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The deception of “buying” digital movies

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#401

Post by dpb1 »

Xeoncross wrote: post #255
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…

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.

social security, medicare, medicaid, WIC Programs, public schools, public transportation, all come to mind.

I mean, no coincidence that they are always on the top of the list to threaten and scheme to cut by the right wing.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#402

Post by extragood »

rendaw wrote: post #231
iamacyborg wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy blurays, rip them and then store them on a NAS to play back via Plex. Much, much better quality than any stream from Netflix et al.

How do you handle the storage for this? One bluray disk is about 60gb. I'm not sure if movies typically take 60gb but if you watch TV shows they do. 15 disks is 1TB. In a short while you're running a data center, especially if you collect a lot of video content. I've heard that you can get efficient re-encodings, but that typically means torrenting it from somewhere. I'm not aware of a way to make high quality re-enc…

I use this project by Don Melton to get a Blu-ray video down to an 8 - 10 GB file size: https://github.com/donmelton/video_transcoding

It uses HandBrake, FFmpeg, MKVToolNix, and MP4v2 with some custom tuned settings and has really good results from my experience.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#403

Post by shmerl »

DRM-free video should be a thing. Buy and save the file - that's it. If you don't have the file you can back up, it's a scam and not buying.

GOG tried to introduce that, but legacy film industry is too obsessed with DRM for all its usual wrong reasons so that didn't work out.

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/introducing_gogcom_drmfree...

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#404

Post by joshspankit »

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…

I’m going to pile on, but it’s important that it’s part of the copyright discussion:

Current copyright is dramatically limiting culture and cultural growth.

Any artist now needs to make sure that they are not inadvertently copying anything from their entire lifetime, and that of their parents.

It’s rarely good enough that an artist shows that they had never been exposed to a previous work, and so now I see artists taking one of two paths: 1) working in secret, trying desperately to thread the needle between making a living creating and losing it all by being discovered. 2) Forgoing the idea of true creative expression altogether, and limiting themselves to samples that they can pay for up front.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#405

Post by groovybits »

mttjj wrote: post #325
groovybits wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, can you explain (or link to) the process you use to download them? Is it manually one-by-one? Or is there a way to batch backup? Thanks

Use the TV App on macOS. Just go into the list view and right-click on a movie (or multiple) and then you can download it. I let the TV app do all its own folder/library management. I've just configured the library to be on my external drive instead of my internal drive (you can do this from the TV app preferences). Note that this doesn't remove the DRM or anything like that. This is simply storing a local copy of th…

Awesome, thank you! Have you attempted transferring those backups from one computer to another? (i.e. upgrading from one Mac to the next)

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#406

Post by mensetmanusman »

I work in R&D where tens to hundreds of millions are spent on talent/materials/engineering to design new high tech materials for the world.

It’s strange that this much effort practically gets about 10-15 years of protection(or less depending on prosecution time with the patent office), while a drawing of a mouse or “moving-pictures” is protected for a century.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#407

Post by jacobr1 »

phpthrowaway99 wrote: post #388
oxfeed65261 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, I think the OP is suggesting that the more likely scenario is some professional-class "weekend-warrior" type bought the F150s with the 72m loan, which later on was resold to the working-class construction worker on the secondary market.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#408

Post by noasaservice »

xani_ wrote: post #371
noasaservice wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, Mickey Mouse is under both copyright and trademark. If someone wanted to do "The New Stories of Mickey Mouse" they should be free to do so. If someone wanted to act as Disney using Micky Mouse, then they should be sued into oblivion for acting as another company.

That's a fair compromise. Original author owns the rights to a given piece of art in whole and trademark from title, so they can profit off their work and make next title without being mistaken for someone else. Everyone else is free to do with IP, do remixes etc. and if they make something with original IP that is better than originals, so be it ,competition actually working.

To be fair, I am a huge proponent of most trademarks. (general shape, color, and such I'm not a fan of)

A trademark means if I buy AMD, I'm not getting "shitty rebrand of chip 10y old by jank fab". Or it means if I buy branded food, I know what I'm getting.

Trademarks are essential for the protection to know the goods you buy from a company are what you're expecting.

And that's why I'm realllllly curious when a whole bunch of big companies sue Amazon for allowing counterfeit co-mingling (or being charged $$$$$ for separate SKUs), relating to trademark dilution. This is straight up provable damage.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#409

Post by aidenn0 »

FalconSensei wrote: post #290
NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

on the other hand, I don't think Mickey should go public domain.

What about the ballet The Sleeping Beauty? Disney used Tchaikovsky's music heavily in their adaption despite it being less than 70 years after his death (and even further from being 95 years from its premiere).

That's always my go-to example for copyright because:

1. Disney has benefited both from extending copyright and from the previous shorter duration of copyright

2. The fact that a work from the 19th century would still be under copyright in 1959 is astonishing to many people

3. Disney's Sleeping Beauty, despite opening to mixed reviews, is generally well received today and is a great example of what we are missing out on; this work (judged "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the LoC) could not have been made if today's rules existed in 1959.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#410

Post by nonameiguess »

D13Fd wrote: post #186

I've always understood this and it doesn't bother me, at least for iTunes/Apple movies. Yes, you get less than a DVD/Blu-Ray in that the media could potentially disappear. But you also get more. It works on your computer, your phone, your iPad, and instantly on every TV in your house that has a streaming device. It works when you travel. You can download every movie you "own" to every device you have, almost instantl…

I was considering a top-level comment saying something similar, at the risk of being severely downvoted for an opinion contrary to such a popular Hacker News hobby horse (you'll own nothing and be happy), but here you are already at the bottom of the page, so I'm just going to commiserate.

I do happen to still own a few DVD box sets from 15-20 years ago, and I haven't watched a single one in over a decade. I have no clue if they still work. I didn't even have a player for a long time, though my wife finally bought one a few years ago to be able to watch a Twin Peaks boxed set with deleted scenes that were not available in any other medium. As it stands, when I click the option to buy from a streaming service, I understand it doesn't mean it's forever, but I don't care. It just means I'm guessing I'll want to watch it more than once outside of the 48 hour rental window and it's worth the extra five bucks or so to do that. It doesn't mean I'm likely going to want to watch it again decades from now. Maybe it's just that I moved so much when I was younger, but the sheer number of DVDs and CDs I lost or accidentally destroyed over a decades greatly outweights what I have ever lost because a streaming service lost its license. And I'm glad to no longer need the external storage space.

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