it. History has always been written by the victor and getting diverse perspectives on things is neigh impossible.
Not to mention, how many people that wrote down the history are really just writing down what they "heard" from someone that did see it or possibly even from someone that "heard" about something but didn't witness it themselves first hand. That doesn't even take into account that two people
Re:Alternative history? (Score:4, Insightful)
Said the person who has absolutely no awareness of how whitewashed all of history is.
We know how it is whitewashed. A common saying is that history is written by winners. However history is a well researched field that is constantly updated with factual information, even when it was once whitewashed (seriously did you sleep through the Republican party nutjobs complaining that history researchers are erasing white men?). History is updated and corrected constantly. Alternate history on the other hand is just fanfiction.
huh? (Score:2)
but when they are pulled from these platforms, many of them disappear forever.
if for some weird reason you absolutely want to watch that crap its torrents won't have gone anywhere.
how people pay anything to these vultures is beyond me. must be out of sheer ignorance or utter laziness. i even have prime because it's a sweet deal just for the fast and cheap shipping and have never even bothered to access their streaming service. (tbh i did once, just out of curiosity: they asked to install some private codec or player and that was the immediate end of the experiment).
Re: (Score:2)
It's super easy to watch Thursday Night Football with a couple clicks on Amazon Prime. Sure, I could use my other streaming sites that I use to watch any game I want but those streams aren't as reliable as Prime's Thursday night is.
It never went away (Score:2)
"Piracy" never went away. (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a period of time where watching what you wanted to watch legitimately was so easy that why would you bother to pirate it. And that still *IS* the case with music if you have Apple Music or Spotify. But then the networks got greedy. And now, most of the shows that you used to be able to go to Netflix and watch, easy-peasy, are scattered to the four winds and half a dozen other streaming apps.
Honestly, I'm surprised that people put up with having to hunt for stuff not just on Netflix, but also Hulu, Prime, whatever CBS/Paramount calls their app today, HMO Max, Peacock, Discovery Plus, and even PBS has gotten into that game. I thought for sure that if something wasn't available to watch on Netflix, or *maybe* Prime since many people have it already for the expedited shipping, peoples' next step would have been The Pirate Bay from the outset. Maybe having streaming bundled with cellular plans, combined with password sharing, showed that down. But now, if they're pulling content entirely (Including things like Westworld... WTFH?!?!?) I bet that TPB will be seeing a nice increase in shipping.
FFS Hollywood... take the lesson from the music industry. Knock off the crap, just put everything on Apple TV+ and Netflix, take your royalty checks; and hardly anybody will still be sailing for the Bay.
Re:"Piracy" never went away. (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a period of time where watching what you wanted to watch legitimately was so easy that why would you bother to pirate it.
Quite.
The selling point of piracy was very often convenience. I remember trying NowTV as the first streaming service I tried to legally watch Game of Thrones back when it wasn't a pile of shit. It was fucking awful. It had a special "app" which had to be installed and it would randomly decide it had to upgrade giving a 20 minute wait before the episode started. And the player app was crap. I ended up pirating shows I paid for.
Streaming got decent. Lots of cross licensing deals, players which worked well enough in a web browser, good range of stuff, easy search.
And now it's getting shit again. The individual studios are all trying to cash in on a subscription. Now when you want to watch a show, you need to find the service, subscribe, figure out the cancellation terms so you don't end up subscribed continuously to 10 different services etc etc and there's no a la cart option.
Huge pain in the arse compared to what the pirate bay used to be.
The stupid thing is if you're making people pay, you really really ought to make sure people get a better product for their money. Instead for your troubles the vendor tries to lock you in so they keep getting your money, like an extra "fuck you" to their customers.
So yeah, not surprised. Getting hold of good TV's got annoying again.
Re: (Score:2)
Single Drunk Female (Score:3)
Too bad they pulled that, it's way more popular than the sequel, "Single Pregnant Female". :-)
[Thinking of this joke.]
They are trying to put warning labels on liquor now that say, "Caution! Alcohol can be dangerous to pregnant women." Did you read that? I think that's ironic. If it was not for alcohol, most women will not even be that way.
-- Rita Rudner
A recent quote or something like it. (Score:2)
"You won't own anything and you'll be happy." - Ida Auken WEF
Surging piracy is a failure of the market (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of pirates aren't doing it because they're nefarious or malicious in nature: they do it because piracy provides a better, more convenient product, or sometimes because there is actually no legal way of getting the product you want because it's out of distribution, region locking nonsense, etc. The reason piracy was so prevalent in the naughts was because it was vastly superior even when you factored out cost: you could spend time and effort going to a store to buy a DVD locked down with copy protections and with unskippable ad rolls prior to getting to the main menu... or you could fire up a torrent from the comfort of your own home and get a better version with no copy protections that you could play on any device, any time you wanted.
Streaming was supposed to be the radical counter to piracy. Yes it cost a bit of money, but it was even more convenient to be able to click on what you wanted and watch it immediately. No hunting down torrents and waiting for long downloads and having to store/manage tons of files. Everything you'd ever want to watch a click away. And for a while streaming delivered on this promise. However years of streaming services balkanizing, increased prices, additions of new annoying DRM and other user restrictions, the lack of quality in new content, and the shuffling/vanishing of old but still desired content means that once again piracy is looking like the better option. Netflix, Amazon, etc are killing the golden goose in search of the next egg and piracy is always there to fill the void when it happens.
How do they establish a write-down value? (Score:3)
How do they establish a write-down value on some piece of media? It can't be the cost of production. they would have already written that off.
So how do they establish that it is worth X millions as a write-off? What gives it this value?
Re: (Score:2)
That might actually be the fix. Disallow whatever rule they're exploiting to make it so that they get a write off on media they're not releasing. That'll fix that problem.
Re: (Score:3)
It can't be the cost of production. they would have already written that off.
They may not have been able to deduct or offset the cost of production in any way until writing the asset down as worthless.
Apparently the government is becoming well-versed in Hollywood accounting, and the IRS does NOT allow creators of media such as Youtubers, films, movies, music, etc, to simply expense their Costs of production. They are one of the few types of business required to instead account for Wages and Labor as
Re: (Score:2)
Alternatively they might be trying to sell those shows to another platform to recover some of their investment?
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/29/streaming-services-remove-movies-shows-heres-why.html
Interprets extortion as failure & routes aroun (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Alternate headline... (Score:3)
Here's an alternate headline that is a bit more descriptive of what's going on:
Movie and TV studios fucking around, finding out
Just like the music industry had to find out that the public isn't going to subscribe to 10 different services in order to listen to what they want, nobody is going to subscribe to 10 different services just to watch the content they want.
Make it easy, available, and of quality and you don't get people going to the lengths necessary to pirate shit. I know I'd rather just pay Netflix $20/month and be done with it.
But if you fuck around and play games of artificial scarcity, you're going to lose every time. You're going to piss off an engineer somewhere who is going to write a piece of software that completely fucks your go-to-market strategy, and they're going to give it away for free along with all your shit regardless of legality.
Yeah, but... (Score:2)
So, HBO also pulled The Right Stuff from their lineup. It had been on there maybe 6-8 weeks. There was a time when older movies would be on for 6 months or more. Why pull it so quickly? Did too many people watch it thus driving up the residual costs? Maybe that's the real problem. The cost to pay everyone and their mother's cousin twice-removed a residual check every time the property gets viewed isn't insignificant and I doubt that a one-time payment is ever part of negotiations.
YARR mateys! (Score:2)
Pirate PowARR!!!
It sucks when shows get written off for tax reasons and can then never be sold or broadcast again, it seems to be happening more frequently these days. A couple of other series I can remember that happened with are Megas XLR and Inside Job.
Re: (Score:2)
How would you apply your argument to Sony Vs. Betamax? Just because a newscast or show or movie only aired once, is one to assume they owner didn't want it viewed ever again? What if they simply didn't care to distribute it again? The lucky few that (legally) recorded it are allowed to pass on copies to friends for all eternity and not get in trouble for it. So it's just luck of the draw/who you know if you get a physical tape of it, but you're SOL if it's a digital copy?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, I didn't assume that. I ASKED that question. But regardless of the answer, if, say the Star Wars Holiday Special only aired once on network TV in 198x, whether the owner WANTED it distributed again or not, it's still legal to do so.
"is one to assume they owner didn't want it viewed ever again?"
Re: (Score:2)
What a pity you didn't take the next logical step, which goes something like this: When people rich and powerful enough to have their foot on the neck of actual writers and film makers can also afford to buy legislators and ensure the laws are heavily biased in their favour...well, it's not surprising that a certain number of consumers get annoyed with an unfair and unethical (but NEVER illegal) situation and take to the high seas.
ARRRRRRRR
Re: (Score:2)
Your argument doesn't hold up when they aren't selling access. How can they be losing out on income when they refuse to make it available?
Re: (Score:2)
In theory, (and now in practice with this movie/series and the D+ Willow series) they can't distribute it/sell it ever again because they took a writedown for tax purposes.
(According to an accountant I know, hypothetically, they could go back later and pay the government the back taxes they wrote off to resurrect the material from the grave, as it were, but I don't know how much or what process they have to go through to do it.)
Re: (Score:2)
hold your horses, ip chevalier, you are missing the point.
which is that they are not selling that stuff anymore so no, not even if your wet dream utopia where intellectual property equates physical property is that "theft". the "lost sales" argument was always bogus but here it doesn't even apply.
besides, this form of sharing is not only completely legal in my country, it is even explicitly sanctioned by the state by virtue of a canon charged on digital services and equipment precisely for this purpose. goo