Is this a surprise to anyone? I’m not being cynical. I thought this was well known. Is it not?
The deception of “buying” digital movies
41–50 of 565 posts
Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? Because it is the same thing, but cheaper. > And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? Because otherwise people won't buy it from you, they'll buy it from ITunes. Even if the lower price doesn't make sense for digital media that aren't degraded through use, lower price (that lets you recoup, say…
I'd be curious to see if a system like that exists already for some kind of digital asset: secondary sales for something that is not limited in quantity, and can still be bought from the source at a higher price.
VST plug-ins have a pretty robust secondary marketplace. See kvraudio.com
Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies
#43I don't use any paid streaming services, so forgive me if I'm saying something stupid, but doesn't this: >Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service mean that you can download a copy of the content you bought? As far as I'm concerned, that's about as close to "owning" as it gets, when it comes to digital media. If you buy, say, a pair of pliers…
Music is typically DRM-free so in that case you have a point. Movie “downloads” are typically DRM’d and only downloadable within the confines of an app, and you don’t get to take the files with you if e.g. you switch devices.
Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies
#44One under-appreciated limitation on digital movies is geographic restrictions. 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. Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. You can sell your DVDs at a yard sale or on eBay but not your iTunes movies. IMO,…
That is feature of DRM and has nothing to do with digital movies. If you bought DRM locked product that you are not really an owner. You can play video file anywhere in the world and any time.
Second issue is if you bought it trough a service and keept it there, then you definitely not the owner...
Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies
#45This is the "you will own nothing" part I was telling people about for years. They still love their Steamy pile of games.
> than buying the movie
it's "then". probably. :)
Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. I get your point but I don't see how this could actually work. As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? It's not like it would come with a box that would look used/damaged, o…
> As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? Because it is the same thing, but cheaper. > And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? Because otherwise people won't buy it from you, they'll buy it from ITunes. Even if the lower price doesn't make sense for digital media that aren't degraded through use, lower price (that lets you recoup, say…
The only problem with this is that with physical media, there's an intrinsic amount of "friction" that prevents gaming the system. It's not convenient to, for example, have five people buy and share one set of DVDs. The hassle of moving the disc around (which gets dramatically worse with distance) incentivizes people to buy their own copy. But digital buying and selling would make it rather easy for one person to "sell" their movie to a friend for next-to-nothing and then "buy" it back when they want to use it. And we can be a thousand miles away with no problem.
There are ways to correct this, such as imposing reasonable floors on the sale price, or not permitting the sale of a title for something like 30 days after a transaction.
I'm just saying that these things would need to be factored into any proper solution, ideally via legislation.
Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies
#47I have started a modest Blu-Ray/4k Blu-Ray collection. For me, it is by far the best movie experience I've had with any format. It takes maybe 90 vs 20 seconds to get the movie playing, but in return I get noticeably better quality. 4k Blu-Rays' bitrates are around 128 Mb/s. For comparison, Netflix tops out around 17 Mb/s. It really does look and sound noticeably better if you have the TV and surround setup to take advantage of it. Sometimes WAY better.
Also, for most physical movies, they had a "+ digital" code included that lets you redeem a digital copy of the movie too. So I can stream most of them on my laptop anyway if I'm away from home or something.
Physical media for movies is super underrated, at least for the situation in my country. It's often cheaper than "buying" the digital version! I can even go to my local used bookstore/Goodwill and find tons of Blu-Rays for cut rate prices. And then I own it forever, and it's 100% legal.
Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. I get your point but I don't see how this could actually work. As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? It's not like it would come with a box that would look used/damaged, o…
>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?…
This I think is one of the places where smaller technical differences make things legitimately different. I'm not coming from the side of "it shouldn't be allowed" or "it must absolutely be allowed like physical goods".
Second hand items are often
* Lower quality, as they've been used * Lack consumer protections
The first just doesn't apply to digital goods and the second is much more minor (not expecting technical faults to become apparent after a while owning a digital item).
Selling physical goods also has a reasonable time commitment to it, you have to physically move things - there's friction. Digital goods could be sold between regular people near instantaneously. Buying a DVD and selling it after watching is do-able but still some work. Buying a film second hand the moment I press play and selling it on a market straight away after I stop watching seems trivial. I know this is ~rental, but theoretically users only need to buy in total enough copies for the concurrent number of watchers. A big enough market and this could impact how things are released, a "watch anytime" vs a "you really need to be up to date (e.g. sports)" would make a vast difference in total required copies floating around.
The resale value impacts the price you can sell at too. If a customer knows they can easily sell an item for 80% of what they bought it for, they're likely to be willing to pay more for it. However the customer also takes on more risk.
It feels like such a small change, but I can see it making a very large difference.
Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. I get your point but I don't see how this could actually work. As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? It's not like it would come with a box that would look used/damaged, o…
>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?
Re: The deception of “buying” digital movies
#50One idea I keep thinking about (which I'm sure interferes with some sort of copyright law) is: 1. User buys a physical copy of a movie/music 2. Instead of sending the disc to their house, it's sent to a storage facility 3. In the storage facility a digital backup is made and uploaded to a cloud storage 4. User is given access to the backup which they can watch/listen to 5. User would be the owner of said physical cop…
[deleted]