On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 19:43:51 +0000 (UTC) jim bell <jdb10987@yahoo.com> wrote:
While I generally like the way society and technology is progressing, one seemingly minor exception involves the esoteric question, "How do people have access to old movies?"
Haha. Well, society is progressing towards the extermination of the human race by means of 'technology' (and I don't think that's the outcome you're hoping for) Anyway, one of the very few positive developments of the las 30 years is so called 'online piracy' (which is of course 100% cypherpunk) so people who want to watch dr strangelove can simply download this torrent https://pirateproxy.gdn/torrent/8063710/Dr.Strangelove.1964.720p.BluRay.x264...
As I pointed out, TV stations used to play old (non-current-run) movies for free (although with commercials) extensively. How do we watch, today, movies like Dr. Strangelove? Is it available at the local used-DVD shop? (I haven't looked.) Okay, Youtube a few years ago shifted movies to a pay-model,
see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=her67M_clPc Problem is, notice that the price for this movie is $3.99. That's pretty much the same price as all the other old movies.
Oh yes. I noticed now the NSA is charging for movies =) - And yes the prices are ridiculous. Then again, so called 'intellectual property' is an anti libertarian toxic government monopoly so no surprises there =) However, that anti libertarian monopoly can be worked around to some degree thanks to 'piracy'. Sounds artificial: While some relatively recent movies might be worth that price, I think one dollar (or less) should be the going rate for old movies from before, say, the year 2000.
I have Netflix, but they are far from being a complete stock of all old movies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bittorrent and even better https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnutella There are apparently other, similar services. But again, I doubt whether any of them are close to having "every old movie ever made".
Jim Bell