Be Excellent To Each Other

Say stuff in here if you want. Good stuff, bad stuff. Indifferent stuff. All the stuff you can fit in as many characters as you want. You ain't limited to 140 characters on BeeX. You're only limited by your imagination.

Thought it was good

Yeah.

It's not yet convinced me that it's a story that particularly needed to be told, but particularly the second episode was good enough that I don't think I mind. Real bleak comedy.

Spoilers for Breaking Bad and both episodes of Better Call Saul:


I'm not sure on the timeline either really. How far before Breaking Bad is it supposed to be? None of the recurring cast look any younger.

I've just watched the first episode. I thought it was really well directed throughout and not afraid of its own silence. I like that.

How rude!

I've just watched both episodes and I thought it was great. Saul is a brilliant character in my opinion and while I'm not a fan of prequels, this seems to be pretty damn good so far.

Not watched it yet as we are addicted to The Wire at the moment

Will give it a look at the weekend, looking forward to it!

Second episode certainly hit the ground running, and it managed to do that thing where the credits roll and I'm like 'Eh? It's finished already?' Breaking Bad style timewarp thing.

Top telly, something to look forward every week now that The Walking Dead has become largely moribund.

Watched the first one and really enjoyed it. Tried to watch the second and i'm now on my 4th download attempt after the first 3 were garbage (poor rips that crashed after a few seconds, or were the wrong framerate, or didn't unpack) Very unusual situation, the rippers are usually pretty good!
Come on pirates, how am I supposed to freeload effectively.

Netflix is like, not very expensive, man.

I'm all for piracy likes, but only if there isn't a reasonably priced and legitimate alternative.

Meh. I'll probably get Netflix when I have Internet that is fast enough to stream properly, but can't be doing with the regional lockout bollocks.

There is none, just install the Hola extension into Chrome and boom, US Netflix. (There's Hola for Android as well, not sure on iOS.)

Anything that VPNs you to the States works as well. (A mate has got US Netflix on his XBox One through some DNS chicanery.)

That's how I watched Seasons 1-4 of The Walking Dead on Netflix, as it's not on UK Netflix.

That said, the selection on UK Netflix has much improved recently, they do seem to be making a pretty good effort to bring it more into line with US Netflix.

They are cracking down on that though, and it's mildly amusing that downloading a show is bad, but breaking regional blocking is apparently ok

Meh, I'm paying for Netflix, regional blocking is arse.

I assume their metrics on the backend show an extra view for the programme/film in the correct way, so that the right people still get paid in the end.

I have heard about them cracking down on the easier methods of circumvention, and doubtless some clever folks will work out how to get around it again. But as I said, the UK selection is in a far better place than it was say 12 months ago.

If they manage to break the regional circumvention thing completely, and I feel that the UK selection isn't up to par, I'll just cancel.

If there is none, why install a proxy?

...

What?

OK maybe I phrased that badly but you get the gist, the regional lockout is so trivial as to be non-existent, but I appreciate that may change in time.

My take on it is that as far as Netflix are concerned they just want to take people's money, they're probably none too keen on all the different licensing deals they need in different parts of the world, and indeed by all accounts they're being pressurised by the studios to make it tougher to get around the regional lockouts, it's not something they're pushing themselves.

I was responding to AE's moral objection to me downloading, yet him using VPN to break licensing.

As an aside, I signed up to Netflix yesterday. The UI is... primitive, to say the least! Not impressed at all.

Downloading means nobody gets any money, bypassing content restrictions just screws the local distributor, not the producer.

You should know by now that Trooper doesn't have any sort of feel for nuance.

It's weird how people don't actually read what people write, and just make up their own assumptions in their head

I'm saying the bypassing content restriction is still a bad thing, sure it's not quite as bad as downloading, but that's a nuance isn't it, or didn't you notice that

My point was that it's a little difficult to take a moral high ground on downloading, if you are breaking license restrictions yourself.

Ah fuck it, it was just an offhand comment anyway, I don't care what people do regarding downloading or netflix!

The rest of this post says otherwise.

Mr Tired Dog Face?

What exact law am I breaking if I stream Netflix USA content via a VPN? I ask because I spent some time looking into this a while back, and I couldn't find one. Note that I'm not referring to Netflix's terms of service, which I daresay has a clause; that's a civil matter. I am referring to statute law. Clearly I am breaking copyright laws if I download a bootleg, so if these things are (as you claim) equivalent I'm sure there's a law you can point to?

As for morals, which you have explicitly invoked, you see no moral difference between buying something in America and stealing it?

I'll try and be more clear. I don't care what people do regarding netflix and downloading. I do care about how much of a cretin you are

You're not breaking a law at all. But you are reducing the value that a local content distributor gets out of the deal. That starts being a big impact, local distributors are going to start paying less for stuff or not taking out distribution deals at all. Which means less money going to the producers and them having less money to make good stuff.

Bless you, there's really no need. I'm at peace with it.

Oh dear lord. Where did I claim it was equivalent? Where did I claim it was breaking a law?

The "law breaking" must be breach of contract "laws" if you have to use Hola to bypass some security thing.

That being said, I haven't read the agreements that you have to sign up to (so I can't say if it IS a breach of contract in these cases) but I'm sure Netflix would be more than happy to point you to the right bit of their terms and conditions.

I paid for Guardians of the Galaxy! In HD! So that covers me for oooh, 6 months of downloading Castle and Forever I reckon.

What a cretin.

I agree, someone depriving the producers of Better Call Saul of their thrupence share of a Netflix subscription is a whole other kettle of moral fish than using a DNS thingy to access US content. What an absolutely outrageous bastard, sort of cunt who no doubt steals from the pick 'n' mix at the cinema.

Netflix doesn't work like Spotify, where each stream earns the artist a fraction of a penny. It spends pretty big money on streaming rights, billions a year, and that amount is fixed and not paid per stream. That's a lot more than Spotify.

Sony could have sold Better Call Saul to any number of satellite channels, I'm sure, had it chosen to do so. It chose Netflix instead. Sony isn't a charity, so one assumes Netflix made a decent offer.

Equivalent obviously means something different to you guys then!

Saying 2 things are bad, doesn't automatically say they are equivalent.
It's almost as if there are nuances that you don't understand

Although viewing figures, number of subscribers and such will be factors in the negotiation process.

Plus whether they allow their users to break the licensing agreements will have a big factor on what content the publishers are willing to give them.

Hmmm this seems to have escalated rather quickly....

I wasn't particularly trying to take any moral high ground, but I do think there's a basic point that if everyone simply pinches everything they want, then no one gets paid for their work and we don't get any stuff - I mean, that much is fundamental, obvious, and fair, surely?

In the past the argument for piracy was often about how there wasn't any viable legal alternative, or at least, one that didn't come loaded with onerous DRM and restrictions.

Netflix however is inexpensive, reliable, fast, and convenient. For reasonably well-heeled folks to just pinch stuff they want to watch when Netflix has it and costs what, £7 per month, just seems a bit off.

Netflix have to walk a very fine line between the content providers and their customers, considering so many of their subscribers are from countries who don't even officially have Netflix access.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2 ... -vpn-users

Indeed. I'm sure Netflix would be more than happy to let anyone access any of their content, but the publishers wouldn't be. So, as you say, it's a fine line.

It's interesting that Netflix don't go out of their way to block VPN access (yet), but do go out of their way to block unofficial clients. You can't get a Netflix client on Plex, for example.
I don't know why they consider one thing to be ok, and one not.

Better Call STAG.

Netflix very rarely has stuff at release. Better Call Saul is unusual.

We should probably get a mod to move all the piracy discussion into a different thread really. And then lock it

No YOU'RE a cunt.

Let's take this to twitter!

I'd rather keep poisoning the well.

House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Wolf Lake?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_or ... by_Netflix