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The case for physical media ownership

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Re: The case for physical media ownership

#191

Post by joquarky »

wilg wrote: post #158
blfr wrote: post #3

Just pirate it. They can't tell you this but there's a quagmire of rights, licenses, agreements, treaties... and you can untangle this Goridan Knot by just pirating, especially media, for your own use. There are pixel perfect 4k drm-free rips out there made by people who poured thousands of hours into understanding codecs. They will work on any platform, forever, you can stream them or play offline. These rips can be…

Yes, of course it's easier to pirate it. The problem is that its unethical (and illegal). That you find it inconvenient to pay for things you want is not a valid justification.

Your values are outdated and impractical. You've obviously stalled at the "law and order" phase of moral development which enables the parasites who are abusing copyright law in order to extract every cent from us.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#192

Post by trelane »

Holding it on your hand is insufficient. Using it may require an external server or certain chosen proprietary software that could be taken from you at any time or itself requiring an external server.

The bits you want to own must be entirely self-contained, and able to be screwed using whatever software you may choose, especially open source (though if the format is fully documented so that anyone can create and distribute a viewer, the software need not be open source.)

See also, The Right to Read. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#193

Post by xandrius »

locao wrote: post #142
xandrius wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battle is alive and well, pirating has never been easier and of this high quality. Support the creators however you want but go foster an environment around your friends and family that there are alternatives to paying evil companies who will remove your access to content willy nilly.

The problem today it's hard to convince even myself to pay the storage premium, but I 100% agree with you.

Premium? Sure things are more expensive but you can get 1TB hdd for 25-30 eur. You don't need an ssd and I'm sure you can find second hand drives even cheaper (or larger).

Starting a subscription is money down the drain.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#194

Post by saulpw »

I'm reading "Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld" by Byung-Chul Han, who has things to say about it. "Things" are naturally possessions to be owned; the non-things that we as a society are moving towards are information to be consumed. If you have a physical book, you can pass it along to someone else, margin notes and dogears and all, but the experience of an e-book is fundamentally different. You might feel like you 'own' the bits because they're on your local computer and have no DRM, but your relationship to the actual item is not one of ownership. Just think about leaving your favorite book as .epub to someone in your will to see how non-sensical that would be.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#195

Post by xandrius »

wilg wrote: post #159
xandrius wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battle is alive and well, pirating has never been easier and of this high quality. Support the creators however you want but go foster an environment around your friends and family that there are alternatives to paying evil companies who will remove your access to content willy nilly.

You actually have to support the creators however THEY want if you want access, not however YOU want. I suspect you're not actually supporting all the creators of the things you watch via piracy!

This perspective has been beaten down to death but, just so you know, whenever you went to see a movie at friend's house, you also didn't contribute and were in fact pirating the content.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#196

Post by cgh »

ripe wrote: post #172

Since I don't see it mentioned yet in the comments: In 2011, movie studios created a digital ownership service called Ultraviolet. You could own titles in your "UltraViolet Digital Rights Locker" and access them from multiple devices via third-party streaming services. [1] "The UltraViolet Digital Rights Locker will keep track of all of the consumers’ UltraViolet digital purchases, whether they bought a movie or tele…

Maybe not mentioned in the comments, but it gets a full entry in the article.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#197

Post by mnahkies »

autoexec wrote: post #169
mnahkies wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I brought half life 2 there was a lag of about 2-4 years before I could play it for the first time - I didn't read the fine print, and on a dial up connection I couldn't get past the steam client updating in a reasonable amount of time, mind you I was able to download much larger Linux ISOs over time frames of a month+ through resumable downloads. Not really an issue these days but it certainly was back in the d…

Steam's DRM is still an issue today and it means that you have to get cracked copies of most of the games you paid for in your library if you expect to ever own them. I spent some months without an internet connection only to find the steam games I'd been playing offline just fine suddenly refused to launch until I allowed steam to phone home to grant me permission to play the games I paid for. Steam could go out of…

I'm aware, and I'm choosing GOG when I can now, though even then I see phoning home (or attempts to) happening (opensnitch is useful for that https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch) - I've paid for some titles 2-3x over which is frustrating, admittedly I don't have the physical media from the first time which is on me, but it's frustrating seeing single player games wanting to phone home

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#198

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

nik282000 wrote: post #164
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #116

The sad thing is that it's also true for money. Cash that you can hold in your hand it's yours, whereas the cash that you own at the bank is a IOU subject to the contract that you sign .

Cash in hand can be rendered equally worthless by an adverserial government that drives down its value by printing more.

That's true but not instantaneously , but I get your point.

Gasoline, diesel, bullets, firearms, explosives, water, canned food, lubricants, soil, seeds are the only thing that are truly yours and cannot be taken from you or diluted into irrelevance

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#199

Post by joquarky »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #55
cube00 wrote: post #26

Sony's one sentence notice is pretty grim considering how much money they made from these sales (sorry licensing). From September 1, 2026, due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library. Thank you, PlayStation Store [1] At least in 2023 it was two sentences and then they somehow negotiate…

I purchased it, and you're taking it away? Then either I didn't actually purchase it (despite the word appearing in the notice), or you're stealing it from me. Which is it, Sony?

Thank you for making a rare valid use of the term "stealing" in regard to intellectual property.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#200

Post by joquarky »

brookst wrote: post #160
carra wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The tension is that digital goods are somewhere between. That's the thing. If they are truly goods, they cannot be in between! Otherwise they are being handled as services and as such they will be terminated at some point. So unless we redefine the word, a true "purchase" can never depend on future actions from the provider (like renewing some DRM).

So no purchasing a warranty or service contract?

Who still purchases a warranty a la carte?

Hasn't it been clearly established for at least a couple decades now that all of these are de facto scams?

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