I do believe it would be a great thing for these buttons to read "Rent Indefinitely" rather than "Buy", and also force these companies to outline in clear and short language within a popup near the button the general conditions under which the rental will be revoked. Like, "Company X may revoke your access to this content in situations where your account breaches the terms of service outlined [here], or if the original rights holders of the content force us to." Not even full ToS, just something to inform people that its possible.

And to be clear, there's a massive swath of digital content that needs regulation like this. Amazon movies, Kindle books, Steam/Xbox/PSN digital games, iTunes music purchases (though in situations like this, I think the word "Buy" is valid given that you're allowed a DRM-free download, but I think the popup should still be required with the language changed to read "...may revoke your access to re-download this content...").

I wonder if a better solution would be allowing people to really own digital goods they buy the way you do physical copyrighted goods. Someone tried to let you "sell" your iTunes library by deleting it off your hard drive and then giving it to someone else but they lost in court:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_LLC_v._ReDigi....

> I wonder if a better solution would be allowing people to really own digital goods they buy the way you do physical copyrighted goods.

the situation with blurays and dvds is not much better. "own" is not quite the right word for what's going on here; it's more like a permanent transferable license. you can freely buy/sell them second-hand, but AFAIK it is technically still illegal to make backups, even for personal use (since it involves circumventing DRM).

as both a long-time torrenter and someone who works on proprietary software project, I'm somewhat conflicted on this topic. for the consumer, it's best to just get the product unencumbered by DRM and do what you want with it. on the flip side, I really need people to actually pay for the thing that I work on so I can get an income. not all pirated copies are "lost sales", but some are. I've certainly pirated stuff that I would have paid for and paid for stuff only because it wasn't cracked yet. not sure what the middle ground is here.

sadly, I'm not sure the average person even cares that much. I follow a couple specific TV shows where I'm invested in what happens next. with the current balkanization, it would probably cost me $50+ a month to have access to the handful of things I actually want to watch. but most people I know just want something to watch, often just to have it playing in the background. they don't particularly care what it is or if it was well-made.

I never really thought of this before, but now that I have I'm confused about backups. In particular, why do we back up some types things but not others?

I've never made backups of my books.

I've never made backups of my vinyl records or my cassette tapes.

I have made backups of all my CDs.

If the backup is to protect against loss of or damage to the media, I should be backing up books and records and tapes, and not backing up CDs. CDs live in a protective case, only coming out for short trips to a CD player, where they are played entirely enclosed, and playback does not cause any wear on the play surface.

Records and tapes are degrade slightly each time you play them. Books also suffer wear each time they are read, and are usually read in environments where they can suffer accidents.

CDs are easy to back up, comparatively, and they do degrade faster then the other options over time (5, 10, 15 years and many become unusable).

> 5, 10, 15 years and many become unusable

Wile writable CDs will decay relatively quickly, professionally mastered CD-ROMS will typically last longer.

On the other hand, a scratch in the wrong place can render a CD useless while a book with a torn out page will still be usable.

The reason we do not make backups of our books is because there is no reasonable technological way of doing so.

One can buy a second copy and donate it to the Library or give it to a friend. Now it's offsite, like all backups should be, and one doesn't advance technology much to achieve this. Depending on how you attribute a "cost" to the time it would take to make a duplicate of a physical copy, it may even be less expensive.

Photocopiers and OCR and both things which people have used for this purpose.

The time it takes to use them for that purpose though... ugh.

Interesting. I do have digital backups of all (or, nearly all... some are hard to find) of my physical books. I didn't make them from my own copy of course, but I still consider my digital library to be a backup of my physical bookshelves. Maybe this isn't as common as I had imagined, but I thought it was a fairly reasonable thing to do.

to be honest, I think "backup" is somewhat euphemistic. the real reason we "backup" CDs is because it is much more convenient to play their content from a computer than from a CD player. it's also trivial to make a lossless copy of a CD, unlike vinyl.

I did both.

I ripped them to my computer to play there and to download from there to my Archos Jukebox and later iPod.

But I also burned copies onto archival quality DVD-Rs, which are stored in my fireproof safe, and I think this definitely counts as a backup.

sure, I'm not saying the idea of archiving is illegitimate! just that I don't think this is why most people rip CDs. they do it because they want to make playlists, play songs on their ipod, etc. I don't think it even occurs to most people that a CD degrades over time.

Of course that would be a better solution; but its not a feasible one at this point. Our governments are corrupt and businesses are too large; the best we can hope for is protecting consumers as much as possible in attainable ways.

I would like to see a law which states that businesses cannot revoke your access to any discrete good you've purchased. Arguably, media companies wouldn't be the primary aggrieved party of a law like that; it really hurts Amazon (et al) more than anyone, being legally forced to continue serving video files you've purchased even in the face of Terms of Service breaches and such.

Which is perfect. That's exactly what we want. If Amazon has to guarantee access to content, the easiest way to fulfill that requirement is to offer downloads for customers (which I think should be a fulfillment of that requirement, and its alright if they terminate an account so long as a download was offered for all content). Of course, the Media companies Definitely don't want that, so now we have the media companies and tech companies fighting each other. Laws which disrupt the alignment of incentives between companies are the best kind of laws.

"Revocable Rental" should be the only permitted button text in most digital licensing situations.

> By ordering or viewing, you agree to our Terms.

goes here

https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=202095490&view-type=c...

"Rent Temporarily" with a comment "Rent can be terminated by renter at any time, without ability to appeal". Because "rent indefinitely" is definitely incorrect since it is impossible.

"Indefinitely" does not mean "forever"; it means "the end is not defined". The end could be tomorrow, or in a thousand years; its just unknown and not communicated at this time.

This is a similar misconception to the word "infinite", which many people believe means "an unending amount" but actually just means "not finite"; an amount large enough that it can't be quantified, but still an amount nonetheless. This comes into play in mathematics when talking about some infinities being larger than others.

If you take a nihilistic view of the universe, then everything is temporary, and thus even the DVDs you've purchased should have been advertised as a temporary rental. That's not very useful, though.

Leasehold?

Wouldn’t the better option be to have regulation that prevent Both the rights seller (Hollywood) & the seller From revoking the sale/license, and guaranteeing it in the company’s perpetuity?

Essentially, require that Buy be Buy, and that the rights licensee can’t screw over the third party (consumers)

Not sure how to handle it I’d say VEVO declared bankruptcy tho

The license that Amazon has doesn't even need to change for there to be undesirable customer outcomes. I didn't realise the extent of the geo-locking of content bought through Prime Video, for example. So a film I bought while living in the UK is now unavailable to me in Sweden, despite both countries being served by Prime Video.

This happened to me as well. You don't even have to move, if you go on a business trip the content becomes unavailable as well. The EU had a public comments period in relation to this a few years back, but I haven't heard much since.

I assume that the geo-blocking is still somewhat relevant in regards to protectionism for the dubbing industry in some member states.

If you're talking about geo-blocking in general, and why it's relevant, there's plenty of reasons. The dubbing industry is probably just one piece of the puzzle. It's not fun or sexy, but there's reasons. Different countries have different rules and censorship. Companies also want controlled marketing campaigns targeting specific regions. Film media is an expensive asset and companies are protective of it.

This seems like a problem for everyone - corporate interests, repressive governments, etc. - but the end consumer, who just wants to watch a damn movie.

I am not talking about geo-blocking in general, but rather why the EU allows this break down of the vision of a single market.

It would be absolutely preposterous to not be able to use your Berlin Netflix account when you are on a business trip in Bonn, but somehow it is acceptable when you go to Brussels. What do EU member states gain from this? Sure you can allege regulatory capture and subservience to the producer's desires, but I assume it is more benign than that and merely market protectionism.

This is orthogonal, and protecting the meaning of the word Buy sounds easier to achieve than outright attacking the publisher's business model, so I'd start with the former.

Making people acutely aware they're not buying content, but only renting it temporarily, would already help change the conversation.

> Wouldn’t the better option be to have regulation that prevent Both the rights seller (Hollywood) & the seller From revoking the sale/license, and guaranteeing it in the company’s perpetuity?

So how would this law work? The reality is that compound works are always, always made up of third party bits of copyright. So are films required to clear any music in perpetuity, no matter what? Goodbye to musicals. What happens if rights are in dispute and a supplier loses the rights to the title, or parts of a title (this happens a lot)? What happens if an estate of a creator files to have the IP in a character revert to them after fifty years?

How are you going to have this regulation pass in every country in the world at the same time?

Or is this one of these things that's easy to glibly say but basically impossible to do?

What are you talking about? That's exactly how it works for VHS, DVDs, CDs, Blurays, books.

Once I buy media, nobody is coming to my house to prevent me from watching it just because there was some legal issues between unrelated parties. That's up to them to solve on their own, in courts.

Just because we have ways to revoke users' access to legally bought media doesn't mean it's ok to do.

The gaming industry and the RIAA are in an interesting situation regarding compound works. Some games license music for their soundtrack, and the games developers want to license streamers to broadcast their games. But the streamer is not covered by the terms of the music license, so their content gets DMCA'ed. But even if the terms of the music license were to be adapted to allow for live streaming of the game, how could one detect that a song is being played as part of a game stream with the right license?

> Change your CTAs from being labelled "Buy" to "Buy a limited license for on-demand viewing over an indefinite period of time" if that's what it is.

It should be the other way round. If it said "Buy", the buyer is deemed to have been sold it and owns it. If it turns out the buyer did now own it to sell it in the first place (eg. someone else held the rights, not the purported "seller"), then the seller now owes the buyer a refund.

The situation should be dealt with just like any other fraudulent misrepresentation/misleading labelling, whether driven by a corporate marketing department or not.

>Is it time for a protected legal definition of "buy" which excludes this nonsense?

I'd go much further than that, "buy" is just one of the completely business washed words which now have no meaning: luxury, unlimited, complete, total, advanced, ... the list goes on.

If you have an army of lawyers and clever marketing team, you can pretty much use intentional ambiguity in English (I suspect any language) to get away with false advertising on a regular basis.

I don't mind if they call it "buy", as long as customers are entitled to a refund in case a work becomes unavailable.

No, I think buy should have a very clear meaning.

No one is going to read all the legal gobbledygook.

When I buy something, I assumed it cannot be taken away. If it can be taken away, then I did not buy it. Ileased it or rented it, but I did not buy it.

The world is already too complicated for many people. If we are going to give people any hope of understanding what they are agreeing to, then we need to make sure that words mean something.

"Entitled to a refund" is not the same as "made whole". Consumers want the latter, companies usually want the former.

For starters there's inflation, so if I spend $10 today and 20 years from now they revoke the license or whatever and give me 10 2040-dollars, that's not going to be the same buying power as the $10 in 2020 dollars.

Second, the media landscape may have shifted by then. If the only company in 2040 that can give me another, comparable "indefinite rental license" or whatever is charging $100, I want Amazon to pay _that_.

> entitled to a refund

Are customers solely responsible for only buying from monopolists so that the store they purchased from can provide refunds when the content later (inevitably) becomes unavailable?

> "Buy a limited license for on-demand viewing over an indefinite period of time"

Which is long form for ”rent” :-)

Renting contracts are almost always time constrained

And generally your landlord cannot terminate the lease any second they want.

Not everywhere, there's countries where it's "open ended", i.e. if your agreement expires, you default to a month-by-month basis until you renew it.

this is still a time constrained rental. if you don’t pay for the upcoming month you lose access

> over an indefinite period of time

I don't know with Amazon, but with Google streaming "purchases" are linked to one email. You lose that email, and you've lost access. Transfers are not possible.

Even requiring “Buy License” would be a good step IMO.

I'm surprised they haven't already sidestepped this by making the button say "Add to Library" with a price.

I use playon.tv which I purchased during my undergraduate and frequently forget about. It allows one to record content from services they are subscribed to in a DVR-like fashion. The interface is kinda jank but it works just fine. I recorded a bunch of shows i wanted to watch before i moved house and lost internet for a week.

On the implementation front, i believe they run a headless chrome instance and record the media as it streams in real time. So they aren't downloading the source files, just recording. This has the unfortunate side effect of baking in subtitles or if the chrome instance is asking for you to accept cookies it shows up over the top of the recording.

Apologies if this is a bit incoherant, whenever the owning of media comes up, it always reminds me i have the software installed

This should be an easy enforcement action for the FTC under existing authority. Either these stores explain you are buying a license for an indefinite period of use, or they ensure you actually own a copy.

Considering how unpopular tech companies are in politics right now, an advocacy group pushing for this could possibly be successful.

It would required petitions, landing pages with catchy phrases, etc...

I 100% agree this would be a big step forward.

not just that, the whole concept of tos is broken

> Is it time for a protected legal definition of "buy" which excludes this nonsense? Does the EU already do this?

No, no country in the world does this, because it's basically impossible to do if a work contains other licensed bits of copyright.

I can buy a physical book, or a car, even if there's IP on some of the items within. It's entirely possible.