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Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

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Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#321

Post by throwaway287391 »

wkjagt wrote: post #206

It's actually worse than the title suggests. It's $5 per month! I wonder what justifies this recurring cost.

Yes, I'm so completely fed up with recurring subscriptions for things with negligible or no recurring costs for the seller. This one is of course particularly obnoxious given the hardware itself is expensive and the recurring cost is 0. But for example I would've gotten an Oura ring by now if they would just charge twice the price for the ring itself and not require a subscription, even though the subscription fees over the lifetime of the hardware would probably add up to a significantly smaller amount. To me it's just incredibly off-putting -- it reeks of greed and feels like a blatant attempt to fool customers by obscuring the actual cost. I guess it must be working for them, but for me, the cost of anything with a recurring fee gets mentally rounded up to "approximately $infinity".

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#322

Post by mauvehaus »

lmm wrote: post #160
halgir wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human, so that their action figures would be classified as "toys" rather than "dolls" and thus charged a lower tariff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_Stat...

Sounds like Ford putting seats in the back of their vans so they could pay less tax when importing them from Mexico, then removing them before they're sold. Looks like they've now been fined, but they got away with it for a while.

This was also the reason for the (in)famous BRAT seats:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_BRAT

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#323

Post by Corrado »

walthamstow wrote: post #316
halgir wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when lawyers successfully argued that X-Men are not human, so that their action figures would be classified as "toys" rather than "dolls" and thus charged a lower tariff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz%2C_Inc._v._United_Stat...

Hoo boy we have some classics in that category in the UK. My personal fave is when morning TV host Lorraine Kelly successfully argued she wasn’t hosting as herself but acting a character called Lorraine Kelly, with very favourable tax consequences.

I think Steven Colbert hosted a show using himself as the host. I’m not sure about the tax implications though.

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#324

Post by brushfoot »

bhickey wrote: post #315
brushfoot wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rage bait. People hate subscriptions, understandably so, and people without A/V experience might expect a camera not sold as a webcam to easily double as a webcam since they both can capture video. It's just a really poor reason to be outraged at Canon (or Sony or any of the other companies whose non-webcam cameras don't seamlessly turn into webcams without some standard A/V adapters).

Canon's webcam software was until recently free. It was the sole reason I bought a Cabin camera. This is a rug pull.

That's upsetting, but my point is the article itself is rage bait. It's not outrageous for Canon to charge for webcam software when there's HDMI video-out on the camera.

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#325

Post by _fizz_buzz_ »

jorvi wrote: post #66
alibarber wrote: post #20

I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously. The problem however wasn't Canon, but that I lived in a region (EU) that would have imposed a customs tariff on cameras that could do that, but by keeping it under that, the camera would be classed as a 'stills' camera and so was therefore exempt. Admittedly this is different from the case in the article - but it…

That sounds like a relic left over from a bygone era. Like the digital storage levy we still pay despite music and movie piracy only being rampant from 1990s-2000s :) I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

> I love the EU but it certainly has its idiosyncrasies.

Tariffs around the world have weird stuff like that. Very little to do with the EU itself. Expect a lot more weird things like that to happen in the US now with the new US government implementing new tariffs.

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#326

Post by strogonoff »

tempo23058 wrote: post #186
strogonoff wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding products from China being cheaper: remember that Japanese, Korean, and Western companies are the ones mostly innovating and absorbing the R&D costs. Remember how modern OLEDs were made feasible basically by LG and Samsung? Having stolen that IP[0][1][2], without any R&D costs but with dirt cheap manufacturing due to direct and indirect subsidies like relatively almost nonexistent labour protection laws, PRC…

"Long before the United States began accusing other countries of stealing ideas, the U.S. government encouraged intellectual piracy to catch up with England’s technological advances. According to historian Doron Ben-Atar, in his book, Trade Secrets, “the United States emerged as the world's industrial leader by illicitly appropriating mechanical and scientific innovations from Europe.” Everyone is a thief. https://ww…

Weren’t people in the US doing so at that point actually fresh English/Irish themselves who just moved or were moving to the new world? Can you elaborate how it is similar to the situation with PRC now, unless you suggest it’s freshly founded by Americans?

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#327

Post by brushfoot »

bhickey wrote: post #319
brushfoot wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP is using a camera as a webcam that's not sold as a webcam. That's fine, I do the same with mine, but it's also fine of the manufacturer to allow for that by simply providing A/V interfaces instead of trying to account for every use case.

Canon advertises their cameras as webcams.

No, they don't. They advertise that the camera can "turn into" a webcam with the right software or through HDMI out.

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#328

Post by klondike_klive »

petepete wrote: post #308
magicalhippo wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or when the makers of Jaffa Cakes baked a giant 12 inch version[1] and brought it to the court to argue they were cakes and not biscuits to get lower VAT. [1]: https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/10/time-compan...

I wish supermarkets would put them on the cake aisle instead and keep the biscuit aisle pure.

That's a mass protest I could get behind

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#329

Post by fxtentacle »

virtualritz wrote: post #224

That's reminds me when I was in South East Asia a few years back and wanted to do some time lapse or series photography with my Sony Alpha a7ii. A camera that I had paid close to 2k€ for (just body, no glass). It required an app to be installed on the camera that was paid-for. Which in term required the camera to be connected to a WiFi. Imagine discovering this while on a trip in the jungle or the desert or whatever…

Wow, I had the exact same experience with a Sony Alpha 6. Also used a laptop to VPN back home ...

Re: Canon wants us to pay for using our own camera as a webcam

#330

Post by jcarrano »

alibarber wrote: post #20

I also discovered that I couldn't use my Canon SLR to record more than 30 minutes of video continuously. The problem however wasn't Canon, but that I lived in a region (EU) that would have imposed a customs tariff on cameras that could do that, but by keeping it under that, the camera would be classed as a 'stills' camera and so was therefore exempt. Admittedly this is different from the case in the article - but it…

In Germany, all storage products (e.g. USB sticks) have to pay a canon "because you could use it to pirate media". Now, if I pre-paid the canon for pirating, does it mean I'm authorized to?
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