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The deception of “buying” digital movies

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#471

Post by tqi »

orthecreedence wrote: post #459
rndmize wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an odd question to me. Social security? Medicare? Free education? The entire welfare state? The vast majority of regulatory apparatus, which is generally implemented when wealthy/owner class people cause damage to employees/poor people to a degree that political action is taken (NLRB, FDA, OSHA, EPA, CFPB, etc.)? The great volume of services provided to all citizens, for free - weather forecasting, GP…

> This seems like an odd question to me. Social security? Medicare? Free education? The entire welfare state? These benefit the wealthy. They are used the quell the thirst for wealthy blood that would otherwise be prevalent. They are crumbs thrown to the masses to keep them from revolting during uncertain times. > The vast majority of regulatory apparatus I'd argue most regulatory bodies are captured agenies in the U…

> These benefit the wealthy. They are used the quell the thirst for wealthy blood that would otherwise be prevalent.

By that standard, a law completely redistributed wealth from top to bottom could still be viewed as primarily "benefiting the wealthy"...

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#472

Post by heavyset_go »

orthecreedence wrote: post #459
rndmize wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an odd question to me. Social security? Medicare? Free education? The entire welfare state? The vast majority of regulatory apparatus, which is generally implemented when wealthy/owner class people cause damage to employees/poor people to a degree that political action is taken (NLRB, FDA, OSHA, EPA, CFPB, etc.)? The great volume of services provided to all citizens, for free - weather forecasting, GP…

> This seems like an odd question to me. Social security? Medicare? Free education? The entire welfare state? These benefit the wealthy. They are used the quell the thirst for wealthy blood that would otherwise be prevalent. They are crumbs thrown to the masses to keep them from revolting during uncertain times. > The vast majority of regulatory apparatus I'd argue most regulatory bodies are captured agenies in the U…

> These benefit the wealthy. They are used the quell the thirst for wealthy blood that would otherwise be prevalent. They are crumbs thrown to the masses to keep them from revolting during uncertain times.

This is how Germany got some of its welfare state way back in the 1800's. Monarchy and statesmen realized they had to quell the masses or they'd get socialist revolutions from the burgeoning socialist movements at the time, and headed them off by implementing things like universal healthcare under Otto von Bismarck.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#473

Post by zdragnar »

wpietri wrote: post #440
simonsarris wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compliance with those laws help big ag and Starbucks WAY more than small farmers and small cafes, and pose barriers to entry.

How does compliance help them more? I'd think it's just the opposite. E.g., I live in a city that posts health department scores in every restaurant. This makes me more likely to eat at a small place because I can know that they're not cutting corners on safety. Whereas, having worked in high school at a large chain restaurant, I would expect those places to do well just through corporate persnicketiness. I agree the…

Regulatory capture. Make complying with rules burdensome enough, and only the bigger players can stay in compliance.

For a long time, Wisconsin was a perfect example. Home canned goods were allowed to be sold, but home baked goods were not, even though canning involves many more safety risks. The Wisconin Bakers Association successfully lobbied against legislation, but home baked goods were eventually allowed after a two year lawsuit. Even after the lawsuit, the Wisconsin agricultural department insisted that "baked goods" were limited to those items that contained wheat flour. It took another lawsuit concluding in 2021 to expand baked goods to include all non-perishable baked goods (gluten-free products, etc).

Most states don't even allow this "cottage food" industry.

Granted, I'm not arguing that some grandma selling kolaches down at the farmer's market is going to build the next Hostess brand, but everyone starts somewhere.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#475

Post by brokenmachine »

squeaky-clean wrote: post #309
nsxwolf wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder: If film grain never existed, would we invent it? If we had originally developed film technology where everything looked completely clean, would anyone have thought "Hey I've got a great idea, let's figure out how to make this look grainy"?

I don't think we'd recreate film grain, but I think some form of artifacts would exist and people would eventually grow a taste for them. Modern digital music can be completely clean and flawless. But it can also have some weird artifacts that can only exist digitally, like aliasing, stuttering from a corrupt file or skipping CD player, compression artifacts while streaming or from very low bitrate sources. And nowad…

Agree, just thought I'd mention that there are zillions of plugins to add these kinds of distortion/noise (like vinyl noise, ground noise, tape distortion, etc). Eg Devious Machines Texture, U-He Satin, etc, etc.

Also most modern synths have noise oscillators for this purpose (eg Serum, Pigments, etc, etc).

Things just sound too clean and perfect/boring if you don't use some kind of saturation/noise or distortion for ear candy.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure Skrillex puts CamelPhat on his master bus. The music video for one of his songs was his Ableton set and it was shown in there.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#476

Post by lmm »

bitwize wrote: post #465
wpietri wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 exemptio…

Real French cheese is made from raw milk, which is banned under USA food safety laws. It is objectively much tastier than the pasteurized stuff, and nobody dies from eating it.

In France around three people per year die from eating it. It's seen as an acceptable cost.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#477

Post by dewert »

cobertos wrote: post #474

Bandcamp is surprisingly the same way. I knew an artist who deleted all their stuff and I can't stream any of the albums I bought by them anymore.

Difference being that you could have downloaded lossless DRM-free copies of these albums. I see the streaming-your-purchases part as more of a convenience than a core service, though I can definitely understand if others see it differently.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#478

Post by danparsonson »

vel0city wrote: post #234
danparsonson wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a false equivalence though - it's well understood in this case that you bought the ticket not the performance, and that the ticket expires after one use. The same is not true of buying films, as it used to be possible to keep a physical copy (e.g. DVD) that no-one could take away from you, and that was recent enough that I think most people still (reasonably IMO) expect a perpetual license when 'buying' a movi…

> buying a limited license to watch a film Buying a VHS was still a limited license. You weren't allowed to reproduce it and sell the reproductions. You weren't allowed to then operate a movie theater around your off the shelf VHS tapes. You weren't entitled to a new tape once the tape wore out.

Missed a word, didn't I - a time limited license.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#480

Post by brokenmachine »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #392
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+.

Definitely, although most people don't even have a crappy soundbar, let alone a quality 7.1 discrete speaker setup.
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