I'm personally seeing an explosion of people embracing piracy. People that were previously vehemently opposed to it (like my in-laws) are now pirating large amounts of content. The rise in streaming service costs while simultaneously reducing catalog content is pushing a lot of these folks over. What we have now is almost worse than cable TV, so it makes sense.
Most of my life I was strongly opposed to piracy for moral reasons. Now I... intentionally try to own (download/pirate) content I consume and I also do this for ideological reasons. So yeah, this effect is real.
On top of that, as long as big companies don't take the protection of my personal information seriously, why should I worry about violations of copyright laws? It works both ways.
Almost worse? Cable doesn't have unskippable commercials, we've had the DVR since 1999. In 1999 it was still possible for a new tech product to be user friendly.
Streaming was designed from the ground up to be user hostile with surveillance and reduced control over the video stream. People hold onto old specious ideas and don't update them.
If you're under the notion that your digital cable box wasn't surveilling you, then you just weren't paying attention. Of course that box knew what channel you were watching and what time meaning they knew what you watched since your name and address and phone number and email address were all linked to that box.
Best investment I made this year was an old refurbished PC to use as a home server. Having my personal streaming services is actually pretty amazing.
There was a point in time, around 10-12 years ago, that I thought that piracy would eventually die, as the streaming services were pretty cheap and offered good quality/quantity. How wrong I was.
But it is refreshing to be sailing the high seas after such a long time. Brings back memories. Contrary to paid services, piracy actually got much better and convenient. Better quality audio/video, etc
Tbf, that's a third party selling that box. But Walmart themselves do sell the Onn 4k stick/box which is the current every level pirates HW of choice to replace the firestick.
Sideloading was basically the main reason people picked Fire Sticks over more locked-down options. Without it, it just becomes another closed streaming box, and a lot of the “power user” appeal disappears.
I can count among my friends and family some 50 Fire Sticks, and we're all happy with them, as they do what they say on the box.
We Tech folks (and some more than others) live in a bubble, but the other 99% of the users couldn't care less about this.
Because those folks don't move the needle on sales. They're buying one, maybe two firesticks and using them OOB. I'd bet a significant portion of sales go to people 'jailbreaking' them and buying in bulk.
Then this would be stupid. Obviously if the product stops doing what people want (jailbreaking, not sure what the scare quotes mean) sales will plummet.
Of one note, Walmart realized that they were in the running to be the next "Android TV piracy platform stick" and Walmart has already gone to the efforts to region-lock the devices to only be set up and used in the US...
All of the streaming devices except for the AppleTV are sold at or below cost subsidized by advertising. If you care about a good streaming devices with anything above bottom of the barrel hardware and you don’t want to buy an Apple device, get an Nvidia Shield.
> In the fall, Amazon started blocking apps that the Alliance for Creative and Entertainment, a global anti-piracy group, has blacklisted.
I love how corporations are building an ecosystem where they don't have to bother with courts or the police, they can just ask each-other to limit what citizens, sorry, consumers can do. Fortunately they also spy on us profusely, which makes it less likely they get it wrong when those restrictions are used in more punitive ways.
I think it's grossly unethical and negligent that our DOJ/FTC allowed them to acquire film studios, subsidize them with outside business unit profit, put ads across their own properties, then give it all away for "free". This destroys actual healthy industries.
They bought Lord of the Rings for egregious sums, emblazoned ads on all of their delivery vans, printed it on their packaging, and put it front and center on all their apps. Any other studio would be out a billion dollars on that. Then Amazon just gives it away.
How do you compete with that?
Meanwhile Warner Bros has to fight an uphill battle to reach the same eyeballs, spend a fortune on production and advertising, and then ask customers for their money. Why would they go to theaters when they can get it for free on Prime later? Or just watch one of the shows already on Prime?
And of course now Amazon has offshored the jobs, further put consolidation pressure on the industry, gobbled up more studios...
Every single one of these giants needs to be broken up. They are a cancer in search of more growth, and unfortunately in order to find that growth they are killing the host (healthy American industries and jobs).
I mean by that they should burn most the VC funding to the ground, because for vast majority of companies that try to take market space where there is some competition around, that's exactly the play, run long enough at loss that you get enough market share, make the walled garden if possible, then gouge prices up once the VCs come asking for payoff
>I think it's grossly unethical and negligent that our DOJ/FTC allowed them to acquire film studios, subsidize them with outside business unit profit, put ads across their own properties, then give it all away for "free". This destroys actual healthy industries.
Film & entertainment is not the only area in which Amazon engages in this type of behavior.
They need to be broken up, and Bezos needs to pay his taxes.
The one of most important things alternative app stores allowed on Fire Sticks was the ability to change the apps remote buttons invoked rather than whichever dumb partners Amazon foisted on its users. Now, it becomes a jail break necessity for reusing and freeing locked-down corporate garbage. Oh and a hack to remove home screen ads or replace the home screen launcher would be awesome.
Meh. These sorts of restrictions are a problem with cell phones because you have two choices.
For this application, you can just get a raspberry pi for about the same price. And they’re not even taking it away from ones that I already had it. They just aren’t selling the ability anymore so you know it when you bought it.
Whoever ends up using these devices second hand will be in for a rude awakening, which is bad for that person (even if it means that it just ends up going to ewaste and they get nothing) and bad for the environment. It's also bad for anyone who orders one new and isn't aware of the changes, although I agree that that is less bad than with phones due to the fact that a pi largely mitigates it.
This sort of thing brings back the late 2000's in Europe. Governments demanding devices "don't support piracy". Tech giants (really: Microsoft) responding, kind of, and failing.
Of course it didn't prevail. We live in an age where Russia and China demand VPNs get removed from the App Store. The US Government removed ICEBlock from all mobile storefronts. The worst-case scenario is staring us right in the face.
It's downright appalling that HN entertained these arguments against sideloading. No self-respecting software engineer can look at the centralized architecture of a billion-dollar software business and surmise that it wouldn't be used against them. The detractors against sideloading deliberately (or foolishly) ignored an outsized, glaringly obvious threat to their personal freedoms that was repeatedly emphasized by their opposition.
Oppression, censorship and surveillance are HN's just deserts.
Congratulations on completely ignoring what I said.
In perhaps clearer terms: HN is not a monolith. There are a variety of opinions here and intense disagreement. It’s very difficult to claim that any particular position is supported by a majority of users, given the arguments that erupt on nearly every topic.
(Or perhaps you are claiming that 100% of a site’s users are responsible for every opinion that is aired on a site, even if they disagree with it.)
I never claimed that the majority of HN shared that opinion, or that they should. You manifested both of those ideas from wholecloth.
The common opinion is still harmful, and it's enabled the harms to scale to the point we see them today. For an analog in modern politics, look at minority opinions like "think of the children" or "unnamed terrorist threat" and their role in manufacturing consent for tyranny.
A statement of fact? We share a common fate, switching to Linux or protesting Meta doesn't exempt you from the rule of law.
Edit: Oppression, censorship and surveillance are not a hypothetical consequence. The "justness" might be debatable, but the existence of it is objective.
It’s actually not a statement of fact, “just desserts” (implying that one is deserving of punishment or suffering) is a moral argument. Moral arguments are not statements of fact, although this does not make them necessarily invalid.
... and one that has quite the merit. A few hours worth of watching Scammer Payback will do that to anyone.
The thing is, wide parts of the population are extremely IT illiterate. The governments didn't act to protect them (say, by threatening the host countries of the scammers aka India in the case of the US or Turkey/Bulgaria/Romania in the case of Europe), so private companies had no other choice.
And hell even the best of us like Brian Krebs can fall victim to attacks [1].
I'm really out of ideas how we can reconcile the needs of the 99% vs the needs of the 1% without making life hell for the other group.
... of course, the EU has the power to get the banks to block those money transfers. Hell, central banks have to be involved in those scams (hopefully/probably unaware). But they CAN shut it down, HARD. They're not doing that, at all.
> so private companies had no other choice.
Because Microsoft has demonstrated how it's done on their platforms? Obviously governments, EU or otherwise, have quite serious tolerance for scams.
You will have to be way more specific. Every time I see a post bringing up the topic of sideloading (like this one), it is a complaint that either another product is locked down or Google itself is trying to lock everything down.
Look at the flippant dismissal in these threads (follow the discussions - don't just scroll past the parent comments). There's a shocking amount of disagreement:
Here's a few of the worst-aged comments, from a glance:
Absolutely no need to wail and rant about Apple and their App Store practices constantly. Just use Android.
You don't hear about 14 million iPhones being infected by malware
But this is the argument with the cookie banners again, isn't it?
There's lots of comments here where people promote trading the freedom of installing arbitrary code for the security of the app store keeping them safe.
GPL-3 dependencies are typically banned inside embedded device firmware. If a 3rd-party app uses those presumably it will be problem for the developer of the app, not Amazon.
Amazon has moved away from Android for the new Fire devices. It is a Linux custom distro with React Native and Web for apps.
As for Android, I would assert that Google has successfully removed everything GPL related from early Android days, the only thing left is the Linux kernel.
GPLv3 doesn't entitle you to signing keys or the ability to remove them: you can release, compile, and inspect the source which will ostensibly still be provided - but not practically use it on the hardware you purchased.
> “Installation Information” for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.
> If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has been installed in ROM).
I'm personally seeing an explosion of people embracing piracy. People that were previously vehemently opposed to it (like my in-laws) are now pirating large amounts of content. The rise in streaming service costs while simultaneously reducing catalog content is pushing a lot of these folks over. What we have now is almost worse than cable TV, so it makes sense.
When Amazon introduced adverts, I Cancelled. Went from near $1k a year on Amazon as a whole to nearly zero.
I still pay for Netflix, Disney, Apple, Spotify and bbc. I’m happy to pay for my entertainment, I refuse adverts.
When Clarkson farm came back I looked at re subscribing to Amazon, there were three choices, all with adverts.
I’m sure it makes money, but for me you get greedy and you lose money.
>I still pay for Netflix, Disney, Apple, Spotify and bbc
I have to admit that's a lot of subscriptions. Most people here are relatively rich, but no wonder people are priced out.
That is still cheaper than the average cable bill even a decade ago
My total entertainment budget is 5% of my net income.
Most of my life I was strongly opposed to piracy for moral reasons. Now I... intentionally try to own (download/pirate) content I consume and I also do this for ideological reasons. So yeah, this effect is real.
On top of that, as long as big companies don't take the protection of my personal information seriously, why should I worry about violations of copyright laws? It works both ways.
Almost worse? Cable doesn't have unskippable commercials, we've had the DVR since 1999. In 1999 it was still possible for a new tech product to be user friendly.
Streaming was designed from the ground up to be user hostile with surveillance and reduced control over the video stream. People hold onto old specious ideas and don't update them.
If you're under the notion that your digital cable box wasn't surveilling you, then you just weren't paying attention. Of course that box knew what channel you were watching and what time meaning they knew what you watched since your name and address and phone number and email address were all linked to that box.
Which is why my parents record they favourite shows on cable, and watch them later, fast forwarding over ads.
Best investment I made this year was an old refurbished PC to use as a home server. Having my personal streaming services is actually pretty amazing.
There was a point in time, around 10-12 years ago, that I thought that piracy would eventually die, as the streaming services were pretty cheap and offered good quality/quantity. How wrong I was.
But it is refreshing to be sailing the high seas after such a long time. Brings back memories. Contrary to paid services, piracy actually got much better and convenient. Better quality audio/video, etc
That’s because Walmart is also selling Android piracy site streaming boxes. So boomers/technologically out of the loop think it’s legitimate.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/S6-Elite-Ultra-2024-SuperBox-TV-2...
Tbf, that's a third party selling that box. But Walmart themselves do sell the Onn 4k stick/box which is the current every level pirates HW of choice to replace the firestick.
I have family members that have bought the Superbox in a Walmart physical store.
In fact here’s the conversation transcript of me asking about it:
Me: What was that piracy streaming box Uncle Gary got from Walmart? Superbox?
Them: Yeah
Me: Thanks
Them: I have it and I literally get everything for free. Like it already has the new super smash Brothers on it.
Them: Has every series and everything. I can give you the apps I have
Me: I dont need it haha just was showing people how illegal streaming is being sold in stores.
"Sideloading" is just a term to make installing software on your own hardware sound scary.
Sideloading was basically the main reason people picked Fire Sticks over more locked-down options. Without it, it just becomes another closed streaming box, and a lot of the “power user” appeal disappears.
> Sideloading was basically the main reason people picked Fire Sticks over more locked-down options.
Any advantage to a Firestick over a Chromecast with Google TV?
CCwGTV was discontinued, now there's only the Google TV Streamer thing...
Good point. I guess the Firestick advantage is $35 vs. $80 for Google's box.
"Basically the main reason"?
I can count among my friends and family some 50 Fire Sticks, and we're all happy with them, as they do what they say on the box. We Tech folks (and some more than others) live in a bubble, but the other 99% of the users couldn't care less about this.
If that's true, then why would Amazon ever care about this?
Because those folks don't move the needle on sales. They're buying one, maybe two firesticks and using them OOB. I'd bet a significant portion of sales go to people 'jailbreaking' them and buying in bulk.
Then this would be stupid. Obviously if the product stops doing what people want (jailbreaking, not sure what the scare quotes mean) sales will plummet.
So does the fire stick have any advantages over Walmart's Onn streaming sticks?
Of one note, Walmart realized that they were in the running to be the next "Android TV piracy platform stick" and Walmart has already gone to the efforts to region-lock the devices to only be set up and used in the US...
https://www.aftvnews.com/onn-streaming-devices-now-must-use-...
These devices and services are not nearly as sticky as these greedy lizards want to believe they are.
All of the streaming devices except for the AppleTV are sold at or below cost subsidized by advertising. If you care about a good streaming devices with anything above bottom of the barrel hardware and you don’t want to buy an Apple device, get an Nvidia Shield.
What's the best Fire Stick model that doesn't have this issue?
Either the HD, 4K Plus, or 4K Max. Just avoid the Select for now (though there will be more models with the new OS in the future).
> In the fall, Amazon started blocking apps that the Alliance for Creative and Entertainment, a global anti-piracy group, has blacklisted.
I love how corporations are building an ecosystem where they don't have to bother with courts or the police, they can just ask each-other to limit what citizens, sorry, consumers can do. Fortunately they also spy on us profusely, which makes it less likely they get it wrong when those restrictions are used in more punitive ways.
So goodbye FireTV sticks.
Getting worse on every metric isn’t a system seller
Everything is a platform play.
I think it's grossly unethical and negligent that our DOJ/FTC allowed them to acquire film studios, subsidize them with outside business unit profit, put ads across their own properties, then give it all away for "free". This destroys actual healthy industries.
They bought Lord of the Rings for egregious sums, emblazoned ads on all of their delivery vans, printed it on their packaging, and put it front and center on all their apps. Any other studio would be out a billion dollars on that. Then Amazon just gives it away.
How do you compete with that?
Meanwhile Warner Bros has to fight an uphill battle to reach the same eyeballs, spend a fortune on production and advertising, and then ask customers for their money. Why would they go to theaters when they can get it for free on Prime later? Or just watch one of the shows already on Prime?
And of course now Amazon has offshored the jobs, further put consolidation pressure on the industry, gobbled up more studios...
Every single one of these giants needs to be broken up. They are a cancer in search of more growth, and unfortunately in order to find that growth they are killing the host (healthy American industries and jobs).
I mean by that they should burn most the VC funding to the ground, because for vast majority of companies that try to take market space where there is some competition around, that's exactly the play, run long enough at loss that you get enough market share, make the walled garden if possible, then gouge prices up once the VCs come asking for payoff
>I think it's grossly unethical and negligent that our DOJ/FTC allowed them to acquire film studios, subsidize them with outside business unit profit, put ads across their own properties, then give it all away for "free". This destroys actual healthy industries.
Film & entertainment is not the only area in which Amazon engages in this type of behavior.
They need to be broken up, and Bezos needs to pay his taxes.
The one of most important things alternative app stores allowed on Fire Sticks was the ability to change the apps remote buttons invoked rather than whichever dumb partners Amazon foisted on its users. Now, it becomes a jail break necessity for reusing and freeing locked-down corporate garbage. Oh and a hack to remove home screen ads or replace the home screen launcher would be awesome.
Meh. These sorts of restrictions are a problem with cell phones because you have two choices.
For this application, you can just get a raspberry pi for about the same price. And they’re not even taking it away from ones that I already had it. They just aren’t selling the ability anymore so you know it when you bought it.
Whoever ends up using these devices second hand will be in for a rude awakening, which is bad for that person (even if it means that it just ends up going to ewaste and they get nothing) and bad for the environment. It's also bad for anyone who orders one new and isn't aware of the changes, although I agree that that is less bad than with phones due to the fact that a pi largely mitigates it.
Yeah, but then you are not the target audience, watching Amazon Prime and Netflix on the Raspberry Pi.
> For this application, you can just get a raspberry pi for about the same price.
Are you able to run Netflix (or any other Widevine-based software) on a Raspberry Pi?
I don’t know how, but somehow this is Apple’s fault
How could you not know the argument that Apple has normalized selling devices that forbid the ability to run arbitrary code without their permission?
You're not required to agree that that's a bad thing, but how could you be unaware of the reasoning at a high level?
Yes because video console makers haven’t been doing this since the 1980s…
This sort of thing brings back the late 2000's in Europe. Governments demanding devices "don't support piracy". Tech giants (really: Microsoft) responding, kind of, and failing.
Is this supposed to stop Android folks?
Vega OS isn't Android, Amazon has moved away from it.
It is a Linux distro, and apps must be written in React Native (C++ libraries supported), or Web.
Ah, appreciate the clarification.
I am guessing there's better devices out there now than a Fire Stick
It’s to avoid making it easy for people to buy them put on plex or jellyfin clients and paying for access to pirate services.
Boy, I sure am glad that HN contributed to the vilification of sideloading.
Don't worry, I'm sure they'll find a way to blame the EU for this too.
How so?
We can't let people install the applications they choose because my grandma. Is a pretty prevailing opinion
Just because an opinion is common doesn’t make it prevailing.
Yes there are many commenters here who say that, but I bet if we could somehow take a poll they would not be the majority.
I don’t know when people started expecting everyone on a given site to share the same opinion, but it is tiring.
Of course it didn't prevail. We live in an age where Russia and China demand VPNs get removed from the App Store. The US Government removed ICEBlock from all mobile storefronts. The worst-case scenario is staring us right in the face.
It's downright appalling that HN entertained these arguments against sideloading. No self-respecting software engineer can look at the centralized architecture of a billion-dollar software business and surmise that it wouldn't be used against them. The detractors against sideloading deliberately (or foolishly) ignored an outsized, glaringly obvious threat to their personal freedoms that was repeatedly emphasized by their opposition.
Oppression, censorship and surveillance are HN's just deserts.
Congratulations on completely ignoring what I said.
In perhaps clearer terms: HN is not a monolith. There are a variety of opinions here and intense disagreement. It’s very difficult to claim that any particular position is supported by a majority of users, given the arguments that erupt on nearly every topic.
(Or perhaps you are claiming that 100% of a site’s users are responsible for every opinion that is aired on a site, even if they disagree with it.)
I never claimed that the majority of HN shared that opinion, or that they should. You manifested both of those ideas from wholecloth.
The common opinion is still harmful, and it's enabled the harms to scale to the point we see them today. For an analog in modern politics, look at minority opinions like "think of the children" or "unnamed terrorist threat" and their role in manufacturing consent for tyranny.
> It's downright appalling that HN entertained these arguments against sideloading.
> Oppression, censorship and surveillance are HN's just deserts.
What is this if not an implication that a majority, or all, of HN users share this opinion and are thus responsible/deserving of the fallout?
A statement of fact? We share a common fate, switching to Linux or protesting Meta doesn't exempt you from the rule of law.
Edit: Oppression, censorship and surveillance are not a hypothetical consequence. The "justness" might be debatable, but the existence of it is objective.
It’s actually not a statement of fact, “just desserts” (implying that one is deserving of punishment or suffering) is a moral argument. Moral arguments are not statements of fact, although this does not make them necessarily invalid.
... and one that has quite the merit. A few hours worth of watching Scammer Payback will do that to anyone.
The thing is, wide parts of the population are extremely IT illiterate. The governments didn't act to protect them (say, by threatening the host countries of the scammers aka India in the case of the US or Turkey/Bulgaria/Romania in the case of Europe), so private companies had no other choice.
And hell even the best of us like Brian Krebs can fall victim to attacks [1].
I'm really out of ideas how we can reconcile the needs of the 99% vs the needs of the 1% without making life hell for the other group.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/security-journalist-brian-kr...
... of course, the EU has the power to get the banks to block those money transfers. Hell, central banks have to be involved in those scams (hopefully/probably unaware). But they CAN shut it down, HARD. They're not doing that, at all.
> so private companies had no other choice.
Because Microsoft has demonstrated how it's done on their platforms? Obviously governments, EU or otherwise, have quite serious tolerance for scams.
Search iPhone or app store on this website. Read the comments.
You will have to be way more specific. Every time I see a post bringing up the topic of sideloading (like this one), it is a complaint that either another product is locked down or Google itself is trying to lock everything down.
Look at the flippant dismissal in these threads (follow the discussions - don't just scroll past the parent comments). There's a shocking amount of disagreement:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21210678
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28561941
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24146987
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39132453
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43421740
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29167948
Here's a few of the worst-aged comments, from a glance:
People like their iPhones but I'd describe the prevailing sentiment towards app stores as "critical".
I’d happily wager any amount of money I have access to that the people actually doing the implementation of these things are among the userbase.
Someone has to write the code and I doubt many people would quit their jobs over it.
By that logic just about anything the tech industry does could be attributed to HN
There's lots of comments here where people promote trading the freedom of installing arbitrary code for the security of the app store keeping them safe.
A lot of imbeciles white knighting for Apple when EU regulations threatened to break their walled garden.
On the plus side, they'll probably vibe code a bunch of security vulnerability and the highseas will be filled with a new generation of pirates!
How does this work when apps use GPLv3? Isn't the user supposed to be given a way to replace/update the code themselves?
GPL-3 dependencies are typically banned inside embedded device firmware. If a 3rd-party app uses those presumably it will be problem for the developer of the app, not Amazon.
Right... how can the app developer enforce their license if the user cannot replace the program themselves?
> How does this work when apps use GPLv3?
Android Open Source Project is mostly Apache licensed, it runs on the Linux kernel which is GPLv2.
This situation with the firesticks is essentially the same play that TiVo pulled way back when, and the GPLv3 is supposed to counter.
Amazon has moved away from Android for the new Fire devices. It is a Linux custom distro with React Native and Web for apps.
As for Android, I would assert that Google has successfully removed everything GPL related from early Android days, the only thing left is the Linux kernel.
GPLv3 doesn't entitle you to signing keys or the ability to remove them: you can release, compile, and inspect the source which will ostensibly still be provided - but not practically use it on the hardware you purchased.
It very much does.
> “Installation Information” for a User Product means any methods, procedures, authorization keys, or other information required to install and execute modified versions of a covered work in that User Product from a modified version of its Corresponding Source. The information must suffice to ensure that the continued functioning of the modified object code is in no case prevented or interfered with solely because modification has been made.
> If you convey an object code work under this section in, or with, or specifically for use in, a User Product, and the conveying occurs as part of a transaction in which the right of possession and use of the User Product is transferred to the recipient in perpetuity or for a fixed term (regardless of how the transaction is characterized), the Corresponding Source conveyed under this section must be accompanied by the Installation Information. But this requirement does not apply if neither you nor any third party retains the ability to install modified object code on the User Product (for example, the work has been installed in ROM).
Okay, I'll bite. What do you think is the difference between GPLv2 and 3?
v3 was just the one stipulated by your grandparent comment's question that your parent answered.
That's not an answer to the question I asked.
But Amazon has infinite money, so licences are meaningless.