this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 9 months ago (3 children)

To be fair, for me the fact that they content is now spread across many subscription services is the problem more than Netflix's price or current quality.

Once I set are services, torrent and jellyfin for all of the others, I'm not making exceptions for Netflix

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yeah, by "they", I meant the studios more than Netflix. Netflix itself was negatively impacted by studio greed, since a lot of them pulled their content from the platform so they can push their own shitty subscription service. It's frustrating that these studios fought streaming tooth and nail, while Netflix pioneered the industry and proved a profitable streaming model. As soon as it was impossible to dispute that the model works, all the individual studios suddenly want to run their own streaming service. They fragmented the content across a dozen different services, and drove the industry back to unaffordability and inconvenience.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Its ironic. On a decentralized platform we are discussing how a big issue with streaming services is that they are not centralized ^-^

I dont even disagree with you. I just think its interesting that we dont apply the ideological standard of centralization and monopoly being inherently bad evenly across the board.

Im not really sure I have a greater point to make here. I'm not trying to knock or dissent what your saying at all.

Just a stoned observation.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's exclusivity deals that are the problem. Governments should legislate them away so that there can be competition.

Then we'd all choose the marketplace of our preference. Like supermarkets.

Video streaming, music streaming, games consoles, even mobile OSs all could benefit from some anti-monopoly legislation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

This, why did the government stop on prohibiting studios from owning cinemas?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I see your point, but I don't think this would qualify as decentralized. It went from 1 to maybe 8 players depending on where you are, but they are separated and closed. Each one of them is centralized, it's just that there are several competing ones. Each one is taking away their shows or making some third party ones exclusive, so the more there are, the less vale each provides.

And of course the issue is that each one has to be paid separately, so there's a economic incentive to participate in as few as you can.

With Lemmy for instance, you might want want an instance that's very connected with others, one that's quite closed and focussed or even create several users or even spin your own instance to have it your way.

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

Excellent point. Calling the current streaming landscape decentralized is like calling the current social media landscape decentralized, since you can choose between twitter, reddit, tiktok, or meta. It's unfortunate that it's unlikely that a properly decentralized network for video will exist, since the hosting costs are so astronomical.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

A centralized service's hosting costs are astronomical because they are trying to serve the whole world. Is your Plex server hosting cost astronomical? What if you share it with friends? Everyone contributes to a decentralized service. Piracy is decentralized, and the hosting costs are not astronomical.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

You can read things from all servers on the server you choose to connect with though. Bad analogy.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Yet streaming music has basically the same artists no matter which service you use. And Tidal integrates with Plex seamlessly with my own local collection. Worth the subscription for that.

Do that. (But they won't)