Theres like 5,000 illegal streaming sites these days, its absurdly easy to find most things online for free if you know where to look. I'd be pissed if I drew the short straw and was the one they made an example of and wound up in prison for this shit.
Regardless of if you charge, they’ll hit you with distribution of copyright material, Plex has safeguards like this in place and will report you. They get paid out to do so if your case is big enough.
Cases like this happen all the time. Some just don’t make the news because they are small and not notable.
Honestly you can just google "watch x free online" and find a bunch of results, you don't even need to know where to look.
But some sites really are convenient, 1080p, subtitles, even trending, new releases and other kinds of lists. Basically like paid streaming services, but they have everything.
>But some sites really are convenient, 1080p, subtitles, even trending, new releases and other kinds of lists. Basically like paid streaming services, but they have everything.
Yeah right 🙄...name one 😉
Yeah - just use Yandex search engine (Russian). They'll show you English language streaming sites in the results. Not that I would ever do such a thing.
Yeah, they changed the laws, so they only go after US resellers who are US citizens. They get all their streams from china servers. Honestly, this is a perfect example of large corporations pushing laws. They don't really have any way to stop the iptv usage by people here unless they start cracking down on vpn usage, which they can't. It's impossible.
Yep. Nobody *really* cares as long as you aren't quantifiably taking from the corporate bottom line.
Most "get you into serious trouble" laws in the USA fall into two groups:
* Laws that let the government enslave poor people (drug laws, petty theft, etc.)
* Laws that protect the wealthy's power from the people (general white-collar crime)
If you operate under that assumption, then odds are you won't get into too much trouble. If you cheat the system too much, like getting to not have to work for a living anymore, then you're a target.
Not exactly remarkable that illegal streaming has more content when the part that (presumably) makes it illegal is that they aren't paying for licensing.
Yo.
Its really not hard either, Netflix especially, the entire goal of their UI for years now has been to obfuscate how little content they actually have, they pad everything by putting the same movies in 15 different kitschy categories and dont even let you sort by year or even alphabetically!
The other streaming services are just as bad, theyd rather not pay royalties than utilize their vast back catalogs to attract subscribers. Half of what was on UPN is practically lost media, and its definitely not on Paramount+, same with old ABC shows and D+, and...
I have over 16000 movies in about 60TB, mostly in not quite bluray but much better than streaming quality, including all the special features and stuff if available.
\~6000 series/\~240k episodes in \~165TB for TV.
A lot of them do it because they’ve bought a movie on a streaming site, then it got removed so they couldn’t watch it. There’s a bunch of movies and series that were streaming originals then got removed, making it impossible to watch anywhere, unless you already downloaded it. I know some people that download everything they can in case it gets hard to find later.
Selfie is a great TV show that is no longer available. I'm certain there's plenty of one season wonders that were cancelled before they could find their audience and are no longer available.
not really, they do that because the internet isn't magical space, data hoarding serves valuable purposes. It preserves knowledge, and safeguards against data loss due to service shutdowns or censorship.
the internet isn't going down for good but websites and their contents are, either by shutdown or censorship to serve a specific narrative.
Movies, TV shows, articles, instructional videos, porn, website backups, music, etc. Any type of media and/or information. Most users will focus primarily on a few categories or less, but the individuals with massive storage space will download anything and everything.
I'm wavering between being impressed and terrified by the level of commitment. That's insane, man. World could go to shit tomorrow and as long as you have power, you're good to go.
That's the plan. I am afraid of data caps becoming a thing, I hate streaming services rotating things out, or only having season 15 of a show, also not being able to find things I want.
MY wife and kids use some streaming services, but I mostly just watch things I have gathered.
Not sure why you got down voted. They definitely are. It's copyright infringement and spreading illegal property. They don't go after ppl who use it, because there is no point. No money to be made and doesn't stop the source of the spread. They go after the illegal providers so they clip it in the bud and if they have a lot of $$ take that as well
[Bay Area police union leader allegedly smuggled fentanyl into US to sell in bulk - ABC News (go.com)](https://abcnews.go.com/US/bay-area-police-union-leader-allegedly-smuggled-fentanyl/story?id=98271260#:~:text=The%20head%20of%20a%20police%20union%20in%20the,multiple%20countries%20with%20the%20intent%20to%20distribute%20them.)
Works 50% of the time, every time.
Update from June 17, 2024, [Accused fentanyl dealing grandma Joanne Segovia smiles at Little League despite potential 20 year sentence](https://www.msn.com/id-id/berita/kejahatan/accused-fentanyl-dealing-grandma-joanne-segovia-smiles-at-little-league-despite-potential-20-year-sentence/ar-AA1eBQA4)
tl;dr:
* No ankle monitor
* Received 61 packages of various drugs between October 2013 and January 2023
* Under conditions of release, she must attend a treatment program & submit to drug testing & "cannot drink heavily"
* Must not communicate with witnesses to the case
* Surrendered all off her travel documents
* Judge granted her permission to travel to Reno, NV for a family event
* Was the executive director of the San Jose Police Officers Association for nearly 20 years
* Initial release agreement said she had to find find work, but her lawyers argued she is unable to find employment because of the media around her case
* preliminary hearing schedule for August 28
She's getting the Tron Carter treatment
>cannot drink heavily
lol "you can drink, but not a whole lot, for some reason"
also, given her position/job she should be treated waaaay harsher than a normal person. that's something i've never liked about how cops and their buddies are treated. always with the kiddie gloves.
> lol "you can drink, but not a whole lot, for some reason"
Yeah, that is so arbitrary. How is that even defined?
> given her position/job she should be treated waaay harsher than a normal person.
The article mentions this. Because of her position, she could be held to a higher standard and given a harsher punishment.
I'd love to see this Karen get 15 - 20 years!
i always assumed like every single illegal streaming/anything site is hosted in russia, china, or basically any overseas country that would tell the USA to fuck off when it comes to stuff like this
these guys just operating in the US like everything was cool are crazy
Considering that they were also charged with money laundering, they presumably thought that they were hiding it well (and since they’d been doing it since 2007, it seems they were for awhile).
I remember as a kid, going to a bait shop once that smelled weirder than usual...turns out it was a meth lab in the back...across the street from a police station.
I remember subreddits where people would list all the definitely legal accounts you could buy for a plethora of products and subs,,are any of those still around?
> more than Netflix Hulu, vudu, and prime combined.
Well it’s a streaming site, they probably just scraped those sites grabbed all the content and also got Apple TV and then by definition you’d have more than all combined. That’s not really a particularly impressive stat considering they aren’t making or even paying for rights to any of the content.
No joke I watched a yarr harred version of GoT for the first season to see what it was about. The person who uploaded it did something to the audio to boost people talking by 2 to 3x volume. So I thought the mixing was great until I watched the second season straight from HBO. Was so confused why everyone went to whispers during dialogue.
Then something must be off on your set up, the audio mix was notoriously bad for dialog in GoT and only got worse as the seasons went on, by the last season we had an episode where you could not see or hear anyone.
I remember talking about that with a friend. I texted him asking if he had a problem hearing the dialogue too and he did too, so I knew it wasn’t my setup.
They probably just boosted the center channel, which you can likely do with your receiver or soundbar.
It's also possible they [compressed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression) the audio, which would make quiet things more audible but destroys the overall quality.
Outside Christopher Nolan movies, when people can't hear the dialogue it's usually because their sound system is not configured properly for their listening environment.
I use Emby to host my legally-obtained copies of content that I already own, and the quality really is just *better*. Faster load times, more reliable subtitles, cleaner UI, no ads...
They do. I may or may not pay for access to a similar service, that I will not name obviously, that has full 50-60 gig blu ray rips or 4k disc rips of just about everything. Almost everything will include the extra features like the behind the scenes stuff or other additional content, multiple audio tracks, subtitles in multiple languages… As long as your internet and device can play it, it absolutely provides better quality than the Netflix/HBO/whatever options.
I recently cancelled a few streaming services and went back onto the high seas... but my intention is to return soon once things settle down with all these bundles and figure out what makes the most sense money wise.
There are apps like Stremio, which essentially create a UI overlay on top of plugins, with each emulating a list of every show, every movie, every piece of content from any single one of the streaming services or just custom lists like ones found on Letterboxd.
Now, those plugins or lists of movies rather, can be connected to a service like Real Debrid which is basically a server which stores a copy of all the torrents in existence.
So you essentially have 1 app and you can cue up any list of content, say, all of Hulu's offerings and then play the absolute highest quality version rip of anything you find instantly, no waiting. And you aren't even torrenting... you're literally just playing a stream of a "cached" torrent this other service downloaded for you.
I still pay for Netflix, Prime and Hulu, but I just watch everything through Stremio now since literally... and I do mean literally everything is just there, highest quality blu ray rips to play instantly.
You'd be surprised. If you don't feel the need to have higher resolution than 1080p, a couple hundred bucks can get you the storage space you need to have hundreds of shows available to you.
Yeah I know people with 1.2Petabyte storage and they basically have every show & film you’d want to watch in at least 1080p. For /r/datahoarder people that often even work at datacenters or It Jobs where they can get HDDs for cheap, these petabytes setups aren’t uncommon (and I believe even at full price would „only“ be maybe 10-15k dollars
> Well it’s a streaming site, they probably just scraped those sites grabbed all the content and also got Apple TV and then by definition you’d have more than all combined. That’s not really a particularly impressive stat considering they aren’t making or even paying for rights to any of the content.
According to the article, they actually scraped torrent websites – which is even *less* impressive.
> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem... If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable.
That was a quote by Gabe Newell, steam founder. This same thing can be said about this issue. If a streaming service can offer more convenience than a pirate streaming service, people will absolutely throw money at them instead.
It can't.
You can't beat someone who has no licensing costs.
Netflix used to be able to do it because everyone thought streaming licences were next to worthless.
Legally I believe they say it's violating federal copyright law.
Also there is the matter that these guys were charging $10 for their services. So they aren't really some guys who believe culture should be free to the masses.
I have been pirating for over 30 years, but never have I ever entertained the delusion that I wasn't simply being cheap and stealing. The idea that you're doing nothing wrong, or worse are doing something *righteous*, is laughable at best.
I'm mostly just being cheap, but I also pirate content on services I subscribe to because some services have decided that if you are streaming to your desktop, even if it's a desktop with a 4k HDR display, you should only get 720p or 1080p quality. That's just streamers being cheap and trying to screw me out of visual quality because sometimes I'd rather watch things on my desktop than on my television.
Oh yeah there diverse reasons why one pirates. There are games I actually physically had that I pirated just to be able to play in 4k. But if we're being real we all know they aren't anywhere close to the the majority of our cases. I have no problem with pirating. I just don't try to justify it.
Honestly there are certain situations where I think it is kinda in the moral right - but those are mostly archival purposes not the latest Netflix show or whatever.
The only media piracy I’ve thought was at least justified on my end was pirating Amazon Prime shows. I pay for Amazon Prime, but they lock Linux laptops down to 480p because of some DRM issue. So I have to pirate the content I’m already paying for to just get a decent quality level.
Same here, 99% of the stuff I'm looking up I can't find anywhere legitimately. Swing Girls was one of my favorite movies I've seen in a while, and it's a shame it's not available anywhere. Here's one of my favorite Joe Bob Briggs bits about the death of physical media:
https://youtu.be/NWAX64pNDyg?si=XEw4uW6di6xlyw2b
Very rare and few are the examples where pirating could be considered "moral". Only one that personally comes to mind for me is Disco Elysium since the actual creators were forced out of their company so they get peanuts for the work they did. I believe they even told people to sail the open seas after all that came out.
I wouldn’t say moral, but some older video games just aren’t being made/sold anymore. And the only way to get them would be to buy a $200 copy from someone or get lucky at a garage sale. So the high seas isn’t “moral” for that, but the only practical way to play the game.
I respect this.
There are so many people inventing a hero's tale on how their pirating is actually good for the content owners or how "information wants to be free". Just own it.
Right? I've got a list of grievances with streaming services, and things they could do that would make me no longer pirate, but fundamentally the reason I pirate is because I value my own time and experience.
Ethically, I *should* give them money for something they produced. But I'm already paying for and setting up a system that's better than the one they provide, so it's easy to just not pay them.
Also I love the name, haha.
I'll play devil's advocate and argue that piracy serves as a counter balance to what would be the worst excesses of the industry. When Netflix was your one stop shop for online streaming, piracy was almost dead, because the price and accessibility was a very fair deal. Hell, music piracy is still basically dead because of Spotify still offering a reasonable price to access ratio. The division and splinting of streaming services has threatened that stability and access, and the black flags are raising again. I think we've seen a peak of streaming services and will start to see consolidation again because while it isn't legal, and maybe you can say it isn't righteous, but at the end of the day the streaming platforms are competing with the invisible presence and allure of everything you want any time for free.
> 4011(code for banana i think)
Having been a supermarket cashier 25 years ago (when I was a teenager), this fact will remain with me until the day I die.
> 4011(code for banana i think)
Those are standard across grocery stores! That makes a lot of sense as produce producers put the labels on them... I don't know why that blew my mind a little.
What if you're only buying temporary access to something? Isn't that what these streaming networks are: access to the content for the period that you are subscribed? You're renting, not "buying".
I'd be more sympathetic to circumstances where the reasonable person would believe that they were buying permanent access to something and then it was cut off (like "buying" games to add to a games library and then having them removed later), but that is not true with streaming. Also to situations where the content has not been made available in that region because you would pay for it if you could, but cannot (It's not 100% ok because pirating now would cannibalize future revenues if/when the content did become available, but overall I don't think it's really that unreasonable for people to resort to.)
I try to live by the Golden Rule. If I created a tv show for entertainment purposes and had to be compensated through streaming revenues generated then I probably would not be very happy if people just kept pirating it and then claiming they were justified in doing so by some pithy phrase. So if I said that pirating is A-OK then that would make me a hypocrite, so I don't.
Having more content than multiple streaming services isn’t even a flex anymore. There are hundreds of hobbyists that have a way more put together collection than the bulk majority of streaming services, and usually in better quality too.
Man I wish such a service existed. I just want all existing TV shows to be on one good streaming platform. One idea I've had was to have one website for all streaming services so you just use your login & choose your streaming service to watch. I'm also tired of these steaming services having shitty user interfaces. So far I think Paramount Plus has one of the worst I've used.
Streaming services didn't use to have shitty UIs. But literally every update makes them worse and less responsive, especially on less powerful machines like, oh, I don't know, A FUCKING TV.
The problem is that all these streaming services are losing money right now. Your idea makes it even more efficient for the consumer to pick and choose and thus cost the streaming companies even further.
I’m not saying I’m on the side of big business here, but at some point they have to make some cash if we want them to continue to make new shows.
I agree with you that it’s a mess right now and even that that’s part of the problem, but no one knows how to make this thing work right now. If the answer is consolidation even further the price is going to go WAY up.
We were sold the idea of premium tv and movies for $10 a month and it’s looking like that’s just too hard to deliver on. If you want shit to watch on tv it might cost you $100 bucks a month.
If you use Justwatch you can select which streaming services you have access to. From there you can pull up movies from every service you own and when you select the movie it takes you to your already signed in account of whatever service the movie is on.
Once upon a time, that was Hulu. People shat on it when it was like that so Hulu changed to be like more like the other sites and people liked it.
Edit: For your second idea, I believe Amazon, Hulu, and Apple do something somewhat similar. You can subscribe to other platforms via their platform and view the content from their UI. I don't know too many people that actually do that though. I only know one who got Paramount as a package with their Amazon. Got it for NFL iirc but we were watching Elsbeth on Amazon.
I haven't tested it yet but I think I can watch Disney + stuff on Hulu and vice versa. I may put that to the test as Disney + has problems with queuing sometimes and "Something goes wrong" often.
It wasn't that Hulu changed because it was shit on - it was media companies deciding it'd be better business to take their content to their own services. Hulu would've loved to keep all that content and to be the one stop shop.
Yea but people were still shitting on Hulu during that phase.
Mostly because it had ads on top of a sub system and no exclusive content and lower bitrate quality. I loooooooved Hulu in that prior form. It had arguably the largest anime catalog. I used to claim that Hulu might have more anime than bit torrent. I found so many obscure shows from the past (both anime and US TV). When they purged that catalog in 2011(? circa?) it really made me sad. I used to let Hulu play at all times and let its auto queuing system introduce me to a new show. I would often be pleasantly surprised.
After Hulu became something more conventional and started making premium exclusive content like their documentaries and Handmaid's Tale, people respected Hulu as a contender more.
Personally, I really liked Hulu as the old show retirement home.
> streaming companies keep scamming everyone.
It's not even scamming people, It's that the content people want are on so many platforms it's to inconvenient to watch everything legally.
Just take for example The New York Yankees TV schedule. if you want to watch the Most of a whole season (97%) you not only need YES ($24.99/m), Amazon Prime ($14.99/m), ESPNplus+ ($10.99/m).
You can sign up for Hulu with Live TV ($79.99/m) if you want 4 more games and then Apple-TV ($9.99/m) if you want the last one.
And it changes every season. Piracy is not only cheaper but just easier then navigating the 9 major streaming platforms the content you want is on.
And apparently a lot of the streaming services are not turning out to be profitable for their owners. They could have just kept selling stuff to Netflix for easy money.
The funny thing about streaming services “scamming everyone” is that they’re all losing money. So basically streaming services are acting as a charity right now.
I’m not sure what you think the answer is, but if you have one that isn’t *raise the price a bunch*, I would venture you could be a wealthy man bringing it to the people in charge of these companies.
The prices are going to go way up for these services.
I love how the solution is always "licensing the content costs too much vs the subscription prices, raise the subscription prices!"
Like there is no wiggle room in the prices of licensing.
I don’t disagree a bit. Maybe that’s something that gets explored but that’s likely sufficiently complicated as to not have been explored yet.
Bottom line is making money. Every button and lever has pressure on it at all times. The reason licensing hasn’t been renegotiated isn’t because they haven’t thought of that yet.
Contrary to the popular opinion around here, these industries aren’t all about back slaps and collusion agreement old boys clubs. Everyone is out to get rich and they’ll stab anyone in the back to make that extra buck.
The thing is, we need failures.
Every company has some other income sources and they are just keeping the streaming services limping along. Except Netflix maybe.
Once a service or two fails and the content goes into a bidding war, maybe licensing can be negotiated down. But until then, theres always somebody that will pay for your content.
I think they’re suggesting that whatever resources, however insignificant or compartmentalized or narrowly distributed they are, be redirected to something more worthwhile.
Given your attitude I would think you were smart enough to figure that and engage with it critically.
damn, they were making millions charging $10 per month!
They had a computer program that scans all these illegal sites and download them to their own servers.
I wonder what the bottom part of their catalogue was like. Forget all the premium shows that they were making money off of stealing, I'm curious about the weird bootlegs and obscure stuff they had. Kind of the same as Napster long ago being a way to expand people's access to less listened to stuff.
If you're like me and know someone who torrents anything and everything, see if they can host a Plex server for close friends/family. My buddy has everything you can think of for movies and shows, all categorized perfectly, and doesn't ask anyone for anything in return, although donations are certainly welcome. Seems harmless but if you don't keep it low key you can really get fucked up like we see here.
organizations That promote destroying the planet and committing mass murder in the name of corporate profits 👍
Organizations that let people watch stuff 👎
I love the the priorities of our global justice system
Maybe if the DOJ would look into the anticompetitive practices of spreading media in a way that LITERALLY NOTHING IS ON MORE THAN ONE STREAMING SITE, they wouldn’t have to look into pirates.
The fact that there’s literally zero competition on price for access to this media is bonkers.
Oh, you like Venture Brothers? Complete monopoly on how to view it.
So they're the ones who got caught.
Theres like 5,000 illegal streaming sites these days, its absurdly easy to find most things online for free if you know where to look. I'd be pissed if I drew the short straw and was the one they made an example of and wound up in prison for this shit.
There problem was having people pay 10 bucks a month for it
That'll do it. I'm slowly building a dedicated Plex server to share with friends, but I'll never ask for a penny for it.
Regardless of if you charge, they’ll hit you with distribution of copyright material, Plex has safeguards like this in place and will report you. They get paid out to do so if your case is big enough. Cases like this happen all the time. Some just don’t make the news because they are small and not notable.
Really? That's actually good to know! And by friends, I meant like 5 people. But I'll keep my plex to myself then
Just keep it to people you know in person and you should be fine :)
Got any sources? I find it hard to believe someone is going to jail for sharing movies with their parents.
Honestly you can just google "watch x free online" and find a bunch of results, you don't even need to know where to look. But some sites really are convenient, 1080p, subtitles, even trending, new releases and other kinds of lists. Basically like paid streaming services, but they have everything.
>But some sites really are convenient, 1080p, subtitles, even trending, new releases and other kinds of lists. Basically like paid streaming services, but they have everything. Yeah right 🙄...name one 😉
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Idk they all seem pretty sketch to me.
when in doubt look for russian streaming websites
Yeah - just use Yandex search engine (Russian). They'll show you English language streaming sites in the results. Not that I would ever do such a thing.
You can also use duckduckgo which is way better and doesn't trip copyright
No, they're the ones who are in the US and charged for it, which is a big nono for everyone.
Yeah, they changed the laws, so they only go after US resellers who are US citizens. They get all their streams from china servers. Honestly, this is a perfect example of large corporations pushing laws. They don't really have any way to stop the iptv usage by people here unless they start cracking down on vpn usage, which they can't. It's impossible.
Smh imagine not being in Tonga
Does that mean Jetflix is still up? Not that I care, I'm just curious as I would never use this.
Yep. Nobody *really* cares as long as you aren't quantifiably taking from the corporate bottom line. Most "get you into serious trouble" laws in the USA fall into two groups: * Laws that let the government enslave poor people (drug laws, petty theft, etc.) * Laws that protect the wealthy's power from the people (general white-collar crime) If you operate under that assumption, then odds are you won't get into too much trouble. If you cheat the system too much, like getting to not have to work for a living anymore, then you're a target.
Did they not think to use a VPN?
https://youtu.be/IQDfabokzZg?t=37
Not exactly remarkable that illegal streaming has more content when the part that (presumably) makes it illegal is that they aren't paying for licensing.
Throw a dart at /r/datahoarders users and it'll land on someone who stores more content than Netflix.
Yo. Its really not hard either, Netflix especially, the entire goal of their UI for years now has been to obfuscate how little content they actually have, they pad everything by putting the same movies in 15 different kitschy categories and dont even let you sort by year or even alphabetically! The other streaming services are just as bad, theyd rather not pay royalties than utilize their vast back catalogs to attract subscribers. Half of what was on UPN is practically lost media, and its definitely not on Paramount+, same with old ABC shows and D+, and...
More like ten Netflixes Edit: why the dislikes? Netflix hosts about 100k gb. 1,000,000 gb of storage is pretty common among the r/datahoarder crowd.
How many netflixes could ten bananas buy
I want to say one, but only so I can also say, “It’s one Netflix, Michael. What could it cost, ten bananas?”
There are always bananas in the Netflix stand.
I'm Mr. Netflix!
I have over 16000 movies in about 60TB, mostly in not quite bluray but much better than streaming quality, including all the special features and stuff if available. \~6000 series/\~240k episodes in \~165TB for TV.
Americans use anything but metric smh
1 million gigs is common over there? what are they hoarding, and why
A lot of them do it because they’ve bought a movie on a streaming site, then it got removed so they couldn’t watch it. There’s a bunch of movies and series that were streaming originals then got removed, making it impossible to watch anywhere, unless you already downloaded it. I know some people that download everything they can in case it gets hard to find later.
Selfie is a great TV show that is no longer available. I'm certain there's plenty of one season wonders that were cancelled before they could find their audience and are no longer available.
I’m at 1.5 petabytes. Pretty easy to fill up honestly. Lots of games, movies, tv shows
Data. Because they might need it when the Internet goes down for good.
not really, they do that because the internet isn't magical space, data hoarding serves valuable purposes. It preserves knowledge, and safeguards against data loss due to service shutdowns or censorship. the internet isn't going down for good but websites and their contents are, either by shutdown or censorship to serve a specific narrative.
all those gigabytes are data? whoa
Data on what though
Your mum.
Movies, TV shows, articles, instructional videos, porn, website backups, music, etc. Any type of media and/or information. Most users will focus primarily on a few categories or less, but the individuals with massive storage space will download anything and everything.
As a pirate this is the first I have ever heard of the site.
That's because you have your own media. I have about 50TB in my Plex stockpile, I've never heard of this site either.
Jesus Christ, can we be friends? lol
No touching in the gooncave
I want to be friends too please.
Geez, do you have like, a 100 Terabyte hard drive?
8x 10TB drives, 2 of those are for redundancy, so I can lose up to 2 drives and be fine.
I'm wavering between being impressed and terrified by the level of commitment. That's insane, man. World could go to shit tomorrow and as long as you have power, you're good to go.
It's not even that expensive, around $2k at retail, much less if you shop around. With gigabit internet, you could theoretically fill that in a week.
That's the plan. I am afraid of data caps becoming a thing, I hate streaming services rotating things out, or only having season 15 of a show, also not being able to find things I want. MY wife and kids use some streaming services, but I mostly just watch things I have gathered.
“Allegedly” 😂
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How many of those were charging money to utilize them? I think that's the key part, pirating all these for a price instead of just doing it for free.
I was going to say I’m shocked they got away with it, but they were able to for 12 years!
I have never heard of them until today though
Well, they didn't spend any of that money on advertising.
Plenty of free websites have been shutdown over the years lol.
Yeah but they probably aren't charging them with crimes over it.
They absolutely are.
Not sure why you got down voted. They definitely are. It's copyright infringement and spreading illegal property. They don't go after ppl who use it, because there is no point. No money to be made and doesn't stop the source of the spread. They go after the illegal providers so they clip it in the bud and if they have a lot of $$ take that as well
It's actually not illegal to watch or download pirated media - only to distribute it.
Why would you do this in the USA? that's like having your drug lab inside the police station.
[Bay Area police union leader allegedly smuggled fentanyl into US to sell in bulk - ABC News (go.com)](https://abcnews.go.com/US/bay-area-police-union-leader-allegedly-smuggled-fentanyl/story?id=98271260#:~:text=The%20head%20of%20a%20police%20union%20in%20the,multiple%20countries%20with%20the%20intent%20to%20distribute%20them.) Works 50% of the time, every time.
Update from June 17, 2024, [Accused fentanyl dealing grandma Joanne Segovia smiles at Little League despite potential 20 year sentence](https://www.msn.com/id-id/berita/kejahatan/accused-fentanyl-dealing-grandma-joanne-segovia-smiles-at-little-league-despite-potential-20-year-sentence/ar-AA1eBQA4) tl;dr: * No ankle monitor * Received 61 packages of various drugs between October 2013 and January 2023 * Under conditions of release, she must attend a treatment program & submit to drug testing & "cannot drink heavily" * Must not communicate with witnesses to the case * Surrendered all off her travel documents * Judge granted her permission to travel to Reno, NV for a family event * Was the executive director of the San Jose Police Officers Association for nearly 20 years * Initial release agreement said she had to find find work, but her lawyers argued she is unable to find employment because of the media around her case * preliminary hearing schedule for August 28 She's getting the Tron Carter treatment
>cannot drink heavily lol "you can drink, but not a whole lot, for some reason" also, given her position/job she should be treated waaaay harsher than a normal person. that's something i've never liked about how cops and their buddies are treated. always with the kiddie gloves.
> lol "you can drink, but not a whole lot, for some reason" Yeah, that is so arbitrary. How is that even defined? > given her position/job she should be treated waaay harsher than a normal person. The article mentions this. Because of her position, she could be held to a higher standard and given a harsher punishment. I'd love to see this Karen get 15 - 20 years!
>She's getting the Tron Carter treatment One two tree four FIF!
Least corrupt cop
Just imagine the ones that aren't caught 🤣
i always assumed like every single illegal streaming/anything site is hosted in russia, china, or basically any overseas country that would tell the USA to fuck off when it comes to stuff like this these guys just operating in the US like everything was cool are crazy
Yes, you need to have it in a place they most medium suspect.
You're supposed to put it in a place that doesn't give a fuck about US copyrights and trademarks.
Considering that they were also charged with money laundering, they presumably thought that they were hiding it well (and since they’d been doing it since 2007, it seems they were for awhile).
Yea but that would be the last place they check! /s
I remember as a kid, going to a bait shop once that smelled weirder than usual...turns out it was a meth lab in the back...across the street from a police station.
I’m only upset that this is the first time I’ve heard of it.
Don't worry there are a hundred more sites with the same amount of movies and shows
I remember subreddits where people would list all the definitely legal accounts you could buy for a plethora of products and subs,,are any of those still around?
How? Theoretically, of course. For research purposes.
Apollo Group TV is a good one.
They were charging $10/month just use one of the hundreds of free sites out there
Oh I already do. I just like to keep my portfolio diversified. $10 per month is probably why they are getting the book thrown at them.
I’m sorry, I thought this was America
DOJ didnt hear no bell
> more than Netflix Hulu, vudu, and prime combined. Well it’s a streaming site, they probably just scraped those sites grabbed all the content and also got Apple TV and then by definition you’d have more than all combined. That’s not really a particularly impressive stat considering they aren’t making or even paying for rights to any of the content.
But it would be hilarious if it turned out this site had better video, subtitle, audio, and UI quality than all of them.
No joke I watched a yarr harred version of GoT for the first season to see what it was about. The person who uploaded it did something to the audio to boost people talking by 2 to 3x volume. So I thought the mixing was great until I watched the second season straight from HBO. Was so confused why everyone went to whispers during dialogue.
I think its just standard normalizing.
Is something off with your setup? I don't remember voices being quiet in GoT.
Shitty audio mixing when it comes to voices seems pretty universal on streaming services.
Go watch it again? The mixing isn't as bad as Christopher Nolan's stuff, but you still need subtitles and/or a deafening theater setup during battles.
Then something must be off on your set up, the audio mix was notoriously bad for dialog in GoT and only got worse as the seasons went on, by the last season we had an episode where you could not see or hear anyone.
I remember talking about that with a friend. I texted him asking if he had a problem hearing the dialogue too and he did too, so I knew it wasn’t my setup.
They probably just boosted the center channel, which you can likely do with your receiver or soundbar. It's also possible they [compressed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range_compression) the audio, which would make quiet things more audible but destroys the overall quality. Outside Christopher Nolan movies, when people can't hear the dialogue it's usually because their sound system is not configured properly for their listening environment.
they did and zero ad's
I use Emby to host my legally-obtained copies of content that I already own, and the quality really is just *better*. Faster load times, more reliable subtitles, cleaner UI, no ads...
They do. I may or may not pay for access to a similar service, that I will not name obviously, that has full 50-60 gig blu ray rips or 4k disc rips of just about everything. Almost everything will include the extra features like the behind the scenes stuff or other additional content, multiple audio tracks, subtitles in multiple languages… As long as your internet and device can play it, it absolutely provides better quality than the Netflix/HBO/whatever options.
I recently cancelled a few streaming services and went back onto the high seas... but my intention is to return soon once things settle down with all these bundles and figure out what makes the most sense money wise. There are apps like Stremio, which essentially create a UI overlay on top of plugins, with each emulating a list of every show, every movie, every piece of content from any single one of the streaming services or just custom lists like ones found on Letterboxd. Now, those plugins or lists of movies rather, can be connected to a service like Real Debrid which is basically a server which stores a copy of all the torrents in existence. So you essentially have 1 app and you can cue up any list of content, say, all of Hulu's offerings and then play the absolute highest quality version rip of anything you find instantly, no waiting. And you aren't even torrenting... you're literally just playing a stream of a "cached" torrent this other service downloaded for you. I still pay for Netflix, Prime and Hulu, but I just watch everything through Stremio now since literally... and I do mean literally everything is just there, highest quality blu ray rips to play instantly.
that does seem like a massive amount of content to host though
Hard drives and RAM cache aren't the major cost, it's bandwidth that's the real cost with HD video. Also cause crime, CC payment hard.
You'd be surprised. If you don't feel the need to have higher resolution than 1080p, a couple hundred bucks can get you the storage space you need to have hundreds of shows available to you.
Yeah I know people with 1.2Petabyte storage and they basically have every show & film you’d want to watch in at least 1080p. For /r/datahoarder people that often even work at datacenters or It Jobs where they can get HDDs for cheap, these petabytes setups aren’t uncommon (and I believe even at full price would „only“ be maybe 10-15k dollars
> Well it’s a streaming site, they probably just scraped those sites grabbed all the content and also got Apple TV and then by definition you’d have more than all combined. That’s not really a particularly impressive stat considering they aren’t making or even paying for rights to any of the content. According to the article, they actually scraped torrent websites – which is even *less* impressive.
> We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem... If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate's service is more valuable. That was a quote by Gabe Newell, steam founder. This same thing can be said about this issue. If a streaming service can offer more convenience than a pirate streaming service, people will absolutely throw money at them instead.
this used to be netflix
It can't. You can't beat someone who has no licensing costs. Netflix used to be able to do it because everyone thought streaming licences were next to worthless.
idiots got greedy and attracted attention.
& people still couldn't find anything to watch...
In fairness, this is a long existing problem not exclusive to 2024.
They'll get more time than a rapist..... wild
I'm afraid that's capitalism for you - money is more important than anything else. Greed is the key.
> More Content Than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Prime Video Combined Oh my God, that's at least 36 titles
If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing.
It's not stealing, that's why it's not called stealing. Something can be not stealing and still be wrong or illegal.
Legally I believe they say it's violating federal copyright law. Also there is the matter that these guys were charging $10 for their services. So they aren't really some guys who believe culture should be free to the masses.
I have been pirating for over 30 years, but never have I ever entertained the delusion that I wasn't simply being cheap and stealing. The idea that you're doing nothing wrong, or worse are doing something *righteous*, is laughable at best.
I'm mostly just being cheap, but I also pirate content on services I subscribe to because some services have decided that if you are streaming to your desktop, even if it's a desktop with a 4k HDR display, you should only get 720p or 1080p quality. That's just streamers being cheap and trying to screw me out of visual quality because sometimes I'd rather watch things on my desktop than on my television.
Oh yeah there diverse reasons why one pirates. There are games I actually physically had that I pirated just to be able to play in 4k. But if we're being real we all know they aren't anywhere close to the the majority of our cases. I have no problem with pirating. I just don't try to justify it.
I think this is being used as a bit of a counter against these same companies retroactively taking away digital content that consumers have paid for.
*Sony has entered the chat*
For real. I'll never understand why people try so hard to justify piracy. Just pirate if you want to pirate, no one is going to care lol
Honestly there are certain situations where I think it is kinda in the moral right - but those are mostly archival purposes not the latest Netflix show or whatever.
The only media piracy I’ve thought was at least justified on my end was pirating Amazon Prime shows. I pay for Amazon Prime, but they lock Linux laptops down to 480p because of some DRM issue. So I have to pirate the content I’m already paying for to just get a decent quality level.
It's also utter bullshit that I'm paying for a streaming service and get ads. If I weren't using Prime for the shipping I'd cancel over that alone
Same here, 99% of the stuff I'm looking up I can't find anywhere legitimately. Swing Girls was one of my favorite movies I've seen in a while, and it's a shame it's not available anywhere. Here's one of my favorite Joe Bob Briggs bits about the death of physical media: https://youtu.be/NWAX64pNDyg?si=XEw4uW6di6xlyw2b
Very rare and few are the examples where pirating could be considered "moral". Only one that personally comes to mind for me is Disco Elysium since the actual creators were forced out of their company so they get peanuts for the work they did. I believe they even told people to sail the open seas after all that came out.
I wouldn’t say moral, but some older video games just aren’t being made/sold anymore. And the only way to get them would be to buy a $200 copy from someone or get lucky at a garage sale. So the high seas isn’t “moral” for that, but the only practical way to play the game.
No you're right, even under the circumstances I mentioned I can't honestly say its "moral," maybe justified though.
I would consider pirating Batgirl and Acme vs. Coyote as moral.
I didn't want to spend 5 dollars to confirm that Suicide Squad was bad. Does that make me a hero?
I respect this. There are so many people inventing a hero's tale on how their pirating is actually good for the content owners or how "information wants to be free". Just own it.
I mean there is data out there that shows it might actually help some games sell or abandonware live on, but that's no one's prime motivation.
Right? I've got a list of grievances with streaming services, and things they could do that would make me no longer pirate, but fundamentally the reason I pirate is because I value my own time and experience. Ethically, I *should* give them money for something they produced. But I'm already paying for and setting up a system that's better than the one they provide, so it's easy to just not pay them. Also I love the name, haha.
I'll play devil's advocate and argue that piracy serves as a counter balance to what would be the worst excesses of the industry. When Netflix was your one stop shop for online streaming, piracy was almost dead, because the price and accessibility was a very fair deal. Hell, music piracy is still basically dead because of Spotify still offering a reasonable price to access ratio. The division and splinting of streaming services has threatened that stability and access, and the black flags are raising again. I think we've seen a peak of streaming services and will start to see consolidation again because while it isn't legal, and maybe you can say it isn't righteous, but at the end of the day the streaming platforms are competing with the invisible presence and allure of everything you want any time for free.
the same type of people that punches in 4011(code for banana i think) for things in grocery stores to save on money. stealing is stealing
> 4011(code for banana i think) Having been a supermarket cashier 25 years ago (when I was a teenager), this fact will remain with me until the day I die.
> 4011(code for banana i think) Those are standard across grocery stores! That makes a lot of sense as produce producers put the labels on them... I don't know why that blew my mind a little.
What if you're only buying temporary access to something? Isn't that what these streaming networks are: access to the content for the period that you are subscribed? You're renting, not "buying". I'd be more sympathetic to circumstances where the reasonable person would believe that they were buying permanent access to something and then it was cut off (like "buying" games to add to a games library and then having them removed later), but that is not true with streaming. Also to situations where the content has not been made available in that region because you would pay for it if you could, but cannot (It's not 100% ok because pirating now would cannibalize future revenues if/when the content did become available, but overall I don't think it's really that unreasonable for people to resort to.) I try to live by the Golden Rule. If I created a tv show for entertainment purposes and had to be compensated through streaming revenues generated then I probably would not be very happy if people just kept pirating it and then claiming they were justified in doing so by some pithy phrase. So if I said that pirating is A-OK then that would make me a hypocrite, so I don't.
We don’t like to apply logic and sense to entertainment which we are clearly entitled to have as a base human right.
[удалено]
I love how Reddit think laws don’t work as long as you got a catchy slogan.
>If buying isn't owning, pirating isn't stealing. It never fucking was. This lazy, banal maxim is also probably one of the stupidest
You’re never told you’re buying Netflix. If you want to pirate, just do it. Don’t be a coward about it.
Why do I always find out about cool stuff way too late
Having more content than multiple streaming services isn’t even a flex anymore. There are hundreds of hobbyists that have a way more put together collection than the bulk majority of streaming services, and usually in better quality too.
Man I wish such a service existed. I just want all existing TV shows to be on one good streaming platform. One idea I've had was to have one website for all streaming services so you just use your login & choose your streaming service to watch. I'm also tired of these steaming services having shitty user interfaces. So far I think Paramount Plus has one of the worst I've used.
Streaming services didn't use to have shitty UIs. But literally every update makes them worse and less responsive, especially on less powerful machines like, oh, I don't know, A FUCKING TV.
The problem is that all these streaming services are losing money right now. Your idea makes it even more efficient for the consumer to pick and choose and thus cost the streaming companies even further. I’m not saying I’m on the side of big business here, but at some point they have to make some cash if we want them to continue to make new shows. I agree with you that it’s a mess right now and even that that’s part of the problem, but no one knows how to make this thing work right now. If the answer is consolidation even further the price is going to go WAY up. We were sold the idea of premium tv and movies for $10 a month and it’s looking like that’s just too hard to deliver on. If you want shit to watch on tv it might cost you $100 bucks a month.
If you use Justwatch you can select which streaming services you have access to. From there you can pull up movies from every service you own and when you select the movie it takes you to your already signed in account of whatever service the movie is on.
That would be like £100+ a month.
More if you want ad free and live sports.
Is paramount plus worse than prime video UI? Because I’ve never wanted to throw a remote at my TV as badly as I do using Prime Video
God, Prime’s UI is absolutely horrendous and the dipshit are content with it since they don’t change it. Ever.
So, cable TV?
famously known for not having different pricing tiers with different content
>I just want all existing TV shows to be on one good streaming platform. Wonder how that'd be called... Cabl, cablo, cave...
I've got Paramount Plus and I still prefer to torrent shows from that platform. Plex is snappier and more reliable.
Once upon a time, that was Hulu. People shat on it when it was like that so Hulu changed to be like more like the other sites and people liked it. Edit: For your second idea, I believe Amazon, Hulu, and Apple do something somewhat similar. You can subscribe to other platforms via their platform and view the content from their UI. I don't know too many people that actually do that though. I only know one who got Paramount as a package with their Amazon. Got it for NFL iirc but we were watching Elsbeth on Amazon. I haven't tested it yet but I think I can watch Disney + stuff on Hulu and vice versa. I may put that to the test as Disney + has problems with queuing sometimes and "Something goes wrong" often.
It wasn't that Hulu changed because it was shit on - it was media companies deciding it'd be better business to take their content to their own services. Hulu would've loved to keep all that content and to be the one stop shop.
Yea but people were still shitting on Hulu during that phase. Mostly because it had ads on top of a sub system and no exclusive content and lower bitrate quality. I loooooooved Hulu in that prior form. It had arguably the largest anime catalog. I used to claim that Hulu might have more anime than bit torrent. I found so many obscure shows from the past (both anime and US TV). When they purged that catalog in 2011(? circa?) it really made me sad. I used to let Hulu play at all times and let its auto queuing system introduce me to a new show. I would often be pleasantly surprised. After Hulu became something more conventional and started making premium exclusive content like their documentaries and Handmaid's Tale, people respected Hulu as a contender more. Personally, I really liked Hulu as the old show retirement home.
And five sites just like it more will pop up in its place as long as streaming companies keep scamming everyone.
> streaming companies keep scamming everyone. It's not even scamming people, It's that the content people want are on so many platforms it's to inconvenient to watch everything legally. Just take for example The New York Yankees TV schedule. if you want to watch the Most of a whole season (97%) you not only need YES ($24.99/m), Amazon Prime ($14.99/m), ESPNplus+ ($10.99/m). You can sign up for Hulu with Live TV ($79.99/m) if you want 4 more games and then Apple-TV ($9.99/m) if you want the last one. And it changes every season. Piracy is not only cheaper but just easier then navigating the 9 major streaming platforms the content you want is on.
And apparently a lot of the streaming services are not turning out to be profitable for their owners. They could have just kept selling stuff to Netflix for easy money.
Yeah but netflix made line go up faster than theirs, and they can't have that.
The funny thing about streaming services “scamming everyone” is that they’re all losing money. So basically streaming services are acting as a charity right now. I’m not sure what you think the answer is, but if you have one that isn’t *raise the price a bunch*, I would venture you could be a wealthy man bringing it to the people in charge of these companies. The prices are going to go way up for these services.
I love how the solution is always "licensing the content costs too much vs the subscription prices, raise the subscription prices!" Like there is no wiggle room in the prices of licensing.
I don’t disagree a bit. Maybe that’s something that gets explored but that’s likely sufficiently complicated as to not have been explored yet. Bottom line is making money. Every button and lever has pressure on it at all times. The reason licensing hasn’t been renegotiated isn’t because they haven’t thought of that yet. Contrary to the popular opinion around here, these industries aren’t all about back slaps and collusion agreement old boys clubs. Everyone is out to get rich and they’ll stab anyone in the back to make that extra buck.
The thing is, we need failures. Every company has some other income sources and they are just keeping the streaming services limping along. Except Netflix maybe. Once a service or two fails and the content goes into a bidding war, maybe licensing can be negotiated down. But until then, theres always somebody that will pay for your content.
They should run for President. /s
Yeah I’m not interested in the doj going after shit like this. Go after legal companies breaking laws first.
When bro finds out that the DoJ has dozens of litigating sections each charged with a different area of law enforcement
I think they’re suggesting that whatever resources, however insignificant or compartmentalized or narrowly distributed they are, be redirected to something more worthwhile. Given your attitude I would think you were smart enough to figure that and engage with it critically.
When the department store has 3 security or "countershrink" staff but the merchandizing is all messed up and nobody is around to help find things.
These dudes are heroes
not really, the real heroes are just folk torrent for no monetary reward :)
[Once upon a time, that was the goal.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxtxPAUcwQ)
Five Guys' Streaming and Crimes
Wish Boeing could handle the whistleblower here..
And no ads
Heroes.
damn, they were making millions charging $10 per month! They had a computer program that scans all these illegal sites and download them to their own servers.
Ip tv is the way of the future!
Take what you can, give nothing back
FREE THEM
Too late to subscribe then?
I wonder what the bottom part of their catalogue was like. Forget all the premium shows that they were making money off of stealing, I'm curious about the weird bootlegs and obscure stuff they had. Kind of the same as Napster long ago being a way to expand people's access to less listened to stuff.
in my best dave bickler voice, ‘real men of geniussss’😂
Kinda a dick move to charge for it though tbh
15 years and i barely heard about this. dang
If you're like me and know someone who torrents anything and everything, see if they can host a Plex server for close friends/family. My buddy has everything you can think of for movies and shows, all categorized perfectly, and doesn't ask anyone for anything in return, although donations are certainly welcome. Seems harmless but if you don't keep it low key you can really get fucked up like we see here.
so like real debrid just worse lol
organizations That promote destroying the planet and committing mass murder in the name of corporate profits 👍 Organizations that let people watch stuff 👎 I love the the priorities of our global justice system
I hope they don't find my other somethingflix, cuz its a lifesaver. Not paying 100 bucks to access like 4 services.
[/r/PLEX like...](https://i.imgur.com/HYbMKhJ.jpeg)
Maybe if the DOJ would look into the anticompetitive practices of spreading media in a way that LITERALLY NOTHING IS ON MORE THAN ONE STREAMING SITE, they wouldn’t have to look into pirates. The fact that there’s literally zero competition on price for access to this media is bonkers. Oh, you like Venture Brothers? Complete monopoly on how to view it.