Hello World!
As we’ve all known and talked about quite a lot, we previously blocked several piracy-focused communities. These communities, as announced, were:
- !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com,
- !steamdeckpirates@lemmy.dbzer0.com,
- !piracy@lemmy.ml, and their local counterparts as follow up actions.
In our removal announcement, we stated that we will continue to look into this more in detail, and re-allow these communities if and when we deem it safe. It was a solid concern at the time, because we were already receiving takedown requests as well as constant attacks, and didn’t want to put our volunteer team at risk. We had zero measures in place, and the tools we had were insufficient to deal with anything at scale.
Well, after back and forth with some very cool people, and starting to have proper measures as well as tooling to protect ourselves, we decided it’s time to welcome these communities back again. Long live the IT nerds!
We know it’s been a rough ride with everything, and we’d like to thank every one of you who were understanding of us, and stayed with us all the way. Please know that as users, you are what makes this platform what it is, and damned we be if we ever forget it.
With love, and as always, stay safe in the high seas!
Lemmy.world Team
❤️
This is what I like to see. Not just heels digging in, but explanations as to why, the follow-ups, the investigation of options and follow through. Thanks for the transparency. Piracy has and won’t ever go away. I used to pirate due to lack of money and resources. When I had those I went legit. When legit sources started turning into:
- monthly subscriptions for everything
- when legit sources suddenly delete or remove content from their systems (to avoid paying taxes?)
- when the rates go up for everything (internet access AND streaming services)
- now ads in your paid services unless you pay more (Amazon)
- Plex trying to go legit and police where and how people run their private streaming, fucking over license holders who built the financial footing they could stand on in the first place. Cool.
You can’t rely on any shit from these services, except for one shit… enshittification.
I don’t want to sound negative, but as a consumer, it’s been nothing but ads rammed down our throats from everywhere we go and look. They lie, they change rates, they shrinkflate, while their pockets get bigger. Long live piracy.
Wait, what happened with Plex? I’m in the dark on that one.
There’s a bunch of analytics tracking and cloud integration in Plex. They are interested in what users are watching, which is concerning.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/7bim8n/plex_analytics_analyticsplextv/
Switch to Jellyfin or another open source server.
More price hikes! More Ads! More tracking!
Plex can go can screw themselves. I’ve been self hosting for over a decade (and stupidly spent hundreds of dollars on a PlexPass instead of buying a lifetime one early on) and finally decided to move to the cloud. Two weeks later I get an email saying that they’re blocking my connection in about 3 weeks and to move to a more expensive hosting company if I want to avoid getting blocked. I’m not the one violating their ToS, but yet I’m getting screwed.
From lemmy.world’s perspective, I get it. Our current legal framework makes it damn near impossible from a financial standpoint to take a stand against corporations with pocketbooks the size of some first world countries.
But the rise in piracy is a direct consequence of these corporations’ actions against their very users.
Piracy has and always will be a service problem. I don’t think lemmy should be used to share torrents for example. But honest discussion about the current state of affairs and alternatives should be allowed.
The admins took a measured approach here and it’s one that is refreshing given the regime that many of us came from.
the problem i have, that nobody has been able to really explain to me, is how the economics of streaming should be made to work.
content is insanely expensive to make. even with all of Netflix’s recent shitty changes, their operating margin is still only about 13%. that isn’t enough cash left over to fund production of every single show they don’t have. and it’s important that they actually be able to fund production, because unlike 10 years ago, most productions no longer rely on first runs on OTA or cable TV to make their money
so it seems to me there are three paths here:
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the industry puts everything on a single service and dramatically increases the base price (remember cable? my parents paid twice as much for it in 2005 as i spend today on streaming services)
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the industry puts everything on a single service and dramatically scales back production (remember OTA TV?) to fit within the budget afforded by a reasonable subscription price
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studios branch off into competing streaming services
i’m not trying to start a fight or defend shitty corporate behavior (no one will ever get me to pay for ads), i just want to know how people think this could work in a way that balances out
i just want to know how people think this could work in a way that balances out
They don’t. They just think content is generated in a vacuum and it’s their right to consume it in whatever way they see fit.
The solution is not one many people want to hear: reduce production costs.
Content is expensive to make mostly because the people making it keep demanding more pay for less work. While it is understandable that people want this, this is not sustainable for an economy. When the economy fails, prices go up. Demanding employers pay more will immediately raise prices the same amount the wages increase, effectively leaving employees who got a raise in the same place they were before but eith bigger numbers, and severely damaging the economy at the same time.
A show can be produced on a shoestring budget. Yes, the quality is lower than a million dollar movie. However, that doesn’t make the show bad. The X-Files was a great show produced on a tiny budget in its first season with phenomenal writing. Yet in the final season, it had a bigger budget but the writing was awful. In fact, most shows these days have awful writing. And the writers of these shows with bad writing are demanding more pay, yet their writing quality does not indicate they deserve increased pay. Certainly if a writer is outputting great work that should be rewarded, but increasing the pay of writers outputting garbage writing can only lead to more expensive garbage.
Then you get to costume, props, and visual effects. First, the damaged economy from before appears in costumes and props material cost. This is unavoidable. In many cases, I would say that good practical effects are cheaper and more convincing than cheap CG. My solution is simply go back to the way films were made in the 70s and 80s. Ditch the bad CG and go for more practical effects.
Last we have actors. Actors do not need more than 100k per film, and thats for the huge actors. Simple to understand, really. So many actors live opulent, overpaid lives, when they could live more simply, more normally, off of much less.
The above aalso applies to directors, producers, streaming company executives and CEOs.
Fix all these and your show production costs plummet. Now you can offer your streaming service at the same cost or cheaper than before while having a larger profit margin.
Idk why you’re leading with writer pay, going into actor pay (most don’t make squat) and then execs at the big companies involved are tossed in as an afterthought. Probably why you’re getting downvoted.
I am getting downvoted because people cant bother to read beyond one sentence.
Also, I dont care about imaginary internet points.
Dude if writers actually made enough money then it wouldn’t be such a huge thing that they get sponsored free lunches during the strike. Thats a fucking meal… However the profit produced on some shows is obscene in comparison. Put 300 mil in and get 500 mil out, thats 200 mil profit… You’re getting downvoted because you don’t understand the economics of the industry while being overconfident that you do.
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piracy has been removed again
Piracy is a right of the people as far I’m concerned, a way to fight back against corruption
To all the people saying “too late, I already switched”: why bother commenting?
Fuck the pirates.
I get what you’re trying to say, but at the same time the corps say “fuck our customers”. You’re a number. They don’t want you to have anything and they just want your money. Look at Amazon pulling purchased books from kindle users. And they’re not the only ones.
I’m glad you guys took a measured approach. This right here is the difference between a corporation and Lemmy. I can’t imagine a for-profit reversing its decision in the interest of the community unless it affected their bottom line or stock price. Hats off to the admin team for working through all these complex issues.
I have love/hate relationship with piracy. I love doing it but hate when it’s done with my products.
what are some of your products?
Nothing significant till now
okay… such as?
I think this is the mark of a decent admin team, the ability to re-evaluate a decision based on new or better data. I’m more inclined to stick with lemmy.world in the future, even through decisions I don’t necessarily agree with .
“Please know that as users, you are what makes this platform what it is, and damned we be if we ever forget it.”
A lesson u/spez forgot.
Hey that’s great, good job! I’m so unused to any disappointing decision being reversed, this really is an amazing site.
Yet another informative post, and a decision that takes some guts and you’re willing to take on some extra work and risk in order to make the instance better
I didn’t want to have to do this, but you’ve brought this upon yourself. You give me no choice but to… donate money to you which you so damn well deserve!
Let this be a reminder that actions have consequences!
Mildly irritating that I’ve got to manually block those communities… but it’s whatever
Oh no, what a nightmare.
Add it to the list of the other stuff you probably bloc k
Great stuff, thanks!
