So one would pay a pirate site instead of subscribing to the actual services?

I assume that paying one site is cheaper than having to subscribe to half a dozen.

My guilty reality TV pleasure is Gold Rush - gold miners in Canada. Its very stupid.

This is filmed in Canada, and made in the UK by Raw TV, and aired by Discovery. I pay for all the relevant things from Discovery that I possibly could, I have a Sky subscription, I have a Discovery+ subscription, I have a TNT sports subscription. The latest season of Gold Rush has just started airing in the US, it airs on Friday nights at 9 ET, 3 AM GMT.

In the past, you could watch it at 3 AM if you wanted, or it was available on Discovery+ to catch up. This year, Discovery have decided to make this a weekday show in the UK, and are airing it at 9pm on Tuesdays. So, despite paying everything I possibly could, it airs in the US on Friday, and four days later in the UK. If one was to use bittorrent (I would never!), you can watch it ~1hr after it airs in the US.

This is the thing with the more obscure TV. Season 2 will start or whatever and it's 6-12 months before it airs in the UK. Don't even get me start on foreign language TV. We don't all go abroad and point at the egg and chips on the menu when ordering food (though I'll be honest I'm not posh, I have done this in the past many decades ago).

Here's an "ethical" question. What if I used a smartDNS service and paid subscriptions in say America? I could get HBO, Peacock (all the premier league games including 3pm kick offs), American Netflix and Disney+. Am I doing something illegal even though I'm actually paying for these services? Would what I am doing be the equivalent of downloading a car?

As for downloading stuff from an ethical point of view if I pay for the service it's going to be on eventually then I'm paying for it.

These companies actively search for the IP addresses of VPNs to block them. They are quite easy to find - suddenly loads of connections from a single IP address.

You could rent a VPS for about a quid a month, and roll your own VPN, but that may not work either if instead of blacklisting IPs they simply whitelist the IPs of US residential ISPs.

You'd also likely need a US based credit card.

Ethically, that's fine. Whether it's legal though is another matter! (I think it would be legal - you'd only likely breach the contract, but I am not a lawyer etc.)

In the early early days I used VPNs because Netflix in different countries had different content. I found at one point every VPN was blocked near enough (I know I can spin up my own). I've not used a smartDNS for about a year but had absolutely zero issues with it because was just specifically for streaming services only. Whether that's the same now is another matter. US based pre-pay credit cards are pretty easy to get round as well. Though like I said I don't bother anymore. Sailing the seven seas which was off the menu for a long time for a lot of people is now back. What these companies don't realise is their own greed is their downfall. All they had to do was club together and have a couple of streaming services which no one would have a problem with. Instead we get Netflix, Disney, Apple, Paramount, Amazon, Crunchy Roll, Britbox, HBO, Peacock, Hulu (which I know is Disney as is FX), Shudder, MGM+ and the list goes on and on and on.

Exactly.

Pirating went down when netflix became viable. But now, they all have their own services, I've heard pirating is going up again.

I didn't know there were as many as you listed, though. Do they all have exclusives tied to them? I.E. Would you have to subscribe to all to get everything? Crazy, if so.

"pre-pay credit cards"

So how is this a *credit* card? Just wondering.

Didn't the media companies learn from the DVD region locking debacle? In our modern world, trying to control the release of media on a global scale doesn't work. Just release it across the globe within 24 hours and you'll end up with more paid viewers and less piracy.

Sure, it won't completely eliminate piracy (there will always be people who want something for nothing) but it'll certainly make a dent in it and you'll make more money too. Doesn't the fact that people were paying to access this pirate site give you some hints?

It's a bit unfair criminalising the developers. Where will it stop ? Financial software used for fraud, will the developers get banged up same as the top people who created the fraud ? Maybe we should criminalise developers on porn sites where underage actors have been used ?

I get the appeal for some people to use the service. Given today's financial climate, if you like programmes that are available only on certain providers, it gets very expensive having to subscribe to them all just to see one or two programmes. This came about because, as usual, people at the top were looking at the likes of Netflix, seeing the money they made, and wanted that for themselves. I used to watch StarTrek Discovery, but when Paramount pulled it from Netflix, there was no way I was going to pay for a Paramount subscription just to watch it.

So personally, I just stopped watching the programmes. There's more to life than TV.

If you have Sky, Paramount+ is part of the Sky subscription. Not sure what level it needs but finished watching the last two seasons of discovery last week.

You actually watched Disco? My condolences.

Paramount would have to pay me to watch Disco, or Pick-a-Card. Actually, they'd have to pay me _lot_ to watch Disco. Yes, I had 'free' account for three months and had a look at Disco, Pick-a-Card, Strange New Worlds and Below Decks. Prodigy was not then available for the 'free' acount. I took a look and decided that I wasn't watching Disco and Pick-a-Card for free and that there was nothing else worth watching on Paramount so bye.

"This case is another example of our steadfast commitment to combat intellectual property theft and to hold accountable those who violate intellectual property rights laws."

Well, now that's clear I'm sure Mr. Frierson will be taking a very long look at OpenAI et al .

Jetflicks ran automation scripts "nonstop."

Jetflicks could be replaced by, oh, let's say Censys. Automated scripts to "test for vulnerabilities" on and on and on.... Auto attempts at logins to server/port ad infinitum. That's illegal too. Oh! I can pay you to see what you've found? Oh! You're the good guys.

But was the punishment received by the actual "controlling mind" behind that site considerably more?

You would hope so, compared to random devs doing a job (it said the guy was only there a few months, interesting to know if he jumped ship for ethical reasons / was he there when the site was shut down, were the devs lied to about what they were doing being OK?* Was it scenario of people taking a job just to pay the bills & bailing as soon as they realised what was going on**)

* Someone may be great at programming but that does not make them immune to being convinced by the smooth talking BS merchant in charge of them that there were no major legal issues in what they were doing.

** Where do you draw the line? I handed in my notice in one post for ethical reasons (before I had a replacement role lined up) because it was beyond what I could morally do even for a short while (& with big financial hit), but I am sure many of us have been in roles we had qualms about, but keeping an income stream meant getting another role lined up before leaving, as instant quit would have been financially damaging so it was a matter of doing some time in a dubious role just to keep the bills paid.