One of the largest bonuses to using Amazon Video was that it worked in any browser. Netflix required this Silverlight bullshit, which meant that despite whatever platforms it allegedly runs on, its not going to run on any linux or apple box I own. So if I want to curl up in bed with my airbook thingy and watch a movie, I have to watch something on Amazon.
Until now.
You were supposed to read "until now" in that deep voice that is always used in movie previews. Go back and do it. I'll wait. Anyway, I tried to buy the latest season of Mythbusters and was told I would need Silverlight. I've actually purchased a number of movies on Amazon because it seemed more free and could work in any HTML5 browser. Now, the value of my little movie collection I assembled there just dropped by more than half.
Fuck you, Amazon.
Ergo, Put.io. I intend to make use of this service. What I'd really like to do is only use it to download things that netflix doesn't have, or that I happened to feel like watching on amazon when I using a mac/linux computer, etc. I think it would be cool if we could get a movement going, where people who torrent would classify media in categories like this:
1. GREEN: A movie that is not available to stream on Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon (rent-only counts as not available on Amazon). Physical services, and lame-ass streaming services run by the monopolies and content owners (Red Box, AMC, Comcast, MLB) don't count. Torrent and seed as much as you can. Paint the streets with free pirated DVDs of this type of content.
2. YELLOW: the movie is sort of available, but the content owners (the "assholes") are being assholes about it. This is a gray area that I don't have a good definition for.
3. RED: the movie is available on Netflix, or is one of the free videos you get with Amazon Prime or Hulu Plus. You're kind of a dick for pirating this movie. Maybe torrent it, but seriously consider if you should maybe pay money
in some form, even if you are just buying one version on Amazon just to
make it ethical to also torrent onto your myth TV box. Obviously if you own the movie in any kind of physical form--DVD, laserdisc, VHS, Betamax--then pirating it is perfectly ethical.
Now, I think that if all netziens everywhere followed that model, it would put market pressure on the content owners to stop being dickwads and let us buy digital content without also trying to control us. I'm skeptical that enough people would follow this. I am starting to wonder if most of the people torrent-ing simply don't want to pay for things.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment