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The deception of “buying” digital movies

worldofmatthew.com

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Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#481

Post by brokenmachine »

js2 wrote: post #174

So here's what I do when I buy a movie, either on Blu-ray or via iTunes. I download the remux from Usenet. If there isn't one (rarely), I wait for the Blu-ray to arrive and I rip it myself. There's a U.K. release of Wages of Fear that you cannot get in the U.S. any other way than purchasing the Blu-ray from BFI. (The U.S. Criterion Blu-ray release is missing 5 minutes of footage.) Even for movies I rent or stream, I…

Hollywood has got their shit together.

They have optimized for user hostility and money.

They've created a system where consumers have bought their products many times over yet still don't own them.

As an aside, games and software is 100x worse. Often times there is just no way to get old software or games running at all.

Why, when emulation of old computers is mostly a solved problem?

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#482

Post by lmm »

paxys wrote: post #424
SergeAx wrote: post #166

I firmly beleive that for every movie I "bought" digitally of physaically I am entitled to download a torrent.

And a lot of people firmly believe that they are entitled to download a torrent without a purchase. Ultimately your beliefs don't matter, the law does.

The legal system is the servant of the people. Thankfully common sense still holds a place in it, especially on juries.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#483

Post by bdw5204 »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #281
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…

What do you think a reasonable form of copyright law would look like?

Basically a modern version of the US Copyright Act of 1790. 14 year terms with an automatic 14 year extension if the work is still in print and was in print for say 10 out of 14 years of the initial term. If it isn't made available in the country, it isn't under copyright. If you "assign" your copyright to somebody else, you have the right to revoke said "assignment" at any time and reclaim your copyright. Publishers should only be allowed to publish under a license from the creator and should be banned from being able to steal the copyright to the work from the creator via deceptive contracts. Corporate copyright should only be allowed if the work was actually the work of the corporation rather than the work of an individual or unincorporated group of individuals.

Patent law would, ideally, be abolished altogether as I'm not convinced that other types of patents are any more legitimate than software patents. Trademarks should not expire, of course, but there should be restrictions on what you can trademark to protect the public domain (for example, the mouse corporation shouldn't be able to evade the copyright term limits by trademarking its characters).

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#484

Post by BLKNSLVR »

slim wrote: post #463
joshspankit wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

it's actually shrinking the realm of ideas (culture) by design. since ideas are "property" their value is function of their rareness. economic forces are literally creating artificial scarcity of ideas.

On the topic of artificial scarcity, once food becomes quickly and easily synthesisable on consumer premises, does anyone think that will not be incredibly heavily gate-kept by roles similar, or even identical, to copyright as it is now?

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#485

Post by lmm »

For a very concrete example of this kind of issue, r18.com is shutting down without offering refunds or anything; videos people "bought" can be streamed (or "downloaded", but with DRM that will make them unwatchable when the service goes down) until 6 months after the announcement, then you're SOL.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#486

Post by brokenmachine »

indymike wrote: post #258
vel0city wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I buy a concert ticket. Does this mean I can go see that artist everywhere they perform forever now? No. I bought a revokable, limited access right to see a particular performance. Should we not use the term "buy" here as well?

> I buy a concert ticket. Does this mean I can go see that artist everywhere they perform forever now? This is a bad analogy. A better one would be, your bought a car from me, and three years from now, I tow your car away and do not compensate you for taking the car. Because buyer beware, caveat emptor, etc...

That's an interesting thought.

I wonder how long a used-car dealership that made people sign an unfair agreement similar to streamed movie legalese, and then later came to repossess people's cars, would last.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#487

Post by squeaky-clean »

brokenmachine wrote: post #475
squeaky-clean wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Good point, I should have emphasized that it can be perfectly clean, but it often sounds like it's missing something, so it's usually made dirtier afterwards.

I just wonder if the reason it sounds like it's missing something is because subtle noise and saturation sound objectively better to human ears, or if it's just because that's the precedent that's been set and we've grown fond of it. Early music was recorded to tape by necessity, and the digital era tries to bring those subtle distortions back to sound like it. Even a teen who has never listened to older music recorded to tape still listens to modern music that tries to sound like it was recorded to tape or passed through saturating transformers.

I think the uptick of intentional digital artifacts in music shows that we grow fond of what we're used to experiencing, even if it's considered a negative in an objective sense. But we can't ever really prove that without a separate society that somehow skipped the entire analog music (or film) era.

Also yeah Skrillex really breaks all the typical rules but his mixes sound fantastic (or garbage, depending on your opinion. His stuff is really divisive). The hosts of The Mastering Show podcast thought his youtube video was fake because of how much saturation and limiting he uses. I'm pretty certain it's totally real.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#488

Post by brokenmachine »

drstewart wrote: post #27

How big of a problem even is this? Serious question: who buys digital movies? I don't really know anyone who even buys movies at all anymore, but if they do it's likely they prefer a physical copy anyway. There's just so much content out there that the number of people that even care to rewatch a movie they've seen feels like it's really low.

I like re-watching movies that I enjoy. I don't need to pay too much attention because I already know the story and often I notice new details while watching.

At the very least, I know it'll be a good movie instead of taking a gamble with an unknown quantity.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#490

Post by Plasmoid »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #484
slim wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's actually shrinking the realm of ideas (culture) by design. since ideas are "property" their value is function of their rareness. economic forces are literally creating artificial scarcity of ideas.

On the topic of artificial scarcity, once food becomes quickly and easily synthesisable on consumer premises, does anyone think that will not be incredibly heavily gate-kept by roles similar, or even identical, to copyright as it is now?

We already do that. Regional appellations limit what food can be called. It's not champagne if it's not from a specific part of France.
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