I'm done with Google

Where convenience and accessibility tend towards paying, that will be the preferred solution. Spotify, Steam and Netflix built billion dollar businesses on that assumption being correct, in three different areas where people pirate frequently.

None of these businesses thought their time was best spent sending letters to individuals who were pirating. Not legal letters, not random HN comments talking about capitalism. Instead, they offered a solution.

I will argue about the first problem: one doesn't really own the things we buy on Google platforms.

This is a general trend with many platforms nowadays like Amazon and Kobo ebooks for example but also Netflix, Spotify and almost everything else. They just don't want to let you to download the content in DRM-free format. They say they are legally obliged but in reality this is what the content industry wants. They have used their lobbying power to obtain from the government the laws they wanted.

I sustain that this system is unfair to the users because:

1. users can be deprived of the goods they purchased with little or no possibility to have their rights restored. 2. users cannot, even temporarily, lend something they purchased to a friend or a familiar 3. users cannot sold back of give away what they purchased and no longer want to use

Please note that all these problems did not existed when the goods were physical objects like a music CD or a book. You owned them and you was free to lend or just give them to a friend or just someone else.

Please note that the fact you had these rights was not thanks to the benevolence of the content creation industry but it was just come from the simple fact that they sold you a physical objects and it was not practically possible to restrict people rights on the object they purchased.

In addition the laws we have since centuries protect the right of private property. These laws are a pillar of our society and has not been done under the pressure of some industries' lobbies.

What follows from these considerations is:

- the practice of restrict people from content they purchased in unfair to the user - the laws that govern these practice serve the interest of the content industries and are contrary to the user's right.

This means people should say "no" to purchase content on all these platforms and only purchase digitally when they get a DRM-free file with the content they purchased. It is also fine to pirate things because the system is just broken and unfair.

I would like also to add that even when they sell you a physical object or give you a DRM-free file, the relation between the user and the vendor is unfair. The reason is that, if we look to all the users together, the vendor can extract an unlimited and potentially disproportionate amount of money from their creation. I consider this unfair because the reward they get should be proportionate to the value of the content and the work it took to produce it but this is not actually the case.

To cite some example: an Elsevir article written and peer-reviewed by University researcher, may be thirty years ago, and if you want to read it you have to pay a ridiculous disproportionate amount like 30 dollars. They can extract and unlimited amount of money for something they contributed very little to. The system is flawed and unfair and the law are not there to fix things.

Another example: the copyright for US created content have been extended to the unreasonable to protect the interest of the content industry. Initially the old copyright law dictated a more reasonable duration before the copyright expired.

This means that the system of the copyright was already unfair since its beginning but now it is even more unfair than before.

We are trading our rights for a better system and good laws for convenience but sometimes, because of an accident, we are struck all of the sudden about how unfair the system is.

But I'd expect that of HBO also. They were the original channel to go to if you wanted to see great movies when I was a kid.

Ranting about Spotify's, Apple Music's, Tidal's payments to the artists or region-locking IP is a smoke-and-mirrors move from major labels, they are the ones forcing these practices unto the distributors/streaming services.