201–210 of 392 posts
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…
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…
Another thing that always needs pointing out: that ad-free, copyable, unencumbered, pixel perfect 4K drm-free rip with multiple language audio streams, hand crafted accurate subtitles, chapter tags, and embedded poster art cannot be bought from the movie industry at any price. That's why piracy is a product problem, not a price problem. The industry refuses to produce and offer the superior product, so regardless of…
Downloaded stuff comes into one service on a server I own (Jellyfin or Plex) and I can see _everything_ there. Every movie and TV show.
On the official services, that I pay for, I need to go through a good half dozen trying to see what's where this time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The parent's point is that possession of a physical good is a bright line separation. For digital files, there's a huge difference between [Files you own] on a hard disk, and files [on a hard disk you own]. There are files you can put on a hard drive that you don't own and will ultimately kill themselves when specified criteria are met, like DRM'd ebooks.
I would argue that the files on your hdd that can expire or made unusable by some remote third party are as incomplete as a book that is missing half the pages. For example a keepass file without the password/key-file is incomplete, the same goes for Audible aax files that can not be played without per-user 'activation bytes.' You have possession of the file but you never owned its contents.
I'm curious what would take for regular people (i.e. people off HN) to realize what is pointed in the article is a real problem. In my experience, every time I mention this I'm labeled as: nostalgic old guy, Don Quixote wannabe, tinfoil hat supporter, pirate nerd who doesn't understand people just want convenience. I've seen people bit by losing access to purchased content shrug and say "yeah, that's bad isn't it? at…
Basically, I don't have much attachment to things so the prospect of losing something isn't such a big deal. Physical things can break down or be lost or stolen after all. Not much different from that to my mind.
The whole page is disorganized and lacks cohesion. Coupled with the fact that there is a mix of different levels of “badness” but they are all presented equally.
This reeks of LLM.
I fully agree with highlighting this topic, but I feel this page/blog/whatever weakens the argument by being so scatterbrained and using bad examples at times. It would benefit greatly from some kind of “scale” (selling licenses vs stopping sales vs refunding vs lost access).
And lastly “If you can’t hold it, you don’t own it” doesn’t make sense at all, I get what they were trying to do/say but many games on disc these days aren’t even the game (just a key that can be revoked) and/or require backend servers for updates or gameplay.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another thing that always needs pointing out: that ad-free, copyable, unencumbered, pixel perfect 4K drm-free rip with multiple language audio streams, hand crafted accurate subtitles, chapter tags, and embedded poster art cannot be bought from the movie industry at any price. That's why piracy is a product problem, not a price problem. The industry refuses to produce and offer the superior product, so regardless of…
There used to be this funny anti pirate advertisement, that tried to raise awareness in people to check if they maybe have a pirated DVD and not the original. Somehing like, make sure your DVD - has unskippable advertisment - long intro, also unskippable - ... If you don't have all that, but just a video that just plays the movie, you got to rush to the store and buy the legal obstructed version.
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.
As a very flattened retelling of history, it was only with the boomers that we reached the tipping point on how people started to think about copyright (Copyright != Attributed Authorship). With them, a majority started to believe in a world where the human history they consumed was a gift from the past, and that what they themselves create must be bought by future generations.
I'm not saying I have answers on how to build a better system, but the current one is neither ethical nor ideal - It's just creating (taxable) markets so business and gov is on board. The certainty with which people claim this setup provides great value to society is bullshit. The only certainty is that there are big businesses with vested interests and small creators who think their only ticket to sustainable income is their copyright (and having the --option-- requirement to sell it entirely, sublicense and all, to YouTube or Amazon).
I mean.. this claim is just untrue. "Owning" something is a social construct defined by law. Our entire society exists because we own things we cannot hold, that is, intellectual property. What this post is actually pointing out is that intellectual property that has transferrable physical representation has more value to the consumer . And intellectual property that does not have transferable physical representation…
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…
Naturally it got shut down and your media no longer plays.