[HN Gopher] Apple is sued for telling you that you're "buying" m...
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Apple is sued for telling you that you're "buying" movies
Author : paulcarroty
Score : 685 points
Date : 2021-04-23 07:42 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nofilmschool.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nofilmschool.com)
| daodedickinson wrote:
| Since the patriot act when I was a kid, and now beyond, it's felt
| worse and worse. Feeling violated every time I remember a
| particular law is having me inspected.
| user3939382 wrote:
| Let's say you buy 5 movies from Apple and then the CC on file
| expires before they billed you for a $0.99 app you bought, so you
| owe Apple $0.99. They will now block you from ALL access to
| anything you have _already_ "purchased" until you pay them.
| ThomW wrote:
| Screw that web site. Nags you to turn off your content blocker,
| and as soon as you do a giant full-phone height banner ad is the
| first thing you see, then a few seconds later a full-screen modal
| pop up appears. GTFO.
| cronix wrote:
| On a PC you can use a Legato capture card and record anything
| that makes it through the HDMI, DRM free, up to 4k/60 and up to
| HDR10 and it has a pass-thru so you can watch on a monitor/tv as
| you record. They're mainly used in game broadcasting, like on
| Twitch. There are also numerous audio recording apps that will
| record audio that is being played from a DRM source, actually any
| source. I actually purchase physical books as I can't stand
| reading on a lit screen for hours on end. As a wise investor once
| told me, if you don't physically hold it, you don't actually own
| it. I have copies of everything I've purchased digitally that is
| worth keeping, and I have no moral qualms about doing so. I paid
| for the content. They got their money.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| As far as I am aware that capture card won't capture HDCP
| content? So anything that uses Widevine or similar DRM will not
| work. There are options for capture cards designed to bypass
| HDCP but it's a bit more involved.
|
| Are you saying you haven't had any issues with HDCP?
| cronix wrote:
| There are many cheap HDMI splitters out there (~$20USD) that
| do not pass on HDCP :)
|
| The hardest part is wading through the comments to see if the
| device will bypass HDCP. This is also a very good way to
| watch HDCP content on older HDTV's that don't have HDCP
| implemented.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/hdmi-splitter-hdcp-
| bypass/s?k=hdmi+sp...
|
| There are even more on aliexpress.
| lrvick wrote:
| Physical media lets you have privacy without logging when you
| watch media, what media you consume, how many times you consume
| it, or how long you consume it. You can enjoy it offline, and in
| 20 years long after the studio that licensed it is gone. You can
| give it to a friend or loan it out. Or sell it. It is yours.
|
| Meanwhile DRM media we pay full price for, or if the content is
| only available via streaming we pay for it indefinitely. In
| neither case are we assured access a decade from now on different
| devices and we certainly don't get any privacy as studios track
| every second we consume. Worse, when big companies decide it is
| not profitable enough to keep "purchased" data around anymore,
| they just cut it loose.
|
| Try opening a book from the Microsoft eBook store. It will fail
| because they closed down the DRM servers. The books stopped
| working. PlayStation 3 store? Wii store? Same story. You can no
| longer access your purchases.
|
| Literally the only way to get the same freedoms with modern
| digital media we had with physical media, is piracy.
|
| We got scammed.
| eplanit wrote:
| You're right. I've returned to buying only physical media --
| haven't purchased an online format for 6 months+. I agree, we
| got played.
|
| About a year ago, Amazon changed the verbiage on the ui from
| "you own this movie" to "you purchased this movie". That was my
| clue and trigger to change.
| chrisfinazzo wrote:
| An interesting exception - it is still Audible's policy to
| say you keep everything you've bought if you decide to cancel
| a subscription. This still ties those books to their app but
| it seems like the best we can hope for given the alternative
| choice.
|
| There have been at various times scripts found on GitHub,
| BitBucket and the rest that will convert the files to MP3,
| effectively breaking out of the DRM, but this has been hit or
| miss in my experience.
|
| My pipe dream for all of these services is still a buyout
| clause which would provide you with the unprotected files for
| a fee, but with the rise in popularity of streaming services,
| legally and financially, there doesn't seem to be much will
| to help a shrinking segment of the customer base with a niche
| concern.
|
| How much to charge for this would be a terrible debate, as
| trying to do it "at cost" per purchase - presumably the
| company's preference - would be heinously expensive.
| frankish wrote:
| I highly recommend https://libro.fm/ as an alternative.
| elliekelly wrote:
| This reminds me of the widespread move to change from
| "private message" to "direct message" on platforms like
| facebook and twitter. A subtle hint in the UI as to how
| things really work.
| jsjohnst wrote:
| Twitter has always, to my knowledge, called them DMs. I've
| always hated FB messaging, despite using it out of
| necessity occasionally, so I can't speak to if/when the
| naming scheme changed there. That said, a bunch of smaller
| messaging sites made that shift, so your core point is
| valid, I just think you overshot with your examples
| potentially.
| teachingassist wrote:
| > Wii store? Same story. You can no longer access your
| purchases.
|
| Not really.
|
| You can still play games purchased at the Wii Shop, you just
| can't re-download them.
|
| [Edited to note: Apparently you can re-download or transfer to
| a Wii U]
|
| That's not meaningfully different from having one physical
| copy: you can use the physical copy until the point that it's
| worn out.
| SCHiM wrote:
| The difference between the time it takes physical copies to
| wear out is much much longer than the time it takes $company
| to decide that it's time to force everyone to buy the next
| latest-and-greatest.
|
| I've got NES cartridges from the 80s or 90s still working.
| teachingassist wrote:
| > I've got NES cartridges from the 80s or 90s still
| working.
|
| And I've got Switch cartridges that are dependent on
| Nintendo's continued online support.
|
| My point was that a physical Wii still works and is still a
| physical object, so it serves the same functional purpose
| here as individual NES cartridges.
| lrvick wrote:
| "...for the time being you may continue to re-download
| content you have purchased or transfer that content from a
| Wii system to a Wii U system. Be aware that these features
| will eventually end at a future date."
|
| https://en-americas-
| support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...
|
| It happened recently so there is a grace period to download
| final copies of a game, but if your console dies and you want
| to transfer games to another unit you get off eBay in a few
| years, you are SOL.
| teachingassist wrote:
| > if your console dies and you want to transfer games to
| another unit you get off eBay in a few years, you are SOL.
|
| Again, this is not functionally different than your
| cartridge dying. If your NES cartridge dies, you can
| replace it with a second-hand copy, or you're SOL. The
| same.
|
| You're saying that there's a consumer benefit to a console-
| cartridge system being modular (such that either module can
| be replaced when desired, rather than needing to replace
| them as a package), but I don't think this has any bearing
| on ownership rights, nor any of the other points that you
| claimed. At least, not in the case of the Wii Shop.
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| For cartridge roms and pressed CDs the failure rate is
| much, much lower than the console and the expected life
| span much longer. Not to mention it's often possible to
| back those mediums up and play the backups or original
| media on another console.
| stormbrew wrote:
| For carts this is (mostly[1]) true but honestly I'd be
| pretty surprised if the average CD outlasts a console
| that used mostly flash to store the games on. Sure if the
| flash has had consistent write cycles for years it might
| fail eventually but probably people will be finding games
| intact on wiis for a long time yet.
|
| A lot of video game CDs barely lasted the life of their
| console without becoming basically useless.
|
| [1] There are mask roms that are prone to failure, and
| some NES for eg. games are vulnerable to progressive
| failure of their battery backed RAM chips, which were not
| just for save backup but were also often used as extra
| RAM with a lot of write cycles (and to be clear, I don't
| mean the battery dying - I mean stuck or flipped bits on
| the ram itself).
| lrvick wrote:
| Large game collections are of much more value than a
| console, and consoles are more complex and have a much
| higher failure rate. Particularly if it is a console vs a
| simple media like a Wii game optical disc that is well
| taken care of.
|
| Maybe I had 100 $40 games on my $100 console. Console
| breaks, I lose all games.
|
| With physical media: One game breaks, I lose one game.
| One console breaks, I lose one console. Way less risk.
|
| Also I can't sell or transfer the digital copies to
| friends or family.
|
| Lock-in digitals are not at all equivalent rights of
| physical copies.
| city41 wrote:
| Physical media fails too, it's become a real problem in the
| retro gaming world. Optical discs start to break down and even
| worse optical drives wear out with no viable replacements. So
| piracy helps preserve physical media too.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/488/
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > We got scammed
|
| Not everyone got scammed. I've exclusively purchased physical
| media or 'acquired' it in DRM-free ways. Piracy is one option
| yes, but things like GOG are a legal and DRM-free way to get
| media, which is why I actually buy from them. I only buy
| digital if I don't care about losing the media, like a movie I
| just want to watch at a friends place that's not available on a
| streaming service.
|
| Never understood why people didn't see this earlier. Thankfully
| many things are available digitally thanks to the work of
| digital archivists (aka data hoarders) who make an effort to
| keep media alive
| SCHiM wrote:
| Do you think it'd be a good idea to force companies to open
| source abandonware? We could claw back space from copyright
| laws, and force companies to remove DRM schemes, open source
| DRM-ed copyright, servers and any/all assets required to run
| "the store" locally.
|
| This is analogous to right to repair, DRM "breaking" your
| property should be banned.
| dataflow wrote:
| How would you define abandonware?
| SCHiM wrote:
| I don't think I have the full definition.
|
| But if you think about online games, it becomes abandonware
| if you can no longer log into the game servers?
|
| Or if your product is dependent on DRM, then is becomes
| abandonware when the DRM servers shut down.
|
| I think different classes of media will require different
| definitions of when they become abandonware, but I think
| we'll mostly know it when we see it.
| dataflow wrote:
| Your definitions are better than what I was imagining,
| but I think they might still have rather significant edge
| cases & loopholes in reality. To give some examples off
| the top of my head: What if (say) access ends up varying
| across jurisdictions? What if they keep the servers
| running, but start charging for them? What if the company
| wants to sell to someone in another jurisdiction? etc.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| It looks like abandonware has an evolving legal status and
| relates to "orphaned" works in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works_in_the_United_St
| a...
| iso1631 wrote:
| I would require copyright holders to renew their copyright.
| 5 years for free, then $1 for the 6th year, $2 for the 7th,
| $4 for the 8th, $8 for the 9th, $1m for the 25th, etc.
| Qwertious wrote:
| I don't think that's the right set of incentives:
|
| 1. Different industries have different paces; it might
| take 25 years for any NASA software to be fully developed
| in the first place, whereas if you haven't made back your
| money on your singleplayer videogame after 10 years, you
| probably won't _ever_ make it back. Point is, there is no
| flat duration that is fair to every work out there. 2.
| almost by definition, the stuff we care about is more
| profitable and will therefore be kept under copyright
| longer. 3. I wonder whether copyright expiration is
| actually helpful for software, when it doesn 't provide
| you with source code. I'd like to see some mechanism that
| incentivizes the IP owner to publish source code after
| their copyright expires - perhaps by offering a
| conditional extension to the copyright duration in
| exchange for putting the source code in escrow?
|
| Really, I don't think software's IP type should be
| "copyright" in the first place. It doesn't make sense to
| cut and paste a binary like you would with a book's text.
| passivate wrote:
| Does the clock reset if you update the original work?
| With rolling releases, who determines when the clock
| officially starts? Also you'd have to account for
| industries where copyright/trademark/patents could
| overlap on products. While a nice idea, I imagine it
| would become a bureaucratic nightmare to implement as a
| law. But nevertheless, we need to think about new ways to
| fix the current broken system.
| ziml77 wrote:
| Not every copyright holder is a massive corporation.
| Artists produce many pieces per year. That would cost
| them a lot to keep copyrights.
| mLuby wrote:
| Right, this is the problem: how to protect normal people
| without giving large companies more power? And how to do
| it when the companies are the ones in the room with
| lawmakers?
|
| Non-transferable copyright/patents?
| ghaff wrote:
| It's mostly representatives of individual creators who
| oppose orphan works legislation. Disney probably isn't
| going to forget (or worry about the expense) to renew the
| copyright on Frozen. But an individual
| author/photographer/etc. may well forget. And in the
| photographer case, does that mean they're going to have
| to spend money every year to renew the copyright on each
| individual photograph that want to continue to protect?
| finnthehuman wrote:
| I think that's the point, to send works nobody is making
| money with to the public domain faster. Rather than the
| politically untenable idea of shortening the ever-
| expanding length of copyright.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| It doesn't necessarily benefit massive corporations more
| than individual artists, because those massive
| corporations probably also hold copyright over a lot of
| works; it'd cost them huge amounts of money to renew them
| all.
|
| I think GP's scheme isn't awful honestly; it would have
| the effect of drastically lowering the practical length
| of copyright for most works while providing artists with
| a way to maintain copyright over works that are actually
| highly successful. (A per-year doubling might be a bit
| much but I think it's on the right track.)
|
| If the practical effect was that we mostly got back to
| the original copyright term we had in the US (14 years
| with the possibility to extend that once), I'd be pretty
| happy. Maybe start the fees after the 14th year.
| ticviking wrote:
| We could allow natural persons to hold copyright for
| their natural life. Their heirs, if natural persons could
| get a 18 year free extension (allowing any minor child of
| a creator to benefit from their parents IP to pay for
| their upbringing)
|
| Corporations can start paying that escalating price right
| away.
|
| (Edit: misread GP and removed a paragraph)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Not for the duration that matters. 5 years for free is
| plenty of time to make reasonable income on your
| creations; after that, you're just seeking rent from
| society.
|
| Sure, boost that to 10 or even 20 years if needed[0]. But
| from then on extension costs should grow exponential -
| otherwise we risk locking down work for duration longer
| than a human lifetime. Like it already happens with
| Disney.
|
| --
|
| [0] - 20 years may have been appropriate in mid-20th
| century, but I'd argue it isn't now. Cultural creation
| accelerates exponentially, but long copyrights prevent
| the ability to improve on prior art to accelerate in lock
| step.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _5 years for free is plenty of time to make reasonable
| income on your creations; after that, you 're just
| seeking rent from society._
|
| I strongly dispute this statement, unless your definition
| of reasonable income does not include at least making
| back the money you spent on producing the content in the
| first place. You're ignoring all the small creators who
| produce new material for niche markets, possibly as a
| side income rather than their main jobs, and rely on the
| long tail of sales of that original work to make it
| financially worthwhile. Not every copyright holder is a
| Hollywood movie studio, big name record label or
| international book publisher you've heard of.
|
| Your longer periods might be more realistic in those
| cases, and even 10 years might not be enough to break
| even.
| danbolt wrote:
| Do you think there'd be a good time to draw a line? I
| can't really see the need for 25+ without a fee.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _Do you think there 'd be a good time to draw a line?_
|
| I suppose that's the $LARGE_AMOUNT question, isn't it?
|
| As a personal opinion, I think copyright is OK as an
| economic incentive unless and until we find something
| that works better, but the protection should be
| determined by what makes it economically reasonable for
| people to create and share useful works, taking into
| account all the circumstances and over the long term.
| There is clearly no single duration of protection that is
| even close to that benchmark for all situations, because
| something like a blockbuster movie or smash hit video
| game might make several times its production costs back
| within months of initial distribution and that might be a
| large majority of the revenue it will ever make, while
| those small, niche-content creators I talked about before
| might not break even for a decade or two. As ever with
| debates about alternatives to current copyright, things
| start to get sticky when you try to figure out a
| reasonable way to estimate the effects of any proposed
| change without actually making it and then waiting a
| decade or three to see what happens.
|
| I like the idea of shortening copyright protection but at
| the same time considering other rights to protect things
| of value that are, sometimes incidentally, protected by
| copyright today. For example, I have no problem with the
| requirements that exist in some places to credit the
| creators of a work, as an entirely separate matter from
| copyright. I think there is also a lot of room to explore
| safeguards against intruding on a larger creative effort
| too soon, such as where an author has put considerable
| effort into world-building and is continuing to produce
| successful new works set in that world, in which case
| allowing poor-quality fan fiction to flood the market as
| soon as the copyright on the first work in that world
| expires could sharply devalue the overall creative effort
| for the author and so result in fewer or lower quality
| works subsequently being produced and shared by that
| author, which is a harm to society as well.
|
| In short, I don't think you can reasonably draw a single
| line with anything resembling our current copyright
| system. I think there should probably be several lines,
| in each of several colours, and some of them should be
| circles and triangles. But then given how difficult
| enforcement often is already and how widespread
| misunderstandings about the existing law are, that might
| not be practical either. Economics and intangible goods
| are a tough combination.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| The trouble is that the company may not own the rights to
| everything involved. This has been an issue for some
| companies that have tried to open up old games. Sometimes you
| have libraries, like Bink video (infamously) that are
| licensed and are not compatible with open licenses. There
| might be issues with the game engines or with assets. e.g.
| it's not uncommon to have music licensed for use in the game,
| but the rights don't include redistributing in other forms or
| producing something like a soundtrack. Stock music often has
| licenses that allow use in something like a game or movie,
| but disallow redistributing the file. (That was a sticking
| point for Bioshock Infinite: they produced their own new
| arrangements of some popular songs, but didn't have more
| costly licensing necessary to release a soundtrack.)
| LocalH wrote:
| Opensourcing the code is different from including music or
| graphical assets that are licensed. The Bink issue is
| legitimate, yes, but there's nothing stopping them from
| stripping copyrighted assets from the game prior to
| opensourcing. Harmonix's source for Guitar Hero II on PS2
| would be nice to see in such a form, for example (and their
| engine is pretty much entirely bespoke, so no real worries
| about license incompatibility). Along with the necessary
| tools to build our own assets (that we can't already do
| with homebrew tools).
| lrvick wrote:
| DMCA is no longer enforced on media where the device needed
| to play it is no longer sold.
|
| You can go get almost any Super Nintendo ROM on archive.org
| right now, legally.
|
| I hope to see this foothold extended.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Do you have chapter and verse for this? It doesn't sound
| right to me but I don't know for sure.
| lrvick wrote:
| https://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/librarian_statement_0
| 1.h...
|
| There is an explicit exemption for:
|
| "Computer programs and video games distributed in formats
| that have become obsolete and which require the original
| media or hardware as a condition of access."
|
| AKA old console roms. https://archive.org has piles now
| unchallenged for years as a result.
| ac29 wrote:
| It doesn't say anywhere that you can also distribute
| copies of the copyrighted work, though.
| saurik wrote:
| I haven't looked into the source of this specific
| exemption yet, but if it is the mechanism I think it is
| -- a ruling on an exemption petition -- it is important
| to understand that this exempts a user from circumventing
| the protection mechanism but it does not provide any kind
| of exemption for "trafficking" in tools that help people
| actually perform the circumvention... which frankly makes
| a lot of these exemptions feel a bit academic :(.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| I love my physical media free life.
|
| I love not having to deal with storage for my collection.
|
| I love that my content got upgraded from HD to 4K.
|
| I love that I have all my movies available at both of my homes,
| and while traveling.
|
| I don't give the single tiniest shit about Apple knowing that I
| just watched a movie.
|
| I think the odds of Apple serving me my movies in 30 years is
| higher than the odds of me having working dvd and blu-ray
| players in 30 years. Not 100% in either case, but I'll roll the
| dice.
|
| I didn't get scammed. I got a more convenient life.
|
| If I had a magic wand, I'd make it so I could cheaply re-sell
| content that I'm done with, but it's not a bad trade off.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > Physical media lets you have privacy without logging when you
| watch media
|
| Don't some blu ray players try to connect to the internet
| whenever you watch a disc? I think my PS3 used to do that.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| PS4 and Xbox One both need to be connected the first time you
| watch a blu ray, I think so that Microsoft/Sony only have to
| pay blu ray licensing fees if you actually use the feature.
|
| Not sure about other blu ray players but I imagine those are
| the most common ones.
| lrvick wrote:
| You have identified the reason my physical media players and
| TVs don't get connected to the internet.
| wildpeaks wrote:
| This is why supporting DRM-free stores is important (e.g.
| Bandcamp for music and GOG for games).
| Latty wrote:
| Shame GOG don't care about your privacy. When they published
| a profile page for you without asking first, leaking your
| personal data and what games you owned to anyone you had
| friended before, I contacted them and they just straight up
| said they didn't think it was a problem.
|
| No DRM is a marketing gimmick for them, they don't actually
| care about the privacy of their customers.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| No DRM is not just about privacy, far from it.
|
| The most important aspect is that as long as you have a
| compatible system and a good backup policy, you will never
| lose access to what you bought.
|
| No DRM can help with privacy but they are mostly
| independent. There is DRM that doesn't violate your
| privacy, like hardware keys typical of arcade machines,
| oldschool copy protection and game cartridges. And I think
| Nintendo has privacy-preserving DRM for digital games too,
| the problem is that if you lose the console, you lose the
| game.
|
| And as you have shown, you don't need DRM for privacy
| violations.
| Latty wrote:
| Oh, for sure. I'm just saying that "they don't use DRM,
| therefore they care about privacy and we should support
| them" isn't going to hold. I agree no DRM is better, but
| as you say, there is more to privacy than that.
| moviuro wrote:
| CD Projekt Red also sell Windows exclusive software
| (Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, etc.), which, one can argue, is also
| a form of DRM.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| That is a very tenuous argument. With DRM, one has to
| work against the grain of a software to implement it,
| whereas focusing on one native platform is almost the
| opposite - one has to go against the grain to make it
| cross platform. In that sense, DRM is an artificial
| limitation, whereas supporting just one platfrom isn't
| one.
| moviuro wrote:
| Wasn't Cyberpunk compiled for Linux to run on Stadia
| though? Not shipping the Linux binary looks like an
| artifical limitation at that point.
| Qwertious wrote:
| "Shipping a binary" is not the same as actually porting
| the game - porting requires a ton of expensive QA, and
| _no port_ is better than _a bad port_ because the latter
| 1) gets bad press for the main version of the game and 2)
| misleads customers who expect quality from your brand.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Judging by the QC nightmare that game appears to have
| been, supporting just one installation configuration on
| an OS with the direct support of the company running that
| configuration (I wouldn't be surprised if Google had
| chipped in resources to get the Stadia port through) is a
| much different level of resource commitment than
| supporting it for a user base.
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| You certainly _could_ argue, but that doesn 't mean it
| would be a good argument. How far can you take this? Are
| cars that only take premium fuel also DRM? What about a
| conduction stove that doesn't work with all pans?
| lrvick wrote:
| https://www.pcgamer.com/valves-made-
| cyberpunk-2077-playable-...
| moviuro wrote:
| By adding yet another indirection. Compiling the binaries
| for Linux and just shipping it with a fat "no warranty"
| label on top would have been 100x better. Even Linux
| distros do that (GPL: `THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE
| PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW.`)
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You want them to sell their product with a "if it doesn't
| work it's not our problem" label? I'm sure there are
| consumer protection laws against that.
| wang_li wrote:
| The no particular fitness of purpose clause in nearly
| every EULA you've ever clicked through is literally that.
| Qwertious wrote:
| EULAs are mostly invalid garbage - they include "TO THE
| FULLEST EXTENT APPLICABLE UNDER THE LAW" is clever
| lawyer-speak saying "this only applies if we can legally
| get away with it". They include that because if they
| didn't, then any explicitly illegal demand they made
| would void the entire contract.
|
| Just because the EULA requires your firstborn son,
| doesn't mean they have any claim whatsoever.
| gambiting wrote:
| EULAs that are shown post-purchase are invalid in all of
| EU, there have been numerous court cases about it. If
| software makers want a legally binding contract it has to
| be shown before purchase - if you already have bought
| something and are just installing it, the EULA presented
| during the installation is meaningless.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Probably not in the beginning, but once you have a
| successful model going it's inevitable that the
| sociopaths/careerists invade and take over. It's unnatural
| and unstable for a company to believe in anything but
| accumulation.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| I have put quite some trust in Steam and hope I won't get
| disappointed
| lrvick wrote:
| You will be. Give it a decade.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I've given it two; so far, so good.
|
| Though, I have made the transition to GOG where possible.
| but with so many games requiring online activation, I've
| accepted modern games might not have a long shelf life.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Are there similar platforms for buying ebooks?
|
| I like ebooks but I'm not comfortable with all the layers of
| DRM involved in it.
| dsign wrote:
| Smashwords comes to mind: https://www.smashwords.com/ .
| Once you buy a book, you get a DRM-free epub that you can
| open in whichever e-book reader you fancy.
|
| There are in fact more of such stores, but this is the one
| that I use and remember.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yeeeesssss.....buuuuut....
|
| Only for certain books.
|
| Book DRM has been a nightmare. Tying a book to certain
| readers is an automatic showstopper for a lot of folks
| (like me). I recently bounced a tech book I purchased,
| because I had to download their crappy hybrid app to read
| the book. The same people that sold it to me, used to sell
| unlocked reflowable EPUBs (my preferred format), or
| watermarked PDFs (I have no problem with simple margin
| watermarks). I'll lay odds that the app they make you use
| phones home. I didn't bother downloading it, or reviewing
| their privacy policy.
|
| I'm not so concerned with privacy, as I am, with perpetual
| access to the books I want to read, on whatever reader I
| want to use.
|
| I often go back and re-read books, years after the the last
| time I read them. I want to have that book available, then.
|
| Also, this goes for all types of media, region locks are
| garbage.
| abawany wrote:
| One approach I've used in lieu of buying ebooks is to buy
| a used/new print copy, get it destructively scanned, and
| thus acquire a drm-free copy of the book. Often this can
| work out cheaper than buying the ebook.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Adding for people who want sources:
|
| There are quite a few places especially technical ones.
| However, many major pulishers don't offer them, so you
| then have the choice of DRM stripping, searching for
| illegitimate copies or giving up/in and using a DRM copy
| somehow.
|
| https://www.ebooks.com/en-nl/drm-free/
|
| https://leanpub.com/
|
| https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/
|
| Note places like ebooks.com don't sell exclusively DRM
| free, so you will need to check per book. I returned one
| to them and got a refund because of my mistake in buying
| a DRMd copy.
| FabHK wrote:
| For free books in the public domain,
| https://standardebooks.org
|
| > Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that
| produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are
| lovingly formatted, open source, free of copyright
| restrictions, and free of cost.
|
| (Not affiliated, just think they do great work!
|
| Discussed before:
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594802
|
| 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138534 )
| bayindirh wrote:
| Add Manning, No Starch Press, InformIT (Pearson) to that
| list.
|
| They somehow watermark your books though, but they don't
| contain any DRM.
|
| O'Reilly was very good. Now they only rent their books
| via Safari. I feel betrayed.
| sitkack wrote:
| I'd add Lulu to that list.
|
| https://www.lulu.com/search/?contributor=Nils+M+Holm
| __david__ wrote:
| Yeah, ebooks are particularly egregious because the readers
| actually have features that are good or bad and being
| locked into one or two options at the most severely limits
| how you consume your books.
|
| What I've doing is buying physical books and then
| downloading DRM free ebook versions from pirate bay. I know
| not everyone will agree with those ethics, but I'm ok with
| it.
| lofi_lory wrote:
| Ironically, DRM drives me towards Z-Lib and Libgen, when I
| happily payed No Starch for their stuff. Especially their
| bundles are a smart move in the digital age.
|
| Also, see e.g. Steam, you cannot charge for these digital
| goods the way you used to. It's shifting towards
| (searchable) collections, not just individual books. It's
| ridiculous, when digital edition cost almost as much as
| print. They are emotionally and functionally different
| things.
| ineedasername wrote:
| I used to work in the industry: Print really isn't much
| more expensive to produce than ebooks, so there's not a
| huge different in cost.
|
| A hardcover will cost around $3-$4 in printing costs.
| Even still, ebooks can be a good deal. To use a recent
| example that wouldn't yet have any digital discounts,
| there's the John Boehner book [0]. As of this comment, it
| has an MSRP of $29.99. The Kindle version is $14.99. At
| actual retail, Barnes & Noble charges $23.99. At Amazon
| it's $17.99, which makes the savings on print costs a
| wash.
|
| Mid-size paper backs are usually a fair bit cheaper too.
| Mass-market editions are the bad deals: In print they
| retail around $8 to $10, which is usually the ebook cost
| too. However, many books never make it to mass market
| editions theses days.
|
| The bulk of the costs involved in bringing a book to
| market are the people: Time to review the "slush pile",
| pay the author, editor, copy editor, typesetting,
| marketing. And many books either lose money for the
| publisher or barely earn out the author's advance. Mid-
| list authors who can consistently earn out their advance
| with a healthy margin are the ones that keep the lights
| on long enough for the publisher to (hopefully) catch
| lightning in a bottle with a block buster, or at least an
| outsized success.
|
| Of course all of the costs above assume you're buying a
| new copy. Used books are often a very good deal.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/House-John-
| Boehner/dp/1250238447/ref=...
| lofi_lory wrote:
| Thanks for the insights!
|
| Still I think ebooks are a different product. At least in
| my head. I have a different emotional relationship with a
| physical book. The information within isn't in
| competition with the endless a "wealth" of information
| available legally or not.
|
| For text books piracy is a victimless "crime" in my case,
| as having a digital copy or not, is independent from
| financial loss above a certain price tag. That is, I
| can't afford most text books, so I won't buy them; piracy
| does not influence the income of the publisher. On the
| other hand, if I really need/want to buy a book, I am
| likely gonna get much more intimate with it. Let's face
| it, digital copies are much more likely not to be read.
| Maybe only indexed and searched as part of a collection.
| Digital has a different value. (Although, I ofc
| understand the superficial dilemma here.)
|
| This is the situation we got IMO.
|
| Side note: You, as someone from the industry, I assume we
| can both agree that at the very least, a free digital
| copy should be included with every physical one, right?
| That just silly and artificial to separate, if you make
| an argument for the value of content and presentation.
| ineedasername wrote:
| In the case of text books, if you can't afford it then
| pirating it can actually be a net-benefit to society. You
| weren't going to contribute to the economy through
| purchasing it, but by learning from a pirated copy you
| increase your knowledge & potential value to society.
| lrvick wrote:
| I looked and looked and looked for an option here, and
| almost pulled the trigger on book scanning gear.
|
| Eventually I gave up realizing it is an extraordinary
| effort to personally rip books just to have drm-free
| digital copies.
|
| Instead I built a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and filled it.
|
| I read ink on slices of dead trees now, like a barbarian.
| throws23577 wrote:
| That's one of my dreams, floor to ceiling bookshelves
| filled with books. Can't you try 'Calibre' [1] instead of
| paid book scanning gear? It's GPL.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibre_(software)
| lrvick wrote:
| That means buying the DRM copies in the first place,
| further contributing to that system. Also it is a PITA.
|
| Pretty much all e-paper readers are proprietary and track
| all reading too which is a second order problem.
| Qwertious wrote:
| IMO the long-term solution is attaching an author-payment
| system widget to pirate sites. It's not illegal to pay
| authors, so a payment system can't be DMCA'd, and pirate
| websites pop back up like weeds and can't realistically
| be stamped out. Magnet links are _way_ too portable for
| that and anyone can spin up a new VPS with 100MB or so of
| data (the size of TPB 's db IIRC) to keep on going.
| abawany wrote:
| There are ebook scanning services that do a great job. I
| have used bookscan.us for hundreds of books for years and
| it works well.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You can actually find quite a few on Amazon. Example:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QGM36KB/
|
| "At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold
| without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied."
| throws23577 wrote:
| This HN thread has some DRM-free
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26892249
| fsflover wrote:
| DRM-free media stores: https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v11/
| (scroll down).
| Fnoord wrote:
| DRM isn't the only problem. Watermarks are as well, they
| ruin the sound quality. Its a bit disappointing FSF doesn't
| mention Fairphone, as they offer a smartphone made from
| slave-free labour (Librem 5 isn't).
| fsflover wrote:
| Fairphone relies on Qualcomm, which forces planned
| obsolescence through proprietary software [0]. This is
| why FSF do not recommend it.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26593274
|
| Consider Librem 5 USA instead:
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa. It is produced in
| USA.
| hamburglar wrote:
| Bandcamp is watermark-free. I've verified it myself by
| comparing FLACs bought from two different accounts. They
| were identical.
| frankish wrote:
| Feel I should add https://libro.fm/ for audiobooks, since
| missing from that list.
| zwily wrote:
| iTunes is also a DRM-free music store. (Assuming you buy and
| aren't using Apple Music.)
| ghaff wrote:
| I wonder if we'd have gotten there without Jobs. It seems
| it happened in a moment of time when there was still a lot
| of piracy going on so there was a big push to make
| purchased digital music as good as/better than pirated
| music. _Maybe_ today there would be a general feeling that
| DRM-free would be the only incentive for people to buy
| music given that streaming predominates, so why not, but I
| 'm not sure.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Here's an archive link for those who didn't see it back
| in 2007: https://web.archive.org/web/20070207234839/http:
| //www.apple....
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| AACS (the BluRay copy protection system) is making a lot of
| effort to change what physical ownership means, and I'm pretty
| sure many TVs and players are working on "improving" on the
| privacy aspects too. One of the nastier aspects is that
| inserting a new disk can permanently modify your drive to no
| longer work with your player software, because the content
| industry no longer trusts that software.
|
| https://hackaday.com/2014/09/08/unbricking-a-bluray-drive/
| criley2 wrote:
| Physical media doesn't automatically provide privacy. There are
| players which do track what blu-rays you put in them. Blu-ray
| players are internet enabled and include advertisements, which
| obviously can have tracking as well. Also you are tracked by
| the banks and stores you make the purchase from. You bought a
| Blu-Ray at Target on a Discover card. Target tracked it and
| sold it. Discover tracked it and sold it. Companies batched
| that together and added it to the same profile that Netflix
| updated. You still got tracked.
|
| Physical media also includes A LOT of DRM as well. You called
| digital streams "DRM media", which is a weird phrase
| considering all physical media uses DRM as well.
|
| I think you're remembering some rose-tinted view of physical
| medias past, not discussing the reality of physical media in
| 2021.
|
| It's weird that you're so inaccurate with these terms and
| concepts, it's almost like you have an agenda
|
| >Literally the only way to get the same freedoms with modern
| digital media we had with physical media, is piracy.
|
| And there it is: The Pirates Rationale(tm)
|
| You see it a lot. An excuse in need of rationalizations, so the
| details get mixed up because it's not about the details, it's
| about the end point.
|
| Stealing media you didn't buy is literally stealing from artist
| and developers and no amount of crying about how the DRM on
| Blu-Ray is more OK than the DRM on Netflix will change that.
| This community should not be as immoral as Reddit and proudly
| and openly support stealing software and content that you did
| not, in some form, pay the artist/creator to access. If you're
| "pirating" things you own, consider ripping and cracking them
| instead, less chance of malicious code that way. But if you're
| using your loose understanding of these concepts to justify
| stealing from developers and artists, then shame on you.
| lrvick wrote:
| I literally bought many hundreds of used CDs and had them
| shipped to https://murfie.com/ to rip for me and give me
| FLACs automatically, because that was the only way to get
| lossless drm-free music I wanted legally.
|
| I even wrote a python library to automate the process since I
| had so much music I wanted to obtain legally that I needed
| bulk access.
|
| I spent thousands of dollars and many hours trying to play by
| the rules on this project.
|
| A: The artist got nothing. CDs were mostly used, and the
| artists are often no longer alive.
|
| B: Murfie went out of business and can't even afford to sort
| and return my discs to me. I can't prove I own my own music
| if challenged. It is all unsorted in a warehouse in the
| midwest somewhere.
|
| Am I a criminal now anyway after all that work?
|
| How many others would go that far to get a legal DRM-free
| music collection?
|
| In the end I still got screwed.
|
| If I could just download DRM-free music/movies/games
| directly, take my money.
|
| Since that is usually not a thing, what other options do
| people that want freedom and privacy have?
| passivate wrote:
| You took a risk on a business (murfie) when you sent them
| your property. Sometimes, the risk materializes, and that
| was unfortunately the case for you. You will have to
| utilize the legal system to retrieve your property, just
| like every other person.
|
| >If I could just download DRM-free music/movies/games
| directly, take my money. Since that is usually not a thing,
| what other options do people that want freedom and privacy
| have?
|
| When you pirate copyrighted content, you're sending a
| strong signal - that there is demand for that content.
| Rather, you may want to consider rewarding creators who
| release their works under a license you agree with. An
| aggregate effect could potentially trigger an industry
| shift away from DRM. As it stands, it may be that your
| favorite creators are not in that list, but that is just
| the reality of the current situation.
|
| >In the end I still got screwed.
|
| When people point out that the creator got screwed when
| people download Avengers or Game of Thrones, others are
| quick to point out that they would never have paid for the
| content. Its all about context and perspective! :)
| RandallBrown wrote:
| > Am I a criminal now anyway after all that work?
|
| You legally purchased the music and legally made backup
| copies of it. You are not a criminal.
|
| > I can't prove I own my own music if challenged
|
| I don't think that matters. Someone would need to prove you
| stole it, which they can't do since you didn't.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > I don't think that matters. Someone would need to prove
| you stole it, which they can't do since you didn't.
|
| Welcome to the civil law world, where they don't need to
| prove that at all, they just need to ask "on the balance
| of probabilities, is it more likely than not that a
| violation happened here?". Unfortunately, for many,
| juries, and even judges, the mere assertion thereof by a
| corporation, even if backed by scant or contradictory
| evidence, is enough for them to say, "that's reasonable".
| eutropia wrote:
| I doubt the piracy moralist you replied to will respond
| with an apology for calling you a thief and a criminal; but
| I really appreciate that you explained your situation.
|
| It's unreasonable to lump all people who pirate media into
| some cesspool of common criminality -- each use-case is
| different. Sure, there are people who aggressively collect
| more pirated content than they could ever hope to
| personally consume and refuse to pay for any media; but
| there are also people who want a secondary copy of
| something they've already purchased, or who can't even
| legally buy the media that they'd want access to in the
| first place.
|
| Easier to just vilify a strawman (for what reason, even?),
| I guess.
| passivate wrote:
| That goes to a deeper philosophical question on social
| contract theory. There are laws that I may not agree
| with. I may chose to break them out of protest or civil-
| disobedience - but then I can't also claim immunity from
| the state's action when they uphold the laws.
| causality0 wrote:
| We need consumer digital rights. Any device, service, or
| license that depends on an external server should be required
| to carry an expiration date that defines the minimum length of
| time for which the maker is willing to support it. Failure to
| render that support should result in liability for a full
| refund of the purchase price.
|
| The other day I saw a dusty copy of Tabula Rasa on the shelf at
| Walmart. That game shut down twelve years ago.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >PlayStation 3 store?
|
| For what little it is worth, Sony has postponed shutting down
| the PS3 and PS Vita stores after backlash. The PSP store will
| still be shutting down this summer. Your point still stands
| regardless
| zerocrates wrote:
| You can still download purchases from the PS3 store; in fact
| you can still _buy_ things from it (but only because of an
| outcry when Sony announced they were closing it). I 'm pretty
| sure you can still download past purchases from the Wii store
| too.
|
| Of course, those kinds of "we're keeping the servers up after
| the store is closed" situations are necessarily limited so it's
| just a matter of time. As you say, once the calculus of
| remaining users and the reputational damage of shutting down
| gets small enough then it'll happen.
|
| On the other hand, Playstation has a worse set of problems
| going on: systems apparently need to phone home if their CMOS
| battery dies or is replaced, and if _those_ servers aren 't
| around anymore or you have no internet, even physical copies
| don't play. (As far as I know this is just about resetting the
| clock but it's still a network dependency.)
| chungy wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure you can still download past purchases from
| the Wii store too.
|
| Correct, at least for now. You haven't actually been able to
| buy anything since 2019.
|
| In my opinion, this was reason enough to find a complete
| archive of all the Wii Shop files and just go through the
| library to find the gems. It might be technically illegal,
| but the only legal process of obtaining any of these games is
| finding a Wii that happened to have a particular game already
| installed on it.
|
| Instead of wasting money and acquiring dozens of otherwise-
| identical consoles, I opt for the preservation (formerly
| piracy) route.
| beckman466 wrote:
| > Physical media lets you have privacy without logging when you
| watch media, what media you consume, how many times you consume
| it, or how long you consume it.
|
| I am so excited for my great-great-great-great ...
| grandchildren to find a layer of plastic DVDs in the earth's
| crust 25 generations from now /s.
|
| Seriously, Blu ray discs and DVDs are such a waste of
| resources.
| ectopod wrote:
| How does the energy use compare of stamping out a DVD and of
| streaming a movie to your TV? Especially if it's a film you
| (or your children) watch repeatedly.
|
| The answer is not obvious. According to [1], mailing a DVD
| and streaming a film use about the same amount of energy.
| This doesn't include the energy cost of manufacturing the
| DVD, but stamping out plastic disks is cheap, so it can't be
| too high. On the other hand, other studies show that DVD
| players, being older, tend to use more energy than streaming
| boxes. For repeated watching, ripping a DVD and streaming it
| locally seems likely to be better.
|
| Or best of all, stream the movie and store it locally for
| future viewings. But that's not allowed. DRM is killing the
| planet.
|
| [1]: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/energy-cost-
| stre...
| fsflover wrote:
| https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-
| hidde...
| beckman466 wrote:
| > DRM is killing the planet.
|
| Agreed. Thanks for the link. I think I could've stated my
| point clearer. I am against DRMed streaming/video, and I'm
| against DVDs. I still want people to be able to make movies
| and get paid, yet the above two options are unsustainable
| e.g. when considering the use of plastic for DVD's, and the
| high energy costs of streaming movies from a data center.
| criley2 wrote:
| How much landfill use does my stream use when it's been
| watched 100 times and becomes garbage?
|
| How much of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch will my Netflix
| stream take up?
|
| Plastic is killing the planet.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Plastic is killing the planet._
|
| No, it isn't. Plastic is only showing up in large
| quantities in areas where it shouldn't, and occasionally
| hurting some animals. Microplastics in particular may
| become a problem at some point, but then again, maybe
| they won't. We aren't sure. And either way, it's not
| causing problems _just yet_.
|
| _Greenhouse emissions_ are what 's killing the planet.
| Manufacturing plastics is a part of that, but so is power
| generation, and thus all "purely digital" activity.
|
| It's a point that people often confuse. Microplastics are
| bad, and emissions are bad, but they're bad for
| completely different reasons. Climate is what's an
| existential threat to civilization, and what we need to
| focus on right now. We can deal with microplastics later,
| if we survive that long.
| lofi_lory wrote:
| Just to nuance the nuance...
|
| We do not have an alternative to petrol based plastic for
| our current economy. Yes, we can make plastic from non-
| fossil biomass, but it's energetically feasible to
| replace petrol based plastics. We don't have the
| landmass, fertilizer, ... to switch completely.
| (Especially, if you consider the big picture: Biofuel,
| carbon sinks, food security, ...)
|
| In a way petrol chemistry bought the planet some time
| before being destroyed by us. It saved the whales and
| prevented ecological exploitation in the colonies.
|
| Since plastics are used amass not just for stupid junk,
| but also critical for e.g. medical single use items,
| sanitation and so on, we shouldn't just think about
| pollution. Although the thought of eating up to 7g of
| plastics a day doesn't sit right with me. (Little known
| side fact: It's not just obvious "plastics", silicone and
| paint does contribute to microplastic accumulation too.)
|
| Our survival very much also depends on preserving oil
| reserves for essential use cases of petrol chemistry.
| Carbon neutral alternatives for many things usually come
| with an increase in another factor (energy, land use, non
| renewable resources) which makes them in concert unable
| to replace fossil energy/chemistry.
|
| Resist.
|
| REDUCE.
|
| Reuse.
|
| Recycle.
|
| Rebury.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Infeasible I think you meant
| lofi_lory wrote:
| Yes! Thanks for pointing it out!
|
| > ... but it's energetically _infeasible_ to replace
| petrol based plastics
|
| (2nd paragraph)
|
| I am using this throw-awayish account with a lacking
| mobile app and cannot edit. So by all means, everyone,
| consider selimthegrim's comment a shame-edit to mine.
| mavhc wrote:
| So is CO2 though.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes, and oil converted to plastic sequesters CO2.
|
| Every plastic bag, every CD, is sequestered CO2.
|
| Of course, plastic is a problem on its own. I don't like
| it, its usage.
|
| Yet I am a realist, and in as such, believe that (sadly),
| every drop of oil will eventually be pumped. Thus, by
| this logic, any use which locks that carbon up may be a
| net benefit.
| lrvick wrote:
| I mean, I can play a movie on a DVD player on solar
| energy for a very long time if I take care of it.
|
| How much electricity and infrastructure does it take to
| deliver the same movie over and over again via the
| internet I wonder?
|
| Both are silly solutions that could be avoided if we were
| allowed to buy and download a DRM-free copy of a movie
| once.
| [deleted]
| everdrive wrote:
| These are all really good points, but what about the cost
| at the data center?
| lrvick wrote:
| As long as the disk still exists /somewhere/, a digital copy
| you ripped from it is legal to keep and backup for personal
| use indefinitely, and transfer to a new owner of the physical
| copy.
|
| One of your many rights if you -actually- own a copy of
| media.
|
| Many sites offer DRM-Free music and books without needing to
| have a redundant physical copy laying around, but in video
| media this is extremely rare, and that is a problem.
| iso1631 wrote:
| > As long as the disk still exists /somewhere/, a digital
| copy you ripped from it is legal to keep and backup for
| personal use indefinitely, and transfer to a new owner of
| the physical copy.
|
| Depends on your jurisdiction. Ripping a dvd or bluray in
| the first place would be illegal in the states. Any type of
| format shifting (including say CD to mp3) is illegal in the
| UK - even if you did buy a drm free WAV, unless the
| copyright holder explicitly gives you permission to copy it
| to your phone, or another computer, you're stuck.
| lrvick wrote:
| This is hotly debated in the US, I will grant, but it
| seems -most- US lawyers agree personal ripping of
| "encrypted" DVDs is Fair Use.
|
| https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/is-it-legal-to-rip-a-
| dvd-...
|
| Some like to claim DMCA could be used to prosecute
| someone for bypassing the encryption on a DVD for
| personal backups but this has, to my knowledge, never
| been tested in court when an individual defendant was
| purely using it for personal backups.
|
| There has been a case in favor of DMCA seeking to
| restrict the release of selling products that allow users
| to to this: https://www.eff.org/cases/realnetworks-v-dvd-
| cca-realdvd-cas...
|
| That was an insane call, and it is a pity they didn't
| appeal as AFAICT.
|
| A similar issue to this was challenged recently with DMCA
| being used to stop the distribution of the open source
| youtube-dl tool making the same anti-circumvention claims
| but in the end this fizzled out as having no merit.
|
| If anyone from Hollywood really wants to test this in
| court I will happily publish a video of myself ripping
| one of their DVDs that I purchased for personal use. It
| would not be a good look for them to to anything about
| it, and would bet a -lot- that they lose. Still, I would
| like to see this chilling effect gray zone be put to rest
| so people are not scared to use their rights.
| est31 wrote:
| There is no requirement to forefit your rights once you
| transition away from physical media. E.g. you could trade DVD
| equivalent rights on a blockchain. The blockchain including
| the proof that you legitimately own this copy would stick
| around for as long as people want it to, it wouldn't depend
| on big tech companies like MS, Sony, etc. I'm not even a
| blockchain fanatic but this is one of the few good uses of
| the technology I think.
| teh_klev wrote:
| What happens then if the blockchain you rely on as proof of
| ownership goes away?
| est31 wrote:
| Blockchains, at least traditionally, work in a way that
| each full node has a full copy of the entire chain.
| Anyone can operate a full node. So it goes away when the
| last person who has kept a copy around somewhere deletes
| it. That happens way later than relying on a central
| party and its digital content store that it might close
| in 5 years (or they might just cancel your account for
| whatever reason they thought of).
| ikerdanzel wrote:
| The piracy it is. They indirectly force consumers to consider
| that alternative. While back during napster time, majority of
| people are not tech savvy. Today, even my neighbor "young"
| grandma knows torrenting.
| zepto wrote:
| > Physical media lets you have privacy without logging when you
| watch media, what media you consume, how many times you consume
| it, or how long you consume it. You can enjoy it offline, and
| in 20 years long after the studio that licensed it is gone.
|
| If you mean books, then yes.
|
| If you mean DVDs, then no - many TVs will report what you are
| watching back to the manufacturer.
| qohen wrote:
| Relevant XKCD (from 2008): https://xkcd.com/488/
| agumonkey wrote:
| Cannot stop thinking the web was sold as a better and cheaper
| business model due to false understanding of digitalization as
| the amount of caveats is getting ridiculous. We keep having to
| walk on eggs for everything and get regular bad surprises.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| "The books stopped working" is a fantastic writing prompt for a
| dystopian novel.
| opinologo wrote:
| Take a look at this great story from Richard Stallman:
|
| https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| I was reminded of a 2-minute video from the FSF, _Shoe
| tool_.
|
| https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/presenting-shoetool-
| happ...
| mhh__ wrote:
| It really pains me that I feel rms has to go. He's just too
| much of whatever he is in real life.
|
| It pains me because he's just so utterly correct on the
| things he writes and wrote about.
| krrrh wrote:
| He's back.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26535224
| datavirtue wrote:
| It's chilling how much this doesn't sound rediculous.
| datagram wrote:
| Wow, this is mind-blowingly prescient.
|
| > Dan would eventually find out about the free kernels,
| even entire free operating systems, that had existed around
| the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal,
| like debuggers--you could not install one if you had one,
| without knowing your computer's root password. And neither
| the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.
|
| Shoutouts to the UEFI secure boot fiasco.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
|
| He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay
| you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob.
| Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed
| it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay
| you."
|
| "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase
| contract you signed when you bought this conapt."
|
| - Ubik, Philip K Dick, 1969
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-
| to...
| lofi_lory wrote:
| What?! I got that book somewhere. That's hilarious, I
| didn't expect that. Now I have to read it.
| throwaway_isms wrote:
| It is, not so much so that the concept is not without
| precedent ("book burnings" are quite famous throughout
| history), but that the book burnings will be conducted by
| corporations that also have all the data on those who ever
| read them, and not to mention they are the ones who initially
| made money selling them in the first place.
|
| In fact [blank] is a fantastic writing prompt for a dystopian
| novel, seems like a fun little game to play with friends.
| elliekelly wrote:
| And will we even notice when the books are "burned"? I have
| so many digital titles I think it would take quite a while
| for me to catch on if they were removed slowly enough.
|
| Weird to think a book burning could happen right under our
| noses (literally!) without us even realizing.
| [deleted]
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| In the before times, people were allowed to show their
| faces.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Let us search about the Gutenbergian cartel for time
| limited ink prints.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| You know it is not book burnings that concern me (they do a
| bit). It is more re-editing that will start to happen once
| they get the tech just right. They will edit problematic
| people in and out of old movies. At first it will be used
| for advertising. Such as switching one cola for another in
| scenes or a billboard in the background. It will be
| something like 'restaurant X has given us money to change
| billboards for a year'. Next year 'car company Y has given
| us money to change billboards for a year'. Then they will
| go bonkers with it. Do not like the dialog, because they
| said something you no longer agree with? Well run it
| through a couple of programs and they are now saying
| something else, or new and upcoming actor someone wants to
| promote. So you will see something then a few months later
| it will be edited and you will never see what you saw
| before.
|
| Oh and it is already happening with adverts in some
| streaming movies.
| lrvick wrote:
| I have been looking for a book title to express my discontent
| at the state of freedom and privacy in our rapidly all
| digital society today and what we can do about it.
|
| There are several more cases of books being remotely disabled
| and I see this being used for censorship before long.
|
| ...Noted
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| You should check out the book "Radicalized" by Cory
| Doctorow! It's four short stories. The first one -
| "Unauthorized Bread" was published online:
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-
| bread-a-...
| lrvick wrote:
| On the way! Thanks.
| mLuby wrote:
| > I was shooting heroin and reading "The Fountainhead" in the
| front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call
| came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was
| the chief.
|
| From [Libertarian Police
| Department](https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-
| d-libertari...)
| swebs wrote:
| >Please drink verification can to continue
|
| https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png
| Balgair wrote:
| > Halo 2k19
|
| Little did we know that they'd just use the same game over
| and over for years. Look at GTA 5.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Which could happen system-wide because they turned off the
| DRM servers (a la Microsoft books) or maybe you've been
| deemed "unacceptable" on the platform.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> We got scammed._
|
| Yes, but it matters less than we think, since it mostly affects
| entertainment consumption. In fact, I'd argue that the amount
| people get burned for using DRM content is precisely enough to
| keep physical media alive and well for along time; and insofar
| as DRM enables the production of more stuff, and the
| inevitability that the popular stuff will "escape" thanks to
| piracy, that's its not that big of a deal.
|
| That said, the issues of DRM are far more vital for creator
| applications! When you've coupled your ability to write,
| communicate and earn a living to any privately controlled
| service that is hard to replace (and that is the very
| definition of the Google vs. Apple software ecosystem, to take
| the most important example) then you've lost something far more
| profound, and when things go sideways (losing your Google
| account, say) you won't be prepared. It is scary that so many
| public services require access to a smartphone, when "having a
| smartphone" is itself not a public service. (And no, library
| computers don't count. You can't install and use an app in the
| library computer browser.)
| saurik wrote:
| FWIW, there is some subtlety here with respect to "physical
| media", as something that otherwise looks like physical media
| can still have DRM annoying enough that you might not be able
| to have a functional player when you go to use your media 20
| years later (particularly if your console has Internet access).
| don-code wrote:
| Case in point: Terminator 2 Extreme, purchased in 2003. I
| figured that having the physical media meant I could play
| this forever long as I owned the discs.
|
| I haven't been able to play those discs since 2008, when the
| license servers went offline.
| reaperducer wrote:
| See if your local library has a copy. My library doesn't
| have many Blu-Rays, but the ones they do have seem to be
| DRM-free.
| cuillevel3 wrote:
| It's heartbreaking to see Nintendo Switch consoles on ebay with
| hundreds of dollars worth of eshops games. At that point you're
| selling an email address.
| pontifier wrote:
| I'm committed to reviving Murfie.com a digital access and
| remote ownership service that respects ownership of media.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I typed a big long response and deleted it because I think that
| people just do not care.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Microsoft "Plays For Sure" is all you need to say ...
| borepop wrote:
| I relate to this energy.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Most users just do not care about "owning" DRM-free files.
| Most users don't have any clue about how to store, manage,
| or safeguard their DRM-free digital purchases.
| wruza wrote:
| It's not their fault. We do not have even primitive means
| to access (except the html part) or participate in the
| internet, despite FOSS everything. Backups/storage?
| Dropbox/Google. Send a file to your buddy?
| Telegram/GDrive. Remote help? TeamViewer. Hosting a site?
| Facebook/Wix. We failed everything, and only very tech-
| savvy users can (and have time to) do one of the above
| without depending on something corporate.
|
| Imagine if every browser had UI->API connection to
| popular hostings (or a local pc) and could allow users
| (and businesses) to exchange files, documents, messages,
| media, etc, and also had established UIs for all of that.
| All these instagrams, facebooks, google services,
| dropboxes simply exploited OS shortcomings and stupid
| complexity of its operation. If a user could just tap to
| publish a photo, they wouldn't need a platform/service
| and a separate app for that. If a user could bypass NAT,
| they wouldn't need remote help services. IIRC, the top
| comment on Dropbox was along the lines of "will not fly,
| everyone can rsync/email their files for free". Turned
| out nobody can. We still use corporate services to send
| files across the same room, because even simple file
| sharing still doesn't fucking work, not to mention media-
| exchange/play and UIs for that. It's not "Most users
| don't have any clue ...", it's "All users don't ...".
| Arrath wrote:
| To be quite honest I'm basically in this boat. With the
| rationalization in the back of my mind that if Amazon
| were to ban my account and block access to my ebook
| library, or were Steam to do the same thing to my games;
| fuck em. I already paid for the items, I'll dust off my
| torrent client if I need to get them some way or another.
|
| Until such time, I have enough other stuff going on in my
| life that I don't particularly have the time to search
| for DRM-free media in my purchasing, organize and curate
| the collection, and so on.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Most users don 't have any clue about how to store,
| manage, or safeguard their DRM-free digital purchases_
|
| They figured out how to care for records, cassettes, and
| videotapes. They just need an incentive to learn.
| amelius wrote:
| > We got scammed.
|
| This is what happens when a technology enters the mainstream.
|
| Average people don't care about the same things that tech-
| people care about.
|
| See eternal September as another example.
|
| Eventually the market always serves the "average" client best,
| and the more demanding people (which are usually the early
| adopters of a technology) aren't served so well.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| Wrong tech is a tool. Those pushing this are at fault, this
| is not just what happens as a natural course of technology
| adoption
| chrisshroba wrote:
| I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I was wondering if you
| have a source on the claim that studios know every second you
| watch one of their films. Specifically, I was under the
| impression that Apple wasn't phoning home with users' watching
| habits. Do you have a source on that? (I'd like to update my
| mental model if so)
| kdmdmdmmdmd wrote:
| In cases where you actually downloaded the content, check the
| end-user license agreement of iOS and macOS. I think if you
| read this, as you're required to do, you will find that they
| explicitly state thais when they say they declaring their
| rights to track this kind of consumption for market purposes
| and to enforce law.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > We got scammed.
|
| Personally, I had movies I had purchased years ago
| automatically upgraded to 4K HDR versions.
|
| That's certainly one advantage over physical disks.
| silon42 wrote:
| Maybe, but Han Shot First.
| wccrawford wrote:
| For me, the advantage is that I don't have to go find the
| disc and physically insert it, and deal with whatever disc
| was in there before. I get to just watch my movie when I
| want.
|
| I also don't have to physically store the discs, which is a
| bigger deal than it sounds like. I really don't want shelves
| and shelves of books and movies in my house. I have a few
| bookcases of our favorites, and that's it.
|
| Even better is monthly streaming services, though. Then I
| don't pay nearly as much and get almost all the convenience,
| but with the risk that any particular movie might no longer
| be streaming.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| > Even better is monthly streaming services, though. Then I
| don't pay nearly as much and get almost all the
| convenience, but with the risk that any particular movie
| might no longer be streaming.
|
| That's it for me. If I buy something now I'm looking for a
| DRM free version (even though are Blu Rays even DRM fee?
| I'm sure there's a day when the certs or licenses will
| expire), otherwise it's streaming services. If I never buy
| something from a digital store I'm not sad when it
| disappears.
| skystarman wrote:
| Yeah, I go back and forth.
|
| I had a decent blu ray collection, DVD collection before
| that, I'm not that old and now they are all essentially
| outdated tech when I could upgrade to 4k.
|
| I love the idea of saving the space that any decent film/tv
| collection would take up, especially living in a 1BR place.
| Then again usually when you watch "4k" on Netflix or
| whatever it's still not up to the same quality of an ACTUAL
| 4k disk would be played through a PS5 or whatever. That is
| unless you have crazy fast broadband. And even then I'd bet
| it's a degraded quality compared to a lossless 4k source.
| lrvick wrote:
| Former me would agree with you, but I hit my breaking point
| when I saw Microsoft eBooks stop working, or shows I liked
| pulled from streaming services. There is no permanence no
| matter how much I pay when media has DRM.
|
| I for one only pull dvds out of the box once ever.
|
| It is easy enough to rip DVDs or Blu-rays to a NAS and use
| Kodi.
|
| Sadly that option is becoming less and less possible as
| many shows become streaming platform exclusives.
|
| Accept the monthly fees, tracking, and proprietary
| devices/apps or no entertainment for you.
| hvidgaard wrote:
| Shows removed from a streaming service is not really the
| same, because you don't pay specifically for that
| particular show. You pay for access to the library which
| is updated every now and then. Just like your taxes might
| pay for a public library in which certain books are sold
| off every now and then.
|
| The problem here is when you buy a movie, show, book,
| album ect. that you suddenly do not have access to. That
| is problematic.
| andrewzah wrote:
| This is why I built a home media server with Jellyfin and
| Navidrome. Nothing will "go away", short of a fire or
| multiple drives failing at once. I keep a physical copy
| in a separate house, and back up the essentials with
| duplicacy to backblaze b2.
|
| In the last few years I've spent more than ever on cds
| through discogs.com.
|
| "Sadly that option is becoming less and less possible as
| many shows become streaming platform exclusives."
|
| Certain websites say otherwise. Luckily my main focus is
| music, where nearly everything I want is already in the
| used market, so the original artist won't see any money.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Not to mention instant loading and the sheer bliss of
| being offline if you want.
| Loughla wrote:
| The only reason I built a home media server was because I
| was sick of the splintering of streaming services. Now we
| buy, rip, and store physical media. Honestly, I think
| that it's something that, if people understood how easy
| it was today, more people would do.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I got it all figured out but I don't think it's easy. I
| have a stack of discs awaiting the ambition to start
| swapping and ripping and converting again.
| kdmdmdmmdmd wrote:
| They certainly don't do that on Amazon but I expect Amazon
| stick around a lot longer than any company that you were
| talking about
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I had movies I had purchased years ago automatically
| upgraded to 4K HDR_
|
| Wait until they get downgraded to error screens because the
| company you bought them from went out of business, got bought
| by another company, pivoted to something else, forgot to
| renew a domain, or a thousand other things.
| neilv wrote:
| FWIW, Sony just backtracked on the PS3 and Vita store
| shutdowns, for now (but still moving forward with PSP store
| shutdown, last I heard):
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2021/04/20/sony-isnt-c...
|
| I agree that there's been some highly questionable shutdowns of
| DRM and content servers by a few major companies, later
| disabling things that they claimed customers were buying.
|
| It seems we're lacking sufficient regulatory/judicial
| disincentives for companies to hoover up much of the market for
| selling content products, then fly-by-night shutdown of the DRM
| and content servers that they'd intentionally made part of the
| products.
| mfer wrote:
| > Physical media lets you have privacy without logging when you
| watch media, what media you consume, how many times you consume
| it, or how long you consume it.
|
| Quick note, smart TVs when using the smart features capture
| this information and send it to the manufacturer or their
| partner. The manufacturers often sell it. It subsidizes the
| cost of the TV.
|
| Using physical media does not mean your viewing isn't being
| monitored.
| holtalanm wrote:
| this is why, whenever I can, i buy games from GoG instead of
| Steam. and purchase paper books rather than digital if at all
| possible.
|
| Is there a digital book seller that doesn't use DRM?
| nomel wrote:
| Almost all of my optical media from around the year 2000
| oxidized and stopped working. I've lost more CDs, DVDs, and
| blue rays to scratches than I care to admit. Many of my old
| photos and books were destroyed with some water damage.
|
| Much of it was due to improper storage, but that's where the
| very real value of not having something physical or on site
| comes from.
|
| When I get a choice between cloud and physical, I now _always_
| buy cloud from the largest, stable, cloud distributors (Amazon
| or Apple, never Google or Microsoft). I will pay _more_ if
| needed. It 's a valuable service to me to not have to babysit a
| movie/book/photo. I've personally never lost anything to DRM,
| but I've lost dozens of physical media, over the years, for one
| reason or another.
|
| Freedom is great, but the freedom of not having to lug things
| around with me is the freedom I would rather pay for. But I'm
| the type of person that gets terrified when I see someone's DVD
| /Blueray collection that covers a wall, "I hope you have
| homeowners insurance".
| lmilcin wrote:
| > We got scammed.
|
| Well, depends on how you look at it and how comfortable you are
| forgetting about how it looked before you could buy online.
|
| I pay for _convenience_ which is a service rather than tangible
| good.
|
| If I need a book for my research, I would prefer to have access
| to it immediately rather than wait two weeks to get it from
| overseas. My time is valuable and the pause on the project or
| inconvenience of not having the book for a week or two cost me
| much more than price of the book.
|
| If I want to watch a movie with my kids I am fine renting the
| movie for the price of the DVD even if I know I could be
| watching the DVD multiple times. Most times we do not re-watch
| movies anyway and it is worth to me to be able to do something
| with my kids on a whim rather than have to plan it.
|
| If I pay for Spotify I understand I don't own all those titles.
| But, for a price of half a CD per month I get access to as many
| titles as I can listen to. This lets me discover new music on a
| whim. Something, that was not possible when I was buying
| physical CDs in a music store. Also I paid A LOT more for CDs
| than I pay currently for access to much more music.
|
| But I agree things should be called properly without creating
| false impression that you _own_ something rather than pay for a
| time-limited service.
| datavirtue wrote:
| They are leveraging the connotation of "buy" to get you to
| give them money. If they used the words lease, rent, or
| borrow or explicitly stated the purchase may be for a limited
| time then consumers' brow would furl as they pulled away from
| the action button. That is bad for conversion. This is
| classic anti-market behavior.
| ghaff wrote:
| I used to be somewhat skeptical of the convenience claim. A
| former colleague argued that the attraction of Napster was
| more about convenience than price which I didn't really buy.
|
| But if we look at the popularity of streaming services today
| versus owning even DRM-free music, that would seem to support
| the convenience theory. (It hasn't taken off for books to the
| same degree but I'd guess that's in part because the vast
| majority of people just don't consume enough to make an all
| you can eat offering work.)
|
| As perhaps both cause and effect, there's probably also
| something of a generational shift in which ownership of stuff
| you can put your hands on may just not be as appealing to
| many younger people, especially if they're urban dwellers
| without a lot of space.
| kdmdmdmmdmd wrote:
| Your opinion on convenience is not relevant to this case.
| ademup wrote:
| Owning music is made much more difficult now that the
| ability to use it has been greatly diminished. Many new
| cars don't even come with CD players. Sure, there are work
| arounds, but I think that moves us beyond a measure of
| "convenience".
| detaro wrote:
| What device are you using that allows you to stream music
| but can't play from audio files you bought? I don't find
| the difference between spotify and MP3s that large.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Alternatively you could just download everything you
| wanted to listen to for the last 30 years.
| ghaff wrote:
| >>the ability to use it has been greatly diminished
|
| Really? I have tons of music ripped from CDs on my iPhone
| and I can trivially play that in my car. I have CD
| players in my car (which I never use) and attached to my
| stereo (which I rarely use). It's not that the ability to
| play CDs (or rip them and play them) has been diminished
| but a lot of people prefer to just use a streaming
| service.
|
| I'll grant that many people don't have a CD player even
| on their computer any longer but you can buy one for not
| much money online and have it in a couple days if you
| want one.
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| Which you're now being tracked when you listen to that
| iPod. You've made yourself the product
| fsflover wrote:
| > I have tons of music ripped from CDs
|
| Are you suggesting that it's a simple and convenient
| thing to do for the public?
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| But ripping CDs is not the only way of "owning" the
| media.
|
| As another commenter said [0], you can buy and own media
| without ever touching a physical medium or waiting for
| the post service to deliver it.
|
| I seem to remember at one point Apple was offering DRM-
| free music. This is pretty convenient for everybody. Yes,
| you have to buy it ahead of time and store it, as opposed
| to just streaming right away.
|
| But it does seem quite easy to me. Go to the iTunes
| store, click buy, done. It may even sync automatically to
| your iPhone, so you can play it in your car, just as you
| would Spotify.
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26914754
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| They still do, Apple's MP3s are DRM-free, and you can
| download them with the iTunes desktop client. Another
| super handy way: Amazon.
|
| Amazon's MP3 download store is DRM-free, but also, Amazon
| has an "Auto-Rip" feature that means often when you buy
| the physical music CD, they immediately give you the
| ability to download the MP3s for free. You get the real
| purchase of physical media, and the convenience of
| instant access.
| benfrancom wrote:
| If you bought Apple's MP3's when they had DRM, you can't
| get them without it. (Maybe if you re-purchase it?). At
| least I can't access DRM free music that I purchased
| initially with DRM.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That supports ghaff's original point. It's far more
| convenient to stream music than deal with CDs period.
|
| Automakers didn't remove CD players despite people
| wanting them. They did it because enough customers were
| not willing to pay a premium to have the CD player. I
| would rather have a larger screen for CarPlay, and I'm
| betting most people who use streaming apps/MP3s would
| too.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| > I would rather have a larger screen for CarPlay, and
| I'm betting most people who use streaming apps/MP3s would
| too.
|
| CarPlay and touch screens generally are one of the worst
| 'innovations' that have happened in cars in recent
| decades, as far as road safety goes.
|
| In the past, I would have a CD that had 5-10 albums on
| it, and could easily flip between them without taking my
| eyes off the road. I could glance up at the sleeve on my
| sun shade to find a different CD to switch to, and easily
| switch the CDs around _and navigate the rest of the
| process by feel alone_.
|
| Now I have to pull over to change albums in a reliable
| (siri is unreliable and doesn't work with all apps) and
| safe manner.
|
| It's an improvement as far as how much total music I have
| access to on any given journey. Does that convenience
| justify even one additional life lost as a result of a
| distracted driver? As a society, we have very loudly
| screamed _ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY_ , which, like GP notes, is a
| real fucking shame.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that it's not? Maybe I'm out of touch
| with both the state of technology and the general public
| (guilty on both counts), but last I checked major
| operating systems all came with CD ripping software
| included. Do people really not have CD drives any more or
| something?
| ghaff wrote:
| A fair number of people probably don't have CD drives any
| longer given you generally don't need them to install
| software. But you can buy one on Amazon for < $20 so
| that's certainly not a huge barrier for people who want
| to.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| It seems like a lot more people have laptops only these
| days and most new laptops don't have a CD drive. Neither
| my 2013 MBP or the desktop I built in 2018 have a CD
| drive and I've never needed one with the desktop and
| haven't used one with the laptop since a year or two
| after I bought it. They are basically phased out for
| computing purposes it seems.
| burnsomecds wrote:
| Yeah? Didn't we all burn mixed CDs to trade as kids? Most
| cars have an aux plug, and there are still standalone mp3
| players with a drag and drop interface
|
| Shoot, almost ten years ago I ripped my dad's CDs and put
| them all on a SanDisk mp3 player. He's almost certainly
| just using it as is.. I'd have to ask, but his music
| taste has been set for thirty years; he doesn't need to
| put anything new on it, ever.
|
| All he needs to know how to do is unplug it from the
| stereo and plug it into the jack in the car.
|
| What's hard here?
| ghaff wrote:
| Streaming is more convenient for most people. Ripping is
| as simple as it was 20 years ago when much of the general
| public had no trouble doing so. It's just that there are
| simpler alternatives that weren't available then.
| crocsarecool wrote:
| Shoot, in the late 90's I feel like everyone was ripping
| and burning CDs not just the savvy ones.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Yes...all you had to do with iTunes was insert a disc and
| click a button. After a couple of minutes, the tracks
| would all be in your library with metadata pulled from
| the internet. Everyone I knew who had a computer used to
| duplicate CDs for their car and make mixes.
| mywittyname wrote:
| _looks at laptop_
|
| Hmmm...
|
| _looks at old laptop_
|
| Hmmm...
|
| _looks at ipad, iphone_
|
| Hmm...Oh, I know!
|
| _looks at gaming PC_
|
| Nope. I don't have a disk drive on a computer and haven't
| for several years now. Sure, I could get one, but optical
| drives have been optional equipment for a while now.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's optional because you, like many, don't rip/play
| CDs/DVDs any longer. You'd have one if you had a use for
| it. I'm guessing you have peripherals attached to one or
| more of your computers that I consider optional.
| sixothree wrote:
| I have Netflix, Prime, Hulu, Spotify, sometimes Youtube TV,
| OTA via TIVO. Trust me, TPB is much more convenient.
| SirSourdough wrote:
| I think it depends on your viewing habits. If you decide
| what content you want to watch and then seek it out, you
| might have a tougher time finding what you want with all
| the streaming services segregating content.
|
| But if you start by opening a streaming service and
| browse from there I don't really think there's any
| contest between the high-quality exploration and
| experience of eg Netflix vs the glorified spreadsheet
| browsing that is TPB and all the gotchas that go along
| with downloading random torrents...
| ghaff wrote:
| I can be streaming just about anything purchased/rented a
| la carte from Amazon in a couple of minutes. It _costs_
| more but I don 't see how that's less convenient than
| TPB.
| sixothree wrote:
| I'm not really concerned about cost.
|
| I like to be able to use my laptop to locate content and
| then watch it on a television. So my habits mostly
| include YouTube or TPB. With youtube I can queue a number
| of items into a playlist. For TPB, I just press the
| magnet and it appears on my television a short while
| later.
|
| I mean I intend to continue paying for these services
| since I like the offerings. I just don't like using them.
| They're all ugly and annoying, and they each have their
| quirks I need to learn. Discovery sucks and searching is
| always slow and painful. I just don't care to deal with
| it.
|
| Plus, every time someone mentions a show you have to have
| this extra little conversation about what streaming
| service it's available on. It's annoying and I really
| don't want to care.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Assuming it's on Amazon...
|
| What do you do when the show you want to watch is not on
| there? What do you do when it's a Hulu Exclusive? Or a
| Netflix show?
|
| You know what I do? Search for 'movie/show name' +
| 'torrent' and I pull down the rip at 10MB/sec, and have
| it in a few minutes. Faster than signing up for another
| service, installing the app on all of my devices,
| connecting that app up to my account, adding my credit
| card, then paying for it. Then having to discontinue that
| subscription later when I decide there's nothing else on
| that service I want to watch. Then you realize, you paid
| for 1 month of service, just to watch one show...
| ridiculous.
|
| Streaming is only convenient when you are already
| subscribed to the service. Otherwise piracy is much
| easier. Plus I don't get my fucking videos downsampled to
| 720p because I choose to watch in a web browser on a
| Linux box.
| andrewprock wrote:
| The primary challenge with today's streaming services is
| determining which platform the content is on, and what
| tier you need to have to consume the content.
|
| In that way, Amazon Video is one of the most convenient
| platforms as it has more content than many other
| platforms, though you may need to pay a rental fee.
|
| When it comes to convenience, for me unified access to
| the most content trumps most other issues.
| sixothree wrote:
| I have to add that I do have one other streaming service
| I did not list and that is Formula 1 TV.
|
| And I think this is an incredible example of value that
| can be added to television. During an event you can watch
| live video footage from the main feed, any of the 20 cars
| on the track, or the pit straights. You can listen to
| team radios, commentary, or just engine audio.
| [deleted]
| kdmdmdmmdmd wrote:
| I get where you are coming from but I don't really care what
| you buy movies for and I don't really understand what that
| has to do with this topic. This isn't a wishy washy political
| or abstract technical topic. Its a legal interpretation.
|
| Did you really need to reiterate yourself three times? Are
| you even really trying to participate in the conversation
| here are you trying to derail?
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| > _I pay for convenience which is a service rather than
| tangible good._
|
| Piracy is often more convenient than going through the
| hurdles of a legal purchase.
| [deleted]
| minusSeven wrote:
| Well that is service vs non service model. For example lets
| say you buy a ebook from Amazon. You expect the book to stay
| with you forever. It costs Amazon next to nothing to transfer
| the 5mb of book data I need to read the book. Compare that
| with subscription to Kindle unlimited. You get some books you
| can read but lose access to them once you unsubscribe.
|
| You are not being lied to in the subscription model but it
| seems the digital buying isn't quite honest.
| __david__ wrote:
| Yeah, I think that's why I object much less to Netflix's
| DRM than to iTunes DRM on movies that I've "bought".
| Netflix, HBO+, Disney+ never give you the illusion that
| anything involving them is permanent.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I've been buying some DVDs off Amazon lately because the
| movies I want to watch, some of which aren't even that old,
| haven't been on any streaming service at any price.
|
| Pretty inconvenient.
|
| If we live in a world without physical media, some things
| will simply disappear forever.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Remember when we could buy mp3s on the iTunes store? Why
| can't we buy our movies as mp4s on the Apple Movies store?
|
| I would have convenience (more convenience than I have now, I
| argue). They could still have a cloud offering that only
| lasts as long as they feel like it.
|
| That would be enough to make this lawsuit go away. So, no, it
| isn't that we are now buying convenience so we must bend our
| backs to their spying and control. We had both freedom and
| control in the digital music ecosystem for more than ten
| years.
| rakoo wrote:
| Yes but that's not the same thing. You're arguing in the
| "physical/digital" debate and I believe evryone will agree
| that digital is better in most cases. Physically owning
| something is nice for the memorabilia and for those who still
| have DVD/CD players but that's not the biggest use case.
|
| The topic here is DRM vs non-DRM'd media. It's orthogonal to
| the topic of physicality: you can have DRM'd physical media
| (think Google Nest) and you can have non-DRM'd digital media.
|
| Switching back to the convenience of using digital instead of
| physical is a disservice to the discussion because it
| switches the focus on something that is totally unrelated and
| makes people believe that those who prefer non-DRM'd media
| are somehow reluctant to adopting streaming platform. I
| definitely see the convenience of it: I barely have any music
| files on my computer, I stream it all from Youtube or
| Soundcloud or Bandcamp. And like you I have spent MUCH more
| money on artists now that I can stream them than when I
| bought CDs. But when I want to get the files for offline use
| I know I'm in good hands because those platforms allow me to
| do it and have files I can use forever without ever
| reconnecting to the mothership.
|
| So, to come back the initial point: yes we got scammed,
| because we didn't read the fine print. We didn't understand
| that DRM'd media is never bought, it's always rented. We
| switched from buy-it-for-life to subscribe-until-the-
| platform-dies
| andrewljohnson wrote:
| I think the point is it's not a scam because these
| businesses are of value to you overall. That they decided
| they needed DRM to make sustainable business is unfortunate
| but doesn't make it a scam. The words may be scammy in this
| case, but digital media is better than physical media and
| you get the good with the bad.
| cycomanic wrote:
| You have an interesting definition of scam. For me
| "selling" you something by misrepresenting what it is, is
| pretty much the definition of a scam to me. It does not
| matter if it had some convenience to me. E.g. If I was
| sold a new iPhone online (maybe when it was currently not
| available on the apple store) and I later found out it
| was used (and I e.g. can't get warranty) I would say I
| have been scammed, even though it was convenient for me
| to buy it from some vendor online and I didn't have to
| wait for it to be back in stock at apple.
| LocalH wrote:
| > I believe evryone will agree that digital is better in
| most cases
|
| If you include modern piracy in with "digital", sure. If
| you only include legal offerings, absolutely not.
|
| Even DRM'd physical media that doesn't use the network in
| any way to authenticate is way better than DRM'd digital
| media, which you can never truly own, and which exists at
| the folly of the service operator.
| Tostino wrote:
| GP was talking about the format of digital media, not the
| usual protections put in place on what is currently
| offered legally.
|
| You're back to conflating the two.
| jwalton wrote:
| > If you only include legal offerings, absolutely not.
|
| I have plenty of ebooks from Baen and Tor, and plenty of
| music I've bought from a variety of places, all in
| digital format, all without any DRM. It's not the
| "digital" part that's bad, it's the DRM part.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| And there are some unsung heros out there breaking those
| DRM schemes. I feel way more comfortable creating a DRM-
| free copy of Blu-rays I own, and I don't feel I stole
| anything from anyone or did anything morally wrong
| Drew_ wrote:
| The OP he's replying to was arguing that "physical media"
| doesn't suffer from the drawbacks of "DRM media" implying
| that physical media has no DRM (obviously false).
| toss1 wrote:
| Fine, but selling convenience is DIFFERENT from selling
| possession.
|
| Alan may want convenience of streaming a large library for a
| low price.
|
| Barbara may want the conveniece of having physical media she
| can bring on her travels and play without an internet
| connection, or the ability to play it 20 years from now and
| give to her kids.
|
| That is all fine, they are two different things
|
| The scam is selling the rental of transient streaming service
| rental as if it had the attributes of buying physical media.
|
| Apple and others are exploiting the familiarity and positive
| connotations of "buying a movie/album" to sell something that
| clearly lacks the same attributes. It is a linguistic
| sleight-of-hand, and it is a scam.
| T3RMINATED wrote:
| Try opening a book from the Microsoft eBook store. It will
| fail because they closed down the DRM servers. The books
| stopped working. PlayStation 3 store? Wii store? Same
| story. You can no longer access your purchases.
| ycombigator wrote:
| Bollocks more like.
|
| A fraudulent contract is not a contract.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| The convenience argument is such bullshit.
|
| We have been seduced into selling our rights down the river
| because we will sacrifice anything to this most pathetic of
| gods, Convenience.
|
| I have been fighting in this war (anti-DRM/copyleft/etc) for
| decades, and peoples' susceptibility to convenience has
| _always_ effectively thwarted any kind of counter argument.
|
| We are fucking lazy and we should be ashamed of it.
|
| Yes I am bitter, we could have had a world of power, control,
| and ownership at our fingers... a cornucopia of content on
| our terms... computers that well and truly serve us and not
| some wanterpreneurial, rent-seeking master... but it wouldn't
| have been as _convenient_.
|
| And now zoomers, seduced by corporate sponsorships and the
| cozy fiefdoms of communities like YouTube or TikTok, have
| almost no concept of files or their utility, of the value of
| owning something detached from a profiteering cloud. They
| have no problem enriching those who seek to exploit them.
|
| It is all complete, utter horseshit. We fought for a better
| world that nobody wanted because it wasn't as _convenient_
| f1refly wrote:
| I feel your pain, exactly as you describe it. It's all
| horrible and wrong. And I'm 22.
| pchristensen wrote:
| How long did it take for you to write the machine code that
| posted this comment?
| salawat wrote:
| Nice deflection, but the poster is absolutely right. It's
| a difficulty I'm having to teach the little ones in my
| life around. Without the understanding of the real
| foundational units of computing, but a "flawless" User
| Experience that results in the ability to get things done
| regardless, we're decoupling the operating the computer
| from understanding it, and creating an unhealthy
| divergence and captive audience. This is unacceptable,
| and a has terrible implications for the next generation.
| fanciestManimal wrote:
| Do you think there are (per capita) more or fewer
| software developers today than there were in 1980? I kind
| of think the inverse of your point is true, to be frank.
| On a per capita basis, I think it's it likely that way
| more people understand the fundamentals of computing.
|
| I just think software has made computing more accessible
| to people that don't know the fundamentals, which I think
| is a good thing. I don't think operating computers should
| be a gatekeeping exercise where you can't use it if you
| don't understand what machine instructions are, or c.
| salawat wrote:
| You misunderstand my definition of fundamentals. I'm
| talking things like filesystems, networking, protocols,
| hardware, etc. You can spend an eternity learning all the
| different Apps on Android or iOS.
|
| Not once will you figure out how to develop one without
| access to a traditional Desktop system, and an
| understanding of the fundamental underpinnings thereof.
| That's changing a bit now with some efforts in the FLOSS
| space, but it is roughly true today.
|
| While there may be more developers now, I do not see a
| significant decrease in overall tech illiteracy.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| There is a big difference between having to know the
| "machine code" of how something works vs. knowing the
| basic, skeumorphic abstractions that power productivity.
| However, both of those things seem to be too much for the
| latest cohort
| b0tzzzzzzman wrote:
| I C what you did.
| wizzard wrote:
| > _And now zoomers, seduced by corporate sponsorships and
| the cozy fiefdoms of communities like YouTube or TikTok,
| have almost no concept of files or their utility, of the
| value of owning something detached from a profiteering
| cloud. They have no problem enriching those who seek to
| exploit them._
|
| You're blaming gen z for the world they were raised in? The
| oldest "zoomers" are about 25. You think they ran these
| companies for the last 20 years and made the decisions that
| got us here?
|
| They have no problem enriching those who seek to exploit
| them because there is _no other choice_. Nobody actually
| wants this.
| RulerOf wrote:
| >You're blaming gen z for the world they were raised in?
|
| I read it as complaining that the work done defending the
| concept of digital ownership and absolute control of
| one's own digital space was for nought. The people coming
| of age in today's digital landscape were basically raised
| as prisoners inside of the rent/data-extracting walled
| gardens we have today.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I'm not blaming them, they are a victim of circumstance.
| But they are now the demographic that marketeers fawn
| over, and the demographic that shapes the immediate
| future. And they just don't care.
| talentedcoin wrote:
| It's because it's 99% just entertainment, and not that
| important to most people. Sorry to burst your bubble. Even
| your use of the word "content" gives the game away.
| bombcar wrote:
| Arguably when you had to search for content (either by
| ripping CDs or DVDs or browsing limewire, etc) you put
| _effort_ into obtaining it, and so it felt worthwhile to
| put _effort_ into maintaining it.
|
| Now it's easy gained, easy lost and so people don't care.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| I fully agree with this lawsuit. I felt OK with "purchasing"
| movies from Apple at the Blu-Ray retail price, because I was
| under the impression that my files remain mine so that if I
| backup them correctly, I can watch the movie later.
|
| By now, I know that this isn't the case. If I had known earlier,
| I wouldn't have paid full price for a limited digital copy.
| Instead, I would have purchased the Blu-Ray which - if you treat
| it well - will last far longer than my digital movies did,
| despite backups and stuff.
| csours wrote:
| If I put money in a bank, it is fungible; I can move it to
| another bank, another account, another person.
|
| If I buy a license to play a video game on Steam, I only own
| that license on Steam with one account (with some exceptions
| and provisions for gifting etc).
|
| If I buy a license to for a movie on iTunes, I only own that
| license on iTunes tied to one account.
|
| Will consumers band together and demand that their media
| licenses be fungible?
|
| In other words, how many things are 'accidental banks'
| thought_alarm wrote:
| If you purchase and download a movie you can copy it, back it
| up, and watch it whenever you want as many times as you want.
|
| The lawsuit is about repeated downloads and streaming after the
| copyright owner has removed the movie for sale.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| But can you copy a movie out of iTunes onto, say, an external
| HD? I thought Apple used DRM for purchased media.
| thought_alarm wrote:
| They use DRM, but movies and TV shows are downloaded as
| regular movie files. You can move and copy them to wherever
| you want.
|
| Downloaded movie files can be played using either iTunes or
| the QuickTime Player, copied to an iOS device, or streamed
| to an Apple TV box.
| shmerl wrote:
| DRM-free video is yet to emerge.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| I would like to see the same happening to Amazon, which also
| "sells" Films, instead of clearly noting they are just renting it
| for as long as you have an account with them.
| tyingq wrote:
| I ran into this when Frontier bought Verizon FIOS in my area. I
| suppose due to differing rights between the two companies, quite
| a few movies I had "bought" just disappeared from the "my
| purchases" page after the transition.
|
| I never did get it resolved, just ended up eating the loss and
| moved to a cable/docsis type provider. All I can do now is just
| treat movie purchases as something less than that. Long-term
| rentals with some chance that it gets revoked.
| t0mmel wrote:
| This whole streaming idea has also got me thinking about how we
| are not leaving behind a legacy. There is nothing to discover
| once you are gone. Your subscription just... ends.
|
| I'm not sure that's how I want to live. I mean, it's convenient
| having access. But now that I have had access, it's clear that I
| actually still have to shop around on the services, and so I
| might maybe just as well buy what I want instead of buying all of
| something for a period, and lose any trace of it after.
|
| I think I prefer buying.
| interlocutor2 wrote:
| Your legacy is the content you've purchased and not the things
| you've built?
| lostmsu wrote:
| Previously, yes. You'd leave your kids a library of books.
| jskrn wrote:
| Property. When you buy something it's yours and you can give it
| to who you want. Want to gift a movie ten years from now to a
| friend or heir? Good luck.
| hsivonen wrote:
| "And that they do this on regular occasions."
|
| This is news to me. I thought the main advantage of iTunes
| compared to other services was that purchases would last as long
| as the iTunes service is operational and that iTunes has outlived
| "purchase with DRM" services so far. Are there concrete examples?
| comeonseriously wrote:
| Companies try to skirt around this by saying you're not buying
| the media, you're buying a license (subject to 37 pages of
| legalese that nobody wants to read right before they watch a
| movie on movie night). I really hope companies are forced to stop
| using the word "buy" for this type of transaction.
| T3RMINATED wrote:
| Try opening a book from the Microsoft eBook store. It will fail
| because they closed down the DRM servers. The books stopped
| working. PlayStation 3 store? Wii store? Same story. You can no
| longer access your purchases.
| newbie578 wrote:
| Full support, of course Apple and other similar companies are
| using all the tools to their advantage.
|
| If I do not "own" the digital goods are paid for, then make them
| change from "Buy" to "Rent for 10 years", and let's seem them
| then explain that to elderly parents.
|
| That would be interesting to watch.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| Oh good!
|
| I've been wondering about Google's practices too:
|
| Google:
|
| * sells movies
|
| * do not allow transfer of movie ownership to a different email
| account
|
| * expires accounts after 2 years of inactivity
|
| https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1335262751992602630
|
| You could also argue that if Apple/Google actually bought the
| right from the studio on your behalf, you should be able to
| stream movies you already own, because you bought the DVDs years
| ago, for a much smaller fee.
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| Somewhat related, I'm confused every time iOS says "Processing
| Payment" when I download a free app.
| danielheath wrote:
| It does seem particularly odd, especially given the attention
| to detail they are famous for.
|
| I can't imagine someone really sat down and decided the
| messaging made sense for free apps.
| simondotau wrote:
| It's the sort of thing that gets fixed quickly when a Steve
| Jobs-type character sees it and has the clout to get it fixed
| without debate. When Jobs says it's a problem, you have to be
| pretty damn sure if you want to disagree. The problem with
| Apple today is that there's no singular vision like that.
| [deleted]
| throws23577 wrote:
| Is it possible to download free apps from the App Store without
| ever giving payment details to Apple? For example, if I don't
| set up card details during phone set up, can I still download
| free apps?
| NavinF wrote:
| Yes. The UI is obtuse, but you can create an Apple ID with
| the payment method set to "none" and then download free apps
| this_was_posted wrote:
| My suspicion is that they explicitly call this a payment for
| legal reasons.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| Maybe they just want to normalize the fact that you should
| give them money.
| anticensor wrote:
| Because it is not free, it is an unpaid lease.
| tebbers wrote:
| Yeah, how have they not fixed this?! I find this incredibly
| confusing.
| jackdrb wrote:
| Its nice of Apple to put this so succinctly:
|
| 'Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe'
| that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform
| indefinitely'
|
| The world has definitely shifted from buying individual movies,
| songs/albums, video games and owning them in a more direct sense
| of having an actual physical object i.e. a disc. There are
| definitely still some limitations to this, its still a limited
| license, but compared to purchasing DRM-filled digital access,
| we've definitely gone even further into more restrictive access.
|
| That is why I think that supporting DRM-free stores (e.g. GOG,
| Bandcamp) is important as well as buying physical media still (I
| still personally buy music CDs and Vinyl from time-to-time,
| however try to buy a game physically and all you will get is a
| plastic disc with a Steam code on it), and sometimes there is no
| way legitimate way to purchase some media, with piracy being
| essentially the only option.
|
| Unfortunately Steam has become quite ubiqitous and like most have
| fallen into the licensing game rabbithole (One the games I bought
| many years ago required installing Steam to 'function'), but with
| video games there's not much else to pick from, apart from
| whatever GOG has or some other companies crappier version of
| Steam (e.g. Origin, Epic Games Store). I'd like this to change
| but I don't think it will anytime soon.
|
| I would be fine purchasing digital copies of content knowing the
| limited-time aspect, given the pricing would be (significantly)
| cheaper. But it isn't, and that's a problem.
| onion2k wrote:
| _Well, because of the way Apple licenses films from studios, you
| never really own them._
|
| Presumably when Apple adds a film to iTunes for customers to buy
| they know how long they'll be keeping it on their servers for
| people to access it. It'll be part of the license. Unless Apple
| can _guarantee_ that the film will be available after that time
| (eg Apple negotiated a non-revokable extension that they 'll
| legally bound to take) then it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable
| that they should have to communicate the time limit to the user.
| Eg add some fine print that says "This film will be available in
| your Apple account until 2031, and may be available after that
| date" or something.
| thevagrant wrote:
| If the customer purchased/bought the movie then Apple should
| offer a way to download the movie (in the case that Apple
| removes it from their catalogue). This would ensure customer
| has the ability to keep their purchase. When I buy something
| whether ebooks, movies, music then I do not expect it to be
| removed from access at a later date unless an option for me to
| store the item is offered.
| franciscop wrote:
| I wonder how this works internationally and I wish to see
| more local lawsuits. In Spain for example, if you have access
| to the original legally (e.g. you buy it, or pay for
| Netflix), you are legally allowed to make a private copy of
| it (even if the platform doesn't want/allow you to). It is
| illegal however to hack the service to make a copy, so it
| seems that a right is in direct contradiction of a
| prohibition here and it'd be interesting to see a case like
| that in my country's court.
| onion2k wrote:
| Apple has the ability to delete media and apps from Apple
| devices. Offering a download would only work if it's not non-
| DRM (so not revokable), not tied to a specific device (you
| should be able to play your film on any device you own), and
| ideally not even tied to an account (you shouldn't lose your
| purchases if Apple close your account). _Really_ it would
| need to be in an open format that works on non-Apple devices
| too.
| biot wrote:
| From 2018:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/09/17/apple-
| res...
|
| tl;dr: once downloaded to a device you have it until you
| delete it.
|
| It's not ideal and I do wish they would retain the right to
| keep an archived copy on their servers for all customers who
| have bought it so they could re-download or stream at any
| time without having to deal with backup and restore.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| >When I buy something whether ebooks, movies, music then I do
| not expect it to be removed from access at a later date
| unless an option for me to store the item is offered.
|
| That's due to technical limitations. The copyright holders
| would like to have this possibility very much :^)
| yrgulation wrote:
| Thats why i buy movies, series, music and games in a physical
| format where possible. If you only rely on a "digital cloud" copy
| you simply dont own them, you just rent them for an undetermined
| period of time.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| So what about games on the play store, apple store, and steam.
| timwaagh wrote:
| This is long overdue. Renting just isn't the same. I know the
| companies want to only do rent to make more money, but this
| should at least be represented accurately.
| CosmicShadow wrote:
| ...and this is why we torrent.
| trwhite wrote:
| There was a similar story last year about Amazon Prime:
| https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/you-dont-own-the-movies-you-bu...
| nemo44x wrote:
| It won't be long before your account is debited when a memory of
| a movie you watched zips through your mind and the implant
| recognizes the synaptic signature of it that had been
| copyrighted.
| Crontab wrote:
| I have never liked the term 'buy' on anything with DRM. This
| isn't really an Apple problem so much as an industry problem. I
| think 'license' would be a better term.
|
| When it comes to Apple specifically, they really need to let iOS
| users know that they need to back up DRMed movies, shows, and
| books. I know some iOS-only users who are under the impression
| that they will forever be able to redownload these items. In
| reality, there is no of guarantee of that, as Apple may might not
| hold distribution rights at some point in the future.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Aren't you allowed to download offline copies as backups of any
| movie you purchase anyways? You just don't gain the right to
| distribute copies. I'd be shocked if anyone would get in trouble
| for torrenting a copy of something they purchased just for the
| purpose of having a backup, because even having a DVD copy
| doesn't mean you own anything other than the right to watch it.
| Likewise if you sold the DVD you'd have to destroy your digital
| backup.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Regardless of the legal status of torrenting a movie you
| already own, to the companies monitoring swarms, someone
| downloading and sharing a movie that they own looks no
| different than someone that doesn't own the movie.
|
| You'll still need to respond to their notice if they send it,
| and possibly defend yourself in court. Even if you succeed, it
| can be a big burden.
| tdhz77 wrote:
| Do my kids inherit my movie/tv shows that I bought or does the
| license die with me?
|
| Seems a rather safe bet Apple will be here after I die.
|
| I was fooled to buy drm media, but I don't see the harm, yet.
| throws23577 wrote:
| Here is how some Apple user found out they own nothing (2019).
| Also it seems Apple nuked even things they actually owned:
|
| https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803
| makach wrote:
| Yes. Hopefully they will do something about it. I have "bought"
| many movies on iTunes, you may argue that I am part of the
| problem, but I do because it is so very convenient.
|
| I perfectly understand the implicit meaning of "buying" and what
| I get is a non-transferable license to access the movie from my
| account.
|
| The same problem exists with video-games. It is much closer to a
| rental than ownership.
|
| I believe that all these licenses should become transferable
| instead of locked to a specific account. I could somewhat agree
| to paying a small fee to achieve this, even though I believe it
| should be free. The technology to achieve this also exist
| (blockchain), so the only thing stopping big-media from doing
| this is greed.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Vudeo games are a bit less infuriating because a 20-year old
| game may not even run, if multioplyer, it needs online servers
| and services, etc.
| underwater wrote:
| Neither the media nor tech companies would want to do that.
| Media companies get you to buy things multiple times. Tech
| companies get you locked into their platform.
| ksec wrote:
| >When you buy a movie through iTunes, you don't actually own it.
| And that's a problem.
|
| When you buy an iPhone through Apple, you don't actually own it.
| And that's a problem.
|
| You can pretty much replace iPhone and Apple with any other
| modern tech with software though. Increasingly I am having an
| uneasy relationship with these _modern tech_. I want old tech
| that just shut up and work.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Same as before on the App Store when they changed "BUY" into
| "GET"
| simondotau wrote:
| _you never really own them_
|
| Controversial take, but does "buying" explicitly mean owning? You
| never really "own" a movie you buy on blu-ray either--you own the
| _atoms_ , but not the content which is merely licensed to you as
| it is with a legal download. The difference between downloads and
| physical media is actually less characterised by ownership and
| more by perpetuity of access.
|
| The key benefit of blu-ray is that perpetual, legal access is
| limited only by your preparedness to maintain functioning
| equipment.
|
| A legally downloaded, encrypted movie file also relies on your
| preparedness to maintain functioning equipment--but that
| equipment can also betray you.
| rtsil wrote:
| The question here isn't ownership, it's possession.
|
| > "Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe'
| that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform
| indefinitely," writes [U.S. District Court Judge] Mendez. "But
| in common usage, the term 'buy' means to acquire possession
| over something. It seems plausible, at least at the motion to
| dismiss stage, that reasonable consumers would expect their
| access couldn't be revoked."
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/apple-must-face-la...
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| But maintaining functioning equipment is within your power if
| you have sufficient technical ability--maintaining a functional
| streaming site is not, regardless of your ability.
| simondotau wrote:
| If you purchase a movie from Apple, you can download it to
| your computer and play it offline so long as your copy of
| iTunes is authorised. I can't find any evidence of Apple
| placing an expiry date on authorisations.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Actually that you gor pointing out that you cannot repair apple
| eqipment because they actively prevent you from getting access
| to soare parts, making sure your machine will break, and you
| will loose your movie. They also refuse to repair old machines
| or recover user data.
|
| On the contrary, you can buy a replacement bluray player.
| Closi wrote:
| Buying a DVD is surprisingly similar: you are buying two
| things, you are buying a physical copy of something (i.e. a
| movie which can be played) and a perpetual licence to play it
| in _certain limited circumstances_.
|
| Even though you 'own' the DVD you still don't get to do what
| you want with it - you can't do public screenings in the UK for
| example without further permission.
|
| And even though you 'own' the DVD might not even be able to
| copy the data to your own laptop for personal backup, again
| depending on jurisdiction.
| hawski wrote:
| In some jurisdictions you can make a copy (how to do this is
| another matter) for your own use, i.e. for backup in case the
| original medium got unplayable. So then the disk, the box and
| maybe the purchase confirmation acts as an unlimited time
| license. At least that's how I remember it worked in Poland.
| xyst wrote:
| my strategy around buying films now is to only buy blu-ray +
| digital copy. iTunes is hands down one of the better places to
| watch digital films (free 4K upgrade, when available), but the
| behind the scenes of how they handle "ownership" is dubious at
| best. If programming has taught me anything, it's to always have
| a backup (in this case a blu-ray copy).
| jason_zig wrote:
| Wait until they hear about NFT's
| senko wrote:
| I've seen the phrase "Own it in {HD/BluRay/4K}" so many times and
| always cringe. You're just owning a limited license ( _extremely_
| limited, in the case of digital goods) to watch.
|
| The average HN user can spot the difference and say "of course
| you don't own it, and in case of streaming, you only have access
| for as long as the service is around", but that's not what the
| average consumer sees. "Buy" and "own" have very strong meanings
| and repurposing those for marketing purposes to mean "limited
| lease" is bending the truth to the point of breaking.
|
| But of course, "lease it for a limited time, to watch on a
| limited set of devices, in a geographically limited region"
| doesn't sound so valuable as "buy and own it".
| jollybean wrote:
| I don't think this is the interpretation of people's
| expectations.
|
| "Own it on BluRay" I think is very well understood by the vast
| majority of the commons and probably even those on HN. They own
| that BluRay and their 'rights' are confined but within
| expectation.
|
| I don't think people have the expectation to "Start
| Broadcasting and Putting Ads in Brad Pitt's New Film".
|
| They can however, spin up their BluRay in 30 years and watch
| the movie, which is fair.
|
| I suggest the case against Apple has a kind of merit as well,
| if people 'own it' they should be able to watch it whenever
| they want, even 10 years from now, which is not a very long
| time.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| This 'of course you dont own it' is false. Compare with a book,
| which you can own. The law makes sure you stil can't distribute
| limitless copies, even if you own it. But you can inherit a
| book, lend it out, be sure it stays around after the vendor
| would rather take it back, even swatting flies as a purposes it
| wasn't ment for.
|
| Licensing, and specifically the EULA, was popularized by
| Microsoft, to make sure you didn't get the rights on their
| software you have on a book. Would you tolerate a book with any
| of these: Disclaimer of warranty or fitness for purpose;
| Automatic revocation; Forbidding critique; Monitoring.
| Presumably you could license books instead of sell them, and
| add all anti-rights.
| timc3 wrote:
| It is not false, just books never had such a problem and so
| the license wasn't deemed necessary to put anywhere. You own
| the paper that it's printed on, but you don't own the
| pictures or the words in the order they are written down.
|
| The protection that a book has against being copied is that
| the format makes it more difficult to copy it quickly/cost-
| effectively for most people. You can do what you are saying
| with a DVD such as inherit it, though it's terrible for
| killing flies.
|
| But the fact is that you are not allowed distribute a "copy
| you made" at all of a book without agreement from the
| copyright holders/owners or to the extent the law dictates.
| Retric wrote:
| The difference is you don't need to make a copy of a book
| to use it. That's what gives EULA's their power. A copy of
| Windows on a DVD that you can't copy to a HDD is at best
| decorative rather than useful.
|
| A book on the other hand could be read by thousands of
| people in it's lifetime.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The difference is you don't need to make a copy of a
| book to use it. That's what gives EULA's their power.
|
| While often assumed to be the case, that's probably not
| true. Copyright law generally allows for incidental
| copying necessary to use a product. And, in fact, (US at
| least) law has been amended over time to explicitly allow
| certain types of copying needed for functional purposes.
| So licensing is probably not, in fact, necessary. Rather
| licensing came in at a time when it wasn't clear that
| software could be copyrighted.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| you can copy books, movies and audio that you own as long
| as it's not for re-distribution.
| ghaff wrote:
| Licensing (probably) came in with the IBM System/360 when IBM
| was starting to sell some of its software separate from its
| hardware primarily for anti-trust reasons. At the time,
| whether software could be copyrighted was still something of
| an unsettled legal matter and, therefore, IBM considered
| copyright a weak protection so they settled on licensing.
| And, of course, because of first sale doctrine a lot of
| companies subsequently latched onto the idea even after
| software came to be seen as clearly copyrightable.
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| you can lend and re-sell books, dvds, blurays, tapes, cds and
| records. if you have the physical medium, for all intents and
| purposes you own it.
|
| you can even copy it for backup purposes. even if it requires
| you to break the encryption to do so.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Another way of looking at it is that you don't own the book
| neither. You have a licence, bound to a physical copy (that
| you own though, and that is transferable). The thing that
| changed in the last 20 years, is that we are now buying
| licences that are not even bound to physical copies, and that
| are expresly nominative.
|
| I suspect that if books would have allowed this sort of
| mecanism (on a technical level) it would have been used. From
| the publisher point-of-view, it just makes sense.
|
| The generation growing up now does not see media as an asset
| that they want to own for the rest of their lives, and they
| are perfectly happy paying 10EUR / month for unlimited
| _access_ to media. Hell we 're having a hard enough time to
| get people to care about _the planet_ in 20 years, so getting
| them to care about this is going to be a hard sell.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have plenty of bookshelves in my house and plenty of
| other media too--though at least some of that is ripped and
| the discs are sitting in boxes in the attic. I also spent
| way too much time and effort earlier in my life hauling
| that stuff around (plus a ton of other paper) when I moved.
|
| I at least like to think that, if I were younger today and
| especially if I were living in a small and/or shared city
| apartment, I'd have a whole lot less "stuff" and would rely
| a whole lot more on digital content.
|
| ADDED: To your other point. Anything covered by copyright
| law has some restrictions on your rights as an "owner." So
| you can't copy a book and give those copies away. (You can
| probably digitize and otherwise make copies for personal
| use--certainly you can as a practical matter.) You can't
| give public reading performances (Most obviously in the
| case of stage plays. You don't even have mechanical
| licenses as in the case of music.)
| teh_klev wrote:
| > Licensing, and specifically the EULA, was popularized by
| Microsoft
|
| Without sounding like an old carmudgeon, but "Licensing" and
| "EULA"'s were around long before MS arrived on the block and
| were already "popularized" within the IT business. MS, Apple
| etc just picked up where the old minicomputer and mainframe
| hardware and software vendors left off.
| nokya wrote:
| Fully agree with you.
|
| I also sense there is an increasing acceptance by consumers,
| that it is normal to not be allowed anymore to own a legal copy
| of a digital work (e.g. picture, movie, music, software, etc.)
| for personal use. Most of these companies now treat their
| consumers defensively and as potential copyright infringers who
| will exploit the first occasion to get rich.
|
| I don't accept that.
|
| So I try to organize my digital consumption on an assumption
| that I will neither have internet access nor a "subscriber
| account" at time of consuming (e.g. software, video game,
| e-book, movie, etc.).
|
| Products like "Spotify", "Netflix" or "Steam", and those
| "modern" video game consoles that treat you like a cheater if
| you try to log off and refuse to be constantly transmitting
| telemetry about you don't have a place in my wallet. I'd prefer
|
| Sadly, I know I am losing the battle, all my friends gladly pay
| their monthly fees to not own anything anymore. I guess it's
| just a question of when I will get tired.
|
| EDIT: forgot to mention, the thing I don't mind paying for a
| "limited access" is going to the cinema/theater and newspapers.
| Those two activities get quite a lot of attention from my
| wallet :)
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Movies are a mixed bag. But once you own the disk - you, for
| all intents and purposes, own the movie.
|
| I can resell the disc. I can rip and backup the disc and thus
| have endless copies for myself, preventing me from having to
| re-purchase that disc. (ripping DVD is much easier than Bluray,
| I'll admit).
|
| IMHO, if i can control a piece of property (or a copy of it)
| for an indefinite amount of time, if i can copy/backup, watch
| it as i please, when i please, how i please, on what i please -
| no i don't "own" the movie per se, but the license granted to
| me by that physical purchase means the contents of that
| purchase are mine to do with what i feel like, short of showing
| it to 100 people in a theater or offering it up on a pirate
| network.
|
| As a side note: I "own" my media. I have 500+ books, 400+ vinyl
| records, 1000+ CDs, hundreds of movies on DVD and bluray (80%
| ripped to a dual Plex/Jellyfin media server.)
|
| Things don't "disappear" from Spotify for me. Amazon can't take
| my copy of 1984 off my Kindle. Microsoft can't shut off my
| access to e-books. Apple can't take back the movies I've
| purchased.
|
| The reality is, i - the consumer - have control.
|
| The future everyone is contributing to, IMHO sounds like the
| Great Reset conspiracy: "you'll own nothing and be happy".
| Happy paying rent in pepertuity to megacorps for access to
| things youd have, for cheaper, if you owned it outright.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| Do you prefer Jellyfin over Emby? I'm evaluating which to set
| up right now.
| curt15 wrote:
| I always make a point to refer to subscription-based software
| like Adobe CC as software rentals, not purchases.
| [deleted]
| paulcarroty wrote:
| Apple plays with "owning" and "leasing" here. Sure "owning"
| sells better.
| onion2k wrote:
| _I 've seen the phrase "Own it in {HD/BluRay/4K}" so many times
| and always cringe. You're just owning a limited license
| (extremely limited, in the case of digital goods) to watch._
|
| That's technically correct, but revoking the license for a
| specific DVD is effectively impossible. If you have the plastic
| disc you will be able to play it until the disc wears out. The
| same should be true for digital purchases, or the limitations
| should be made clearer.
| grishka wrote:
| Even if, and it's a big if, whatever online store you
| "bought" your digital content from is around forever and
| never arbitrarily bans your account with no way to appeal,
| you still get less value out of your purchase. You could lend
| a physical medium to a friend or resell it. Can't do any of
| that with a digital purchase. Yet, somehow, digital purchases
| still often cost as much as the real thing.
| senko wrote:
| DVD regions limit where you can watch something. Performance
| rights limit to who you can show it. Copyright limits how you
| can distribute it. These kinds of things were happening
| before and are something we're accustomed to, but I agree DRM
| and the possibility to rescind access makes it much worse.
|
| That's why I'm a happy streaming subscriber. No lies there.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| This is nothing at all like DVD region coding except in the
| intent of the perpetrators.
|
| Region coding does not prevent me from buying and playing a
| disc from any region, in any region.
|
| It's just a technical hurdle which works well enough for
| the publishers business model, in that the inconvenience
| has the desired effect on 99.9% of consumers.
|
| But once I own the disc, I own the disc. Same for the
| player.
|
| It's entirely and fundamentally different from anything
| delivered only as a service or worse as services
| masquerading as products, like software and devices that
| don't actually function without a service to allow it.
|
| And the encryption is so pointless I forgot it even existed
| until just now.
| retSava wrote:
| What's it like for blu-ray? I seem to recall that there's a
| master key or the like involved, which may require updating
| the br-player to successfully decode new discs if they change
| the key later on (which I also seem to recall...). Not
| FUDing, just not recalling completely, so can be completely
| off..
| 4AoZqrH2fsk5UB wrote:
| I've started torrenting again (did it a lot in the early 00s, but
| stopped like most others as streaming showed up in a big way).
| Honestly, once set up the experience is lovely.
|
| - The catalog is enormous, you can almost always find what you
| want.
|
| - There is robust software that can pull down the latest episode
| of the tv shows you want.
|
| - There is similar software that can pull down movies based on
| public lists (e.g. IMDB top 100), so discovery is pretty great.
|
| - All the above can be done on public trackers. Private trackers
| are even better.
|
| - Many have a community of people who are into the content, and
| curate their own lists.
|
| - There is software for a home media server so you can flip
| through all your content. Its also just one interface... no
| flipping through hulu/netflix/amazon/apple/google.
|
| - That same home media server software can host all videos, so
| downloads from youtube, family videos, etc... all in one place as
| you see fit.
|
| - I get to know that know one out there knows what I'm watching
| or when I'm watching it.
|
| - Backup is easy, with offsite services running ~$0.005/gb/month,
| so pennies per movie per month. This way I know I'll always have
| it regardless of what happens with streaming services.
|
| Getting it up and running takes some customization but it is
| _really_ great. I would gladly pay for such a service, even the
| typical ~$20/movie price.
| dhruvrrp wrote:
| It's not just Apple, almost all online services charge an extra
| to buy movies/tv shows compared to renting, even when it's
| impossible to get that movie out of the online service.
|
| So now there is a whole variety of movies/shows you just can't
| buy ( unless they have a physical release). This is especially
| problematic for older shows, which don't have physical copies at
| all. For example, I've recently been trying to purchase Yes
| Minister (a BBC show from the 80s) and it's only available in
| locked down online streaming places like Youtube and Apple TV
| AyrtonB wrote:
| You can get a physical copy here -
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Yes-Minister-Prime-DVD/dp/...
| rchaud wrote:
| > "Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe'
| that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform
| indefinitely,"
|
| Weasel-worded legal arguments like this is why I don't use Apple
| Music, Spotify, Youtube Premium or anything where the final
| product is not a DRM-free file sitting on my hard drive.
|
| As much as Blockbuster is considered a dinosaur, you could buy
| and sell used games and movies there. If you bought something, it
| was yours. There was no retroactive disappearance because
| Blockbuster no longer had the rights for that movie or TV show.
| crazygringo wrote:
| But the products you're listing are streaming services. You
| never buy anything, you subscribe per month.
|
| So not really sure why you're conflating this story with those?
| Or why you think files for a _subscription_ service shouldn 't
| be DRM'ed? I mean, if you keep the files after your
| subscription ends, that's obviously not a subscription anymore.
| ianbicking wrote:
| Does this criticism apply to pay-for-access services like
| Spotify? Spotify is what it is, and has the content it has, and
| you aren't paying for any future content or access, only for
| what's there this moment. This seems pretty transparent.
| judge2020 wrote:
| If it helps, YouTube doesn't do DRM on music and you can use
| YouTube-dl to download as many songs as you'd like for personal
| use.
| beefield wrote:
| There should be some consumer protection regulation around using
| words buy, sell, purchase etc. Can you sell what you bought to
| someone else? If not, you did not buy it. Do yo have root on your
| device and all it's components? If not, you did not buy it. And
| so forth. That might make people a bit more aware on the stuff
| they think buying.
| jrm4 wrote:
| You don't own it unless you can hold it in your hand and play it
| on demand. You don't own it unless you can hold it in your hand
| and play it on demand. You don't own it unless you can hold it in
| your hand and play it on demand.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| It's weird to realize that there's a huge difference in how
| people who read HN understood "digital buying" and how the rest
| of the world did.
|
| I have bought many movies and TV shows from the iTunes store. I
| did so knowing that it was not a true purchase in the sense of
| buying a DVD, or a videotape, or a book, or even in the sense of
| buying music from the iTunes store (which has been DRM-free since
| 2009). But I did it anyway, because the transaction still offered
| a net positive value for me:
|
| - Very long term (but clearly not perpetual) rights to watch the
| thing; - Very high convenience (easily available on my Apple
| devices without dealing with files or sync); - Very much
| easier/simpler than resorting to, shall we say, nontraditional
| means of media procurement.
|
| But, again, we knew what was happening. Apple could turn heel and
| invalidate these purchases on their whim, or the whim of the
| rightsholder. I still made the deal, and still feel fine about
| it, because I knew that going in. Normal humans tend not to
| understand this.
|
| (We also have a very minimal cable package. We did the math and
| realized that it was cheaper to, say, buy season passes of the
| mid-tier cable shows we wanted to see than it was to pay for the
| channels in question. If you watch a LOT of those shows, this
| math doesn't work, but for us and things like Mad Men, it
| definitely did. Our cable bill is $50 a month lower than it would
| be if we had those channels, so we could absolutely justify
| "buying" the show on iTunes -- even if we had no plans to watch
| it more than once.)
| sterlinm wrote:
| This was the first thing I ever felt compelled to write to the
| government about. I'm sure Chris Christie, then Governor of New
| Jersey, recalls my strongly worded letter objecting to Amazon
| saying you were "buying" Kindle books.
| xbar wrote:
| I don't own them?
| david-cako wrote:
| There's a lot of lines you can draw like this. Do you own your
| money, or do you own an obligation made by the fed to all
| participants in the US economy? Okay, so maybe the US dollar is
| so pervasive that it's "inert" for all intents and purposes as a
| store of wealth.
|
| The less tangible a good is, the more difficult it is to tell who
| owns it. People do like streaming services, but Apple has to keep
| the service running, right? There is a non-zero cost to Apple
| continuing to service relationships with studios and with
| customers, and they can't really say "this thing in your Apple
| account will, necessarily, live forever". I think Apple is the
| most likely company to make good on this sort of promise; in
| spite of the way they deprecate APIs (which I actually
| appreciate), they have an immaculate track record of supporting
| their services and devices.
|
| If you buy a DRM-free movie or rip a physical copy, you're
| getting closer to owning the bits and bytes themselves, but
| still, really, you own the right to watch the movie in a non-
| commercial setting, and you now have to figure out how to make it
| available on your devices.
|
| How long am I obligated to continue supporting software I've "let
| go" to the folks that contracted me? When will my car stop
| receiving kernel updates? To me, this is a more difficult issue
| than whether you have to re-purchase (or pirate) games and movies
| that you already bought.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Awesome. The copyright industry actively misleads customers with
| these words. People think they're buying something but the truth
| is they own absolutely nothing and have effectively no rights.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| I physically own about 1000 commercial disks (stored in Logic
| cases) I'll never part with. Ripped to HD, instantly available,
| no network needed.
|
| Result is quite different from a 'license' to 'stream' since
| 1984. Solar flare, no worries. House fire, HD backup. Big Tech
| dies, network gone, meh. Got _my_ tunes.
| baybal2 wrote:
| In other news:
|
| Man Sues Apple For Terminating Apple ID With $24K Worth of
| Content
|
| http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/4QFg_7qSgss/...
| ShinTakuya wrote:
| As he should. I can understand restricting an account if he was
| doing something dodgy with it, but you shouldn't lose access to
| purchased content, especially if accessing the content does no
| harm to others (e.g. banning from online games can also make
| sense situationally).
| ycombigator wrote:
| Shady AF.
| jurassic wrote:
| After discovering a favorite album of mine got dropped from the
| Spotify catalog, I feel a strong impulse to return to physical
| media. But first I have to decide on which audio components to
| get. Thinking back, I think I had a much stronger emotional
| response to albums I specifically chose and invested in than the
| ones the algorithm chose and automatically played for me. Lately
| with streaming I listen more and enjoy it less.
| actionowl wrote:
| This is true for iTunes and Google Play too, I've had albums
| disappear from my Library with no explanation (I suspect some
| licensing change or label shuffle behind the scenes). I've
| totally abandoned streaming services since I've been bitten twice
| by this.
|
| Bandcamp handles this exceptionally well, you can download
| anything you buy (even as Flac!) and for anything else, it's back
| to buying/checking-out CDs and ripping them old-school style.
| brainzap wrote:
| "How many people here bought digital media? You are all wrong,
| none of you have, you only rented it. If you lose the account it
| is all gone" Rob Pike, unspin
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| What about NFTs?
| dinondiman wrote:
| I backup all my iTunes movies on a drive to take with me so I can
| watch movies with no internet connection. All work fine. What am
| I missing?
| hyperman1 wrote:
| This seams the core of Apple's defence: Apple
| contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that
| purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform
| indefinitely
|
| which is a flagrant difference between ownership of physical
| items and non-cloud items vs cloud items.
|
| This strikes at the root of our society's definition of
| ownership. Clarification should not depend on Apple, or even a
| court. This should be enshrined by an explicit law. Using the
| word 'license' or 'rent' instead of 'buy' for something you can't
| own seems the minimum a consumer should demand.
| irrational wrote:
| Has Apple been attending the Fox News School of
| Rationalization? No reasonable viewer would believe that Tucker
| Carlson is News.
| gwd wrote:
| My understanding WRT buying a movie on iTunes was:
|
| 1. If you download the movie, _you will always have the ability
| to play the movie you downloaded_.
|
| 2. As long as Apple has the rights to distribute the movie, you
| will be able to re-download it again
|
| 3. If Apple loses the rights, _and you don 't have your own
| backed up copy_, it's lost.
|
| It's the same for Audible books; which is why I always d/l and
| backup any movie or book I buy electronically.
|
| Buying a physical DVD is _only_ #1. If you buy a physical DVD
| at Walmart or whatever, and then lose it, you can 't go back to
| Walmart and ask for a second DVD; that's a perk of buying an
| electronic copy.
|
| Compare this to buying a piece of software off a website for
| $30. You download the installer, install it, and use it. Six
| months later, the company goes out of business and the website
| does down. You can still use the software as long as you still
| have the installed version and/or the installer; but if you
| lose the installer, you lose access.
|
| I guess the difference is that Apple is purposely blurring the
| line between "storing stuff in the cloud" and "redownloading"
| movies. What should really happen is that three months before
| Apple loses the distribution rights, they should send an email
| to everyone who's bought the move, telling them to either 1)
| Download it to their own local hard drive 2) Buy an iCloud
| subscription and click this button, and Apple will
| automatically "download" it from iTunes to your iCloud folder
| on your behalf. (EDIT: Which due to [1], will probably require
| actually shipping bits over some internal network for each
| individual user.)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.c
| o....
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Streaming services are kind enough to notify when movies are
| leaving their platforms...
| ctdonath wrote:
| Good summary. Bought, you're able to download and keep a
| copy. Only issue then is DRM and knowing where that file is
| (and being able to relocate it).
| kalleboo wrote:
| Luckily this has been true for Apple so far. But there is
| still the chance in the future that they stop supporting the
| DRM (either voluntarily or involuntarily).
|
| Just look what happened to Microsoft's ironically named
| "PlaysForSure" DRM. They shut down the DRM servers in 2008
| and made everyone's "purchased" content unplayable.
|
| edit: I double-checked how Apple FairPlay DRM works to make
| sure I wasn't mistaken. But no, to play FairPlay DRMed
| content, you need to log in with iTunes which downloads your
| user decryption key. So if you got banned from Apple's
| services (credit card chargebacks, etc) then you can no
| longer log in to play your content, even if you have the
| media files. So you are only licensing it for as long as you
| agree to the terms of service, not buying it.
| gwd wrote:
| Right, so _THIS_ aspect I totally agree with: If someone
| says "Buy", it must be possible for you to hand down a
| copy of that to play to your great-great-grandkids. That
| means it can't be turned off or lost because your account
| is cancelled; and shutting down DRM servers should require
| unlocking all DRM'd content first. Otherwise "Buy" really
| was a lie.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The best of both worlds is movies that come with a digital
| code (usually moviesanywhere.com codes now) so you have both
| the physical media and the ability to enjoy the digital title
| on a digital library.
| jakemauer wrote:
| This is true, but movies purchased on iTunes can only be
| downloaded at 720p or 1080p. To play back in 4k/HDR it must
| be streamed. It sucks because I don't own a 4K blu-ray player
| but wanted a few movies to try out my OLED and bought some
| movies on iTunes. They look great, and comparisons online put
| them within close distance to 4k blu-rays in quality, but I
| can never "own" them in full resolution.
| schmorptron wrote:
| But it's the exact opposite in reality, no? Any reasonable
| consumer would believe' that _purchased_ content would remain
| accessible to them indefinitely.
|
| On Steam, even content who's publisher has been banned off of
| the platform entirely is still accessible to customers who
| bought it before, and can be redownloaded at any time.
| wiredfool wrote:
| So is the core of this issue that if I "buy" a movie on iTunes
| (say Kenneth Braunah's Henry V), and they lose the right to
| distribute it (as they did within the last year), I can no
| longer watch the movie?
| lifeformed wrote:
| And Apple is even calling you "unreasonable" for even
| believing that you could watch it in that situation.
| galad87 wrote:
| If you did not download a copy on your disk, yes you won't be
| able to download and watch it again.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| It is plausible for me to buy Braking Bad today, and for
| them to loose licence tomorrow. The series is so long it
| takes multiple days to watch.
|
| What is the legal position in this case?
| afandian wrote:
| More to the point, how much of a refund do you get if it's
| withdrawn? If Apple is sharing the licensing risk with you,
| the goods should come at a pretty steep discount.
| timbre1234 wrote:
| Wow, I guess I'm not a reasonable person then - because that's
| absolutely what I believed when I hit "purchase".
| watwut wrote:
| Maybe I am unreasonable, but that is exactly what I expect when
| I purchase content.
| zepto wrote:
| I don't think Apple should pay a penalty - because buying
| 'licenses' is a commonplace activity online, and is essentially
| always what you are buying when you buy a digital item.
|
| However I agree with you. We should have a different word.
| Maybe even 'license' instead of buy.
| afandian wrote:
| It shouldn't only come down to "on the iTunes platform". What
| about the user's ability to maintain access?
|
| I have a similar situation with Google. I've had a Google Apps
| for buisness account for a few years so I can can use email on
| my personal domain. I made the mistake of 'purchasing' some
| media on that account.
|
| I've since switched my mail over to fastmail but can't quite
| bring myself to close the Google account because I paid for
| every episode of the American The Office and might want to
| watch it again ... one day.
|
| Of course Google's customer service worse than useless. Can't
| transfer the 'purchases' to a free google account. Can't
| refund. Do I cut my losses or keep paying for the account
| subscription?
|
| The answer is never buy anything from Google (or equivalent,
| such as Apple) but that's not a very mainstream solution.
| remir wrote:
| Not that I want to encourage piracy, but at this point, if
| you already paid for them, why not torrent the episodes so
| you keep a copy?
| anoncake wrote:
| Pirate it. That's easily more ethical than paying Google for
| nothing.
| soylentcola wrote:
| Yeah...technical legalities aside, I have no moral qualms
| with downloading an unencumbered digital copy of something
| I already paid for.
|
| I guess you could argue that the cost I paid may have been
| lower due to the limited nature of the format/platform, but
| eh...I'm already trying not to be a total mooch so it'll
| do.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Aside from the hassle involved, any reason you couldn't try
| to get a class-action lawsuit started?
| alpaca128 wrote:
| > but that's not a very mainstream solution
|
| Sometimes you gotta get off the train that speeds towards a
| cliff, even if it means going by foot for a while.
| soneil wrote:
| While I personally agree, ownership should be explicit - their
| defence isn't as silly as it looks. "reasonable belief" is an
| actual mechanism in english law (the system, not the nation),
| and the learned behaviours of "buy it on Kindle", "buy it on
| Steam", etc, do support it.
|
| It's essentially the "times have changed" argument; that the
| common nomenclature for "purchase a non-exclusive license with
| no fixed term" is "buy a copy", and "purchase a non-exclusive
| licence with a fixed term" is "rent a copy". And if that is
| true for the vast majority of consumers, the argument does hold
| weight.
| josephcsible wrote:
| When you rent something, you're supposed to be told very
| clearly up front when your last day when the thing is.
| fastball wrote:
| Isn't that the distinction though? A rental has a clear end
| date, enforced by Apple. A _purchase_ does not, it can
| merely disappear from Apple 's catalogue at some point, due
| to licensing issues. Apple has no idea how long that thing
| will be around, so they can't really quote a date your
| "purchase" ends.
| amelius wrote:
| Sadly, the vast majority of consumers totally expects to be
| ripped off in one way or another. So, yes indeed.
| ece wrote:
| > Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe'
| that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform
| indefinitely
|
| By this definition, any online locked down device (not just the
| software on it) can only be licensed or rented. Why should any
| online platform be treated differently from iTunes?
| fighterpilot wrote:
| > Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe'
| that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform
| indefinitely
|
| Pretty sure that many people would be led to believe that.
| moreira wrote:
| Heck, I believed it. That, for me, was the main pull of
| buying on iTunes vs. streaming, because (not being in the US)
| I've been burned one too many times by streaming services
| pulling content because their license ran out.
|
| If iTunes might pull content I purchased at any time, that
| does make me rethink the whole thing.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I am. Apple needs to prove i m unreasonable
| jfoster wrote:
| Perhaps Apple should begin explicitly telling consumers for
| how long they think it's reasonable to expect the content to
| be there.
| c3534l wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people believe that now
| and as near as possible to everyone believed that when the
| concept was fairly new and novel.
| danpalmer wrote:
| As there's no physical degradation of a storage medium
| associated with a hosted service, I'd expect a service to be
| able to remain longer that a physical copy I purchase.
|
| If that doesn't happen that's down to the business interests
| of the seller and those are not something consumers typically
| have to account for when buying media.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| This has happened to me with iTunes, and Apple's contention in
| the suit has been expressed to me by Apple support.
|
| A few months ago, I was browsing my iTunes cloud library and
| noticed that an album I had purchased years prior was missing a
| few songs. I contacted support, and the support agent explained
| to me that the rights holder had removed the songs from the
| store, and thus they were now removed from my library.
| (Inexplicably, the entire album is still available on iTunes,
| but apparently the version I bought was removed.)
|
| The rep also helpfully recommended that I back up my downloads
| in the future. While I did in fact have all the songs
| downloaded on my Mac, I'm not sure what the official solution
| would be for someone whose primary device is an iPad or an
| iPhone.
| geoelectric wrote:
| I wonder if Match would have caused it to silently re-upload
| your missing files then supply them back.
|
| It's the (supposed, it's very confusing) difference between
| Match as a standalone service and the Apple Music streaming
| service when it comes to your own library--Match will serve
| back your own music files to you if not already on the
| service. OTOH, I have no idea what it does if it _thinks_ it
| matched on the service when first scanned, but the track isn
| 't there anymore.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Imagine a bank marketing itself as "No reasonable consumer
| would believe that their deposits will remain in the bank
| indefinitely"
|
| This is a really awe-inspiring, a complete rejection of the
| concept of ownership
| nuka_coffee wrote:
| This is already reality. Paypal shuts down inactive accounts.
| (And guess what they do with the positive balance.)
| Kye wrote:
| PayPal isn't a bank. They don't have the same obligations
| or protection. When a bank closes your account, they mail
| you a check with the balance, and that balance is insured
| up to $250,000. I don't know how it works in other
| countries, but they probably have something like the FDIC.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| It's a bank in the EU
| Kye wrote:
| Do they have the same reputation in the EU?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| well i havent had problems with them even if i held large
| amounts there, but my business with them was rather
| straightforward. Their KYC was reasonable
| BruiseLee wrote:
| Actually that is correct in many countries (including US).
| After a period of inactivity (typically 3-5 years) the bank
| is required to turn over the money from inactive accounts to
| the state. This process is called escheatment. I'm not
| joking.
| barbacoa wrote:
| I had 19C/ in a bank account I that sat dormant for 4 year.
| Still there when I logged in and started using the account
| again.
| thamer wrote:
| Let's hope they don't close your account.
|
| In Futurama's "A Fishful of Dollars"[1] Fry discovers
| that the $0.93 he had in his account when he was
| cryogenically frozen in the year 2,000 had grown at 2.25%
| a year to almost $4.3 billion when he was reawakened
| 1,000 years later.
|
| Yes, the match checks out[2]: 0.93 * (1.0225 ^ 1000) [?]
| 4,283,508,449.71
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fishful_of_Dollars
|
| [2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.93+*+%281.022
| 5+%5E+1...
| rafale wrote:
| It's not an inactive account if it is being logged in.
| barbacoa wrote:
| I didn't log in for 4 years.
| datavirtue wrote:
| That is a protection. The government holds the money and
| you can apply for it anytime. As can your relatives. Have
| you never received unclaimed funds you didn't know were due
| to you?
| irrational wrote:
| > Have you never received unclaimed funds you didn't know
| were due to you?
|
| No... have you?
| gingericha wrote:
| Federal unclaimed property site:
| https://www.usa.gov/unclaimed-money
|
| State unclaimed property index (find your state site at
| the top): https://unclaimed.org/search/#
| rurp wrote:
| Yes, I have. My state has a website where you can search
| for and claim your funds back. It's quite easy.
| cabaalis wrote:
| Happens all the time. They even used to publish lists of
| unclaimed funds in the paper. It's occurred to me twice
| in my lifetime.
| mygoodaccount wrote:
| You've implied it's permanent transfer of ownership to the
| state. It's not.
|
| From wikipedia: "Escheats are performed on a revocable
| basis. Thus, if property has escheated to a State but the
| original owner subsequently is found, escheatment is
| revoked and ownership of the property reverts to that
| original owner."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escheat#United_States
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Only on HN would you need to specify "active account" for
| such a clear cut analogy. Two replies and both are picking
| that nit.
|
| Apple is admitting regardless of activity, studios can
| revoke their license to content, removing content from your
| _active_ account
| elliekelly wrote:
| Threads with analogies are one of my favorite HN
| idiosyncrasies because they're almost _guaranteed_ to be
| followed up with something along the lines of "a better
| analogy would be $materiallySimilarAnalogy" or "that's
| not a good analogy because $immaterialDetail". Just an
| endearing quirk of HN users to have a tendency to be
| overly-precise, I think.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| No reasonable lender would believe that I am paying that loan
| back.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I'm just back to pirating shamelessly. Emby, Radarr, nzbget.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I think the future is Popcorn Time + a patron-like model
| fastball wrote:
| Not sure tequila will really help this situation...
| sfgweilr4f wrote:
| The old discussions around digital assets resurface again.
|
| My perspective is really simple: If I buy something then its
| mine. If I lease something then its temporary. Buying a lease is
| actually just leasing.
|
| Digital assets are more often just fancy lease agreements. At
| best you get to keep access to what you paid for when you stop
| paying. At worst its literally just a lease. The real kicker is
| you often can't simply format shift without consequences, because
| it was just a lease only on that platform and the terms are: Pay
| for access; Stop paying and you're out. Want it somewhere else?
| No can do.
|
| I wonder if I could bequeath my Apple Music collection? Probably
| not. That's the big reveal right there. Its not actually ever
| yours. Never was.
|
| Apple Music is somewhat better than a long term lease. Last time
| I looked you could write the MP3s to a CD. Not sure if that's
| still true.
|
| Contrast this with Spotify: pure subscription. Good luck looking
| for a "Write to CD" option. That's completely out of scope. And
| no one is surprised. At least its clearly spelt out. But still a
| lease. You're only buying access.
| the_other wrote:
| I have come to think of Spotify only as a
| discovery/introduction service. It finds me music I like, and I
| go buy physical media or MP3 from shops that give me downloads
| in my browser (Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat...).
|
| I use it the way I used to use radio and record shops. I'm in
| my 40s so I grew up at a time where this was common. Record
| shops were on the high streets in most towns in the UK through
| the 80s and 90s. In my teens I started to dig deeper, into
| niche, side street record shops for off-mainstream music. These
| days, it seems all record shops are on side streets.
| DanBC wrote:
| > Last time I looked you could write the MP3s to a CD.
|
| Format shifting isn't always legal.
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-q...
| andrewzah wrote:
| Digital stores need to update their terminology to reflect that
| you don't actually -own- what you buy. So many people are
| confused by this as it's counterintuitive.
|
| And this is why piracy is, and will, always continue. I legally
| buy movies and then have to deal with DRM and other nasty,
| annoying things that only affect paying customers! People who
| pirate have no such limitations to deal with.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| As a content creator, I use DRM free leanpub.com to produce books
| under a Creatuve Commons license. I also give away the same books
| for free on my web site. To be clear, the vast majority of my
| income is being paid for work, so it is easy to be a little
| generous. I am not a corporation who has to maximize profit to
| shareholders.
|
| As a consumer of content, I like purchasing books that are
| (sometimes watermarked) PDFs or ePub. When that is not possible,
| I do buy DRM books, but split my purchases between Apple, Amazon,
| and Google.
|
| My wife and I have no network TV but we are happy to support
| content creation by paying subscriptions to Netflix, HBO, Prime,
| and Hulu. I could care less about owning "forever copies" of
| entertainment. I do want to support the industry financially.
|
| For music, streaming services like YouTube Music and Apple Music
| are great for discovery, but when I find a song that I really
| love, I don't mind spending $1 per song if I can get it DRM free
| on Amazon.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The terminology probably should be clarified so laypeople do not
| misunderstand. My own policy is I don't buy anything digitally, I
| only rent it or subscribe to the service for as long as I want
| it. That way I won't be sad when I lose access to 'purchased'
| content because I never had any expectation of indefinite access
| to it.
| Mikho wrote:
| It's not so much about nature of DRM streaming vs having a movie
| on your disk. The whole debate is really about Apple misleading
| users into overpaying for a mere rent of a movie. When you buy
| something and have a complete ownershio you treat this expense
| differently than renting expense. You dont pay full price of a
| thing just to rent it.
| turtleofdeath wrote:
| What's not misleading about offering a "Buy" option and a
| lower-priced "Rent" option?
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| Buying a DVD is also only buying a limited license (you can't,
| for example, legally make copies of that DVD or use it for public
| performances).
|
| Buying a blu-ray is even more of a gray area with the key schemes
| being fundamentally more complex and internet-updatable. It's
| possible the blu-ray you bought and watched last year may not
| work on your player anymore.
|
| I agree that it's wrong to say you're "buying" movies from
| iTunes/et al, but, I'm not sure what the correct term is. Renting
| is wrong as it implies a definite intentional time-limited
| period, license seems wrong as it's too legal/contractual. What's
| the better word?
| elliekelly wrote:
| I could be wrong but I think you _can_ legally make copies of a
| DVD you own so long as it's only for personal use and not for
| distribution.
| baliex wrote:
| This law has a tendency to flip-flop every now and again, and
| is per-jurisdiction in any case
| bsimpson wrote:
| The double-facedness pisses me off:
|
| When it's digital, you're only buying the right to watch
| something, not to own your copy.
|
| When it's physical, you're only buying your copy, not the right
| to watch it indefinitely.
|
| The odds are always slanted to favor Hollywood: they get to make
| you pay to watch the same title every time the viewing technology
| changes (VHS -> DVD -> digital), but also use the specter of
| piracy to curtail your rights with what you did buy.
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