[Louis Rossmann] Piracy is COMPLETELY justified: Louis tries NetFlix and remembers why

That was a fun watch. My friends give me shit when I complain that Netflix looks terrible on their huge expensive TV, and yet my pirated content looks perfect every time. I will never pay for a service that delivers a lower quality product than what I can get for free. And like this guy says, I’m a grown-ass man that can afford a Netflix subscription. But why the hell would I pay for a subpar product, when sailing the high seas has always allowed me to watch super-high quality content whenever I want?

Because people behind the content would like to pay bills and live?
- I’m more than willing to pay for content, and frequently do whenever there’s DRM-free media available as an option. I’ll happily pay even more than the other options if there’s a DRM-free version (Baldurs Gate on GOG for example). But that’s so rarely possible. I’m not willing to risk losing access to a favorite old show or some super-obscure thing I love for a corporate tax technicality.
  And call me old fashioned, but I like the option of watching a tv show or movie straight off my own hard drive. No internet to rely on, instant 4K playback no matter what. Streaming just isn’t how I want to consume my media. I get that a lot of people love it, and that’s totally fine, no judgement. But for me, if companies can’t make guarantees about resolution and content availability then there’s no reason for me to buy in when I can get by perfectly well without their blessing. I’ll continue to support local artists and larger media companies whenever they give me a fair way to do it.
- Then they should gives us options to give them money. I'll happly pay for all the songs I want to have, but this is not real now. The only way to legally buy music in my country are CDs. For best bands I buy them and rip, but what about a radio song stuck in the head for a week? I don't want to order a whole album in CD box, carry it home and rip just to delete month after. So I record internet radio stations, download from YouTube, etc. which is not much illegal like torrenting, but I would much rather have an app with search bar and "buy" button on songs for buck or two than play in gray areas.
- oh yeah look at them actors and directors struggling to buy food!
- Who makes most of the money? Disproportionately at that...

Fuck a corporations but let's not act like piracy is the modern version of Robin Hood or righting a huge injustice

I mean yeah it's selfish, but it is definitely righting a huge injustice:
There is literally no customer centric way to watch these shows, or most modern media at all. Where can I literally buy shows that I can then resell. Where can I get a subscription service that's focused on giving me the best content possible and not trying to squeeze value out of me by influencing what I watch or selling my metrics or up selling me to a bigger plan after killing the previous plan or any number of other dark practices. Where can I buy DRM free offline files of these shows so I can watch them on an airplane on my own hardware without Internet?
It's fucked up that there is literally no way for people to buy their entertainment and not be fucked over more for trying to do it the legal way and spending money. And piracy needs to exist as a breaking point to stop these companies from getting even worse.
- If you are a gullible consumer whose devices are always connected to the internet, you don't notice you're getting a worse service. Unfortunately, way too many people are falling for this.
  Luckily, at least PC gamers are largely outspoken about DRM and there are pretty popular platforms that cater to them. But console games and media (other than some e-books)? No end of DRM in sight.
- Hence why the people on the internet needs to reject people coming here to profit.
  There's no middle ground in trying to keep the internet good and having it be a platform to hock stuff.
  We should go back to the roots. Promote collaboration and be hostile to those people trying to manufacture scarcity online
- I've been buying movies and series on Bluray, which I can rip and resell. Not every show has a physical release, but the most popular do and you do not have to watch every show there is.
- No, it's just stealing stuff. I'm a shameless pirate, but stop pretending that this is some noble resistance. The reality is that its a luxury someone is selling for a price, and we don't want to pay the price, so we steal it. You could always just not consume it. That would be the noble move.
  They're assholes so I just don't give a fuck.
It's more like Civil Disobedience on account that Copyright is an entirelly artificial construct (the idea that you can't copy - not take, just copy, with your own resources - something is pretty anti-natura, which is especially obvious in the more traditional domains like storytelling) and even the one reasonable rationalle for it - that it incentivises creation in a way that enriches society - has been entirelly nullified by making the entering of copyrighted works into the Public Domain take longer in average from the time of creation than the lifespan of the longuest living human ever: it mainly enriches a tiny fraction of people, not society as a whole, even though the costs of compliance are bourne by society as a whole.
It's about not obbeying unfair laws in a way that doesn't harm anybody and only damages the interests of those whose gain comes entirelly from the unfairness of said laws: so not selfless like a Robin Hood situation, but also not the pure selfishness of trying to get more than others.
I'm not a proud pirate, but I'll never be a proud data harvest free-for-all resource. there is no glamour to any of this, but I will patiently await a reasonable offering. in the music industry it also worked. as well as the video game industry. you can easily buy honest drm free games
- New games are just annoying to pirate, old games and ROMs sure. Music I buy all the time but I also pirate all the time, every artist I buy music from and see live I probably first pirated.
It kinda is though.
- in a pretty limited, cultural archival and dissemination point of view, mayyyyyyyyybe.
  the vast majority just want free entertainment.
Hollywood put billions into the next generation disc, blu-ray, and you would still pay extra at Blockbuster for being late if it wasn't for piracy.
While piracy isn't without problem it is the closest we get to "supply and demand". Piracy balances the scale.
At some level it happens due to people wanting stuff for free... but if it's the consequence of that is that works are preserved and disseminated, that's more valuable for our culture than when companies vault them and lose them, or when they never release them at all, like Warner has been doing lately.
One might say that these companies have all the right to make these works unavailable, but this is clearly a situation where the "proper" is more detrimental than the "clandestine". After all, the way these companies handle it, when the ridiculously excessive copyright length is over and the works are supposed to cease their artificial monopoly and be returned to the Public Domain from which everyone takes inspiration, there might be nothing left. A DVD is unlikely to last 100 years.
This is not a matter of life and death but culture has its value.
- Most people don't have the understanding to fully appreciate the consequences of the current system of "free" services. That's why it's the job of governments to put robust consumer protections in place. The Europeans have been making some moves in the right direction, lately. Unfortunately, they also increasingly have been veering towards totalitarianism in their moves to enforce mandatory trusted certificates, weakening of encryption and other hare-brained schemes.
Exactly. The bottom line is it’s still stealing. Do it all you want but don’t pretend you’re some hero, steal it with a smile on your face.
- It's illegal but not immoral, is the argument. Those two are a Venn diagram.

I may have missed it, but does he (or anyone else) have recommendations for options to simply pay for content and get high quality DRM free files (edit: I mean legally)?

And how much of a pain in the ass is it to buy DVD box sets and rip them? Presumably that’s legal for personal use? Is that the only way? :(

I have some additional frustrations with Netflix:

they have removed some shows that I like
if you travel to another country, you can’t always watch the same shows— even if you downloaded them within the app
they completely remove some episodes: the episode of community where they play Dungeons and Dragons, and (other streaming services) remove the Michael Jackson Simpsons episode.
extremely user hostile way to browse content. They always move your list around and show the same show in multiple places
I absolutely hate how all these streaming services auto play to the next episode. You can often change this behaviour. But my partner sometimes casts it to our TV and the damn app (Disney+ in this case, I think) changes the interface just as you get to the credits. I want to sit in peace and let the credits play, and discuss the episode. But it tries to shove another one down your throat, presumably to “maximize engagement”. (I get it for content that you’re binging or are re watching. But this is horrible if you’re just watching an episode during dinner and don’t want to have to scramble to stop the autoplay as soon as it ends)

I believe ripping your DVDs is technically illegal because breaking CSS is a violation of the DMCA. It is quite easy to do though. MakeMKV is great.
- There is actually a DMCA exemption (1201) for ripping DVD's and bypassing the DRM for copyright that falls under fair-use otherwise. The Librarian of Congress has the power to grant these exemptions to the DMCA and grants quite a few other things. Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies
  These exemptions are good until October 2024 but just like previously, the same exemptions and perhaps even more will likely continue.
Some vinyl comes with a download card for lossless files.
Companies need to make it clear which and I would personally pay full price. As it is I only buy on sale and the cards are a bonus.
Ripping discs sucks but it's a one time thing.
Some of the end credits on netflix are longer than the show. I would kill for auto skip in jellyfin.
- Ah, I actually have bought a few music CDs a while ago, and they were actually fairly easy to rip myself. I can't complain about that at all. If ripping DVDs was that easy then I would probably enthusiastically buy a few DVD boxsets. But I don't really want to buy dedicated hardware just to read DVDs on my PC to do a cumbersome ripping process, and also probably lug that hardware (or the entire PC) to my TV now and then to watch a movie.
  I've been interested in vinyl for a while, does it really sound better?
For audiobooks I recently discovered libro.fm and it works great. You can use their app to listen to it like any other service, but you can also just download the plain drm-free mp3s. For music there is bandcamp if the artist is on there, but for movies and series I'm not aware of any vendors like that. DVDs I don't see as an option because their file size limit is too low, the quality on a modern TV looks really bad. And Blurays are a whole other level of DRM hell.
- Awesome, thanks for sharing this! I haven't gotten into audiobooks yet, but it's good to know that there are user friendly options out there.
  Vaguely related: it's also possible to listen to audio books through local libraries in some cases. I think the app is not as friendly, and does a lot to prevent you from getting DRM free mp3s, but at least there's no charge.
- There WAS bandcamp...
- I don't know about the value of libro.fm... Seems to me that the monthly subscription is the price of a physical book and you only get one per month?
  I get a much better deal with my city's library which offers a large catalogue of audio books for free. It's not owning, it's borrowing like you would from a library but at least it doesn't cost anything.
- Thanks for this! I'm so glad to see an audible alternative.
  EDIT: I signed up for a free trial and will give it a go. Bummed to see they have a much smaller selection but I guess that's expected with Amazon's muscle.
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- In the US, you can make an archival copy of software for yourself.
  However, you can't legally sell it, give it away or use someone else's archival copy for something you do have already.
Autoplay next episode is what many people want.
But Netflix or platform should let users make their own choice and put autoplay in the option/setting.
- But Netflix or platform should let users make their own choice and put autoplay in the option/setting.
  On Netflix, it is in the Profile settings. (Manage Profiles -> Edit Profile.)
options to simply pay for content and get high quality DRM free files (edit: I mean legally)?
Lmao. Heard of geoblocking? My Jellyfin instance has no geoblocking tho. 🙆
- Ah, good point. I had briefly heard of this and was shocked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code
  For anyone who hasn't heard:
  This is achieved by way of region-locked DVD players, which will play back only DVDs encoded to their region (plus those without any region code).
  This definitely furthers the original post's point. And he may have even mentioned it.
  It's infuriating that you can pay for something and then move, and lose your collection. This comes to mind: https://xkcd.com/488/
And how much of a pain in the ass is it to buy DVD box sets and rip them? Presumably that’s legal for personal use? Is that the only way? :(
It can be a pain at first when you figure out a schema, look for software etc., then just a matter of inserting a disc and pressing a button. DVDs are easy to rip, there are fully open source programs to do it, for example libcss from VLC team. And DVDs don't require using leaked decryption keys like BluRays.
It is legal depending on the country. In US it's in gray area as you strip down DRM. In country I live in (Poland) from my research there are no such measures and copyright works differently. In Poland the movie/music is untied from medium you bought it on, so copying is legal but selling or giving those copies without destroying other copies you have is illegal.
My advice is that for first dozens of movies don't play with Jellyfin and storing them. DVD player on USB is the best and rip just to have movies for a trip or on a phone. Just out of simplicity, why spend time managing backups, storage shares and additional machines when there is only a few titles to manage.
- Thanks, this is somewhat reassuring. Maybe some day I'll try it. I used to like tinkering with things, but lately I haven't had as much patience or free time.
- Even assuming ripping is legal (it usually isn't ,though it should be), the effort required is significantly higher, the cost is significantly higher, and at least for TV shows, you usually suffer from huge delays as you wait for the season box set to be released. This is even assuming they bother to release a bluray in 4k with HDR.
  Netflix and other services (assuming it even has the content you want) have fixed these issues, with the massive downside of no 4k, lower bitrate, and no ownership at the end of it.
  Piracy, while more illegal, has the content you want, at 4k, usually a higher bitrate, with minimal effort, no cost, and no delays. Now that I'm employed, I don't pirate music or games anymore, because the services offered are good enough that piracy isn't worth the effort. But for movies & TV shows, the services offered are simply terrible.
Ripping your locally purchased content for ripping is a fun hobby and can be addicting to getting everything to look just right in your media player of choice. Also, ripping gives you control over codecs as you can reencode as needed for different clients. This works for music, movies, and TV shows. I will say that ripping TV shows is a chore, so start with movies and music first.
stremio solves most of that

Scam and enshittification as always.

i like the Google play model where i can pay $3 to download the whole movie before watching it. I also like the band camp model where I'm paying a few bucks to the artist to download the music in whatever format i want. i think this is the way.

I don't like Louis very much, because while we're on the same team, he's usually extrem in his opinion, and most importantly, he takes 30 minutes to explain a 3 minutes argument.

But on this, he's right 100% I watched the whole thing! I'm an ex Netflix customer, btw.

Remember when Netflix used Silverlight? Couldn't get it to work on linux back in the day.

Anyways, I don't think this makes piracy completely justified. It just means the best user experience for desktop, or for super privacy related folks, is not supported by netflix. It was a weird self defeating ending to say at the end if it's on netflix only, it's just not worth watching, but also say it's justifiable to pirate.

I think there's a weird sense of irony in being both pro piracy and pro sag aftra. Although they didn't win big, their payout is directly tied to streaming metrics. Piracy instead of streaming is going to screw them.

Odysee link for those who want to watch in the true spirit of the content:

lbry://piracy-is-completely-justified-louis

why do nerds think theyre entitled to free content, you just look like a bunch of whiny babies. if you're gonna pirate do it with the same level of shame as everyone else

Looks like you did not watch the video.
- I started to watch the video, but after listening to unnecessary rambling twice, I lost interest.
  Can you give me a cliff notes of his argument?
Why do technically inept people think they're entitled to the dumbest takes, just look like a bunch of wankers. If you're gonna post your mental diarrhea do it with the same level of shame as everyone else.
Why do you think anyone cares what you think?

While I am not advocating for regulations or for people to stop I don’t think that we are entitled to someone else’s work. I guess you could try to justify it for works of art that were publicly funded.

Did you watch the video?
- no, it was 20 minutes.