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The deception of “buying” digital movies

worldofmatthew.com

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#441

Post by Retric »

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.

Every car initially comes under warranty and if a used car was returned under lemon law you can find out before buying it. https://www.lemonlawlawyerscalifornia.com/2022/08/how-to-kno...

Thus lemon law benefits every single consumer whether buying a new or used car.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#442

Post by Retric »

phpthrowaway99 wrote: post #412
jacobr1 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose. Even lemon laws are funny if you follow them to their conclusion, so maybe OP is right. Once a vehicle gets lemon lawed, it gets sent to auction where it is disclosed to dealers, and then it's just sold again to the public as a used car without the ability to be lemon lawed at that point.

Sold yes, but also marked as a lemon. https://www.lemonlawlawyerscalifornia.com/2022/08/how-to-kno...

There is nothing wrong with buying a lemon car at a sufficient discount.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#443

Post by the_af »

iggldiggl wrote: post #364
the_af wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does allowing re-sale make iTunes unprofitable? I doubt it. Does reselling used physical books make the book publishing business unprofitable?

I'd wager that physical vs. digital media does somewhat affect the outcomes here…

It probably does, I think mostly in the sense digital media is relatively new and misunderstood -- even today -- and publishers thought they could get away with an iron grip they simply could not have with physical stuff. So it's probably not that they lose profitability, but more that the extraordinary profit margins of digital get capped back to normality.

Disregarding piracy [1], if I can sell a digital item and lose access in the process (so that I'm not making duplicates out of thin air), then what's the harm? That it's easier and more efficient to do used sales this way? Well, aren't free market proponents all about efficiency? Or is it just when it doesn't affect their profits?

[1] If we don't disregard piracy, then all bets are off and whatever the publisher wants becomes irrelevant.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#444

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

tzs wrote: post #397
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

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 t…

You stopped just short of the worst one:

>The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act – also known as the Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or (derisively) the Mickey Mouse Protection Act[1] – extended copyright terms in the United States in 1998. It is one of several acts extending the terms of copyrights.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#445

Post by wpietri »

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #399
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.

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.

> One needs only to taste legit French cheese,

Not sure how you got from food safety to how much you like the taste of particular cheese, but to me they're very different problems. I'm only talking about food safety.

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

Not generally, but perhaps in your area. Where I am there are special exemptions for charitable organizations giving out food: https://www.sfdph.org/dph/EH/Food/lscfo.asp

There are still some requirements, which I think is good. Nobody, homeless people included, should receive unsafe food.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#446

Post by WesternWind »

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote: post #399
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.

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.

Could you link me to something showing that that's an issue? Because the issues people run into as volunteers that I've hard about tend to be city ordinances, not state or federal food safety requirements.

Further I'm aware of Food Not Bombs winning a case by claiming an expressive first amendment right to share food.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#447

Post by rsch »

joshspankit wrote: post #404
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 t…

Steamboat Willie is from 1928, almost a hundred years ago. And it is still under copyright.

So you can make that “the lifetime of their grandparents” too.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#448

Post by cgrealy »

deadbunny wrote: post #431
volleygman180 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Steam has a list of licences I own for the games I have on Steam. They could easily add 2nd hand sales to the Steam store and just transfer that license to another user. No need for a Blockchain when Steam have a perfectly working database.

The issue with resale of digital content is that there is no discernible difference between new and used.

Why would anyone ever pay full price for a "new" game if there were "second hand" copies that were completely identical to a new version available for less?

I don't care about EA or Activision losing out on that 10th private jet, but second hand sales would absolutely hurt small creators doing great work.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#449

Post by cgrealy »

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…

>4k Blu-Rays' bitrates are around 128 Mb/s. For comparison, Netflix tops out around 17 Mb/s.

Surely, this is just a current business decision of Netflix. As internet speeds increase, the bit rate is almost inevitably going to catch up (most likely if Netlix et al decide to charge a premium for it!)

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