this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 544 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Proving Netflix could be replaced by five hard working people.

[–] [email protected] 195 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Proving Netflix could be ~~replaced~~ outdone by five hard working people.

[–] [email protected] 92 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Proving Netflix should ~~could~~ be ~~replaced~~ outdone by five hard working people.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

~~Proving~~ Netflix ~~should~~ ~~could~~ be ~~replaced~~ ~~out~~done ~~by five hard working people~~.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago

Things are easier if you can steal stuff. And operate on a small scale.

[–] [email protected] 120 points 4 months ago (6 children)

They didn’t need the army of lawyers to get license deals, so that’s not a fair comparison.

[–] [email protected] 89 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Its almost like its unecessary shit made up in order to keep profits away from working people artificially

[–] [email protected] 73 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yeah its almost like if we didn't keep extending copyright protections a bunch of stuff would be in the public domain and any streaming service could offer it without having to deal with licensing.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I mean that's all well and good, but then how would the very deserving shareholders get dividends?

Won't somebody think of the shareholders!?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)
  1. Take over a failing company
  2. Hold a shareholder meeting
  3. Show the line going down
  4. Turn the chart upside down
  5. Become a hero to the shareholders
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

maybe if they actually invested some money somewhere they would make some money for once.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's true that Hollywood is corrupt and csuite pay is absurd, but those deals are the only mechanism by which ANY money makes it to the writers, actors and staff who deserve it

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's the exclusivity bullshit that gets me.

It could be: New movie is released! Anyone who pays the price tag gets to stream it!

But no, we must bidding war gouge.

On top of that, X Y and Z services exist in America, but not in other countries, so in this other country, everything is on Netflix, while I had to jump between three different services at one point just to watch Stargate

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hey, you're just salty that you didn't get in on the ground floor when Stargate was being exclusively streamed in a dedicated Stargate streaming service

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Stargate+ Maxx Ultraviolet

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

Or fund new content

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Their scale was also an insignificant fraction of what Netflix has, making the point even more irrelevant.

The best figure I could find on Jetflicks user count was 37k, where as Netflix has 269 million users.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Prices should go down with scale not up though.

There's initial investment on the initial servers (and the software), and afterwards it should be a linear increase of server costs per user, with some bumps along the way to interconnect those servers.

The cost also scales per content. Because that means more caching servers per user and bigger databases, and licenses.

So this service has less users and more content, it should be way more expensive. The only reason they are cheaper is because they don't pay those licenses.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

The cost of storage in this case is more or less irrelevant - traffic is what matters here. You're also not getting any mentionable bulk discount on the servers for that matter.

The key is that you can engineer things in completely different way when you have trivial amounts of traffic hitting your systems - you can do things that will not scale in any way, shape or form.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

If we get rid of the licensing we get rid of the lawyers.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (6 children)

If you get rid of licensing you get rid of the content

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Certain types of content. But YouTube's own existence started because people made content without licensing rights.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Technically YouTube exists because three horny nerds wanted a dating site with video integration. It only turned into a video sharing site when they realized they couldn't find the clip of the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction and they decided they wanted to build that platform instead.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I wonder what youribe would have been like if they didn't sell to google

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

probably redtube

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Not really. I can undersgand licensing but at this point it's become a distopian practice completely separated from the basic need to monetize the content an make a profit. That's why those companies become such gargantuans monsters.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (11 children)

Nope. People will still make content. It'll be on far less of a budget, but that didn't stop the Film School generation of independent films in the 1970s (before which you had to sell your life and soul and beating heart to a studio). In between all the schlock were the occasional arty films we consider classics today.

And then there's government subsidization of art projects, as per the National Endowment of the Arts.

I think the MCU movies, the DC movies, the many studio iterations of Spiderman have shown us what capitalism eventually churns out. Sony actually chose this path content as product the same resort to formula that plagued the music industry in the 1980s (and drove the Hip Hop Independent movement of the next half-century).

We just need to empower artists. Make sure they don't have to moonlight as restaurant wait staff in order to eat and pay rent while they create, and make sure they have access to half-decent (not necessarily high end) hardware with which to do their thing. And yes, as Sturgeon observes, most of it will be schlock, but through sheer quantity of content we'll get more gems than Hollywood is putting out.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The only reason all companies prices go up these days is for CEO pay packages

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago

I think it’s more for major shareholders (which includes CEOs, of course)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Like Boeing's CEO making 300 million.... imagine 300 people who worked their ass off could make million. Or 1500 hard workers could be making 200k. But nah, let's just drag these huge bags of money into this one asshole's account. Oh there were a couple of crashes right? 👍 Our thoughts and prayers 🙏. But not our money wagons.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Regulate monopolies and eat the rich.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

but wait.. there's more
astronauts

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Does Netflix make shows? Or does it slam its name onto filmmakers it pays to make content? If so, one of those things simply requires throwing cash at people, which I think is a skill that most people can learn.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Did the pirate site pay anyone to make new shows?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They had to operate under the radar to avoid the law, so you know the answer to your question

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (6 children)

So Netflix actually pays for shows to get made, so when everyone pays for Netflix, it lets everyone enjoy them. Pirate sites only extract value from the hard work of the producers, without paying them.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Does Netflix? Or do they pay production companies for content?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They use the subscription money to pay production studios. What did the pirate site use the subscription money for?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Servers, electricity, bandwidth, blackjack and hookers.