There is some pretty common software out there that allows the user to view a lot of copyright-infringing content, namely movie and TV show uploads. It acts as a portal of sorts: you put in the name of the movie you want, it gives a list of hosting site, you pick one and it streams the movie. You do not visit the hosting site yourself and the software does not display ads.
So the chain is Pirate -> Hosting Site -> Streaming Software -> Viewer
Under other circumstances, the Hosting Site would get revenue via ads or maybe injecting malware or something depending on their legitimacy. But you never visit the host and never see any ads, etc. How is the host getting paid? Seems that SuperUploadHosting streaming out Godzilla Vs Batman for free a couple thousand times a day would be a financial loser. Maybe someone’s paying on the front end like getting a premium unlimited account at SUH – but who and why? It’s not torrented from a bunch of people, it’s streaming directly from a single upload host.
No such thing as a free lunch so who is picking up the tab?
(This isn’t about the ethics or legality of the behavior, just the economics. Details left vague so not to run foul of board rules)
A lot of shared content follows the Napster model - rather than uploading to a central server, you connect to a service which tells you where to find the content - and then it directs you to connect to some other user who has the content on his personal computer. Napster’s flaw was having a central server that could be shut down; since then, numerous substitutes like BitTorrent have popped up (and been taken down, and replaced, like whack-a-mole) where the service is more like a “tell two friends, and they tell two friends…”. There is no central server to shut down. local “nodes” are constantly updated with lists of valid nodes by other nodes.
Sites like Pirate Bay are constantly relocating, I understand, because the authorities close down the server and they start up somewhere else.
If you ever try connecting to Pirate Bay (don’t) you will find they are incredibly aggressive with their advertising on the web page and with pop-ups. I have no doubt some of those ads also try to infect your computer; plus, some content is actually infections software rather than real content. If the link tells you to download their special streaming software - hmmm. Who are you going to complain to? “I tried to watch copyright content for free and my PC got infected…”
There is apparently a large underground market in botnets of remote controlled infected PC’s that can do the owner’s bidding - spam, denial-of-service attacks, fake browser traffic clicks, etc.
Plus, there’s legit advertising for stuff that would not be acceptable in ordinary websites - I’m told there are hordes of women in my neighbourhood who want to meet me, or more…
I’m aware of Pirate Bay and torrenting. In those cases no one person is paying for bandwidth because many people are contributing a little during a torrent. What I’m speaking about is software that connects directly to sites like MegaUpload (Wiki link) that function as a “locker” for file storage. However, the end user never visits MegaUpload themselves; the software goes down a list of hosting locations, sees which have the file and you pick from there to have it streamed. So the question is how MegaUpload (or whoever) monetizes this since I doubt it’s a charity endeavor.
Those kind of hosting sites generally follow the “freemium” model, where content is hosted for free at slower speeds, lower quality, or limited usage frequency and users pay to upgrade to premium unlimited, high-quality service.
Eh, you can stream high def video from them without hitching. Again, you never directly log in or access the site so you couldn’t upgrade even if you wanted to.
Well, some sites do offer HD for free, but might have other limits, such as that HD video buffering very slowly. The portal sites just exploit the various sites that offer the best free service.
I’ve never ever been given malware in the last 10 years — OK, it wouldn’t affect me if I had since I run on Linux, BUT using Linux doesn’t absolve one from passing it on to others, so I scan regularly to make sure there’s nothing bad on my computer that could hurt lesser computers: Windows Users are people too !
I don’t even get false positives. I don’t do porn, but reputable torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Demonoid don’t distribute malware as part of their business model, otherwise their clientele would dry up.
And even if, may God Forbid, torrenting be destroyed by the puritans, there’s always Usenet, and The Scene ---- neither of which I have ever used, but it’s always good to learn as one gets older.
It’s possible that the software you describe is parasitic on the hosting companies. The hosting company ideally wants to make things as easy as possible for their paying subscribers, while still making things hard for nonpaying users, so as to give them an incentive to subscribe. At the same time, though, they also don’t want to make it too hard for nonpaying users, because they want to give them the taste of what they could be getting, again, to give them an incentive to pay. Given that confluence of factors, someone is going to invent a tool that makes things easier for the nonpaying users. The hosting site would prefer that such tools not exist, but they might just not have gotten around to changing things to stop them from working, and they might have calculated that doing so would be more trouble than it’s worth in chasing off potential customers.
Some of this stuff is just out there for the lulz. For the fun of “sticking it to the man.” To see if they can get away with it. To enjoy the thrill of stealing/getting something for free and giving it away for free for as long as they can.
I don’t think anyone is becoming rich off of tv and movie capping (which is different than the streaming being asked about), but people are capping tv shows and movies every day, en masse, to distribute freely.
I get the feeling that the people putting streams up are, for the most part, doing it for the same reasons.
No, I don’t think that’s an accurate impression of the primary motivations.
Sure, there are whole organized groups that claim to do it for the lulz, thrills, sticking it to the man, or because information wants to be free. But it’s very similar to the hacking or virus scene and they’re really doing it for status within that community and whatever fringe benefits come along with that, such as increased access to all sorts of resources and further advancement within that community.
And remember, the hosting sites absolutely depend on their users to upload the content in the first place. Not only does that greatly simplify content aquisition, but it also provides the plausible deniability to stay on the right side of the DMCA laws. So what you see is the hosting sites offering various incentives to uploaders. Those incentives can even be cold hard currency for the high volume uploaders of in-demand content. Other, less prolific uploaders might be after free premium memberships or credits that allow them unlimited download of stuff that other people uploaded or to get free private storage/hosting services, etc.