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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

#431

Post by reaperducer »

don-code wrote: post #193
saurik wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, there is some subtlety here with respect to "physical media", as something that otherwise looks like physical media can still have DRM annoying enough that you might not be able to have a functional player when you go to use your media 20 years later (particularly if your console has Internet access).

Case in point: Terminator 2 Extreme, purchased in 2003. I figured that having the physical media meant I could play this forever long as I owned the discs. I haven't been able to play those discs since 2008, when the license servers went offline.

See if your local library has a copy. My library doesn't have many Blu-Rays, but the ones they do have seem to be DRM-free.

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

#432

Post by reaperducer »

GeekyBear wrote: post #111
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…

> 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.

I had movies I had purchased years ago automatically upgraded to 4K HDR

Wait until they get downgraded to error screens because the company you bought them from went out of business, got bought by another company, pivoted to something else, forgot to renew a domain, or a thousand other things.

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

#433

Post by reaperducer »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #205
borepop wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most users don't have any clue about how to store, manage, or safeguard their DRM-free digital purchases

They figured out how to care for records, cassettes, and videotapes. They just need an incentive to learn.

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

#434

Post by lrvick »

Qwertious wrote: post #339
lrvick wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That means buying the DRM copies in the first place, further contributing to that system. Also it is a PITA. Pretty much all e-paper readers are proprietary and track all reading too which is a second order problem.

IMO the long-term solution is attaching an author-payment system widget to pirate sites. It's not illegal to pay authors, so a payment system can't be DMCA'd, and pirate websites pop back up like weeds and can't realistically be stamped out. Magnet links are way too portable for that and anyone can spin up a new VPS with 100MB or so of data (the size of TPB's db IIRC) to keep on going.

Honestly, this is an amazing idea be if for individual creators or studios. It should also have a way to tag specific media that caused them to want to contribute so it is a wallet vote for more like this.

Really all creators should just have anonymous donation options for people that want to support -them- without supporting the toxic labels and DRM situation.

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

#435

Post by lrvick »

saurik wrote: post #159
lrvick wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Maybe, but archive.org has listed this exemption on their website for years as their rationale for being able to distribute ROMs for dead consoles and it has totally remained unchallenged AFAICT.

Copyright enforcement seems often "use it or lose it"

SPAM didn't act fast enough to protect their brand, and once it became commonplace as a term for internet garbage it was considered too late to enforce.

Unless someone like Nintendo makes a new Super Nintendo that can play original cartridges, I don't expect they would do well in court trying to enforce given the exemption and after doing nothing for so long at this point.

I study IP law academically but IANAL. With that said, I think we are honestly at a free for all at this point, and the more people that host ROMs openly, the worse the case against them gets.

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

#436

Post by akoncius »

fastball wrote: post #378
josephcsible wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you rent something, you're supposed to be told very clearly up front when your last day when the thing is.

Isn't that the distinction though? A rental has a clear end date, enforced by Apple. A purchase does not, it can merely disappear from Apple's catalogue at some point, due to licensing issues. Apple has no idea how long that thing will be around, so they can't really quote a date your "purchase" ends.

one approach: if license expires old buyers still should be able to watch that movie and license expiration could be applied only on new sales.

on the other hand, apple is well educated how industry works and they are well aware that purchase is not full ownership of copy so you could interpret it as intentional attempt to mislead customers.

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

#437

Post by lrvick »

ac29 wrote: post #338
lrvick wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't say anywhere that you can also distribute copies of the copyrighted work, though.

But it does imply DMCA can't be used to go after people that do.

DMCA is the only tool people that wish to stop distribution of media have, so it might as well be a blanket statement of legal distribution IMO, and archive.org certainly interprets it this way.

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

#438

Post by lrvick »

neilv wrote: post #348
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…

FWIW, Sony just backtracked on the PS3 and Vita store shutdowns, for now (but still moving forward with PSP store shutdown, last I heard): https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2021/04/20/sony-isnt-c... I agree that there's been some highly questionable shutdowns of DRM and content servers by a few major companies, later disabling things that they claimed customers were buying. It seems we're lacking sufficient regul…

IMO if someone wants to shut down distribution of DRM media, then they should grant users blanket license to own a single copy in whatever format they wish.

If that means they are protected from legal recourse for obtaining a single pirated copy, that works.

Else, they have to do the work to distribute DRM free copies until every user has one, since they changed the terms of ownership.

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

#439

Post by lrvick »

abawany wrote: post #334
lrvick wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked and looked and looked for an option here, and almost pulled the trigger on book scanning gear. Eventually I gave up realizing it is an extraordinary effort to personally rip books just to have drm-free digital copies. Instead I built a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and filled it. I read ink on slices of dead trees now, like a barbarian.

There are ebook scanning services that do a great job. I have used bookscan.us for hundreds of books for years and it works well.

The only issue I have is most of them require the destruction of the book by removing the pages. Many of mine are very rare and collectible now costing hundreds of dollars so it would be a crime to damage them.

Do you know of services that can do this without damage?

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

#440

Post by lrvick »

abawany wrote: post #336
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…

One approach I've used in lieu of buying ebooks is to buy a used/new print copy, get it destructively scanned, and thus acquire a drm-free copy of the book. Often this can work out cheaper than buying the ebook.

Sadly many of the books I buy are quite rare, and getting a destructive scan would be a crime against humanity.

One could argue it is ethical, if not legal, to obtain a drm-free digital backup from a pirate site if one has a physical copy on their shelf.

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