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

nofilmschool.com

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

#151
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

CD Projekt Red also sell Windows exclusive software (Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, etc.), which, one can argue, is also a form of DRM.

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.

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

#152
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

CD Projekt Red also sell Windows exclusive software (Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, etc.), which, one can argue, is also a form of DRM.

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?

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

#153
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 books stopped working" is a fantastic writing prompt for a dystopian novel.

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

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

#154
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mon…

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 p…

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.

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

#155
post #6

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 s…

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.

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

#156
post #6

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 s…

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…

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.

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

#157
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 D…

you can copy books, movies and audio that you own as long as it's not for re-distribution.

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

#158
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How would you define abandonware?

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_Sta...

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

#159
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have chapter and verse for this? It doesn't sound right to me but I don't know for sure.

https://www.copyright.gov/1201/docs/librarian_statement_01.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.

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 :(.

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

#160

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.

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.

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