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The case for physical media ownership

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Re: The case for physical media ownership

#361

Post by cassianoleal »

geor9e wrote: post #245
cassianoleal wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine, but that's very different from what the post to which I was responding said.

Ya got me. You can also show it in your friend's personal home.

I understand your snark, but my I wasn't attempting to be pedantic for the sake of it.

Your original message said "buying a disc is a license to view the intellectual property, subject to various restrictions like only showing it within your personal home". This biases the interpretation towards more restrictions than rights, but I don't think that's the case at all. The restrictions are essentially - don't make money out of playing it, don't play it in public. Pretty much anything else goes.

Call all your friends and family to watch with you whenever you want. Lend to your friends. Take it to your friend's house to watch together. Sell it to someone else. Watch it as many times as you want, anywhere and with anyone you want - as long as those restrictions above are respected, which isn't hard to do.

Do I think this is ideal? No, maybe not - but that's the world we live in, and all things considered, that's still substantially more rights than most "digital ownerships" give you.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#362

Post by zephen »

microgpt wrote: post #349
zephen wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the distributed responsibility might make this difficult, but maybe not impossible. Is the disc defective because it doesn't play in a labeled player, or is the player defective because it doesn't play a labeled disc? Can the licensing body be held responsible? In point of fact, you'd probably get your money back in small claims court just by suing the store, with evidence that your player plays other discs, ju…

I think by default it's whichever one you bought later. The judge may tell you it's the other one. But it doesn't matter because either way the store has to issue a refund.

On the one hand, maybe it matters, because most people won't go to the trouble to sue, and suing the store doesn't really address the root cause anyway.

On the other hand, maybe it doesn't matter, because if this were really an issue, I'd expect to see class action suits.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#363

Post by RiverCrochet »

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.

I ask a remote computer using an open protocol to send me stream of 3 million bytes, once, and then it sends me those bytes. Explain how this is unethical.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#365

Post by therealpygon »

knaik94 wrote: post #44

I agree with the sentiment implied by the author, but I would reword it slightly. If you don't have the freedom to share something, you don't own it. I disagree with the interpretation that it needs to be held physically. Digital ownership is still ownership. I go out of my way to find music on Bandcamp, games on GOG, and rip movies myself using MakeMKV. I wish I could encourage people to continue embracing physical…

Isn’t it interesting that you can purchase a movie, rip and transcode it… but if you download the same transcoded version for the movie you already own, you have committed a crime?

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#366

Post by vel0city »

throwawayk7h wrote: post #351
vel0city wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't change the fact it can still be your physical device that remains in your personal control. I can stash them on a yubikey or similar device and still meet those requirements. It's still only my device, it doesn't rely on other services, etc.

There are also non-transferrable passkeys which can't be copied between two secure devices, so it'd be hard to get some passkeys onto your yubikey in the first place. Furthermore, I personally feel that if you can't actually access the bits, you don't truly "own" it.

> so it'd be hard to get some passkeys onto your yubikey in the first place.

It's as easy to get a passkey on it as it was to originally create the first passkey. That's the thing with them. You can make a bunch. It was just as easy to add the first passkey as it was the second and third and fourth and fifth and....

The point is to not reuse the same passkey everywhere. Same idea as not using the same password everywhere and not reusing the same SSH key everywhere.

> Furthermore, I personally feel that if you can't actually access the bits, you don't truly "own" it.

So if a certificate authority uses an HSM to sign certificates do they not own those keys? Who does own it then, nobody?

If one uses a hardware Bitcoin wallet do they not own those keys?

Isn't being the exclusive one to operate with the key material with hardware entirely in your possession and control the same as owning it? Why is reading the raw bits the only true level of ownership? Just trying to really understand your perspective.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#367

Post by TylerE »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #323
TylerE wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to imagine that as a world where no one funds any thing resembling research or content because it will get instantly ripped off.

Since that's not what the world was like before copyright, and since copyright is more often used to rip people off than protect them, this seems unlikely.

The ore copywriter world did not have any means of mass duplication.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#368

Post by Telaneo »

Blackstrat wrote: post #319

So pirating is the answer? I don't think so. It's unethical and illegal. Buy the physical media of the books, movies, and music that you consume. Quit screwing the creators. I've seen numerous complaints on HN about one's code being stolen. What's the difference?

> It's unethical and illegal.

I don't think it's unethical. It's illegal on the distribution side, but not if you're just downloading. I don't really care either way, because I don't think it's unethical.

> I've seen numerous complaints on HN about one's code being stolen. What's the difference?

The 'stealing' in those cases is usually plagiarism; copying someone's work and not attributing it to them. I will happily attribute all media I've ever downloaded to their creators. If that's all it would take to make 'piracy' legal, I would happily do it.

Re: The case for physical media ownership

#370

Post by account42 »

> Physical media can have resale value. A finished game can be sold, a film can be traded, and a book can be lent. Digital licenses are usually locked to an account and non-transferable, so the purchase price typically cannot be recovered through resale.

More importantly, the resale market acts as competition to the first market sale, lowering prices over time as supply accumulates. Without re-sale publishers can just never lower prices for old digital products or even increase them with inflation or more. This is an underappreciated way in which the copyright deal has been worsened.

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