4 ms·

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

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

leetcrew 6y ago
> 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.
- tzs 6y ago
  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.
  - mcherm 6y ago
    The reason we do not make backups of our books is because there is no reasonable technological way of doing so.
    - justinclift 6y ago
      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.
    - cardiffspaceman 6y ago
      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.
  - mafuy 6y ago
    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).
    - account42 6y ago
      > 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.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    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.
    - 6y ago
013a 6y ago
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.

leetcrew 6y ago

> 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.

tzs 6y ago
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.
- mcherm 6y ago
  The reason we do not make backups of our books is because there is no reasonable technological way of doing so.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    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.
  - cardiffspaceman 6y ago
    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.
- mafuy 6y ago
  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).
  - account42 6y ago
    > 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.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  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.
  - 6y ago

013a 6y ago

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.