undefined | Better HN

0 pointsclose046y ago0 comments

Sometimes as a legal user you are faced with far more obstacles than the illegal user. All kinds of limitations that are made to curb piracy but actually just hurt legitimate users. This applies to every type of protected content, be it music, video, games, ebooks, etc.

This makes paying users less likely to sympathize with the content provider. And then you see those transparent attempts to skew numbers so they can generate some compassion ("This episode of GoT was pirated 30 million times which means we lost 30 million possible subscribers!!11" type thing) and you start having a really bad impression about them whether you pay for the service o not.

I am forced to torrent content that I already legally pay for just to get a proper subtitle or voice over for example, because sometimes I get a different experience for the same content based on the country I'm in.

0 comments

spottybanana6y ago

Also as a legal user you might end up paying for subscription service you don't use. I'm subscribed to netflix and HBO and don't remember the last time when I used them... Now and then try to find something to watch but it is all shit.

bjelkeman-again6y ago

Which is why we unsubscribed recently and read more books and play free or donation based games instead.

close04OP6y ago

But that's a straight forward fix: unsubscribe. The problem is when all the legal options are real PITAs.

buran776y ago

Not sure why this is getting down voted. Outside of official statements from the content providers, who are happy to bury their heads in the sand and pretend the flagged problems don't exist, general consensus is that most anti-piracy measures ruin the experience for legal users far more than for pirates. Pirates might accept lower standards of service given the all time low price of free. Paying customers of course have much higher expectations.

And the fragmentation of titles across platforms doesn't help one bit. We're basically heading to the same situation with today's cable business.

Personally, living in a country whose language I don't master means many of the titles in my Netflix catalogue are unwatchable. Anime being in Japanese and only dubbed or subed in the local language and nothing else. In English speaking countries the exact same titles have English sub or dubbing.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse