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The deception of “buying” digital movies

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#391

Post by babypuncher »

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.

The sources rich people buy their food from have historically been less likely to be unsanitary.

A lot of our food safety regulations are a result of public outrage over horrendous conditions in factories that produced low cost foodstuffs primarily eaten by the poor in the early 20th century.

Though you could easily argue that the rich still benefit from these laws because they help insure a healthy labor pool.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#392

Post by lowbloodsugar »

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…

The biggest difference for me is the sound quality. Lossless 7.1 24/96 or even 24/192. Compared to, at best, DTS or DD+.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#393

Post by nmeagent »

taylodl wrote: post #108
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…

You purchased a license to view the media content. I don't agree with this philosophy, I see it as a variant of "right to repair" that we should call "right to own", but that's the way it is for now.

That's the way it is just as long as we tolerate it, so don't.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#395

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

There's another layer to this that I haven't seen in any of the comments thus far, and that is the fact that the movie studios are putting the GOOD movies behind the "second paywall." Many popular titles are not available for streaming, and require a "purchase" or "rental," outside of the titles you're getting with your particular services. I have Netflix, Hulu, Prime, HBO, and Disney, and it seems like, about half the time I get a hankering to watch something in particular (instead of just "grazing"), I see that it's not available on any of my services, and it's a rent/buy title. So, yes, I have bought some movies (less than a dozen), and I always buy them from Apple, if I'm having to buy. I've been tempted several times to "buy" the complete set of the Office on Apple TV for $99, but I fear exactly what the OP is talking about: a rug-pull that causes me to lose access to the library.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#396

Post by p_j_w »

nsxwolf wrote: post #91
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 t…

Which explains the downvotes I'm getting. I've apparently angered the cinephiles. Edit: I'm bemused that my subjective personal preferences have made multiple people this upset.

Or maybe you're getting downvoted because you were denigrating other people's personal preferences when you called the disc version "trash." You're guilty of what you accuse others.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#397

Post by tzs »

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #278
senko wrote: post #215

Copyright, as it exists in the 21st century, is a scam. It does not protect the artists, the creative works, or the little guy. It is a product of decades' worth of lobbying by very rich and powerful organizations and megacorps. I'm not against the idea of a copyright. An artist has the right to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and creative works do have value. However, the original idea of copyright has been bent, b…

Copyright law was created by and exclusively for lawyers and the oligarchs who can afford them on retainer. Just look at what Disney has done to us and you'll lose all sympathy for the mouse: https://i.imgur.com/58gB0hq.jpg

Your chart shows two copyright term extensions since Mickey Mouse was created.

As your chart shows ever since the first Copyright Act in the US, there has been a major revision every 40-70 years, typically to update for things that have changed since the previous Act such as new technology.

As far as I've been able to tell Disney has nothing to do with creating the 1976 Act, which was the first time their copyright term was extended. The 1976 was created largely to address the massive changes in technology and international trade since 1909.

As part of that there was wide consensus that the US needed to make its copyright law more like the rest of the world, to pave the way for the US joining the Berne Convention. The change in terms came as part of that, making US copyright terms match what nearly everyone else had.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#398

Post by jacobr1 »

abetusk wrote: post #359
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…

Personally, I think this is the best solution I've heard. It still has problems in that copyright holders need to be proactive and it punishes work that can't pay the copyright extension fee that doesn't become popular until later but I think these are reasonable compromises to make to serve the larger good. I haven't figured out a way to push this narrative in any meaningful way. People have a hard time distinguishi…

> it punishes work that can't pay the copyright extension fee

One tradeoff is to have the fee be proportional to the revenue it is generating. But this could encourage extension-by-default, rather than making it an intentional decision the copyright holder has to make: Is it worth "buying the monopoly rights." I think I would be ok with that if the increase for future extensions was steep. But that does also come at the cost of the second part,

> that doesn't become popular until later

You have a small-time creator that doesn't extend, and so loses out on massive potential revenue derived from future popularity of the work decades later. This would be unfortunate ... but on the other hand I think society would be more likely to make this true and create interesting derivative works if there were more works that were derivable. You need to keep durations short to make that happen.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#399

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

wpietri wrote: post #350
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.

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.

They also conveniently keep volunteers and churches from feeding the homeless, so subsidized corporations can handle that.

One needs only to taste legit French cheese, compared with, say, Austrian manufactured French cheese, to know food quality laws have little to do with actual food quality, and Austria has one of the strictest food legal systems in the World.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#400

Post by jacobr1 »

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...

Only for "non-profitable" works. It is a downside in the tradeoff. But even then the escalating price for extensions should offer an incentive to limit what works fall into this category and subsidize society when they do.

We are not just balancing the individual creators vs corporations, but also creators of derived works, and societies benefit at-large of more creative works in general. We want to maintain and compensate creators "enough" to maintain incentives for creation, but otherwise maximize the commons.

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