Fed up with increasing subscription prices, viewers embrace rogue streaming boxes.
  • HulkSmashBurgers@reddthat.comEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    Oh well that’s ironic

    After signing him up as a reseller, Jason’s SuperBox contact also recruited him for a unique side gig: Whenever Jason finds a SuperBox advertised for less than the company’s suggested retail price, he buys it and sells it back to the company for a premium. He says that the SuperBox maker then checks the device’s MAC address against a list of past sales and remotely deactivates all boxes it sold to the reseller who openly advertised the unauthorized discount.

    Offending sellers are then asked to pay a fine, Jason says. Consumers who happened to buy a box for the wrong price find it locked, with an onscreen warning telling them to contact their service provider. vSeeBox engages in similar practices, Mike says: “They can essentially shut off the boxes.”

  • orclev@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    5 days ago

    As always piracy is a symptom not the problem. People pirate when a) they don’t have enough money or b) the experience for paying customers is significantly worse than for pirates, or c) the price of services far exceeds their perceived value. Piracy was down for a while because Netflix and Hulu were relatively cheap (or free), ad free, and the economy was doing OK so most people had a little disposable income.

    Now that we’re in a recession that’s starting to look like it might turn into a depression and Netflix and Hulu (and others) have cranked the prices of their services up and stuffed them full of ads, yeah I’m not in the least surprised to see piracy surging. Every time you turn around there’s another email from some service letting you know they’re raising prices another couple bucks a month, and a bunch of people cancel their subscriptions and start sailing the high seas.

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      I stopped pirating when we got a Netflix sub for reasonably cheap.

      I started pirating again when I realized we were subbed to six different platforms, paying over $1k a year for the content, and still couldn’t watch what we wanted sometimes. The fact that I had to jump through hoops to find the thing I wanted to watch was also quite infuriating.

    • -RJ-@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Or c) the money never makes it to the actual artists so why give the record label money they don’t deserve

    • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      and D) I’m not going to give money to institutions like cable TV where a percentage of my money ends up with Fox News, or Paramount whose ownership is in bed with Trump, or Amazon and Bezos for obvious reasons. Go on down the line, fuck em all.

  • MattBlackAlien@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    5 days ago

    “You wouldn’t steal a handbag. You wouldn’t steal a car. You wouldn’t steal a baby. You wouldn’t shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn’t go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman’s grieving widow. And then steal it again! Downloading films is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.”

  • Reygle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    I feel like outside of a handful of “TV Programs”, the younger generation wouldn’t even notice if “TV” as we know it disappeared tomorrow. Me personally whenever I visit family, “TV” is on and I’m repulsed by the level of marketing on it. Even if there’s a baseball or football game on, they’ve made damn sure that every single frame of the game includes at least one sponsor logo.
    I know I wouldn’t care. I might even celebrate.

  • robocall@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 days ago

    I know someone that uses TVpass.org and thinks that it’s not stealing because it’s a .org and “they only give those org websites out to good people” It made me smile.

    • Tiger666@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      What is stealing, let’s be honest.

      Is charging a crazy amount for forced programming laced with massive amounts of advertising considered stealing? I think so.

      As far as Im concerned copying something is not theft.

      • BrightCandle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        4 days ago

        Theft has a very specific definition, critically it requires the taking of something so that someone else is permenantly deprived of the thing. When something is cloned or copied its not theft, its all intellectual law driven so copyright and trademark breaches. No one is deprived of the product, only potentially the payment for a service.