I hope Stripe developers didn't write this code. I got the movie for free, jesus ... http://imgur.com/a/hf8FZ - and I didn't get a job after my interview with Stripe earlier this year.
1) Open up the chrome developer tools
2) On the sources tab, set a breakpoint @ line 69, the one saying "if ( response == 'lacey' ) {"
3) Reload the page
4) Open the console tab, type response = 'whatever'
5) Go back to the sources tab and hit the Play button
6) Enjoy movie
Anyone feel like this is Sony testing The Internet on how we behave if they give us nice things, like streaming movies online right when they are released without DRM?
It must've been broken on the server too then? I call BS...
The way stripe checkout works, that token is passed to your server and you do an API request to stripe with the token. The token merely represents your card. The charge is done on the server.
I'll take the downvote rather than pile-on with criticism that is almost certainly misplaced. I find it very unlikely the GP downloaded the movie for free. If i'm wrong, I'll gladly retract, but the presence of the test key in the comments is hardly an indication that it'll work on the server.
That you posted this comment is a good indicator that Stripe made the right decision not to hire you. It shows a lack of professionalism, judgment, maturity, etc.
The logistics of doing an unplanned online launch are pretty large, and launching in lots of different markets adds a lot of complexity (legal issues, customer support issues in multiple languages, etc.). I'm surprised they managed to launch in the US in time for Christmas.
It's disappointing it isn't also launching internationally, but I'm optimistic - if this makes lots of money, then it will prove that it makes sense to launch new movies online. Then in the future we may see more movies launch like this, and with more preparation time, hopefully also internationally.
Most people, even outside the US, will want to see the movie at the same time, to engage in online discussion about the movie.
If they can't buy it, they will find another ways.
Does anyone else find it funny that Google will work with Sony to sell this movie, but the hacked emails reveal how Sony is going after Google (Project Goliath) to get them to censor search results? Strange bedfellows...
I'm not in the US, will torrent for sure just to make a statement. I support online releases but this is not an online release, there are no borders on the internet.
But this is progress at least. We should support progress in this area, in the hope hat it encourages these companies to be more accepting and open im with future releases
It's great that they're making progress, but by supporting them in the way they are currently attempting to segregate the Internet now, we will lose future debates about the border-less Internet.
Compromise is appropriate in many places, but I do not think this is one of them. We should make sure they know why we're not supporting their current move, but I don't think we should capitulate the border-less Internet.
Eh. It takes more effort to regionally lock something on the Internet than not. Sony makes this sound like they'll go to every effort eventually to release this movie across the globe - doing that would require so much less effort than they're currently expending. When you say "wait" you're asking people to assume Sony will get around to considering them equal members of the Internet society. Or they can just assert that power themselves.
As much as I can't wait to see the movie (because I'm a fan of absurdist comedy) I'm tired of this conversation. Release it or don't, everyone who wants to see it will. Release it globally or don't, but quit acting like it takes some act of heroism to release a movie outside the U.S.
> Eh. It takes more effort to regionally lock something on the Internet than not.
Not necessarily.
To properly allow your product to be sold in multiple international markets, you need to have customer support in the local languages. You need to support the popular local payment systems. You need localized fraud detection (risks differ by area). You also need to comply with local laws (copyright law differs by country, and rights to show movies may need to be negotiated separately).
It's true that you can just put something on YouTube for free and forget about it, and in that case, locking it to one region is just being mean. But when launching a paid and supported product, it's just not that easy.
edit: you also need subtitles or dubbing in some areas
Nonsense. You need that stuff for localized releases. Allowing worldwide purchase of the English/US version (take it or leave it) is perfectly possible and is easier.
Did you somehow miss how software or SaaS is sold these days? Worldwide?
The real reason is probably something mentioned elsewhere here: distribution contracts already in place.
edit: but I realize you do make a fair point, just being on YouTube means that it removes some of the technical difficulties in launching in multiple countries. It still leaves a lot of others, though.
I agree with everything you say - but it takes nothing away from my original point. The OP stated that he had 'no choice' but to pirate the movie. He does have a choice. He can wait for them to make it available to him - the cinema release was originally US only anyway. Or his other option is just to not watch it. I'm personally tired of the argument 'I had no option to pirate it'. It's rubbish. It's simply somebody's way of reliving themselves of any guilt or feeling of wrong doing from pirating. Pirate if I you want, just don't make bullshit excuses for it.
That said, I see pirating in this context as civil disobedience. It's not a new concept, and is used all the time to convey that the status quo is unacceptable to society at large.
There is the "choice" to accept things as they are, whether or not you believe them to be good and proper. Or you can break the law on purpose, with purpose, with intent to disobey laws and rules that you see as counter to the greater good.
Remember, this is copyright law we're talking about. Pirating is not thievery, and I personally see pirating in places where content is unavailable to be in the same wheel house as pirating as a voice against the absurdity of insanely extended copyright laws.
I'm highly conflicted on copyright law. I believe if they've made a movie they have the right to distribute it in whatever countries they want, whenever they want. They've put this together pretty damn quick too, I think they deserve a break. In fact they're hoping to expand the available countries to at least Canada in a day or two [1]. They probably already have distribution deals in place around the world (let's not forget the movie was only getting a US cinema release tomorrow originally) and those are probably limiting the VOD options.
As for copyright in general - extended copyright laws are nuts. I personally think it's fair for someone to have copyright until they die (no passing it on to relatives etc.). Also, it's a unpopular opinion here, but I consider piracy theft. And I'm not saying that to be morally superior - I've pirated lots of stuff but I consider it theft and wrong.
That's a pretty bad option, and reinforces the notion that non-US countries are second-class citizens when it comes to content, which is a big part of why piracy is popular in other countries.
Nobody wants to be treated as second class just because of where they were born. If history had happened the other way around, with the Internet first and Hollywood just now trying to introduce region-locked distribution, they would be decried as hideously insensitive, possibly racist. I don't blame anyone for wanting the same access at the same time we get it in region 1.
Sony Pictures Entertainment probably no longer has sole control over distribution elsewhere in the world. This close to the original planned release date, they likely have deals in place for nearly every other region, and thus partners to work with to arrange for release.
In fact, it's entirely possible that those deals were in place before filming even began, and some money may have changed hands at that time, helping to finance the film.
In short, there's almost certainly a partner of Sony in other countries that Sony has obligations to. Sony can't just alter those deals at will like it can alter its own plans in North America.
I just bought it through Google Play with the expectations of being able to watch it offline (since Internet while traveling is hard to find!). Turns out that, if I want to watch it offline, I have to either download it to one of my Android devices or my Chromebook. I'm downloading it to my Chromebook now, but it's a damn shame I can't download it to something that actually has a decent screen.
Why? Paying to movie producing companies means more DRM schemes, more filesharing restrictions and more copyright lobbying. To protect freedom of speech and weaken copyright regulations we need Hollywood to die from starvation.
Kernel is one of the companies putting this release together. They put up the redirect temporarily; about to put a more informative placeholder until the 10a PT launch.
What is kernel.com? The website doesn't explain, and I can't find anything online talking about them. (It's hard to search because of the similarity to kernel.org perhaps.)
You can download this as a DRM-free file with a simple curl command. Most people probably wouldn't bother, however, because Stripe makes it so easy to just watch directly your browser, no need to go through the hassle of downloading anything or needing the hard drive space.
This is a great example of content providers finally beating piracy by providing a simpler method of content distribution. I hope more movies come out like this.
I'd like to agree with you, but the easier than pirating part of your comment only seems to apply if you're from the US (correct me, if it's available in other countries). I'd really like to pay, but it seems I have to resort to other sources.
Besides other, admittedly far from mainstream movies did this a lot better - "Sleepwalk with me" or last years highly praised "Computer Chess" offered a DRM-free, 1080p download and a streaming option, both without region-lock and for a reasonable price. Still an exception unfortunately.
I totally agree with you that this is far from perfect. It's just in one market, and could be more convenient even there. But, the impressive thing is they scrambled to do this in just a few days - it's amazing anything has been launched at all!
I suspect they really wanted as much of a launch as possible by Christmas, for symbolic reasons. (I think that was the original intended release date?). Kudos to them for managing to achieve a fairly significant launch.
I don't see how providing this to a tiny minority on a global network is 'beating piracy' at all. I'm outside the US and happy to pay to watch. I even have a US credit card ready. What are my options now?
lol! Am I the only one trying to understand why Stripe felt reason to give moralist post? "We’re proud to work with organizations defending digital freedoms such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Freedom of the Press Foundation ... We don’t always endorse what businesses sell through Stripe, but" I mean props, but are you doing this because you figured out the vibe on the internet is that Sony is an souless and shallow company or is it you don't want N.K.'s elite hackers to get an idea you're gun-ho-america on this release and target you?
This is the beginning of the new Internet - one where you can watch a mainstream movie from mainstream producers, and PAY FOR IT in a fashion that doesn't make you feel like a criminal.
Actually most critics are singing its praises. Even the hardcore art house high nosed critics are.
Some of the praise is just because they use the dictators name, willingly. This is actually rather new. Political Correctness dictates you don't. Yes we all knew Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" was about Hitler, but he didn't use the name. Most studios won't do this, its rather bold and new to do that. The only people who really have are SNL, and South Park -esque shows. Not internationally screening studio movies.
As David Edelstein said, "Its a low brow comedy, a political bold, low brow comedy. Laugh and have fun."
> Some of the praise is just because they use the dictators name, willingly. This is actually rather new. Political Correctness dictates you don't. Yes we all knew Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" was about Hitler, but he didn't use the name.
Fair point. For some more context, though, The Great Dictator came out in 1940 - almost at the peak of Hitler's power. North Korea today is worrying, but nowhere near the status Germany had in 1940. It's therefore more impressive that Chaplin was willing to parody Hitler as he did, even with a fake name and fake country.
I just re-watched The Great Dictator a few days ago. It's amazingly funny even today, holds up great.
"It's just stupid enough that some things are funny. Sadly, it isn't smart enough to realize that other things aren't terribly funny and that an opportunity was lost here."
"The remarkably dismal quality is emblematic of the mind-set that brought the movie, and its attendant crises, into being."
I'm guessing "Stars Episode III" is Star Wars Episode III? As far as I can see they give Star Wars III 80% and The Shining 92% which is more like a 12% difference by my calculation. The tomatometer is just an indication of whether the critics liked the movie really. The Shining gets 4/5 from audience while SW III gets 3.1/5 which I'd translate as pretty good and mediocre respectively. Probably not to far off.
The Interview is looking pretty mediocre from the reviews but I look forward to seeing it anyway.
"Within hours of it being uploaded, the film had been viewed more than 10,000 times. The majority of viewers gave it a 'thumbs up' on Youtube, with around 800 giving it a poor review."
Stripe works by having pages invoke their "stripe.js" within the host page. The risk of mixing payment processing input into a general site is that anything that can access the DOM can patch "stripe.js" and
tap the credit card data. Since this page is very likely to be attacked, that's a big risk here.
The page uses several off-site Javascript files. Attacks through the CDN that distributes "bootstrap.js", for example, might work.
In 2015, payment card requirements are tightening up. Sites which use third party processors like Stripe will probably have to put credit card entry into an iframe which comes directly from the third party processor. This makes the attack surface smaller.
Yes, it does. But that iframe is dynamically invoked by JavaScript executing in the parent page. The user can't easily see that the popup is more secure than the background page.
> Online freedom isn’t automatic, and it’s only through active effort that the internet will stay an open platform for creativity and innovation. We take our role seriously.
It redirects to kernel.com on the website they link to, and there is no reference of The Interview. Where have I made a wrong turn, or is everyone else seeing what I am?
I saw that, but just wasn't sure about that Kernel site. Had seen nothing about it, and was wary it may be phishing or something. Paranoid, I guess. Thanks.
Fair enough. A temp page just went up and it already seems slammed. But this was just announced this morning, so I wouldn't be surprised if everyone is throwing this together right now.
On a side note, I'll be really interested to see site activity statistics if they ever become available.
Programming is popular now, so I guess it follows that the pop-gobbling consumerists that ingest propaganda hourly would start overrunning the hacker types. How I miss the pre-2003 slashdot type commentators and hackers in general.
If another country made a movie about Obama being assassinated the US would be bombing them. No matter how crazy a current world leader is, I think it's an unwritten law not to depict their assassination.
I agree that it's unlikely the hack itself was a PR stunt, but you have to admit the subsequent handling of the hack was a PR stunt in which even the US Government seemed to be in on.
This north korea hacking looks more and more like a marketing PR scam... Or at least something very opportunisticly white washing for the company involved in privacy leaking and censorship.
