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The deception of “buying” digital movies

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#381

Post by NoGravitas »

xani_ wrote: post #372
jacobr1 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10-year extensions with graduated costs. You get first 10 years upon publication, for free automatically, or for a nominal filing fee to register your claim. The next 10 years costs (extending to 20 total) now costs a meaningful fee. Maybe a fraction of sales structured like a license owned by the public/government, maybe a known schedule of fees based on the type of work, but either way it is a non-trivial sum. Then…

That's even more corporation favoured. It's much easier to stomach the price as corporation than author...

Not if you're still making money off of the work. But if you're not making money off of it, it's an incentive to let the copyright expire. Corporations might sit on things that they're not making money off of in order to try to make money off of them later, but they'd be limited to 50 years, which is a vast improvement.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#382

Post by NoGravitas »

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…

>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.

It's almost as if there's a consistent economic process that leads companies to do this kind of thing again and again. We could call it "the tendency of the rate of profit to fall".

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#383

Post by eddieroger »

awiesenhofer wrote: post #259
titzer wrote: post #114

I am hoarding DVDs and it's because a.) it's cheap, b.) it's reliable c.) it's future-proof and d.) I don't trust tomorrow's political/cultural landscape to not disappear things down the memory hole as well as subtly editing out offensive material or otherwise altering things in hard to detect ways. Case in point, not long ago a family member witnessed "Scrubs" being scrubbed of a particularly offensive joke that ran…

> "Scrubs" being scrubbed of a particularly offensive joke Which one?

Seemingly this: https://etcanada.com/news/660724/scrubs-blackface-episodes-b...

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#384

Post by NoGravitas »

volleygman180 wrote: post #263
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,…

> re-sale of digital goods Sounds a lot like a problem that NFTs could fix

No, introducing artificial scarcity does nothing to fix the problem.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#385

Post by oxfeed65261 »

Retric wrote: post #302
Xeoncross wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the US have any state or federal laws that don't benefit the wealthy at least as much as a regular citizen? As far as I'm aware, even laws for the small business play into the favor of larger corporations either directly or via auxiliary laws.

US automotive lemon law for example doesn’t specifically benefit the wealthy or large corporations. What muddles the picture is people do benefit from economies of scale. So, if you make the law actually hostile for large companies both the general public and corporations are worse off.

Lemon laws only apply to cars sold with warranties. Wealthier people are more likely to buy new cars, or used cars with warranties. Poor people are relatively much more likely to buy cheaper used cars without warranties. Rich people also buy more cars over their lives, increasing their chances of coming across a lemon. Therefore, lemon laws are relatively more beneficial for wealthier people.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#386

Post by phpthrowaway99 »

moffkalast wrote: post #355
wpietri wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food safety laws are a good example. By acting as a floor on manufacturer and restaurant hygiene and ingredient quality, they help the poor a fair bit more than the rich.

The rich also need to well... eat. It benefits them as much as anybody. For example milk started to be regulated more only after someone in Al Capone's family got poisoned and he bribed the right people to make it a thing. You're kidding yourself if you think any of that was to benefit the poor in the first place lmao, just happens to be a side effect.

Rich people can eat at at places to nice and clean that the work areas are probably cleaner than some of the tables and chairs in the customer areas of low end dining places.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#387

Post by vel0city »

indymike wrote: post #379
vel0city wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of a streaming movie is a physical item? It is even further removed and a worse analogy than my concert ticket is like a streaming movie license. With one you physically have a few thousand-pound piece of metal in your garage with a title from the government of ownership, the other you have a limited license on an account maintained by the service provider. If you "buy" a car, and don't get a title, then ye…

> What part of a streaming movie is a physical item? The issue is telling someone this: Rent ($2.99) Rent HD ($3.99) Buy ($13.99) So I pick buy, and it sure looks like I own it because the other two choices were presented as rentals. The buy option really is a "long term rental" and should have a very easy to read disclaimer under it that says: "Buy access until 12/31/2029". That way the consumer does not conclude it…

> The buy option really is a "long term rental"

It isn't a "long term rental", it is a limited license to use it until the service provider isn't able to provide it. There isn't a pre-defined end date you're agreeing to with this buy button. Depending on the movie, putting an end date of 2029 is actually more limiting than what many of those videos will have. I bought movies on Unbox 16 years ago which are still available today, something you'd ensure wouldn't be possible with forcing them to put an end date only 7 years away.

You're literally arguing I should have had less ownership of access of the media than I currently do have.

I'd like to understand how buying a streaming video license is more akin to buying a car than buying a concert ticket. You brushed it off as a bad analogy and seemingly only offered a seemingly worse one. One is directly a physical object with government backed ownership registrations, one is a limited access token to enjoy some media. Which seems more like buying a concert or theater ticket?

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#388

Post by phpthrowaway99 »

oxfeed65261 wrote: post #385
Retric wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US automotive lemon law for example doesn’t specifically benefit the wealthy or large corporations. What muddles the picture is people do benefit from economies of scale. So, if you make the law actually hostile for large companies both the general public and corporations are worse off.

Lemon laws only apply to cars sold with warranties. Wealthier people are more likely to buy new cars, or used cars with warranties. Poor people are relatively much more likely to buy cheaper used cars without warranties. Rich people also buy more cars over their lives, increasing their chances of coming across a lemon. Therefore, lemon laws are relatively more beneficial for wealthier people.

I get what you're saying, but if a construction worker buys a new Ford F150 that is constantly breaking, that is a much bigger problem to him than if a wealthy person buys a Range Rover as a 3rd vehicle for Tahoe runs and that vehicle has some recurring check engine lights.

Unless we're calling construction workers buying F150s with 72 month loans wealthy these days.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#389

Post by withinboredom »

RealStickman_ wrote: post #339
withinboredom wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 90% sure an rpi can’t handle the Bitrate needed to watch a 4K video.

You can't just throw files on there. You should make sure the clients you're connecting support the codecs and formats natively and at that point the pi is basically acting as a NAS. It should play 4k fine like that if it has the bandwidth necessary.

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t think the pi itself has the internal bandwidth necessary.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#390

Post by Xeoncross »

wpietri wrote: post #367
moffkalast wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich also need to well... eat. It benefits them as much as anybody. For example milk started to be regulated more only after someone in Al Capone's family got poisoned and he bribed the right people to make it a thing. You're kidding yourself if you think any of that was to benefit the poor in the first place lmao, just happens to be a side effect.

The rich do need to eat, but they can and generally do eat from places with much higher margins and higher-value brands. Those places have less incentive to cut corners and more incentive to keep their customers healthy. The poorer you are, though, the more constrained your choices are and the more risk you may have to take. Food safety laws act as a quality floor (or a risk ceiling if you prefer), so they help poor…

While this is true, the OP's argument could also include other reasons they wanted this such as avoiding costly sickness in their employees.

I can assure you that amazon and walmart care at least a little about the health of the minimum wage workers they depend on to move inventory.

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