U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-senators-introduce-new-pirate-site-blocking-bill-block-beard/

by HieronymusBosch • 12 months ago

267 242 12 months ago

torrentfreak.com

Varelion• 12 months ago

So sick of this corporatocracy.

monksy3• 12 months ago

So how much are they getting bribed to do this?

whynotmaybe• 12 months ago

Only the powerless are bribed, the powerful are "lobbied".

seanw4443• 12 months ago

It's just different, otherwise it wouldn't be a different word... right?

pickleglitch• 12 months ago

It's nice to see the US Congress finally trying to address the real issues that have serious impact on the daily lives of the average citizen. Oh wait, this matters to almost no one except big business interests. Never mind.

ratelimitsteve• 12 months ago

the end of red dead redemption 2 is about the internet, isn't it?

johnisgood3• 12 months ago

Amazing. These kind of bills / laws are being passed left and right "recently".

mindslight4• 12 months ago

Both major parties are corpo-authoritarian, with the main dynamics of elections being to gauge how much the public is willing to accept and to make half the people think they actually wanted the resulting policies. And for this round the people have spoken that they want it good and hard.

johnisgood3• 12 months ago

I have a feeling the public is going to be willing to accept a lot of things.

tharmas• 12 months ago

corpo-authoritarian

"corporate fascist"

lokar2• 12 months ago

I don’t think they care about the policy. They just see a one sided debate: companies will to pay and an indifferent public.

pessimizer• 12 months ago

And for this round the people have spoken that they want it good and hard.

Actually, the people have said "please stop this, this can't go on" at every election since 1992, with the possible exception of 2012 (unless you admit that 2012 President Obama was running against 2008 Candidate Obama.) They again said it in 2024.

JumpCrisscross• 12 months ago

These kind of bills / laws are being passed

It hasn’t been passed!

leptons• 12 months ago

I have no doubt that it will pass. If it is overly broad and can be used to needlessly hurt someone, Republicans love it, and they are the ones with power right now.

johnisgood3• 12 months ago

Many of them have, but you are right, should have used a different term.

rcpt• 12 months ago

Our own great firewall

cvoss• 12 months ago

The Great Firewall of China is a censorship program.

This proposed US legislation puts the power of blocking under the authority of its court system and only in the domain of copyright law. The courts are historically very concerned with upholding 1st Amendment rights to a degree that often (but not always) surpasses analogous rights in many sister liberal democracies. Anything that remotely smells of censorship would come under intense scrutiny.

And in this case, since we are talking about copyright law, the only parties with standing to sue for a block are the IP owners in the first place. So, by definition, this legislation cannot be used for censorship.

dttze2• 12 months ago

Yet it will be. Laws mean nothing to these people.

ACCount362• 12 months ago

This is a censorship program.

Every time a system that allows for internet content to be blocked is created, it's extended, misused and abused shortly thereafter.

"The tools already exist, why don't we use them to fight terrorists/pirates/cybercriminals/gays/undesirables too".

The slope isn't just slippery - it's made of Teflon and coated with baby oil.

supertrope• 12 months ago

YouTube's copyright strikes create a chilling effect. Google takes the easy way out in tuning their system to minimize false negatives at the cost of lots of false positives. This minimizes their liability under the DMCA and minimizes cost but allows lots of abuse by those claiming to hold copyright.

int_19h8• 12 months ago

When you prevent distribution of information, that is censorship by definition. You can argue that censorship in this case is socially beneficial, but don't muddy the waters as to what it it is.

At the same time, laws like these require creation of infrastructure that is goal-agnostic. Once you have ISPs implement mandatory blocking of websites for copyright reasons, this system can, and eventually will, be used to block other things deemed undesirable for the plebs to access.

Given the current presidential administration especially, any Democrat participating in such a project should be tarred and feathered.

Henchman213• 12 months ago

So how long before its used to block sites that say mean things about Trump?

BrawnyBadger53• 12 months ago

Copyright law is a censorship program. It may not have been the intent presented when it was made but more and more it is used to suppress the speech of those who can't afford the legal battle. This is amplified by enforcement around it taking a guilty until proven innocent style since platforms that host speech are held liable for not taking immediate action.

hooverd3• 12 months ago

Ah, I'm so glad we can be bipartisan when it comes to making things worse.

monksy3• 12 months ago

Can we get a list of senators who support this and their party affiliation?

hooverd3• 12 months ago

Thom Tillis - R Chris Coons - D Marsha Blackburn - R Adam Schiff - D

andrewmcwatters• 12 months ago

I wonder if with all of these attacks on international Internet freedoms we'll eventually have a resurgence of usage of technology like Tor, etc.

Finnucane• 12 months ago

landlines and snail mail. Not that those things can't be tracked/tapped either, but it is more work. Pay cash for stuff.

jsbisviewtiful• 12 months ago

Oh so all these AI companies get to steal whatever they want but in order to stop the 99% from stealing we need to lock down the internet?

lenerdenator2• 12 months ago

[flagged]

FridayoLeary• 12 months ago

That's just silly. There is no moral comparison between the two. I wouldn't bother to respond, except that it's this sort of attitude that was behind the gleeful response and support of a cold blooded murder.

jimmydoe• 12 months ago

That’s necessary because US&A needs to beat China!

tracker1• 12 months ago

Wonder if having your own DNS resolver will work around the issue... I mean, the caching from cloudflare/google-dns is nice, but I'm fine if 1/8 of my dns lookups has to make the full cycle through domain resolvers.

hellojesus• 12 months ago

Won't they just instruct isps to block the ip addresses of the sites and bully cloudflare into dropping them so they can't hide behind their proxies?

It'll be a cat and mouse game, and tor could easily mitigate blocking efforts.

But this seems like a 1A violation to me.

sybercecurity• 12 months ago

I haven't seen the text of the bill, so don't know for sure. If it says "resolvers must block site" then yes, running your own resolver would still work. If it says "domain registries must remove delegation" then it won't, but that could only be enforced for registries that are based in the US. Unless your ISP blocks well-known DNS ports, which none due as far as I've found.

The article says one of the requirements for the complaint needs to be that the site to be blocked must be found to be foreign based, so I guess the assumption is that the current set of laws to take down the site or sue are unavailable.

Henchman213• 12 months ago

So is this an opening move with an end goal of “private national internets”? Fracturing the international nature of the ‘net seems like every power worldwide would like and benefit from this.

benreesman2• 12 months ago

I've recently switched to privacy respecting computing options, so of course lost access to everything I've bought from Apple and Amazon for the last 20 years.

If I never paid for content again they'd still be in my debt.

You wouldn't steal a car would you? No, but I'd repossess one from some delinquent son of a bitch in a suit.

CamperBob2• 12 months ago

"If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing."

mystraline2• 12 months ago

I've argued that if 'buy' is DRM encrusted shit (hardware or software), then the sale should be considered fraudulent conversion to a rental.

And since its a rental, and the company still retains control, that's a lot of capex they failed to declare with the IRS. And yeah, tax fraud.

bombcar3• 12 months ago

I see no strong moral argument against ripping DVDs (from the library or similar) of content you paid for on Apple or Amazon.

unsupp0rted• 12 months ago

There's no moral argument against ripping DVDs one way or the other.

There's a civil/economic argument: arguably copyright/intellectual property make for stronger societies that produce better stuff for everybody.

But there's nothing immoral about copying or watching something you came across. The author isn't injured by it- nobody is. Except, like I said, perhaps society in general.

MangoToupe• 12 months ago

The main moral argument for intellectual property rights seems to be "because that's how the world already works and we don't want to disrupt that less it be artists or inventors that get the shaft", and yet we don't have strong cases of intellectual property protecting artists or inventors in the first place. Not as a primary effect of IP, anyway.

xtracto2• 12 months ago

In my country it is not illegal to download or share copyright content for non-profit and personal use. It's the IPTVs, torrent and streaming pirate sites with Ads or asking for money the ones that should die (that's why I don't agree with Anna's Archive profiting from sharing copyrighted content).

As I said before: it's 2025, we shouldn't need an ad infested "website" to share, discover and download content in a p2p fashion. Kademilla and similar DHT truly decentralized tech has existed for more than 15 years...

The problem is that new generations want to profit from everything and have stopped "sharing is caring"

int_19h8• 12 months ago

There are ways to get your content out of DRM walled gardens, e.g. Streamfab.

msgodel2• 12 months ago

It's easier to just make a list and torrent.

burnt-resistor2• 12 months ago

You only rented licenses if you didn't receive physical copies or DRM-free downloads.

benreesman2• 12 months ago

The button said "Buy" and it was next to one that said "Rent". I bought it.

If they choose to make retrieving my purchase from the warehouse difficult, then I will take it by force with a torrent.

puppycodes• 12 months ago

ah great I was worried for a second for our struggling monopolies this should help them back on their feet

thedevilslawyer3• 12 months ago

No one would steal a car. More importantly, everyone would clone a car. Of course we should support this fully.

Oppose this bill.

dfxm12• 12 months ago

Oppose the bill based on freedom, as in speech. This comes above all else.

Arguing over what is or isn't piracy is a non-sequitor when it comes to government censorship of the Internet.

thedevilslawyer3• 12 months ago

I'd argue freedom of access to knowledge is atleast as important, if not more, than speech. Down with copyright - restriction on this freedom.

ryandrake2• 12 months ago

Isn't torrenting way down from its heyday? Streaming companies are not perfect, but I always thought they were at least moderately successful such that in 2025, average, casual, non-techies no longer bother to jump through the VPN and private tracker hoops just to download a movie.

shkkmo• 12 months ago

For a while, streaming was better than any alternative. However over the last several year prices have a spike while the collections available for streaming have shrunk and splintered. Then a bunch of the streaming sites started adding ads for their paying customers.

At this point streaming servcies have been enshitified enough to make piracy again the better experience.

seanw4443• 12 months ago

Can confirm. The only streaming service I use anymore is Disney+, and I only have it because I like to watch the new Star Wars stuff when it releases at good quality. Everything else I care to watch, which isn't much besides older stuff, I'll just torrent now.

Greedy companies really need to heed Gabe Newell's words.

int_19h8• 12 months ago

I still subscribe to some of the services, but the experience has deteriorated sufficiently that at this point I rip all videos I care about and then watch them in Plex.

dsissitka• 12 months ago

In my circles the modern alternative seems to be using Yandex to search for "$show stream".

I don't know about BitTorrent but Usenet is way up:

https://www.newsdemon.com/usenet-newsgroup-feed-size

namrog84• 12 months ago

Daily volume could just be more bluray high quality downloads with people with better internet. And not neccesarily larger number of people right?

SSLy• 12 months ago

dunno about public sites, but the private ones are healthier than ever

e40• 12 months ago

I torrent content I’m legally allowed to watch because the UX is far better with Plex than with the plethora of crappy apps.

Marsymars• 12 months ago

I rip stuff from YouTube for the same reason. Currently watching Taskmaster which has all or most episodes freely available on YouTube, but no way am I interested in using that dumpster fire of a UX.

dml21352• 12 months ago

It's down from it's heyday for the mainstream, but for the dedicated few, it's better than ever before. Gone are the days of manually searching for a movie on tracker sites, downloading them, organizing your library and watching stuff on your laptop.

There are now open-source, self-hosted applications that automate that entire process, so it's as simple as requesting a movie on your phone and having it show up on your own personal streaming service on your TV a few minutes later.

IshKebab3• 12 months ago

What are the names of these immoral piracy applications, so that I can know to avoid them if I happen to stumble upon one?

neuralRiot• 12 months ago

I know a guy who knows a guy that says that you don’t even need that, you just browse the movies and press “play” as there is direct torrent streaming now. But I don’t know anything about all this i just use my VCR with the clock flashing 12:00.

IshKebab3• 12 months ago

I think it was down when the answer to streaming was "get netflix, it has most stuff", but now it's "pay for netflix, Disney+, Amazon prime, apple tv, ...".

blackjack_2• 12 months ago

I've been trying to watch old 80s-90s movies recently. I'm happy to pay $5 or whatever, and they just aren't available anywhere. Rental stores are dead, so I can't go rent them from blockbuster or whatever, and streaming sites have splintered to the point I'm not even sure what is a scam and what is a legitimate business anymore. Trying to even find availability of what films exist on which streaming sites has been an absolute pain. There are theoretical catalogue sites, but they are all randomly out of date to the point that its not very useful.

I'm literally at the point where its looking like pirating the movies is the only way to watch them...

LeonardoTolstoy2• 12 months ago

How's your local library system?

HanClinto• 12 months ago

I live in a small country town. It's decent for its size, but it's very small.

In contrast, Archive.org is an absolutely fantastic library, and we're happy to support them.

Way better than my public library -- especially for hard-to-find media.

standardUser5• 12 months ago

I wonder what the material difference is between borrowing a film from the library (is this DVD? Blu-ray? Streaming?) and downloading it from a peer-to-peer network.

I suppose it's an act of support for your public library. But no one with a financial stake in that particular media is impacted in any way by using either method to obtain the film.

endemic• 12 months ago

Came here to recommend this. A viable option, at least until Republicans completely defund public libraries.

elijaht2• 12 months ago

I watch a decent amount of movies, I can count on one hand the number of times I couldn’t rent it for <$5 on Prime or YouTube. I’ve never been unable to identify where I could find a particular movie to stream, and it’s certainly less effort than going to a physical storefront.

I think there are plenty of problems with the streaming model, but I think it’s borderline bad faith to try and make the claim that piracy is needed because it’s hard to navigate streaming sites. It’s certainly easier than finding obscure movies was pre-streaming

MichaelBosworth• 12 months ago

It happens to me often enough. Might be a matter of taste in movies?

Spastche• 12 months ago

I watch a decent amount of movies, I can count on one hand the number of times I couldn’t rent it for <$5 on Prime or YouTube.

delve deep into most directors filmography from the 60s/70s/80s and you'll find plenty missing. Ken Russell, Robert Altman, etc

lupusreal• 12 months ago

Even when Amazon Prime has it, the rental terms are dogshit. I used to rent VHS and DVDs from the store and got to watch them as many times as I wanted for a week. With Amazon Prime, once I start watching it I only have 48 hours and then I have to rent it again. Friends coming over in 3 days and you think they'll like the movie you just rented? Too bad, have to pay them again.

It's flagrant bullshit that physical media, with real scarcity, had better rental terms than digital.

So why the hell shouldn't I pirate it? I get a better product, it's free, and all the people who made it are dead now anyway so spare me any bullshit moralizing.

pwthornton• 12 months ago

You can’t find them to rent on iTunes and similar platforms?

VWWHFSfQ• 12 months ago

I'm guessing they can. They just don't want to.

hahn-kev• 12 months ago

There's plenty of stuff that isn't listed there

tarnith2• 12 months ago

Who wants to rent? I have money, give me a file for money.

DRM is laughable anyway, if you give me the data I have the file if I really want it.

Let me, the consumer, legally purchase a high res copy of media I can own. Why is this so hard?

Me10003• 12 months ago

Not OP, but yes believe it or not it's impossible to find certain movies anywhere other than pirating them. One example is "Pirates of Silicon Valley", I watched it when I was young and recently wanted to watch it again. I pay for basically all the streaming services, I'm would have been happy to rent it from any service at all. I spent several hours trying to find a way to pay to watch it and never could.

indoordin0saur• 12 months ago

I'm at the point where I just automatically assume any new movie is derivative, uninspired slop. Professional reviewers don't really seem trustworthy these days and user reviews are constantly being gamed based on fandom, political sentiments or just bots boosting or tanking reviews.

I do love movies, particularly ones that are pre-2010 or so. I've actually started going to a local indie theater that curates excellent older stuff so I just check their calendar every once in a while and pick something that sounds interesting to go see a couple times a month. Often times it's foreign stuff or things I've never heard of but those guys have excellent taste and I have yet to see a bad film. For anyone curious, here's my spot: metrograph.com

dev1ycan• 12 months ago

Because they aren't trustworthy:

1)Disney-adjacent properties.

Look at the amazing spiderman 1, it was better than anything Marvel has released with Spiderman, it got trashed on for a very simple reason in my eyes, Disney wanted the rights for Spiderman and tried to force them to give them it (it worked) via giving it terrible reviews.

Opposite thing happened with Star Wars, another Disney "product", the new trilogy getting "amazing" reviews at the start was ridiculous, they were very bad movies, like terrible, the first one which was the most watchable of the three was just bad acting mixed in with nostalgia bait, didn't push the universe forward at all which the prequels get hate for but they did hugely expand what star wars was, in good ways. Even midichlorians which people gave so much hate to in episode 1, makes sense if you rewatch the OT, Darth Vader suddenly turning good is like "snapping" out of the trance state he was in, because as we know now, the "force" in star wars is not like morality in the real world, while you play a part in you getting taken "over" by a side (light/dark side), once it happens you sort of lose control, sort of like a hard drug in the real world, it takes a lot for someone who has given in to the dark side to go back to normal, which I believe makes for a better science fiction universe, the concept of only giving in enough to receive the power but not enough to become evil was even explored with mace windu with Vapaad, anyways.

Lastly, Black Adam, I watched it and the movie was objectively not beyond terrible for current day standards, it was a watchable popcorn flick and the CGI was very very good compared to Marvel movies which made the movie look cool, the main villain was uninspiring but so are most first movie villains, it's all about the setup. It received beyond terrible reviews in my opinion directed from Disney/Marvel in an attempt to fully kill competition especially during Marvel's weak point post endgame. I would have enjoyed seeing a movie of Superman vs Black Adam but it is what it is.

Lastly any anime movie competing with Disney, just look at the Oscars, how many anime movies get snubbed? I still remember being shocked at how when marnie was there did not win vs inside out... or how look back wasn't even nominated, lol.

larrik• 12 months ago

The Roku app is actually really good at determining where everything ever is currently streaming (or purchasable). It's not 100% perfect, but it's generally correct. I go there first for basically everything.

For example, it tells me Wake Up Ron Burgundy (which isn't even a "real" movie) can be purchases on Prime, Fandango, or iTunes.

Actually, iTunes and Prime have mostly everything for rent, what movies were you actually looking for?

buran77• 12 months ago

It gets worse when you're looking for a movie only to realize it's different from what you remember. Either a change of substance (different scenes), or a change of form (adjusted color palette). Occasionally the original version is no longer officially available anywhere.

a2tech• 12 months ago

Just wanted to watch a relatively recent movie yesterday (Antichrist) and the only place that has it is a streaming service called Mooby. Not signing up for a service to watch one movie. Would have gladly paid 4 bucks to watch it, so had to find it in the usual places instead.

nickthegreek2• 12 months ago

Plex does this as well.

fluidcruft• 12 months ago

IMDB does something similar (it at least lists Wake Up Ron Burgandy as available for rent on Prime, doesn't mention iTunes or Fandango but I'm not logged in to IMDB so I'm not sure what's enabled/disabled as "preferred services" by default)

AlotOfReading• 12 months ago

My spouse loves watching old direct to home video movies and I'd say about 75% of them have no accessible copies outside maybe eBay. Most of the remainder are only available via piracy. A vanishingly small percentage are available from streaming platforms.

One that I wanted to watch recently was Disney's 2000 animation short John Henry. It's now part of the American Legends compilation, which is only available for purchase on Amazon, not rent. It's not even on Disney+.

mmcclure2• 12 months ago

I recently joined a local independent video rental store and it's so, so good. My partner looked at me like I was crazy when I told her, but she was a convert after one trip to pick out a movie in person.

Something about browsing in person is just so much more enjoyable than flipping between 9 services. Having a cinephile right there behind the desk that wants to nerd about movies and help pick something out is awesome. It's not a big store, but they've got thousands of movies in their catalog, which is (apparently) way bigger than any of the streaming services.

This doesn't solve your problem, but for the folks that are near the few remaining physical rental stores: consider supporting them, because they're great.

Edit: Actually, on the "your problem" part...maybe give the store a call? Looks like he'll mail discs too: https://myvideowave.weebly.com/services.html

eagerpace• 12 months ago

Out of curiosity, what formats do they rent?

anonymars• 12 months ago

I find justwatch.com useful

haunter2• 12 months ago

Useful but +95% of the films I watch are not available in my country :shrug:

tarnith2• 12 months ago

Video games too. Try to buy Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005). You can't.

FirmwareBurner2• 12 months ago

Try to buy Need For Speed Most Wanted (2005). You can't.

I searched the biggest used online (flea)marketplace in my country and I could find the DVD for sale from several people. So I can buy it and play it right now legally if I want to, without resorting to piracy.

What point were you trying to make with this? Because I also can't buy a brand new 1969 Ford Mustang. Nothing is made forever.

brnt• 12 months ago

Oh boy. That one. And Battle for Middle Earth 2.

Nobody wants my money, so to the bay we go.

spullara• 12 months ago

my son gets all the old movies from the local library

parliament32• 12 months ago

This is precisely the problem, and the whole reason why we still pirate TV/movies. I would have no problem paying $XX to a unified service that has basically everything; I have no interest in paying a dozen different streaming platforms for effectively "cable packages" that often add/remove/shift content around.

The music industry figured this out: I pay Spotify, they have 95% of music content I could ever way, the UX is good enough. I have no reason to pirate music anymore.

Why is this so hard for the film industry?

MSFT_Edging• 12 months ago

The music industry figured this out
Why is this so hard for the film industry

Music industry runs on barely paying any artist that cant fill a stadium. Movie industry runs on constantly re-licensing content to min-max their returns from IP. Music industry can happily barely pay musicians via the spotify model, but the Movie industry can't continually re-license their stuff to a higher bidder if it's all on one site.

tomwheeler• 12 months ago

The music industry figured this out: I pay Spotify, they have 95% of music content I could ever way, the UX is good enough. I have no reason to pirate music anymore.
Why is this so hard for the film industry?

My theory is that the United States has compulsory licensing for music, but not movies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license#United_Stat...

To my knowledge, a radio station or music streaming service doesn't have to negotiate with the record label to play a given song, they just have to pay a small royalty as defined by law. However, that doesn't hold true for movies. Each video streaming service has to negotiate the right to carry a given movie with the film studio that owns it. Those film studios play the streaming services against one another, often allowing the exclusive right to offer certain content for a limited time, after which they then lease the rights to a competing service.

jasode2• 12 months ago

Why is this so hard for the film industry?

It boils down to money.

Movies & tv have higher monetary value to the studios than songs to the record labels.

So the ip owners of video content get more revenue by restricting it as exclusives to their respective platforms rather than licensing it out to everybody and get a smaller fractional payment from an everything-unlimited-catalog video streaming service.

E.g. HBO would rather get 100% of their own $16.99/month subscription -- vs -- licensing entire HBO catalog to Netflix and getting a fraction% of $17.99/month.

How much extra would Netflix conceivably have to charge per month such that the fractional amounts to each movie studio (HBO, Disney, etc) would be enough $$ that the studios wouldn't bother with their own exclusive streaming platforms? $99/month? $149/month? Right now, there isn't a number that Netflix + all studios + subscribers can converge on so instead, we get the current fragmented streaming platforms of video content.

For more evidence of how video content is more valuable than music (in terms of digital streaming platforms), consider that tech giants like Netflix, Amazon, and Apple -- all created their own movie & tv studio business to produce even more exclusives for their streaming platforms. But none of them have started their own record labels to sign musicians to get exclusive songs or albums.

michaelt• 12 months ago

Why is this so hard for the film industry?

The logic is pretty simple:

* It has been widely demonstrated that, in the US, many consumers are willing to pay more than $100/month for cable TV, with ads.

* Netflix costs $8/month with ads.

* Why leave that money on the table?

jasonjayr• 12 months ago

Old media competes with new media.

If you, as the rightsholder can just eliminate that competition without any further effort, it makes logical sense to do so.

Excessivly long copyright is what enables this.

lanfeust62• 12 months ago

I only understand the frustration with finding any legal avenue at all to see certain films. I don't really understand why disparate services are a big deal. You don't need to subscribe to multiple things all at once, and it's all done in a few clicks in the convenience of your own home.

I'm concerned and curious about one thing, which is that tech giants have a monopoly on renting. If you want to rent a digital movie that isn't otherwise available from subscription, you might be able to get it from MSFT, Google or Amazon. Meanwhile the telecoms only seem to offer this through cable machines, just new releases at that.

I'm interested in seeing a few Korean films, the kind that aren't on criterion or mubi. Basically no legal way to see them.

HWR_14• 12 months ago

Music recording copyrights have a single owner, and can be licensed for streaming by that owner. Older movies have a lot of IP owned by various entities with licensing to allow for theatrical and home release, but all of which have to cooperate to make the movies available for streaming.

haunter2• 12 months ago

Not just 80s-90s but try everything non-vanilla Hollywood stuff. Asian cinema, MENA, Eastern Europe etc. Piracy is just superior because I can actually watch what I want.

philips• 12 months ago

An archival incentive is the reason I am pro 25 year copyright. This current situation is causing our cultural heritage to rot.

criddell• 12 months ago

Seems like a fair solution might be limiting damages on pirating movies that aren't widely available. For example, if a movie isn't available for streaming cap damages at $2.99 or whatever the going rental rate is.

gchamonlive• 12 months ago

And good luck trying to find anything marginally erotic, like "Bliss (1997)".

Not only you don't own anything anymore, you can't purchase anything anymore and you can't view content that the overseers deem imoral. At this point pirating is just civil disobedience against the stronghold that corporations have on the American society that ripples across the globalized world.

EliRivers• 12 months ago

Unhelpful but related; back in the day (15 or so years ago), Netflix had a truly excellent back catalogue of old movies. Over a hundred thousand titles. A DVD collection that we just didn't realise was going to vanish as quickly as it arose.

The current offering is just... less. I don't know if I mean in terms of sheer number of titles, but a million episodes of slop is just more slop. Netflix peaked 15 years ago and we didn't even notice.

HelloMcFly• 12 months ago

This is why I started getting into physical media. I was subbed to so many services, but I felt like only 15% of the time would any service I want have the movie (and almost never Netflix as they prefer their own content slop).

imglorp• 12 months ago

They've ended/sold/traded away many of their licensing agreements. Many things they used to have are gone.

It stinks because some of the things they tossed are mundane, but they add to the depth of the catalog if you're looking for something and improve the experience.

Reason077• 12 months ago

In fairness to Netflix, in the old days they only had to own a copy of the DVD in order to rent it out.

Now they have to secure rights for every title they want to stream. That’s a lot of work (and cost) for a hundred thousand titles, especially when your competitors own some of the studios that license those titles.

Disney, for example, owns the Disney / Marvel / Fox / Searchlight / Lucasfilm back catalogues and wants to hoard much of it for its own streaming service.

thefourthchime• 12 months ago

This is actually a larger problem that has to do with lost licensing negotiations and residuals. For a place to offer up streaming, they have to know they can license the content.

But oftentimes, that production company is closed shop. They've sold the licenses off to someone else, who split it into something else. And then there's the music rights. The whole thing becomes extremely complicated.

There's a whole set of movies that were somewhat popular that you just cannot find streaming. 100 cigarettes and Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors are good examples.

I'd say if they can't figure out the rights, just put it on YouTube.

Pfhortune• 12 months ago

The length of time it takes for media to enter the public domain is absolutely absurd. It if didn't take over a century for works to enter the PD, we could say, "Eh, just wait a few years." But instead we hold these works of art captive for no reason, other than a few multi-billion-dollar conglomerates want to keep milking art for money again and again.

If we had a more reasonable period like a decade, it would be a driver for creating new art, and prevent works from being locked away arbitrarily until our great-grandchildren can enjoy them (unless the art was just... lost to time).

beej71• 12 months ago

I can't go rent them from blockbuster

I can. :) But for those not so lucky, second hand stores have tons of DVDs usually for peanuts. Also your library might lend them out.

I'm still in the process of ripping our collection, but we can watch stuff on TV with Jellyfin.

But to your point, Louis Rossman suggests that when piracy provides the best experience, providers might want to rethink their strategy...

Cytobit• 12 months ago

Pirates always pull this out as justification. Like they are starving people who are forced to steal bread just to survive. Maybe just because a piece of media has been published in the past, we don't all have some God-given right to access it in perpetuity for a nominal fee. Lost media is not a sin.

firefax• 12 months ago

Rental stores are dead, so I can't go rent them from blockbuster or whatever

Try the library, I've found lots of things not on streaming in mine's DVD collection.

akaitea• 12 months ago

try local second hand sites and physical copies, although the quality will most likely not be as good if its only been released on DVD

snthpy• 12 months ago

Same here. I have 4 streaming service subscriptions and it really frustrates me when I can't find classic films that I want to show my kids or just watch myself.

const_cast• 12 months ago

streaming sites have splintered to the point I'm not even sure what is a scam and what is a legitimate business anymore

They're all scams, of varying levels of scammyness ;P

No but seriously, the pricing is intentional deceptive and a lot of werives won't offer ad free viewing, no matter how much you pay. They'll also weasel around it with "most media won't have ads, but some will". Thanks, how helpful. Paramount plus apparently doesn't consider ads for itself to be ads - so on the ad free plan, you still get ads for Paramount.

But the worst part is that every app is different and some are really, really poor quality. You'd think we would just invent an API for this and then have one viewer, like we had for TV. But then again, maybe nobody wants to reinvent TV.

Also, blocking VPNs: if I'm logged in and you know my real country and I'm paying, you don't need to block VPNs. It doesn't do anything but annoy customers

antonf• 12 months ago

The granted orders would stay in place for a year with the option to extend if necessary. If blocked sites switch to new locations, the court can also amend blocking orders to include new IP addresses and domain names.

What if the "pirate site" uses foreign cloud provider, and regularly changes IP addresses? Will I lose access to all websites hosted by the foreign cloud provider once their whole ASN will be blocked?

Block BEARD does not mention VPNs, but its broad definition of “service provider” could be interpreted to include them.

This seems easy to circumvent - you can just use foreign VPN provider, who don't advertise themselves for piracy use, for... piracy. IP/DNS blocking proven to be a good censorship tool though.

quesera2• 12 months ago

"Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors Act of 2025” (Block BEARD)

I really wish destitutely uncreative people would stop pretending to be clever.

RankingMember2• 12 months ago

Agreed, these backronym bill names are obnoxious at best.

rkomorn4• 12 months ago

I used to think so, but now I think they're just intended to make it easy to refer to the bill in a context people can recall quickly.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF• 12 months ago

pretending to be clever
Electronic Art

I actually think it's pretty clever that the lawyers who wrote the bill managed to (almost) put their employer's name in it.

jamesgasek• 12 months ago

TL;DR, "Let's block every single piracy site". Sounds foolproof to me

iooi• 12 months ago

courts can subsequently order U.S. service providers to block access to these sites.

So looks like this will be at the ISP level, so should be able to be circumvented easily with VPNs.

The scary part is it's likely to lead to a lockdown on VPNs in the future.

medler• 12 months ago

Block BEARD does not mention VPNs, but its broad definition of “service provider” could be interpreted to include them.

The prospect of all VPN providers being required to block pirate sites, or being unable to operate in the US, is very scary indeed

mystraline2• 12 months ago

Piracy, eh? So copied without approval.

Like archive.is or other news aggregator and paywall-bypass sites.

Or, just needs 1 falsely filed DMCA to ban. And whoops, made a mistake, and no process to unban.

By sneaking in with 'piracy', they're setting the stage to block any content they don't like.

__MatrixMan__• 12 months ago

Intellectual property has been a cover story for censorship for hundreds of years. Nothing new here.

Simulacra• 12 months ago

Meanwhile, VPN use is skyrocketing as is use of Tor and the dark web.

Ylpertnodi2• 12 months ago

Ban vpn use. It's on the cards.

int_19h8• 12 months ago

Good luck enforcing that. VPN protocols have already been honed in the process of evading Chinese, Russian, and Iranian blocks. V2Ray, Trojan etc.

crinkly• 12 months ago

Good luck! I've stolen everything I want to steal already!

metadat• 12 months ago

Is it really possible to effectively mass-block a website? Lib-z seems to keep popping back up like the head of Medusa.

bobajeff• 12 months ago

It obvious that the purpose of this is really just to censor and lock down the Internet more. I saddens me to watch us go down this path.

keernan• 12 months ago

I am more concerned about "big brother" - the increasing use of the internet by the government to "watch" its citizens. The recent efforts by England's demand that Apple provide the English government with a "back door" into Apple OS. And more and more governments demanding ID under the guise of protecting children. How is that going to work? Are we all going to need a government issued digital identity in order to use the internet?

Ylpertnodi2• 12 months ago

Yes. And I believe you mean the 'Great/ British' [.gov].

Mountain_Skies2• 12 months ago

Most accepted needing a government document to access most aspects of public life just a couple of years ago. The governments saw the public blink and now it knows the sky is the limit.

gscott• 12 months ago

Without piracy no llm

dartharva• 12 months ago

When have these blocks ever succeeded?

pmarreck• 12 months ago

Once the market moves on, only the people that love the media will be the best caretakers of it and that often ends up looking like piracy.

They don't rob media sales; they secure media legacies. They're hoarders, not consumers.

rsynnott• 12 months ago

Process of drafting a bill in the US:

- Actually drafting the bill: 10 minutes

- Coming up with the perfect stupid acronym pun name: 6 months.

As far as I know, this is a uniquely American thing.

jjk166• 12 months ago

Well given that the acronym is the only part of the legislation anyone will read, it makes sense it should get the lion's share of the effort.

IshKebab3• 12 months ago

Gotta say that's a pretty great name at least!

msgodel2• 12 months ago

Wow they haven't even finished the porn blocking stuff and they're already starting with the web-wide corporate censorship.

RiverCrochet• 12 months ago

This bill is different than the domain seizures of the past; it seems to be the start of a framework where the government is using its power to tell ISPs to block access to IP addresses - in this case, those identified as foreign piracy sites. Honestly I don't know what's already happening in this space, though. I haven't heard of many instances where U.S. judges are ordering ISPs to block traffic to sites like in other countries, but maybe I haven't been paying attention.

There's a number of precautions and exceptions in the bill, and they're good ones, but I don't think we've seen anything like this before.

I feel like this bill is the beginning of a type of thinking that could grow past piracy by riding the current isolationist wave in U.S. politics. I think once this passes, it's probably going to be easier to justify ordering ISP blocks of non-U.S. IPs/ASNs on other criteria.

It will also further cement social media as the primary thing that is "Internet," instead of websites or other applications based on network protocols. After all that's probably what most people think of as the Internet - social media, a few apps, and streaming. Big social media will always have an international reach as its owners are very rich, they cooperate with governments, their users are individually accountable, and those users will likely become more so over time. I bet soon, that's all that will be left to the masses - social media and streaming.

Mountain_Skies2• 12 months ago

Governments saw how much they got away with during the pandemic, most of it to thunderous applause. This has emboldened them to grasp even more power.

McAlpine5892• 12 months ago

This kind of crap will only grow the MAGA base. Everyone knows our politicians work to serve the corporations and are sick of it. Democrats won’t allow a real candidate that will be anti-corporate. So we end up with Trump who pays lip service to it. For reasons beyond me, people seem to believe him.

Meanwhile Altman & Co. continue to steal data at large scale. Trump himself encourages it by removing any potential for regulation the LLM industry. I guess his followers can’t be bothered to read the actual news and get angry about it.

Most politicians that stand up against this stuff aren’t allowed to succeed. Unless someone does, this pro-corporate downward spiral will continue.

LocalH• 12 months ago

Any time a law has a contrived name to fit some cutesy pre-determined name, it's a bullshit law, and will almost never achieve the goals that the cutesy name brings to mind.

animitronix• 12 months ago

lol bring it senators

theturtle• 12 months ago

Every one of those jackoffs probably has a VCR at home flashing "12:00."

arunabha• 12 months ago

The site-blocking proposal seeks to amend U.S. copyright law, enabling rightsholders to request federal courts to designate online locations as a “foreign digital piracy site”. If that succeeds, courts can subsequently order U.S. service providers to block access to these sites.

Of course, because what we need is the govt deciding which sites can be banned. I'm hoping this dies in committee, however for Bay Area folks, Rep Zoe Lofgren is the house sponsor for the companion bill and Adam Schiff is the Senate co sponsor. They can be reached at

https://lofgren.house.gov/contact/offices and https://www.schiff.senate.gov/contact/

If you oppose this bill, take 5 min and let your congressperson know. They might seem to be bought and paid for by lobbyists, but they care deeply about being reelected and even a small number of constituents showing up can be effective. In order of impact personal visit > letter > call > email. The higher effort channels(visit, letter) tend to get treated more seriously. Emails are largely ignored unless they are absolutely deluged.

zxcvbn4038• 12 months ago

The motion picture industry’s problem isn’t piracy, it’s just that they keep targeting movies at 0.02% of the population. If they want to sell more movies they ought to target a bigger demographic.

jajuuka3• 12 months ago

Between this, new requirements to verify age and locking down of mobile devices it feels like digital freedom is really under attack. For all the decades of the west mocking the great firewall of china, it's sad to see them turn about and enact it themselves.

U.S. senators introduce new pirate site blocking bill, "Block BEARD"

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