[HN Gopher] Amazon deleted my Final Space digital purchases of s...
___________________________________________________________________
Amazon deleted my Final Space digital purchases of season 1 and 2
Author : tosh
Score : 130 points
Date : 2022-09-28 17:49 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| anvic wrote:
| You mean they revoked the licence that you purchased from them.
| eranation wrote:
| Why do people share screenshots of tweets instead of linking to a
| tweet, on twitter? I believe the tweet, but I can't find the
| original, was it deleted?
| https://twitter.com/TedVillavicenc/with_replies
|
| EDIT: found it!
| https://twitter.com/TedVillavicenc/status/157383312338041241...
| zac23or wrote:
| On the website the button does not say "rent", but "buy".
|
| That's theft. The theft pure and simple, ancient, which has been
| around forever. Nothing new.
|
| If you SOLD something and somehow REMOVE it or the ability to use
| it, it's theft. Whether it's done using modern technology
| (software) or old technology (crowbar) is not important.
|
| The TOS do not override the law.
|
| Amazon and others use the technology to commit very old crimes.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The button should read:
|
| Buy this revokable (at any time) license to view this content
| brnt wrote:
| How about we don't let businesses redefine words to fit their
| business needs. "buy" already had a perfectly clear meaning,
| and whatever Amazon Prime peddles, you're not "buying"
| anything.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It has been this way since recorded media has been made
| available. From the 45 your parents (grand-parents?)
| bought, the cassettes--VHS or audio--your parents bought
| (you bought?) to the CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, and now digital
| copies.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Legally it doesn't work that way.
|
| Although I think that the laws should be strengthened so that
| it does work that way.
|
| Amazon needs to be forced to give you a permanent license any
| time you "buy" a digital right. Those bits need to really be
| permanent. The structure of Amazon's contract with the producer
| needs to be changed so it is clear that the consumers rights to
| those copies are non-revokable. And that law needs to be made
| retroactive to all past contracts. The termination of any
| contract with Amazon should only lead to Amazon no longer being
| able to sell new digital copies.
| zac23or wrote:
| So Amazon needs to change the button to "rent".
|
| Without the change, it is at the very least false
| advertising.
|
| In the end, big companies can distort the words and etc, But
| theft is theft, it is very clear that it is theft.
| lamontcg wrote:
| If you read the fine print you'll find that what you're
| buying is a license that can be revoked, so its currently
| perfectly legal. The law doesn't consider it theft. You'll
| have to get the laws changed so that contracts like that
| aren't legal.
| paxys wrote:
| All these companies figured out how to get around the legal
| issues of this a long time ago. They aren't selling you the
| movie/song/game/book, they are selling you a license to it. And
| they can revoke the license whenever they want.
| jbombadil wrote:
| Agree!. I'd love to live in a world where if the button I click
| reads "buy" then by law I actually own that: * It can't be
| taken away [1]. * I can lend it to anyone I want [2]. * I can
| sell it to whomever I want, for whatever price I want.
|
| If a company doesn't want to do this, then the button and all
| UI pieces MUST say "rent". Not just some minor line in the
| EULA.
|
| [1] Maybe the service where I downloaded it wants to go down?
| Great, then let me download it in a non-DRMed format to use
| forever. [2] And not having available to use myself during that
| time. Sure.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I understand and agree with what you're getting at, but
| having both [1] and [2] would be impossible. Without DRM,
| there's no way you could "lend" a digital copy to someone and
| remove your ability to use it.
| altruios wrote:
| when in doubt, doubt DRM's necessity.
| wmf wrote:
| They're already forcing DRM on us, so why not add those
| features to the DRM?
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Zigurd wrote:
| That you are prevented from easily defeating any "copy
| protection" on content means the device one which you download
| and view that content is not fully controlled by you. Content
| publishers can reach into systems owned by you and relied on by
| you for financial transactions and health care information and
| mess around with data on your system. This is a designed-in
| security defect.
|
| This does not meet the plain English meaning of "equal protection
| under law." Your property, your data, access to your money, your
| health records, etc. is not controlled by you in what should be a
| symmetrical and equal way.
|
| In some contexts, like game consoles that are heavily subsidized
| by content revenue, content protection is a fair element of that
| deal. But not on systems you paid full price to own outright.
| Acts like deleting purchases should be treated as unauthorized
| access, and punished accordingly, no matter the click-through
| "agreement."
| programmer_dude wrote:
| Isn't Final Space available on Netflix?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| How is that relevant?
| programmer_dude wrote:
| Just curious why would anyone want to buy it.
| OriginalPenguin wrote:
| He paid $5 a season. Assuming he doesn't want to watch
| anything else on Netflix, it's better to just buy it
| outright.
| kalupa wrote:
| That's probably exactly why it's no longer available on amazon.
| I wouldn't be surprised if the OP's content was pulled because
| amazon lost access to the license.
| ubertaco wrote:
| For now, but the network that owns it notified the creator that
| they have plans to let Netflix's license expire, and then not
| license it elsewhere:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33012167
| danjoredd wrote:
| This is why I always either buy my shows/movies physically, or I
| pirate them. Ever since Amazon pulled 1984 from their shelves due
| to a copyright issue(they later put it back) I have avoided
| buying digital items ESPECIALLY from Amazon. Even games I try to
| not buy digitally anymore unless its from a DRM-free source like
| GOG or something.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I still buy my favorite movies on Blu-Ray, but to get the
| convenience of streaming I convert them myself to a digital
| format and add them to my Plex server, so I can watch them from
| anywhere I want.
|
| I'm not going to feel bad about it, whoever own the rights got
| paid, and it's limited for my own personal use.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| End users should also keep in mind that artists and studios
| will frequently republish media to change or edit things on
| streaming services. Famously Kanye West spent many months
| making changes to the "Life of Pablo" album after its release:
| https://www.xxlmag.com/kanye-west-the-life-of-pablo-changes
| digitallyfree wrote:
| Star Wars (the original trilogy) is also a classic example of
| this. The studio added drastic CGI changes for the 1997
| release and still continues to make small fixes in subsequent
| releases. I believe the only way to watch it now in its
| original state is via old VHS tapes or bootleg scans of the
| original 35mm.
| itronitron wrote:
| I've started buying physical copies again of great movies. We
| still subscribe to streaming for the middling stuff, but if
| it's standout or niche (which is rare) then having a hard copy
| is worth it as the various platforms will often not have it
| available.
| userbinator wrote:
| That 1984 incident never fails to amuse me. Of all the books
| that it could've happened to, it had to be _that_ one.
| disillusioned wrote:
| Only better option would've been Fahrenheit 451, and only
| just barely
| Alupis wrote:
| I really, really think we need to move away from using the term
| "purchase" with these sorts of things. You are not buying the
| title, you are buying access to the title so long as the title
| rights owner feels like you should have access to the title.
|
| Amazon isn't alone, Valve/Steam has a similar issue, all music
| services, eBook platforms, audio books, etc. I think the war has
| already been lost on that front... you do not own anything and
| that's not going to change unfortunately.
|
| For me, describing this as a "lease", perhaps with an explicit
| renewal date (that may or may not be free maybe) would make a lot
| more sense.
|
| For Example: Lease "Final Space" for 10 years
| (Renewal Date: 9/28/2032): $29.99
|
| Or: Lease "Final Space" until 12/31/2022 (Non-
| Renewable): *Reduced Rate* $7.43
|
| This would give platforms a predictable end-date, and the
| possibility to charge a reduced amount as the title's contract
| expiration date nears... plus charge a reduced fee for "renewing"
| a lease (and giving them future revenues on the same titles).
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Lease "Final Space" until 12/31/2022 (Non-Renewable)
|
| This is how the avails are written for licensing to platforms.
| It even allows for different windows based on territory. This
| is how you can see content bounce from platform to platform.
| caiomassan wrote:
| for games, u can buy the games on GOG ( RED PROJEKT plataform)
| whenever they remove a game they warn you, so you can download
| your copy before the game gets delisted.
| okasaki wrote:
| Does GOG remove bought games? Is there a list?
| arvonle wrote:
| GOG has removed some games from the shop - an infamous case
| being the three Fallout "Classic" games upon release of new
| and inferior versions by Bethesda.
|
| However at least in this instance the games are still in my
| library years after.
|
| Of note Steam despite its reputation has done the same with
| LOTR War In The North and Hentai Loli vs Pedobear (don't
| ask, it was a gift by a deranged friend I swear ;))
| okasaki wrote:
| Yes that's my impression as well. They remove it from the
| catalog, but if you bought you can still see it.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| We can "want" this outcome all we want, but as long as
| distributors have no legal requirement to not have an asterisk
| and language explaining it somewhere else, it will always say
| "buy"
| PeterisP wrote:
| If enough people want this outcome, then this can motivate
| our legislators to impose this legal requirement. Consumers
| in some countries have better conditions not because of the
| benevolence of distributors but because legislators treat
| consumer-friendly legislation as good PR for (re)elections.
| mech422 wrote:
| yeah ... 'purchase now' type calls to action really seem
| misleading if you're 'leasing' or 'renting' something.
| xupybd wrote:
| You will own nothing and you will be happy
| pessimizer wrote:
| Sharecroppers all.
| gertrunde wrote:
| Why not legislate that the vendor must provide a refund in these
| cases?
| bakugo wrote:
| Because that's not a solution. If someone breaks into your
| house and steals your TV it's still theft even if they leave
| behind the same amount of money that you originally paid for
| it. And the same should apply here.
| [deleted]
| desindol wrote:
| I don't know Usenet is still running fine for over 20 years for
| me.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Presumably here what happened is that WB revoked Amazon's license
| but they really should have a system for dealing with this...
| either having the contract such that they retain the right to
| provide access to previous buyers, or putting the company on the
| hook for refunds.
|
| I wonder if the situation is the same at other vendors or if
| Amazon's handling of taking something off the platform is
| uniquely bad. Surely there are people who own this through Apple
| or Google or Vudu or something (as I believe it's been equally
| pulled from all those platforms) who could weigh in.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Is there any moral framework under which this isn't considered
| stealing, but illegal downloading is?
| donatj wrote:
| I mean yes. Like it or not, all parties involved agreed the
| terms.
|
| That's not true under piracy.
| wl wrote:
| The terms of service here are too intricate and contain
| provisions contrary to the average "purchaser's"
| expectations. There was no agreement here.
| donatj wrote:
| Everyone by now is well aware this is the situation. This
| has happened so many times over the last 20 years that
| feigning ignorance is just silly.
| wl wrote:
| Generally, the people who are well aware of this
| situation are techies who have seen coverage of the issue
| in specialist media or who have been burnt by it
| personally.
| pessimizer wrote:
| People aren't "feigning" ignorance. The terms of service
| are long, in legal language, and not meant to be read.
| The ignorance is by design.
| throwaway858 wrote:
| The consumer did not actually agree to the terms of: "I, the
| consumer, will pay you $XX to download the film to my device,
| but you can delete it from my device at any time in the
| future without giving me a refund".
|
| It may be written in the fine print, but it's not something
| that most rational consumers willingly agree to.
| kube-system wrote:
| I mean, they all click agree, because they DGAF about the
| terms, they just want to use the service. Consumers can
| absolutely refuse to accept these terms (and some do, like
| me), they just choose not to.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Exactly: take it to its logical conclusion. What if Amazon
| did this 5 minutes after they took your money for it, so
| you never got to watch it at all? Obviously that's not what
| anyone's agreeing to.
| vkou wrote:
| The flipside of it is that surely Amazon did not agree to
| continue serving the film from now and the heat death of
| the universe.
|
| Regulation of these shrink-wrap agreements is the only non-
| insane solution to this problem. Lawsuits are too slow and
| too expensive, and by the time you get enough people behind
| one, may be an exercise in squeezing blood out of a rock.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Amazon did not agree to continue serving the film from
| now and the heat death of the universe.
|
| That's not their only other choice. They could also let
| you download the content so you're not dependent on them
| forever to watch it.
| vkou wrote:
| They could, but unless you get some legislature behind
| this, who is going to enforce it when they explicitly
| choose not to include it in the TOS?
| jaywalk wrote:
| Amazon cannot just let you download the content. It's not
| up to them.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It certainly is up to them. They negotiated a contract
| with the content producers that did not allow for that,
| and could have negotiated a different contract that did
| by offering more.
| vkou wrote:
| They could have, but they didn't. Unless you make
| negotiating such contracts illegal, they and their
| competitors & partners will keep doing it.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Agreeing to terms without informed consent is not consent. A
| lay person can't honestly be expected to fully understand a
| novel's worth of legalese. From a moral standpoint, fuck the
| megacorps with a team of lawyers foisting such bullshit on
| people.
| ipaddr wrote:
| By releasing a product into the public does a business agree
| to some piracy in the social contract?
| qintl55 wrote:
| Not all streaming providers do this. For example, if you buy a
| movie on Apple TV, you can download it. To me, that makes good on
| the "buy" agreement. Based on my last experience, I was trying to
| buy a movie that was available both on Amazon and Apple for the
| same price. The amazon version is bound by the EULA, and they
| don't let me download or play on non-DRM protected devices/apps.
| But Apple's was good. So I don't buy movies on amazon anymore.
| post_break wrote:
| Apple bans your Apple ID you lose everything.
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/apple-faces-clas...
| tpxl wrote:
| Can you sell it to a friend after you've watched it, like it's
| 100% perfectly legal to do with a CD? If not, then you haven't
| bought it.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Apple won't let you download or play a movie on non- drm
| protected devices/ apps either.
|
| And you can't play anything you bought until you obtain Apple's
| permission to link the device you want to play on to your
| Itunes account.
|
| This isn't exactly a traditional definition of ownership.
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember a story (I think it was last year, but may have been
| longer), where someone had an Apple account, and deleted it.
| Apparently, $25,000 worth of media went with it, and he sued.
|
| Not sure how that turned out, but I am pessimistic about his
| chances of prevailing.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Here is a link
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/apple-faces-clas...
| Gregioei wrote:
| I tried to open the link to understand the reason but I was not
| able to do so.
|
| I would definitely not like if my digital fully bought think
| would be unavailable for no reasons.
|
| Independent of this I actually stoped caring to much owning all
| of the digital stuff I consumed over the years.
|
| I love movies and tv shows but there is soon much and I seldom
| rewatch them, it's just not important to me anymore.
|
| I'm still getting much more much better content for much less
| than 10 years ago.
|
| And Im pretty sure there are still enough collectors out there
| who will make sure aaaal of this stuff will be kept for much
| longer as we all expect.
| KIFulgore wrote:
| "Purchases."
| skhameneh wrote:
| I "bought" an award-winning film and never got to watch it before
| it was removed.
|
| No notice, no refund. I went to watch it one day and it was gone.
| ubertaco wrote:
| With apologies for linking to Facebook, the creator of Final
| Space (Olan Rogers) has posted publicly about the news he was
| given that Final Space was being removed from all platforms, with
| licenses not being renewed, and (if he's to be believed,
| which...he's been trustworthy in the past) that the show was
| basically produced for "tax write-off" purposes:
| https://www.facebook.com/olanrogersofficial/posts/pfbid02fuC...
|
| Relevant bits: Five years of my life.
| Three seasons. Blood, sweat, and tears...
| ....became a tax write-off for the network that owns Final Space.
| Yup. That's it. That's why it's disappeared everywhere in the
| USA. Five years of work vanished. When the license is
| up internationally, Netflix will take it down, and then it will
| be gone forever. There are no more physical copies of S1 and S2,
| and no physical copies of Season 3 were ever made. Your memory of
| Final Space will be the only proof it ever existed.
| barbazoo wrote:
| How does the "tax write-off" work here, does anyone know?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Pretty much everything made in Hollywood is done as a tax
| write-off. That's the core of the business model: write-offs
| and incentives.
| paxys wrote:
| Say Netflix values your content at $10M. You can choose to
| license it to them, or instead say that you value it at $200M
| internally and do a write-off of that much on your books. So
| your total tax liability goes down by X% of $200M which could
| be greater than $10M.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's called "hollywood accounting". You play games with
| contracting around IP rights and services as part of the
| content creation process into such a way that a specific
| entity you want reports that they took in $X for the IP
| rights of the content, and then spent $Y > X to actually
| produce the content. If you own or have significant sway over
| enough of the legal entities involved, you can arbitrarily
| set the price of "rights" over certain parts of the process
| to make everyone look like losers.
|
| Like yeah, the entity that sold the film reels to the cinemas
| made a billion dollars off those sales, but they had to pay a
| billion plus one dollar for the right to distribute from one
| of the other entities, who paid a billion plus 2 dollars to
| other entities invented for this purpose, and so on. You take
| gains exactly where it's most convenient for contracting to,
| and put losses everywhere that had a contract based on
| royalties or similar. The vast majority of the numbers can be
| whatever you want, within huge bounds, so you can optimize
| however you want.
|
| This is how famous actors for large productions still end up
| getting screwed out of a paycheck.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Probably in the same way it prevents Megas XLR from being
| revived or released in any form:
|
| https://untiedmagazine.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/10-years-
| meg...
|
| > So here's the ugly truth from what I understand, and I'm
| neither a lawyer or accountant so my understanding could be
| off - Megas was written off as a tax loss and as such can not
| be exploited, at least domestically, in any way, or the
| network will get into some sort of tax/legal trouble.
|
| From looking at the wikipedia definition of "write-off":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write-off#Accounting
|
| > In business accounting, the term 'write-off' is used to
| refer to an investment (such as a purchase of sellable goods)
| for which a return on the investment is now impossible or
| unlikely. The item's potential return is thus canceled and
| removed from ('written off') the business's balance sheet.
|
| So if a "write-off" is declaring it impossible to get any ROI
| on investment and you then _get_ some return on it (after
| e.g. reviving the show, selling DVDs of it, etc), you 've
| lied to the federal government to reduce your tax burden.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Apparently it is some kind of benefit available to companies
| during a merger. There are like a thousand articles about it
| but I don't put a lot of faith in some random journalist
| nailing the details of the tax code so I'm not linking to any
| of them.
|
| Perhaps a better question: If a particular show is written
| off, does anyone own the IP anymore? Do they still have the
| right to sue for copyright infringement if someone else
| broadcasts or distributes it?
| avianlyric wrote:
| Not an accountant. But I suspect the network assigns "value"
| to the show, based on its cost to produce, and ability to
| bring in long term revenue.
|
| By eliminating the long term revenue, and effectively
| deleting the show, they're basically destroying an asset.
| Which means they can claim the value of the show as a loss,
| and offset their profits. Thus reducing their tax burden.
|
| Presumably the savings in tax are greater than expected long
| term income from licensing. So it makes sense to write off
| the asset and take the value of the asset as a loss.
|
| I suspect that big part of why this makes sense, is because
| it often possible to claim the value of an intangible asset
| is at-least the cost of producing (in terms of salaries etc).
| So when writing off the asset, you get the ability to recoup
| some of the cost of production.
| cronix wrote:
| > Your memory of Final Space will be the only proof it ever
| existed.
|
| And to those who know about bit torrent.
|
| https://rarbg.to/torrents.php?search=final+space&category%5B...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| That could make sense if it was just Amazon removing it from
| their _streaming_ service like Netflix did. Because streaming
| generates revenue, and would have to stop if the underlying
| assets were written off. But I don't understand how that makes
| sense in this case, as far as I understand where they removed
| it from someone who bought an actual copy that does not
| generate recurring revenue. What am I missing?
| antonyt wrote:
| His quote does not say that the show was produced for tax
| write-off purposes, it says that it's disappearing from
| platforms because of tax write-off purposes.
| [deleted]
| antonymy wrote:
| This is the exact reason I have never "bought" digital "copies"
| of anything. A subscription service is one thing, but selling a
| "digital copy" is basically a scam.
| toddm wrote:
| I buy Mission Impossible like once a year from Amazon. I think
| I've bought all of John Wick twice.
|
| I kind of read the fine print at some point and it turns out
| "buying" is just renting for some arbitrary time until Amazon
| decides you have to pony-up again.
|
| Maybe DVDs will make a comeback?
| itronitron wrote:
| A DVD is typically the price of a movie ticket and it's not
| uncommon for the DVD to be available while the movie is still
| in theaters.
| riddlemethat wrote:
| DRM manages rights like jail manages freedom.
|
| It's time for legislation to change the "Buy" or "Purchase"
| button on these pages to "License".
|
| People need to be aware they are making an exchange of money for
| a long term license that can be lost/suspended/deleted at
| anytime.
|
| If you want to own a copy you need to physically buy a version
| without DRM or at least with a DRM that has been defeated.
| f1shy wrote:
| Lately I've seen posts of people who lost a "free" mail account.
| And people said "you don't own anything". But here, after
| paying... you still don't own anything.
|
| I must be too old. I do not understand how can they take it away
| without refund.
|
| If somebody could illuminate me, please?
| bjacobt wrote:
| I keep wondering why we as consumers allow this? I'm US based,
| and my bank closed one of my accounts and "held" my money due
| to suspected fraud when I deposited a good check. It took 2
| months and a complaint to CFPB to get my funds released.
|
| Before contacting CFPB, I was on numerous phone calls and made
| multiple trips to the local branch to get the funds released
| and it appeared that I would never get it back because one part
| of the bank does not communicate with the other. I had
| submitted all the documentation the risk department asked for
| but claimed they never received, and the local branches assured
| me it was sent, but could not give me a tracking number or
| reference number. After contacting CFPB the issue was magically
| resolved without any additional documents, apparently the
| documents were never lost based on their response.
|
| When I asked how this is legal, they said I agreed to it when I
| opened the account, which is basically what every bank does.
|
| So in a nutshell, nothing is yours even the money you worked
| hard for.
| [deleted]
| IndigoIncognito wrote:
| Their is a clause in their ToS which says when you buy
| something your are only renting it for the amount of time
| Amazon is happy to serve said content
|
| This is why we need to educate people on how to pirate
| effectively and safely so big tech will have to listen to what
| the markets actually demands and what will be in the best
| interests of society
| nsxwolf wrote:
| As long as that poor woman is still on the hook for millions
| of dollars over some CDs or whatever I'm not pirating
| anything no matter how "safe" it is promised to be.
| pessimizer wrote:
| That's the effect they were looking for. It's a basic
| terrorist tactic (in the original asymmetric warfare sense,
| not the "calling you a terrorist is an announcement that
| we're willing to violate our own professed norms to kill
| you and people like you" modern sense.) They found a
| sympathetic working class single native mother who had done
| relatively little filesharing to attack _brutally,_ so
| average people could see and say "if they're willing to do
| that to her, they're certainly willing to do it to me." And
| the government announced with its verdict "and we'll help
| them do it."
|
| My aging father, who has gone from a math-major programmer
| to nearly computer illiterate in 40 years, won't even take
| a file from me directly, out of fear. I think of that fear
| as a bit hysterical, but he uses Windows and an iPhone, so
| who am I to say that his devices won't report that file to
| the proper authorities some day in the future, after a
| forced update? Who am I to say it's not somehow doing it
| now, and flipping a flag at the NSA or Amazon marking him
| for special attention?
|
| I obviously believe something like that at some level, with
| my insistence on FOSS and control over my devices.
|
| The avenues for pirating have narrowed in an extreme way
| over the past five or so years. There can be no one
| professionally interested in piracy who isn't aware of all
| of them.
|
| The government could just choose a week where they decide
| to contact and charge everyone associated with piracy, and
| pull down every pirate site. They could show PR-style grace
| by giving 98% of people a symbolic fine in return for the
| destruction of all of their digital storage, and give the
| other 2% brutal prison sentences. Everyone would then be
| placed on a public blacklist to encourage ISPs to ban them.
|
| Entirely possible, and entirely consistent with centrist
| values. So I'm no smarter than people who don't pirate.
| IndigoIncognito wrote:
| Are you saying you don't commit tax fraud on a regular
| basis?
| izzydata wrote:
| At least just never "rent" anything ever. If they don't
| explicitly mention it is a n endless perpetual license to
| said content and their terminology implies that it is then
| you should never give them money under any circumstance.
| kube-system wrote:
| It doesn't matter if you get a perpetual license, the
| companies that host the data _themselves_ are ephemeral.
|
| I do the opposite -- I rent everything, and expect it to be
| a rental. I have never been disappointed.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong but the only things we can really do to
| combat this increasingly absurd breakdown of intellectual
| property law is to teach people how to safely and effectively
| pirate things, and raise awareness that the problem is copyright
| itself.
|
| The only way I see this changing anytime is through a massive
| cultural shift in our views toward intellectual property, and I
| think the only way we can make that happen is by bringing it to
| the forefront of people's minds.
|
| I'm not sure, but I think making piracy easy and appealing is
| essential to taking the wind out of the sails of the enormous
| entrenched interests that seek to lock down IP. Ultimately
| copyright is a tool that serves those who can buy up copyrights a
| whole lot more than it serves artists, and that fact is very
| corrosive to our society. Artists and creatives still need
| protection and support, but Disney and Amazon can go fuck
| themselves.
|
| Basing our economic system in the digital world on artificial
| scarcity doesn't make any sense and artificial scarcity itself is
| morally incorrect.
|
| P.S. Since people may ask if I have any concrete solutions. No,
| not really other than I think everyone would be better off if
| copyright and patents were limited to something sane like 10
| years with no option to extend that time.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| How would you teach people to safely and effectively pirate
| content when you can't ensure that all participants are benign
| actors?
| charlesrocket wrote:
| Yep, this model went off the rails. Its not enough I limited to
| where I can consume it, you can just take it away from me. MO
| drives making the best noise so I am down listening it all day
| long.
| User23 wrote:
| US Copyright law explicitly protects your right to create
| backups.
| than3 wrote:
| but it does not protect your right to bypass any digital
| security mechanism to do this, or to disclose how you did
| this to anyone else by threat of law.
|
| They lobbied for laws to explicitly prevent this, and given
| the strict constructionalist nature of the current courts,
| its unlikely we'll regain or be able to enforce these rights
| in this capacity without significant intervention by policy
| makers.
| dickfickling wrote:
| asking for a friend: what's the safe and effective way to
| pirate things in 2022?
| glitcher wrote:
| > ...teach people how to safely and effectively pirate things
|
| > ...making piracy easy and appealing is essential
|
| This sounds a little too naive to me. Every platform that has
| made significant progress towards these goals has run into
| massive legal opposition. And then it becomes an ever changing,
| moving target cat and mouse game between opposing sides. Not to
| mention the dangers of malware, etc lurking within sought after
| content - how can you guarantee safety?
|
| I agree that copyright itself needs reform, but looking back
| over the last ~25 years and how big corporations have become
| more advanced at fighting online piracy, I don't see piracy as
| the central mechanism to create the big cultural shift you
| speak of.
| __s wrote:
| Concrete solution is an HDMI adapter splice that can record to
| a USB drive whatever passes through it
| rolobio wrote:
| This may not always work, data going through HDMI is
| frequently encrypted. If you try to capture the data between
| a Blu-ray drive and a TV (for example), it will be encrypted.
| f1shy wrote:
| But there must be a point, where you still have full
| digital original signal, but decoded. It has to be
| possible.
| xeromal wrote:
| I believe the private keys are in the TVs themselves. Not
| sure how accessible the keys are.
| everforward wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that you
| can get cheap Chinese HDMI splitters that strip the
| encryption.
|
| I would think it has to be relatively easy to decrypt given
| that the Blu-Ray player has to either send a decryption key
| to the TV via the HDMI cable, or the TV has to already have
| a decryption key that could presumably be skimmed.
| goosedragons wrote:
| They exist. My cheapo $20 USB HDMI capture card does it
| too and I can use OBS to record Blu-rays off my PS3 for
| example.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| From what I can tell the splitters essentially convince
| the playback device to play by relaying whatever HDCP
| messages the TV sends: Playback Device
| (Roku etc) | |
| Splitter ------ Unauthorized Player (Recorder)
| | | Authorized Player (TV)
|
| Without this the Playback Device will show a black
| screen, an HDCP error message or something similar, but
| even with the splitter & an authorized player it seems
| the content can be encrypted.
|
| Since the TV obviously has the capability of decrypting
| the content it seems like there should be a way to split
| the signal somewhere between the main TV board and the
| display panel(s), which sounds like a big deal. Or maybe
| someone could make an incomplete splitter / recorder that
| just needs a legit Samsung board attached to it?
| DennisP wrote:
| Although Blu-ray encryption was cracked back in 2007.
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-4
| 1...
| dylan604 wrote:
| But backdoor keys for authorities will not suffer this
| problem. Trust me. /s
| than3 wrote:
| That's not correct. Version 1 of their system was, they
| quickly fixed it to the chagrin of many Linux desktop
| users (who just want to play and watch the movies they
| paid for on the hardware they own).
|
| So we're back to the state of you don't actually have
| property rights in any of the things you own or paid for.
| pferdone wrote:
| Look at the FeinTech splitters for example. I've thrown
| everything from BRs to streaming at them and they can
| handle it all.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > The only way I see this changing anytime is through a massive
| cultural shift
|
| Solutions like that or, "if everyone would just _", or
| "everybody needs to _" will never happen. Just my own rule of
| thumb.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Never? Like universal suffrage, civil rights, (mostly
| universal) education, the Montreal Protocol, seatbelts,
| airbags, anti-lock braking.
|
| Nah, you know what, forget it, give up, shits fucked and
| people are dumb. /s
|
| Edit to add: unleaded fuel, catalytic converters, emmision
| standards, one third of owner-occupied homes in Australia
| have rooftop solar, the widespread acceptance of
| anthropogenic induced climate drivers.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| You're talking about issues solved either through a
| critical mass of people wanting change or legislation. I'm
| not saying do nothing.
| CabSauce wrote:
| This is often suggested on HN anytime there's some minor issue
| with streaming. Piracy isn't a solution to anything. Yes, there
| are issues with intellectual property, but most of the issues
| aren't with movies/TV/art. Without people paying for these
| things, studios won't invest vast sums of money in them and we
| wouldn't have the vast amount of high quality content we have
| today.
| thedanbob wrote:
| There's a middle ground. If I want a movie or TV show, I'll
| buy it from iTunes and then strip the DRM / pirate it. If I
| can find it streaming somewhere that yt-dlp works, I'll
| download it. I don't mind paying for content but only if it
| can't be taken away from me after the fact.
| altruios wrote:
| we need less superhero movies, more independent content that
| is there for the sake of itself, and not for the sake of
| making money.
|
| tying money to art cheapens it.
|
| art is priceless, attaching a price therefore is a
| regression.
|
| Not everything is about money, not everything needs to be
| done.
|
| better that it is free: if you couldn't sell movies - the
| only ones that would exist are the ones people truly wanted
| to make - the quality of the artform would skyrocket, even if
| the quantity plummets.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Pirating is the solution if you want to watch Final Space in
| the year 2025.
| CabSauce wrote:
| Sure. I guess in this very narrow situation where the
| content is no longer available, I don't have an issue. But
| the person I responded to seemed to be suggesting stealing
| content as some sort of broad solution to an undescribed
| issue.
| megous wrote:
| Anyone can also do both if they like. Buy and download to
| have an archival copy.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The problem is that you don't know which things need to
| be downloaded until they disappear.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| All three seasons are available for streaming on
| hindilinks4u and probably a lot of other places so it's not
| yet lost.
| virtual_void wrote:
| I think you're presenting a false dichotomy here. Piracy has
| always been there and studios still make a lot of money.
|
| People are still willing to pay for things, they just want a
| copy of the thing that they paid for so that it cannot be
| stolen from them later. The only answer here IS piracy.
| CabSauce wrote:
| Wanting your purchase to persist is totally reasonable. Not
| buying a digital copy where it can disappear is the
| solution.
| virtual_void wrote:
| Another false dichotomy!
|
| How about i pay for things I'm buying but take a pirate
| copy as a backup?
|
| It's already clear that if you make digital content
| available at a reasonable price people will pay for it.
| The thing we're arguing about is who is stealing from
| whom.
|
| Here's a genuine dichotomy. Assuming I'm interested in
| the media, then I'm either buying or I'm renting. If I'm
| renting call it renting. If I'm buying don't steal it
| from me later by hiding the fact that it's a rental in
| thousands of lines of legalese.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Not buying a digital copy where it can disappear is the
| solution.
|
| There's not always another choice.
| avianlyric wrote:
| It would be if Blu-ray disks and DVDs weren't covered in
| copy protection making it close to impossible to backup
| your physical purchases, or guarantee your long term
| ability to watch them.
|
| How many people here still have a functioning VCR? Hell,
| how many still have a functioning DVD player?
| virtual_void wrote:
| Dvd and Blu-ray are deeply upsetting things. Used to be
| that there were unskippable adverts and all sorts of junk
| I don't expect if I paid for it.
|
| Continually adding on user hostile additional revenue
| streams, like adverts, on top of something i already paid
| for is one of the major drivers of piracy.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I feel like you're describing a huge win here. The idea that
| our culture _needs_ media juggernauts for some reason is
| absurd. The "vast amount of quality content" I experience
| from day to day comes almost exclusively from small creators,
| creators who's content would in many cases be a hell of a lot
| better if it wasn't encumbered by onerous copyright laws.
|
| Don't even get me started on how bad patents are.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Well, economics has something called "revealed
| preferences". Despite your opinions, most people do prefer
| media from the juggernauts based on where they spend their
| money.
|
| Based on where people spend their money, your preferences
| are in the minority.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| People spend their attention here, not their money.
| YouTube alone has far more watch-time than cinemas or
| Netflixes.
| scarface74 wrote:
| But how many people are willing to pay $15 to watch 2
| hours of YouTube videos?
|
| How many paying subscribers does YouTube have compared to
| Netflix?
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Is it that they _prefer_ media from juggernauts or that
| they 're more likely to _know of_ media from juggernauts?
|
| Juggernauts are able to put their movies in theaters or
| cable/streaming television, put trailers in front of
| other movies or tv shows, take out billboards, etc.
| Juggernauts are able to market the hell out of their
| products, while most little guys don't have that
| opportunity.
|
| I imagine that this also has a lasting effect. For
| example, juggernauts are more likely to have a streaming
| service trying to pick up their media while also putting
| that media ahead of little guy's media in that streaming
| service's recommendations. I'd also guess that over time
| the probability of organically finding little guy's media
| drops at a significantly faster rate than juggernaut's
| media .
| scarface74 wrote:
| Well, we have studios like Blumhouse that create low
| budget movies that do get a lot of press, have trailers,
| get plenty of promotion etc. They do well on an ROI
| basis. But they don't top the box office.
| tenpies wrote:
| I agree with you, but I wish there were more effort from
| big-name directors or producers to crowd fund their film or
| series.
|
| Imagine for example something like the Expanse being crowd
| funded. That's about $3.5 - $5 MM per episode - a huge
| amount. And then it takes a year or more to see the
| content. And the Expanse wasn't really that expensive in
| the scale of things.
|
| Unfortunately, until a better model emerges, the media
| juggernauts do serve a function in the marketplace as
| financiers.
| CabSauce wrote:
| Copyright laws protect small creators too. I'm not sure how
| they could expect to make a living if their work could just
| be copied and sold or given away by anyone.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Copyright laws protect small creators too. I'm not sure
| how they could expect to make a living if their work
| could just be copied and sold or given away by anyone.
|
| Blatantly false. The majority of these small creators are
| Twitch Streamers, Tik-tockers, Youtubers these days. All
| of them give their work away for free effectively.
|
| In particular, the value in the Twitch-stream is from
| interacting with the chat realtime. Its effectively a
| live performance tied to a chatroom in some niche subject
| matter that the audience is interested in.
|
| All of those can probably be released public-domain and
| free to copy, and they won't lose a single subscriber.
|
| --------
|
| Others are paid primarily through their Patreon account
| or other forms of merchandise (dolls, plushies, etc.
| etc.). Or direct advertisements inside of the content
| (see Oversimplified and VPN). You can't "skip" the ad
| because the Ad is part of the video itself and worked
| into the script.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| FWIW if you don't want to see sponsored segments in
| youtube videos etc, there's a tool for this called
| SponsorBlock which uses crowdsourced timestamp
| information and allows you to opt out of seeing various
| different kinds of content you'd rather skip over
| (sponsorship, self promotion, likecommentsubscribe
| segments etc.)
| Fargren wrote:
| I don't like this argument. It's true that without copyright
| we would not have the current status quo, that much is
| obvious. But what we could have instead if everyone was
| allowed to remix any content and create things freely based
| on other published works is unknown and unknowable.
|
| It is not obvious to me than having copyright is better than
| not having it. It would be better for some people and worse
| for others.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| Agreed, I do think we need to make sure creation is
| rewarded, but creation should also be used for the good of
| society not hoarded for wealth. That's the problem we need
| to solve, we need to look for systems that encourage
| creation _WITHOUT_ the need to create artificial scarcity
| and means for people to collect rents on intellectual
| property.
|
| To wit, intellectual property itself is likely a concept
| that keeps us locked in a local maximum.
| than3 wrote:
| It would depend on what your definition is, I suppose.
|
| The general narrative and has been if you copied it without
| written authorization, you are a pirate. Even if you are
| archiving a copy for future generations.
|
| You can't even look up news articles from 10 years ago
| because of that.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| No. Piracy is the only reason things moved in acceptable
| direction for regular consumer. Were it not MP3, P2P, codecs,
| matroska and other technologies and formats, we would all
| still be beholden to some ridiculous locked down standard
| imposed by the copyright holders and bricked-by-design
| devices ( ala Zune, which had crazy DRM approach ). Let us
| not forget that there were ideas of destroying your PC if
| there is an indication of not allowed content on it.
|
| And even those gains, which were won with overwhelming
| disobedience, because early internet people were at least
| technical enough to burn a cd are now being eroded again, but
| under different guise. Piracy stopped being a thing, because
| it got easier to get stuff you wanted when you wanted it
| without trolling the internet. Now with streaming wars coming
| to a close, content owners think they will get to impose
| rules not realizing that they are making the same mistake
| thinking kids will not learn how to bypass whatever
| restrictions they put in place all over again.
|
| History. Rhymes. All that.
| vasco wrote:
| In Europe you can vote for the Pirate Party in several
| countries, including for European parliament.
|
| There are problems with such parties at the local level because
| it's hard to unite on other issues, but at the EU level, the
| Pirate Party representatives consistently have presented (in my
| view), the most technically correct interpretations of internet
| laws and regulations for example, all the topics around data
| privacy, etc. They are not "hurr durr I wanna get free stuff"
| at all, and most other representatives remind me of my grandpa
| that had no clue what a computer even was.
|
| To me, donating and voting for people who are technically
| correct is a way better way to effect change than just trying
| to have some mass coordination around piracy / boicots, those
| never work.
|
| Outside of Europe I have no idea what something effective would
| be. Unfortunately the patent / copyright apparatus is very very
| strong and the political pressure US groups put on the world is
| very hard to combat.
|
| A good book about the subject of patents and this apparatus and
| how they basically muscled the world into abidding to US
| lobbies, including massively fucking poor countries with
| respect to pharmaceutical patents is "Information Feudalism:
| Who owns the knowledge economy?"
| https://thenewpress.com/books/information-feudalism
| slim wrote:
| US pirates https://uspirates.org
| bombcar wrote:
| This has been the case for as long as people can remember.
| There's various tiers but it happens on all digital platforms.
| Steam, for example, will let you still download certain games _if
| you bought them before they were delisted_ but others just
| entirely disappear.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Your example doesn't jive with the problem.
|
| Steam, in your example, is still giving you access to the
| delisted content you bought, but, since Steam itself has lost
| the license to sell, they no longer let new purchases happen.
|
| That seems fair. What doesn't seem fair is buying something and
| then it going away for _me_ because of a licensing expiration
| between other parties.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yes, Steam was smarter about licensing (though I do believe
| they've completely pulled a few games entirely) than Amazon
| was.
|
| And sadly, nobody is going to ever really care.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-
| remov...
|
| Citation on "Removed a few entirely". I'm not sure what the
| most recent example is, since this was a while back, but it
| has happened and could happen again.
| staticman2 wrote:
| So Steam removed an online- only game after the servers
| were closed by Square Enix.
|
| While online only games are certainly a problem it
| doesn't appear Steam's actions made the problem any
| worse.
| [deleted]
| MrWiffles wrote:
| ...and they wonder why piracy is a "problem"...
|
| YARR motherfuckers.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-28 23:02 UTC)