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Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

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Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I had expected to own it forever, I'd probably have bought DVD's, not digital. This is the opposite of what it should be. DVDs degrade over time, and can last for as little as 10 years. Digital should be mean transportable and convertible indefinitely.

Sure but who's gonna pay to keep those servers up in perpetuity? I would never buy digital thinking I'll have access indefinitely. At least with DVD's I can rip them and burn them on new DVD's if I wanted them to be "forever"

Make DRM free versions available for download? Music has had to go that route so that people can 'own' their downloads.

Maybe a self-hosted auth server of some kind is possible?

Adobe recently stopped letting you install CS3 even if you have the CDs because they took the auth server down. Do you think there was a reasonable expectation that when someone paid thousands of dollars for those discs, that they 'owned' them and had the right to install them repeatedly on their own computers?

>https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite.html

>You can no longer reinstall Creative Suite 2, 3 or 4 even if you have the original installation disks. The aging activation servers for those apps had to be retired.

Looks like they just added CS4 to the list...which is still usable software (and in fact offers features that are currently unavailable!)

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#312

The reality is that most big tech companies want to get all the benefits of "going digital", while shifting all the costs or downsides of that move to the consumers. This is not accidental. This is a long-term strategy backed by an elaborate PR campaign. The campaign was so successful that most people aren't even aware of how bizarre the whole idea of "renting" digital content really is. You're "renting" something th…

People are so happy that they are fine with not finding their liked/fav songs regularly on Spotify even after they notice it has gone missing. And they also kinda accept the mediocre recommendation (often laden with ads and "place in front" for pay content) which just feels like habit after a while.

It’s particularly noticeable on spotify. I actually don’t mind the rental model (though it’s overpriced for how I use it), but you cannot remove songs from curated playlists and expect me not to notice.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#313

The reality is that most big tech companies want to get all the benefits of "going digital", while shifting all the costs or downsides of that move to the consumers. This is not accidental. This is a long-term strategy backed by an elaborate PR campaign. The campaign was so successful that most people aren't even aware of how bizarre the whole idea of "renting" digital content really is. You're "renting" something th…

How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators FWIW, Apple answered this partly recently. At least as it applies to music. It's not very much, but it's supposed to be a lot more than most other services. I believe the context was refuting accusations in the Spotify dustup. I saw it on a site like macrumors, so some salt may be required.

Tidal, I believe, is the streaming service that gives most to the creators. This may or may not be related to Jay-Z being on the board.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#314

The reality is that most big tech companies want to get all the benefits of "going digital", while shifting all the costs or downsides of that move to the consumers. This is not accidental. This is a long-term strategy backed by an elaborate PR campaign. The campaign was so successful that most people aren't even aware of how bizarre the whole idea of "renting" digital content really is. You're "renting" something th…

People are so happy that they are fine with not finding their liked/fav songs regularly on Spotify even after they notice it has gone missing. And they also kinda accept the mediocre recommendation (often laden with ads and "place in front" for pay content) which just feels like habit after a while.

Wouldn't say people are happy. "They accept" is much closer. They accept the mediocre, because there's nothing they can do about it, and they don't understand how any of it works.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#315
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will create an entirely different system. Simple as that sounds I didn't think of it before. It seems that if all the old systems can/might/will be replaced by the mega corp we could simply set a modest fixed megacorp-tax of say 1-2% and have the rest go to the creator of the text or video. It was the author who provided the excuse in the old system why we should pay for easily replicated data. The argument that…

The MagaCorp will spend less than that 1% "lobbying" (hear legally bribing) politicians so that will never happen.

I’m still waiting for public domain Mickey Mouse. Disney only has a couple more years to get those checks sent out.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with a book, you have that privilege in perpetuity, and you can loan, transfer, and resell it. Coincidentally, NFT’s got the “transfer” side of the equation, but forgot about the “privilege” part! The tokens are yours in perpetuity, and can be transferred to others, but it’s not at all clear what privilege they provide.

> But with a book, you have that privilege in perpetuity, and you can loan, transfer, and resell it. But you don't. Not really. DVDs and books only last, what, 30-40 years. Are you entitled to a free replacement after that time is up?

> books only last, what, 30-40 years.

I have little pulp paperbacks that are older than 40 years, and those are about the least durable books around. I expect finer books to last 100 years and as many readings... and to go on to do it again. Barring environmental damage or my deliberately binning them, I expect most books I’ve already had 20 years to outlive me by going another 50+... and I got most of them used to begin with, often already 10-80 years old when I got them (a few older, but they’re outliers). If the next owner re-binds them many could survive another lifetime or two.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#317
post #203

Hot Take: Just pirate everything and be done with it. Between 5 Suscription Services it would take to get the few TV Shows& Movies I care about, Privacy concerns and unethical behaviour like this i just can't be bothered to look for "legal" sources anymore when any decent private tracker has everything i need in one place anyway. The content mafia didn't get it with music, until perhaps spotify for a while and now th…

You don't need to pirate it, you can just continue to buy physical media. CDs are unencrypted. The encryption on DVDs and blu-rays has long been broken. I continue to buy physical discs, rip them into my library, and then keep the discs as backups. It's the best of all worlds, and is both legal (in most places) and moral.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MPAA vs RIAA is sort of an apples vs oranges comparison though. Audio is much easier to compress, and MP3 made it very easy to make files small enough to download via dial-up modems. Video had years to go before quality was good enough at small enough sizes to make them a viable thing on the internet. Because of that, the MPAA got to watch/learn from mistakes that RIAA made in trying to protect its kingdom. Rathe…

Also I don't think there ever were physical audio formats with DRM? CD came out way before piracy was anyone's concern, and then it was too late to change anything. On the other hand, all digital video formats have always had the technical capability for DRM, starting with DVD.

>Also I don't think there ever were physical audio formats with DRM?

Yes, there certainly were - basically all early digital audio media were encumbered with SCMS[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Copy_Management_System

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#319

The reality is that most big tech companies want to get all the benefits of "going digital", while shifting all the costs or downsides of that move to the consumers. This is not accidental. This is a long-term strategy backed by an elaborate PR campaign. The campaign was so successful that most people aren't even aware of how bizarre the whole idea of "renting" digital content really is. You're "renting" something th…

The concept of renting alone is not bad - I mean, they have something you want (e.g. movie), you pay to watch it, then you don't need it anymore. Tried and true concept, same as me renting a tool from Home Depot - I use it for a day, then I don't need it anymore. It doesn't matter how replicable it is - when I use it, I don't care much about whether Home Depot has more tools like that.

What is ridiculous is that they pretend the other option - "buying" - which is usually much more costly - is anything close to what people mean by "buying" in a non-digital non-DRM world. If I buy a book, the book is mine. I can read it forever, I can sell it, I can use it as a doorstopper if I like, but whatever I do it's mine. If I "buy" a movie on DRM platform, I can watch is only as long as the platform allows me to, and yet most people do not realize the profound difference. I think it's a good thing there's now a growing awareness that his is false pretense and it's time to shine a light on it.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are so happy that they are fine with not finding their liked/fav songs regularly on Spotify even after they notice it has gone missing. And they also kinda accept the mediocre recommendation (often laden with ads and "place in front" for pay content) which just feels like habit after a while.

Wouldn't say people are happy. "They accept" is much closer. They accept the mediocre, because there's nothing they can do about it, and they don't understand how any of it works.

I’m happy. It’s not really a big deal to me if my uploaded content is removed and I think the service that Spotify provides is worth more than what I pay for it.
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