Well, depends on how you look at it and how comfortable you are forgetting about how it looked before you could buy online.
I pay for convenience which is a service rather than tangible good.
If I need a book for my research, I would prefer to have access to it immediately rather than wait two weeks to get it from overseas. My time is valuable and the pause on the project or inconvenience of not having the book for a week or two cost me much more than price of the book.
If I want to watch a movie with my kids I am fine renting the movie for the price of the DVD even if I know I could be watching the DVD multiple times. Most times we do not re-watch movies anyway and it is worth to me to be able to do something with my kids on a whim rather than have to plan it.
If I pay for Spotify I understand I don't own all those titles. But, for a price of half a CD per month I get access to as many titles as I can listen to. This lets me discover new music on a whim. Something, that was not possible when I was buying physical CDs in a music store. Also I paid A LOT more for CDs than I pay currently for access to much more music.
But I agree things should be called properly without creating false impression that you own something rather than pay for a time-limited service.
The topic here is DRM vs non-DRM'd media. It's orthogonal to the topic of physicality: you can have DRM'd physical media (think Google Nest) and you can have non-DRM'd digital media.
Switching back to the convenience of using digital instead of physical is a disservice to the discussion because it switches the focus on something that is totally unrelated and makes people believe that those who prefer non-DRM'd media are somehow reluctant to adopting streaming platform. I definitely see the convenience of it: I barely have any music files on my computer, I stream it all from Youtube or Soundcloud or Bandcamp. And like you I have spent MUCH more money on artists now that I can stream them than when I bought CDs. But when I want to get the files for offline use I know I'm in good hands because those platforms allow me to do it and have files I can use forever without ever reconnecting to the mothership.
So, to come back the initial point: yes we got scammed, because we didn't read the fine print. We didn't understand that DRM'd media is never bought, it's always rented. We switched from buy-it-for-life to subscribe-until-the-platform-dies
If you include modern piracy in with "digital", sure. If you only include legal offerings, absolutely not.
Even DRM'd physical media that doesn't use the network in any way to authenticate is way better than DRM'd digital media, which you can never truly own, and which exists at the folly of the service operator.
I have plenty of ebooks from Baen and Tor, and plenty of music I've bought from a variety of places, all in digital format, all without any DRM. It's not the "digital" part that's bad, it's the DRM part.
You're back to conflating the two.
But if we look at the popularity of streaming services today versus owning even DRM-free music, that would seem to support the convenience theory. (It hasn't taken off for books to the same degree but I'd guess that's in part because the vast majority of people just don't consume enough to make an all you can eat offering work.)
As perhaps both cause and effect, there's probably also something of a generational shift in which ownership of stuff you can put your hands on may just not be as appealing to many younger people, especially if they're urban dwellers without a lot of space.
Really? I have tons of music ripped from CDs on my iPhone and I can trivially play that in my car. I have CD players in my car (which I never use) and attached to my stereo (which I rarely use). It's not that the ability to play CDs (or rip them and play them) has been diminished but a lot of people prefer to just use a streaming service.
I'll grant that many people don't have a CD player even on their computer any longer but you can buy one for not much money online and have it in a couple days if you want one.
Are you suggesting that it's a simple and convenient thing to do for the public?
As another commenter said [0], you can buy and own media without ever touching a physical medium or waiting for the post service to deliver it.
I seem to remember at one point Apple was offering DRM-free music. This is pretty convenient for everybody. Yes, you have to buy it ahead of time and store it, as opposed to just streaming right away.
But it does seem quite easy to me. Go to the iTunes store, click buy, done. It may even sync automatically to your iPhone, so you can play it in your car, just as you would Spotify.
---
Amazon's MP3 download store is DRM-free, but also, Amazon has an "Auto-Rip" feature that means often when you buy the physical music CD, they immediately give you the ability to download the MP3s for free. You get the real purchase of physical media, and the convenience of instant access.
Shoot, almost ten years ago I ripped my dad's CDs and put them all on a SanDisk mp3 player. He's almost certainly just using it as is.. I'd have to ask, but his music taste has been set for thirty years; he doesn't need to put anything new on it, ever.
All he needs to know how to do is unplug it from the stereo and plug it into the jack in the car.
What's hard here?
Automakers didn’t remove CD players despite people wanting them. They did it because enough customers were not willing to pay a premium to have the CD player. I would rather have a larger screen for CarPlay, and I’m betting most people who use streaming apps/MP3s would too.
CarPlay and touch screens generally are one of the worst 'innovations' that have happened in cars in recent decades, as far as road safety goes.
In the past, I would have a CD that had 5-10 albums on it, and could easily flip between them without taking my eyes off the road. I could glance up at the sleeve on my sun shade to find a different CD to switch to, and easily switch the CDs around and navigate the rest of the process by feel alone.
Now I have to pull over to change albums in a reliable (siri is unreliable and doesn't work with all apps) and safe manner.
It's an improvement as far as how much total music I have access to on any given journey. Does that convenience justify even one additional life lost as a result of a distracted driver? As a society, we have very loudly screamed ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY, which, like GP notes, is a real fucking shame.
Hmmm...
looks at old laptop
Hmmm...
looks at ipad, iphone
Hmm...Oh, I know!
looks at gaming PC
Nope. I don't have a disk drive on a computer and haven't for several years now. Sure, I could get one, but optical drives have been optional equipment for a while now.
But if you start by opening a streaming service and browse from there I don’t really think there’s any contest between the high-quality exploration and experience of eg Netflix vs the glorified spreadsheet browsing that is TPB and all the gotchas that go along with downloading random torrents...
In that way, Amazon Video is one of the most convenient platforms as it has more content than many other platforms, though you may need to pay a rental fee.
When it comes to convenience, for me unified access to the most content trumps most other issues.
And I think this is an incredible example of value that can be added to television. During an event you can watch live video footage from the main feed, any of the 20 cars on the track, or the pit straights. You can listen to team radios, commentary, or just engine audio.
What do you do when the show you want to watch is not on there? What do you do when it's a Hulu Exclusive? Or a Netflix show?
You know what I do? Search for 'movie/show name' + 'torrent' and I pull down the rip at 10MB/sec, and have it in a few minutes. Faster than signing up for another service, installing the app on all of my devices, connecting that app up to my account, adding my credit card, then paying for it. Then having to discontinue that subscription later when I decide there's nothing else on that service I want to watch. Then you realize, you paid for 1 month of service, just to watch one show... ridiculous.
Streaming is only convenient when you are already subscribed to the service. Otherwise piracy is much easier. Plus I don't get my fucking videos downsampled to 720p because I choose to watch in a web browser on a Linux box.
I like to be able to use my laptop to locate content and then watch it on a television. So my habits mostly include YouTube or TPB. With youtube I can queue a number of items into a playlist. For TPB, I just press the magnet and it appears on my television a short while later.
I mean I intend to continue paying for these services since I like the offerings. I just don't like using them. They're all ugly and annoying, and they each have their quirks I need to learn. Discovery sucks and searching is always slow and painful. I just don't care to deal with it.
Plus, every time someone mentions a show you have to have this extra little conversation about what streaming service it's available on. It's annoying and I really don't want to care.
Alan may want convenience of streaming a large library for a low price.
Barbara may want the conveniece of having physical media she can bring on her travels and play without an internet connection, or the ability to play it 20 years from now and give to her kids.
That is all fine, they are two different things
The scam is selling the rental of transient streaming service rental as if it had the attributes of buying physical media.
Apple and others are exploiting the familiarity and positive connotations of "buying a movie/album" to sell something that clearly lacks the same attributes. It is a linguistic sleight-of-hand, and it is a scam.
You are not being lied to in the subscription model but it seems the digital buying isn't quite honest.
I would have convenience (more convenience than I have now, I argue). They could still have a cloud offering that only lasts as long as they feel like it.
That would be enough to make this lawsuit go away. So, no, it isn't that we are now buying convenience so we must bend our backs to their spying and control. We had both freedom and control in the digital music ecosystem for more than ten years.
Pretty inconvenient.
If we live in a world without physical media, some things will simply disappear forever.
Piracy is often more convenient than going through the hurdles of a legal purchase.
A fraudulent contract is not a contract.
We have been seduced into selling our rights down the river because we will sacrifice anything to this most pathetic of gods, Convenience.
I have been fighting in this war (anti-DRM/copyleft/etc) for decades, and peoples' susceptibility to convenience has always effectively thwarted any kind of counter argument.
We are fucking lazy and we should be ashamed of it.
Yes I am bitter, we could have had a world of power, control, and ownership at our fingers... a cornucopia of content on our terms... computers that well and truly serve us and not some wanterpreneurial, rent-seeking master... but it wouldn't have been as convenient.
And now zoomers, seduced by corporate sponsorships and the cozy fiefdoms of communities like YouTube or TikTok, have almost no concept of files or their utility, of the value of owning something detached from a profiteering cloud. They have no problem enriching those who seek to exploit them.
It is all complete, utter horseshit. We fought for a better world that nobody wanted because it wasn't as convenient
You’re blaming gen z for the world they were raised in? The oldest “zoomers” are about 25. You think they ran these companies for the last 20 years and made the decisions that got us here?
They have no problem enriching those who seek to exploit them because there is no other choice. Nobody actually wants this.
I read it as complaining that the work done defending the concept of digital ownership and absolute control of one's own digital space was for nought. The people coming of age in today's digital landscape were basically raised as prisoners inside of the rent/data-extracting walled gardens we have today.
Now it's easy gained, easy lost and so people don't care.
I just think software has made computing more accessible to people that don't know the fundamentals, which I think is a good thing. I don't think operating computers should be a gatekeeping exercise where you can't use it if you don't understand what machine instructions are, or c.
Not once will you figure out how to develop one without access to a traditional Desktop system, and an understanding of the fundamental underpinnings thereof. That's changing a bit now with some efforts in the FLOSS space, but it is roughly true today.
While there may be more developers now, I do not see a significant decrease in overall tech illiteracy.
Did you really need to reiterate yourself three times? Are you even really trying to participate in the conversation here are you trying to derail?
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I’ll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you."
"I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt."
- Ubik, Philip K Dick, 1969
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to...
> Dan would eventually find out about the free kernels, even entire free operating systems, that had existed around the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like debuggers—you could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.
Shoutouts to the UEFI secure boot fiasco.
It pains me because he's just so utterly correct on the things he writes and wrote about.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/presenting-shoetool-happ...
Little did we know that they'd just use the same game over and over for years. Look at GTA 5.
In fact [blank] is a fantastic writing prompt for a dystopian novel, seems like a fun little game to play with friends.
Oh and it is already happening with adverts in some streaming movies.
Weird to think a book burning could happen right under our noses (literally!) without us even realizing.
There are several more cases of books being remotely disabled and I see this being used for censorship before long.
...Noted
From [Libertarian Police Department](https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26593274
Consider Librem 5 USA instead: https://puri.sm/products/librem-5-usa. It is produced in USA.
As for planned obsolescence, FP2 has 5+ years of support as we speak. Without help from Qualcomm, as they EOLed SD800/801 long ago. That's the same SOC as in the Mars helicopter, btw.
The point I made still stands: Librem 5 is made from slave labour (gold, cobalt). Especially sour with the 2000 USD price tag.
I like ebooks but I'm not comfortable with all the layers of DRM involved in it.
Only for certain books.
Book DRM has been a nightmare. Tying a book to certain readers is an automatic showstopper for a lot of folks (like me). I recently bounced a tech book I purchased, because I had to download their crappy hybrid app to read the book. The same people that sold it to me, used to sell unlocked reflowable EPUBs (my preferred format), or watermarked PDFs (I have no problem with simple margin watermarks). I'll lay odds that the app they make you use phones home. I didn't bother downloading it, or reviewing their privacy policy.
I'm not so concerned with privacy, as I am, with perpetual access to the books I want to read, on whatever reader I want to use.
I often go back and re-read books, years after the the last time I read them. I want to have that book available, then.
Also, this goes for all types of media, region locks are garbage.
There are quite a few places especially technical ones. However, many major pulishers don't offer them, so you then have the choice of DRM stripping, searching for illegitimate copies or giving up/in and using a DRM copy somehow.
https://www.ebooks.com/en-nl/drm-free/
https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/
Note places like ebooks.com don't sell exclusively DRM free, so you will need to check per book. I returned one to them and got a refund because of my mistake in buying a DRMd copy.
> Standard Ebooks is a volunteer-driven project that produces new editions of public domain ebooks that are lovingly formatted, open source, free of copyright restrictions, and free of cost.
(Not affiliated, just think they do great work!
Discussed before:
They somehow watermark your books though, but they don't contain any DRM.
O'Reilly was very good. Now they only rent their books via Safari. I feel betrayed.
One could argue it is ethical, if not legal, to obtain a drm-free digital backup from a pirate site if one has a physical copy on their shelf.
Eventually I gave up realizing it is an extraordinary effort to personally rip books just to have drm-free digital copies.
Instead I built a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf and filled it.
I read ink on slices of dead trees now, like a barbarian.
Pretty much all e-paper readers are proprietary and track all reading too which is a second order problem.
Really all creators should just have anonymous donation options for people that want to support -them- without supporting the toxic labels and DRM situation.
Do you know of services that can do this without damage?
Edit: Ask and ye shall receive: https://www.amazon.com/Fujitsu-ScanSnap-SV600-Overhead-Scann... - had no idea this existed. Very tempting - Fujitsu makes solid scanners .
Also, see e.g. Steam, you cannot charge for these digital goods the way you used to. It's shifting towards (searchable) collections, not just individual books. It's ridiculous, when digital edition cost almost as much as print. They are emotionally and functionally different things.
A hardcover will cost around $3-$4 in printing costs. Even still, ebooks can be a good deal. To use a recent example that wouldn't yet have any digital discounts, there's the John Boehner book [0]. As of this comment, it has an MSRP of $29.99. The Kindle version is $14.99. At actual retail, Barnes & Noble charges $23.99. At Amazon it's $17.99, which makes the savings on print costs a wash.
Mid-size paper backs are usually a fair bit cheaper too. Mass-market editions are the bad deals: In print they retail around $8 to $10, which is usually the ebook cost too. However, many books never make it to mass market editions theses days.
The bulk of the costs involved in bringing a book to market are the people: Time to review the "slush pile", pay the author, editor, copy editor, typesetting, marketing. And many books either lose money for the publisher or barely earn out the author's advance. Mid-list authors who can consistently earn out their advance with a healthy margin are the ones that keep the lights on long enough for the publisher to (hopefully) catch lightning in a bottle with a block buster, or at least an outsized success.
Of course all of the costs above assume you're buying a new copy. Used books are often a very good deal.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/House-John-Boehner/dp/1250238447/ref=...
Still I think ebooks are a different product. At least in my head. I have a different emotional relationship with a physical book. The information within isn't in competition with the endless a "wealth" of information available legally or not.
For text books piracy is a victimless "crime" in my case, as having a digital copy or not, is independent from financial loss above a certain price tag. That is, I can't afford most text books, so I won't buy them; piracy does not influence the income of the publisher. On the other hand, if I really need/want to buy a book, I am likely gonna get much more intimate with it. Let's face it, digital copies are much more likely not to be read. Maybe only indexed and searched as part of a collection. Digital has a different value. (Although, I ofc understand the superficial dilemma here.)
This is the situation we got IMO.
Side note: You, as someone from the industry, I assume we can both agree that at the very least, a free digital copy should be included with every physical one, right? That just silly and artificial to separate, if you make an argument for the value of content and presentation.
There are in fact more of such stores, but this is the one that I use and remember.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08QGM36KB/
"At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied."
What I've doing is buying physical books and then downloading DRM free ebook versions from pirate bay. I know not everyone will agree with those ethics, but I'm ok with it.
Though, I have made the transition to GOG where possible. but with so many games requiring online activation, I've accepted modern games might not have a long shelf life.
No DRM is a marketing gimmick for them, they don't actually care about the privacy of their customers.
The most important aspect is that as long as you have a compatible system and a good backup policy, you will never lose access to what you bought.
No DRM can help with privacy but they are mostly independent. There is DRM that doesn't violate your privacy, like hardware keys typical of arcade machines, oldschool copy protection and game cartridges. And I think Nintendo has privacy-preserving DRM for digital games too, the problem is that if you lose the console, you lose the game.
And as you have shown, you don't need DRM for privacy violations.
Just because the EULA requires your firstborn son, doesn't mean they have any claim whatsoever.
Much of it was due to improper storage, but that's where the very real value of not having something physical or on site comes from.
When I get a choice between cloud and physical, I now always buy cloud from the largest, stable, cloud distributors (Amazon or Apple, never Google or Microsoft). I will pay more if needed. It's a valuable service to me to not have to babysit a movie/book/photo. I've personally never lost anything to DRM, but I've lost dozens of physical media, over the years, for one reason or another.
Freedom is great, but the freedom of not having to lug things around with me is the freedom I would rather pay for. But I'm the type of person that gets terrified when I see someone's DVD /Blueray collection that covers a wall, "I hope you have homeowners insurance".
I encourage anyone with physical media to make digital backups right away in case the media becomes unreadable down the road.
Then the original media, readable or not, is just a physical license certificate that sits on a shelf.
In the case of blu-rays or DVDs be sure you rip them by simply doing analog MITM recording in a custom LCD controller just after the DRM decryption is done so you don't break DRM circumvention laws.
For sure avoid using any of the really good open source tools that can get you identical copies in a shorter period of time. That would be illegal.
Of course, those kinds of "we're keeping the servers up after the store is closed" situations are necessarily limited so it's just a matter of time. As you say, once the calculus of remaining users and the reputational damage of shutting down gets small enough then it'll happen.
On the other hand, Playstation has a worse set of problems going on: systems apparently need to phone home if their CMOS battery dies or is replaced, and if those servers aren't around anymore or you have no internet, even physical copies don't play. (As far as I know this is just about resetting the clock but it's still a network dependency.)
Correct, at least for now. You haven't actually been able to buy anything since 2019.
In my opinion, this was reason enough to find a complete archive of all the Wii Shop files and just go through the library to find the gems. It might be technically illegal, but the only legal process of obtaining any of these games is finding a Wii that happened to have a particular game already installed on it.
Instead of wasting money and acquiring dozens of otherwise-identical consoles, I opt for the preservation (formerly piracy) route.
About a year ago, Amazon changed the verbiage on the ui from "you own this movie" to "you purchased this movie". That was my clue and trigger to change.
There have been at various times scripts found on GitHub, BitBucket and the rest that will convert the files to MP3, effectively breaking out of the DRM, but this has been hit or miss in my experience.
My pipe dream for all of these services is still a buyout clause which would provide you with the unprotected files for a fee, but with the rise in popularity of streaming services, legally and financially, there doesn't seem to be much will to help a shrinking segment of the customer base with a niche concern.
How much to charge for this would be a terrible debate, as trying to do it "at cost" per purchase - presumably the company's preference - would be heinously expensive.
This is analogous to right to repair, DRM "breaking" your property should be banned.
You can go get almost any Super Nintendo ROM on archive.org right now, legally.
I hope to see this foothold extended.
There is an explicit exemption for:
"Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access."
AKA old console roms. https://archive.org has piles now unchallenged for years as a result.
Copyright enforcement seems often "use it or lose it"
SPAM didn't act fast enough to protect their brand, and once it became commonplace as a term for internet garbage it was considered too late to enforce.
Unless someone like Nintendo makes a new Super Nintendo that can play original cartridges, I don't expect they would do well in court trying to enforce given the exemption and after doing nothing for so long at this point.
I study IP law academically but IANAL. With that said, I think we are honestly at a free for all at this point, and the more people that host ROMs openly, the worse the case against them gets.
DMCA is the only tool people that wish to stop distribution of media have, so it might as well be a blanket statement of legal distribution IMO, and archive.org certainly interprets it this way.
Sure, boost that to 10 or even 20 years if needed[0]. But from then on extension costs should grow exponential - otherwise we risk locking down work for duration longer than a human lifetime. Like it already happens with Disney.
--
[0] - 20 years may have been appropriate in mid-20th century, but I'd argue it isn't now. Cultural creation accelerates exponentially, but long copyrights prevent the ability to improve on prior art to accelerate in lock step.
I strongly dispute this statement, unless your definition of reasonable income does not include at least making back the money you spent on producing the content in the first place. You're ignoring all the small creators who produce new material for niche markets, possibly as a side income rather than their main jobs, and rely on the long tail of sales of that original work to make it financially worthwhile. Not every copyright holder is a Hollywood movie studio, big name record label or international book publisher you've heard of.
Your longer periods might be more realistic in those cases, and even 10 years might not be enough to break even.
I suppose that's the $LARGE_AMOUNT question, isn't it?
As a personal opinion, I think copyright is OK as an economic incentive unless and until we find something that works better, but the protection should be determined by what makes it economically reasonable for people to create and share useful works, taking into account all the circumstances and over the long term. There is clearly no single duration of protection that is even close to that benchmark for all situations, because something like a blockbuster movie or smash hit video game might make several times its production costs back within months of initial distribution and that might be a large majority of the revenue it will ever make, while those small, niche-content creators I talked about before might not break even for a decade or two. As ever with debates about alternatives to current copyright, things start to get sticky when you try to figure out a reasonable way to estimate the effects of any proposed change without actually making it and then waiting a decade or three to see what happens.
I like the idea of shortening copyright protection but at the same time considering other rights to protect things of value that are, sometimes incidentally, protected by copyright today. For example, I have no problem with the requirements that exist in some places to credit the creators of a work, as an entirely separate matter from copyright. I think there is also a lot of room to explore safeguards against intruding on a larger creative effort too soon, such as where an author has put considerable effort into world-building and is continuing to produce successful new works set in that world, in which case allowing poor-quality fan fiction to flood the market as soon as the copyright on the first work in that world expires could sharply devalue the overall creative effort for the author and so result in fewer or lower quality works subsequently being produced and shared by that author, which is a harm to society as well.
In short, I don't think you can reasonably draw a single line with anything resembling our current copyright system. I think there should probably be several lines, in each of several colours, and some of them should be circles and triangles. But then given how difficult enforcement often is already and how widespread misunderstandings about the existing law are, that might not be practical either. Economics and intangible goods are a tough combination.
I think GP's scheme isn't awful honestly; it would have the effect of drastically lowering the practical length of copyright for most works while providing artists with a way to maintain copyright over works that are actually highly successful. (A per-year doubling might be a bit much but I think it's on the right track.)
If the practical effect was that we mostly got back to the original copyright term we had in the US (14 years with the possibility to extend that once), I'd be pretty happy. Maybe start the fees after the 14th year.
Corporations can start paying that escalating price right away.
(Edit: misread GP and removed a paragraph)
Non-transferable copyright/patents?
1. Different industries have different paces; it might take 25 years for any NASA software to be fully developed in the first place, whereas if you haven't made back your money on your singleplayer videogame after 10 years, you probably won't ever make it back. Point is, there is no flat duration that is fair to every work out there. 2. almost by definition, the stuff we care about is more profitable and will therefore be kept under copyright longer. 3. I wonder whether copyright expiration is actually helpful for software, when it doesn't provide you with source code. I'd like to see some mechanism that incentivizes the IP owner to publish source code after their copyright expires - perhaps by offering a conditional extension to the copyright duration in exchange for putting the source code in escrow?
Really, I don't think software's IP type should be "copyright" in the first place. It doesn't make sense to cut and paste a binary like you would with a book's text.
NASA is a government agency, the work should be in the public domain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works_in_the_United_Sta...
But if you think about online games, it becomes abandonware if you can no longer log into the game servers?
Or if your product is dependent on DRM, then is becomes abandonware when the DRM servers shut down.
I think different classes of media will require different definitions of when they become abandonware, but I think we'll mostly know it when we see it.
I haven't been able to play those discs since 2008, when the license servers went offline.
Personally, I had movies I had purchased years ago automatically upgraded to 4K HDR versions.
That's certainly one advantage over physical disks.
I also don't have to physically store the discs, which is a bigger deal than it sounds like. I really don't want shelves and shelves of books and movies in my house. I have a few bookcases of our favorites, and that's it.
Even better is monthly streaming services, though. Then I don't pay nearly as much and get almost all the convenience, but with the risk that any particular movie might no longer be streaming.
I for one only pull dvds out of the box once ever.
It is easy enough to rip DVDs or Blu-rays to a NAS and use Kodi.
Sadly that option is becoming less and less possible as many shows become streaming platform exclusives.
Accept the monthly fees, tracking, and proprietary devices/apps or no entertainment for you.
In the last few years I've spent more than ever on cds through discogs.com.
"Sadly that option is becoming less and less possible as many shows become streaming platform exclusives."
Certain websites say otherwise. Luckily my main focus is music, where nearly everything I want is already in the used market, so the original artist won't see any money.
The problem here is when you buy a movie, show, book, album ect. that you suddenly do not have access to. That is problematic.
I had a decent blu ray collection, DVD collection before that, I'm not that old and now they are all essentially outdated tech when I could upgrade to 4k.
I love the idea of saving the space that any decent film/tv collection would take up, especially living in a 1BR place. Then again usually when you watch "4k" on Netflix or whatever it's still not up to the same quality of an ACTUAL 4k disk would be played through a PS5 or whatever. That is unless you have crazy fast broadband. And even then I'd bet it's a degraded quality compared to a lossless 4k source.
That's it for me. If I buy something now I'm looking for a DRM free version (even though are Blu Rays even DRM fee? I'm sure there's a day when the certs or licenses will expire), otherwise it's streaming services. If I never buy something from a digital store I'm not sad when it disappears.
Wait until they get downgraded to error screens because the company you bought them from went out of business, got bought by another company, pivoted to something else, forgot to renew a domain, or a thousand other things.
For what little it is worth, Sony has postponed shutting down the PS3 and PS Vita stores after backlash. The PSP store will still be shutting down this summer. Your point still stands regardless
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2021/04/20/sony-isnt-c...
I agree that there's been some highly questionable shutdowns of DRM and content servers by a few major companies, later disabling things that they claimed customers were buying.
It seems we're lacking sufficient regulatory/judicial disincentives for companies to hoover up much of the market for selling content products, then fly-by-night shutdown of the DRM and content servers that they'd intentionally made part of the products.
If that means they are protected from legal recourse for obtaining a single pirated copy, that works.
Else, they have to do the work to distribute DRM free copies until every user has one, since they changed the terms of ownership.
Not everyone got scammed. I've exclusively purchased physical media or 'acquired' it in DRM-free ways. Piracy is one option yes, but things like GOG are a legal and DRM-free way to get media, which is why I actually buy from them. I only buy digital if I don't care about losing the media, like a movie I just want to watch at a friends place that's not available on a streaming service.
Never understood why people didn't see this earlier. Thankfully many things are available digitally thanks to the work of digital archivists (aka data hoarders) who make an effort to keep media alive
Imagine if every browser had UI->API connection to popular hostings (or a local pc) and could allow users (and businesses) to exchange files, documents, messages, media, etc, and also had established UIs for all of that. All these instagrams, facebooks, google services, dropboxes simply exploited OS shortcomings and stupid complexity of its operation. If a user could just tap to publish a photo, they wouldn’t need a platform/service and a separate app for that. If a user could bypass NAT, they wouldn’t need remote help services. IIRC, the top comment on Dropbox was along the lines of “will not fly, everyone can rsync/email their files for free”. Turned out nobody can. We still use corporate services to send files across the same room, because even simple file sharing still doesn’t fucking work, not to mention media-exchange/play and UIs for that. It’s not “Most users don’t have any clue ...”, it’s “All users don’t ...”.
Until such time, I have enough other stuff going on in my life that I don't particularly have the time to search for DRM-free media in my purchasing, organize and curate the collection, and so on.
They figured out how to care for records, cassettes, and videotapes. They just need an incentive to learn.
The other day I saw a dusty copy of Tabula Rasa on the shelf at Walmart. That game shut down twelve years ago.
Yes, but it matters less than we think, since it mostly affects entertainment consumption. In fact, I'd argue that the amount people get burned for using DRM content is precisely enough to keep physical media alive and well for along time; and insofar as DRM enables the production of more stuff, and the inevitability that the popular stuff will "escape" thanks to piracy, that's its not that big of a deal.
That said, the issues of DRM are far more vital for creator applications! When you've coupled your ability to write, communicate and earn a living to any privately controlled service that is hard to replace (and that is the very definition of the Google vs. Apple software ecosystem, to take the most important example) then you've lost something far more profound, and when things go sideways (losing your Google account, say) you won't be prepared. It is scary that so many public services require access to a smartphone, when "having a smartphone" is itself not a public service. (And no, library computers don't count. You can't install and use an app in the library computer browser.)
Not really.
You can still play games purchased at the Wii Shop, you just can't re-download them.
[Edited to note: Apparently you can re-download or transfer to a Wii U]
That's not meaningfully different from having one physical copy: you can use the physical copy until the point that it's worn out.
https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/...
It happened recently so there is a grace period to download final copies of a game, but if your console dies and you want to transfer games to another unit you get off eBay in a few years, you are SOL.
Again, this is not functionally different than your cartridge dying. If your NES cartridge dies, you can replace it with a second-hand copy, or you're SOL. The same.
You're saying that there's a consumer benefit to a console-cartridge system being modular (such that either module can be replaced when desired, rather than needing to replace them as a package), but I don't think this has any bearing on ownership rights, nor any of the other points that you claimed. At least, not in the case of the Wii Shop.
Maybe I had 100 $40 games on my $100 console. Console breaks, I lose all games.
With physical media: One game breaks, I lose one game. One console breaks, I lose one console. Way less risk.
Also I can't sell or transfer the digital copies to friends or family.
Lock-in digitals are not at all equivalent rights of physical copies.
A lot of video game CDs barely lasted the life of their console without becoming basically useless.
[1] There are mask roms that are prone to failure, and some NES for eg. games are vulnerable to progressive failure of their battery backed RAM chips, which were not just for save backup but were also often used as extra RAM with a lot of write cycles (and to be clear, I don't mean the battery dying - I mean stuck or flipped bits on the ram itself).
I've got NES cartridges from the 80s or 90s still working.
And I've got Switch cartridges that are dependent on Nintendo's continued online support.
My point was that a physical Wii still works and is still a physical object, so it serves the same functional purpose here as individual NES cartridges.
Don't some blu ray players try to connect to the internet whenever you watch a disc? I think my PS3 used to do that.
Not sure about other blu ray players but I imagine those are the most common ones.
This is what happens when a technology enters the mainstream.
Average people don't care about the same things that tech-people care about.
See eternal September as another example.
Eventually the market always serves the "average" client best, and the more demanding people (which are usually the early adopters of a technology) aren't served so well.
Quick note, smart TVs when using the smart features capture this information and send it to the manufacturer or their partner. The manufacturers often sell it. It subsidizes the cost of the TV.
Using physical media does not mean your viewing isn't being monitored.
I would like to have a complete set of the FLAC files for the hundreds of CDs I have in your warehouse, and my original disks back.
At that point I would gladly start shipping new batches of disks to be ripped to continue building my legal FLAC collection.
If you mean books, then yes.
If you mean DVDs, then no - many TVs will report what you are watching back to the manufacturer.
Is there a digital book seller that doesn't use DRM?
I am so excited for my great-great-great-great ... grandchildren to find a layer of plastic DVDs in the earth’s crust 25 generations from now /s.
Seriously, Blu ray discs and DVDs are such a waste of resources.
The answer is not obvious. According to [1], mailing a DVD and streaming a film use about the same amount of energy. This doesn't include the energy cost of manufacturing the DVD, but stamping out plastic disks is cheap, so it can't be too high. On the other hand, other studies show that DVD players, being older, tend to use more energy than streaming boxes. For repeated watching, ripping a DVD and streaming it locally seems likely to be better.
Or best of all, stream the movie and store it locally for future viewings. But that's not allowed. DRM is killing the planet.
[1]: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/energy-cost-stre...
Agreed. Thanks for the link. I think I could've stated my point clearer. I am against DRMed streaming/video, and I'm against DVDs. I still want people to be able to make movies and get paid, yet the above two options are unsustainable e.g. when considering the use of plastic for DVD's, and the high energy costs of streaming movies from a data center.
How much of the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch will my Netflix stream take up?
Plastic is killing the planet.
No, it isn't. Plastic is only showing up in large quantities in areas where it shouldn't, and occasionally hurting some animals. Microplastics in particular may become a problem at some point, but then again, maybe they won't. We aren't sure. And either way, it's not causing problems just yet.
Greenhouse emissions are what's killing the planet. Manufacturing plastics is a part of that, but so is power generation, and thus all "purely digital" activity.
It's a point that people often confuse. Microplastics are bad, and emissions are bad, but they're bad for completely different reasons. Climate is what's an existential threat to civilization, and what we need to focus on right now. We can deal with microplastics later, if we survive that long.
We do not have an alternative to petrol based plastic for our current economy. Yes, we can make plastic from non-fossil biomass, but it's energetically feasible to replace petrol based plastics. We don't have the landmass, fertilizer, ... to switch completely. (Especially, if you consider the big picture: Biofuel, carbon sinks, food security, ...)
In a way petrol chemistry bought the planet some time before being destroyed by us. It saved the whales and prevented ecological exploitation in the colonies.
Since plastics are used amass not just for stupid junk, but also critical for e.g. medical single use items, sanitation and so on, we shouldn't just think about pollution. Although the thought of eating up to 7g of plastics a day doesn't sit right with me. (Little known side fact: It's not just obvious "plastics", silicone and paint does contribute to microplastic accumulation too.)
Our survival very much also depends on preserving oil reserves for essential use cases of petrol chemistry. Carbon neutral alternatives for many things usually come with an increase in another factor (energy, land use, non renewable resources) which makes them in concert unable to replace fossil energy/chemistry.
Resist.
REDUCE.
Reuse.
Recycle.
Rebury.
> ... but it's energetically infeasible to replace petrol based plastics
(2nd paragraph)
I am using this throw-awayish account with a lacking mobile app and cannot edit. So by all means, everyone, consider selimthegrim's comment a shame-edit to mine.
How much electricity and infrastructure does it take to deliver the same movie over and over again via the internet I wonder?
Both are silly solutions that could be avoided if we were allowed to buy and download a DRM-free copy of a movie once.
Every plastic bag, every CD, is sequestered CO2.
Of course, plastic is a problem on its own. I don't like it, its usage.
Yet I am a realist, and in as such, believe that (sadly), every drop of oil will eventually be pumped. Thus, by this logic, any use which locks that carbon up may be a net benefit.
One of your many rights if you -actually- own a copy of media.
Many sites offer DRM-Free music and books without needing to have a redundant physical copy laying around, but in video media this is extremely rare, and that is a problem.
Depends on your jurisdiction. Ripping a dvd or bluray in the first place would be illegal in the states. Any type of format shifting (including say CD to mp3) is illegal in the UK - even if you did buy a drm free WAV, unless the copyright holder explicitly gives you permission to copy it to your phone, or another computer, you're stuck.
https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/is-it-legal-to-rip-a-dvd-...
Some like to claim DMCA could be used to prosecute someone for bypassing the encryption on a DVD for personal backups but this has, to my knowledge, never been tested in court when an individual defendant was purely using it for personal backups.
There has been a case in favor of DMCA seeking to restrict the release of selling products that allow users to to this: https://www.eff.org/cases/realnetworks-v-dvd-cca-realdvd-cas...
That was an insane call, and it is a pity they didn't appeal as AFAICT.
A similar issue to this was challenged recently with DMCA being used to stop the distribution of the open source youtube-dl tool making the same anti-circumvention claims but in the end this fizzled out as having no merit.
If anyone from Hollywood really wants to test this in court I will happily publish a video of myself ripping one of their DVDs that I purchased for personal use. It would not be a good look for them to to anything about it, and would bet a -lot- that they lose. Still, I would like to see this chilling effect gray zone be put to rest so people are not scared to use their rights.
Physical media also includes A LOT of DRM as well. You called digital streams "DRM media", which is a weird phrase considering all physical media uses DRM as well.
I think you're remembering some rose-tinted view of physical medias past, not discussing the reality of physical media in 2021.
It's weird that you're so inaccurate with these terms and concepts, it's almost like you have an agenda
>Literally the only way to get the same freedoms with modern digital media we had with physical media, is piracy.
And there it is: The Pirates Rationale™
You see it a lot. An excuse in need of rationalizations, so the details get mixed up because it's not about the details, it's about the end point.
Stealing media you didn't buy is literally stealing from artist and developers and no amount of crying about how the DRM on Blu-Ray is more OK than the DRM on Netflix will change that. This community should not be as immoral as Reddit and proudly and openly support stealing software and content that you did not, in some form, pay the artist/creator to access. If you're "pirating" things you own, consider ripping and cracking them instead, less chance of malicious code that way. But if you're using your loose understanding of these concepts to justify stealing from developers and artists, then shame on you.
I even wrote a python library to automate the process since I had so much music I wanted to obtain legally that I needed bulk access.
I spent thousands of dollars and many hours trying to play by the rules on this project.
A: The artist got nothing. CDs were mostly used, and the artists are often no longer alive.
B: Murfie went out of business and can't even afford to sort and return my discs to me. I can't prove I own my own music if challenged. It is all unsorted in a warehouse in the midwest somewhere.
Am I a criminal now anyway after all that work?
How many others would go that far to get a legal DRM-free music collection?
In the end I still got screwed.
If I could just download DRM-free music/movies/games directly, take my money.
Since that is usually not a thing, what other options do people that want freedom and privacy have?
>If I could just download DRM-free music/movies/games directly, take my money. Since that is usually not a thing, what other options do people that want freedom and privacy have?
When you pirate copyrighted content, you're sending a strong signal - that there is demand for that content. Rather, you may want to consider rewarding creators who release their works under a license you agree with. An aggregate effect could potentially trigger an industry shift away from DRM. As it stands, it may be that your favorite creators are not in that list, but that is just the reality of the current situation.
>In the end I still got screwed.
When people point out that the creator got screwed when people download Avengers or Game of Thrones, others are quick to point out that they would never have paid for the content. Its all about context and perspective! :)
It's unreasonable to lump all people who pirate media into some cesspool of common criminality -- each use-case is different. Sure, there are people who aggressively collect more pirated content than they could ever hope to personally consume and refuse to pay for any media; but there are also people who want a secondary copy of something they've already purchased, or who can't even legally buy the media that they'd want access to in the first place.
Easier to just vilify a strawman (for what reason, even?), I guess.
You legally purchased the music and legally made backup copies of it. You are not a criminal.
> I can't prove I own my own music if challenged
I don't think that matters. Someone would need to prove you stole it, which they can't do since you didn't.
Welcome to the civil law world, where they don't need to prove that at all, they just need to ask "on the balance of probabilities, is it more likely than not that a violation happened here?". Unfortunately, for many, juries, and even judges, the mere assertion thereof by a corporation, even if backed by scant or contradictory evidence, is enough for them to say, "that's reasonable".
The rightsholder does not want to fight you in court because the amount of money you can pay (most likely) is less than what they have to pay in legal fees to hire these guys to come after you.
The era of mass lawsuits ended like 10+ years ago. It was a hallmark of the 2000's. These days, rightsholders do the settlement fishing where they get enough data to subpoena your identity from your ISP, then send you settlement offers. They don't want you to show up in court, they want to spook you and get you to give them $1000 or something to make it go away.
A realization that your desire to access music and content with freedom and privacy DOES NOT SUPERSEDE the creators right to profit from their work. Look at where you are -- do the people in this community deserve to be paid for their code? Or can you take it from them if their feelings about privacy and freedom do not match yours perfectly?
I could say, I want bread but I don't want to contribute to capitalism, what option do I have? I'll just take. This isn't how we run our society. It's not how good people behave.
If you cannot abide by the authors/owners wishes, then you must set aside the entitlement you feel towards their work and simply move on without it.
Meanwhile DRM media we pay full price for, or if the content is only available via streaming we pay for it indefinitely. In neither case are we assured access a decade from now on different devices and we certainly don't get any privacy as studios track every second we consume. Worse, when big companies decide it is not profitable enough to keep "purchased" data around anymore, they just cut it loose.
Try opening a book from the Microsoft eBook store. It will fail because they closed down the DRM servers. The books stopped working. PlayStation 3 store? Wii store? Same story. You can no longer access your purchases.
Literally the only way to get the same freedoms with modern digital media we had with physical media, is piracy.
We got scammed.