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HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

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Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#41
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale?... (Offline-only distribution would count as “abandoned” in this regime.) Let's say I author a book and sell it as a paperback, but decide for whatever reason that I don't want to sell an e-book. Would you apply the same reasoning there? Is it ethical for you to torrent an unpaid for e-book copy because you've decided that's more convenient…

Ethics? I don't care too much if mouse company gets more money for their empire from me or not. Lets be real, that money more less goes to people that have nothing to do with people that create shows/content etc. But thats beside the point, I don't care much about it. I am adult, I earn money and at this point in my life my time IS worth money. If the effort/cost of watching a show it greater than firing up torrents,…

> Ethical/lawful or not, I don't care.

As they'd say on reddit, "username checks out".

While I can sympathise with plenty of your points, this statement is a huge red flag regarding your general attitude to the world. You're marking yourself as someone I don't think I'd care to do business with, or to have as a friend. (Not that I expect that matters to you. Just an observation.)

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#42
It all goes back to not owning you media. When you rent ("subscribe") and stream, it's not yours, and can be taken away for any reason, or no reason at all.

For the last decade I've been buying up old DVDs and CDs of films and TV shows that I like from fleaBay, Goodwill, and elsewhere and archiving them in my own NAS for my personal use. It's astounding how much quality media has never made it to streaming.

In my estimation, probably 5% of what was released on DVD as ever made it to streaming services. And even then, there are huge gaps in DVDs. Probably half of VHS tapes made it to DVD.

Recently, my wife wanted to watch all the movies of an important film star (Humphrey Bogart, or someone similar), and it turns out that it's not possible. Many of the films never made it to digital (DVD or streaming), and so can never be seen by the public short of flying to a city on another continent and attending an obscure film festival.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#43
post #23

Guys - you can get all 161 episodes (6.23GB and v.slow download) here: https://archive.org/details/126BuddiesThickerThanWater1962/ Enjoy!

Not for long if this gets popular

If that goes down, you can always get 121 of the episodes off of the CIA's public archive of Osama Bin Laden's hard drives.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#44
post #2

Similar shenanigans are the reason I cancelled Disney+. I’ll pay a monthly fee for your entire back library. Otherwise, no thanks. Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale? I’d love to see a copyright overhaul that formalized abandonware and extended it to back catalogs of film and music. That way, people could legally torrent everything currently missing from these streaming platform…

> Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content...

I'd first like to have the discussion about the ethics of the current decades long copyright laws that are creating artificial monopolies and a really crooked supply and demand market.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#45
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely devil's advocate would be someone along the lines of -- just because it isn't for sale now doesn't mean it might never be. Pirating it now deprives the owner of some amount of ability to make money from it in the future. Pretty flimsy, imo.

I've upvoted you because this point needs to be countered and stopped. Something that was pirated does NOT equal a lost sale. I might enjoy Charlie Chaplin films, I would never pay for the ability to watch them. I don't feel it is worth my money. It doesn't matter if it becomes available at some-point in the future, I won't ever pay for it. If anti-piracy measures were 100% effective and reasonable and I couldn't get…

If certain media is "not worth your money", why do you feel you're entitled to enjoy it anyway?

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#46

It all goes back to not owning you media. When you rent ("subscribe") and stream, it's not yours, and can be taken away for any reason, or no reason at all. For the last decade I've been buying up old DVDs and CDs of films and TV shows that I like from fleaBay, Goodwill, and elsewhere and archiving them in my own NAS for my personal use. It's astounding how much quality media has never made it to streaming. In my est…

you missed the part that says "So, to date, a complete, uncut Hanna-Barbera collection has never been released on DVD in the US"

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#47
post #2

Similar shenanigans are the reason I cancelled Disney+. I’ll pay a monthly fee for your entire back library. Otherwise, no thanks. Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale? I’d love to see a copyright overhaul that formalized abandonware and extended it to back catalogs of film and music. That way, people could legally torrent everything currently missing from these streaming platform…

A lot of content is not available as streaming flat rates but via various rental or purchase platforms (iTunes, Amazon Video, etc.) There’s no (and there should be no) obligation to make things available for bargain dollars. If the publisher things the movie is worth a $15 dollar purchase or $8 rental, they can charge that. It’s our right not to watch it if we don’t think it’s worth that.

You're implicitly accepting the frame that copyright is an inherent right that should be granted, rather than a privilege extended to copyright holders on public policy grounds. If copyright owners do more rent-seeking and offer evermore complicated and user-hostile deals, it's well within the purview of our government to alter the terms of copyright extension for public policy purposes.

In other words, there's an implicit obligation to offer consumers deals that are better than the counterfactual in which copyrights are not enforced whatsoever. Otherwise, why should we have laws that make things worse for us just so that various copyright holders can maximize the rents they extract from us via intellectual property?

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#49

Mouse in Manhattan is a wonderful short. The storytelling, the pacing, and the orchestral score are magical. But there is the small issue of Jerry falling into a vial of shoe polish and then popping his head out -- in full blackface. Yup, that's not allowed today. I hope they just correct that (but without messing up the music) rather than outright ban it.

What is "correct" today will not be "correct" tomorrow.

You don't reconcile history by pretending it didn't exist.

50 years from now, some young generation will decide that animal-sourced leather is a hate crime, and every movie you've ever seen will be banned to "correct" the social error of seeing shoes that aren't plastic.

Re: HBO Max is failing the classic Tom and Jerry

#50
post #5
post #2

Similar shenanigans are the reason I cancelled Disney+. I’ll pay a monthly fee for your entire back library. Otherwise, no thanks. Also, what’s the ethical issue with pirating content that is not for sale? I’d love to see a copyright overhaul that formalized abandonware and extended it to back catalogs of film and music. That way, people could legally torrent everything currently missing from these streaming platform…

Purely devil's advocate would be someone along the lines of -- just because it isn't for sale now doesn't mean it might never be. Pirating it now deprives the owner of some amount of ability to make money from it in the future. Pretty flimsy, imo.

This is hard to get into without context.

Copyright (and patents) exist "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

The purpose is to promote the progress of science and useful arts for the public's benefit, the means is a limited time monopoly.

The limited time rights are intended to be the minimum necessary to incentivize people to create for the public's benefit. Originally this was 14yrs, required registration, and could be renewed once.

The intent has been twisted by those with an interest in perpetuating copyright indefinitely (rights holders). Now copyright is 70yrs after the death of the creator or 95yrs after publication for contract work. [0]

Why does someone need to be incentivized to create after they're dead? Why were these extensions retroactive since you can't incentivize someone to create something they've already created?

This has been argued in the US courts, the end result of these extensions was because each one is still for a 'limited time' they're okay - even if they're repeatedly extended at each expiration. This isn't the original intent or spirit of copyright law.

> "Pirating it now deprives the owner of some amount of ability to make money from it in the future."

The rights holders have lobbied to twist the law for their own self-interest and then play victim - I have little sympathy for that.

I think if we had something sane (5yrs, maybe special protections around certain types of adaptations, maybe longer time frame to reward authors specifically up to some dollar amount if adapted for-profit, restrictions on for-profit distribution by third parties?) the law would be more aligned with its original goals and there would be fewer issues.

Today you can't even declare something 'public domain' if you want to since copyright is reserved by default. The best you can do is license it permissively.

[0]: An aside, at one point it was until the author's death. This gave me an idea for a B-movie where a serial killer goes around taking out pop groups so their music goes into the public domain.

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