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The deception of “buying” digital movies

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#71

Post by javajosh »

dublin wrote: post #24
fbanon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still alive and kicking. You just need to know where to look.

Yeah, but that's a real problem for those of us who don't watch a lot of movies. Many people aren't capable of figuring out "where to look" at all anyway. I am, to some degree, but it's just not worth spending that much of my time to hunt them down on the rare occasions I really want to watch something. Also, I'll just note that we never got the 21st century we were promised, which was this - any movie ever made: htt…

>the people who own movie IP rights are truly evil.

That is wildly overstated. The worst they can do to you is not let you watch their entertaining movie. Possibly even after you've paid for it (the subject of the OP) - and in that case the culprit isn't even the IP owner, it's the distributor! And honestly it sounds like the problem with digital ownership is simple fraud that is a) covered by existing law and b) too expensive for anyone to litigate. Maybe a class action could do it.

Here's the really interesting part - you're railing against artificial scarcity. Someone has a good that they could give away, and they aren't, and you're calling them evil for doing that, but I ask you, in all honesty, how else do you make money from movies? If you can't make money from it, how will you convince investors to fund your next movie? (Now substitute "album book software" for movie and ask the same question.)

That's not to say that IP owners can't be "evil". George Lucas believed it was his right to keep changing Star Wars over time, and it's impossible to find a legit copy of Star Wars that is the original theatrical release. That's some 1984-level memory hole bullshit and although the stakes are low, it's evil. Disney is arguably quite evil for a variety of reasons, e.g. it's unholy influence over Congress, it's unhealthy consolidation of huge chunks of the American movie market. But neither of them are evil for using artificial scarcity to profit from their work, because that's the only way to profit from data goods.

(Professional open source tries to square the circle by giving away the data goods but charging for (actually scarce) knowledge. It's a good model but cannot apply to entertainment goods, since viewers don't need scarce knowledge to enjoy a movie.)

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#72

Post by gjsman-1000 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #64
rthomas6 wrote: post #47

I have started a modest Blu-Ray/4k Blu-Ray collection. For me, it is by far the best movie experience I've had with any format. It takes maybe 90 vs 20 seconds to get the movie playing, but in return I get noticeably better quality. 4k Blu-Rays' bitrates are around 128 Mb/s. For comparison, Netflix tops out around 17 Mb/s. It really does look and sound noticeably better if you have the TV and surround setup to take a…

I don't have much physical media since finally going 4K HDR, but so far my experience hasn't been great. I purchased the Mission:Impossible boxed set, and it came with a download code to use on iTunes. The discs look like trash. Noisy, grainy, just bad. The iTunes versions look phenomenal. It would be nice if there was a way to know how good the quality of a particular release is before buying it. Reviews I read don'…

"Noisy, grainy, just bad."

AKA, it was shot on film. Film has film grain, which can only be removed by Digital Noise Reduction. DNR removes film grain, but also scrubs away detail and can leave waxy faces among other artifacts, as well as a fairly artificial and non-cinematic look. Film grain compresses very badly over streaming, so DNRing the streaming version before compression is probably what you are seeing. In this case, you prefer the DNR - but if you read online forums, most collectors hate it and consider it a crime against humanity to have ever been invented.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#73

Post by netsharc »

josh_fyi wrote: post #10

Has anyone tried a legal challenge to the word "buy"? It seems like a straightforward case of misrepresentation.

There's probably wording in the agreement (linked next to the checkbox we automatically tick before clicking the button) that says you're buying a license to watch the movie as long as the movie is available on the platform.

There are other definitions of buy a movie, e.g. buy the IP so you're allowed to make sequels.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#74

Post by drstewart »

TecoAndJix wrote: post #35
drstewart wrote: post #27

How big of a problem even is this? Serious question: who buys digital movies? I don't really know anyone who even buys movies at all anymore, but if they do it's likely they prefer a physical copy anyway. There's just so much content out there that the number of people that even care to rewatch a movie they've seen feels like it's really low.

I bought "Bullet Train" over the weekend on Amazon for an at-home date night with my wife (rental was not available yet). It costs $20 which we justified as being the cost of 2 movie tickets. Doubt I will watch it again so really I was just paying for access

Good point. Early release access definitely seems like an almost separate use case bundled with the "Buy" feature, but like you mention most people aren't doing this to buy the movie but to watch it earlier.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#75

Post by frankfrankfrank »

shockeychap wrote: post #46
chucksmash wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? Because it is the same thing, but cheaper. > And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? Because otherwise people won't buy it from you, they'll buy it from ITunes. Even if the lower price doesn't make sense for digital media that aren't degraded through use, lower price (that lets you recoup, say…

The only problem with this is that with physical media, there's an intrinsic amount of "friction" that prevents gaming the system. It's not convenient to, for example, have five people buy and share one set of DVDs. The hassle of moving the disc around (which gets dramatically worse with distance) incentivizes people to buy their own copy. But digital buying and selling would make it rather easy for one person to "se…

The friction you are overlooking would be, e.g., the platform to sell the media and the likely cost to do so. Not only that, but you are also not aware of the fraudulent price that is charged for the media now precisely because the market is a monopolistic fraud. If movies were priced at what they are really worth, they would be some … and easily significantly … lower lower price, e.g., $.50 rent and $2 to buy.

If you want to evaluate how much the movies/content is really worth, just take the price you pay for a streaming service and divide it by the content you consume.

For example; $5 month, divided by 80 hours of viewing (which seems low for most) and you come to $0.06 per hour, or about $0.12 per movie. Using this conservative estimate, are you going to bother selling a digital movie for less than $0.12? No. But that is precisely why the industry has monopolized the market and added DRM, because they want to keep their fraudulent scheme going to deprive people of their earnings.

But what it’s really about is, as instituting a new form of slavery where you are given everything for “free” just like like slave of all other eras, but you are deprived of far more at a far greater intangible cost for it.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#76

Post by PontifexMinimus »

IYasha wrote: post #53
kalleboo wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have DRM attached and need to be played on a computer that has logged in to your iTunes account and been "blessed". But unless something has changed, as long as you keep that computer offline it will be able to play those videos in eternity. You can un-bless all your other computers (as you can only have 5 computers blessed at once) but I guess if the other computers are offline they can keep playing old downloa…

> But unless something change :)

4 words that explain why, if I ever wanted to collect movies, they would all be DRM-free torrents.

When the "legal" way to do it is self-evidently a scam perpetuated by corporations and governments working together against our interests, then they only honourable ways are either to watch illegal downloads or not watch movies at all.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#77

Post by tigen »

nsxwolf wrote: post #64
rthomas6 wrote: post #47

I have started a modest Blu-Ray/4k Blu-Ray collection. For me, it is by far the best movie experience I've had with any format. It takes maybe 90 vs 20 seconds to get the movie playing, but in return I get noticeably better quality. 4k Blu-Rays' bitrates are around 128 Mb/s. For comparison, Netflix tops out around 17 Mb/s. It really does look and sound noticeably better if you have the TV and surround setup to take a…

I don't have much physical media since finally going 4K HDR, but so far my experience hasn't been great. I purchased the Mission:Impossible boxed set, and it came with a download code to use on iTunes. The discs look like trash. Noisy, grainy, just bad. The iTunes versions look phenomenal. It would be nice if there was a way to know how good the quality of a particular release is before buying it. Reviews I read don'…

Film grain is a funny topic... if it was the original look then it can be considered highest quality/fidelity to retain it. Filtering it makes for easier video compression.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#78

Post by JohnTHaller »

CharlesW wrote: post #68
JohnTHaller wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you play those downloaded movies outside of Apple hardware/software?

Yes. A bunch of non-Apple devices have an Apple TV app now¹, and you can also play movies to any device that supports AirPlay 2¹. ¹ https://www.apple.com/apple-tv-app/devices/

That's still Apple hardware/software. If you can't play it outside of the locked down Apple ecosystem which is checking your license, then you don't own it.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#79

Post by gjsman-1000 »

josteink wrote: post #70
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DVD has an incredibly weak 40-bit encryption scheme due to US regulations on exporting cryptography when it was developed. As a result, it was broken very quickly after launch. It has no real key revocation system (just stop including keys for certain defeated devices in new releases), and nowadays a computer can brute-force every possible decryption key within seconds, rendering revoking stolen drive keys completely…

> Blu-ray on the other hand... well, where do I start? 128-bit AES, key revocation, host authentication, virtual machine fixup tables, digital signing, Media Key Block updating, Java applications... It would almost seem like most of the engineering for the Blu-ray format went into things which very specifically doesn’t act in the interest of the buyer. Given the current state of things, I wouldn’t count Blurays as me…

The same could be said though of DVD. Remember that DVD is completely proprietary - we've just done a fantastic job reverse-engineering it. Blu-ray, ironically, is still proprietary, but the specification on how the DRM is implemented is actually public information and you can just download that online. You won't get the required encryption key for your new device without a contract though for it to work, but if you want to read the details, that's fine.

https://aacsla.com/aacs-specifications/

Ultimately, if all the manufacturers decide to stop sale, there's nothing you can do about that. I'm not too worried about Blu-ray yet, as it is still in the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and I don't think gamers will be excited about losing physical media as an option (considering PS5 with Disc has outsold the Disc-free version, like, 4-1).

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#80

Post by kranke155 »

nsxwolf wrote: post #64
rthomas6 wrote: post #47

I have started a modest Blu-Ray/4k Blu-Ray collection. For me, it is by far the best movie experience I've had with any format. It takes maybe 90 vs 20 seconds to get the movie playing, but in return I get noticeably better quality. 4k Blu-Rays' bitrates are around 128 Mb/s. For comparison, Netflix tops out around 17 Mb/s. It really does look and sound noticeably better if you have the TV and surround setup to take a…

I don't have much physical media since finally going 4K HDR, but so far my experience hasn't been great. I purchased the Mission:Impossible boxed set, and it came with a download code to use on iTunes. The discs look like trash. Noisy, grainy, just bad. The iTunes versions look phenomenal. It would be nice if there was a way to know how good the quality of a particular release is before buying it. Reviews I read don'…

There are sites who do this exact kind of review.

https://www.google.com/search?q=review+picture+quality+blura...

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