Netflix Price Hikes and Anime Copyright Issues

oil things around where I live lots of them and

The The boys asked me one day what they were

big mistake So I came up with this elaborate

story I was bored and I said they're cow launchers

Because they look like the the pedestal where

a space shuttle launches I told them they were

cow launchers and the kids You know, I was explaining

they're like well, how does it and I was I was

going I had him going for like ten minutes Before

I finally felt bad and I said something but I

was like, you know, so they they stick the cow

they they you know Get them on a platform And

then you ever hear that the cow jumped over the

moon and he's like and they're like, yeah And

and I says well, that's how they do it. They

launched them to me so So the boys are just like

eating this crap up and I know it's like bull

and so I'm just going back with it and then I

tell them that you know, they're their cow launchers

and I came up with this whole like background

story of it and everything else and so I Told

them no, I'm just kidding. It's you know, it's

actually for oil. There's nothing to do with

cows and so now Whenever we go past one Much

to Mary's irritation. They say cow launcher and

they yell and point And then she just grins it

gives me this dirty look and then just like the

kids drop it I drop it but it's still funny because

they call it a cow launcher. That's hilarious

What a gullible What an in cow poop You are tuned

in to Steve Megatron on alter Giggles Hello and

welcome to Altered geek. I'm your host Steve

Megatron and joining me on this adventure into

geekdom is TFG1 Mike. Hello. Hello. So this is

episode 399. You're one away from 400. Yay, I

like 400. And tonight we've got a bunch of stories

here. Just some fun sort of things, and then

the last story is fun, but it's more of, hey,

yay, we won, kind of thing. Again, I mentioned

in the most recent episode of GCR how I have

the Google feed thing on my Pixel 6 Pro, and

I think this is how I found this story. This

is from comicbook .com. Highway Patrol mistakenly

sent out Batman and Joker themed alert message

I'm sorry, but if I if I got this I would be

like Blast the chokers on the loose even though

it's the wrong Joker. Yeah This was from January

20th of this year 2022 this was in Missouri And

I'm gonna read this, folks, because I have to.

Some Missouri residents were very confused when

they got an alert about Batman and the Joker

recently. On the 18th of January, the Highway

Patrol for the state sent out a push notification

that it concerned a purple and green 1978 Dodge

3 ,700 GT. Tim Burton fans will recognize this

is the car that the Joker drove in the 1989 movie.

Also curious was the mention of Gotham City in

the alert. Twitter users began to Google and

see if there really was a city within the same

name as the DC Comics location. When nothing

lined up, most people assumed that it was a false

alarm and had a quick laugh. Well, the Missouri

Highway Patrol actually put out a statement to

clarify what went wrong. It would seem as though

it was a test of the alert system and someone

checked the wrong box in the software. There

may be skullduggery ahead. The fact that someone

thought to put that in there was funny. Oh My

god, yeah, it's I'm looking at the Twitter post.

This was meant to be a test message. There was

no alert. Oh Man, that's hilarious And most everybody

pays for streaming these days folks and once

again Netflix is raising their prices on all

US plans Gee How many nice of them? You know

everybody else is coming out with their own streaming

service, and then what do they do continue to

raise prices? Because honestly there isn't enough

choices out there like yeah, really I don't understand

their reasoning For I mean I get it because it

costs a lot of money to run a streaming service

and all that bandwidth and the internet and everything

else but the Part of it is like I don't give

a rip about 4k to be honest. I really do so for

the extra money I I'm like HD is plenty fine

for me. Yeah, there's also the fact that They

limit, you know, I think the lower tier they

the standard one they lower it so you can only

use two devices to download content to Whereas

if you have the higher one you can do four. Yeah

Nice just because my kids my wife and myself.

It would be nice to have it. But yeah Different

situation. Yeah. I yeah, it's mine is for screeners

and stuff like that Yes, I use it for other stuff

for review as we we find things to review on

Various animated shows Speaking of which, we

actually do. March 3rd, 2022, Season 2 of the

CGI He -Man and the Masters of the Universe will

hit Netflix. So this is coming from The Verge

and they basically outlined the price hikes since

2011. In 2011, the only thing they had was the

standard HD two -screen plan and it was $7 .99.

I remember I had this plan. At some point when

Karen and I got together or whatever else, we

switched over to her Netflix as a family plan

thing. So now that she's no longer here, I switched

back to mine because I don't want to be using

a dead person's Netflix account. That just...

no. So anyway... They go through these these

things of the plans here starting in 2014 so

from 2014 to From April of 2014 to January of

2022. There was a basic no HD one screen plan

Started at 799 went up to 899 and then it is

now 999 in January of 2022 The plan that I've

had my whole Netflix time went from 799 to 899

$9 .99, $10 .99, $12 .99, $13 .99, and it is

now $15 .49. Why it's $15 .49 is beyond me. And

then the premium 4K four screen plan was not

available in 2011. In 2013 is when it started

at $11 .99. It went up in 2017 to $13 .99. In

2019 to $15 .99. Last year it went up to $17

.99 and now this year it's $19 .99. Now look,

if you want the 4K thing and you have four screens

and you have four different people in your family

that are all gonna wanna watch different crap

and they all want that 4K experience and they

all have 4K TVs in their bedrooms, fine, great,

it's worth it. It's just me. Watching on my TV

in the in the bedroom. I may watch it on my phone

half the time I'm watching it on my computer.

So I think I am on the Standard HD 2 screen at

1549 It is what it is folks You and I have talked

about this before I mean the Well, there's gonna

come a point where the streaming market's gonna

crash at some point because there's It's it's

different than cable in the sense that Yes, you

can continually add all of the shows that you

want to watch and yes, they're all on demand

and you know granted I'm a little peeved with

some of them because they're missing certain

shows that are on should be on their service

that they own the rights to and yeah, so Yeah,

so they're to that to that excuse like I I don't

know what their excuses for that However, that

being said, I have a lot of issues with the variety

of services being out there, just because you've

got your HBO, you've got your Paramount, you've

got your Netflix, your Hulu, your Disney. There's

so many of them. There's so many of them that

some of them You know NBC, I at least have to

give them props because they have a lot of their

stuff for free Yeah with ads Yeah, so you're

still what it's like watching cable. Okay, I

can sit through the ads like it's you know, just

like to be I can watch that I I can get past

the ads. Yeah, what I can't get past is the fact

that they're all like gatekeeping. Yeah You're

an expedited customer, right? Yes, so am I so

the Peacock whatever it's supposed to come with

it and it does the NBC app thing and You know,

that's fine. Like you just said that's fine.

If it comes at no additional cost I don't mind

doing the ads but if I am paying for a service

The reason the whole reason why I'm paying for

it is ad free content I hope this pops up again

soon, but I had had a YouTube premium perk from

my Google Play Store thing or whatever. And I

got YouTube premium for three months for free

to try out home -like YouTube without ads. This

is amazing. How much does this cost? It's like

$11 .99 a month or something or whatever it is.

I don't know. I'm not looking at it right at

the top of my head. Recently, they offered me

something where it was like, you can pay this

or you can pay this yearly. Right now, where

I am with my streaming, if I can get all of my

streaming stuff for a yearly cost and I only

have to pay for it once a year, that's where

I am. I have no interest in any cable packages

whatsoever. I already switched my Disney Plus.

Subscription over to a year, so I'm gonna get

charged for that until November December of this

year again I wish Netflix and Hulu had yearly

they don't it sucks Actually what sucks about

Hulu is they have it on the ad Version of it,

but they don't have it for the ad free version,

which makes no damn sense. I Don't know It's

a whole thing. We're always going to be talking

about this because it's always changing. It's

always morphing into something and whatever else.

I guess you just get to pick the services you

want and to hell with the rest of them. And then

over on Kotaku, YouTuber hit with ungodly number

of anime copyright strikes gets a win for everyone.

You want to talk about this? Because you brought

this one to us. Well, I found this I'd watch

this when this originally happened mm -hmm this

particular article about the youtuber that got

hit with the Like 150 copyright strikes right

by Toey animation and the guy reviews anime right

and You know, he would show clips of it or he'd

show, you know, just brief, you know to discuss

it and kind of converse about it and he would

just Basically review it you know like any of

us do right and because the rules over in that

side of the world are a little bit different

on their copyright. Yeah as opposed to here yeah

Joey animation decided to. Basically they they

game the system because there's no possible way

like it for the amount of time like they were

like instantly 150. Copyright strikes all of

the videos were taken down. They use some kind

of service to kind of pull it off right and so

So anyways It left him in this weird legal battle

and the fact that you know This is how he makes

his living of you know doing the reviews and

he's like I you know if these don't get brought

back up I'm either a never going to do stuff

for them again. He says or B You know, I'm just

gonna retire completely because it would ruin

him those videos Do you know how long it takes

to get an appeal? A long time it's 30. It's like

he said it would take him over like 38 years.

Oh Jesus to appeal all of the videos or something

close to that and so they You know the the animation

company contacted YouTube Directly upping those

150 strikes to full takedown notices before Jesus

before emailing him And so You know he So basically

he got a hold of somebody higher up in YouTube

and you know They had requested for YouTube not

to block his content, but to completely delete

it off his channel which would result in the

termination of his account and so You know YouTube

honored the request to, you know, they decided

not to honor Toey's removal request because that

would violate the platform's very use copyright

policy. Instead, YouTube asked the animation

studio to provide further justification for his

channel receiving the takedown notices. But rather

than providing YouTube with evidence, Toei Animation

used the website's automated reporting tools

to manually claim and block all those videos.

There was basically a lot of phone tag between

Toei, the Japanese YouTube team, the American

YouTube team, the guy from the YouTube channel,

and then his contact. Regarding the situation,

and then Toei ended up providing a new list of

86 videos of the original 150. or so that the

company deemed should not remain on YouTube.

There was a lot of back and forth anyways. Japan's

copyright law is a little bit less robust in

their interpretation of fair use. If they were

to have fought it, it would have probably lost,

but that's where YouTube's new legal innovation

comes in that they created specifically because

of this case. They apologize that the whole situation

happened in the first place, which is good for

this guy. He's still a little burned out, but

understandably. Basically, YouTube's new copyright

rule allows owners like Toei to have videos removed

from, say, Japan's YouTube site, but said videos

will remain up in other territories as long as

they fall under the country's fair use policies.

In other words, it's up to the individual country's

fair use policies. Because the United States

has such a high use of fair use, basically it

allows them to stay up. To have videos removed

from the places with more allowances for fair

use, companies would have to argue their cases

following the copyright laws of those territories.

If if they got but heard about it, you know toeing

animation can have it removed from the chip Japanese

YouTube but it would stay up around the rest

of the world which honestly isn't that bad of

a deal it will basically also affect this new

fair use thing will fare well for impacting small

content creators as well. Yeah, I'm happy that

this is the first instance that YouTube is applying

the rule to its copyright policy and that they're

finally kind of learning and combating all of

this because it's just crappy for them to do

that. Paramount tried doing that to me a number

of years ago. When I first started Altered Geek

as a video show, and then I started doing a little

bit of a little bit of conversation on the YouTube

channel, just basically doing like the the three

minute or a 10 minute blitz, but doing like just

top three. Yeah, pick the week. And I talked

about I think it was Star Trek four and I used

I used official promo images released by the

company that were meant for for news and press

purposes. Oh. And I even had cited them and they

still flagged my video with a takedown and gave

me a strike and I emailed them back very politely

and I was like, hey, you know, it's fine. You

know, you want to strike me for using a picture

of a movie that had been out for three years.

Jesus. And and I was like, you know, it's fine.

I won't just won't review. anything that comes

from your company ever again. And I've been reviewing

stuff from your company for years and I'm a huge

Trek fan, but you know, you do you. And they

immediately reverse the strike and apologize.

And that was the end of it. Wow. Yeah, I don't.

OK, so. I don't know, fair use is fair use. It

is what it is. But as we've talked about on this

show and on other shows recently, we've learned

over the last 13, 14, 15 years that, you know,

little bits, you know, it's like super shredder

at the end of TMNT 2. In smaller doses through

future mutants, you know, kind of thing, like

being copyright stricken for a picture. That's...

That's a head scratcher. That's just yeah crazy

I don't know this this is that's as bad as people

that you know, they name their podcast and don't

do the research True and the funny thing is is

that you know I go on YouTube and I subscribe

to various things and I watch various things

like I And I'm not trying to call these people

out. But you know Because I don't do much video

gaming anymore. I Like watching playthroughs

How in the hell do any of these damn video game

companies not strike down some of these YouTubers

who do, like, just straight playthroughs? Like,

they're, like, okay, so recently I've been on

a Metal Gear Solid kick, so I watched some, I

watched this channel called Long Play Archive,

I believe it is, and whomever the person, like,

they're not doing commentary on it, they're just

playing the game and just streaming it, you know,

kind of thing. I found out recently because I

haven't had, I mean, I had a Samsung Galaxy S9

before I upgraded, but with the Google Pixel

6 Pro, and I think I mentioned this on one of

our other episodes of Altered Geek, if I wanted

to stream me playing Minion Rush, I could do

so to YouTube. Okay? Am I going to do that? No,

probably not. I mean, whatever, but like, I see

all these Let's Plays and... and long plays of

just people playing the game all the way through.

And hey, I'm glad I can watch that stuff. That's

great. At the same time, I'm thinking to myself,

I'm glad that they aren't getting copyright stricken,

but how the hell are they not getting copyright

stricken? Because they're streaming a video game.

I don't understand that whole aspect of it. So

if somebody is listening to the sound of my voice,

they could tell me why that is. Hey, great. You

know, I'm glad that they can still do it. But

yeah, I mean It's like we talked about last time

about the the other the the twitch chick That

got struck or got banned from twitch for streaming

some anime or something Yeah, I think it was

it might have even been something from the same

company, which wouldn't surprise me probably

there I Think it was avatar from Nickelodeon.

But anyway, yeah, that was what it was. But anyway,

it's either way It's just it's crappy and like

poor practice like oh, yeah, let's take them

down instead of just like hey How about we have

a conversation? Yeah be decent human beings talk

to each other and say hey, you know is there

something that we can work out between the two

of us instead of you know creating this dynamic

where it's basically your your burning bridges

because no matter how how you You shake it the

company is gonna look worse than the person doing

the deed. Yeah, I Mean I can look on my own YouTube

channel right now and I can tell you that I have

I'm surprised I have this many but I have oh

I lost a subscriber I wonder who unsubscribed

I at the time before I checked it just now I

had 671 subscribers. I've only been doing YouTube

content since somewhere in 2009 and it's Started

out doing it as like hey, this is what I got

today or this is what I got this week and it

was like DVDs I was buying or whatever or I've

done some shout factory video reviews or whatever

but most of the content that is on my YouTube

channel is like Audio stuff from some of our

old pod like I think I have all five or six parts

of the top 100 animated series on there that

kind of thing I have 670 subscribers. I don't

meet the requirements for monetization anymore

because they've updated it in the last x number

of years, whatever. I don't care. So I'm not

getting, like, I'm not taking anything away from

anybody if I stream a game. Like, I'm not getting

paid by YouTube for streaming Minion Rush kind

of thing. Again, not that I'm going to do that,

but I'm saying, like, I am such a small potato

why would somebody want to come after me kind

of thing and most of the bigger potatoes or most

of the bigger people on YouTube normally they

will go through proper channel like you know

insert tech youtuber here and they have a specific

intro with specific music and a whole video layout

whatever else well I'm sure they go to that person

and say hey can I use this song in my video and

you'll get You know what I mean? Like, it's a

reciprocal thing. So, like, you know, I don't

know, man. It just... YouTube's... I'm glad that

this guy won his thing. That's awesome. That's

great for all of us. But it's always just been...

This is why I prefer audio podcasting. I don't

need to... Well, and it's flaky there, too. Well,

I mean, yeah, it is. But, you know, in general...

Just the production of audio podcasting versus

video production is yeah Anything else we want

to bring up Hmm anything else strike your fancy

let me step over to my Google feed Marvel reals

new spider -man logo representing all three spider

-men. Okay. Oh That is kind of cool what it's

not the the spider -man logo thing. I'll have

to send it to you in Facebook It's representing

all of the Marvel movie spiders Yeah, yeah I

Don't know about you, but and I know I haven't

talked about it on here. Uh -huh at this point.

I loved No, yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. I cannot

wait to review the spider films I've actually

rewatched all of them recently because of it.

Well, I asked somebody on I asked on Twitter

I didn't ask somebody specifically. I just put

a general tweet in the general Facebook post

out there What in the hell is the difference

between? Spider -man 2 and spider -man 2 .1 and

most people said it's like additional footage,

it's this, it's that, it's whatever, and I looked

it up myself. So Spider -Man 2 .1, an extended

cut of the film entitled Spider -Man 2 .1 was

released April 17, 2007. The cut includes eight

minutes of new footage with new special features

not included in the original release, as well

as a sneak preview of the then -upcoming Spider

-Man 3. So we are going to be reviewing the Raimi

Trilogy the amazing films and the Non slash MCU

movies. I don't know how to quantify the The

the Garfield films basically we're gonna do one

podcast episode per actor McGuire Garfield Garfield

and Holland and Holland over on studio 2009 because

I wanted to see like For me, half the time how

I get some of these movies is I will purchase

them on Voodoo because I have a Voodoo account

and it's just easy for me to do that. And Voodoo

most of the time does bundles, so you don't have

to buy each individual movie, you just pay for

one thing and you get three, four, five, whatever

it is. Well, the Voodoo bundle has Spider -Man,

Spider -Man 2, 2 .1 and 3, and I'm like, wait

a minute, what the frag is the difference? So

probably when we go and do the the rainy films,

we're probably going to go off the Spider -Man

2 .1 version of Spider -Man 2 because it has

all the extra stuff. And just because I think

it's a little cooler. So, yeah. Yeah, that's

coming up over on Studio 2009 later this year.

God, it has been 20 years. May 3rd of this year

to be 20 years since I was in the theater all

day long. I saw Spider -Man five times the day

it came out. I just sat in the theater and just

waited for them to restart the movie. There was

a lot going on back in 2002, folks. Oh, man.

So good. So good anything else you want to bring

up sir, I Don't think so. Yeah, I think that's

about it So if you guys have something that you

would like to hear on a future episode of altered

geek, let us know Tune in next time on episode

400 where hopefully we'll have something exciting

and something fun to discuss and I would like

to have listener feedback and possibly some some

listener suggestions to kind of go over, but

you can email us feedback at geekcastradio .com.

You can find us on the Twitter's myself at scp21

or at Steve Phillips VO and yourself, sir. I'm

at TF2 and Mike. You can also follow at GeekCastRadio

for the network and at AlteredGeek for the show.

So until next time, we've been Steve Megatron

and TF2 and Mike. Get altered, get geeky with

the AlteredGeeks. I don't know why I said it

that way. I'm losing brain cells. It's backwards

day. Block it out and power on through.