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Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

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Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Piracy is theft.

Piracy, of actual -tangible- goods, is theft. Piracy of digital content is -literal- copying. The original item is not modified or changed. Copying is not theft. The politicians, media journalists, and corporations spent enough monies to brainwash children into believing copying is theft. It isn't. Never was. Never is.

Digital content of songs and movies is exactly the same as the way you consume it. It is the tangible thing. It’s like having a perfect atom to atom reconstruction of the Mona Lisa you can put on your wall and stealing it. People’s jobs depend on the money made from selling digital media and making more digital media takes money. You can try to abstract it away but it doesn’t make sense. Maybe the prices or agreements aren’t fair but the blacksmith can charge whatever he wants for what he makes.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#42
I was impacted by this, I have some digital magazines from the 2010s; Conde Nast Traveller. Honestly I don't care, like print magazines I read the issues a long time ago and haven't thought of them since.

I can download the PDFs and then reupload to drive if I want (the only annoyance here is that I have to do that, there's no simple "export to drive" button, or I can just pretend that I got them in the mail, read them, and tossed them in the recycling a decade ago.

If it were some magazine I really wanted to keep forever instead of inspiration for trips I already went on, it would be a bigger deal, but even then a nice pdf download is fine by me, slots in next to my big collection of old dragon magazines in PDF.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#43

Much like the phrase around crypto about "not your keys? not your crypto" goes, similar applies to all digital things: Not your local content? not your content" Things like Kindle Unlimited (which at least say they're subscriptions to content access) digital streaming and so many other services that let you "buy" things that you don't keep on your own device in your own chosen format are all bullshit waiting to happe…

I've been burned too many times by streaming services: 1. Removing entire series/movies 2. Removing specific episodes in a series 3. Making changes to content (e.g. Scrubs and its soundtrack) 4. Only having the inferior quality version of some content 5. And finally, to a lesser extent, just having bad metadata (Netflix in particular has listed episodes out of order) I'm becoming more and more envious of those YouTub…

Streaming services refusing to let me watch episodes of shows like Always Sunny and the Simpsons for political reasons is my primary reason for supporting piracy. These companies care more about pushing an agenda than they do about their customers. Disney in particular is downright evil and I don't want to give them a single penny.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#44
post #8

I wonder if this is just due to something internal at Google or if there has been some more global change that has made them uninterested in continuing this? Normally I'd guess the former given Google's legendary propensity for getting rid of services, but a couple months ago Amazon did something similar [1] which makes me wonder if the two are connected somehow: > Effective September 4, 2023, Amazon is no longer sel…

I think it's just a coincidence. The Kindle team has been gutted with job losses so almost everything non-core is being cut. This magazine business just never made anyone any money, so it's an obvious thing to cut.

Magazine subscriptions can be a funny business because they can be so much cheaper than buying an issue at the newsstand. Don't know what the economics look like these days. On Amazon (not uniquely) there were an awful lot of often non-obvious auto-renewal magazine subscriptions which doubtless caused Amazon some number of headaches.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with Israeli-Hamas conflict isn't that the accurate information isn't available. > It is that both sides of the conflict decided to use misinformation to bolster their media presence and their right to defend themselves. How can these two claims be compatible with each other? The first says that accurate information is available. The second says that it isn't.

Strictly speaking, it says that inaccurate information is also available.

You can destroy information with noise. Accurate information about the conflicts (or anything) is also available in the digits of pi.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy, of actual -tangible- goods, is theft. Piracy of digital content is -literal- copying. The original item is not modified or changed. Copying is not theft. The politicians, media journalists, and corporations spent enough monies to brainwash children into believing copying is theft. It isn't. Never was. Never is.

Digital content of songs and movies is exactly the same as the way you consume it. It is the tangible thing. It’s like having a perfect atom to atom reconstruction of the Mona Lisa you can put on your wall and stealing it. People’s jobs depend on the money made from selling digital media and making more digital media takes money. You can try to abstract it away but it doesn’t make sense. Maybe the prices or agreement…

Then refer to it as 'illegal copying', not 'stealing'.

Re: Google News is shutting down purchased magazine content, offering refunds

#49
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people should expect accurate information. Kinda the same as with justice. We know justice is served by people in nice togas and juries of peers who are really a nice name for your neighbours. And yet we still demand and hopefully will continue to demand justice, even if those people make mistakes or sometimes behave fraudulently. The problem with Israeli-Hamas conflict isn't that the accurate information isn…

> If you don't like "trumpism", you have to side with "radical left". If you don't like "radical left", you have to side with "trumpism" This strikes me as incorrect. There isn't really much "radical left" in the US, Biden himself is a centrist. I take your overall point regarding accuracy of information, and I think the comments re: "radical left" are an example of the inaccuracy we see in US media. "Radical centris…

I think the word "radical" or "far" as in "far right" are being perverted to deny the existence of both the "radical left" and deny the existence of a moderate right. I've noticed the language war (as in, changing the meaning of words) is more heavily employed by the "far left" (see what I did there?) than the right, but I'm happy to see evidence of the right using it.

For instance, I think if the right fought the language war, nuclear energy should be called "green energy" because it doesn't emit greenhouse gases. And you should be called "against green energy" if you oppose nuclear power.

To be clear, I am vehemently against changing the meaning of words, but it's seemingly an arms race and I happily add the word "far" to referring to the left just to help balance things out. I just wish it didn't have to be this way.

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