9 ms·

It's really time for laws which forbid companies to terminate accounts and access to them if they met certain conditions like licencing digital properties. Sur

It's really time for laws which forbid companies to terminate accounts and access to them if they met certain conditions like licencing digital properties. Sure, they can restrict them all they want, as long as a fair stance prevails und people are not ripped of their goods. This strong difference in powers between companies and customers in the digital realm becomes more and more a serious problem. When people are stop buying digital goods or anything of certain types, just because they have no legal security, then it harms also companies themself. so it should be in their own interesst to support such things. There was a time in Europe when a strong movement for digital rights existed, but to bad it somehow died down.

matheusmoreira 6y ago
What good are rights when corporations can just have users sign them away by agreeing with some policy? They already make users waive a lot of rights, including the right to pursue legal action, the right to reverse engineer...
- ampdepolymerase 6y ago
  Regulate as utilities/infrastructure. Nobody likes the Ma Bell type of anti-trust because it feels like infringing on private property rights but regulating as utility or infrastructure is much widely accepted and palatable. However if you have poor management then you end up in the P&G situation with blame passing from one generation of management to another and no real improvements.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    P&G or PG&E?
    - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
      PG&E, typo.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  That form of broken legal system is, as far as I know, peculiar to the USA. In most of the world, businesses aren't allowed to arbitrarily negate laws specifically created to protect their customers just by including some weasel words in the fine print. In fact, here in the UK and at least across much of Europe, businesses are required to actively inform their customers of various rights and other details, and failing to do so can have significant consequences.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    The problem is most big technology companies seem to be located in the USA. Foreign laws are meaningless to them.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      this would explain why the big technology companies are always upset when they get fined by the EU and then pay the fine.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    USA system isn't broken that way. Unconscionable contracts are void. One famous example is CA's anti-non-compete law that created Silicon Valley. USA also has mandated rights notifications. There are specific absences of laws in certain particular cases.
- MagnumOpus 6y ago
  > corporations can just have users sign them away by agreeing with some policy These shrink wrap licences can be legislated away. Lots of EU countries have consumer protection legislation that explicitly forbids/invalidates such imbalanced or unexpected terms in the fine print for consumer-facing contracts -- or indeed invalidates shrink-wrap licence terms outright.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    My country does the same thing but it's meaningless since companies are usually located in the USA.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      Amazon is in USA but subject to EU jurisdiction when selling to EU residents.
  - jerf 6y ago
    As is often the case, a lot of these things are either illegal in the US too, or far less settled than the companies would have you believe. The companies stick them in the license clauses anyhow, because when you can just stick a severability clause [1] in there, why not grab things willy-nilly? Plus a lot of people simply assume there's no recourse even when there in fact is ("the US is an anarchist wonderland where consumers have no protections at all" is a harmful and false meme, what we have is the widespread assumption that consumers have no protections), and of those who don't, who really wants to spend a ton of time in any sort of legal or arbitration resolution over 40 books, which almost certainly total far less than any possible legal or arbitration battle will cost? The legal system, US, EU, or otherwise, doesn't have a good answer to when a company bones .01% of several million people to the tune of several hundred dollars, or bones its entire customer base for $1 or something. By the time you bust through their contract clauses against class action and even find everyone affected you've long since eaten up any value you're going to get from the lawsuit even if you win big and win punitive damages. Computers make it so much easier to do this kind of thing on the company's side, but they don't help anyone trying to fight it anywhere near as much. Very asymmetrical advantage for the companies to hit people like this at some scale. [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  There are limits to contracts, including nontermimable or notransactable rights.
DoingIsLearning 6y ago
People need to talk with their wallet to get the message across. There is nothing stopping people from buying a 'dumb' e-reader with internal storage where you load epub/pdf/rtf/txt files that you actually own or borrow from a library.
- kiaulen 6y ago
  Does anyone make these? I know you can get a phone app, but all the e-ink I've seen has been kindle/nook/kobo. I'd happily buy one.
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    I still own an old Sony PRS e-reader which they can take from my cold dead hands! AFAIK Most 'non-kindle' e-readers (even those with an online store), will still operate as a mass storage device if you connect them via USB to another machine.
  - tempest_ 6y ago
    You can just drop PDFs/Epubs on a Kobo, At least the one I have. It is a bit old now however.
  - vict00ms 6y ago
    I use my Kobo like it's "dumb"...but I generally have to use Calibre to convert epub to kpub for it to format right on the "page".
- dubcanada 6y ago
  Where does a person with very little technological knowhow go to get these epub/pdf/rtf/txt files to somehow load onto this "dumb" e-reader they buy? What is a "dumb" e-reader? What software does a "dumb" e-reader need. There is a reason that Kindle prevail, and it's not because of some conspiracy or a giant company. It's because it's easy, basically like going to Chapters or Barnes and Noble and walking out with a book. There is no similar avenue for "dumb" e-readers. They need to know several levels of skills to get it and it's a lot more difficult then clicking "Buy" and start reading.
smolder 6y ago
What they need is a legally required termination procedure, so when the company shuts down, or if business with a user is terminated, it MUST supply the user with accessible digital goods equivalent to their library, or else the company is liable for goods not delivered.
- SilasX 6y ago
  That's on the right track, but it's not very helpful if the company is shutting down and out of money anyway.
  - beagle3 6y ago
    Make the customers of digital goods first-in-line creditors. It's basically goods stolen from people, at the moment of shutting down - they should be first in line. Most companies don't shut down when they run out of their last dollar; Rather, they shut down when they have more liabilities than assets. The result would be that traditional creditors will demand an escrow for that digital data before giving any money (or providing products before payment), to make sure that they are not bypassed -- which would be the desired result for everyone.
    - SilasX 6y ago
      Agreed, I've long felt the same way about gift cards. And pensions, for that matter. (Which shouldn't be controversial, but is, at least for the Post Office.)
      - beagle3 6y ago
        In most of Europe AFAIK, pensions are in even better status than first-in-line creditors: Money must be continuously deposited to a pension fund, not just an IOU.
        SilasX 6y ago
        The US migrated to the system of required pre-funding too, but not with pension priority over creditors. They get dumped on the PBGC.
hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
Those of us that support digital rights vote with our wallets. I would like to read ebooks. I don't have a source to BUY ebooks that I want. So I don't read them.
wvh 6y ago
It probably mostly died down because the battle really was elsewhere than in Europe. The EU does try to regulate American tech companies though; how successfully, that's up for debate.
bArray 6y ago
This is why I like places like Humble Bundle, you literally get a download link with PDFs (as well as other formats). It encourages piracy of course, but then again the moment somebody else could view your content on a device you don't control - it was already copy-able. If the ebook publishers were motivated to, they would encode unique properties into the text of each download that uniquely identifies the transaction. Then if you find copies online you know who to chase. The point is, give me my copy of the file, I don't want to be locked into your system.
- fakedang 6y ago
  This actually sounds like a neat idea from a theoretical perspective, but isn't it how cracks work, and how crack-generators evade that?
  - emteycz 6y ago
    They meant for identification of leaker. But IMHO it's useless. Anybody could claim they had their laptop stolen.
    - hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
      Only if they have filed a police report...
      - emteycz 6y ago
        Okay, not stolen, but attacked with malware.
    - dragonsngoblins 6y ago
      Also you could just have two different accounts, buy the file, compare the two files and identify any differences, overwrite the differences with blanks/gibberish
      - emteycz 6y ago
GoblinSlayer 6y ago
>There was a time in Europe when a strong movement for digital rights existed, but to bad it somehow died down. Did it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dorgo 6y ago
  Small parties attract protest voters who switch to something else later (or don't vote any more).

matheusmoreira 6y ago

What good are rights when corporations can just have users sign them away by agreeing with some policy? They already make users waive a lot of rights, including the right to pursue legal action, the right to reverse engineer...

ampdepolymerase 6y ago
Regulate as utilities/infrastructure. Nobody likes the Ma Bell type of anti-trust because it feels like infringing on private property rights but regulating as utility or infrastructure is much widely accepted and palatable. However if you have poor management then you end up in the P&G situation with blame passing from one generation of management to another and no real improvements.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  P&G or PG&E?
  - ampdepolymerase 6y ago
    PG&E, typo.
Silhouette 6y ago
That form of broken legal system is, as far as I know, peculiar to the USA. In most of the world, businesses aren't allowed to arbitrarily negate laws specifically created to protect their customers just by including some weasel words in the fine print. In fact, here in the UK and at least across much of Europe, businesses are required to actively inform their customers of various rights and other details, and failing to do so can have significant consequences.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  The problem is most big technology companies seem to be located in the USA. Foreign laws are meaningless to them.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    this would explain why the big technology companies are always upset when they get fined by the EU and then pay the fine.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  USA system isn't broken that way. Unconscionable contracts are void. One famous example is CA's anti-non-compete law that created Silicon Valley. USA also has mandated rights notifications. There are specific absences of laws in certain particular cases.
MagnumOpus 6y ago
> corporations can just have users sign them away by agreeing with some policy These shrink wrap licences can be legislated away. Lots of EU countries have consumer protection legislation that explicitly forbids/invalidates such imbalanced or unexpected terms in the fine print for consumer-facing contracts -- or indeed invalidates shrink-wrap licence terms outright.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  My country does the same thing but it's meaningless since companies are usually located in the USA.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Amazon is in USA but subject to EU jurisdiction when selling to EU residents.
- jerf 6y ago
  As is often the case, a lot of these things are either illegal in the US too, or far less settled than the companies would have you believe. The companies stick them in the license clauses anyhow, because when you can just stick a severability clause [1] in there, why not grab things willy-nilly? Plus a lot of people simply assume there's no recourse even when there in fact is ("the US is an anarchist wonderland where consumers have no protections at all" is a harmful and false meme, what we have is the widespread assumption that consumers have no protections), and of those who don't, who really wants to spend a ton of time in any sort of legal or arbitration resolution over 40 books, which almost certainly total far less than any possible legal or arbitration battle will cost? The legal system, US, EU, or otherwise, doesn't have a good answer to when a company bones .01% of several million people to the tune of several hundred dollars, or bones its entire customer base for $1 or something. By the time you bust through their contract clauses against class action and even find everyone affected you've long since eaten up any value you're going to get from the lawsuit even if you win big and win punitive damages. Computers make it so much easier to do this kind of thing on the company's side, but they don't help anyone trying to fight it anywhere near as much. Very asymmetrical advantage for the companies to hit people like this at some scale. [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp
dredmorbius 6y ago
There are limits to contracts, including nontermimable or notransactable rights.

DoingIsLearning 6y ago

People need to talk with their wallet to get the message across. There is nothing stopping people from buying a 'dumb' e-reader with internal storage where you load epub/pdf/rtf/txt files that you actually own or borrow from a library.

kiaulen 6y ago
Does anyone make these? I know you can get a phone app, but all the e-ink I've seen has been kindle/nook/kobo. I'd happily buy one.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  I still own an old Sony PRS e-reader which they can take from my cold dead hands! AFAIK Most 'non-kindle' e-readers (even those with an online store), will still operate as a mass storage device if you connect them via USB to another machine.
- tempest_ 6y ago
  You can just drop PDFs/Epubs on a Kobo, At least the one I have. It is a bit old now however.
- vict00ms 6y ago
  I use my Kobo like it's "dumb"...but I generally have to use Calibre to convert epub to kpub for it to format right on the "page".
dubcanada 6y ago
Where does a person with very little technological knowhow go to get these epub/pdf/rtf/txt files to somehow load onto this "dumb" e-reader they buy? What is a "dumb" e-reader? What software does a "dumb" e-reader need. There is a reason that Kindle prevail, and it's not because of some conspiracy or a giant company. It's because it's easy, basically like going to Chapters or Barnes and Noble and walking out with a book. There is no similar avenue for "dumb" e-readers. They need to know several levels of skills to get it and it's a lot more difficult then clicking "Buy" and start reading.

smolder 6y ago

What they need is a legally required termination procedure, so when the company shuts down, or if business with a user is terminated, it MUST supply the user with accessible digital goods equivalent to their library, or else the company is liable for goods not delivered.

SilasX 6y ago
That's on the right track, but it's not very helpful if the company is shutting down and out of money anyway.
- beagle3 6y ago
  Make the customers of digital goods first-in-line creditors. It's basically goods stolen from people, at the moment of shutting down - they should be first in line. Most companies don't shut down when they run out of their last dollar; Rather, they shut down when they have more liabilities than assets. The result would be that traditional creditors will demand an escrow for that digital data before giving any money (or providing products before payment), to make sure that they are not bypassed -- which would be the desired result for everyone.
  - SilasX 6y ago
    Agreed, I've long felt the same way about gift cards. And pensions, for that matter. (Which shouldn't be controversial, but is, at least for the Post Office.)
    - beagle3 6y ago
      In most of Europe AFAIK, pensions are in even better status than first-in-line creditors: Money must be continuously deposited to a pension fund, not just an IOU.
      - SilasX 6y ago
        The US migrated to the system of required pre-funding too, but not with pension priority over creditors. They get dumped on the PBGC.

hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago

Those of us that support digital rights vote with our wallets. I would like to read ebooks. I don't have a source to BUY ebooks that I want. So I don't read them.

wvh 6y ago

It probably mostly died down because the battle really was elsewhere than in Europe. The EU does try to regulate American tech companies though; how successfully, that's up for debate.

bArray 6y ago

This is why I like places like Humble Bundle, you literally get a download link with PDFs (as well as other formats). It encourages piracy of course, but then again the moment somebody else could view your content on a device you don't control - it was already copy-able. If the ebook publishers were motivated to, they would encode unique properties into the text of each download that uniquely identifies the transaction. Then if you find copies online you know who to chase. The point is, give me my copy of the file, I don't want to be locked into your system.

fakedang 6y ago
This actually sounds like a neat idea from a theoretical perspective, but isn't it how cracks work, and how crack-generators evade that?
- emteycz 6y ago
  They meant for identification of leaker. But IMHO it's useless. Anybody could claim they had their laptop stolen.
  - hdjdbtbgwjsn 6y ago
    Only if they have filed a police report...
    - emteycz 6y ago
      Okay, not stolen, but attacked with malware.
  - dragonsngoblins 6y ago
    Also you could just have two different accounts, buy the file, compare the two files and identify any differences, overwrite the differences with blanks/gibberish
    - emteycz 6y ago

GoblinSlayer 6y ago

>There was a time in Europe when a strong movement for digital rights existed, but to bad it somehow died down. Did it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Party

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dorgo 6y ago
Small parties attract protest voters who switch to something else later (or don't vote any more).