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posted by chromas on Thursday August 29 2019, @12:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the why-have-one-cheap-service-with-everything-when-you-could-have-117? dept.

Eight individuals have been charged with an indictment by the United States for allegedly running two of the "largest unauthorized streaming services".

The federal grand jury that gave the indictment alleges that the two streaming services, Jetflicks and iStreamItAll (ISIA), caused copyright owners to lose millions of dollars.

Both services were used by tens of thousands of subscribers, and could be accessed online and on numerous systems including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, video game consoles, digital media players, set-top boxes, and web browsers.

Jetflicks allegedly obtained infringing television programs from pirate websites -- such as The Pirate Bay, RARBG and Torrentz -- by using automated computer scripts, and then would provide the pirated content to subscribers soon after the shows were aired.

ISIA allegedly used many of the same automated tools that Jetflicks employed to locate, download, process, and store illegal content -- but ISIA also provided movies in addition to television programs -- to quickly make pirated content available to ISIA subscribers.

The two services allegedly reproduced tens of thousands of copyrighted television episodes and movies without authorization, the Justice Department said, and distributed the infringing programs to tens of thousands of paid subscribers located throughout the US and Canada.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday August 29 2019, @02:43AM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday August 29 2019, @02:43AM (#887137) Journal

    Here's another thing. From what I can see, the streaming sites and addons mostly serve up 720p resolution content, maybe lower. And that's the resolution I'm targeting for watching video, 1080p or 4K being gratuitous.

    The bitrate needed for 720p video got pretty low when H.265 landed. It's set to plummet again in a few years with AV1, AV2, and/or H.266 codecs.

    At the same time, the cost of bandwidth for illicit streaming sites will decrease, and average bandwidth per home user will increase (relevant to BitTorrent).

    So the cost of serving up free pirated entertainment will continue to drop over time, meaning costs could be covered even if a higher proportion of users block the ads. Even if U.S., Russia, China, et al. managed to crush all the streaming sites, you can just switch back to peer-to-peer. A worthless product that can be endlessly stolen will become even more worthless.

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday August 29 2019, @03:27AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday August 29 2019, @03:27AM (#887156) Journal

    Cheaper storage ($/TB) and better hardware also play a role. But I think those are the two main factors.

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