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Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

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Re: Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

#101

Post by criley2 »

ectopod wrote: post #96
beckman466 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 han…

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.

Re: Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

#103

Post by ikerdanzel »

lrvick wrote: post #57

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…

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.

Re: Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

#104

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

alpaca128 wrote: post #76
wildpeaks wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why supporting DRM-free stores is important (e.g. Bandcamp for music and GOG for games).

Are there similar platforms for buying ebooks? I like ebooks but I'm not comfortable with all the layers of DRM involved in it.

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.

Re: Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

#105

Post by teh_klev »

est31 wrote: post #86
beckman466 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 tech…

What happens then if the blockchain you rely on as proof of ownership goes away?

Re: Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

#106

Post by lrvick »

iso1631 wrote: post #88
lrvick wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prob…

> 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…

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.

Re: Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

#107

Post by mavhc »

criley2 wrote: post #101
ectopod wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 han…

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.

So is CO2 though.

Re: Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

#109

Post by lrvick »

criley2 wrote: post #101
ectopod wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 han…

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.

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.

Re: Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

#110

Post by sammorrowdrums »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #104
alpaca128 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there similar platforms for buying ebooks? I like ebooks but I'm not comfortable with all the layers of DRM involved in it.

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…

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.

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