Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by hvidgaard » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #140

wccrawford wrote: post #129

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…

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.

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

#202

Post by FabHK » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

sammorrowdrums wrote: post #110

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fr…

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 )

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

#203

Post by ashtonbaker » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #153

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

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-...

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

#204

Post by jackdrb » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

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.

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

#205

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

borepop wrote: post #199

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I typed a big long response and deleted it because I think that people just do not care.

I relate to this energy.

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.

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

#206

Post by bayindirh » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:39 PM UTC

sammorrowdrums wrote: post #110

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fr…

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.

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

#207

Post by BruiseLee » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

cblconfederate wrote: post #66

hyperman1 wrote: post #13

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 ens…

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

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.

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

#208

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

wccrawford wrote: post #129

GeekyBear wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

> 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.

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

#209

Post by jbverschoor » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

Same as before on the App Store when they changed "BUY" into "GET"

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

#210

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 23, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #180

throwaway_isms wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 li…

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]