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Two Las Vegas Men Plead Guilty in U.S. Criminal Streaming Piracy Case
- mapleoin 7y agoSo two programmers ran a streaming website bigger than Netflix from their garage?
- tsukurimashou 7y agoand yet they are getting punished for it, what a world we live in, right?
- hamhand 7y agoThe numbers don't add up.
- Consultant32452 7y agoSomething is fishy about this. Netflix's infrastructure is massive, and their bandwidth usage is a big chunk of the entire internet. How could this possibly go unnoticed for any amount of time?
- sevencolors 7y agoI'd imagine the "more subscribers than Netflix" is an inflated number
- the8472 7y agoMore content than any of the silos seems plausible, since all they have to do is aggregate. More paying subscribers would be a huge.
- alecco 7y agoIt's just a software in front of existing torrents.
- bestnameever 7y agoI think it is in an error in the reporting. The press release from the FBI only mentions content, not subscribers. I actually remember JetFlix and wondering how they had so much content. They were acting like a real company, IIRC.
- busymom0 7y agoWhat if they were using something like webtorrent to reduce their bandwidth costs?
- 1234ideclare 7y agoI would be super interested in a detailed breakdown of their stack, I assume something built on p2p was used, otherwise the compute, bandwidth, and storage costs would be insane.
- GhettoMaestro 7y agoBandwidth at any decent metro area colo these days is cheap af. Last I did the math I saved 15x the egress Data charges versus if I just put it directly in AWS.
- slykar 7y agoI guess Netflix needs their developers for all the random UI changes nobody is asking for and some "unrelated recommendations" engine.
- qwerty1234599 7y agoHave you used any pirate streaming websites? They're pure garbage, bad UX, bad image quality, choppy video. The only reason anybody uses them is the price or lack of legal options
- vinni2 7y ago> One of the platforms reportedly had more paying subscribers than Netflix, Hulu and other popular licensed streaming platforms. So it was’t a free service?
- chris_wot 7y agoPopcorn Time’s UI is very easy to use, and rarely has problems.
- tsukurimashou 7y agoPopcorn time is cancer for me, I always have issues where I cannot play the video anymore, the loader varies (sometimes it loads fast, sometime slow, not matter the download rate). I think these problems are probably caused by Electron / some bad JS code but still I fint it frustrating, other than that Popcorn time is a fantastic idea. But I just cannot like their UI / UX.
- realusername 7y agoI find their UI pretty good and at least they work consistently, I was sometimes pirating shows I had access for free on Amazon prime due to DRM issues, a good example it's not only about pricing.
- PikachuEXE 7y ago
- alecco 7y agoThey were just running streaming software in front of existing torrent and NZB content. That's why they could scale relatively easy and why they were caught.
- tnolet 7y agoThe cynic in me would say they did not spend half their time building resumé-ware. But the numbers are probably totally wrong.
- masonic 7y agoTo be fair, it was a really big garage.
- zaroth 7y agoThe article has been updated to reflect that they had more content not more subscribers. > “Polo pitched his service to potential clients by pointing out that it offered more content than competing legal services such as Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, and Amazon Prime.” Total revenue was less than a couple million dollars.
- jedimastert 7y ago> Total revenue was less than a couple million dollars. I think you mean that the revenue of a 2 guy company was over a million dollars.
- thomasahle 7y ago> > Total revenue was less than a couple million dollars. > I think you mean that the revenue of a 2 guy company was _over a million dollars_. No. It is meant as a comparison with Netflix which has a revenue of 15.79 billion dollars. "They have more content, but make less money," works, but "they have more content, but make _over a million dollars_," doesn't work as well.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- firefoxd 7y agoThis might be a naive question but, why is the FBI the office in charge of enforcing copyright? Especially when it comes to entertainment. Why do we get an FBI warning on a cartoon's dvd?
- Consultant32452 7y agoI believe it's because it's an inter-state crime. Once crimes cross state borders you have to get the federal level police involved, which is the FBI.
- rusk 7y agoAh Goodfellas :-)
- kd5bjo 7y agoCopyright and patent authority is explicitly granted to the Federal government by Art. I, Sec. 8 of the US constitution: The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; As such, state courts and police forces have no jurisdiction over copyright issues; they must be handled by the federal courts and police force (the FBI). (Text from https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri... )
- jalla 7y agoWhy didn't FBI get involved against Napster?
- x86_64Ubuntu 7y agoI assume it's because Napster was the first to really take file-sharing global and at such an accessible scale. And maybe the laws and enforcement procedures hadn't really caught up. But keep in mind, that Napsters defense was that they were just acting as an intermediary, they never actively distributed and held the content unlike our heroes at JetFlix.
- paule89 7y agoIts like in the beginning of torrenting. Nobody willing to offer a service for everyone, for a fair price. Everybody gatekeeping selling only their stuff. And if you want everything pay this atrocious sum of money. I tell you this will happen more often and people are willing to pay. But not pay for everything. Good thing they had going. Well it was still illegal, but hey it will happen again i tell you.
- zaarn 7y agoStreaming is a service question. Netflix/D+/AMZN offers you a limited catalogue for 10$ or so a month. You select a movie from their website and it starts playing on your phone or computer. Pirates offer you everything for free. You select a movie from their website and it starts playing on your phone or computer. Why would any customer pick the more expensive product? Netflix and Friends need to offer a better service and experience at a low price. Notably that will have to include one subscription for everything. Steam from Valve has been extremely successfull because they offer a very good service for fairly good prices. Now that EGS is trying to bleed customers, video game piracy is going up again because nobody likes exclusives except those that get money for them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Snetry 7y agoNetflix and Steam don't have a lot in common outside of being a platform for their respective media Netflix and Stadia (or something like Xbox game pass) are more comparable in my opinion
- zaarn 7y agoIt's not a direct comparison on purpose. Steam offers a service for relatively low cost and a fairly good user experience. Pirates have difficulties providing the same. Netflix has a much lower bar on providing that service. I don't think Stadia has much options for pirates.
- 7y ago
- haunter 7y agoIt's cable TV all over again. The current streaming scene is not any better at all.
- Pigo 7y agoMy mind is blown that these sites were actually getting paid subscribers. I thought the beauty of piracy is the whole "not paying for it" thing. I refuse to pay for more than one subscription service, I'm not going to end up paying more than I did for cable tv. Hulu still wins for me because it has the live/local tv, and I'm not giving Disney anymore money.
- mywittyname 7y agoThe beauty of piracy is that you can watch/listen to what you want to, how you want to, when you want to. People are more than happy to pay reasonable prices for content, so long as they can use it how they want; see: Spotify. I'd pay $50/mo for a streaming service that had a significant number of movies and television shows that I want to watch. As it stands, I still need to pirate movies because they are not available on stream services, or they are only available for "purchase" at like $14-17 when I know for a fact that the same movies are sitting in the Walmart DVD bin for $5.
- Pigo 7y agoYou're correct of course, because I have consistently paid for services when they have stuff I wanted at reasonable prices. It's worth it just to relieve myself from the hassle of downloading and filling up my hard drive with stuff. The entire King of the Hill can fill up a HD. It's just been my experience that these 'popcorn time' services are janky and law enforcement magnets, it's surprising anyone would pay for it. But I suppose I live somewhere that doesn't have as many roadblocks as some places.
- lghh 7y agoDisney owns Hulu [1] :(. [1]https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/media/disney-buys-comcast-hulu-ownership/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/media/disney-buys-comcast-hul...
- latchkey 7y agoWhy would you do this from within the US? The mind boggles.
- saagarjha 7y agoBecause the current streaming service landscape is kind of awful?
- zebby 7y agoI think what he means is why didn't they do this from a country that doesn't care about movie copyrights.
- mirimir 7y agoWell, TFA says: > "Specifically, Polo used sophisticated computer programming to [get pirated stuff] and then make the shows and movies available on servers in Canada," officials said. So the fact that they were in the US is irrelevant. But I'm sure that they got caught because they didn't know how to stay anonymous. Or were too lazy. Or got too greedy. I mean, there are far better hosting alternatives than Canada. I guess that they wanted low latency for US customers. But still, they should have isolated themselves from the damn servers. I'm guessing that it was their payment setup that got them pwned.
- latchkey 7y agoI disagree on irrelevant. The fact that they stayed in the US definitely makes it harder to be anonymous (friends, relatives, language, police presence, etc)... it also makes it easier to be caught.
- mirimir 7y agoThere's no way to know what happened in their case. But I suspect that it was a "loose lips" thing. Exacerbated, probably, by developing the project gradually. Being sloppy at first, because it was just playing around. Also bragging, and living large. That's a common set of fails. It played a major role in DPR's takedown. Also Sabu, who had been indiscreet on IRC, years before. And Artem Vaulin of KickassTorrents, who registered a key domain in his own name. There's also the difficulty of accepting and accessing money anonymously. The Sheep Marketplace founder pwned himself when he cashed out. It's very hard to route around KYC law. The safest bet is collecting payments as Bitcon, Monero, etc And leaving everything except operating expenses in cryptocurrency, until it's time to expatriate to a safe jurisdiction, and cash out some of that good wealth.
- 55555 7y agoThere is no way they had more paying subscribers than Netflix. Netflix has 160 million paying customers. These two guys had "more" and made only 1 million dollars total. What? Probably their total pageviews vs Netflix's total paying customers or something dumb like that.
- saagarjha 7y agoOr law enforcement trumping up a number that’s larger than any reasonable number of subscribers they actually had.
- dmix 7y agoNot to mention the infrastructure, even if they didn’t host the video content themselves (which I doubt?) just handling that many paying customers would be a major operation.
- jessaustin 7y agodidn’t host the video content themselves I guess you could host the most popular stuff, plus the first five minutes of everything Netflix and other streamers have, and then just redirect the rest of those streams...
- roberson87 7y agoI think it was a typo, later in the article they mention this service had more content than Netflix, Hulu etc. I share your scepticism that two individuals could build a streaming service catering to >160m customers.
- wp381640 7y agoThe DOJ presser said the site was "larger" than Netflix, Hulu and Amazon combined in terms of available content - some media reports have misreported it as larger by subscriber count
- 55555 7y agoThanks, that makes sense. The HN title should probably be corrected then, at mods' convenience.
- noname120 7y agoArticle should be replaced with this one[1], which is much more informative. Most notably, the headline of the linked article is ridiculously incorrect. The statement of facts states that they only processed 0.018M credit/debit card transactions over roughly the 2014-2016 period[2]. I would be extremely surprised if it reached Netflix's 152M of worldwide paid memberships for streaming in 2019[3][4]. [1] https://torrentfreak.com/two-las-vegas-men-plead-guilty-in-u-s-criminal-streaming-piracy-case-191214/ https://torrentfreak.com/two-las-vegas-men-plead-guilty-in-u... [2] https://torrentfreak.com/images/polosof.pdf#page=1&search=%2218,551%20successful%20credit%22%22 https://torrentfreak.com/images/polosof.pdf#page=1&search=%2... [3] https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarterly_reports/2019/q2/Q2-19-Shareholder-Letter-FINAL.pdf#page=1 https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarter... [4] https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarterly_reports/2019/q2/Q2-19-Shareholder-Letter-FINAL.pdf#page=11&search=%22memberships%22 https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/quarter...
- PeterStuer 7y agoServices such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video would be a lot more successful if only their catalogs in regions outside of the US would be comparable to their home turf. If US clients would have the tiny tiny catalogs they offer e.g. in most of Europe, you would also be scratching your head how this could ever justify the subscription cost.
- close04 7y agoThe major difference is that the EU does not behave like a unified body when it comes to purchasing the distribution rights. So Netflix negotiates with each country individually. Unless you share it with family so more people get value out of it, it is indeed hard to justify the subscription for many people. Edit: > make the shows and movies available on servers in Canada Is this a real protection against getting caught? I would have imagined Russia or the Ukraine to be better options for being outside of the reach of the FBI.
- PeterStuer 7y agoArchaic distribution rights are indeed to blame. But this still leaves most of the world in an impasse with regards to a credible legal media streaming option for film and television. (I am a Youtube Premium and an Amazon Prime subscriber btw)
- kgwxd 7y agoIs the price cheaper in regions where the catalog is slim?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- icebraining 7y agoNo, there's no direct relationship: https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/countries-netflix-cost/ https://www.comparitech.com/blog/vpn-privacy/countries-netfl...
- 7y ago
- kleer001 7y agoNo doubt they weren't cryptography and security nerds. I wonder how a team with great operational security would have done. I bet that it's possible with a dedicated team with good clean opsec and intelligently placed servers it'd be possible to fly under the radar for decades.
- magduf 7y agoI'm surprised some foreign power hasn't done this just for the sole reason of messing with the US movie industry, which is one of America's more significant export industries, and thereby harming the American economy.