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The deception of “buying” digital movies

worldofmatthew.com

491–500 of 565 posts

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So in your example, "big ag" is... people who do canning? The industrial bakeries supposedly threatened by home bakers selling at farmers' markets?

I'm willing to believe there are actual examples out there, but this is not it. Starting a bakery is not hard. I've traveled extensively in Wisconsin and there are plenty of small bakeries. And at least here in CA, a common way to get started building a food business is to rent time in a shared industrial kitchen. That suggests there are plenty of ways for people to get started, and that food safety laws are not a big burden.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's because we've evolved in nature to appreciate natural sounds, which always have distortion, harmonics and noise.

There's nothing that would generate perfect sine/sawtooth waves or perfect, undistorted echoes. So anything else just sounds unnatural/robotic.

I think it's the same with film grain, looking at flat perfectly polished surfaces can seem boring and unnatural to the eye.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#493

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…

I like the idea of renewal at a creator-set price.

Every 10 years, declare that your work is worth $x, then pay a renewal fee of $x/10 (or some other fraction based on more solid economics).

If anyone volunteers to pay more than $x in place of your $x/10 your work is now public domain.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#494

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…

Copyright is a right. Having to pay for it sounds absurd. I have a much simpler solution: copyright terms are fourteen years from date of publication. There are no extensions. It could even be a lot shorter nowadays. Nearly all media gets nearly all of its profit in the first year. A lot of commercial software goes out of date in a few months rather than yearly releases.

> Copyright is a right. Having to pay for it sounds absurd.

It really isn't. It's a temporary privilege of state enforced monopoly.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#495

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.

It may be subjectively more tasty, but it's objectively more dangerous. E.g:

https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2017/05/what-are-the-odds-840...

https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/rawmilk-outbreaks.htm...

But this all seems pretty far afield from my point, which is that food safety laws benefit the poor. I am happy to believe that some dangerous food, like casu martzu or blowfish sushi, is also very tasty. But taking risks for exotic, connoisseur food experiences is also generally the provenance of the rich. So it seems like this also proves my point.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#496
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…

obligatory link I found it here sometime ago

https://career-end.donrosa.de/

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#497
post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, yes, taste, the most objective of the senses ...

'the dress' would like a word with you

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t think the pi itself has the internal bandwidth necessary.

The rPI moved the NIC off the USB bus so is actuy1gbps which is plenty for even 4k and it has hardware x264/x265 so should playback fine.

Also most 4K videos on internet (except your recorded HQ file by camera or latest phone) even below 100Mbps so it's fine. Even in UHD Blu-ray, it's 128Mbps max.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#500

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!)

I doubt it. All streaming services are around this bitrate or a little higher, like around 30 Mb/s or so. This bitrate is good enough for most people and is likely to remain so. People watch on their 50" bargain TVs with a soundbar, or even just on a laptop/tablet. Most people wouldn't even be able to tell a difference. It's just not worth the cost of the almost 10x bandwidth for Netflix to stream losslessly encoded video and sound that like 95% of customers won't even notice.
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