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OpenSubtitles.org is shutting down it's previous API. Now only authenticated access allowed.
(blog.opensubtitles.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
744 points (96.2% liked)
Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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Lost me right here. Personally I'm not ever going to pay for a service where the work done by volunteer users, for free, is filling some random person's pockets. An argument can't even be made a la RedHat here - there's literally no value being added to the volunteers' work by OpenSubtitles...
OpenSubtitles literally has pulled a shXtter here IMO
What about infrastructure costs? Are you comfortable making someone else pay for your access? What about the design and implementation of the API? Should all software be free?
Please note that I’m not trying to support this decision at all. I personally feel like API access is similar to SSO for enterprise stuff (check out sso.tax). I also feel like there should be some level of compensation and even profit so people can focus on building stuff like this. It’s really hard to define what that is, especially without transparent costs, which I don’t believe OpenSubtitles shares? Also they use super predatory ads so I don’t think they have any high ground to even suggest what I’m talking about.
They host incredibly tiny text files. We are talking in the single KB range. Even serving millions of these a day is minor load to current hosting environments.
Most modern webpages load the equivalent of 1000s of subtitles to every user on every page load, including small sites like personal blogs.
I would be surprised if their hosting costs were even in the $1000s/month instead of $100s.
Thats the likely reason they don't share the costs. It's that cheap to run. Even asking for donations might be pushing it. Demanding payment? Bullshit.
I'm paying for the fact it's popular with submitters so has the most subs available (this could change with the recent announcement, we'll see) and an API that allows automated download of subtitles including matching of the scene file that is being played, supported by Jellyfin/Plex.
Is there another, free, as popular resource with an API? If so, please share.
No work? They host, maintain and provide access to a massive catalogue of subtitles providing metadata needed for matching media to subs and up until recently we're giving free access to everyone. Might I suggest if you care about your wife's access to subtitled movies this much that maybe you should buy the 10 euro per year subscription for her to help keep the platform alive? Alternatively you can find a subtitles group that does all this for free and choose to solely download their subs (also I assume donating to them since you're so appreciative of their work).
He can put that subscription right up there with his Youtube Premium