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Once content has reached my computer, it is mine to do with as I wish and consume as I wish. If you choose to interfere with this, your site is BROKEN, and I an

• bcook 10y ago
  >Once content has reached my computer, it is mine to do with as I wish and consume as I wish. Is it that simple? Morally and ignorantly I agree but I'm not so sure the law and more sophisticated understandings of morality agree. I mean, I'm happy to pay for & watch Netflix but I understand that (edit: for most titles) I never paid for download rights, only streaming rights.
  • Endy 10y ago
    Streaming is downloading. The information is on your PC; you should have the right to do with it as you please forever.
    • masterleep 10y ago
      It is equally logical to say that your name appeared in my computer just now by virtue of your comment; therefore, I can now impersonate you forever.
      • seanp2k2 10y ago
        More equivalent might be "an apple appeared in [your] house", but this falls apart since apples are physical, finite, and unique entities, unlike streams of bits.
    • tibbetts 10y ago
      When I buy a book, I'm allowed to do a lot of things with it (read it, sell it, burn it) but I'm not allowed to do anything I please. Copyright limitations are a reasonable thing for society to extend to content producers. What protections should exist digitally, and how should they be enforced by software tools, is a reasonable thing to debate.
      • realusername 10y ago
        I personally don't believe copyright as a concept is reasonable but even if you do, viewing content you downloaded as you wish seems fair to me.
        • Silhouette 10y ago
          What if you had to sign up to something, with agreed terms, before you were allowed to download that content? For example, is it OK to agree something is pay-per-view and pay for one viewing, but then exploit whatever technical loopholes are available to save it anyway?
      • zanny 10y ago
        Hate to even invite the rabbit hole, but even on HN you will find many people who fundamentally disagree with your assumption that copyright itself is reasonable in the first place. It is akin to the marijuana legalization movement in many ways - pot was always illegal, so it should always be illegal, and to question why it is illegal is to be unreasonable. Debate about sentencing, classification, possible medical use - possibly reasonable, but to question the fundamentals starts drawing on cultural and emotional ire and identity that starts breaking down reasonable debate. Copyright to many works much the same way - especially when no new works have entered the public domain in the lifetime of the vast majority of the populace - it has always been there, thus even if you debate duration you assume it must remain because to question why it exists in the first place is, again, to be unreasonable.
        • olalonde 10y ago
          That may well be true but in that case, the comment probably should have been "I oppose copyright because X and Y". Otherwise, it's hard to tell whether the commenter really was making a statement against copyright or simply being overly reductionist without realizing it.
        • Silhouette 10y ago
          People are perfectly entitled to disagree with the principle of copyright and to advocate for change. Heck, I'm a content creator in several different contexts and I have aggressively lobbied my representatives for changes towards a more reasonable and balanced copyright regime over many years. But the fact remains that copyright is the law today, and encouraging users to break that law is apparently a consequence of what Google did. It's not unreasonable to debate the actual legal situation, not the legal situation that people who don't like copyright would prefer to exist.
    • untog 10y ago
      "you should have the right" is very different to "legally you can", though. The idea that as soon as data hits your computer it's yours to do whatever you like with doesn't really hold up to any legal analysis.
      • semi-extrinsic 10y ago
        I presume that they meant "do whatever you want with it" as in "consume it however they see fit, as many times and when and wherever they like", not including re-broadcasting publically etc. And that idea was solidly cemented back in the days when VCRs were common - you had a right to record anything and watch it again whenever, wherever you liked.
        • Silhouette 10y ago
          Actually in many cases people didn't legally have the rights they thought they did even with VCRs, but it was prohibitively difficult to detect and penalise infringements so in practice that made little difference. What you never had the right to do, even with a VCR, was something like borrowing a movie from your local video rental store, paying a lower rental price rather than a full purchase price for it, and then copying that movie so you could keep it after you returned the original cassette.
          • slrz 10y ago
            You're describing US law only, right? Because the rent-a-VHS-and-keep-a-copy thing is perfectly legal in many parts of the world. It'd be that way with BluRays too, except that there are laws now that prohibit the breaking of DRM systems.
            • Silhouette 10y ago
              Because the rent-a-VHS-and-keep-a-copy thing is perfectly legal in many parts of the world. Where is this legal? I'm quite sure it would have been an explicit breach of the membership conditions for every video rental store I ever belonged to in the UK, for example.
• TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
  Content creators (and their publishers) should have the right to specify licenses for their content. You should have the right to enter into license agreements with them. Including limiting what you're allowed to do with that content. Under your regime there would be nothing wrong with me claiming I am Aviral Dasgupta and that everything you've posted at https://github.com/aviraldg https://github.com/aviraldg and http://www.aviraldg.com/ http://www.aviraldg.com/ are actually my work and you are the impostor.
  • Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Content creators (and their publishers) should have the right to specify licenses for their content. That is an entirely different thing from requiring (or even expecting) third parties to reduce the functionality of their product to help enforce that license.
    • TheSpiceIsLife 10y ago
      Is it though? DVD players conform to region code requirements. Edit to add: I think people like me, who aren't content creators (not to any degree that anyone should care about), need to be careful about telling people who are content creators what they should and shouldn't be allowed to do to protect their content.
      • Turing_Machine 10y ago
        They can do anything they like to protect their content, at their own expense. Again, that's an entirely different thing from trying to force a third party (who is receiving neither money nor the benefit of viewing the content) from going out of their way to enforce those protections (especially if it reduces the usefulness of their own product).
        • eastWestMath 10y ago
          There's a big difference between "we have a good relationship so I'll do X" and forcing third parties to enforce those protections. Those content provides aren't required to distribute their product and once a proper framework is set up for their situation there's no reason other people can't use it.
• Waterluvian 10y ago
  I can appreciate where you're coming from. It's now in my computer and you don't get to reach in and control things on me. But I'm not so sure that's actually fair and reasonable. If I rent you a VHS, once it's in your house, is it your right to consume as you wish? Do you get to make a copy to watch at a future date? Maybe I don't want that. Maybe the contract I make with you is that you can purchase a loan of this VHS to watch over the next few days. Maybe when I host your favourite music videos, I don't want you copying to your disk to watch hundreds of times without seeing any ads.
  • Turing_Machine 10y ago
    Why should enforcing your wishes (or even your contractual agreements with the viewer) be Google's problem?
    • Silhouette 10y ago
      Enforcing your wishes isn't Google's problem, but actively interfering in a commercial relationship between two other parties might be.
  • averagewall 10y ago
    Using the video analogy, your VHS player still has a record button. Video rentals discourage copying by showing anti-piracy notices. So perhaps websites should show notices like that too "Don't press download. You might break the law".
    • Silhouette 10y ago
      A lot of sites do have models along those lines. Think pay-per-view sporting events, Netflix-style subscription libraries, and so on. The biggest problem here was that when Google suddenly moved the goalposts, a lot of users assumed it was now OK to download and save stuff anyway. They don't understand that it's a browser update they didn't know anything about that made the change, not the web site they're visiting. A lot of people complain about moves to incorporate DRM as an official web standard, but it's the sites that haven't who got screwed on this one. It's rather disappointing to see so many people on HN apparently supporting the "I've got it now, it's mine whatever" attitude you'd expect on Slashdot. It's hardly the way to promote either useful new business models or businesses trusting their customers rather than slapping the strongest DRM they can find on everything.
• Silhouette 10y ago
  Once content has reached my computer, it is mine to do with as I wish and consume as I wish. No, it isn't. That isn't how copyright law works, and it isn't how various business models work.
  • nepeckman 10y ago
    From what I understand about copyright law, it has to do with use and distribution of content. As long as I'm not redistributing or using your data in my product, I don't think I'm breaking copyright. If I have a book and a copier, its no one's business if I make a copy of a book I own for my own use. No one is losing business. Its only an issue if I start trying to sell those copies, thus stealing business from the writer and publishers.
    • Silhouette 10y ago
      Respectfully, your understanding of copyright law is wrong almost everywhere, because the kinds of provisions that are relevant here are covered by international agreements to which almost all first world countries are signatories. There are some jurisdictions that do have special private use provisions in their copyright laws that apply under some circumstances, which is probably the closest you'd find to what you're describing. If you're in one of those places then for you the situation might be different. However, even those often have significant strings attached, not least because they obviously undermine any alternative business models based on offering temporary access in return for a lower price. As a case in point, the UK tried to add a much more limited set of personal use provisions to its copyright law not so long ago, after many years of reviews and consultations. They lasted just a few months before getting struck down at EU level because of those international agreements, and the government backed down rather than pick a fight.