5 ms·

Physical media doesn't automatically provide privacy. There are players which do track what blu-rays you put in them. Blu-ray players are internet enabled and i

Physical media doesn't automatically provide privacy. There are players which do track what blu-rays you put in them. Blu-ray players are internet enabled and include advertisements, which obviously can have tracking as well. Also you are tracked by the banks and stores you make the purchase from. You bought a Blu-Ray at Target on a Discover card. Target tracked it and sold it. Discover tracked it and sold it. Companies batched that together and added it to the same profile that Netflix updated. You still got tracked. 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.

lrvick 6y ago
I literally bought many hundreds of used CDs and had them shipped to https://murfie.com/ https://murfie.com/ to rip for me and give me FLACs automatically, because that was the only way to get lossless drm-free music I wanted legally. 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?
- RandallBrown 6y ago
  > Am I a criminal now anyway after all that work? 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.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    > 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".
    - criley2 6y ago
      While the standard is lower in civil law than criminal law, this isn't how it works at all. 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.
- eutropia 6y ago
  I doubt the piracy moralist you replied to will respond with an apology for calling you a thief and a criminal; but I really appreciate that you explained your situation. 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.

lrvick 6y ago

I literally bought many hundreds of used CDs and had them shipped to https://murfie.com/ https://murfie.com/ to rip for me and give me FLACs automatically, because that was the only way to get lossless drm-free music I wanted legally. 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?

RandallBrown 6y ago
> Am I a criminal now anyway after all that work? 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.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  > 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".
  - criley2 6y ago
    While the standard is lower in civil law than criminal law, this isn't how it works at all. 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.
eutropia 6y ago
I doubt the piracy moralist you replied to will respond with an apology for calling you a thief and a criminal; but I really appreciate that you explained your situation. 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.