[HN Gopher] The deception of "buying" digital movies ___________________________________________________________________ The deception of "buying" digital movies Author : worldofmatthew Score : 485 points Date : 2022-10-04 11:05 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (worldofmatthew.com) (TXT) w3m dump (worldofmatthew.com) | keb_ wrote: | If I can't buy a movie or album DRM-free, I won't buy them at | all. This is an area where piracy ironically offers a better | experience than the legitimate route. | Hnrobert42 wrote: | Is this a surprise to anyone? I'm not being cynical. I thought | this was well known. Is it not? | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | There's been a lot of discussion about this, recently. | | I think that some form of persistent medium might be useful, but | the comparisons between, say, CDs, and digital music files, isn't | really a "fair" one. | | One of the biggest things about _any_ physical media; whether it | be vinyl record, CD, or even an SD card, is that the media has a | _finite lifetime_. It may be a _long_ lifetime, but the clock is | ticking. | | When we buy a CD, we aren't buying the music. We're buying the | physical media on which the music has been placed. _Tick-tick- | tick..._ Eventually, the CD will die. At that point, we can 't | expect the music store to give us another CD for free. We have to | buy it again. | | I grew up in the age of vinyl. I brought the same album over, | frequently, because the records wore out. I never even thought | about it. | | I could record the album on tape, and have a somewhat longer- | lasting copy of the music, but that, too, would eventually die. I | would often record the album, as soon as I got it, then play the | tape, thereafter. It prolonged the life of the album. | | If we buy digital art (music, photographs, movies, TV shows, | etc.), we can do so in physical media (a locked DVD, for | instance), or as direct digital, "virtual" media (streaming, | downloading, etc.). | | The first (DVD) can be copied, like I used to copy records, but | the second (downloading, as opposed to streaming), could, in | theory, save a full-quality copy of the art, in perpetuity. If | you got it in a thumb drive, or SD card, then the media would | have a finite lifetime, but the difference between that media, | and, say, a CD, is that the copy would be direct digital-to- | digital (I think most CD copies, these days, are also "pure | digital"). That A/D conversion introduces some "lossiness," that | makes the copy ever so slightly (or, in the case of cassette | tapes, a lot more than "slightly") lesser in quality than the | original. | | It's not quite as black-and-white as people on either side like | to make it. | | For the record, I am not a fan of the ability to "take away" art | that may be on physical media in the possession of a customer (as | opposed to blocking access to art on some kind of external media, | under the control of the publisher). | | Things like Kindles and iPads are a sort of "grey area," where | the device is the media, as opposed to a player for media that is | introduced, externally. | | I have no solution, but I'm not a fan of the extremist, over- | simplified rhetoric that either side uses. | thinkingkong wrote: | Buy pricing also acts as an anchor vs the other options. This | happens a lot in pricing; something seems excessively costly just | to make the option next to it seem reasonable. Ski resorts do | this all the time. The daily lift rate at Whistler in Canada is | around 200CAD but a seasons ticket is 1700. It makes the seasons | pass seem, almost reasonable. | youdontsayitno wrote: | digital artifacts do not play well with capitalism as it is. | something has to be done. | | I refuse to watch what could have been vanish...(e.g. napster, | megaupload, what.cd and those kinds of complete medial-cultural | archives). Heck, we're going the opposite direction, libraries | are starting to get mud slung. There are too many incentives to | shift that public perception, into libraries being bad; just a | couple more generations. | | sure, people whose job is to make this expensive productions | involving lots of people need to earn a living somehow... it's an | open problem but we need to look beyond capitalism to find an | answer acceptable to all people, both those who come up with the | ideas (who when coming up with them are greatly benefited by open | access to all culture) and those living off the rent of the | produced cultural artifact. | UltraViolence wrote: | There's always BitTorrent. | thom_ wrote: | If you pay a twice the rental cost and watch the movie a dozen | times, that's your moneys worth. Nobody wants to hold onto a DVD | for 20 years to rewatch an old movie again and again and again | and pass it onto their grandkids. This is just ridiculous, | streaming movies is absolutely the future. The days of 50tb drive | arrays with every Hollywood movie are over not because of a new | world order but because the time trade off and all that effort | just isn't worth the $4 to sit and enjoy the movie in one of your | finite days on Earth | IYasha wrote: | This is the "you will own nothing" part I was telling people | about for years. They still love their Steamy pile of games. | | > than buying the movie | | it's "then". probably. :) | efitz wrote: | The anecdote in TFA is wrong, about "coming to your house and | seizing your DVDs". They won't come to your house; they will | revoke the decryption keys and push the revocation to your Blu- | Ray player, which will then fail to decrypt your BDs. They don't | need to come to visit; they thought of that already. | | And it's not just movies, it's also books and music. Many people | "bought" MP3s or "buy" Kindle eBooks. Amazon has already shown | that it is willing to delete Kindle content remotely [1]. And | come on, this is Amazon. They are happy to censor on their own | [2] and in collaboration with other companies [3]. | | Copyright is not just a "scam" anymore. It's a tool that is being | used to shape what information is available to us. It's an | enforcement mechanism for the "Overton Window". | | [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-amazon-is-within-its- | right... [2] https://www.foxnews.com/media/amazon-harry-became- | sally [3] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8523526/amazon-stop- | selling-to... | emaro wrote: | If they call it buying, but think renting, then I might as well | call it borrowing, but think pirating. | rthomas6 wrote: | I have started a modest Blu-Ray/4k Blu-Ray collection. For me, it | is by far the best movie experience I've had with any format. It | takes maybe 90 vs 20 seconds to get the movie playing, but in | return I get noticeably better quality. 4k Blu-Rays' bitrates are | around 128 Mb/s. For comparison, Netflix tops out around 17 Mb/s. | It really does look and sound noticeably better if you have the | TV and surround setup to take advantage of it. Sometimes WAY | better. | | Also, for most physical movies, they had a "+ digital" code | included that lets you redeem a digital copy of the movie too. So | I can stream most of them on my laptop anyway if I'm away from | home or something. | | Physical media for movies is super underrated, at least for the | situation in my country. It's often cheaper than "buying" the | digital version! I can even go to my local used | bookstore/Goodwill and find tons of Blu-Rays for cut rate prices. | And then I own it forever, and it's 100% legal. | stackedinserter wrote: | Do you have to watch these non-skippable FBI warnings? | rthomas6 wrote: | Yeah. | PNWChris wrote: | The worst part is that the old "stop stop play" trick doesn't | work on any devices I have that can play disks (Xbox and | computers). Every time I play a disk and hit the unskippable | nonsense, I'm reminded why nobody uses those things anymore. | | If you have a stand alone player, however, perhaps that trick | still works. Just press stop, then press stop again, then | press play. It skips the warnings, pre roll stuff, menus, and | just plays the movie. | chiefalchemist wrote: | I've been doing similar (i.e, growing my collection of physical | medium entertainment). I also prefer physical medium and my own | player because I don't feel comfortable with someone else | (unseen) recording my every pause, rewind, login, etc. | | I get a better quality experience and no one is probing my | psyche. | m463 wrote: | Except for the unskippable nonsense, and the hit-or-miss | ability to resume a show you that you paused or stopped. | | other than that I 100% agree with you and have a collection as | well. | iamacyborg wrote: | I buy blurays, rip them and then store them on a NAS to play | back via Plex. Much, much better quality than any stream from | Netflix et al. | paxys wrote: | Might as well skip the extra step and just torrent them | directly. What you are doing is illegal either way, so why do | the extra work? | deadbunny wrote: | Maybe in America (Land of the Free). Elsewhere in the world | it's perfectly legal to backup your owned media. | iamacyborg wrote: | Yeah, no. | alexfromapex wrote: | I think this is what everyone should do instead of "buying" | or paying for subscription services | rthomas6 wrote: | I thought about doing this, but I was worried about codec | compatibility issues with Dolby Vision and Atmos, and | DTS:whatever. Everything I've read says you need to buy an | Nvidia Shield to do it right. This is probably even closer to | ideal than my setup, but in the end I decided it's not worth | the effort/cost vs just putting the disc in the player. | rdschouw wrote: | An Apple TV 4K with Infuse app does all of this without | problems and supports many kinds of storage backends. | iamacyborg wrote: | I mean, I still have all the discs too, obviously. I've not | noticed any codec errors with my tv which is running the | Android OS. | rthomas6 wrote: | That's good. Some people seem to have issues with Dolby | Vision. See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/ | rw6mn3/what_is_the_cu... | iamacyborg wrote: | I'm trying to think if I have any discs with Dolby | Vision, I'm only buying 1080p blurays so maybe not. Most | recent purchases were Dune and the new Batman movie and | those both look and sound fantastic. | rthomas6 wrote: | I believe Dolby Vision is only on 4k Blu Rays, so you're | probably good. | pathartl wrote: | This is essentially correct. I've been bouncing between | different boxes and HTPCs for almost a couple decades now | and the best experience I've had has always been the Nvidia | Shield. The only annoyance I have is I want to reliably set | Kodi as the main launcher, which is more of Kodi's issue | rather than the system. | | But seriously, HTPCs of yesteryear are essentially dead due | to Windows' terrible handling of Dolby Vision, Atmos, | DTS:X, and HDR. Even though there are players that will | allow you to get much better quality out of your source | file on PC, the hassle of licensing and HDR modes is just | absolutely not worth it. | rendaw wrote: | How do you handle the storage for this? One bluray disk is | about 60gb. I'm not sure if movies typically take 60gb but if | you watch TV shows they do. 15 disks is 1TB. In a short while | you're running a data center, especially if you collect a lot | of video content. | | I've heard that you can get efficient re-encodings, but that | typically means torrenting it from somewhere. I'm not aware | of a way to make high quality re-encodings locally without | lots and lots of tweaking/testing/re-encoding and it takes a | particular set of skills. | extragood wrote: | I use this project by Don Melton to get a Blu-ray video | down to an 8 - 10 GB file size: | https://github.com/donmelton/video_transcoding | | It uses HandBrake, FFmpeg, MKVToolNix, and MP4v2 with some | custom tuned settings and has really good results from my | experience. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Handbrake, chose a profile, use a script, use a more | efficient codec. Doesn't take much manual work but computer | chugs for a while. | rthomas6 wrote: | Would this work for Dolby Vision et al? | mixmastamyk wrote: | It uses ffmpeg underneath which can handle a large number | of formats, in theory at least. You might have to | sacrifice some esoteric features however. | rendaw wrote: | Does handbrake presets give you good space savings? I was | imagining at most something in the 10-20% range. | RealStickman_ wrote: | Most Blu Rays I have are MPEG-2. AVC compresses to about | half the size for the same quality and HEVC does that | again on top. | franciscop wrote: | Cannot wait for hardware support for AV1, since encoding | with software takes hours for short clips. | iamacyborg wrote: | I use a 4 bay NAS with 4TB drives. I guess things would be | more problematic if I had hundreds of movies but I've got a | hair over 100 right now averaging around 40GB per movie | which is fine. | joshstrange wrote: | A Synology is good option here (I say this as someone with | 2 UnRaid machines and 1 12-bay Synology). You can even get | one that can run Plex for you as well (assuming your | transcoding needs are minimal/none, else you might need a | seperate box to handle the transcoding and just use the | Synology as storage, like I do). | | 14TB+ hard drives are not too bad (~$235) so that would be | 210 movies right there (though you are going to need to | "burn" 1 drive for parity). The other option is to more | liberally interpret copyright laws and buy the disk then | pirate a copy that matches your requirements. Seeing how | there are many people out there just doing the pirating | step and that you aren't running a pay-for-plex scheme then | I can't imagine you running afoul of law enforcement. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Even if for some reason you don't re-encode, 18+ TB disks | are now available. This means you can fit nearly 300 films' | worth on a single drive like this, more if you buy | multiple. I don't think it's such a bad idea to run a | 4-drive cluster out of a single Raspberry Pi, with all the | drives connected over USB. | | You don't even need backups for this, really. If you own | the discs and lose the digital version, just copy it on the | disc again. If you acquired it via other means, then... it | should be possible to replace most such data. Even if you | do choose to make backups, then that doubles your cost per | terabyte at most. | | Storage is really cheap, assuming you're fine with | something that isn't a fancy ZFS/RAID array. | withinboredom wrote: | I'm 90% sure an rpi can't handle the Bitrate needed to | watch a 4K video. | RealStickman_ wrote: | You can't just throw files on there. You should make sure | the clients you're connecting support the codecs and | formats natively and at that point the pi is basically | acting as a NAS. It should play 4k fine like that if it | has the bandwidth necessary. | withinboredom wrote: | Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't think the pi itself | has the internal bandwidth necessary. | deadbunny wrote: | The rPI moved the NIC off the USB bus so is actuy1gbps | which is plenty for even 4k and it has hardware x264/x265 | so should playback fine. | pdntspa wrote: | You have stumbled upon one of the greatest virtues of owning | your bits and bytes, which is something that people seem to be | forgetting | cxr wrote: | > I have started a modest Blu-Ray/4k Blu-Ray collection. For | me, it is by far the best movie experience I've had with any | format. | | I'm a big proponent of physical media (incl. ownership), but I | can't vouch for this at all. | | I recently pulled out the Blu-Ray player, plugged it in, and | picked up a dozen or so movies from the library. What struck me | about the experience was how much worse it was from what I | remembered. | | You get a bunch of prefatory material (copyright infringement | warnings, trailers, bizarre PSAs, etc.) that you have to | individually figure out how to skip through. (The menu button | doesn't always let you jump straight to the menu; you might get | a No symbol[1] with a message "operation not permitted".) | | Instead of being mostly pure content that gets streamed at you | over a dumb pipe, every disc, like many Web sites today that | haven't abandoned practices from the age of lame Flash intros, | is crafted to be a package that provides an "experience"--a | bunch of silly flourishes injected by way of themable menus, | etc. that're _supposed_ to be consistent with the look and feel | and mood of the movie. In practice, it makes navigation | cumbersome at best, and as far as their tastefulness goals go, | they tend to have a half-life of, I dunno, a year or two, | because they don 't age well at all. The same can be argued for | movies generally, but the timescale for aging out is somehow | much longer (decades rather). Plus movies have, like, plot and | stuff to capture your attention. | | Several of the Blu-Rays I played from Universal Pictures had an | obnoxious tendency to go to screensaver if the movie is paused | for more than a minute or so. Apparently it uses some clever | trick to abuse the Blu-Ray format to do this. (You can see on | the player's hardware LED readout that it has jumped into a 1-2 | minute video sequence played on a loop.) Most obnoxiously, it | breaks the prime design constraint of a screensaver, which is | that when you return to your device, it should get rid of | itself. No amount of button pressing is apparently sufficient | to get this to happen, and the only way I found to get back to | the movie was to stop it entirely, re-enter through the menu | that begins playing it from the beginning, and then seeking | forward to roughly the spot that I remembered the movie was at | when I originally paused it. Fucking ridiculous. | | Turning on subtitles can be an exercise in frustration. Are you | allowed to use the "Subtitle" button on the remote? Do you have | to navigate the themed menu by following your nose[2] to find | the relevant setup screen where you can turn them on? Is it | perhaps hidden behind the "Audio" button on the remote? This | adventure can be yours. With one Criterion disc, I ended up | giving up upon realizing that it was actually available on a | streaming service that we subscribe to (which wasn't listed | when I first picked up the disc). | | 1. Aka the "do not" sign | <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_symbol> | | 2. <https://www.w3.org/wiki/FollowYourNose> | dawnerd wrote: | I think your problem is using a Blu-ray player. If you use | what I'd suspect most people use, an Xbox or PlayStation, the | experience is much, much better. Even better is just using | makemkv and ripping just the movie. Also works for 4k if you | have the correct drive (there's some inexpensive drives you | have flash firmware) | cxr wrote: | My problem is with Blu-Ray. The moment where you're | subverting the Blu-Ray format, you're also subverting the | argument that Blu-Ray provides the best experience of any | format. | | I had a whole paragraph in that post (but that I ended up | deleting) about how Blu-Ray would be great if "Blu-Ray" | were as simple as a single-file filesystem with an open | media container format at the root, burned/pressed onto a | BD physical disc (or some other high-density optical | media). Like the digital equivalent of a reel (or set of | reels) of 35mm film. But that's not what it is. | [deleted] | cgrealy wrote: | >4k Blu-Rays' bitrates are around 128 Mb/s. For comparison, | Netflix tops out around 17 Mb/s. | | Surely, this is just a current business decision of Netflix. As | internet speeds increase, the bit rate is almost inevitably | going to catch up (most likely if Netlix et al decide to charge | a premium for it!) | nsxwolf wrote: | I don't have much physical media since finally going 4K HDR, | but so far my experience hasn't been great. I purchased the | Mission:Impossible boxed set, and it came with a download code | to use on iTunes. | | The discs look like trash. Noisy, grainy, just bad. The iTunes | versions look phenomenal. | | It would be nice if there was a way to know how good the | quality of a particular release is before buying it. Reviews I | read don't seem to go into a lot of detail. I realize it's | probably somewhat subjective and hard to put into words how an | image looks. | tigen wrote: | Film grain is a funny topic... if it was the original look | then it can be considered highest quality/fidelity to retain | it. Filtering it makes for easier video compression. | kranke155 wrote: | There are sites who do this exact kind of review. | | https://www.google.com/search?q=review+picture+quality+blura. | .. | rthomas6 wrote: | Wow, that's really surprising and disappointing. Usually the | disc is considered the ideal "canonical" way to watch the | movie, but I guess not always. I think blu-ray.com has user | reviews that are focused on the quality of the disc | specifically, but I usually don't look at them. I looked at | MI:1 and they talked a lot about the grain, but seemed to see | it as a stylistic choice. | | Film grain from pre-digital era movies is a divisive issue. | All older movies originally had some amount of film grain | from the analog film. Some people like it and want it there | on purpose. Some people prefer the movie run through a de- | noise filter. The pro-grain people claim this removes fine | detail. The anti-grain people say why the hell would you want | it there on purpose. Some modern movies even add film grain | on purpose. See Disney's Luca as an example. I personally | don't care for it but it usually doesn't bother me as long as | it's not extreme. | badcppdev wrote: | This is a totally uninformed question. Are you sure the bad | quality from the discs is the fault of the discs rather than | your blu-ray reader? I'm assuming you've had good quality | from the reader for other discs?? | deadbunny wrote: | It's a digital signal, either it reads and works or it | doesn't. You don't lose quality because a "bad" player. | gjsman-1000 wrote: | "Noisy, grainy, just bad." | | AKA, it was shot on film. Film has film grain, which can only | be removed by Digital Noise Reduction. DNR removes film | grain, but also scrubs away detail and can leave waxy faces | among other artifacts, as well as a fairly artificial and | non-cinematic look. Film grain compresses very badly over | streaming, so DNRing the streaming version before compression | is probably what you are seeing. In this case, you prefer the | DNR - but if you read online forums, _most collectors hate | it_ and consider it a crime against humanity to have ever | been invented. | chaxor wrote: | On the other (semi-unrelated) hand, film can be much, much | better than digital for some applications. For example, a | transmission electron microscope that uses an emulsion film | to capture the image compared to a digital capture device - | the film can be magnified again with a light microscope | later for much more magnification than may be accessible | when all of the information is registered to a single | pixel. | | Just something to remind us that there are pros and cons to | everything. | maskros wrote: | It's not just extra DNR applied, modern image and video | compression formats almost make it a point to erase all | detail and texture from images. | | For example, compare the WebP and AVIF (VP8/AV1) | compression artefacts with JPEG (and MPEG). | | With WebP and AVIF all textures and low contrast details | tend to be erased or smoothed out, preserving only high | contrast parts of the image. | | The JPEG image may have some visible ringing and block edge | artefacts, but at least the textures and fine details are | preserved! | nsxwolf wrote: | Which explains the downvotes I'm getting. I've apparently | angered the cinephiles. | | Edit: I'm bemused that my subjective personal preferences | have made multiple people this upset. | f1refly wrote: | I think you're getting downvoted because the solution to | your issue was one "why does my bluray look grainy" | search away, yet you chose to stay uninformed on purpose | and complained about it in a public forum without | understanding the mechanics. | p_j_w wrote: | Or maybe you're getting downvoted because you were | denigrating other people's personal preferences when you | called the disc version "trash." You're guilty of what | you accuse others. | kranke155 wrote: | It's funny if the poster is actually complaining about | grain. Digital compression, like the one that Netflix uses, | will often clean up the image of grain as a secondary | effect of the compression algo. | | Essentially grain is a lot of detail that video compression | algorithms have been taught to ignore/remove. H.264 was | notorious for virtually removing all grain making it | impossible to have authentic film grain on YouTube for | years. (I work in advertising). | | Exactly like you said - grain is a common first victim of | video compression. | | The other curious thing - modern movies that are shot on | film / have grain actually get it removed during VFX | stages. You have to do it so you can integrate CGI - grain | is usually "sampled" first by the compositing software (The | Foundry's Nuke in 99% of occasions) and removed since the | CGI image won't have any grain from the CG renderer so you | have to integrate it onto a denoised image. You then re add | it at the end! | | Using the same software you then re-add the sampled noise | back onto the image, and since you've now integrated the | CGI, the noise goes on top of everything helping it all get | integrated. | | Just saying this because you are right - using noise | reduction to remove film grain for release is considered a | sin (I myself would agree with the sentiment). Yet actually | most films today will go through some denoise stage in VFX. | Which is an interesting thing to think about - we actually | remove the grain for a lot of the work then re add to keep | the filmic texture. | nsxwolf wrote: | I wonder: If film grain never existed, would we invent | it? If we had originally developed film technology where | everything looked completely clean, would anyone have | thought "Hey I've got a great idea, let's figure out how | to make this look grainy"? | kranke155 wrote: | I doubt we would invent it. But there are artefacts of | the analogue age that have more value than people think. | My understating is that "grain" on vynil is perceived as | increased resolution to the brain (or so I've read). Thus | giving some scientific reason for the preference of | audiophiles. It would be interesting to know if there's a | similar effect to grain in film but I don't know. | | The other interesting thing is how beautiful and | different grain is when it's from silver halvide film. | I'd dare say it's truly gorgeous to watch. Such film was | used in the 1900-1930s age and if you watch a great print | or restoration of that time the effect is quite stunning. | I believe John Ford's Stagecoach is a good example that | should be relatively easy to find. | | unfortunately I think the same epoch has lost immense | amounts of film due to the flammability of the materials | (which is extremely high, as seen in Tarantino's | Inglorious Basterds). Which is why every once in a while | you'll get a huge fire in some film archive and so much | of it is lost. | reaperducer wrote: | _If film grain never existed, would we invent it?_ | | Yes, but it wouldn't be used across an entire film. | Likely just in flashbacks and other dramatic scenes, the | way it's applied to digital productions today. | | Similar to how in the 2000's, hipster bands added | photographic pops and crackle to their tracks as an | artistic measure. | DangitBobby wrote: | They added those things to indicate age my mimicing older | formats. They wouldn't add those effects to mimic older | formats if older formats never existed. | squeaky-clean wrote: | I don't think we'd recreate film grain, but I think some | form of artifacts would exist and people would eventually | grow a taste for them. | | Modern digital music can be completely clean and | flawless. But it can also have some weird artifacts that | can only exist digitally, like aliasing, stuttering from | a corrupt file or skipping CD player, compression | artifacts while streaming or from very low bitrate | sources. | | And nowadays we're seeing genres like Hyperpop, Glitch | Hop, and Future Bass which all play with these artifacts. | | Flume even has a song[0] where you can hear the | distinctive whine of an improperly grounded USB audio | interface. It's inserted into a silent part of the song, | so it is 100% intentional and not an accident in the | recording. I like to think he's giving a little wink-wink | to other music producers. | | It's on the "My Name is Flume Mixtape" album, which | itself is a great example of intentional digital | artifacts in a creative use. There's lots of aliasing on | things that shouldn't, and things that "should" alias | like square waves sliding into the 10khz range are | perfectly alias free. | | [0] Amber at 1:51. The ringing sound that comes in after | the first bass hit is also some sort of ground noise, but | very distorted. | | https://youtu.be/RM2cNhVep40 | dangets wrote: | It sounds like movies need to start including gpu shaders | with them to add grains or other effects regardless of | the compression. | evancox100 wrote: | Not literally a gpu shader but AV-1 now has film grain | synthesis as part of the decoding process: | | https://waveletbeam.com/index.php/av1-film-grain- | synthesis | The-Bus wrote: | Netflix removes the film grain in compression then adds | it back in: https://www.slashcam.com/news/single/Netflix- | removes-movie-n... | CharlesW wrote: | > _H.264 was notorious for virtually removing all grain | making it impossible to have authentic film grain on | YouTube for years._ | | In the YouTube case, the low encoding bitrates make it | really difficult to encode fine detail. (Blu-ray discs | use H.264 as well, and at those bitrates it reproduces | film grain well.) | | > _Which is an interesting thing to think about - we | actually remove the grain for a lot of the work then re | add to keep the filmic texture._ | | This is a great point. Even with older "remastered" | movies, analog artifacts like film grain are sometimes | removed during cleanup and then recreated during | mastering. | kranke155 wrote: | They will 100% remove grain for restoration. It's the | same process as VFX really, essentially restoration | involves a lot of what's called "cleanup" work in the | industry. In a Marvel movie cleanup will be removing | wires from actors, in restoration it's scratches and | other issues. | justsomehnguy wrote: | I'm not a collector, but I hate vaxy faces. Which is also | the reason I could spot CGI for years, until we had the | ability to simulate even a pores of skin, but then again it | were tuned to 11 and I could spot it again. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | The biggest difference for me is the sound quality. Lossless | 7.1 24/96 or even 24/192. Compared to, at best, DTS or DD+. | D13Fd wrote: | I've always understood this and it doesn't bother me, at least | for iTunes/Apple movies. | | Yes, you get less than a DVD/Blu-Ray in that the media could | potentially disappear. | | But you also get more. It works on your computer, your phone, | your iPad, and instantly on every TV in your house that has a | streaming device. It works when you travel. You can download | every movie you "own" to every device you have, almost instantly, | as many times as you want. You don't have to worry about storing, | losing, or damaging the disc. You can start a movie on your | laptop, pause, and automatically pick right up where you left off | on your phone or iPad or TV. You don't have to go to a store, or | order a disc online and wait. You don't have to pay for shipping. | With Apple, and least, you don't even have to buy new media when | new technologies appear - every video I've ever purchased has | been upgraded to HD, and then to 4K and HDR when they became | available, all for free. And with Apple at least, "Family | Sharing" lets all of your family members stream or download the | movie to their devices as well. | | Yes, it's possible that Apple or Amazon could take away movies | that you own. But the public outcry would be massive. And I've | been "owning" videos from Apple for 10+ years without issue, so I | feel pretty comfortable with it at this point. | nonameiguess wrote: | I was considering a top-level comment saying something similar, | at the risk of being severely downvoted for an opinion contrary | to such a popular Hacker News hobby horse (you'll own nothing | and be happy), but here you are already at the bottom of the | page, so I'm just going to commiserate. | | I do happen to still own a few DVD box sets from 15-20 years | ago, and I haven't watched a single one in over a decade. I | have no clue if they still work. I didn't even have a player | for a long time, though my wife finally bought one a few years | ago to be able to watch a Twin Peaks boxed set with deleted | scenes that were not available in any other medium. As it | stands, when I click the option to buy from a streaming | service, I understand it doesn't mean it's forever, but I don't | care. It just means I'm guessing I'll want to watch it more | than once outside of the 48 hour rental window and it's worth | the extra five bucks or so to do that. It doesn't mean I'm | likely going to want to watch it again decades from now. Maybe | it's just that I moved so much when I was younger, but the | sheer number of DVDs and CDs I lost or accidentally destroyed | over a decades greatly outweights what I have ever lost because | a streaming service lost its license. And I'm glad to no longer | need the external storage space. | haunter wrote: | >Yes, it's possible that Apple or Amazon could take away movies | that you own. But the public outcry would be massive | | It's already happening and nope there isn't a massive outcry | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33010912 | [deleted] | alexfromapex wrote: | The public outcry being massive isn't going to stop companies | from trying to exploit people. Companies that seemed consistent | in the past have changed many times. Apple is actually a great | example in that they were a privacy-focused company but have | more recently forayed into scanning devices against customers' | will and have now created their own ad business. That decision | was made under the assumption that they own the devices they | sell to customers for thousands of dollars not their customers. | If the economy gets worse, you can bet they will look for | additional ways to make money off their customers. Once you buy | a decent amount of movies they will have lots of leverage over | you. Look at Tim Cook's response to fixing the texting issue. | They don't care about public outcry. | daveslash wrote: | Reminds me of the _" The Books Will Stop Working"_ incident from | a few years back. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20297331 | imchillyb wrote: | Only the original copyright filer should be able to protect their | work. | | The moment the rights are sold or transferred to another party, | the rights should be dissolved and no protections afforded; | whatsoever. | ge96 wrote: | What's annoying is you buy a UHD movie and you can't stream UHD | unless it's on a specific device eg. Phone or TV. Otherwise | capped to 480p in case of YT. | titzer wrote: | I am hoarding DVDs and it's because a.) it's cheap, b.) it's | reliable c.) it's future-proof and d.) I don't trust tomorrow's | political/cultural landscape to not disappear things down the | memory hole as well as subtly editing out offensive material or | otherwise altering things in hard to detect ways. Case in point, | not long ago a family member witnessed "Scrubs" being scrubbed of | a particularly offensive joke that ran afoul of today's censors. | With streaming, you have absolutely no control over what version | of a movie you're seeing. What are you going to do? Store the | bits and compare it to your neighbors'? That right there is a | crime. | moffkalast wrote: | Well you do you. If you ask me, DVD quality (480p) is not | really watchable anymore these days. Looks like what VHS looked | like when DVDs were new now that we have full HD and 4K to | compare it to. | | Just going full on pirate with an HDD full of instantly | accessible files seems way more practical, especially living in | a country where it's de facto legal. | 6stringmerc wrote: | I'm pretty impressed with the upconversion quality of the | Xbox One for better viewing on a modern television. | awiesenhofer wrote: | > "Scrubs" being scrubbed of a particularly offensive joke | | Which one? | eddieroger wrote: | Seemingly this: https://etcanada.com/news/660724/scrubs- | blackface-episodes-b... | titzer wrote: | It wasn't that, it was a one-liner by McGinley's character | that just got inexplicably stricken. | weekendvampire wrote: | Agreed. Now if I have a TV show I haven't seen, I check if I've | already downloaded it years back and watch the downloaded | version rather than stream it. I can't trust streaming services | to show me anything as it is, ever since Netflix removed the | Community episode with blackface (it was parodying blackface, | that was the point). | throwaway2203 wrote: | DVDs have a limited lifespan as well | titzer wrote: | My oldest one is 25 years old and still works with no issues. | Technically _every_ physical object breaks down over time, | but I expect that with proper storage and handling with care, | a pressed DVD could last 50 years. And then you can also rip | the bits and store them. | YurgenJurgensen wrote: | I have a disc from 2004 that had been in its original | shrink wrap until this year but it had read errors when I | tried to rip it and was showing signs of rot. Some discs | are from bad batches, and you don't really have any way of | knowing if a disc is bad until it starts rotting. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Luckily, the data on them does not. Storing a 5GB file | locally is basically free, at $15 ish per terabyte for modern | HDDs. | shmerl wrote: | DRM-free video should be a thing. Buy and save the file - that's | it. If you don't have the file you can back up, it's a scam and | not buying. | | GOG tried to introduce that, but legacy film industry is too | obsessed with DRM for all its usual wrong reasons so that didn't | work out. | | https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree... | deadbeeves wrote: | I don't use any paid streaming services, so forgive me if I'm | saying something stupid, but doesn't this: | | >Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be | available to you for download or streaming from the Service | | mean that you can download a copy of the content you bought? As | far as I'm concerned, that's about as close to "owning" as it | gets, when it comes to digital media. | | If you buy, say, a pair of pliers from a hardware store, and then | instead of taking them home you leave them at the store and come | back to use them every time you have something that needs plying, | and then eventually the store needs to make room for other | products and so throws your pliers away, you have no one to blame | but yourself for not taking them home for safekeeping when you | had the chance. | | This analogy could break down if the content has DRM. I don't | know if it does, or if it does when it stops working, but that's | a different discussion from "Amazon deleted my movie". | ryukafalz wrote: | Music is typically DRM-free so in that case you have a point. | Movie "downloads" are typically DRM'd and only downloadable | within the confines of an app, and you don't get to take the | files with you if e.g. you switch devices. | josephcsible wrote: | For your analogy to be correct, it's not that you chose not to | take the pliers home, but that the hardware store won't let | you. | dghlsakjg wrote: | In this analogy, it is the case that the store won't let you | take the pliers home, or only lets you take the pliers home | under the supervision of an employee, and also that if you want | to take the pliers with you on a road trip to Mexico, that | isn't allowed, even if the hardware store has a branch in | Mexico. | | Oh, and if the hardware store goes out of business you can | never access the pliers again because it turns out they were | leased from the plier manufacturer. | | Frequently when streaming content providers say "download" it | is more accurately described as downloading a pre-cached | version of the stream that only works on proprietary software | which is reliant on a semi-regular internet connection. For | example, you can "download" netflix/amazon/youtube content, but | it can only be viewed on the app, and the app must be | periodically reconnected to the internet. | andy_ppp wrote: | I often wonder how much money the movie industry would make if | they just charged $2 for HD movies and $3 for a 4k download, no | DRM because it's pointless and clearly looking at pirate bay | doesn't work. I think most people would just pay and probably | quite a lot. I'd probably be spending $30 per month there and it | would feel great to be doing things honestly but getting a file I | could keep forever. | | The people intent on pirating would still pirate and the people | who wanted to pay a reasonable cost would get as good if not | better experience than the pirates. $10+ to "own" a movie on a | streaming service with DRM and lock in is far too much. | wazoox wrote: | As Klaus Schaub said "you will own nothing and you will be | happy"... | IYasha wrote: | Yeah, this is the first part, and I doubt the second part will | be a natural reaction. | _thisdot wrote: | I remember a Twitter client for Android being pulled from the | Play Store. Anyone who had already purchased it could still go to | Play Store and download it again. But nobody new would find it. | One would expect the same to happen for every digital "purchase" | SergeAx wrote: | I firmly beleive that for every movie I "bought" digitally of | physaically I am entitled to download a torrent. | paxys wrote: | And a lot of people firmly believe that they are entitled to | download a torrent without a purchase. Ultimately your beliefs | don't matter, the law does. | josephcsible wrote: | Morally, you are, but unfortunately, what's moral isn't always | legal. | [deleted] | Zigurd wrote: | This is what not really owning content implies about that | computer you think you own: If a content publisher can reach into | your computer and turn off access to content, you not only do not | own and control the content, you do not properly own and control | that computer. If you did you could assert that removing access | to data on that computer constitutes unauthorized access. It's a | security breach. | TheRealDunkirk wrote: | There's another layer to this that I haven't seen in any of the | comments thus far, and that is the fact that the movie studios | are putting the GOOD movies behind the "second paywall." Many | popular titles are not available for streaming, and require a | "purchase" or "rental," outside of the titles you're getting with | your particular services. I have Netflix, Hulu, Prime, HBO, and | Disney, and it seems like, about half the time I get a hankering | to watch something in particular (instead of just "grazing"), I | see that it's not available on any of my services, and it's a | rent/buy title. So, yes, I have bought some movies (less than a | dozen), and I always buy them from Apple, if I'm having to buy. | I've been tempted several times to "buy" the complete set of the | Office on Apple TV for $99, but I fear exactly what the OP is | talking about: a rug-pull that causes me to lose access to the | library. | etothepii wrote: | An unusual form of pluralising thief. | | I know it is acceptable to use the grocers' apostrophe with | foreign words but with thief the forms thiefs and thieves are | both arguably correct (see pre Tolkien elfs) but auto-correct | does not agree. | jijji wrote: | whatever happened to downloading a mp4 torrent of the movie and | watching it instantly whenever you want? | realusername wrote: | It's still pretty much the only reliable long term option to | get a movie and be sure it'll stay viewable, nothing has | changed. | awoimbee wrote: | Then the TV show you love gets cancelled because everyone is | pirating it. I guess it's the fault of the studios for pushing | us towards piracy, but it's a shame. | metalliqaz wrote: | The best anti-piracy tool of all time was old Netflix. Then | they had to go and screw it up. Yearrrrgh! | fbanon wrote: | Still alive and kicking. You just need to know where to look. | alex_suzuki wrote: | TPB has added really annoying "on-click" BS lately, super | shady. Any alternatives you might have heard of? Not for me, | for a friend of course... | bheadmaster wrote: | YIFY provides movies of decent quality at reasonable file | sizes. | | For movies that YIFY doesn't have, 1337x is a good site. | fein wrote: | qbittorrent + jackett. Click on however many pub trackers | you want to search in jackett then set the search plugin on | qbit to point to your jackett instance. | CuriouslyC wrote: | Tell your friend about 1337x.to | deadbeeves wrote: | I just use NoScript. | weberer wrote: | QBitTorrent has a search feature built in. | mindslight wrote: | It is painful to even just skim this thread, seeing basically | every comment brimming with frustration from being stuck in a | paradigm that's straightforward to leave behind. So much | wasted human potential. | | It's a solved problem - torrent your damn entertainment. | Movies are just basic files sitting in a directory. Files | that can be rewatched whenever you'd like. If you are | traveling, copy to your laptop. If you move and haven't quite | set up your entertainment center or Internet connection, | watch it on a computer. If your friend is interested in | something, copy it to their USB drive. No fucking nonsense of | some third party capriciously disrupting your life precisely | when you're trying to relax. | | Any business trying to sell me some productized solution | needs to beat torrenting for ease of use. So far none of them | have even attempted, because they all end up warping the user | experience to appease Hollywood's delusion of control. Just | say no. | dublin wrote: | Yeah, but that's a real problem for those of us who don't | watch a lot of movies. Many people aren't capable of figuring | out "where to look" at all anyway. I am, to some degree, but | it's just not worth spending that much of my time to hunt | them down on the rare occasions I really want to watch | something. | | Also, I'll just note that we never got the 21st century we | were promised, which was this - any movie ever made: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAxtxPAUcwQ The fundamental | problem is that the people who own movie IP rights are truly | evil. | javajosh wrote: | _> the people who own movie IP rights are truly evil._ | | That is wildly overstated. The worst they can do to you is | _not let you watch their entertaining movie_. Possibly even | after you 've paid for it (the subject of the OP) - and in | that case the culprit isn't even the IP owner, it's the | distributor! And honestly it sounds like the problem with | digital ownership is simple fraud that is a) covered by | existing law and b) too expensive for anyone to litigate. | Maybe a class action could do it. | | Here's the really interesting part - you're railing against | artificial scarcity. Someone has a good that they _could_ | give away, and they aren 't, and you're calling them evil | for doing that, but I ask you, in all honesty, how else do | you make money from movies? If you can't make money from | it, how will you convince investors to fund your next | movie? (Now substitute "album book software" for movie and | ask the same question.) | | That's not to say that IP owners can't be "evil". George | Lucas believed it was his right to keep changing Star Wars | over time, and it's impossible to find a legit copy of Star | Wars that is the original theatrical release. That's some | 1984-level memory hole bullshit and although the stakes are | low, it's evil. Disney is arguably quite evil for a variety | of reasons, e.g. it's unholy influence over Congress, it's | unhealthy consolidation of huge chunks of the American | movie market. But neither of them are evil for using | artificial scarcity to profit from their work, because | that's the only way to profit from data goods. | | (Professional open source tries to square the circle by | giving away the data goods but charging for (actually | scarce) knowledge. It's a good model but cannot apply to | entertainment goods, since viewers don't need scarce | knowledge to enjoy a movie.) | selfhoster11 wrote: | The stakes are not low. Denying access to, or altering, | content in this way is equivalent to vandalising the | cultural commons (and yes, even if it's not in the public | domain - it's still cultural commons). People should be | more upset about this. | javajosh wrote: | On the scale of evil things in the world, modifying ~10 | minutes of a popular fantasy movie does not rank highly. | The implication is scary, but the act itself is | profoundly unimportant. | mensetmanusman wrote: | I work in R&D where tens to hundreds of millions are spent on | talent/materials/engineering to design new high tech materials | for the world. | | It's strange that this much effort practically gets about 10-15 | years of protection(or less depending on prosecution time with | the patent office), while a drawing of a mouse or "moving- | pictures" is protected for a century. | The-Bus wrote: | Not using cost measured in dollars to equate the benefit of | different things, but most studio films are at minimum tens of | millions of dollars, with nine figures not being uncommon. | mensetmanusman wrote: | Of course, I'm just noting it's interesting that a similar | endeavor measured in dollars is protected for about the half | the life of the inventors in R&D, and almost 10x that in the | latter case. | anjbe wrote: | The article mentions GOG's movie selection (which is indeed | extremely limited: https://www.gog.com/en/movies). It's worth | pointing out that Vimeo also provides some DRM-free digital | downloads through its "On Demand" imprint | (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/oxyana). Like GOG, though, it mostly | contains works of a particular niche (in this case, documentaries | and short films). | | I've been hard-pressed to find any other way to purchase DRM-free | movies. | ezfe wrote: | The iTunes Store continues to be the only reputable place to buy | movies, mainly because they allow downloads (except 4K...but I | digress). | | In the past, redownloading movies wasn't even permitted. You | download it and save it somewhere yourself. You can still do that | to avoid any issues in the future, but I suspect the few | incidents that have affected the iTunes Store are unlikely to re- | occur. Why? For exactly the reason I mentioned at the beginning, | originally you couldn't even re-download movies so it stands to | reason the initial transition might've had some licensing | loopholes. | causi wrote: | It's interesting that even storefronts run by the same company | don't always have the same reliability. Microsoft fucked over | thousands of gamers when they pulled the plug on Games for | Windows Live, yet I can still download episodes of Invader Zim | I purchased on the Xbox Live Store in 2006. | jSherz wrote: | Do the downloaded movies have DRM attached that requires a | network connection or limits their usage? | kalleboo wrote: | They have DRM attached and need to be played on a computer | that has logged in to your iTunes account and been "blessed". | But unless something has changed, as long as you keep that | computer offline it will be able to play those videos in | eternity. | | You can un-bless all your other computers (as you can only | have 5 computers blessed at once) but I guess if the other | computers are offline they can keep playing old downloads. | Kon-Peki wrote: | > But unless something has changed, as long as you keep | that computer offline it will be able to play those videos | in eternity. | | I don't know if it ever was that way. If it was, something | _has_ changed. | | During the early months of the pandemic, we carried a Mac | mini around that had a ton of downloaded content, and spent | a lot of time in places with no internet service. It needed | to "re-bless" itself every so often (I don't remember how | often - maybe once a month or twice a month - it wasn't | very often). | | Our solution was to carry it with us when we were near | enough to a tower. Using a phone hotspot with just a single | bar of bad service, the process took 10-15 seconds. | | So as far as tech/media companies go, Apple is almost | certainly the least bad option, by a wide margin. But it's | not perfect ;) | kalleboo wrote: | > _I don 't know if it ever was that way. If it was, | something has changed_ | | To be fair, it was a LONG time since stopped buying video | from iTunes. Like 5 years at least. I subscribe to a | bunch of the streaming services but instead of bothering | to figure out exactly where something is streaming I just | download it from the Pirate Bay where I know I can find | everything right away. | IYasha wrote: | > But unless something change | | :) | PontifexMinimus wrote: | 4 words that explain why, if I ever wanted to collect | movies, they would all be DRM-free torrents. | | When the "legal" way to do it is self-evidently a scam | perpetuated by corporations and governments working | together against our interests, then they only honourable | ways are either to watch illegal downloads or not watch | movies at all. | dfxm12 wrote: | Why eschew ripping physical media? You'll likely have a | more uniform collection in terms of quality. Also | depending where you are in the world, it's either legal | or just as legal as torrenting media. In the latter case, | it's not really enforced. It's also probably more | honourable, if that's something you really care about. | PontifexMinimus wrote: | > Why eschew ripping physical media? | | None of my computers has a DVD drive! Though if I was | interested in movies, probably one would. | | > You'll likely have a more uniform collection in terms | of quality. | | Also 4K is useless to me as I have a 1080p monitor. | | > It's also probably more honourable, if that's something | you really care about. | | Helping systems of control that are actively hostile | towards me is not honourable, IMO. | YurgenJurgensen wrote: | You need a real computer to rip BDs. A netbook or a | Raspberry Pi aren't going to cut it because of the CPU | requirements. Said Pi will have no trouble running a | torrent client though. | BiteCode_dev wrote: | Found the spartan. | paxys wrote: | Those downloaded movies still have DRM, and can only be played | on official Apple devices or apps. Apple can revoke the license | whenever they want. No better than what Amazon and others do. | JohnTHaller wrote: | Can you play those downloaded movies outside of Apple | hardware/software? | scarface74 wrote: | Others have mentioned that the AppleTV app is ubiquitous | across every major streaming platform - Roku, Amazon, Samsung | Smart TVs, etc. | | A little known service in the US is "Movies Anywhere". Four | of the major studios participate in as well as does Apple, | Amazon, Google, Vudu and other platforms. You link all of | your accounts and a movie bought on one, automatically is | credited to the other accounts as a purchase. | | https://help.moviesanywhere.com/hc/en- | us/articles/1150045768... | CharlesW wrote: | Yes. A bunch of non-Apple devices have an Apple TV app now1, | and you can also play movies to any device that supports | AirPlay 21. | | 1 https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-app/devices/ | JohnTHaller wrote: | That's still Apple hardware/software. If you can't play it | outside of the locked down Apple ecosystem which is | checking your license, then you don't own it. | ezfe wrote: | > If you can't play it outside of the locked down Apple | ecosystem which is checking your license, then you don't | own it. | | The DRM does not require being online to verify once it's | been set up | CharlesW wrote: | > _That 's still Apple hardware/software._ | | Incorrect, Apple did not build the software for all of | the listed devices. Apple licenses the protocols and | provides reference implementations through their MFi | program. | scarface74 wrote: | If your movie is from any of the five participating | studios you buy the movie once and it works across all of | the major video platforms if you use Movies Anywhere | | https://help.moviesanywhere.com/hc/en- | us/articles/1150045768... | | Blu ray players are also locked down and the embedded | keys are subject to revocation | rthomas6 wrote: | If you buy blu-rays from those five participating | studios, they also give you the same Movies Anywhere | digital copy. | FalconSensei wrote: | US only though, so if you move you are out of luck. | Mindwipe wrote: | You couldn't play a downloaded title on a non-Apple Apple | TV device or via AirPlay 2 tbf. | | In both scenarios the playback support is that the file | just gives the credentials for the device with the Apple TV | app or Airplay 2 to go and stream it from Apple's servers. | No transfer of the video from a local download occurs. | CharlesW wrote: | > _You couldn 't play a downloaded title on a non-Apple | Apple TV device or via AirPlay 2 tbf._ | | You absolutely can. | rthomas6 wrote: | >The iTunes Store continues to be the only reputable place to | buy movies | | Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and Goodwill work pretty well for | me. | ezfe wrote: | I obviously meant for digital movies, even if I forgot that | detail | intrasight wrote: | I think all movies are digital now ;) | mark_l_watson wrote: | I am not complaining too much, but I was disappointed when the | movies I bought on Google Play stopped being available there, and | now are in a special area on YouTube. I still have access to | them, but have to go to a different place. | | Anyway, the article makes good points. | SubiculumCode wrote: | perhaps they can be sued for the use of the word buy? | stewx wrote: | One under-appreciated limitation on digital movies is geographic | restrictions. You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then | move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them | anymore due to licensing. | | Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the | inability to resell the content once you're done with it. You can | sell your DVDs at a yard sale or on eBay but not your iTunes | movies. IMO, our competition law should require vendors to allow | re-sale of digital goods. Big benefit for consumers. | abraxas wrote: | Unfortunately geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits | movie format. DVDs were regionally locked as well and even | analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats that | were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM). | | That said, the situation is quite a bit worse now as the modern | DRM is harder to circumvent and geolocking more granular than | ever before. But the intent to lock us down was always there | from the movie industry, just not the capability until | recently. | pilsetnieks wrote: | NTSC, PAL and SECAM wasn't a case of intentional geolocking, | those were simply different signal standards used in | different parts of the world. NTSC had different frequency | from PAL/SECAM because the signal was synchronized to the | power grid; SECAM was different from PAL because the French | being French had to make it their own way (and then | communist-affiliated countries adopted it). | the_af wrote: | > _DVDs were regionally locked as well_ | | To be fair, those of us who tend to complain about these | things also raised hell about DVDs back then. Geo-locking is | such an obviously _bad_ idea for consumers. It was such a | relief when the restrictions were hacked away (was it that an | encryption key got leaked? I don 't remember the details). | babypuncher wrote: | People complained, but I can't imagine the user experience | of playing an NTSC DVD on a PAL player and TV would have | been very good, or vice-versa. There isn't a clean way to | convert between 50 and 59.94 fields per second. You would | have ended up with either jittery playback or incorrect | playback speed. The field sizes are also mismatched, which | would have required some pretty gross scaling given | late-'90s DVD player technology. | | Region-locking on Blu-Ray is 100% unnecessary. Fortunately, | it has become increasingly common for discs to ship with no | region restrictions. | | Of course all of this is moot when you're just slapping | that disc in an optical drive and ripping it to a NAS, | instead of using an "official" player. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. | It was such a relief when the restrictions were hacked away | (was it that an encryption key got leaked? I don't remember | the details). | | DVD region locking didn't need to be hacked away; it | operates purely on the honor system. There are 8 regions, | and a DVD contains a single byte specifying which regions | it should be allowed to be played in. If the bit for your | region is clear, you can play the DVD. | | Or, of course, you can just ignore that byte, and play the | DVD. | wpietri wrote: | Now you can, but back in the day of hardware-only | players, those were also region locked. So it was much | stronger than an honor system originally. | borski wrote: | DeCSS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeCSS | brabel wrote: | I havea few DVDs I bought in my previous country... I | remember first time I tried to play them in a player from | the new country, it asked me if I wanted to "move" it to | the new region... I think there were 2 "moves" allowed. So, | anyway, I was able to play it, no worries. | wpietri wrote: | Overall I think geo-locking was bad, but I wouldn't go this | far: | | > Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. | | Depends a little on the consumers, really. Region-locking | enabled them to sell cheaper copies in lower-wealth areas, | the same way that movie ticket prices were lower. Without | geo-locking, pricing strategy gets much more complicated, | but it's a fair guess that consumers in regions 3-6 (that | is, the majority of humanity) would have either paid more | or gotten movies later. | gjsman-1000 wrote: | DVD has an incredibly weak 40-bit encryption scheme due to | US regulations on exporting cryptography when it was | developed. As a result, it was broken very quickly after | launch. It has no real key revocation system (just stop | including keys for certain defeated devices in new | releases), and nowadays a computer can brute-force every | possible decryption key within seconds, rendering revoking | stolen drive keys completely pointless. As the region lock | is enforced by software only, an unofficial player like VLC | does not need to pay the region lock any heed. | | Blu-ray on the other hand... well, where do I start? | 128-bit AES, key revocation, host authentication, virtual | machine fixup tables, digital signing, Media Key Block | updating, Java applications... Let's just say Blu-ray is | stuck in an odd place where the underlying technology isn't | really that defeated, even though hackers have made keeping | up with their stolen device keys from hacked players very | impractical for the Blu-ray Disc Association. (Revoking a | drive key requires a 90-day heads up for manufacturers to | roll out new keys for the effected model, which means that | if hackers manage to steal 4 device keys per year... from | over a decade and a half of different players, many not | receiving updates anymore...) | sbf501 wrote: | DeCSS was "cracked" because Xing accidentally included an | unencrypted key in their firmware. | | The encryption wasn't cracked, it was subverted by poor | security practices. | | If Xing hadn't screwed up, it may have been another | decade before it was possible to rip a DVD, waiting for | some other manufacturer to screw up. | throwaway08642 wrote: | pdntspa wrote: | I had friends running timing attacks against the Xbox 360 | encryption key around that time, they never publicly | disclosed their work but I saw them playing games on a | hacked firmware around mid 2000s. No reason to think this | wouldn't be the same for the CSS encryption key. | loufe wrote: | Thanks for taking the time to write this, it's | fascinating. | josteink wrote: | > Blu-ray on the other hand... well, where do I start? | 128-bit AES, key revocation, host authentication, virtual | machine fixup tables, digital signing, Media Key Block | updating, Java applications... | | It would almost seem like most of the engineering for the | Blu-ray format went into things which very specifically | doesn't act in the interest of the buyer. | | Given the current state of things, I wouldn't count | Blurays as media you actually physically own. | | You're permitted to watch them, for now, but there's no | guarantee that will remain true 20+ years in the future. | mikestew wrote: | _It would almost seem like most of the engineering for | the Blu-ray format went into things which very | specifically doesn't act in the interest of the buyer._ | | Which is why some of us were rooting for the somewhat- | more-consumer-friendly HD-DVD. In retrospect, given the | choice, there was no way in hell the industry was going | with a "more consumer-friendly" anything. | taylodl wrote: | You purchased a license to view the media content. I | don't agree with this philosophy, I see it as a variant | of "right to repair" that we should call "right to own", | but that's the way it is for now. | nmeagent wrote: | That's the way it is just as long as we tolerate it, so | _don 't_. | [deleted] | gjsman-1000 wrote: | The same could be said though of DVD. Remember that DVD | is completely proprietary - we've just done a fantastic | job reverse-engineering it. Blu-ray, ironically, is still | proprietary, but the specification on how the DRM is | implemented is actually public information and you can | just download that online. You won't get the required | encryption key for your new device without a contract | though for it to work, but if you want to read the | details, that's fine. | | https://aacsla.com/aacs-specifications/ | | Ultimately, if all the manufacturers decide to stop sale, | there's nothing you can do about that. I'm not too | worried about Blu-ray yet, as it is still in the PS5 and | Xbox Series X, and I don't think gamers will be excited | about losing physical media as an option (considering PS5 | with Disc has outsold the Disc-free version, like, 4-1). | happymellon wrote: | Steam is the only online games store that has given me | any levels of comfort that I'll still be able to get | access to my games after 10 years. | | Even then, I'm still not 100% confident that I'll be able | to access everything in 25 years time. | | I have no reason the believe that Sony and Microsoft | won't shut them down like they already have done with the | PS3 store. | mattl wrote: | Do you think eventually Windows will drop 32-bit support | like Mac OS X did? What will that mean for a lot of those | games? | squarefoot wrote: | Ironically, by then the best Windows 32bit compatibility | layer might come from Linux with WINE and other tools | using it. | | https://www.winehq.org/ | | https://lutris.net/ | | https://www.playonlinux.com/en/ | mattl wrote: | I hope so. The Steam Deck has been pretty nice but I hate | leaving Steam and fiddling with Arch Linux and KDE to get | non-Steam games working. | vel0city wrote: | Microsoft already shut down a lot of games when they | killed Games for Windows Live. | kube-system wrote: | If the bar for "owning" something is that it is | guaranteed to function unchanged 20+ years from now | without exception, then I don't own very much stuff. | ipaddr wrote: | That bar include able to resell it and inability of | company selling to have control over the product. | nonrandomstring wrote: | > It would almost seem like most of the engineering for | the Blu-ray format went into things which very | specifically doesn't act in the interest of the buyer. | | It doesn't _seem_ like that. It _is_ like that. | | Welcome to modern tech, where the management, perception, | control and tactical destruction of real value is the | only place left to eek out a profit margin. We build 8 | core CPUs and blow e-fuses in the factory to make them 4 | cores. As resources dwindle and the planet fills with | e-waste this disgusting, unethical wanton destruction of | value continues because we've normalised it. | kortilla wrote: | > We build 8 core CPUs and blow e-fuses in the factory to | make them 4 cores. As resources dwindle and the planet | fills with e-waste this disgusting, unethical wanton | destruction of value continues because we've normalised | it. | | This is a bad follow-on example because artificial price | differentiation is sometimes what it takes to make a | business viable. Making an actually worse model in the | processor case has far more fixed costs than re-using the | existing pipeline. The business wouldn't be viable | selling all of the processors at lower nor would it be as | strong leaving out the lower income segment. | | The alternative world is you get no affordable processor | at all and the 8-core version costs 200% more due to the | volume lost. | | Finally, this ignores that processors selected for lower | tiers can be chosen precisely because they didn't meet | the bar for the high performance batch. So if they had | proceeded to treat it as an 8-core it would have had | thermal issues and an 80% reduced life. | ambicapter wrote: | > artificial price differentiation is sometimes what it | takes to make a business viable | | Sometimes wage theft is what it takes to make a business | viable, so I don't really buy this as an argument. | | > processors selected for lower tiers can be chosen | precisely because they didn't meet the bar for the high | performance batch | | This is a better argument | | > The alternative world is you get no affordable | processor at all | | You probably do, just maybe their performance doesn't | double every year. I would say that's probably an | interesting tradeoff to make, depending on how | catastrophic one thinks the state of the world is today. | ipaddr wrote: | In your scene you would see increased buying and volume | at the higher price point which would offset the money | lost at the lower tier. | goodpoint wrote: | > The alternative world is you get no affordable | processor at all and the 8-core version costs 200% more | due to the volume lost. | | No, you are making up a false dichotomy. There are many | alternative worlds, including the ones where CPUs have no | proprietary "intellectual property". | Gordonjcp wrote: | > We build 8 core CPUs and blow e-fuses in the factory to | make them 4 cores. | | Not "deliberately". We build 8-core CPUs, discover four | of them are a bit sub-spec, and blow e-fuses to disable | those and sell it as 4-core. It's possible that those | four disabled cores would be just fine, but I'm not | selling you a chip that gets its sums wrong _sometimes_. | | I guess people complained about how chip manufacturers | sold CPUs rated at 25MHz that could be overclocked to | 33MHz, but they too were not guaranteed to meet spec even | if they worked. | nonrandomstring wrote: | Is it really the case that dies/packages are tested and | batched _individually_? | | I mean, you make a good point on reliability/quality, but | there are surely cases where to create a product | differential perfectly good (and known to be good) | devices are crippled. | | That seems ever less ethically defensible as we move into | scarcity. | NoGravitas wrote: | >Welcome to modern tech, where the management, | perception, control and tactical destruction of real | value is the only place left to eek out a profit margin. | | It's almost as if there's a consistent economic process | that leads companies to do this kind of thing again and | again. We could call it "the tendency of the rate of | profit to fall". | nonrandomstring wrote: | Consistency may be running out. It may be time to turn | this elegant observation (not immutable law) into an | anti-pattern. As an optimist I prefer "tendency of | systems toward failure of innovation" (AKA sloth of the | entrenched incumbents). This is the last crisis. Because | it's not a crisis of capital, it's a crisis of the very | substrate (the planet) which allows for the possibility | of capital. Schumpeter's creative destruction is now | literally environmental destruction. A new broom is | required. Let's hope it's not the communists again. A few | simple bits of regulation could go a long way to correct | things. | jaywalk wrote: | If binning of CPUs were disallowed, it would result in | even more e-waste because any imperfect chips would have | to be tossed out instead of sold with fewer cores | enabled. Bad example. | 1980phipsi wrote: | You have to pay for an upgrade on Windows to even play a | Bluray movie. | jaywalk wrote: | Which is a good thing, if you think about it. It means | that the vast majority of people who have no desire to | play Blu-ray movies on their PC don't have to foot the | bill for licensing. | barelysapient wrote: | And let's not forget, that if you brought your DVD player | with you, you could still play your DVD's no matter what | region you were physically in. | gjsman-1000 wrote: | And if you ordered a disc from abroad, you could | completely legally import a disc player from, say, the UK | and play your region-locked Blu-ray Discs and DVDs that | way (and still can, eBay.co.uk works fine). It's | inconvenient but it does work, and is 100% legal and | hack-free. | ipaddr wrote: | Or buy a worldwide player like Philips offered in the day | that would play all regions | mixmastamyk wrote: | Power, tv, and plugs different. | makeitdouble wrote: | Except if your player wasn't conpatible with your TV of | course. | | At the time DVD started prolifering more and more player | and TVs had full support for NTSC, PAL and SECAM, but you | could still be stuck with some hardware only supporting | standard and your DVDs would be black and white or | scrambled on the display side. | tjoff wrote: | True in theory but in practice it wasn't much of an | issue. | | Especially as late as when the DVD came. | | And the purpose of it wasn't geo-restrictions either. | arthurcolle wrote: | Liquix wrote: | Anyone interested in the history of DVD DRM / region locking | may be interested in the "illegal number": a hex code which | defeated DVD AACS encryption, prompting an attempt by the | industry to surpress it across the internet, leading to a | streisand effect and the end of effective DVD DRM. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controve. | .. | gjsman-1000 wrote: | That was a leaked Blu-ray _Processing Key_ that was quickly | revoked - but the industry was livid that it was allowed to | propagate before they could revoke it (which takes 90 | days). This means, ultimately, that _if_ you have a player | that hasn 't had a Blu-ray Disc made since 2008 inserted | into it, _and_ are trying to decrypt a disc made before | ~2008, then _maybe_ with the right tools you could. It 's a | shallow victory meaningless nowadays. | | [Even then, a Processing Key isn't nearly as interesting as | a Device Key, plenty of which have been leaked since | without much attention. Blu-ray has so many keys...] | goosedragons wrote: | DVDs were region locked but not to the same degree. Digital | content is on a country by country level. An American can | easily buy and use a Canadian DVD while on vacation and then | use it back home. The same is not true of digital content. | dylan604 wrote: | >even analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats | that were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs | SECAM). | | I think you're really stretching this one. These were | dictated be the equipment of the regions. This was just as | much of a pain in the ass to the studios as anyone else. If | theStudios wanted to sell VHS in these markets, they _HAD_ to | make them in the format that would work in that region. | | DVD/Blu-ray region was definitely something added on top of | format limitations as DVDs were still PAL/NTSC, but by the | time Blu-ray and HD arrived, those format limitations were | less of an issue. It was all about the region locking at that | point. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | > geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits movie | format | | when governments ban imports / exports, its a matter of | public scrutiny. So is protectionism. | | But apparently we allow a private cartel to do the same thing | to an enrire industry with no pushback. | | This affects smart IoT devices, TVs, cars, etc. My xiaomi | light does not pair with the app because its was meant for | chinese market, and the guy that sold it to me claims its not | hia problem either. | | The only way out of this mess is a law to properly define | digital ownership. | | If you want a weired half renting half ownership, that should | have to be explicit contract with a signature and maybe | lawyers involved, so you know what you are signing up for. | orev wrote: | This is out of context and has nothing to do with what they | said. The comment is about how companies were already | region locking content using technical means on DVDs, not | anything to do with government involvement. | denton-scratch wrote: | To be fair, NTSC/PAL/SECAM were political decisions made by | governments at the start of the television era, well before | modern copyright maximalism had got its boots on. | davrosthedalek wrote: | Some were also technical I believe, for example with | relation to the power grid frequency. | anikom15 wrote: | They were not political decisions made by governments. They | were technical standards developed by standards bodies | primarily made up of engineers. Then government | institutions like the FCC adopted them for their countries. | happymellon wrote: | In the UK it was quite common to be able to purchase DVD | players that were region free in most of the large electronic | stores. The few that were region locked required something | like the Konami code to unlock all the region's. | | Was region locking really that big of a deal? | dfxm12 wrote: | _Was region locking really that big of a deal?_ | | No. Not in the US either, at least. Even if there was a | part of the world where it was a big deal, I imagine if you | were so big a cinephile for it to matter, you would know | how to deal with it. | HideousKojima wrote: | Geolocking _kind of_ made sense back when we had incompatible | standards like NTSC and PAL. It makes zero sense (except as | rent-seeking behavior by rights holders) for Blu-ray and | beyond. | titzer wrote: | > DVDs were regionally locked as well | | It's easy nowadays to get a DVD/Bluray player that is multi- | region, if only because of an aftermarket mod. E.g. I have a | Samsung one that happily plays both media from any region. | jandorn wrote: | That is feature of DRM and has nothing to do with digital | movies. If you bought DRM locked product that you are not | really an owner. You can play video file anywhere in the world | and any time. | | Second issue is if you bought it trough a service and keept it | there, then you definitely not the owner... | stewx wrote: | Ok, "digital movies as most consumers know them". People | aren't buying DRM-free digital movies. (Technically, DVDs and | Blu-rays are digital as well, but we don't call them that) | jandorn wrote: | Doesn't matter if you are talking about downsides. Digital | movie has no downsides, DRM on other hands has as we all | know. Only valid complaint here is DRM and it always was. | We were warned but nobody listened. | KingFelix wrote: | Final space was also interesting. Another show that got the | chopping block for tax purposes. They were removed from AMazon, | even if you purchased the seasons! | | Piracy returns? | benabus wrote: | Came here to say this. I thought "Now that it's not | streaming, I've at least got a copy on Amazon Prime!" Nope. | Not anymore. And definitely can't get Season 3 any longer. | Complete bullshit. | 5pComb wrote: | -"Piracy returns?" | | It never gone. 4Tb USB HD + Good Torrent Tracker = All | problems solved. | deadbunny wrote: | Thankfully we never went away and we have a lot of the | shows/films/music that are no longer commercially available | archived for future generations. | OhNoNotAnother1 wrote: | astorsnk wrote: | >> You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the | USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due | to licensing. | | Maybe this is true from the perspective of the license but it's | not something Apple enforces through tech. For example, I have | a two iTunes accounts for two countries. I can purchase content | through both and use that content anywhere without restriction. | They make it a big pain because you can't switch your account | to a different geo after it's created but with multiple | accounts your content isn't actually restricted. | AlecSchueler wrote: | Maybe iTunes wasn't a good example but it has happened to me | with other services. I live in the Netherlands where I bought | a subscription for the Formula 1 TV service. Last year I was | in the UK visiting family and was unable to watch races | there, despite havng already paid for them, as the geo | restrictions were different. | Tangurena2 wrote: | I found this happens sometimes with Kindle books. I never | know what will work or what will get disappeared when | travelling. | astorsnk wrote: | >> Last year I was in the UK visiting family and was unable | to watch races there, despite havng already paid for them, | as the geo restrictions were different. | | Yep, thank sucks. You can thank brexit for that. AFAIK | services offered in one EU country have to work throughout | the EU (so if you were in Germany it would have worked). | This meant that on holiday (coming from UK to Spain) a few | years back I was able to watch F1 live on my phone via the | NowTV/Sky app. This year - geo restricted. | squeaky-clean wrote: | I think they're referring to the official F1TV app, which | is region restricted in UK because of an exclusivity | agreement between SkyTV and Formula One Group. | | F1TV also added DRM this season, so open source clients | for it no longer work. You're allowed to view up to 6 | simultaneous cameras with your subscription (There's the | main feed, the map view, the data view, and 20 onboard | cameras). But there's no easy way to do this now aside | from having 6 chrome windows with all their chonky | borders taking up space, or using 6 different devices. | | RaceControl [0] is an amazing open source client that | offered split screen and synchronization of the videos | (F1's own app has the onboard cameras about 20s ahead of | the main feed, which means you either had to manually | delay them all yourself or you get spoilers). Now it only | works for archivee races. | | Which is ridiculous because someone with an HDMI splitter | can still strip the DRM and stream it illegally. | | I'm probably going to end my subscription after this | season and switch to watching pirated streams, because | I'm being punished for having the gall to be a paid | subscriber. | | [0] https://github.com/robvdpol/RaceControl | | In case robvdpol is an HN member, thanks for all the work | you put into RaceControl. It was the best way to watch | the sport. | detaro wrote: | > _AFAIK services offered in one EU country have to work | throughout the EU_ | | Streaming services are a bit of a special case: they can | have different access in different places, _but_ the | location that counts is the users home location. So e.g. | a national sports league can license exclusive rights to | different streaming services in different countries, and | in your home country there is only one choice, but if you | sign up with them and then travel, you still can access | it, even though the "exclusive" contract for that | country is with someone else. | denton-scratch wrote: | Nothing to do with Brexit. | chordalkeyboard wrote: | in 2010 I bought an ipod touch at the px in Afghanistan and | Apple wouldn't even let me create an account; without an | account most of the features were not accessible. | stewx wrote: | Jumping through hoops doesn't work for most consumers. Nor | should they have to do it. | 411111111111111 wrote: | The original point was that you might loose access to | purchased movies because the licensing doesn't allow you so | watch it from a different locality. | | This is currently untrue for Apple/itunes and that's the | only point they made. | | There are currently no hoops for anyone to jump through | unless you want to sidestep the law or licensing | agreements, which is another discussion entirely. | | Potential buyers still have to consider the original point | however, as even if Apple doesn't enforce it _currently_ , | there is no assurance that it won't in the future. And | there is no guarantee that it's gonna be the same if theyre | buying on another platform. | | Didn't Google and Amazon have competing platforms for | example? | makeitdouble wrote: | I am on the same boat but found it more and more a PITA to | manage as Apple started to push for 2FA (that damn prompt | every fucking login to "upgrade" your account). Switching | account is now way more burdensome, and it's also a pain to | get the password prompts on updates as apps are still bound | to your logged out account. | warp wrote: | I find the password prompts an improvement over earlier | versions of iOS, where there was no way to get updates to | those apps without logging out of the app store entirely | and logging in with the other region's account. | | Obviously it would be better if we could be properly logged | in into multiple accounts at the same time (The play store | on android does support switching easily), but at least I | can now (I think since iOS 15) get app updates while | staying logged in in my main account. | volleygman180 wrote: | > _re-sale of digital goods_ | | Sounds a lot like a problem that NFTs could fix | NoGravitas wrote: | No, introducing artificial scarcity does nothing to fix the | problem. | SkyBelow wrote: | That would be one way of handling the technical how, but it | isn't technical problems that are stopping companies from | doing this. Places like Steam already have digital | marketplaces yet games aren't resalable. | deadbunny wrote: | Steam has a list of licences I own for the games I have on | Steam. They could easily add 2nd hand sales to the Steam | store and just transfer that license to another user. No need | for a Blockchain when Steam have a perfectly working | database. | cgrealy wrote: | The issue with resale of digital content is that there is | no discernible difference between new and used. | | Why would anyone ever pay full price for a "new" game if | there were "second hand" copies that were completely | identical to a new version available for less? | | I don't care about EA or Activision losing out on that 10th | private jet, but second hand sales would absolutely hurt | small creators doing great work. | anikom15 wrote: | Used sellers can't create new copies of the game. Used | markets have more of an impact on retailers and dealers | than on manufacturers. | dewey wrote: | > You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the | USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due | to licensing. | | In the EU we have an interesting law regarding that, if you | subscribe to Netflix in Germany and then travel to another EU | country you'll still get the same catalog as in your home | country. | | If you have a US account and travel to the EU you'll get access | to the catalog of the country you are in. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | do you have a link to this law? | dewey wrote: | It's the Portability Regulation: | https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-9-2-2018/4728 | iggldiggl wrote: | > Another significant issue with digital movies and games is | the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. | | Which, as I've recently noticed, in turn has the interesting | (and from the consumer point of view somewhat unfortunate) side | effect that if a particular online release is pulled from | distribution, it becomes completely unavailable (at least | through legal channels) from one moment to the next. | | Whereas with physical media first of all being pulled from | distribution doesn't automatically mean that all existing stock | in all stores worldwide is being recalled (it can happen, but | the process is not as intrinsically linked as it is with | digital distribution), and secondly in any case there's always | the second hand market to completely legally fall back to, so | the onset of unavailability is a more gradual process, | especially for more popular media where there's a sizeable | second hand market offering available. | | With digital media on the other hand you more or less | immediately have to fall back to under-the-table sources if | that happens... | antoinec wrote: | > Another significant issue with digital movies and games is | the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. | | I get your point but I don't see how this could actually work. | As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else | and not from iTunes? And as a seller, why would I sell it at a | lower price than what it is on iTunes? It's not like it would | come with a box that would look used/damaged, or a DVD with | scratches on it. | oneeyedpigeon wrote: | As a buyer: to get it cheaper. As a seller: to obtain money | for something you no longer value at its purchase price. | chucksmash wrote: | > As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone | else and not from iTunes? | | Because it is the same thing, but cheaper. | | > And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than | what it is on iTunes? | | Because otherwise people won't buy it from you, they'll buy | it from ITunes. | | Even if the lower price doesn't make sense for digital media | that aren't degraded through use, lower price (that lets you | recoup, say, 90% of what you paid) would be needed to make | people go through hassle of not just buying it "new." | shockeychap wrote: | The only problem with this is that with physical media, | there's an intrinsic amount of "friction" that prevents | gaming the system. It's not convenient to, for example, | have five people buy and share one set of DVDs. The hassle | of moving the disc around (which gets dramatically worse | with distance) incentivizes people to buy their own copy. | But digital buying and selling would make it rather easy | for one person to "sell" their movie to a friend for next- | to-nothing and then "buy" it back when they want to use it. | And we can be a thousand miles away with no problem. | | There are ways to correct this, such as imposing reasonable | floors on the sale price, or not permitting the sale of a | title for something like 30 days after a transaction. | | I'm just saying that these things would need to be factored | into any proper solution, ideally via legislation. | frankfrankfrank wrote: | The friction you are overlooking would be, e.g., the | platform to sell the media and the likely cost to do so. | Not only that, but you are also not aware of the | fraudulent price that is charged for the media now | precisely because the market is a monopolistic fraud. If | movies were priced at what they are really worth, they | would be some ... and easily significantly ... lower | lower price, e.g., $.50 rent and $2 to buy. | | If you want to evaluate how much the movies/content is | really worth, just take the price you pay for a streaming | service and divide it by the content you consume. | | For example; $5 month, divided by 80 hours of viewing | (which seems low for most) and you come to $0.06 per | hour, or about $0.12 per movie. Using this conservative | estimate, are you going to bother selling a digital movie | for less than $0.12? No. But that is precisely why the | industry has monopolized the market and added DRM, | because they want to keep their fraudulent scheme going | to deprive people of their earnings. | | But what it's really about is, as instituting a new form | of slavery where you are given everything for "free" just | like like slave of all other eras, but you are deprived | of far more at a far greater intangible cost for it. | necovek wrote: | Loaning a copy to a friend, which is what your example | basically is, should also be protected by consumer laws. | shockeychap wrote: | If you're talking about loaning a physical copy of a | movie to a friend, sure. We have to make arrangements to | get the "thing" from one location to another. | | Surely you can understand that freely "loaning" digital | copies - with none of the friction involved in physical | media transport - would de-incentivize purchasing by | others. | | If you want that, fine. But that will jack up the price | of movies, since a lot fewer of them will be sold. | samdcbu wrote: | We already have exactly this system for library e-book | lending. There is a queue of people on the waitlist for a | book and once loan period for the current reader is | expires it is automatically loaned (no scare quotes | because it is in every way a loan) to the next person in | the queue. | | I don't see why the same couldn't be done for other forms | of media. Movies, albums, maybe even software licenses. | | This system will likely result in a fairly minor decline | in VOD revenue due to fewer individuals purchasing their | own digital copy because they are once again able to loan | works to others and take advantage of the same sharing of | works that was taken for granted with physical media. If | someone borrows a friends license to a movie to watch it | once instead of being forced by the studios to buy or | rent their own copy then there will be some lost revenue | but I think that revenue only existed in the first place | because of the walled garden scheme of owning nothing | that exists right now. I also think if VOD licenses | actually had value and guaranteed longevity they would be | more appealing to consumers. | necovek wrote: | With streamed digital copies, one can limit simultaneous | playback. Simply "loaning" it in a service where you | select who do you loan it to will add friction, and | considering how any little friction (instead of | torrenting or getting BR disks) is keeping people on | streaming services anyway, it's unlikely it would move | the needle too much. | cxr wrote: | > Simply "loaning" it in a service where you select who | do you loan it to will add friction | | Interesting observation! Digital-only copies traded in a | form not comprising the embodiment in a physical "vessel" | allow for a theoretically efficient handshake-and- | exchange process, but in practice, there's lots of | friction involved. | | Grievance: "Hey, you can't do that! It's too easy!" | | Response: "Easy? Have you ever _used_ an app with a | 10-foot UI that 's controlled by a TV remote?" | | See also: <https://xkcd.com/949/> ("File Transfer"). | denton-scratch wrote: | > There are ways to correct this | | Those aren't "correcting" anything; the internet came | along and stole their lunch. What needs correcting is the | business model. | Avicebron wrote: | True, and if the market economy was working as it should. | Then if enough people were selling old digital music at | lower prices, Itunes would have to lower their prices. | Essentially what their doing is anti-competitive. | adrianN wrote: | You could even imagine an automated system where you buy | a song for some two cents and then sell it back after | you're done listening to it for a one cent. You could | have users make their collections available on a market | place and pay them some fraction of the profits you make. | scarface74 wrote: | Music bought on iTunes hasn't had DRM since 2009 | mattl wrote: | Depends where you're based. Japan had DRM on iTunes for | some time and also DRM-free songs on iTunes were a paid | upgrade globally for a while too. | [deleted] | antoinec wrote: | I'd be curious to see if a system like that exists already | for some kind of digital asset: secondary sales for | something that is not limited in quantity, and can still be | bought from the source at a higher price. | carlgreene wrote: | VST plug-ins have a pretty robust secondary marketplace. | See kvraudio.com | [deleted] | apetresc wrote: | Certain NFT marketplaces have this characteristic. | LegitShady wrote: | @antoinec | | steam does exactly this. you can sell on steam and pay | steam their cut, or sell steam keys elsewhere for the same | or more money without steam taking a cut. | bigyikes wrote: | >as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what | it is on iTunes? | | A seller would do this to undercut iTunes, making a sale much | more likely. | | >As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone | else and not from iTunes | | Because the seller would likely price it lower than iTunes. | | The real question is: how does this affect the digital goods | market overall? Does allowing re-sale make iTunes | unprofitable? Does it make movie production unprofitable? | IanCal wrote: | This I think is one of the places where smaller technical | differences make things legitimately different. I'm not | coming from the side of "it shouldn't be allowed" or "it | must absolutely be allowed like physical goods". | | Second hand items are often | | * Lower quality, as they've been used * Lack consumer | protections | | The first just doesn't apply to digital goods and the | second is much more minor (not expecting technical faults | to become apparent after a while owning a digital item). | | Selling physical goods also has a reasonable time | commitment to it, you have to physically move things - | there's friction. Digital goods could be sold between | regular people near instantaneously. Buying a DVD and | selling it after watching is do-able but still some work. | Buying a film second hand the moment I press play and | selling it on a market straight away after I stop watching | seems trivial. I know this is ~rental, but theoretically | users only need to buy in total enough copies for the | concurrent number of watchers. A big enough market and this | could impact how things are released, a "watch anytime" vs | a "you really need to be up to date (e.g. sports)" would | make a vast difference in total required copies floating | around. | | The resale value impacts the price you can sell at too. If | a customer knows they can easily sell an item for 80% of | what they bought it for, they're likely to be willing to | pay more for it. However the customer also takes on more | risk. | | It feels like such a small change, but I can see it making | a very large difference. | mafuy wrote: | I'd say this goes both ways. It's vastly easier and | frictionless to sell content. It could and should also be | easy to re-sell this content - it's only fair that both | seller and buyer benefit from the properties of digital | content. | the_af wrote: | > _Does allowing re-sale make iTunes unprofitable?_ | | I doubt it. Does reselling used physical books make the | book publishing business unprofitable? | iggldiggl wrote: | I'd wager that physical vs. digital media does somewhat | affect the outcomes here... | the_af wrote: | It probably does, I think mostly in the sense digital | media is relatively new and misunderstood -- even today | -- and publishers thought they could get away with an | iron grip they simply could not have with physical stuff. | So it's probably not that they _lose_ profitability, but | more that the extraordinary profit margins of digital get | capped back to normality. | | Disregarding piracy [1], if I can sell a digital item and | lose access in the process (so that I'm not making | duplicates out of thin air), then what's the harm? That | it's easier and more efficient to do used sales this way? | Well, aren't free market proponents all about efficiency? | Or is it just when it doesn't affect their profits? | | [1] If we don't disregard piracy, then all bets are off | and whatever the publisher wants becomes irrelevant. | frankfrankfrank wrote: | It's rather simple, because you want to sell it. If you want | to hold out for selling it at market price while the buyer | will prefer buying it directly from the source, then so be | it, or if you want to sell it immediately, you price it at | bargain prices or even free if you don't care, i.e. value the | item anymore. What we are witnessing here is a total | destruction of markets and commerce between free humans. | | What you and many are are also missing, including the author, | is that the whole system is a fraud because the prices we | asked to pay (I refuse) are fraudulent themselves because of | it. You are "buying" a movie at a price, precisely because | the whole system is rigged in a fraudulent manner where you | are not able to actually own it and you are not able to sell | it, and you can't rent it or even lend it; therefore it is | not actually a market price, it is a monopoly price based on | cartel control and total cornering of the market. It's | essentially no different than the fraudulent price of | diamonds or any of the frauds that have been prosecuted where | people corner and manipulate the market of, e.g., onions, | famously. | | Some may have heard the phrase "you will own nothing and be | happy" expressed by your global rulers. This topic is | precisely manifestation of that and people don't seem to | realize it. You own nothing related to media that you think | you own and you think you are happy for it, without yet | realizing what a fraud and trap it is, even as the | encirclement of slavery progresses all around us. | | Especially in America there are many people who, if you were | to look at closely, literally own not a single thing they | think they have; and in many cases own less than they are | even worth. Every single thing can be yanked out from under | people like that on a whim ... legally. A recent famous | example of that is the Tesla that was disabled because Tesla | didn't like something. Slaves of the past were also "happy | and didn't own anything" since their healthcare was "free" | and their groceries were "free" and their housing was "free", | etc.; all provided for "free" by government of and by the | feudal lord or plantation owners. | | In case people have forgotten the most relevant case of what | the author writes about; remember when Amazon simply deleted | a book from users' kindles without even asking, let alone | receiving consent? This was about 4 years ago now. That book | that Amazon just disappeared off people's devices with no | evidence of their actions other than some coincidental proof | of purchase people had retained ... 1984. | rvz wrote: | Yes. That is the scam. | | It's no different to the rest of them. If Stadia hasn't | already taught anyone that it is a scam then I don't know | what will. | jayeshsalvi wrote: | Is there a legal definition to "buying" in consumer law? Can't | Amazon be sued for this? | intrasight wrote: | It's not a "deception" if you understand that you don't really | "own" digital content. I will "buy" it if I think I'll watch it | again - soon. But there are so many good movies and TV shows that | I rarely re-watch anything. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | > It's not a "deception" if you understand that you don't | really "own" digital content. | | No, it's the wrong word regardless, and in any event I | seriously doubt that the average consumer actually understands | that they're being lied to. | redleggedfrog wrote: | Arr, matey! There's a solution to this problem. | itslennysfault wrote: | This hit me long long ago when the kindle first came out. At the | time (haven't looked since), eBooks were the same price as paper | back books, but with a paper back book you OWN it. You can GIVE | it to a friend. You can SELL it. Heck, if it gets really cold you | can even burn it. With an eBook you can read it, and thats about | it. | moffkalast wrote: | > With an eBook you can read it, rip it into an epub and give | it to ALL your friends and everyone on the internet. | | FTFY | | Or more accurately, someone's already done it and you get to be | one of those friends. | FalconSensei wrote: | It's usually cheaper, and they often have sales were you get it | for 10%~20% of the paperback price. | | Also, for fiction, it's an advantage too because many times | there's only a hardback + ebook release. Since hardbacks are | the more expensive and less convenient/easy version to read - | heavier, get's damaged more easily - you can just get the ebook | for maybe half the price of paperback | The-Bus wrote: | I understand the point you are trying to make but a hardcover | book is definitely can take more damage than an ereader. | indymike wrote: | There needs to be a very large lawsuit or two about this. | Claiming you can buy something, and then renting it, even if the | rental is 20 years is fraud. | vel0city wrote: | I buy a concert ticket. Does this mean I can go see that artist | everywhere they perform forever now? | | No. I bought a revokable, limited access right to see a | particular performance. | | Should we not use the term "buy" here as well? | D13Fd wrote: | Agreed. Even when you "buy" a DVD or Blu-Ray, you are | actually just buying a copy of the media with a limited | license to use it for certain purposes. | | It's still copyright infringement if, for example, you buy a | Blu-Ray disc and then open a movie theatre and start playing | that disc publicly. The license you bought with the disc | doesn't extend that far. | | Whether you "buy" a movie via a disc or a streaming service, | you're really just buying a limited license to display the | movie along with either physical or digital delivery. | fsflover wrote: | You don't "buy the performance" but a ticket for a certain | time. | vel0city wrote: | You don't by the streaming movie but a license for an | indefinite time. | | And how do you know what the limits of the ticket or the | license are? You read the document you're agreeing to when | buying the ticket. | evouga wrote: | Many people have already said this, but: buying a ticket | to a _one-time_ event is not analogous to buying a | license to watch a movie _in perpetuity._ | | A better analogy, that does not involve a _one-time_ | event, would be a lifetime pass to concert venue. You buy | this pass, only to have the venue refuse to honor it a | few years later. | vel0city wrote: | On Amazon, you're literally _not_ buying a license to | watch a movie _in perpetuity_. You 're buying a license | to access it for "an indefinite period of time". This is | pretty clear and easy to see in the agreement they ask if | you read before you check out. | danparsonson wrote: | That's a false equivalence though - it's well understood in | this case that you bought the ticket not the performance, and | that the ticket expires after one use. The same is not true | of buying films, as it used to be possible to keep a physical | copy (e.g. DVD) that no-one could take away from you, and | that was recent enough that I think most people still | (reasonably IMO) expect a perpetual license when 'buying' a | movie. | | We had a word in the olden days for buying a limited license | to watch a film - we called it "renting". | vel0city wrote: | > buying a limited license to watch a film | | Buying a VHS was still a limited license. You weren't | allowed to reproduce it and sell the reproductions. You | weren't allowed to then operate a movie theater around your | off the shelf VHS tapes. You weren't entitled to a new tape | once the tape wore out. | EMIRELADERO wrote: | That's not a license, that's just buying a copy enshrined | in a physical medium. All the restrictions you mentioned | derive from copyright law itself, not a license. | indymike wrote: | > Buying a VHS was still a limited license. | | Yes, but no one would take the physical tape away when | Target or their distributor lost the right to sell the | video tape. | indymike wrote: | > I buy a concert ticket. Does this mean I can go see that | artist everywhere they perform forever now? | | This is a bad analogy. A better one would be, your bought a | car from me, and three years from now, I tow your car away | and do not compensate you for taking the car. Because buyer | beware, caveat emptor, etc... | vel0city wrote: | What part of a streaming movie is a physical item? It is | even further removed and a worse analogy than my concert | ticket is like a streaming movie license. With one you | physically have a few thousand-pound piece of metal in your | garage with a title from the government of ownership, the | other you have a limited license on an account maintained | by the service provider. | | If you "buy" a car, and don't get a title, then yeah sure I | guess the title holder can take it away. You didn't own it; | you never had the title for it. | indymike wrote: | > What part of a streaming movie is a physical item? | | The issue is telling someone this: | | Rent ($2.99) Rent HD ($3.99) Buy ($13.99) | | So I pick buy, and it sure looks like I own it because | the other two choices were presented as rentals. The buy | option really is a "long term rental" and should have a | very easy to read disclaimer under it that says: "Buy | access until 12/31/2029". That way the consumer does not | conclude it is a purchase, like a DVD or VHS that I own | until it wears out, or forever, whichever comes first. | | > If you "buy" a car, and don't get a title, then yeah | sure I guess the title holder can take it away. You | didn't own it; you never had the title for it. | | I bought my car with a loan. I did get a copy of the | title, with the lien-holder listed on the back. The car | is mine, but I cannot sell it without the lien-holder | releasing the lien. Legally, I do own the car. It is very | much mine. If I fail to make payments, the lien holder | may go to court, and the court can allow them to reposes | (note the "re" in reposes) the vehicle. | | Presenting something as "buy" when it is really "rent" is | unethical at best, and illegal at worst, and it needs to | be litigated now. | vel0city wrote: | > The buy option really is a "long term rental" | | It isn't a "long term rental", it is a limited license to | use it until the service provider isn't able to provide | it. There isn't a pre-defined end date you're agreeing to | with this buy button. Depending on the movie, putting an | end date of 2029 is actually more limiting than what many | of those videos will have. I bought movies on Unbox 16 | years ago which are still available today, something | you'd ensure wouldn't be possible with forcing them to | put an end date only 7 years away. | | You're literally arguing I should have had _less_ | ownership of access of the media than I currently do | have. | | I'd like to understand how buying a streaming video | license is more akin to buying a car than buying a | concert ticket. You brushed it off as a bad analogy and | seemingly only offered a seemingly worse one. One is | directly a physical object with government backed | ownership registrations, one is a limited access token to | enjoy some media. Which seems more like buying a concert | or theater ticket? | alexfromapex wrote: | When you are sold the concert ticket you know you are buying | it to only view at the one specific time and location. It is | an event ticket. With a digital movie, ostensibly buying lets | you view it whenever you want wherever you want in perpetuity | but that's not actually the case. We can use the term "buy" | for digital movies if you actually are just buying a ticket | that lets you view the movie however wherever and whenever | the license specifies. But that information should be | highlighted to the buyer otherwise it's deception. | vel0city wrote: | > When you are sold the concert ticket you know you are | buying it to only view at the one specific time and | location. | | Do I know this? Are you _assuming_ I bothered to read the | ticket ahead of time? I bought a ticket to the Red Hot | Chili Peppers 2022 Tour. I should be able to go to all the | tour, right? | | Oh wait, you're telling me there's _text_ on the ticket I | should have read to understand it was only for _one_ | location and _one_ evening? You really expected me to | _read_ all that legalese? | | > With a digital movie, ostensibly buying lets you view it | whenever you want wherever you want in perpetuity but | that's not actually the case. | | Ugh. I bet I would of had to _read_ something to understand | the limitations of what I was buying. I can 't believe | companies expect people to read about the things people buy | these days, totally taking advantage of everyone by putting | knowledge behind words. | alexfromapex wrote: | Arguing that reading anything, even small amounts of | information located directly on the ticket or receipt, is | "legalese" is very reductive and seems to be coming from | an emotional rather than logical argument. Event tickets | are an established practice that is very familiar and | straightforward to consumers and as another commenter | mentioned is a false equivalence for several reasons. | | There is an actual legal concept of an undue burden and | that is exactly what having to read through many pages of | fine print is. If you don't actually own digital content | it should be highlighted very clearly, while placing a | minimal undue burden on the consumer. Otherwise, it's | deceptive. | vel0city wrote: | I want to watch Top Gun: Maverick. I go to the Amazon | Store page. | | https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0B213HG4N/ref=atv | _hm... | | I see "By ordering or viewing, you agree to our | Terms[link to terms]" Huh maybe I should look at what I'm | buying before I click checkout. | | https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=202095490&view- | type=c... | | Hmm, what's relevant to this. Ah, Digital Content, | generally. | | The Service may allow you to: (i) ignoring subscription | talk (ii) ignoring rental talk (iii) purchase Digital | Content for on-demand viewing over an indefinite period | of time ("Purchased Digital Content") | | So obviously even "buying" the movie only gives it to me | for an indefinite period of time. I wonder when it might | not become available then. Let's scan more section | headers to see if it talks about that. | | i. Availability of Purchased Digital Content. Purchased | Digital Content will generally continue to be available | to you for download or streaming from the Service, as | applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential | content provider licensing restrictions or for other | reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if | Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further | download or streaming. | | I don't get how this is an "undue burden" to read this | before forking over $14. It is not fine print, the | default styles render it pretty clearly on my screen but | you can feel free to resize it to render however you | wish. Its not a long document. It has obvious sections. | The link to this document was a few pixels away from the | Buy button on my screen and was easily visible. It took | me less than a minute to understand what I would be | buying if I clicked "Buy". They're not hiding this away | behind some far away unrelated site or only giving you | this after requesting it by mail with legal letterhead. | This is pretty out there and open. | | To me, suggesting that people can't read this might as | well be the same as arguing people shouldn't be required | to read what's on the face of a ticket. The information | is right there, it is not hidden in the slightest. | | > Event tickets are an established practice | | Maybe to you, but maybe I've never bought one before. | | If you're going by "event tickets have been sold for a | while", well, so have digital movies with DRM that can | make them unavailable. This isn't something that just | came out this year, I bought a movie from Amazon Unbox | _sixteen years ago_ which had these limitations. How long | does it have to exist before it is an "established | practice"? | alexfromapex wrote: | > It is not fine print | | definition of _fine print_ : inconspicuous details or | conditions printed in an agreement or contract, | especially ones that may prove unfavorable | | definition of _inconspicuous_ : not clearly visible or | attracting attention; not conspicuous. | | You can note that you had to click on the "Terms" link to | get to those... | | > I don't get how this is an "undue burden" | | If you have to read 20 paragraphs of text for every | digital movie purchase, it is considered an undue burden | to me. You can calculate the amount of reading time that | would take. I'm not going to. | | I'm not going to argue with you anymore as I feel I'm | wasting my time but in short I don't want to live in a | dystopia where companies start foisting time wasting | tasks on me until I give in and accept their unfavorable | terms on everything. | vel0city wrote: | > definition of inconspicuous: not clearly visible or | attracting attention; not conspicuous. | | It is a link probably millimeters away from the Buy | button on the screen to read before even clicking Buy, | and then Buy asks you if you did read it before it | charges your card. I don't know how that's "not clearly | visible". If there wasn't a link on the page, or was tiny | and at the very bottom of the page, sure I might agree | but that's not what's going on here. | | I guess its "fine print" when you don't want to read it | but I'm just overly reductive when I don't want to read | it. That must be the distinction. | | > If you have to read 20 paragraphs of text for every | digital movie purchase | | I mean, you don't have to every time. This argument seems | to be coming from an emotional rather than logical | argument. These terms don't change very often and they're | very similar for every digital movie platform. Once | you've skimmed it on Amazon there's not really a point to | reading it again. I'll look over the ingredients list on | a food product once but it's not like every time I eat a | Snickers I re-examine the ingredients label. | | Do you really not bother reading contracts when you agree | to them? | | Your main point is essentially that consumers shouldn't | have to actually pay attention in the slightest to what | it is they're buying. That they have practically no | mental capacity to glance over the terms of a service | they're agreeing to when they click "agree". | | > I don't want to live in a dystopia where companies | start foisting time wasting tasks on me until I give in | and accept their unfavorable terms on everything. | | Cool. Nobody is forcing you to buy these movies. I | haven't bought a digital movie in decades precisely for | these reasons. But I don't act like it is this massive | undue burden for me to read about the thing I'm buying. | It took one minute for me to scan that document and | understand what buying a movie on Amazon is like. | npteljes wrote: | That doesn't compare. If I go to Amazon, look for a Harry | Potter collection, I'm presented a Buy for kindle button. Not | a "rent for some time, but read fast because we might take it | away whenever" button. If they said rent, lease, license, | borrow, peek momentarily into, it wouldn't be misleading. | senko wrote: | Yes. | | Good luck winning this with Amazon, Apple and Disney on the | other side. | senko wrote: | Copyright, as it exists in the 21st century, is a scam. | | It does not protect the artists, the creative works, or the | little guy. It is a product of decades' worth of lobbying by very | rich and powerful organizations and megacorps. | | I'm not against the idea of a copyright. An artist has the right | to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and creative works do have | value. | | However, the original idea of copyright has been bent, broken, | dismembered, and sown back together in a Frankensteinian | abomination and now serves only to line up pockets of people in | the publishing industry. And the US has, through its trade deals, | exported this thing worldwide. | | Disney lobbies for life of author + 70 years copyright duration | not out of goodwill towards authors (in fact, it's been trying to | wriggle out of paying royalties to some of them!). Amazon uses | copyright as an excuse to push DRM, locking out competition and | limiting users' rights (Kindle, Audible DRM). DMCA is constantly | abused to take down fair-use content. | | Meanwhile, book authors are struggling to find a reason to write | books, since many barely recoup the costs. Musicians decry | royalties paid out by Spotify (that aren't actually so small, but | the majority of the cut is taken by the music industry). | Photographers try in vain to stop people just copy/pasting their | photos online (what are they going to do, sue everyone?), | including in some cases big companies that didn't even bother to | check the copyright. | | They aren't being protected. They are being milked. | Xeoncross wrote: | Does the US have any state or federal laws that don't benefit | the wealthy at least as much as a regular citizen? | | As far as I'm aware, even laws for the small business play into | the favor of larger corporations either directly or via | auxiliary laws. | wpietri wrote: | Food safety laws are a good example. By acting as a floor on | manufacturer and restaurant hygiene and ingredient quality, | they help the poor a fair bit more than the rich. | moffkalast wrote: | The rich also need to well... eat. It benefits them as much | as anybody. | | For example milk started to be regulated more only after | someone in Al Capone's family got poisoned and he bribed | the right people to make it a thing. You're kidding | yourself if you think any of that was to benefit the poor | in the first place lmao, just happens to be a side effect. | wpietri wrote: | The rich do need to eat, but they can and generally do | eat from places with much higher margins and higher-value | brands. Those places have less incentive to cut corners | and more incentive to keep their customers healthy. The | poorer you are, though, the more constrained your choices | are and the more risk you may have to take. Food safety | laws act as a quality floor (or a risk ceiling if you | prefer), so they help poor people more than the rich. | Xeoncross wrote: | While this is true, the OP's argument could also include | other reasons they wanted this such as avoiding costly | sickness in their employees. | | I can assure you that amazon and walmart care at least a | little about the health of the minimum wage workers they | depend on to move inventory. | est31 wrote: | Amazon is famous for _not_ caring about the health of | their workers, compared to competitors in the same | industry. They pay above the market and replace the | market 's healthy workers with workers with health | issues. They don't care to optimize their process towards | worker health as currently the supply outstrips their | demand. | | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/12/study-amazon-workers- | suffer-... | | But I do agree with your general argument, a healthy | workforce is better for a country's economy. | phpthrowaway99 wrote: | Rich people can eat at at places to nice and clean that | the work areas are probably cleaner than some of the | tables and chairs in the customer areas of low end dining | places. | babypuncher wrote: | The sources rich people buy their food from have | historically been less likely to be unsanitary. | | A lot of our food safety regulations are a result of | public outrage over horrendous conditions in factories | that produced low cost foodstuffs primarily eaten by the | poor in the early 20th century. | | Though you could easily argue that the rich still benefit | from these laws because they help insure a healthy labor | pool. | TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: | They also conveniently keep volunteers and churches from | feeding the homeless, so subsidized corporations can handle | that. | | One needs only to taste legit French cheese, compared with, | say, Austrian manufactured French cheese, to know food | quality laws have little to do with actual food quality, | and Austria has one of the strictest food legal systems in | the World. | cgrealy wrote: | Food laws are about safety, not taste. | wpietri wrote: | > One needs only to taste legit French cheese, | | Not sure how you got from food safety to how much you | like the taste of particular cheese, but to me they're | very different problems. I'm only talking about food | safety. | | > They also conveniently keep volunteers and churches | from feeding the homeless, so subsidized corporations can | handle that. | | Not generally, but perhaps in your area. Where I am there | are special exemptions for charitable organizations | giving out food: | https://www.sfdph.org/dph/EH/Food/lscfo.asp | | There are still some requirements, which I think is good. | Nobody, homeless people included, should receive unsafe | food. | bitwize wrote: | Real French cheese is made from raw milk, which is banned | under USA food safety laws. It is objectively much | tastier than the pasteurized stuff, and nobody dies from | eating it. | 9991 wrote: | Ah, yes, taste, the most objective of the senses ... | WesternWind wrote: | Could you link me to something showing that that's an | issue? Because the issues people run into as volunteers | that I've hard about tend to be city ordinances, not | state or federal food safety requirements. | | Further I'm aware of Food Not Bombs winning a case by | claiming an expressive first amendment right to share | food. | simonsarris wrote: | Compliance with those laws help big ag and Starbucks WAY | more than small farmers and small cafes, and pose barriers | to entry. | wpietri wrote: | How does compliance help them more? I'd think it's just | the opposite. E.g., I live in a city that posts health | department scores in every restaurant. This makes me more | likely to eat at a small place because I can know that | they're not cutting corners on safety. Whereas, having | worked in high school at a large chain restaurant, I | would expect those places to do well just through | corporate persnicketiness. | | I agree they pose a barrier to entry, but I think that's | good. People not ready to run a clean kitchen should are | not ready to serve food. Now it's possible that the bar | is unnecessarily high in places. But I live in a city | with lots of restaurants and a relatively low number of | chains, so I'm sure it's not always the case. | dpb1 wrote: | social security, medicare, medicaid, WIC Programs, public | schools, public transportation, all come to mind. | | I mean, no coincidence that they are always on the top of the | list to threaten and scheme to cut by the right wing. | rndmize wrote: | This seems like an odd question to me. Social security? | Medicare? Free education? The entire welfare state? The vast | majority of regulatory apparatus, which is generally | implemented when wealthy/owner class people cause damage to | employees/poor people to a degree that political action is | taken (NLRB, FDA, OSHA, EPA, CFPB, etc.)? The great volume of | services provided to all citizens, for free - weather | forecasting, GPS, state/federal parks, federally funded | research; laws like the CRA, VRA or ADA which help those | disadvantaged by racism, disability, etc. | | Look, I'm not going to say regulatory capture doesn't exist, | or that the wealthy don't have advantages in getting laws | passed that favor their interests, but there's a great deal | of stuff that gets done that is specifically for the poor or | the average citizen. | orthecreedence wrote: | > This seems like an odd question to me. Social security? | Medicare? Free education? The entire welfare state? | | These benefit the wealthy. They are used the quell the | thirst for wealthy blood that would otherwise be prevalent. | They are crumbs thrown to the masses to keep them from | revolting during uncertain times. | | > The vast majority of regulatory apparatus | | I'd argue most regulatory bodies are captured agenies in | the US. The delineation between _state_ and _industry_ has | been fading for decades. They either look the other way, or | overregulate to choke out any competition that would unseat | existing players. Regulation in the US is almost entirely | in service to capital. | | > weather forecasting, GPS | | Again, these are likely more in service to the economy | (capital) than normal citizens. | | > state/federal parks | | Fair enough. I'd add libraries to this list as well. These | institutions are actually kind of an odd exception to | America's complete obsession with privatization, | consumerism, and capital. | | > laws like the CRA, VRA or ADA which help those | disadvantaged by racism, disability, etc. | | Again, fair enough. | | > federally funded research | | Yes, often funded by the citizens such that private | industry can sell the result without recompense. | | > Look, I'm not going to say regulatory capture doesn't | exist | | It's the the rule, not the exception. | Retric wrote: | US automotive lemon law for example doesn't specifically | benefit the wealthy or large corporations. | | What muddles the picture is people do benefit from economies | of scale. So, if you make the law actually hostile for large | companies both the general public and corporations are worse | off. | oxfeed65261 wrote: | Lemon laws only apply to cars sold with warranties. | Wealthier people are more likely to buy new cars, or used | cars with warranties. Poor people are relatively much more | likely to buy cheaper used cars without warranties. Rich | people also buy more cars over their lives, increasing | their chances of coming across a lemon. Therefore, lemon | laws are relatively more beneficial for wealthier people. | [deleted] | phpthrowaway99 wrote: | I get what you're saying, but if a construction worker | buys a new Ford F150 that is constantly breaking, that is | a much bigger problem to him than if a wealthy person | buys a Range Rover as a 3rd vehicle for Tahoe runs and | that vehicle has some recurring check engine lights. | | Unless we're calling construction workers buying F150s | with 72 month loans wealthy these days. | jacobr1 wrote: | No, I think the OP is suggesting that the more likely | scenario is some professional-class "weekend-warrior" | type bought the F150s with the 72m loan, which later on | was resold to the working-class construction worker on | the secondary market. | phpthrowaway99 wrote: | I suppose. Even lemon laws are funny if you follow them | to their conclusion, so maybe OP is right. | | Once a vehicle gets lemon lawed, it gets sent to auction | where it is disclosed to dealers, and then it's just sold | again to the public as a used car without the ability to | be lemon lawed at that point. | Retric wrote: | Sold yes, but also marked as a lemon. | https://www.lemonlawlawyerscalifornia.com/2022/08/how-to- | kno... | | There is nothing wrong with buying a lemon car at a | sufficient discount. | jacobr1 wrote: | There are some laws around maintaining the history the | car. Sales must be recorded, certain accidents. I think | certain types of flood damage. Getting a carfax is a must | if you are buying a used car. | Retric wrote: | Every car initially comes under warranty and if a used | car was returned under lemon law you can find out before | buying it. | https://www.lemonlawlawyerscalifornia.com/2022/08/how-to- | kno... | | Thus lemon law benefits every single consumer whether | buying a new or used car. | Adraghast wrote: | > if you make the law actually hostile for large companies | both the general public and corporations are worse off | | What an overly broad thing to say! | Retric wrote: | Hostile as in preventing the existence of rather than | simply detrimental. | whimsicalism wrote: | Progressive taxation? | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | Copyright law was created by and exclusively for lawyers and | the oligarchs who can afford them on retainer. Just look at | what Disney has done to us and you'll lose all sympathy for the | mouse: https://i.imgur.com/58gB0hq.jpg | FalconSensei wrote: | on the other hand, I don't think Mickey should go public | domain. | rowanG077 wrote: | Why? I see no reason why it shouldn't go public domain. If | anything it might be possible wash some of the stain of | Mickey Mouse. | retrac wrote: | I think the best example to work with is Star Wars, or | maybe The Lord of the Rings. The harm of eternal copyright | is probably best demonstrated with these. They've both | entered popular understanding, becoming casually referenced | all over the place. "We need to make a little stop in | Mordor first" is probably more widely-understood than most | references to Greek mythology at this point. | | The people who grew up in the culture permeated with such | stories are stunted expressively. Because they're denied | the use of an ever-growing share of the tropes and | characters of the common culture. Many Disney films | themselves are retellings of classic stories in the public | domain. If you want to reference the original Cindarella, | or Greek mythology, or Oliver Twist, you're free to do so. | | You cannot do that with Luke Skywalker, or Aragorn. Now, | maybe you shouldn't be able to within the author's life. | But how many centuries should we keep this privilege? Would | you or I (or Disney) be able to tell a new story about | Hercules if copyright had been around 2000 years ago? | Imagine Shakespeare still under copyright! No Hamlet or | Macbeth characters in any other works without permission. | We can strike several important 20th century books right | there. In the future, the equivalent of Shakespeare will | still be under copyright long, long after they are dead. | Derivation and reuse are normal in art. Disney can borrow | from the public domain to make Cindarella, but it in turn | will never become public domain. | pvaldes wrote: | Lord of the Rings drinks from European mythology, and | Star Wars toke more than a few clues from a particular | film of Kurosawa. Both evolved in interesting histories, | innovated a lot and add their own work and merit, of | course. This happened in part because they were not sued | by former authors. | pvaldes wrote: | Oh, I almost forgot it... and Star wars toke also "more | than inspiration" from the french comic Valerian. The | designs from the imperial probe droid in Hoth or the | Leia's bikini were taken directly from the comics with | minimum changes, and without asking anybody. | | This, lets call it, "cross pollination" would be much | more difficult today. | anjbe wrote: | Star Wars is a particularly salient example because the | original cuts that made the films such cultural icons are | completely unavailable from anyone other than third-party | sellers, due to the wishes of the (former) rights holder. | After the Special Editions were released, the theatrical | editions made it onto DVD one time, and never did again. | J.J. Abrams has indicated that there are difficulties | behind the scenes (perhaps some clause in the Disney | purchase) that prevent the originals from being made | available for sale. So people who want to avoid the CGI | and bad redubs of the Special Editions are stuck | scrounging eBay, or more likely, grabbing an "unofficial" | scan of the theatrical editions. | gibspaulding wrote: | You may have avoided mentioning this on purpose, but I'll | go for it. The "Despecialized Editions" [1] of the | original Star Wars trilogy are an amazing project to take | the HD special editions and edit out all of the changes | to match the theatrical edition. They look a lot better | than the scans I've seen, but still match the old VHS box | set I grew up watching. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmy's_Despecialized_E | dition | FlingPoo wrote: | Another project to fully restore the original Star Wars | trilogy is 4K77/4K80/4K83 [1] | | [1] https://www.thestarwarstrilogy.com/ | thefringthing wrote: | > the theatrical editions made it onto DVD one time | | Even then, it wasn't really what was being asked for by | fans. The goal at that time was to get LucasFilm to | release the pre-Special Edition versions of the movies, | which were available on VHS and Laserdisc, on DVD _at DVD | resolution_. | | LucasFilm insisted that it was impossible to reassemble | the negatives and that they had no suitable print from | which to produce a new digital scan. Instead, they | released digitized copies of the Laserdiscs on DVD bonus | discs. | | Since then, enthusiasts have managed to produce Blu-ray | resolution versions of the original movies first by | piecing together a variety of sources and later by | acquiring and scanning surviving prints. | zeruch wrote: | I do. | moffkalast wrote: | At this point it should've been public domain twice over, | it's old as dirt. | jqgatsby wrote: | What is casually asserted can be casually denied. Can you | elaborate your reason for thinking this? Is it a special | carve-out for Mickey, or would you also include, say, Alice | in Wonderland? | tremon wrote: | Indeed. Why should Mickey be governed by different rules | than Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, The | Sorcerer's Apprentice, Pinocchio or The Ice Queen? | noasaservice wrote: | In a way, Mickey Mouse is under both copyright and | trademark. | | If someone wanted to do "The New Stories of Mickey Mouse" | they should be free to do so. | | If someone wanted to _act_ as Disney using Micky Mouse, | then they should be sued into oblivion for acting as | another company. | xani_ wrote: | That's a fair compromise. Original author owns the rights | to a given piece of art in whole and trademark from | title, so they can profit off their work and make next | title without being mistaken for someone else. | | Everyone else is free to do with IP, do remixes etc. and | if they make something with original IP that is better | than originals, so be it ,competition actually working. | noasaservice wrote: | To be fair, I am a huge proponent of most trademarks. | (general shape, color, and such I'm not a fan of) | | A trademark means if I buy AMD, I'm not getting "shitty | rebrand of chip 10y old by jank fab". Or it means if I | buy branded food, I know what I'm getting. | | Trademarks are essential for the protection to know the | goods you buy from a company are what you're expecting. | | And that's why I'm realllllly curious when a whole bunch | of big companies sue Amazon for allowing counterfeit co- | mingling (or being charged $$$$$ for separate SKUs), | relating to trademark dilution. This is straight up | provable damage. | aidenn0 wrote: | What about the ballet _The Sleeping Beauty_? Disney used | Tchaikovsky 's music heavily in their adaption despite it | being less than 70 years after his death (and even further | from being 95 years from its premiere). | | That's always my go-to example for copyright because: | | 1. Disney has benefited both from extending copyright _and_ | from the previous shorter duration of copyright | | 2. The fact that a work from the 19th century would still | be under copyright in 1959 is astonishing to many people | | 3. Disney's _Sleeping Beauty_ , despite opening to mixed | reviews, is generally well received today and is a great | example of what we are missing out on; this work (judged | "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by | the LoC) could not have been made if today's rules existed | in 1959. | tzs wrote: | Your chart shows two copyright term extensions since Mickey | Mouse was created. | | As your chart shows ever since the first Copyright Act in the | US, there has been a major revision every 40-70 years, | typically to update for things that have changed since the | previous Act such as new technology. | | As far as I've been able to tell Disney has nothing to do | with creating the 1976 Act, which was the first time their | copyright term was extended. The 1976 was created largely to | address the massive changes in technology and international | trade since 1909. | | As part of that there was wide consensus that the US needed | to make its copyright law more like the rest of the world, to | pave the way for the US joining the Berne Convention. The | change in terms came as part of that, making US copyright | terms match what nearly everyone else had. | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | You stopped just short of the worst one: | | > _The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act - also known | as the Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or | (derisively) the Mickey Mouse Protection Act[1] - extended | copyright terms in the United States in 1998. It is one of | several acts extending the terms of copyrights.[2]_ | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act | joshspankit wrote: | I'm going to pile on, but it's important that it's part of the | copyright discussion: | | Current copyright is _dramatically_ limiting culture and | cultural growth. | | Any artist now needs to make sure that they are not | inadvertently copying _anything from their entire lifetime, and | that of their parents_. | | It's rarely good enough that an artist shows that they had | never been exposed to a previous work, and so now I see artists | taking one of two paths: 1) working in secret, trying | desperately to thread the needle between making a living | creating and losing it all by being discovered. 2) Forgoing the | idea of true creative expression altogether, and limiting | themselves to samples that they can pay for up front. | rsch wrote: | Steamboat Willie is from 1928, almost a hundred years ago. | And it is still under copyright. | | So you can make that "the lifetime of their grandparents" | too. | mmmpop wrote: | I'm 35 and my grandmother was born in the late 40s, my | great-grandparents. | zdragnar wrote: | I'm 36 and my grandfather was born in 1907. YMMV. | slim wrote: | it's actually shrinking the realm of ideas (culture) by | design. since ideas are "property" their value is function of | their rareness. economic forces are literally creating | artificial scarcity of ideas. | forrestthewoods wrote: | What do you think a reasonable form of copyright law would look | like? | buttercraft wrote: | A decade or two tops. That is enough time to monetize your | work. Then, you get out of the way and let others benefit | from your work just as you benefited from the works of so | many others who came before you. You're still free to keep | creating new things. | moffkalast wrote: | Just like patents are right now. | jacobr1 wrote: | 10-year extensions with graduated costs. You get first 10 | years upon publication, for free automatically, or for a | nominal filing fee to register your claim. The next 10 years | costs (extending to 20 total) now costs a meaningful fee. | Maybe a fraction of sales structured like a license owned by | the public/government, maybe a known schedule of fees based | on the type of work, but either way it is a non-trivial sum. | Then at 20, 30 and 40 there are further extensions each with | higher costs, stopping at 50 years total. The copyright isn't | tied to the creator's lifespan. Maybe we extend from my | proposed 50 to 70 years to match current expectation, so | Mickey gets protected (or would have) but there is a social | benefit that gets shared. | xani_ wrote: | That's even more corporation favoured. It's much easier to | stomach the price as corporation than author... | jacobr1 wrote: | Only for "non-profitable" works. It is a downside in the | tradeoff. But even then the escalating price for | extensions should offer an incentive to limit what works | fall into this category and subsidize society when they | do. | | We are not just balancing the individual creators vs | corporations, but also creators of derived works, and | societies benefit at-large of more creative works in | general. We want to maintain and compensate creators | "enough" to maintain incentives for creation, but | otherwise maximize the commons. | NoGravitas wrote: | Not if you're still making money off of the work. But if | you're _not_ making money off of it, it 's an incentive | to let the copyright expire. Corporations _might_ sit on | things that they 're not making money off of in order to | try to make money off of them later, but they'd be | limited to 50 years, which is a vast improvement. | abetusk wrote: | Personally, I think this is the best solution I've heard. | It still has problems in that copyright holders need to be | proactive and it punishes work that can't pay the copyright | extension fee that doesn't become popular until later but I | think these are reasonable compromises to make to serve the | larger good. | | I haven't figured out a way to push this narrative in any | meaningful way. People have a hard time distinguishing | arguments against copyright from arguments for copyright | reform. Most of the time I have to stress that I'm not for | copyright abolishment but more reasonable copyright terms | and extension protocols. | jacobr1 wrote: | > it punishes work that can't pay the copyright extension | fee | | One tradeoff is to have the fee be proportional to the | revenue it is generating. But this could encourage | extension-by-default, rather than making it an | intentional decision the copyright holder has to make: Is | it worth "buying the monopoly rights." I think I would be | ok with that if the increase for future extensions was | steep. But that does also come at the cost of the second | part, | | > that doesn't become popular until later | | You have a small-time creator that doesn't extend, and so | loses out on massive potential revenue derived from | future popularity of the work decades later. This would | be unfortunate ... but on the other hand I think society | would be more likely to make this true and create | interesting derivative works if there were more works | that were derivable. You need to keep durations short to | make that happen. | anikom15 wrote: | Copyright is a _right._ Having to pay for it sounds absurd. | | I have a much simpler solution: copyright terms are | fourteen years from date of publication. There are no | extensions. | | It could even be a lot shorter nowadays. Nearly all media | gets nearly all of its profit in the first year. A lot of | commercial software goes out of date in a few months rather | than yearly releases. | mtgx wrote: | Probably around 7-10 years, which is the time limit it | originally had. | | Copyright is meant to be a "public pact" to encourage | creation and innovation. | | But think about that goal for a minute. It doesn't | necessarily mean you should be able to create one awesome | thing once and then benefit from it for life as a rent- | seeking fat cat. | | Instead, it should give you a reasonable amount of time to | benefit from the fruits of it, but afterward, you should be | encouraged to create again. So you'd be motivated not just by | the carrot of making a lot of money over a 10-year span after | launch, but also by the stick that you will no longer get | royalties after 10 years, so you need to keep innovating. | There is even a study out there that shows that the buyers of | most books drastically drops after 10 years. | | This benefits society at large, since it creates more | competition, both from the original author of a work, but | also by others who are then allowed to make iterations of the | original work. | | That's why patents are time-limited, too. The idea isn't to | give one company the "right" to make money off an invention | for eternity, but to allow the whole society to profit from | it eventually by allowing others to drastically improve upon | that original idea afterward. | | But why was it ever intended as a "public pact" and not like | an "actual right" that authors have? Because let's not forget | that no idea is 100% original. | | In fact, most aren't even 10% original. We all live "on the | shoulders of giants" as they say. So most works are just | rehashing of old works - so that also means that if | enforcement was 100% the inflow of new works would | drastically be reduced. So you don't "deserve" to benefit | from a "new work" that's actually mostly rehashed old ideas | anyway. | | I always recommend watching the Everything is a Remix series | to get a new perspective on this based on the history of | copyrighted works: | | https://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series | forrestthewoods wrote: | > then benefit from it for life as a rent-seeking fat cat. | | Instead the benefit of creative works would almost | exclusively to middle-men who created nothing. | | 7 years is sooo short. Many TV shows and book series take | longer than that from start to finish. And often times they | grow in popularity. | | Movies based on books frequently come out more than 10 | years after the book resulting in a surge of popularity. | With 10 years the original author would see no benefit from | either the movie or their new book sales! There'd be a lot | of fat cats, just not the actual creator. | noasaservice wrote: | You're dead-on-arrival. I vouched cause it was a respectful | answer. | | You probably should abandon this account and create a new | one that isn't "dead" on post. | | -------------- | | > Probably around 7-10 years, which is the time limit it | originally had. | | Samuel Clemens stated that if copyright was shortened to | this long or shorter, then he would not issue books. | Instead he'd public chapters as to restart the clock for | each. And naturally, would arbitrarily lengthen copyright | to however long he'd string readers by. | | As for me, I have no answers. This problem is larger than I | think anyone can view. | saurik wrote: | (It is interesting, as if you go back, mtgx has been | banned since 2019 because of a "personal attack" on | Carmack 100% is NOT personal and that, supposedly, their | views are "predictable", which, if applied fairly, would | get most of us banned as we are all broken records ;P.) | | Regardless, that copyright was 7-10 years originally is | close but not quite right in a way that matters: it was | 14 years with the ability to request a 14 year extension. | (This being the same in the US law which came much later, | but was originally from the Statute of Anne in the UK.) | | So like, 10 is close enough to 14 and yet, not only do | those 4 years feel (to me) like they matter a lot, it is | arguably 28, and 7 is definitely underselling the | protection they were being granted. That said, it also | only applied (in the US) to books, maps, and charts, so | in some sense wasn't even the same, broad concept. | | The discussion of how long over time is interesting as, | in a very real sense, our ability to monetize copyright | quickly has _increased_ : the Internet lets you | immediately address a nationwide market, while it easily | could have taken decades with nothing but (expensive to | use) printing presses making materials to distribute | around using (slow) horses and (for even wider | distribution) boats. | | These days, I almost get the impression that a lot of | media companies try to make the vast majority of money | off of something in the first few MONTHS and then nigh- | unto discard it entirely--not even bothering to finish | things for later syndication--while they move on to new | content and new IP. | | They are then occasionally mining their old catalogs of | IP to do like, a "reboot", but I frankly feel like no one | would stop making content if they lost the ability to | later do that, and I also doubt that the original | creators are being compensated much for that later | possibility (as it is so hit and miss). | zsz wrote: | This is precisely why those laboring under the misapprehension | that the same mechanism used for this can somehow be used by | them to make things more "fair" are, at best, delusional. The | results will always be "more fair" only to a certain group; | moreover, that group will always exist in some form or other, | as precisely such has always been the actual outcome of any | fascist/mercantilist/communist system: only the name and | presumed principles vary, but the effective outcome is always | the same and always toxic to the rest of society. | RunSet wrote: | "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor | alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to | steal their bread." | abetusk wrote: | What's also bad is that most of the artists that don't benefit | from copyright in it's current form are proponents because it's | such an emotional issue. | | Corporations barely need to do any propaganda because so many | artists advocate for exploitative system without any prompting. | talkingtab wrote: | All over the world people take a stand against tyranny. This is | just internet tyranny. The button on Amazon says "buy" but the | fine print says "borrow". | | A class action legal solution with a lawyer would mean that even | if we won, each user would be award one free movie while the | legal team got millions. | | At the very least every single person in the US who ever clicked | "buy" can take Amazon to small claims court. Maybe you lose, but | Amazon will get the message. | | In New Hampshire a small business took Instagram to small claims | court for terminating their account without reason. Instagram | sent lawyers, but the case was appealed to the NH Supreme Court | for review. (They sent it back!) Imagine if every person who had | an account terminated for no reason or lost access to a movie | they "bought" then took the case to small claims court. | | The problem is that Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook can _buy_ | laws. I 'm not saying these are the only ones, just big internet | ones. And the courts enforce these laws. Sounds anti-democratic | to me. | misterbishop wrote: | I hate this as much as anyone, but it's wild that nerds make | their stand on the sacred right TO WATCH A MOVIE. | | We face incredible political oppression and extreme economic | exploitation in the context of global capitalism melting down. | There are more important things than whether your $10 Hercules | purchase still works in 20 years. | | By all means be angry about this, but try to connect it with | things that have actual stakes in people's lives. This isn't even | in the top 20 worst things Amazon does. | maerF0x0 wrote: | > There are more important things than whether your $10 | Hercules purchase still works in 20 years. | | How you handle the small things is how you handle everything. | I'm glad to see something breaking their trance. Let's hope | they keep going! | misterbishop wrote: | nonsense. the political activity required to solve the big | problems would sweep these little bullshit issues off the | table. | maerF0x0 wrote: | I think the point was lost. My point if the requisite care | isn't there to deal with small issues, then you're not | gonna have the care to deal with things that demand so much | more (big things). | | maybe an analogy like if you cant be bothered to pick up | one sock, odds are you wont pickup all your laundry? | remote_phone wrote: | I have bought around 100 movies on iTunes. I get the argument | that I don't "own" the movies but it's too convenient. And the | best thing about iTunes is that it upgrades the movies when new | features come along. I didn't have to pay extra for 4K or Dolby | Atmos when the movie itself got upgraded. That itself is enough | for me. | js2 wrote: | So here's what I do when I buy a movie, either on Blu-ray or via | iTunes. I download the remux from Usenet. If there isn't one | (rarely), I wait for the Blu-ray to arrive and I rip it myself. | There's a U.K. release of _Wages of Fear_ that you cannot get in | the U.S. any other way than purchasing the Blu-ray from BFI. (The | U.S. Criterion Blu-ray release is missing 5 minutes of footage.) | | Even for movies I rent or stream, I often download the remux to | watch it, then delete it after watching. It's the only way to | avoid bullshit like streaming apps (all of them except Criterion, | no matter your settings), not letting me watch to the end of the | credits in peace. Or subtitles which are shown below the frame | for movies which are wider than 1.78:1. Or, let's say you want to | watch _RRR_ in its original language with English subtitles. | Netflix only has the rights to the Hindi dub. | | I want my money to go to the filmmakers and actors and production | crew, but these fucking studios and streaming companies, man. | Please, let me pay you to watch the movie in high quality and in | peace. Why is it easier for me to pirate content? Like, it takes | me 30 seconds to go to https://radarr.home.mydomain.org/, type in | the name of the movie I want to watch, click search, click | download, wait 5-10 minutes, and now it's there for me to watch. | | Contrast that with going to Just Watch, maybe the movie is on a | service I pay for, maybe it isn't. Maybe it's on Blu-ray, maybe | only on DVD. Want to watch _Happiness_ (1998)? Too bad, not | available anywhere except maybe you can find a used DVD on Amazon | for $50. How about _The Heartbreak Kid_ (1972)? (Oh, hey, how do | you like that, someone put up a copy of it on YouTube last year.) | But time and again, movies just aren 't available. I really don't | understand why they get locked away. What's the incremental cost | of taking a movie which has already been digitized for DVD or | Blu-ray and making it available on a streaming service or for | digital rental or purchase? | | Come on Hollywood. Get your shit together. | drstewart wrote: | How big of a problem even is this? | | Serious question: who buys digital movies? I don't really know | anyone who even buys movies at all anymore, but if they do it's | likely they prefer a physical copy anyway. There's just so much | content out there that the number of people that even care to | rewatch a movie they've seen feels like it's really low. | evouga wrote: | For me it's the convenience. If all movies were available | reliably from a single streaming service, I would use it | instead (as I did Netflix, in the early days). At my current | stage of life, $10 here or there to buy a movie is irrelevant; | the hassle of figuring out which streaming service (if any) has | the movie I want to watch is not. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Content is not fungible. When I want to watch _Terminator | (1984)_ and nothing else, then no amount of having other | killer-robot films on your platform will satisfy this want. | | As to why people who buy prefer to buy physical? Because | there's actual ownership. I haven't even as much as | investigated my options for buying 4K content, because I am | 100% sure it doesn't exist in a form that's not hooked into | some DRM system (AKA worse than useless). With physical | content, at least you retain the control. | cgrealy wrote: | > With physical content, at least you retain the control. | | To an extent, yes. Practically, you have control. Legally, | you have still purchased a licence to view that content on | that media in limited scenarios. | | You can't (legally) copy it, or display it in public (for | free or money). | bombcar wrote: | If the cost to rent is X and the cost to buy is some multiple | of X such that I suspect we'd rent enough to overcome the buy, | I will buy, fully knowing I may lose access to it some day. | | Same reason that when I go to rent from RedBox and they offer | the rental for $1 and let me keep the DVD for $2 or whatever | I'll just buy. | | It's much more likely that my entire Amazon/Apple/Whatever | account gets banned for something than they revoke access to | more than a small subset of the movies, so for me the risk is | worth the reward. | mttjj wrote: | I buy digital movies all the time. Not often at full price | because there are sales and deals on iTunes weekly (daily). To | me, "buying" a movie for $4.99 or even $8.99 (which is only a | dollar or two more than the rental price) is worth it on the | off-chance that I may want to watch it again in the future. My | digital iTunes movie library is nearing 900 movies at this | point. All backed up and downloaded locally so I reduce the | risk of what this article is talking about happening to me. | abruzzi wrote: | damn, you're way ahead of me, almost double my number. I | haven't looked into local backups. I'll have to see how that | is done (and buy a bigger harddrive.) I didn't really realize | that Apple made this possible since I only use an AppleTV to | purchase and view movies. | mttjj wrote: | Yeah, unfortunately you can't download the 4K versions. But | for me that's an OK tradeoff since I've never once had to | use the downloaded version to actually watch something on | my AppleTV; everything has still been available in my | account for streaming. Not to mention that over half of my | library is movies from the 1930s to 1960s - way before 4K | was even a concept. So except for a handful of recent | movies, I've got the highest form downloaded anyway. | | I have a Mac mini that exists almost exclusively to be the | backup for all my digital content should I ever need it. | All the movies are downloaded to a 14TB external drive | which is then cloned to another 16TB external drive and | also fully backed up to Backblaze. | groovybits wrote: | Hi, can you explain (or link to) the process you use to | download them? Is it manually one-by-one? Or is there a | way to batch backup? | | Thanks | mttjj wrote: | Use the TV App on macOS. Just go into the list view and | right-click on a movie (or multiple) and then you can | download it. I let the TV app do all its own | folder/library management. I've just configured the | library to be on my external drive instead of my internal | drive (you can do this from the TV app preferences). | | Note that this doesn't remove the DRM or anything like | that. This is simply storing a local copy of the iTunes- | protected video on your Mac. But if the movie isn't | available to stream anymore or your internet is down, you | can use Home Sharing on the AppleTV to connect to your | Mac and stream the downloaded version. | groovybits wrote: | Awesome, thank you! Have you attempted transferring those | backups from one computer to another? (i.e. upgrading | from one Mac to the next) | mttjj wrote: | Yes in the sense that I plug in my external hard drive to | the new computer and point the new computer's TV app | library to the existing library on the external HD. Then | it will prompt for authentication the first time I try to | play something. After that the movies will play. | abruzzi wrote: | I currently "own" 493 movies on iTunes. I don't use any | streaming servies because my experience with them has been | horrible--a couple dozen movies I want to watch with hundreds | or thousands of filler movies that I have no interest in. When | I started buying, I went into it with my eyes open. Apple | seemed to be the safest option for companies that would be | around for some time and unlikely to pull the plug on a service | that wasn't doing as well as hoped. I've never had content | pulled. | | I'm the sort of person that like to rewatch things. As a kid I | rewatched Star Wars so many times that I knew the lines in the | entire movie by heart, these days the Big Lebowski is comfort | food that I'll throw on when I'm bored. So the "rent" option on | iTunes never made sense to me. And my concern with something | like Netflix is--will it be there when I want to rewatch it? | | If Apple ever gets out of the game I hope they give an out for | people who have bought things, but I'm not optimistic. I'm less | worried about them pulling content they lost a license to | because I hope that licensing for purchase is a different world | than licensing for free streaming. | | (Also, remember that this is exactly the same for app stores. I | did have an app pulled that I paid for. So it does happen, I'm | just hopeful that it doesn't very often.) | | EDIT: I just looked and I own two copies of David Lynch's "Lost | Highway" (a mistake since I already owned it, and later saw it | on sale and bought it without checking my list. It had changed | hands and was being sold by a different distributor.) I | searched for it on a non-logged-in computer and its not | available to purchase at all. While this is a guarantee of | nothing, it suggests that Apple's licensing with the movie | rights owners may retain rights beyond the termination of the | license. | joshmanders wrote: | Last I checked I was nearing 1,000 movies on iTunes/AppleTV | that I "bought" | | I also haven't noticed any missing or anything, but my | understanding when I click the "buy" is I'm not buying to OWN | the content like I'd expect with a DVD/VHS, but buying the | right to watch it as long as the content is available as many | times and whenever I want. | | I personally think people are clinging too much onto the | description of "buying" that comes with physical goods, not | digital goods. | gcp123 wrote: | Parents with kids who like to repeatedly watch certain movies | and shows. | warner25 wrote: | Yep, we've bought every season of Blue's Clues and Daniel | Tiger on Amazon because they started out as included / free | content on some service and then became "buy or rent" after | our kids were hooked. I'm happy that they're not physical | DVDs because those would have been destroyed long ago from | getting handled too roughly too often. With four kids, we've | gotten our money's worth. | scarface74 wrote: | Is this the new "who watches TV? I haven't owned a TV in 20 | years?" Obviously someone is buying them or do you think six or | seven platforms are selling movies just for grins and giggles? | makeitdouble wrote: | Many new movies don't have a "streaming" license for a while | and your only option is "buying" them. | | It's also cheaper if you have a family and don't intend to | watch it together at once, or even in a single day. It's also | more flexible regarding which device can play the movie (iTunes | rentals were bound to the device clicking the play button lady | time I tried) | | It's way more niche than a few decades ago, but there's a bunch | of cases where buying is a better choice. | vel0city wrote: | > your only option is "buying" them. | | No, there's always another option: not watching the movie. | TecoAndJix wrote: | I bought "Bullet Train" over the weekend on Amazon for an at- | home date night with my wife (rental was not available yet). It | costs $20 which we justified as being the cost of 2 movie | tickets. Doubt I will watch it again so really I was just | paying for access | drstewart wrote: | Good point. Early release access definitely seems like an | almost separate use case bundled with the "Buy" feature, but | like you mention most people aren't doing this to buy the | movie but to watch it earlier. | filoeleven wrote: | The number of people could indeed be quite low, but I'm glad | the use case is supported. | | I buy digital films occasionally, only the ones that I know | I'll want to re-watch every year or two. It's a much nicer | experience to call one up on a whim than it is to find out | which (if any) streaming service currently has them, sign up, | then cancel. That's worth the $10 or $15 I paid, especially | considering that the wine consumed during each viewing matches | or exceeds the same cost, depending on how many folks I'm | watching them with. | onychomys wrote: | A couple of months ago I pirated "You Won't Be Alone". I | finally got around to watching it last night and today I'm | going to go buy a digital copy of it. Note that I already have | a digital copy, it's what I watched last night! But the film | isn't available on any sort of disc, and it was an amazing | movie and I want to support the filmmakers any way I can. I | honestly have no idea how much of my $20 is going to flow from | Amazon to the production company to (hopefully) eventually the | director. But what else can I possibly do? | hatware wrote: | Last year, I bought a blu-ray player and two blu-rays to see if | buying the media was worth it. At the very least, I'd have | alternatives in case power goes out for an extended time. One of | the blu-rays I bought was It's a Wonderful Life. | | At the penultimate scene, with the bell ringing on the tree when | George is back home with his family, the blu-ray just stopped, | glitched out, and I could not get it to play properly. Something | to do with firmware and others were experiencing similar issues. | | I tried! It's incredible that even when you follow all the rules, | you still get the shaft. | | Never again. | andyjohnson0 wrote: | "Buy" is just "Rent" without a specific end-date. Is this not | commonly understood? | danpalmer wrote: | Not among most people who aren't interested in these things. I | think it's very reasonable for consumers to expect that "buy" | means to keep in the way that it means for most other things. | People should not have to be experts in how content licencing | and distribution works to not get screwed over. | dalf wrote: | said differently "Buy ... the right to make it available at | will at the place of purchase as long as the content provider | licensing does not change, and as long your internet connection | allows it" | Wazako wrote: | The problem with all these stores like Steam, Playstore, Apple | store, Nintendo Store, ... where you buy a license and not a | file. | least wrote: | When I had a 28.8k and eventually 56k modem and had to download | individual songs off of Napster and then Kazaa, of course it made | sense to have a local download because that was the only viable | option. I could download music while using AIM or IRC, but that | would eat heavily into the limited bandwidth that I had. | | I eventually convinced my parents to upgrade to a 1.5Mbps cable | connection when I was a senior in high school. That was when | Oink's Pink Palace was a thing. I downloaded tons and tons of | music and basically filled up the what was at the time absolutely | massive 500gb hard drive with music. If something had a lot of | people leeching I'd download it just to get my seed:leech ratio | up. If I liked a single song from an artist I'd go and download | their entire discography. | | Unfortunately that all came crashing down when that hard drive | failed and I had no backup (maybe smarter/richer kids had backup | drives, but I did not). I realized then that the whole thing was | silly. I hadn't listened to half the music I downloaded. It was | more an addiction to collecting music rather than listening to | it. | | Eventually Spotify came around and that basically killed my | desire to hoard music. I currently use Apple Music for the | majority of my music listening needs. If there is something that | I cannot find on there I might still download it. I've even added | some songs with Apple's service to host your files on the cloud | so I can listen to it on all my devices. I feel much freer to | explore music rather than spend my time figuring out how to | download and store it which is wonderful. | | I know that movies are not the same as music and the services are | frankly much worse. It doesn't take nearly as much bandwidth to | stream high quality music than it does to stream movies, | especially with all the various technologies like Dolby and what | not. Still, I do think that it is unnecessary to maintain massive | collections of them in formats that are degrading sitting on your | shelf or as digital versions taking up a ton of space and care to | ensure data integrity. I _know_ there are people that download | movies and shows onto their home servers _just to have them_ or | _just in case_ someone who has access to their plex wants to | watch it. | | DVDs, CDs and Blu-Rays have a limited shelf life. If you take | care of them they may last long enough for you to pass them on to | your children, but you're just placing a burden of leaving behind | a ton of things that aren't _really_ important to you or them. | Having recently gone through trying to clear my grandparents ' | house full of junk, I would not want to place that burden on my | future children. If they are really meaningful to you then by all | means, keep them. But I don't think most of them are. Maintain a | small collection of the genuinely important ones. Make sure to | get copies that aren't beholden to the whims of | licensors/distributors... but maybe don't stress too much about | the rest. | vivegi wrote: | The closest analogy I can think of is this: | | Property developer leases a beachfront land for 99 years and | builds a resort. You book a vacation at the resort. You enjoy the | facilities -- pool, spa, restaurants etc., during your stay. At | the end of your stay, you lose the privileges of staying at the | resort/using the facilities. | | Even if you bought a timeshare in the resort, you still do not | own it. Heck, the property developer also doesn't own it | (remember, they just hold the 99 yr lease)! | | Electronic-sell-through/Download-to-own is pretty much that esp. | if the player is controlled by the platform. You may download the | artefact (or the player software may do it for you), but | playability is dependent on the platform still holding rights. | This is implementation dependent and you have to look through the | Terms of Service to really be sure. | | All streamers who license third-party content do it for a limited | period (from a few months to several months or a year). I | wouldn't be surprised if many of the platforms have licensed the | "Download to own/Electronic-sell-through" titles only for a | finite period. Those titles will go away / become unplayable at | some point in the future (unless you downloaded them from a DRM- | free platform). When the eventual consumer backlash occurs, the | platforms will point to their ToS. | | And to add to this complexity, copyright rules are quite | different across jurisdictions. | matheusmoreira wrote: | Real property like resorts all exist in the real world. There | is no copying a resort. You can't just instantly copy a | building. You can't just create more physical space on this | planet. The limits of physics renders such property inherently | scarce. | | Data is different, it is infinite. You can copy it infinitely | at nearly zero cost. You can transmit it to anyone anywhere in | the world at nearly zero cost. Any attempt to own bits fails | because of the inherently infinite nature of data. Any notion | of property is imaginary, an illusion. Intellectual property | degenerates into number ownership, it's that ridiculous. | | If you follow this logic to its conclusion: | | > the player is controlled by the platform | | Then intellectual property will lead to the end of free | computing as we know it today. We cannot have computers that do | what we want while simultaneously preventing us from copying | data some rightsholder "owns". The copyright industry will | lobby the government until free computing is illegal and all | computers come pwned from the factory so that we can only | execute "legal" code. This also goes hand in hand with | government desire to control cryptography, paving the way for | total surveillance and oppression. | LocalH wrote: | The color of bits simultaneously doesn't exist at all, and | yet is very real | vivegi wrote: | The reason why the long-term property lease analogy is | accurate is because in most jurisdictions copyrights lapse | after a stipulated period. That is inspite of corporations | like Disney that have used copyright law to their benefit to | extend the lifetime of their IP. | | Taking your point about "free computing", I wonder why we | haven't had the equivalent of open source software and the | success we have seen over the last few decades hasn't spawned | open content movement where we could get great movies, music, | books etc., Sure, there are pockets of availability that is | an exception, but not the kind of mainstream success that we | have seen with open source software. | selfhoster11 wrote: | Leasehold is a scam, and should not be legal in the first | place. It benefits no-one except the original freeholder's | great-grandchildren or whatever, and vastly complexifies | matters for everyone else. | majortennis wrote: | I purchased a track on beatport and later wiped my usb and | realised I lost it I returned to beatport to find out it was a | one time only download of that track. Very dissapointing when you | try to do things the "right" way and are punished. | xg15 wrote: | > _If you buy a DVD or a Blue-Ray at a retail store, you are able | to play that disk for as long as that disk physically works | (often over 20 years). There are very few if any countries that | would allow a shop to send around bailiffs to seize DVDs already | bought years past, because the distributor no-longer has the | rights to distribute the content. | | If a retailer dared attempt such seizure of people's Property, | there would mass outrage. The media would shout about the | retailer being thief's, questions would be raised in parliament | and the business would most likely face legal problems._ | | On the other hand, if the distributor simply added the Blu-ray | you bought to the blacklist of your DRM compliant Blu-ray player, | I'm not so sure there would be the same level of outrage, even | though the end result were the same. | | My suspicion is the level of public outrage is less about some | deeply ingrained sense of natural rights and more about what kind | of actions feel familiar and which feel unfamiliar. Which is a | problem, really. | charles_f wrote: | > if the distributor simply added the Blu-ray you bought to the | blacklist of your DRM compliant Blu-ray player, I'm not so sure | there would be the same level of outrage | | I don't see what leads you to that conclusion. I've also never | heard about that happening, and I don't suspect this would | happen unless something actually illegal was happening (illegal | copies and such). The justification for actually blocking you | from watching that movie for which you own a digital copy would | be pretty hard to find. And the work around is relatively easy | - dont connect your blueray player to the internet. With | streaming services, you're at the mercy of the service provider | to just lose a contract with a studio and stop providing their | content. | | > less about some deeply ingrained sense of natural rights | | At this stage fairness is proven to be deeply ingrained, even | in animals. There is something deeply unfair with losing access | to something you were supposed to own, just because they can, | and some corporate bean counter decided to not renew some | licensing contract on their catalog because the competition | offered a percent more. | | > more about what kind of actions feel familiar and which feel | unfamiliar | | 9/11 was a one-off, I didn't get familiar with this type of | terrorist event. On the other hand, school shootings happen so | often that I'm not surprised by them. Both still trigger | outrage. | akomtu wrote: | The biggest deception was convincing the public that knowledge is | a thing, so it can be bought, sold and change "owners". | Convenient access to movies can be indeed sold, but not the | movies themselves. | cassianoleal wrote: | Perhaps not the movie itself, but the media and its content are | things that can be sold. | | VHS, DVD, BluRay. If you have the media and a compatible | player, you can watch them. You can lend or sell them. That's | not very different to a physical book. | | Even video-games are a bit like that. It's true that you may | lose access to updates the game received after the physical | launch but as long as you have the media (BluRays, cartridges, | whatever) you can still play them on a compatible console, lend | or sell them. | | With digital "purchases", you can only do what the platform | allows you, for as long as they allow it, for as long as they | exist. | vehemenz wrote: | What it could possibly mean to suggest knowledge is or isn't a | thing? | swayvil wrote: | I think it means that knowledge and material things are quite | different. | | For example, a material thing cannot be duplicated a million | times in a second. Or transmitted a million miles in an | eyeblink. | | And knowledge has no mass. | | We could probably draw a bunch of other distinctions too. | vehemenz wrote: | I didn't get the impression that the parent was offering | such anodyne observations, to be honest. | deadbeeves wrote: | Are knowledge and information the same thing? | akomtu wrote: | I think these are synonyms. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | I don't much care for this weird equivalency that a motion | picture is "knowledge", but regardless should every bit of | knowledge be offered and given freely? Given that I know where | I was last night and you don't is it within your right to | demand it from me? Is it enough you want to have that knowledge | that requires you then get it? | akomtu wrote: | I said knowledge can't be owned. I didn't say that everyone | is obligated to educate others. It's fine to keep a secret. | It only gets murky when the secret becomes public. | SketchySeaBeast wrote: | What is the threshold for "public"? The movies are still | only licensed for viewing by those who paid. Once someone | has the knowledge they a free to disseminate it? | poiuyytrewq wrote: | it was the same sh*t when the first kindles with digitals books | came out ... you don't "own" the book... | | same goes with full-online games... you don't own the game, you | just have the right to play on servers... when the server shuts | down, you have nothing left | | buying physical stuff may be the "old" way, but it's reliable | stuff | fortran77 wrote: | Would it kill these platforms to, at the very minimum, give you | credits for another movie in the case where the movie you | "bought" becomes unavailable? | | That being said, I've never chosen the "buy" option on a digital | streaming movie. | Mindwipe wrote: | > Would it kill these platforms to, at the very minimum, give | you credits for another movie in the case where the movie you | "bought" becomes unavailable? | | In practice this usually happens, but I'm not surprised nobody | commits to it in writing. | | I know in the two instances of video services I can think of | shutting down in the UK, Sainsburys gave customers | Ultraviolet/Google Play codes and refunds, and the BBC Store | gave Amazon credit rounding up to the nearest PS10, so I | actually got more than I'd spent back. | tantalor wrote: | That's a reasonable solution because it doesn't create a | liability on the provider to refund your purchase in whole. | | I wonder how it works on the backend. When you "buy" a digital | movie, does the publisher get a royalty? Then for the credit | the provider could just eat that extra cost since it likely to | be very rare. It still kind of sucks that the publisher can | reap the royalty payments for all the "sales" and then turn | around and pull the license. | boros2me wrote: | One idea I keep thinking about (which I'm sure interferes with | some sort of copyright law) is: 1. User buys a physical copy of a | movie/music 2. Instead of sending the disc to their house, it's | sent to a storage facility 3. In the storage facility a digital | backup is made and uploaded to a cloud storage 4. User is given | access to the backup which they can watch/listen to 5. User would | be the owner of said physical copy and when they sell it, all | digital backups would be erased. | | What's the legality that stops this from working? | dghlsakjg wrote: | 1DollarScan.com is an interesting service that does this for | books. You can order books direct from Amazon, and they will | digitize them for you | Mindwipe wrote: | > 3. In the storage facility a digital backup is made and | uploaded to a cloud storage | | Generally speaking neither of these parts are legal in most | territories without rightsholder permission. | maerF0x0 wrote: | One thing to note is this would be very expensive from a | bandwidth perspective, of course depending on streaming | quality. A 2 hour 4k video is about 40GB of data transfer, I'm | presuming if someone buys something over rent they're going to | watch it at least 3x... A quick google suggests 120GB can cost | $6 to move. | | happy to hear if my math is off and learn more about the | pricing structures | [deleted] | kgwgk wrote: | https://www.wired.com/2011/10/streaming-movie-service-zediva... | boros2me wrote: | 2011 wow... Thanks for sharing! | pontifier wrote: | A key problem with zediva was that they were only offering | rentals, not ownership. Ownership of a particular copy gives | you rights that you don't have when renting. | paxys wrote: | Unauthorized reproduction, even for personal use, is illegal | under IP laws. This company would get sued by movie studios 5 | minutes after it launches. | pontifier wrote: | This is what I'm attempting to revive with Murfie/Crossies. | | Right now, I'm dealing with unrelated problems with my | warehouse so the service is only partly functional. In my | opinion the basic model, with true ownership, should be | completely legal under copyright law. | obblekk wrote: | We should require companies to use the word "license" rather than | "buy," unless you receive a universe-wide, irrevocable, non- | exclusive, transferrable at will, independently verifiable | license (i.e., what it means to actually own a digital product). | | I suspect that would quickly create a much more robust market in | services offering upgraded worldwide licenses, and so on, and the | market would clear at some price for those upgrades. | josh_fyi wrote: | Has anyone tried a legal challenge to the word "buy"? It seems | like a straightforward case of misrepresentation. | dqpb wrote: | If you sue Amazon, can they ban you from using their services? | wing-_-nuts wrote: | This sort of thing does have a chilling effect. I've had | issues with Sony and google. With a physical store? I'd have | simply done a chargeback. With my them? I'm basically | guaranteed to be banned from their services. That sort of | thing doesn't happen in physical stores. One doesn't get | barred from walmart if you have a beef at the return desk. | ticviking wrote: | I expect that such a case would be enormously expensive, and | bankrupt one or both sides in the process. | dfxm12 wrote: | I don't know if this is exactly the same thing, but this ruling | from the EU, coming from reselling oracle licenses, comes to | mind: | https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201... | PikachuEXE wrote: | It's faster to build alternatives... | | There will always at least 2 (N) groups of people who | agree/prefer Nth direction | EMIRELADERO wrote: | Yes, check out the _Andino v. Apple_ lawsuit | | https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18607418/andino-v-apple... | izacus wrote: | That won't fix the core problem though - the platforms will | just use another word for it and you still won't be able to | take your content with you on a vacation or give it to your | friends and family. | | It's a massive degradation of consumer rights you had | guaranteed with physical media. | dml2135 wrote: | I think getting rid of the deception and forcing companies to | be upfront about what they're selling would be a significant | improvement. | | Hard to get companies to change when people don't even | realize the problem. | hyperman1 wrote: | 'License' and 'EULA' basically do what you propose in the | software world. They were a ploy to get more rights form | 'buyers' than copyright allowed. | | It works so well that a lot of people think companies can't | sell software without giving the right to unlimited copies, | even if a book or dvd are trivial counterexamples. | | Basically the button 'buy' changes to license | nicholasjarnold wrote: | Exactly this. Those of a certain age will remember the days | when all media was physical media. People could purchase new, | used or trade for a copy of this media. People had some | amount of freedom regarding how they handle and/or distribute | this media. It could be resold. A corporation could not | immediately and arbitrarily decide to revoke your right to | use the media or place many restrictions on _how_ you used | it. | | While streaming media has some notable conveniences in | certain cases, the downsides to the consumer seem to outweigh | those benefits. It's as if there is a coordinated assault on | ownership rights across many industries which is being led by | the ubiquity of actually-broadband internet connectivity, the | streaming technology that exists across many industries | (gaming, movies, music and even general software) paired with | corporation's insatiable desire for growth at all legal (even | some not) costs. Because they now can, they will. | | As one who prefers freedom of use to maximum convenience I | think it wise to purchase physical media when possible and | back it up in a manner which is suitable to your long-term | accessibility needs. Maybe I'm just a crabby old guy... | netsharc wrote: | There's probably wording in the agreement (linked next to the | checkbox we automatically tick before clicking the button) that | says you're buying a license to watch the movie as long as the | movie is available on the platform. | | There are other definitions of buy a movie, e.g. buy the IP so | you're allowed to make sequels. | ticviking wrote: | The point of such a lawsuit would be to establish that a | reasonable person thought they were "buying" it in the same | way as a DVD, and the idea that it was time limited or could | be unilaterally revoked was deceptively hidden. | janzaib wrote: | JadoJodo wrote: | The way it seems to work from what I understand: | | Movie Studio offers (what is effectively) a lease of Digital | Media to Digital Retailer. Digital Retailer is then allowed to | sublease copies of Digital Media to End Consumer. When Digital | Retailer's lease ends, so does End Consumer's sublease. | | How it seems like it OUGHT to work: | | Movie Studio offers resale rights of Digital Media to Digital | Retailer. Digital Retailer then sells copies of Digital Media to | End Consumer. When Digital Retailer's right to resell ends, End | Consumer is allowed to procure/store their copy of Digital Media. | atoav wrote: | If your button says "buy" and you do indeed "rent", you will | loose my respect immediately and Inwill go out of my way to avoid | buying _anything_ from you. | ordiel wrote: | Worth to mention, at least in google services you are allowed to | (at least up to last time I checked) download such file and from | there o werds is yours as in the traditional sense, you are | allowed to write it to a DVD or back it up on whichever way you | prefer, and as loong as you preserve proof of purchase you are | more than fine ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-04 23:00 UTC)