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The deception of “buying” digital movies

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#221

Post by throwaway08642 »

sbf501 wrote: post #209
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…

DeCSS was "cracked" because Xing accidentally included an unencrypted key in their firmware. The encryption wasn't cracked, it was subverted by poor security practices. If Xing hadn't screwed up, it may have been another decade before it was possible to rip a DVD, waiting for some other manufacturer to screw up.

No post body was provided.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#223

Post by ambicapter »

kortilla wrote: post #210
nonrandomstring wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It doesn't seem like that. It is like that. Welcome to modern tech, where the management, perception, control and tactical destruction of real value is the only place left to eek out a profit margin. We build 8 core CPUs and blow e-fuses in the factory to make t…

> We build 8 core CPUs and blow e-fuses in the factory to make them 4 cores. As resources dwindle and the planet fills with e-waste this disgusting, unethical wanton destruction of value continues because we've normalised it. This is a bad follow-on example because artificial price differentiation is sometimes what it takes to make a business viable. Making an actually worse model in the processor case has far more f…

> artificial price differentiation is sometimes what it takes to make a business viable

Sometimes wage theft is what it takes to make a business viable, so I don't really buy this as an argument.

> processors selected for lower tiers can be chosen precisely because they didn’t meet the bar for the high performance batch

This is a better argument

> The alternative world is you get no affordable processor at all

You probably do, just maybe their performance doesn't double every year. I would say that's probably an interesting tradeoff to make, depending on how catastrophic one thinks the state of the world is today.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#224

Post by PontifexMinimus »

dfxm12 wrote: post #124
PontifexMinimus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why eschew ripping physical media? You'll likely have a more uniform collection in terms of quality. Also depending where you are in the world, it's either legal or just as legal as torrenting media. In the latter case, it's not really enforced. It's also probably more honourable, if that's something you really care about.

> Why eschew ripping physical media?

None of my computers has a DVD drive! Though if I was interested in movies, probably one would.

> You'll likely have a more uniform collection in terms of quality.

Also 4K is useless to me as I have a 1080p monitor.

> It's also probably more honourable, if that's something you really care about.

Helping systems of control that are actively hostile towards me is not honourable, IMO.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#225

Post by samdcbu »

shockeychap wrote: post #89
necovek wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loaning a copy to a friend, which is what your example basically is, should also be protected by consumer laws.

If you're talking about loaning a physical copy of a movie to a friend, sure. We have to make arrangements to get the "thing" from one location to another. Surely you can understand that freely "loaning" digital copies - with none of the friction involved in physical media transport - would de-incentivize purchasing by others. If you want that, fine. But that will jack up the price of movies, since a lot fewer of the…

We already have exactly this system for library e-book lending. There is a queue of people on the waitlist for a book and once loan period for the current reader is expires it is automatically loaned (no scare quotes because it is in every way a loan) to the next person in the queue.

I don’t see why the same couldn’t be done for other forms of media. Movies, albums, maybe even software licenses.

This system will likely result in a fairly minor decline in VOD revenue due to fewer individuals purchasing their own digital copy because they are once again able to loan works to others and take advantage of the same sharing of works that was taken for granted with physical media. If someone borrows a friends license to a movie to watch it once instead of being forced by the studios to buy or rent their own copy then there will be some lost revenue but I think that revenue only existed in the first place because of the walled garden scheme of owning nothing that exists right now. I also think if VOD licenses actually had value and guaranteed longevity they would be more appealing to consumers.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#226

Post by alexfromapex »

vel0city wrote: post #182
indymike wrote: post #61

There needs to be a very large lawsuit or two about this. Claiming you can buy something, and then renting it, even if the rental is 20 years is fraud.

I buy a concert ticket. Does this mean I can go see that artist everywhere they perform forever now? No. I bought a revokable, limited access right to see a particular performance. Should we not use the term "buy" here as well?

When you are sold the concert ticket you know you are buying it to only view at the one specific time and location. It is an event ticket. With a digital movie, ostensibly buying lets you view it whenever you want wherever you want in perpetuity but that's not actually the case. We can use the term "buy" for digital movies if you actually are just buying a ticket that lets you view the movie however wherever and whenever the license specifies. But that information should be highlighted to the buyer otherwise it's deception.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#227

Post by mindslight »

fbanon wrote: post #8
jijji wrote: post #6

whatever happened to downloading a mp4 torrent of the movie and watching it instantly whenever you want?

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

It is painful to even just skim this thread, seeing basically every comment brimming with frustration from being stuck in a paradigm that's straightforward to leave behind. So much wasted human potential.

It's a solved problem - torrent your damn entertainment. Movies are just basic files sitting in a directory. Files that can be rewatched whenever you'd like. If you are traveling, copy to your laptop. If you move and haven't quite set up your entertainment center or Internet connection, watch it on a computer. If your friend is interested in something, copy it to their USB drive. No fucking nonsense of some third party capriciously disrupting your life precisely when you're trying to relax.

Any business trying to sell me some productized solution needs to beat torrenting for ease of use. So far none of them have even attempted, because they all end up warping the user experience to appease Hollywood's delusion of control. Just say no.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#228

Post by jaywalk »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #127
josteink wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. It doesn't seem like that. It is like that. Welcome to modern tech, where the management, perception, control and tactical destruction of real value is the only place left to eek out a profit margin. We build 8 core CPUs and blow e-fuses in the factory to make t…

If binning of CPUs were disallowed, it would result in even more e-waste because any imperfect chips would have to be tossed out instead of sold with fewer cores enabled. Bad example.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#229

Post by dylan604 »

abraxas wrote: post #12
stewx wrote: post #7

One under-appreciated limitation on digital movies is geographic restrictions. You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due to licensing. Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. You can sell your DVDs at a yard sale or on eBay but not your iTunes movies. IMO,…

Unfortunately geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits movie format. DVDs were regionally locked as well and even analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats that were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM). That said, the situation is quite a bit worse now as the modern DRM is harder to circumvent and geolocking more granular than ever before. But the intent to lock us down was alway…

>even analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats that were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM).

I think you're really stretching this one. These were dictated be the equipment of the regions. This was just as much of a pain in the ass to the studios as anyone else. If theStudios wanted to sell VHS in these markets, they HAD to make them in the format that would work in that region.

DVD/Blu-ray region was definitely something added on top of format limitations as DVDs were still PAL/NTSC, but by the time Blu-ray and HD arrived, those format limitations were less of an issue. It was all about the region locking at that point.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#230

Post by denton-scratch »

abraxas wrote: post #12
stewx wrote: post #7

One under-appreciated limitation on digital movies is geographic restrictions. You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due to licensing. Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. You can sell your DVDs at a yard sale or on eBay but not your iTunes movies. IMO,…

Unfortunately geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits movie format. DVDs were regionally locked as well and even analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats that were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM). That said, the situation is quite a bit worse now as the modern DRM is harder to circumvent and geolocking more granular than ever before. But the intent to lock us down was alway…

To be fair, NTSC/PAL/SECAM were political decisions made by governments at the start of the television era, well before modern copyright maximalism had got its boots on.
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