If I want to watch those shows or movies, I am literally at the mercy of the piracy community helping me access them, because there's a good chance that it's either months or years away from release in my country, or that I'll be unlucky and it will never release here at all.

It's a completely broken system, and Gabe Newell called it what it was over a decade ago. Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem.

It won't be solved without massive changes to international copyrights and how shows/movies are bought and sold on an international market.

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 45 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Pricing doesn't hurt.

But yeah, people will pay for convenience. Nobody wants to dig around for pirated links if a simpler option is available.

But yeah, I hear you on international licensing. I try to keep up with Star Trek content and man, I don't know how you can bungle up a licensig deal that much.

The latest bit of genius includes Amazon Prime listing three seasons of Lower Decks, but the third season consisting on a page that tells you they don't have that season available, despite having had it before.

There is a fourth season. It's not available anywhere.

I gave up and pirated it, knowing it will eventually show up in a service I do own. It was all getting spoiled for me in social media anyway.

[–] lemann@lemmy.one 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It was all getting spoiled for me in social media anyway.

I thankfully haven't seen any spoilers for anything since moving to Lemmy... on other sites it's silly easy to accidentally run into a spoilers for anything remotely popular 😭

Unless you follow ST communities here... then oops I guess spoilers are in your feed for each episode 😳

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 13 points 7 months ago

And you know what? It makes sense. A big part of making a moment of a media launch is to get like-minded people talking about it. It's harder now that media is largely on-demand, so it's great to have a place to go for the discussion afterwards.

Which is why staggered, inconsistent launches make no damn sense in the 21st century. When pirates can deliver a way to join that hype moment and you can't, for the content you're creating on the service your followers are already paying for you have entirely missed the point.

[–] jasondj@ttrpg.network 2 points 7 months ago

I pretty much only look at All and somehow like a good third of my feed is Star Trek stuff. Mostly memes, and mosty TNG/DS9.

I somewhat enjoy it because I’m not really a big trek fan and it reminds me what it feels like to not be “targeted” by an ad. But ironically, it had the effect of me starting to put on TNG at night.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone -2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It was all getting spoiled for me in social media anyway.

Found the Risa community member.

[–] MudMan@kbin.social 4 points 7 months ago

Hah. Not even. Between Youtube and Mastodon it was doing the job just fine.

Not like I don't see all those posts anyway, this place isn't THAT big yet.

[–] _number8_@lemmy.world 44 points 7 months ago (1 children)

geolocking as a technology is a kick in the throat to humanity and all its cultural and technological achievement

[–] radix@lemmy.world 31 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Would it even require massive changes? The framework is already built for music. The idea behind compulsory licensing is that any radio station can play any music, and the royalty rates due to the copyright holder are set in advance. The music industry fought tooth and nail to prevent streaming sites from getting access to their content, but it's now their biggest revenue source.

A world where Netflix, Disney, Paramount, Max, and all the others could use each others' (and literally all) content and pay for every stream would practically kill video piracy almost overnight. Make them all compete on their quality of service, instead of the size of their siloed library. And in the end, both customers and rights-holders would almost certainly be better off.

[–] neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space 2 points 7 months ago

It would also cause REAL competition as video platforms now have to fight to be the best to use and the best value.

[–] VaultBoyNewVegas@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Years ago there was no way to watch one piece in my country. The only option for anime was funimation (which didn't have a great library) and crunchy roll which had more of the big shows but it would be incomplete. Like a show would only have the second season or last season. Anyway the only way to watch one piece was via an extension to Firefox that spoofed crunchy roll but still required a premium subscription.

The only other way to watch one piece was online with sites like anime paha.

Also it gets real expensive paying for 4-5 services when theres a show on Amazon you want to watch, maybe 2-3 on apple, 1 on Netflix and 4 on Disney + and that's not even including star trek.

[–] MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 months ago

There's major issues with copyright/licensings/trademarks etc. It's fundamentally flawed