The deception of “buying” digital movies • Hacker News Board

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#361

Post by wpietri » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #349

the_af wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DVDs were regionally locked as well To be fair, those of us who tend to complain about these things also raised hell about DVDs back then. Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. It was such a relief when the restrictions were hacked away (was it that an encryption key got leaked? I don't remember the details).

> Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. It was such a relief when the restrictions were hacked away (was it that an encryption key got leaked? I don't remember the details). DVD region locking didn't need to be hacked away; it operates purely on the honor system. There are 8 regions, and a DVD contains a single byte specifying which regions it should be allowed to be played in. If the bit for your…

Now you can, but back in the day of hardware-only players, those were also region locked. So it was much stronger than an honor system originally.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#362

Post by dewey » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #326

dewey wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due to licensing. In the EU we have an interesting law regarding that, if you subscribe to Netflix in Germany and then travel to another EU country you'll still get the same catalog as in your home country. If you have a US account and travel to the EU you'll get access to the catalog of the coun…

do you have a link to this law?

It's the Portability Regulation: https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-9-2-2018/4728

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#363

Post by rthomas6 » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

iamacyborg wrote: post #346

rthomas6 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's good. Some people seem to have issues with Dolby Vision. See here: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/rw6mn3/what_is_the_cu...

I’m trying to think if I have any discs with Dolby Vision, I’m only buying 1080p blurays so maybe not. Most recent purchases were Dune and the new Batman movie and those both look and sound fantastic.

I believe Dolby Vision is only on 4k Blu Rays, so you're probably good.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#364

Post by iggldiggl » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #49

bigyikes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? A seller would do this to undercut iTunes, making a sale much more likely. >As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes Because the seller would likely price it lower than iTunes. The real question is: how does this affect the digital goods market overall? Does allowing re-sale make iTunes unprofitable?…

> Does allowing re-sale make iTunes unprofitable? I doubt it. Does reselling used physical books make the book publishing business unprofitable?

I'd wager that physical vs. digital media does somewhat affect the outcomes here…

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#365

Post by hyperman1 » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

dml2135 wrote: post #144

izacus wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't fix the core problem though - the platforms will just use another word for it and you still won't be able to take your content with you on a vacation or give it to your friends and family. It's a massive degradation of consumer rights you had guaranteed with physical media.

I think getting rid of the deception and forcing companies to be upfront about what they're selling would be a significant improvement. Hard to get companies to change when people don't even realize the problem.

'License' and 'EULA' basically do what you propose in the software world. They were a ploy to get more rights form 'buyers' than copyright allowed.

It works so well that a lot of people think companies can't sell software without giving the right to unlimited copies, even if a book or dvd are trivial counterexamples.

Basically the button 'buy' changes to license

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#366

Post by abetusk » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

senko wrote: post #215

Copyright, as it exists in the 21st century, is a scam. It does not protect the artists, the creative works, or the little guy. It is a product of decades' worth of lobbying by very rich and powerful organizations and megacorps. I'm not against the idea of a copyright. An artist has the right to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and creative works do have value. However, the original idea of copyright has been bent, b…

What's also bad is that most of the artists that don't benefit from copyright in it's current form are proponents because it's such an emotional issue.

Corporations barely need to do any propaganda because so many artists advocate for exploitative system without any prompting.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#367

Post by wpietri » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #355

wpietri wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food safety laws are a good example. By acting as a floor on manufacturer and restaurant hygiene and ingredient quality, they help the poor a fair bit more than the rich.

The rich also need to well... eat. It benefits them as much as anybody. For example milk started to be regulated more only after someone in Al Capone's family got poisoned and he bribed the right people to make it a thing. You're kidding yourself if you think any of that was to benefit the poor in the first place lmao, just happens to be a side effect.

The rich do need to eat, but they can and generally do eat from places with much higher margins and higher-value brands. Those places have less incentive to cut corners and more incentive to keep their customers healthy. The poorer you are, though, the more constrained your choices are and the more risk you may have to take. Food safety laws act as a quality floor (or a risk ceiling if you prefer), so they help poor people more than the rich.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#368

Post by moffkalast » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #114

I am hoarding DVDs and it's because a.) it's cheap, b.) it's reliable c.) it's future-proof and d.) I don't trust tomorrow's political/cultural landscape to not disappear things down the memory hole as well as subtly editing out offensive material or otherwise altering things in hard to detect ways. Case in point, not long ago a family member witnessed "Scrubs" being scrubbed of a particularly offensive joke that ran…

Well you do you. If you ask me, DVD quality (480p) is not really watchable anymore these days. Looks like what VHS looked like when DVDs were new now that we have full HD and 4K to compare it to.

Just going full on pirate with an HDD full of instantly accessible files seems way more practical, especially living in a country where it's de facto legal.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#369

Post by Retric » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

Adraghast wrote: post #340

Retric wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US automotive lemon law for example doesn’t specifically benefit the wealthy or large corporations. What muddles the picture is people do benefit from economies of scale. So, if you make the law actually hostile for large companies both the general public and corporations are worse off.

> if you make the law actually hostile for large companies both the general public and corporations are worse off What an overly broad thing to say!

Hostile as in preventing the existence of rather than simply detrimental.

Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies

#370

Post by moffkalast » Tue, Oct 04, 2022, 6:04 PM UTC

itslennysfault wrote: post #197

This hit me long long ago when the kindle first came out. At the time (haven't looked since), eBooks were the same price as paper back books, but with a paper back book you OWN it. You can GIVE it to a friend. You can SELL it. Heck, if it gets really cold you can even burn it. With an eBook you can read it, and thats about it.

> With an eBook you can read it, rip it into an epub and give it to ALL your friends and everyone on the internet.

FTFY

Or more accurately, someone's already done it and you get to be one of those friends.