Fire TV: Amazon to block piracy apps in the future

90 pointsposted 9 hours ago
by speckx
(heise.de)

63 Comments

GolfPopper

8 hours ago

Piracy is just the excuse. What they're saying is that Amazon will allow a collection of corporations (including Amazon) to decide what you're allowed to do with the hardware they pretended to let you buy.

freedomben

8 hours ago

Indeed. I wonder if in these executive conversations anyone ever asks the question, "Music has been purchaseable now without DRM for quite a while. Why has music piracy essentially died but movies/TV shows/etc is still as hot as ever?"

iamben

8 hours ago

To be fair, I think the fractured rights thing is a big thing a well. I can subscribe to one music service - Spotify, Amazon, Apple, Tidal - and pretty much every new release is available on all of them (or risk a terrible opening week/zero buzz if you go for the 'exclusive' - but ever then, available a week or so later).

The movie/TV companies sell their show to the SVOD platform that offers the most in the territory. Or it's developed by the service themselves. So if you have to subscribe to a handful of services to watch everything your friends recommend.

Most of us can afford one music service. If you're forced into 5 streaming services a lot of people will just pirate. And even for those that do pay - the "we'll show this in the UK a week later than the US" means unless you pirate it, it's spoiled on social media within a few days.

babypuncher

8 hours ago

The economics of shoving the entire output of the entertainment industry on a single $15/mo streaming service don't work out. It arguably doesn't even work that well for music. Ask any musician that doesn't rake in platinum records how well Spotify works out for them.

JoshTriplett

7 hours ago

> The economics of shoving the entire output of the entertainment industry on a single $15/mo streaming service don't work out

The economics work out just fine: the net result would be paying the entertainment industry less, which may be what people want.

lotsofpulp

7 hours ago

People can pay less, all they have to do is consume less.

But all the complaints I see are about not wanting to pay more for more content.

GolfPopper

5 hours ago

Short film SF production house / curated YouTube channel DUST has been around for years, and appear to have a business model that works for them. And while I do not know anything about their finances, and I doubt they make blockbuster money, their content is typically more enjoyable to watch than most stuff I see streaming elsewhere.

freedomben

5 hours ago

Certainly there's some, though I would gladly pay for downloadable drm free copies. I have no problem paying, but I do have a problem renting, which is all the digital purchases today are, despite marketing propaganda

someguyiguess

6 hours ago

Why would people pay less and consume less when they can more easily pirate, consume more, and pay nothing?

attendant3446

5 hours ago

I don't think it's DRM. When you subscribe to a music streaming service - you get 90+% of the music you'll ever need.

But you can't get the same subscription with movies/TV shows. You get a fraction of content with each subscription. When there will be a reasonably priced subscription for most of the video content - it will change the situation.

So in my opinion, it's not about DRM. It's about convenience.

ge96

7 hours ago

The DRM thing is interesting, for a while if I was watching a show on PC it would detect a screenshot event and turn the show window black. This stopped working. I've seen it used on Netflix and Prime. Not sure if it works still now.

thaumasiotes

7 hours ago

> "Music has been purchaseable now without DRM for quite a while. Why has music piracy essentially died but movies/TV shows/etc is still as hot as ever?"

If music piracy hadn't essentially died, how would you know?

You can go to several different streaming services right now and listen to the music of your choice. They'll send you the file and you pinky-swear that you aren't saving a local copy. But if you do save a local copy, that will look identical to you not saving one.

So we have several things going on:

1. You can purchase DRM-free mp3s from major vendors;

2. You can stream the music in a notionally non-lasting way, also from major vendors, for free;

3. If you pirate music directly from the major streaming platforms, that doesn't show up in the piracy statistics.

I suggest that points (2) and (3) are more significant than point (1). Point (2) depresses piracy because the benefit of having a copy of your music is lower when you can use someone else's copy for free whenever you want. Point (3) artifactually depresses piracy by not counting it when it happens.

Point (1)... doesn't do much to depress piracy.

JambalayaJimbo

7 hours ago

How many musicians make their living off of recorded music anymore?

eikenberry

7 hours ago

How many did before... my bet is an insignificant number. The vast majority of musicians work day jobs to support their art. The ones that do make money make it mostly from performances. Making money from recordings only was always a small niche.

mlrtime

7 hours ago

The real question is how many make a living now vs when music piracy was at it's highest.

My guess is it's higher.

bluescrn

7 hours ago

The Napster era was the period when I bought the most CDs, by a large margin.

It was new+exciting, I was discovering lots of new music. But at that point, casual piracy over slow connections (low-bitrate often-poorly-encoded MP3s) wasn't quite good enough to replace real CDs. And back then, MP3 was still a 'nerdy computer thing' and CD players were everywhere - and by far the most convenient way to play music on a proper hi-fi, in a car, etc.

But these days, there isn't really the same upgrade path from a lower-quality pirated copy to an authentic copy. Especially with TV/movies, now tied to subscription services and encumbered by increasing levels of ads.

squigz

6 hours ago

Implication being that piracy reduced the amount of people who could make a living off music? Another explanation is that simply more people are making music. I suspect the actual percentage of musicians who can make a living is the same as ever though.

m463

7 hours ago

remember that piracy competes with amazon.

similarly I used to be able to download my kindle books and read them on non-kindle readers. Now you can't do it anymore. And some books seem to have further restrictions. I have had several phones and the kindle reader app has complained that I have reached sort of limit on the number of downloads some books have.

imiric

4 hours ago

How is that different from an Apple device, and, increasingly, one running Windows or Android?

The trend is towards locked down devices where a corporation decides what you're allowed to do with it, using excuses like piracy, safety, security, privacy, etc. The unfortunate thing is that most people don't mind, and keep purchasing them.

barbazoo

9 hours ago

> Fire TV players are repeatedly offered on the internet with piracy apps that are supposed to enable free access to IPTV or VoD content.

They’re so close to getting it. So close. They almost understand that this is a response to a completely unusable, expensive and user shitty experience.

Build something that integrates all streaming providers and many people will already stop pirating. But even then, people are still expected to pay rent to n different streaming companies. It just doesn’t work. They’re being too greedy.

CamperBob2

8 hours ago

That's basically what an AppleTV box does. However, you still have to pay (and search) a large number of services to find what you want, and there's no guarantee that it will be ad-free no matter how much you pay. The way these people think, the more you're willing to pay to avoid ads, the more your eyeballs are worth.

As Gabe Newell put it, piracy isn't a legal problem or a revenue problem, it's a customer-service problem. Serve the customer, or someone else will.

a4isms

7 hours ago

OG HN mainstay Joel Spolsky put it incredibly presciently back when Napster was a thing in 2001. The music studios were all raving about theft, but he pointed out that people weren't filesharing mp3s to save a buck, they were filesharing mp3s because, his words: You can type the name of a song and listen to it right away.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/04/21/dont-let-architect...

TV still doesn't get this for TV shows. Yes, I can type the name of a show. There are two options, one is some streaming service, the other is Prime. So I select Prime. Psych! It offers me the option to go to that streaming service. And subscribe. Which means thinking about the long term, not this show I want to watch.

Or I open the lid of my Mac, type the name of a show, and almost right away I can watch it on my Apple TV.

cameldrv

6 hours ago

I wish Apple TV did that. It has a global search feature. My kids push the button on the side of the remote and say what they want to watch. Then they get a screen saying you can rent it for $6.99 or whatever, and I'm thinking "didn't you just watch that the other day, and I didn't have to approve any purchase..." Well of course Netflix doesn't appear in the Apple search results. You can search in their app separately, but it's not integrated into the system. Even if you pay all of the services their $15 a month or whatever, you still can't just watch what you want because something something engagement metrics. It's tiresome.

brookst

8 hours ago

I use IPTV on an AppleTV box. Works great.

anjel

8 hours ago

Not greedy, but delusionally thinking they can still expect the same pre-napster rev levels

NoMoreNicksLeft

8 hours ago

>Build something that integrates all streaming providers and many people will already stop pirating. But even then, people are still expected to pay rent to n different streaming companies. It just doesn’t work. They’re being too greedy.

They're not being "too greedy". No single streaming company makes you pay multiple subscriptions. Just the one. But you like the shows, and lots of companies want to make shows, so you end up liking shows from multiple companies. You're the one that wants multiple subscriptions, you just dislike the cost/inconvenience. Economically speaking, there's no solution here that can satisfy you... the cost to negotiate with all of them and consolidate on a single platform would be extraordinarily expensive, because that's what convenience often is: exorbitantly expensive. There's no game theory strategy here where you get everything you want, where all the production companies get everything they want, and it all happens at modest prices.

Personally, I can't even pretend to imagine what goes through the heads of people who want to having "streaming subscriptions". Even you, you want those too, you just want a single everything-in-it subscription that's cheap. It's the same thing that people complain about with video games with the "why do I have to have internet for a single-player game" gripes. In 1985, if I wanted shows, I did have to subscribe to cable... the infrastructure for shows was absurdly expensive, no individual could have it. Now? The big 12-bay NAS filled with hard drives, and I have copies of movies and television (and music and software and games and books) that my great-nth-grandchildren will be able to enjoy for free (16K ultra-giga-mega-gold-bluray re-re-remasters notwithstanding).

danielbln

8 hours ago

It works for music. Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music. They all have pretty much the full catalog that most people are looking for. In the video world however, we have dozens of providers. Why is that? Also, it used to work like that in the early days of Netflix. But then everyone and their dog wanted their own streaming portal (for video) and here we are.

cameldrv

6 hours ago

Not to mention the amount of stuff that's simply unavailable. I remember fondly the original Netflix where they mailed you DVDs. They really had almost everything. I was watching all kinds of weird art movies and such. Now someone will mention some interesting film to me and I can't find it streaming anywhere except pirate sites.

BriggyDwiggs42

7 hours ago

Yeah it’s pricy to run the services, but it’s especially expensive to buy the rights to things. Watching tv and movies will probably remain as expensive while the legal substructure remains the same. That’s why the streamers asymptomatically approach the business model of cable companies. I’m just gonna pirate because fuck all that.

BigTTYGothGF

9 hours ago

The website doesn't let me view the article unless I agree to accept tracking cookies from "up to 184 partners".

embedding-shape

8 hours ago

Can't believe people don't use adblockers in 2025, together with enabled "anti-annoyance" lists. Or for the ones who used to be able to, but are still using a browser that removed that possibility, that you haven't moved to a different respectful browser yet.

plorg

7 hours ago

I have some pretty aggressive filters on Firefox/uBO, and relaxing my dynamic filters as much as I can conveniently this page still loads blank. It's not worth digging any further to figure out what's getting in the way (I'm assuming something in a static filter list)

rightbyte

5 hours ago

There is a drawback with using adblockers in that it is not as trivial to notice if a site is hostile. It is about the only reason to not use it I can imagine.

embedding-shape

4 hours ago

uBlock Origin does show a little badge indicating how many resources it blocked on the current page. NYT shows a 9 for me right now, HN doesn't show any number at all, FoxNews shows ~30 but keeps growing every 2-3 seconds.

mmanfrin

8 hours ago

Firefox with ublock and I still get the modal.

Fluorescence

8 hours ago

I don't. Have you enabled the "annoyances" lists in the ublock settings? They aren't on by default.

arthurtakeda

8 hours ago

Thanks for sharing that tip, no more annoyances for me!

Farbklex

8 hours ago

The blacklist is easy to circumvent by offering apps with randomly generated package IDs and probably also with randomly generated signing keys per user.

This is of course more effort than just building and signing the app once, but doable.

Of course you can't have any api keys or functionality in the app, that is bound to a specific app id or signing key.

_fat_santa

8 hours ago

Part of me wants to be angry at this change but another part of me is honestly going "ok whatever".

It's not like FireTV is the only game in town. These days you can buy an RPI Zero or next to nothing and program it to basically the same thing as a FireTV with zero restrictions and no possibility for future restrictions.

cheeze

8 hours ago

That sounds like a pain in the ass though. Explaining to my dad how to use Downloader on a FireTV is a lot easier than "hey dude buy a raspberry pi"

bluescrn

7 hours ago

If there's a demand, someone will sell them ready to use, with preloaded microSD card, case, and cables.

ls612

8 hours ago

I mean even among android tv sticks alone there are plenty of no name chinese options out there, these things are dirt cheap to make and are basically commodities.

clueless

7 hours ago

any you would recommend that would compete with a fire-stick 4k Max level of hardware? and is open software, but that would also allow the installation of other media apps, like netflix, HBO max, etc?

Fabricio20

3 hours ago

Xiaomi has a really good one I've been using for years at this point. The 4K one. I'm sure there are more reputable chinese brands with alternatives as well!

ls612

6 hours ago

I’m not in this market I have a plex server so idk.

ronsor

9 hours ago

Protecting the margins of media companies...errr I mean users from spyware-laden illegal streaming apps!

freedomben

8 hours ago

Indeed, the gloves have been off for a while now and the "IP owners" have demonstrated that they're willing to turn our entire lives into digital prisons in the name of stopping "piracy." They've done an incredible job at radicalizing me against IP protections by making clear that there is no acceptable middle ground to them. I don't believe there is any sating them unless/until (and maybe not even then) it's illegal (and a heavy prison sentence) to have a "non-attested" device in your posession. I wish the big tech cos would push back, but unfortunately for us this sort of lock down fully aligns with their own goals for platform control, so it's not going to happen.

GolfPopper

8 hours ago

We're headed for Max Headroom territory, where having an off-switch is a capital offense.

lotsofpulp

8 hours ago

Amazon is one of the media companies.

dmalik

7 hours ago

The ads and recommendations on Firetv sticks has been getting worse and worse. I tried modifying it to use a custom launcher but they keep breaking it.

I think I'm going to just trash it and get a Onn. 4k Pro and install projectivy on it.

sfRattan

5 hours ago

I can happily recommend that option from experience. I've used Walmart's "Onn" Google/Android TV boxes on both 1080p and 4K televisions. They work, and with Projectivity as the launcher you can pretty much rid yourself of any and all advertising placements. If you want to be super thorough, use adb to remove the default launcher once Projectivity is installed and set to default.

I now use an NVIDIA Shield in basically the same way. Projectivity Launcher set to default and advert-buttons on the remote control overridden in software. Jellyfin & SmartTube as primary apps for streaming. VLC & FCast Receiver for random video thrown around the network. LocalSend to easily sideload apps (sadly ending within a few years). Moonlight for game streaming from my PC (via gigabit ethernet). HDHomeRun app as a backup for any Jellyfin failures with live OTA TV streaming. Other apps from Google Play only as absolutely necessary (Google Play TV apps include a number of popular VPNs, along with tailscale).

It's honestly better than my experience with Apple TV 4K. And if Google continues to close down and wall off AOSP, there's already at least one community build of Lineage OS with Android TV for the Raspberry Pi.

donmcronald

6 hours ago

I bought 2 recently. They’re awful. I’ll never buy another. I was going to put Projectivy on them after I saw how nasty the stock launcher has become, but you can’t do a complete replacement.

DrNosferatu

8 hours ago

Exactly which individual apps are they talking about?

mindracer

8 hours ago

How long till they block apps like plex or kodi

pessimizer

8 hours ago

Do they even really have a choice about this? When all your platforms are locked down and proprietary you can't allow piracy apps. I never understood why people buy products like this, but I don't have to understand - some people just don't mind if Amazon or Google own their televisions, or even every sound made in their homes.

And they allowed piracy apps until now, so I was overestimating how fast the frog was boiling anyway. Must have been a good deal while it lasted.

Weird how people are acting like this is a collapse: everything was always locked down until FOSS alternatives came to free you. Megacorps invited you back by letting you pirate a bit, for a while, and now that the alternatives have been adequately starved it's time to get in line again.

Why in the hell would Amazon let you pirate the things it sells (rents?), forever? I think a lot of people got caught up in a free promotion handing out samples of a zero-marginal cost product. It didn't cost them anything to pretend like you were going to have any real control over their completely controlled device.

exe34

8 hours ago

I gave up on my Chromecast when Google broke it with an update. I'm never going to buy a single use computer again anyway. I won't buy anything with DRM, thanks.

rpdillon

7 hours ago

> blacklist maintained by the anti-piracy coalition ACE (Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment)

Can we see what's on the blacklist? I haven't been able to find it despite searching everywhere.

NoSalt

7 hours ago

And, another use for a RaspberryPi.