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Since early 2020 Netflix has cracked down on VPN users by disconnecting sessions at random and terminating SSL connections to their main website. This action is to due to content distributors pressuring Netflix to prevent users from accessing content outside of their geographical zone as they believe this is costing them in terms of profit. The end result is that users who always use a VPN to access the internet are cut from Netflix as collateral damage even if their account is registered in the same country where they connect to a VPN for. While some VPN providers have given up, NordVPN and a few others are battling on to provide their users with peace of mind while accessing services on the internet.
Can I get my money back because Netflix is not delivering the service I paid for?
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @02:36PM (23 children)
Why would you remain their customer if they don't provide what you want?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @02:45PM (9 children)
Apparently, this form of piracy is better than other forms of piracy. Honestly, at that point, you might as well get your content from nautical themed sites.
(Score: 5, Informative) by maxwell demon on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:09PM (8 children)
Accessing through VPN the content you have paid for is not piracy.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:12PM (2 children)
Failing to fellate the "rights holders" to their satisfaction is piracy.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @12:10AM (1 child)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWP88WKVBKs [youtube.com]
You are not wrong. It just feels like crap from our PoV.
But basically they have sliced and diced the 'rights' to the movies so much it is a royal PITA to show it anywhere, legally.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 13 2020, @01:50PM
Just to be clear -- it's not netflix that has sliced and diced the rights. They only get a specific slices from the copyright owners.
I would love to see a regime where the distributors (such as Netflix) were separated from the creators. The way they once were.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:54PM (3 children)
And neither is accessing it through a torrent. When you paid for the content, they have no right to block you from accessing it, no matter how it's done.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @08:20AM
I suspect they would disagree here, saying that you only had licence to view through one medium.
This is the same as 'I purchased the CD so I can listen to the radio for free at work'.
No, they still want to charge you.
(Score: 2) by DeVilla on Monday April 13 2020, @01:29AM
Depends on what limits you agreed to in the Terms of Service. You may have given up that right. It's safer to just buy the dvd. I believe that's still just governed by basic copyright which I believe allows medium shifting around here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 17 2020, @06:43AM
What they are doing here amounts to 'You paid for the rights to view content through our network, but we're blocking you because we don't like VPN'. Not sure how this is legal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @03:30PM
Depends, if you're accessing ones in your local market, it's not. If you're using it to access content that's not available in your market, it is piracy. Whether or not that should be, is a different matter.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:14PM (6 children)
I like Netflix. The price is right. The content is worth it. I haven't run out of shows to watch. The interface could do with some work. Overall I am happy with it and could probably get another year or two out of it.
This just sucks. I can't watch shows. I keep getting cut off. If I am even 1 minor version behind on Firefox then it cuts out. I really thought there were SSL issues, or my ISP was at fault. No. It's Netflix.
My family is so pissed about SSL dying all the time that they are going back to the times before Netflix. It really sucks because I want this to work. I want to pay money per money and binge TV.
Thanks, Netflix, for the good times. It's been a great couple of years. When our current credit runs out, this is it. I don't know why exactly you chose to include us in your dragnet.. but.. may I just say: Fuck You.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:58PM (1 child)
"We'll give you all this bling, all this luxury, all this entertainment, it's miraculous! Just sign on the bottom line, and whatever you do don't read the fineprint."
Not too long ago this sort of scam was pretty much unviable. Sure, you might exploit a niche for a bit, but for the most part consumers were just too savvy to fall for it. We've rapidly charged down the slope to the point where now it's just expected, and it's become nearly impossible to continue living without accepting the yoke of your corporate masters.
And unless large numbers of people start to say 'enough' and stand up against it, the next generation is going to inherit a world that will make 1984 look cute, naïve even.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @12:15PM
Ok then. Back to BT we go..
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @05:21PM (1 child)
what kind of dumb ass white man funds netflix and lets his kids watch that anti-white brainwashing shit? just how fucking stupid are you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @09:29AM
white? man?
(Score: 3, Informative) by legont on Saturday April 11 2020, @06:33PM (1 child)
I was Netfix customer for many years from it's first days, but I sent them to fuck itself awhile ago.
As per the "war", Amazon and many banks are fighting VPN's as well. I thought they are just using ip blacklists from 3rd parties, but now I doubt it.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 11 2020, @10:33PM
Netflix was always something I'd let expire unless I was gettin' pussy, in which case I'd happily renew my subscription. Last I checked it was like 5 bucks a month, a small price to pay for greasing the gears into dipping my wick.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday April 11 2020, @06:35PM (1 child)
Forced to have Netflix? Yes.
The wife forces me to keep Netflix. She's afraid that on the mere accusation of piracy, we will be sued for everything we have and thrown in jail. She's afraid of a whole lot of things of that sort. The streets are just swarming, swarming I tell you, with criminals and rapists and murderers and berserkers. Yes, I know a lot of it is a bunch of melodrama she uses as a pretext to have her way on various matters of importance to her. Also, she does use Netflix, and I must admit it's useful for keeping the kids entertained. And, since they do have much Star Trek, I sometimes watch.
Nothing is forcing her to keep Netflix.
Anyway, there are other ways to fight. Boycott is good, but it takes a lot of cooperation to make that work. Some lawyer ought to bring a class action lawsuit against the content cartels over region schemes, get them pronounced anti-competitive and illegal. Maybe NewYorkCountryLawyer could do it.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 11 2020, @10:37PM
There's an audit trail with Netflix. And if she catches you watching a romantic comedy while she wasn't around, then she's gonna rip your balls off.
Never believe what women say at face-value. They are control-freaks, and what she likes most about Netflix is the audit trail rather than the copyright legitimacy. The audit-trail is well-worth the price.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday April 11 2020, @10:04PM (3 children)
There are numerous sites all over the internet showing the exact same content for nothing. If companies like Netflix drive away consumers for whatever reasons, they will seek alternate sources and find them. If people are willing to pay, the providers should be accommodating as possible. If they forget this, they might just see their subscriber base fade away.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @11:24AM (1 child)
Time to switch to crunchyroll
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:35PM
Crunchyroll is also hit by the regional rights restrictions imposed by the rights holders. Fortunately, they seem not to be sliced and diced as much as the traditional American media.
But they are being hit, and heavily, but some of the licensors deciding to operate their own servers and deny avaliability to Crunchyroll.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 13 2020, @01:47PM
It's not Netflix that's choosing to implement all these restrictions. They'd be quite happy showing everything to everyone that pays them.
It says it right in the headline: they are being *forced* to impose restrictions.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @02:36PM (15 children)
I don't think that it's cool for the content providers to limit the selections regionally. There's plenty of foreign language content that I can't get due to the region locking.
But, that being said, unless you're unable to browse without a VPN and you're VPN is in the country you live in on both ends, you are getting what you paid for. What you paid for was whatever the regional selection for your area is. In some areas there are more or fewer titles, but the titles available elsewhere weren't included in the deal.
It annoys me a great deal that the selections are limited in terms of foreign content, but Netflix is being pressured to limit access and either lose out on content or pay for a global license.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:16PM (14 children)
I disagree, and rather strongly. So called "rights holders" don't have any right, nor authority, to limit what people can see. Especially so with Netflix, who apparently pass royalties on to those same rights holders. If I contact a book store in any country in the world, seeking a specific title, the book store will happily sell me that book. He/she may or may not charge me a premium for mailing the book, but if I'm willing to pay the vendor's price, he will ship. No author has any authority to block the sale.
Same rules should apply to streaming, downloading, or whatever other means I might use to view a movie. Artificial and nonsense barriers to distribution need to die a painful death, and quickly.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fustakrakich on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:57PM (3 children)
So called "rights holders" don't have any right, nor authority, to limit what people can see.
Yeah well, they write the laws for our elected officials to rubber stamp. So our feelings about their "rights" are moot.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 11 2020, @04:58PM (2 children)
That situation is solved easily enough with pitchforks and torches.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Saturday April 11 2020, @05:11PM (1 child)
Not it's not. It's been done before. The replacements with the pitchforks and torches are just attacking each other and are no better anyway.
The Party has a ~95% majority. You oughta make at least a feeble effort to vote them out first. The "pitchforks and torches" gag is bullshit
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday April 11 2020, @08:05PM
Oh ye of little faith! But it's not the pitchforks and other tools of force that defeat them. It's reality. Every time they try to legislate or enforce some form of artificial scarcity, a lot of people see it for the bull that it is, and refuse to accept it. And neither they nor the law can do much about it. They can make noise, try to scare people with extreme threats and whine about those mean pirates killing their business model, and try yet another idiotic DRM scheme, but those are awfully feeble when set against reality.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Saturday April 11 2020, @07:53PM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 11 2020, @08:09PM (1 child)
Well, in the end, they lack the power. Pirate Bay says so, and I believe them.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Saturday April 11 2020, @11:50PM
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:40PM
I do wonder sometimes how many flat-earthers really believe in a flat Earth and how many are just along for the ride because it's fun.
Come on, do you really expect me to believe that you can understand the acceleration-gravity equivalence in general relativity and still think the Earth is flat?
(talking about the explanation that the flat Earth is accelerating upwards at one G.)
-- hendrik
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Spamalope on Saturday April 11 2020, @10:14PM
In the past, book publishers did indeed try adding EULAs to books to restrict reading to the original purchaser and such. Courts refused to enforce such restrictions, whereas the MPA first greased the right palms so that EULAs converting a sale into a license would be deemed lawful. That's the problem right there...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @10:35PM (2 children)
You're focusing on whether the book seller has the *right* to not sell you something, which is a valid concern, but what baffles me more is whether the book seller has any *motivation* to not sell you something. Unless the book to be shipped would get the seller in legal trouble due to e.g. morality laws of the destination country, the reasoning to not want to make the sale eludes me.
But WEMAKETVANDMOVIE people create that motivation by first creating business deals that only Country A can sell this stuff to people in Country A. Having made that deal, your VPN, without further examination, appears to mess it up and needs to be stopped before the deal falls apart. In other words, it isn't about the customer or the customer's money at all. It's about some unrelated-to-the-customer deal that must be far more lucrative than your $monthly.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @09:15AM (1 child)
I can't understand this argument.
Let's say I live outside the US. So, I buy Netflix in my country. I use a VPN to connect to US Netflix servers. Netflix has licensed the content in the US. They pay, I pay, I watch, all happy?
Up this a bit. Let's say the content is not available in my country. Or, I just can't pay for it here. Same thing: connect with VPN, and we're all happy? Right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @03:33PM
The US party that receives the payment for the license may not be the one with the right to sell distribution rights where you're located. That's the detail a lot of people in this discussion are missing. Paying the wrong party for rights isn't any different than just pirating, except that you can pretend like it's a licensed copy. But, you might as well just pirate at that point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @05:31PM (1 child)
Umm, that's why they can't limit the number of people in your living room while you watch it. Netflix is not allowed to stream to individuals in those areas. And they do have a responsibility to do what they can to avoid unauthorized streams.
I don't particularly care for it either, but you're a moron if you think those streams are anything other than piracy. Netflix would love to allow those streams, but the reality is that the content holder hasn't authorized them to stream to those regions and failing to take steps could lead to further losses of content.
As far as books go, those are purchased, not rented, first sale doctrine, or equivalent, applies. Not to mention that the publisher has no way of knowing what customers do with their product after the fact. If I buy a copy and ship it to a foreign country, the publisher would have no idea.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday April 12 2020, @05:47PM
I won't call you a moron, but this is piracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrm1hO18BQ4 [youtube.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tokolosh on Saturday April 11 2020, @02:43PM (8 children)
I used to be a Netflix subscriber, now I am not.
1. This VPN thing.
2. Autoplay.
Decide Netflix, did you value the people who "force" you to do stuff, or do you value your paying customers more?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by zocalo on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:15PM
Given that a) those who "force" them to do stuff also provide them with a lot of their content, without which they wouldn't have as many (any?) paying customers. Customers that, are either b) not be in clued in to using a VPN and/or c) will just accept having to wait for some shows to get the ones they can have now, I think I can guess which way this is going to go.
Sure, blocking VPNs is going to cost them some customers, but I suspect Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, et al, are all seeing a large uptick in new customers on the back of the lockdowns, most of which probably won't cancel out of apathy once this is over, so in net terms I suspect it's all gravy for them. Besides, the real culprits here are the clueless rent seekers at the studios and distributors who are insisting on this kind of asshattery *right* *now* rather than getting the positive PR of publically waiving the restrictions for the duration of the outbreak, then hitting the streaming services up for higher fees due to increased viewership in the next round of negotiations.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @07:49PM
Just wanted to note that I doubt external forces were forcing Netflix to create the most annoying autoplaying interface system ever on many devices. This is just Netflix's attempt to keep sucking people into its content, whether you want it to play or not. Before you can switch to Amazon Prime or Hulu... "oh, god damn it, another episode started playing" or "oh, crap, this movie is already playing...hey, is that a boob?..."
The faster it serves up content, the less time you have to find stuff on competitors -- or at least that's what I assume the motivation is. How anyone can stand it is beyond me. I was a Netflix subscriber for 18 years, and quit because they forced that shitty interface down my throat. Just thinking about it makes me want to shoot my TV as I hop quickly from show to show trying desperately to keep the damn thing to JUST STOP FUCKING PLAYING!! GOD DAMN IT!!!!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Common Joe on Saturday April 11 2020, @08:01PM (3 children)
After several years, Netflix decided to give in on Autoplay. It's now an option. It still defaults to on for new subscribers (I think), but you can turn it off in settings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @03:38PM
That's great to know, I'll have to look into that. I really hate it as sometimes I'll walk away for a few minutes between episodes or while waiting for other people to be ready and it's annoying to have to start and then pause.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:43PM (1 child)
It's actually true that a lot of streaming TV viewers like autoplay. Especially binge-watchers.
That's presumably why it became an option instead of just being turned off.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday April 14 2020, @01:57PM
That may be, but there were several years when I couldn't turn it off. I'm far from the only one who hated it. A lot of non-binge watchers complained from the moment they introduced it. We simply got silence.
Although I'm not one of them, I get that there are people who like to binge. Fine, give us an option so we can say which camp we're in. Instead, Netflix decided to violate Wheaton's Law and be a dick.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 13 2020, @01:57PM (1 child)
In the Netflix app I use on Android, there's a configuration option to turn off autoplay. It wasn't easy to find, but it was there.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 13 2020, @03:30PM
Which is why I prefer netflix to its main competitor here in Canada: Crave always autoplays. Given a choice, I always look for something to watch on Netflix or Crunchyroll, which do not autoplay.
So if people like me are a significant market, competition favours the services that do not autoplay,
-- hendrik
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @02:53PM (4 children)
If enough users would take that route maybe they would rethink their strategy of collecting money for a service and not rendering it. Some entities show more wisdom here. For example, the NHL from North America will service customers in Europe more than happily, delivering live streaming in HD for every event!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:07PM (3 children)
Not true. To this day, Steam discriminates against users based on country of connection (and will ban users who use VPNs). They charge some customers (Americans, Australians, Western Europeans) four times as much as other customers. They hide this under the guise of currency conversion, but if you run the numbers, you will see the truth. There used to be an economy around buying games in a cheap country, and then sending them as gifts to a paying customer, but Steam has now blocked that too.
If you connect to Steam from a VPN in another country, and then buy a game at a lower price than Steam thinks your home country deserves, they will ban your account, and forcibly uninstall all your games.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:31PM
More reasons to avoid Steam?
I never used it.. but.. no longer use HumbleBundle because they have jumped the shark. They pretty much just sell Steam keys now..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @05:04PM (1 child)
Except that they lower the price for markets with low income. Some money is better than no money. Yes, it might hurt your feelings a bit, but you can use those dollar bills you get payed with to wipe 'em off. Unlike us here with local currency that falls dozens % per year as soon as someone sneeze nearby.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:48PM
The original reason for DVD regions was that American movies tended to be shown in America about a year before they were shown in Europe.
In the interim, they had time to do things like dubbing and subtitling. At least that was part of the official story.
In fact, they were also using that year to do market analysis in America so that they could adjust their advertising to the perceived cultural differences between America and the rest of the world.
When I was last in Holland about 20 years ago, no one there would buy a DVD player that hadn't been "chipped"; i.e., had the region restrictions removed.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:11PM
We would quite happily pay a monthly fee for the BBC (which we watch) rather than Netflix. (which we don't.). For now CyberGhost works fine.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Saturday April 11 2020, @03:18PM (3 children)
Just something to keep in mind. If netfux will so easily declare war on these kinds of users, then they would have no problems declaring war on any other kinds of users - which one day, might be YOU.
It boggles my mind how consumetards buy products, get raped up the ass, then keep handing over money for more.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Saturday April 11 2020, @08:07PM
I see a lot of people marked you insightful. I share your sentiment, but don't fully agree with your conclusion.
If I didn't pay companies that tried to screw me, I wouldn't be able to buy anything. So far, I haven't found a large corporation that I trust. Small companies rely on large corporations. Ugly cycle. Now, we're talking about TV, so if you're willing to socially isolate yourself, I suppose that's an option, but many kinds of social interaction today require television.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @05:46AM (1 child)
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:50PM
Again, Netflix doesn't hate their customers. Rights holders hate Netflix customers.
-- hendrik
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday April 11 2020, @04:05PM (9 children)
If it is so easy to detect, it isn't of much use.
While we're at it, let's get rid of DNS, in fact the whole client/server setup has to go. When are we going to do peer to peer on the WAN?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Arik on Saturday April 11 2020, @04:37PM (6 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Funny) by fustakrakich on Saturday April 11 2020, @04:50PM (5 children)
The internet is not peer to peer
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Saturday April 11 2020, @05:12PM (4 children)
That design has been perverted by the refusal of ISPs to provide proper service, and all the entrenched interests building crap at the application layer to subvert that design, but it's still fundamentally a peer to peer network underneath all of that.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday April 11 2020, @05:23PM (3 children)
Until we can circumvent the ISP, I can't call it peer to peer. We're just on their client/server LAN. And it really is an unacceptable single point of failure. No ISP, no internet.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by FunkyLich on Saturday April 11 2020, @11:59PM (2 children)
Any suggestions on where can we start the process of circumventing the ISP and still be able to connect and use the Worldwide Network?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:53PM
Live in a place with multiple ISPs.
Here in Canada, the local access providers (such as the telephone and cable networks) are required to make their lines available to other ISP's at regulated rates. There end up being a lot of independent ISPs as a result.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2020, @10:00PM
But you can use Tor as an address resolution layer, although it's addresses are much uglier than clearnet dns.
I2P also had the addressbook notion, where you could arbitrarily assign domain names to addresses (although if they didn't match and the site uses virtual domains, you would at best get stuck with the default domain pages.)
0 hop Tor doesn't provide any obscurity (it should definitely not be considered anonymity, even at 3 hops, most of the self selecting nodes due to performance appear to be run by 5 eyes in large clusters. Look for the 'nifty*' series of nodes and a variety of adjacent class c addresses. And don't get me started on questionable guard node selection...) but it does provide ingress-capable service hosting anywhere you need it, even behind a firewall or NAT, decent performance for almost any site, and the ability to automatically generate a new domain at any time, although generating 'vanity' domains will require non-trivial computer time for the more memorable and long a portion of the address you require.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @10:55PM (1 child)
What alternative to DNS do you propose and where does it lie on Zooko's triangle?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:55PM
Aren't there some proposals for totally distributed DNS systems? Don't know how they deal with name collisions.
Maybe we'd end up with something like UUCP's old bang addresses.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @05:28PM (3 children)
netflix has not been forced to do anything. they are whores. plain and simple. stop running interference for these professional propagandists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @12:13AM (2 children)
To be fair in a way they are forced to do it. Their competitors do. You think Hulu or Disney or Youtube or HBO or Amazon isnt going to do it? You want that cool movie you play by the 'rules' or they walk to your competitor. 100% bet that has come up in meetings all the time. When it was pretty much only netflix in the game they could look the other way. Now they have competition that does.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 13 2020, @03:38PM
It's not the competitors that are "forcing" netflix.
It's the copyright owners and their representatives.
Mind you, some of the copyright owners *are* competition, such as Disney.
I'd like the distributors to be separate from the content creators.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2020, @10:23PM
what do you think i mean by "whores"? ffs. integrity is very inconvenient.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 11 2020, @07:54PM
No UHD? Why?
Proprietary crap.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Sunday April 12 2020, @03:59AM (2 children)
It's possible that the Time of Passive Entertainment might be passing. I'm reading a lot of the sentiment here and comparing it with the experience in our home, and there's not a lot of oomph left in the TV & movie industries.
If VR doesn't step in to fill the gap, digital entertainment could die with our kids as they switch it all off and go outside to play.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2020, @08:38AM (1 child)
It is sort of funny you mention that. At a recent shindig in February, I conducted a poll and most people agreed that they actually saw more kids playing outside over the past year or two than before. The reason I asked is because I had a discussion with a friend where we noted similar things. We debated why and came to the conclusion that it has to be because the kids are "on" all the time, so going outside is their only escape from the bombardment, for lack of a better word. It also allows them to burn their physical energy and get away from the repetitiveness, since a lot of entertainment options are driven by algorithms trying to extract the most money with huge advertising budgets and have started feeling identical.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday April 14 2020, @12:57PM
This "Stay Home" policy and using networking is starting to make me feel like I'm living in Solaria.
-- hendrik
(Asimov's The Naked Sun)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2020, @09:18PM
If they didn't have DRM I might have used 'em. As it is - nah.