this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024

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Five Men Convicted of Operating Massive, Illegal Streaming Service That Allegedly Had More Content Than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Prime Video Combined (variety.com)

submitted 5 months ago by TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] woodenskewer@lemmy.world 57 points 5 months ago (2 children)

“substantial harm to television program copyright owners,”

Give me a fucking break

[–] Retrograde@lemmy.world 28 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Won't somebody think of the television program copyright owners??

[–] Brutticus@lemm.ee 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I think of them when I dream about them facing a firing squad.

[–] tonyn@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

But then who would finance the production of television programs?

[–] Brutticus@lemm.ee 10 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I dream of a world where we are free to create art without having dance for Capital

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 54 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If five people can maintain a service bigger than all those combined, then the big streamers need to buck their fucking ideas up.

[–] geekworking@lemmy.world 17 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They had a big library, but not the user base. They were definitely not maintaining anywhere near the infrastructure and bandwidth of major streaming platforms. Netflix claims 260 million users. It's not hard to get a giant catalog when you dont have to pay for it.

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[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 48 points 5 months ago (8 children)

If there is no need,such places would not exist

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[–] istanbullu@lemmy.ml 47 points 5 months ago (4 children)

It probably also had better user experience than all of them

[–] dan@upvote.au 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

That's the thing about all the pirate apps (apps like Weyd, Syncler, the now-defunct TVZion, etc). They're made by people that actually care, not by companies that are only in it for the money. The user experience is usually a lot better. One of those apps plus a Real Debrid subscription and you're set.

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[–] paris@lemmy.blahaj.zone 35 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The group used “sophisticated computer scripts” and software to scour piracy services (including the Pirate Bay and Torrentz) for illegal copies of TV episodes, which they then downloaded and hosted on Jetflicks’ servers, according to federal prosecutors.

They probably used Sonarr and Radarr and called it a day (or similar off-the-shelf tools available on GitHub). It's not very sophisticated at all. That combined with Jellyfin and a VPN (or Usenet or a country that doesn't care about piracy) and you have your own up and running. You could also just use free sites with an ad blocker instead of paying $10/mo like the service this article is about charged.

Unrelated to all of this: https://rentry.co/megathread

[–] Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee 12 points 5 months ago

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

For the elderly folk who write and enforce the laws that caused this to come to pass, sufficiently advanced technology just means more complex than notepad

[–] Dorkyd68@lemmy.world 31 points 5 months ago (5 children)

The only thing I'm pisseed about is the fact that I was unaware of its existence. Fuck the system

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[–] confusedbytheBasics@lemmy.world 30 points 5 months ago (20 children)

Proving Netflix could be replaced by five hard working people.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 20 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Proving Netflix could be ~~replaced~~ outdone by five hard working people.

[–] ThePantser@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Proving Netflix should ~~could~~ be ~~replaced~~ outdone by five hard working people.

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[–] anlumo@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (23 children)

They didn’t need the army of lawyers to get license deals, so that’s not a fair comparison.

[–] FreudianCafe@lemmy.ml 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Its almost like its unecessary shit made up in order to keep profits away from working people artificially

[–] WarlordSdocy@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah its almost like if we didn't keep extending copyright protections a bunch of stuff would be in the public domain and any streaming service could offer it without having to deal with licensing.

[–] Brickhead92@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I mean that's all well and good, but then how would the very deserving shareholders get dividends?

Won't somebody think of the shareholders!?

[–] jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

PLS KEP LNE GOE UUP

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[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 22 points 5 months ago (1 children)

They're here doing everyone a service. Why are there resources to prosecute this but not like elon musk's insider trading?

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 9 points 5 months ago

Because our society is profoundly corrupt

[–] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 19 points 5 months ago

Five men convicted by the court of the high seas for being absolute chads

[–] Snapz@lemmy.world 16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (13 children)

Nobody gives a shit, you're not doing enough to punish trump for his obvious, literally filmed and recorded crimes.

This is the equivalent of the cops celebrating after beating peaceful college protesters while pissing their pants and freezing while the uvalde kids were slaughtered and psychologically tortured.

You're focusing on the non victory and ignoring the failures. Cowards.

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[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago

They solved a problem people had after the fragmentation :)

[–] kakes@sh.itjust.works 11 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Love how they make this sound like some incredible feat. When you aren't bound to license agreements, turns out it's actually very easy to have a "massive" content library. Literally the only hurdle is storage space.

[–] Wrench@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (8 children)

I mean, distributing it isn't a small feat. Plus you need to manage subscriptions, billings, CMS, a front end to navigate the content, etc.

That's no small amount of work, even if they used out of the box solutions for many layers.

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[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Honestly pretty funny to call the site "Jetflix" and advertise it as nothing but aviation videos. Nobody would know what you're up to until they pay you.

How much you wanna bet a aerospace nut subscribed to this because they love Jets, and immediately reported this site to the authorities because he got the avengers movies rather than Airbus maintenance videos or something...

Pretty stupid though to run this site out of the USA. Terrible opsec. They really just seemed to trust that nobody who cares would ever figure out what they were doing. Plenty of similar sites out there that don't even need to hide what they are because they are well outside of American jurisdiction.

[–] a2part2@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 months ago

Yeah. I bet he wasn't looking for a Boeing maintenance video.

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 months ago (19 children)

Jetflicks, which charged $9.99 per month for the streaming service, generated millions of dollars in subscription revenue and caused “substantial harm to television program copyright owners,

The ownership class will tremble before a communist revolution!

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[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

“Sophisticated scripts to scour pirate sites”.

I think we’ve just found a new tagline for radarr and sonarr.

[–] el_abuelo@lemmy.ml 4 points 5 months ago (9 children)

This is despicable. What specific service was this? So I know how to avoid it if it should resurface.

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[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I've got one of those too. Plex is great.

[–] rmuk@feddit.uk 6 points 5 months ago (21 children)

ITT: Have you heard the good news about our lord and saviour, Jellyfin?

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