Okay, I'll just come out and say it. As a poor college student, I used to pirate a lot, I don't after having gotten Netflix. It just makes things too easy, that's all there is to it.
Also, interestingly, because I've basically watched all the shows and movies that I was interested in I'll actually be cutting my subscription soon.
Imagine how far piracy would drop if Netflix Canada actually had some decent content (there's some good stuff, but if you go looking for anything specific, it's nearly always not there - American Netflix is far superior).
As a Canadian, that's what I've heard too. Netflix Canada = sucks.
Not that I personally like streaming anyway... but the piracy problem is a tough one because it's so quick and easy, but is not always reliable nor safe (and obviously screws the creator in terms of $$). However, piracy can also go beyond the original creation, like how Warcraft 2 was ported to work on modern operating systems. Will be interesting to see in 10 years where things go.
Ironically, I have used my vpn service to access Canadian Netflix because you were the only ones who had for instance Community.
Also, streaming from Canadian servers were better than from the U.S. for a while.
(Norwegian)
"Young consumers, taking on their first apartments..., are ignoring the existence of $100+ premium cable bundles."
I live in a college town and can attest that a lot of the new graduates I know forgo cable subscriptions, either because they are broke, or because they can't be bothered to navigate Comcast's bewildering array of "packages".
"Have the intentions of mandatory CanCon TV spending drifted so far from the reality that the whole scheme should be scrapped?"
[edit] Canadian HN'ers, what are your impressions of CanCon? Is it like a Canadian version of the BBC, and if so, does it make shows with that quality? (The BBC makes a few really decent shows and some amount of debatable tripe.)
>Canadian content (abbreviated CanCon, cancon or can-con) refers to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) requirements, derived from the Broadcasting Act of Canada, that radio and television broadcasters (including cable and satellite specialty channels) must air a certain percentage of content that was at least partly written, produced, presented, or otherwise contributed to by persons from Canada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content
CanCon stands for Canadian Content. High level, in order to maintain a broadcast licence in Canada, you need to have a certain percentage of your content be defined as "Canadian". The way you get a piece of content certified as Canadian is via point system - Canadian director, +1 point, Canadian lead actor, +1 point, etc... more info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_content
One really odd thing about Canada is we don't "naturally" produce enough content for broadcasters to meet their Canadian content requirements (let alone content people actually want to consume), therefore there are HUGE subsidies in place for the production of Canadian content - like billions of dollars a year huge. These subsidies enable broadcasters to pick up Canadian shows cheaply in order to meet their quotas. Most Canadians don't realize how much money is given to media creators because the money is distributed in many different forms from different institutions, at both the provincial and federal level, i.e. those which invest in media (http://telefilm.ca/) distribute tax credits (i.e. http://www.omdc.on.ca/ ), and so fourth.
This is ignoring the CBC by the way, the government financed broadcast organization.
The subsidies haven't followed changes in Canadian media consumption patterns though, meaning we over-subsidize mediums which are consumed less and under-subsidize those that are consumed more. It will be interesting to see if / how things change moving forward.
There's also the Canadian Media Fund. http://www.cmf-fmc.ca/ which supports not only film/tv production but also interactive digital media (ie. video games).
As others have said, CanCon is a quota for "Canadian" content on TV and the radio, which mostly means our radio stations play a lot more Nickelback than anyone wants to listen to.
While this may be true, I recently started volunteering at the student radio station at UBC, and I would be surprised if we have any Nickelback. Citr.ca also has a live stream, if you do not live in Vancouver.
For anyone wondering about some CanCon regulations as far as radio:
1. Music falling in Category 2 (Rock, Dance, pop, acoustic, country, easy listening) must consist of 35% CanCon
2. Category 3 (concert/classical, opera, musical theatre, folk, world beat and international, jazz and blues, religious, experimental) must consist of 12% CanCon
3. 7% CanCon during ethnic broadcast.
In order to qualify as CanCon, a song must contain someone of Canadian nationality in two of the for MAPL categories: music (composition), artist (music or lyrics performance), performance (live performance recorded or broadcasted from live in Canada), lyrics (written entirely by a Canadian).
We do have a Canadian version of the BBC; it's called the CBC. I hear that their radio stations are pretty good, but their TV channel really makes me wish that we just spent our government dollars on making the BBC iPlayer available in Canada.
Literally nobody I know has cable, just isn't worth it. Anything worth watching has a way to download it online easily and hassle free and if you don't feel like paying there's a million ways to download it regardless.
CanCon is generally pretty bad and shouldn't be compared to the BBC, though recently I've read some Canadian production companies have had a fair amount of success in selling their shows to US cable companies.
Someone from Quebec should chime in because from my understanding their locally made product is of higher quality than that of English Canada.
I find this hard to believe. Based on what evidence? This fails even the common sense test. Netflix doesn't have TV show episodes the day they come out or movies within the time you would remember them. I've even gone and RENTED a movie before it came out on Netflix.
It's pretty rare for me, but I don't watch a lot of TV. And, I very rarely think, "I want to watch X". I often browse Netflix (or Amazon Prime, when I'm working, since I work on Linux and Netflix doesn't support it), rather than go looking for something really specific.
Have you tried netflix-desktop for Linux? It works well enough for me, but I have a fast GPU and the audio still gets out of sync sometimes (I blame PulseAudio ;-P).
A couple of months ago I put together some lists[1] of movie availability on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu plus, based on the IMDB top 250, 2010 Oscar nominees, Sight & Sound 2012 top 250 poll, and the 250 biggest box office money makers from 2000 to 2012. I was surprised at how poor the selections they offer turned out to be — it depends on the list, but none of them had more than a quarter of the movies available.
This is spot on. If you make it easy to legitimately acquire, I will legitimately acquire it. I don't "watch TV" in the sense that I allocate time for TV-viewing and then find the best thing available. If I want to watch something, I will find it in the most convenient way possible. If you have a pay service that is super convenient, guess what? It's an easy choice to pay $2.99 and watch it _now_ rather than to search torrent sites, wait some time to download it, hope that I got a legitimate copy, hope that I don't get harassed by my ISP, etc. If it takes an hour to download a movie, well... I'd give $3 for that hour, any day.
1) The Canadian library initially couldn't hold a candle to the USA library. I've found this hasn't been true for about a year -- most things I've wanted to watch recently have been on both.
2) VPN proxies are <=$5/mo, and easy enough for general consumers to set up with a bit of handholding.
Amazingly I've had to switch back to Canadian netflix several times to watch something I wanted to watch in the last few weeks. It blows my mind every time.
Well, and moreflicks.com if you want to see how catalogue selection varies by country. (Its search isn't the greatest, but they have the most netflix countries, I've found.)
And since the vast majority of what I watch is anime these days that hasn't been officially brought to USA yet, I pretty much go straight to #4, animehere.com or animecenter.tv or similar. I even have scripts that scrapes the page for the direct video-file URL and fetches it. I run it every Saturday night to get the newest Attack on Titan & Hunter-x-Hunter-2011. Here[1] is a bash script I put together to download all of the One Piece video files from watchop.com . Of course, now that I've posted the script it'll probably stop working in the not-too-distant future.
I kept going to shows or movies and finding only trailers and clips. Why would I want either of those things? I don't go looking for ads. I just don't...I have less than zero interest in seeing ads, even for shows or movies I wanted to watch.
I used to love Hulu. It works on Linux (which is a big thing for me, especially during the day when I'm working and watching TV), and it used to be a place where I could watch current season shows. Now, it's just too much hassle to find any actual programming.
Same here, for the same reason. One of the reasons I stopped paying for cable TV was the utter overabundance of ads. Hulu wants me to give them money so they can make me watch ads? Yeah, no. One more benefit the torrent sites have over the legit item, apparently.
http://www.crunchyroll.com/ has a lot of anime, and offers the latest subbed episodes an hour after broadcast in Japan. The latest episodes are offered only if you are a monthly subscriber. They have Android and iOS apps, as well as an AppleTV client.
All the sources except piracy, for movies and TV (and books too), are missing features you can use with other software if you have DRM free media. For example, I have amazon video already paid for and never ever use it because of this -- missing features that VLC has.
IMO they should try achieving feature parity -- or better, actually innovate -- to cut down piracy further. (Yes the paid stuff is arguably ahead on certain features like convenience. But not others.)
Can't argue with that. When I watch most video, including YouTube (downloaded with youtube-dl), many streaming or download sites, or MythTV recordings, I tend to speed it up to 130-160% of normal; Netflix is the one and only source of video I can't do that with.
I have the same process... but stop at Netflix; all the other (legal) solutions are either too complex or too expensive (not to mention, I'm not in the US, so subscribing to US-based Amazon Prime would be of little value).
> Is it available anywhere online for purchase? Cool. Buy it and watch it.
A week later. And I would have to get an archaic optical drive. It also creates useless waste and is usually way too expensive for an hour of entertainment.
For me, none of the options before that is available so I can either don't watch it or pirate it with "I'll pay for it later" attitude. It worked well enough for games and software in general (pirated everything since maybe three or four years back).
Like most people outside of North America, I just skip these steps by default since the answer has been "no" for a decade, and in most cases still is.
Also "purchase" should be "non-DRM or single-platform format crippled purchase".
Oh, we now have Netflix in the Netherlands, since a few weeks. The actual selection is a joke. Yes, I understand it's the copyright mafia's doing, but don't ask me to pay the same price as Americans for a fraction of the product.
People far smarter than me have been saying for a long time that if you make the price of the content more reasonable and make it far easier to get, most people wouldn't bother to pirate.
I have no idea about the numbers, but it's good to see someone who makes money on providing the easier content providing some data on the fact that one of the best ways to remove piracy isn't to randomly sue people to scare them, but to provide them a good product, at a reasonable price and not to go out of your way to make it difficult for people to purchase/license/rent your product.
gate keeping is a means to obtain profit. If you controlled it all, like the old media companies used to, you can make a lot more profit. but with the advent of the internet and p2p distribution, it's becoming hard to control, and this they have completion.
I really don't get that argument (from them of course, not you haha.) If you make something super easy to get and a reasonable price (eg: Quite a few comedy specials are appearing for $5 DRM free) then more people will just download it than go through the hassle of a torrent or getting their friends to put it on a memory stick.
Is there anything else which has happened recently in the Canadian media space which could have led to the decrease? I understand that we should be careful with correlation/causation, but it seems like a fairly reasonable connection.
I've always regarded these piracy statistics with great suspicion, regardless of the point the person pushing them is trying to make (even then, usually any comments made about piracy statistics are by media industry types banging on about how they're close to bankruptcy or similar).
I assume they're doing something like connecting to a random swarm and counting IPs, problem is that makes a number of faulty assumptions:
* 1 IP = 1 person
* Person on the swarm is necessarily there to download
* Person on the swarm is necessarily downloading something they don't have a license for
* Person on the swarm is necessarily consuming the media they're downloading (some people just like to collect)
* Public trackers are the only means of pirating via torrent
* Other mediums are completely ignored (IRC/Usenet/HTTP sites/EDonkey/DC++/etc etc etc etc)
I'm sure it would decrease in the U.S. as well if all the cable companies weren't greedy, antiquated whoremongers. Consumers find alternatives when all the options available are sub-par.
That being said I'm glad newer options are becoming increasingly more available, despite setbacks from the regulators.
The impressive thing is that this happened with Netflix Canada's selection being a joke compared to that of the U.S. version of Netflix. This doesn't just show that people will choose the legal path to obtaining the content they want if it's available. It actually shows that a significant number of people will limit their choices to what is legally available!
Personally, I was hoping Netflix Canada would have a tougher time until they bother to improve their selection just a tad.
In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.
Those two sentences should be tattooed on every music, film, and publishing executive's forehead. As every convenient online service (iTunes, Netflix, Steam, Kindle) has demonstrated, people will legally purchase content, so long as the option of legal purchase is easier and more convenient than piracy.
Even Netflix, Kindle, iTunes have significant accessibility issues - as a Canadian I find US friends online have access to a much greater library than the Canadian equivalent. I can only assume this is license related (as opposed to concerns around the incremental cost of distribution of online streams!).
A good example actually comes from BBC - QI (Quite Interesting) uses some media whose licensing/copywrite is prohibitively expensive in the US relative to UK that the program cannot be broadcast by BBC America / BBC Canada.
I've said time and time again: IMO Piracy is often not out of malice and being unwilling to pay for things (although no doubt it happens.) It's about convenience. If you give three options:
1) Walk into town and pay £15 for a disc totalling around an hour.
2) Download it from a pirate site totalling about 10 hours but with no effort required for free.
3) Pay £1.99 on iTunes so I rent it and have it instantly available to stream.
Why isn't the movie industry posting this happy news about piracy? Because this is actually defeat to them. They no longer control the most important distribution channel. This is what the war on piracy has been all about for the last 10 years. And the industry is finally losing the battle.
63 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] threadAlso, interestingly, because I've basically watched all the shows and movies that I was interested in I'll actually be cutting my subscription soon.
Not that I personally like streaming anyway... but the piracy problem is a tough one because it's so quick and easy, but is not always reliable nor safe (and obviously screws the creator in terms of $$). However, piracy can also go beyond the original creation, like how Warcraft 2 was ported to work on modern operating systems. Will be interesting to see in 10 years where things go.
I live in a college town and can attest that a lot of the new graduates I know forgo cable subscriptions, either because they are broke, or because they can't be bothered to navigate Comcast's bewildering array of "packages".
"Have the intentions of mandatory CanCon TV spending drifted so far from the reality that the whole scheme should be scrapped?"
[edit] Canadian HN'ers, what are your impressions of CanCon? Is it like a Canadian version of the BBC, and if so, does it make shows with that quality? (The BBC makes a few really decent shows and some amount of debatable tripe.)
One really odd thing about Canada is we don't "naturally" produce enough content for broadcasters to meet their Canadian content requirements (let alone content people actually want to consume), therefore there are HUGE subsidies in place for the production of Canadian content - like billions of dollars a year huge. These subsidies enable broadcasters to pick up Canadian shows cheaply in order to meet their quotas. Most Canadians don't realize how much money is given to media creators because the money is distributed in many different forms from different institutions, at both the provincial and federal level, i.e. those which invest in media (http://telefilm.ca/) distribute tax credits (i.e. http://www.omdc.on.ca/ ), and so fourth. This is ignoring the CBC by the way, the government financed broadcast organization.
The subsidies haven't followed changes in Canadian media consumption patterns though, meaning we over-subsidize mediums which are consumed less and under-subsidize those that are consumed more. It will be interesting to see if / how things change moving forward.
For anyone wondering about some CanCon regulations as far as radio:
1. Music falling in Category 2 (Rock, Dance, pop, acoustic, country, easy listening) must consist of 35% CanCon
2. Category 3 (concert/classical, opera, musical theatre, folk, world beat and international, jazz and blues, religious, experimental) must consist of 12% CanCon
3. 7% CanCon during ethnic broadcast.
In order to qualify as CanCon, a song must contain someone of Canadian nationality in two of the for MAPL categories: music (composition), artist (music or lyrics performance), performance (live performance recorded or broadcasted from live in Canada), lyrics (written entirely by a Canadian).
CanCon is calculated on a weekly basis.
Someone from Quebec should chime in because from my understanding their locally made product is of higher quality than that of English Canada.
Is it on Netflix? Cool. Watch it.
Is it on Amazon Prime? Cool. Watch it.
Is it on Amazon Instant Video for rent or purchase? Cool. Buy it and watch it.
Is it available anywhere online for purchase? Cool. Buy it and watch it.
Not available for purchase online? Pirate Bay.
1. http://davidjohnstone.net/blog/2013/07/netflix-amazon-and-hu...
1) The Canadian library initially couldn't hold a candle to the USA library. I've found this hasn't been true for about a year -- most things I've wanted to watch recently have been on both.
2) VPN proxies are <=$5/mo, and easy enough for general consumers to set up with a bit of handholding.
Well, and moreflicks.com if you want to see how catalogue selection varies by country. (Its search isn't the greatest, but they have the most netflix countries, I've found.)
1. http://pastie.org/pastes/8353546/text
I kept going to shows or movies and finding only trailers and clips. Why would I want either of those things? I don't go looking for ads. I just don't...I have less than zero interest in seeing ads, even for shows or movies I wanted to watch.
I used to love Hulu. It works on Linux (which is a big thing for me, especially during the day when I'm working and watching TV), and it used to be a place where I could watch current season shows. Now, it's just too much hassle to find any actual programming.
IMO they should try achieving feature parity -- or better, actually innovate -- to cut down piracy further. (Yes the paid stuff is arguably ahead on certain features like convenience. But not others.)
A week later. And I would have to get an archaic optical drive. It also creates useless waste and is usually way too expensive for an hour of entertainment.
For me, none of the options before that is available so I can either don't watch it or pirate it with "I'll pay for it later" attitude. It worked well enough for games and software in general (pirated everything since maybe three or four years back).
When I say, is it available online for purchase, I mean can I watch it online. I haven't ordered a DVD or CD in a decade or more.
Also "purchase" should be "non-DRM or single-platform format crippled purchase".
Oh, we now have Netflix in the Netherlands, since a few weeks. The actual selection is a joke. Yes, I understand it's the copyright mafia's doing, but don't ask me to pay the same price as Americans for a fraction of the product.
- DRM-free download for later use in XBMC (no iTunes, no streaming due to limited bandwidth) - 720p or better - original english audio track
Of course this is nowhere to be found in Germany.
Will it come to theaters someday and coincide with my wife's good mood? Yes. Ok, it's worth the wait.
For any other scenario, Netflix.
Is it on Netflix? Doesn't matter, can't use Netflix.
Is it on Amazon Prime? Doesn't matter, can't use Amazon Prime.
Is it on Amazon Instant Video for rent or purchase? Doesn't matter, can't use it.
Do I actually want to own a copy permanently and is it available anywhere online for purchase for a reasonable price, in high quality, and DRM free?
No? Pirate Bay.
Is it on Amazon Instant Video for rent or purchase? Doesn't matter, can't use it."
Incorrect. I'm watching Amazon Prime right now on Linux.
It's one of the reasons I use Amazon more than Netflix, even though I have both, and Netflix has a better selection.
You might as well just run windows if you're going to run closed source binaries with hardware access.
I'm not so keen on giving Adobe root just so I can watch a movie using their buggy insecure antiquated software platform.
I have no idea about the numbers, but it's good to see someone who makes money on providing the easier content providing some data on the fact that one of the best ways to remove piracy isn't to randomly sue people to scare them, but to provide them a good product, at a reasonable price and not to go out of your way to make it difficult for people to purchase/license/rent your product.
There is a demand for it here, and there's even many Australians that buy a US VPN service to buy a Netflix subscription. See - http://www.zdnet.com/au/australians-encouraged-to-bypass-net...
I assume they're doing something like connecting to a random swarm and counting IPs, problem is that makes a number of faulty assumptions:
That being said I'm glad newer options are becoming increasingly more available, despite setbacks from the regulators.
Personally, I was hoping Netflix Canada would have a tougher time until they bother to improve their selection just a tad.
In general, we think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.
Those two sentences should be tattooed on every music, film, and publishing executive's forehead. As every convenient online service (iTunes, Netflix, Steam, Kindle) has demonstrated, people will legally purchase content, so long as the option of legal purchase is easier and more convenient than piracy.
[1] http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/intervi...
A good example actually comes from BBC - QI (Quite Interesting) uses some media whose licensing/copywrite is prohibitively expensive in the US relative to UK that the program cannot be broadcast by BBC America / BBC Canada.
1) Walk into town and pay £15 for a disc totalling around an hour.
2) Download it from a pirate site totalling about 10 hours but with no effort required for free.
3) Pay £1.99 on iTunes so I rent it and have it instantly available to stream.
I am ALWAYS going to pick the last one.