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Recently saw a movie, liked the soundtrack, and decided to buy the mp3 (On the Run - Naz Tokio). Found it, of course, on Amazon, good deal, and made the purcha

Recently saw a movie, liked the soundtrack, and decided to buy the mp3 (On the Run - Naz Tokio). Found it, of course, on Amazon, good deal, and made the purchase. Tried to download it after the purchase, but the mp3 was ONLY available in the cloud for various devices, not for direct download. There was language that might have implied this was the case, but it was not clear or I was oblivious, probably the latter. I was refunded my $1.29 and went straight to a pirate site and got it for free. I would rather have paid. Occasionally, the availability of piracy is a check on bad ideas, in this case, cloud walled gardens.

cute_boi 5y ago
And the problem with downloading using cloud is you have to use their apps and requires them to supply your phone data forever which is no no in my book. Imagine the dystopia there would be if there were no piracy. You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back".
- lovelyviking 5y ago
  >You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back". Do they specify what you actually purchase, I can't figure out what is it you purchase in such cases.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Don't they have your data as part of the Amazon account anyway? Why does that even matter?
lovelyviking 5y ago
>went straight to a pirate site Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose I presume. What a web site providing access to the music has to do with it? The whole 'buy mp3' idea always have been troubling for me because I can't figure out exactly what I actually buy there. What is it I purchase? The right to listen for some composition? The right to listen it in that specific mp3 format ? The right to listen it more then one time because I have access to the file? What do I actually possess after the purchase that I didn't possess before? If it's my property then what is it? Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited? For instance it belongs to me but somehow there are some limits to play it in my own restaurant, isn't it? It's all presented as you buy something and it's clear what you buy. But if you are trying to think about it's more and more unclear. It looks more like some bully simply blocks access to something he got using some leverage over the author then sells you 'unblock' feature while author is stripped away from any rights by the same bully and have no ability to sell it directly to you. Isn't it a case now days of redundant MIM? Another issue is with how long it is blocked by paywall. The initial idea was how much? 10 years ? 15 years? How come that let's say Beatles are still protected from public? How that even possible and why nobody rises the issue of abusing initial idea?
- muspimerol 5y ago
  All of your questions have to do with copyright, which has little to do with the format of the thing you're purchasing (an mp3).
- lelandfe 5y ago
  > Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose I presume. What a web site providing access to the music has to do with it? "Piracy" has been a term of art in the copyright world for over 100 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyrightpirates.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyrightpirates.jpg > Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited? If you buy a copy of a book, you are not eligible to reprint that book and sell it yourself. There are limits on what folks can do with copyrighted works they buy. It might be worth reading, for instance, about the American concept of first-sale doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
  - betterunix2 5y ago
    "Piracy" has been a propaganda term in the copyright world... FTFY
    - 123pie123 5y ago
      Piracy implies theft and sounds more serious; where as copyright infringement does not sounds as exciting... (from wikipedia...) Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works Theft is the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
    - akomtu 5y ago
      The correct term is probably greed: not giving back to the author of music, movie, software you use. But greed is also the foundation of our economy, so copyright owners had to come up with a different word.
ecf 5y ago
It took me about half an hour of constant retries for the rented Apple TV movie I downloaded for offline use to play. Each time, for some reason or another, was blocked with the error message “This movie can only be played on displays that support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection)”. I was on a plane with no internet, so troubleshooting the error was impossible. Furthermore, I can’t test playback of a movie in the future because doing so starts the three day expiration timer. In the future I guarantee I’ll be torrenting.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Torrenting + crossing a border… Not a good idea. Even having “photos for personal use” while crossing the boarder isn’t a good idea. I’m so afraid of TSA…
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    "crossing A border" is not the same thing as "crossing the US border".
  - jimktrains2 5y ago
    The TSA handles neither customs nor border patrol.
    - garbagecoder 5y ago
      Right, but they do handle the security screening and it’s all DHS
- donmcronald 5y ago
  I have Apple TV for the year because I got a new iPad and I still "pirated" Foundation because the Apple TV app for Roku isn't very good. I hate the interface, the playback skips (very infrequently), and the subtitle support is pretty bad. There's no way Plex and Emby should be better than Apple's equivalent, but they are IMO.
  - 5y ago
ligerzer0 5y ago
I recently bought some hardware which came with license for software ( vst plug-ins). After registering the hardware, then making an account with the third party who provides the software, I was able to download a demo version which I should then have been able to unlock into a full version using the serial number and license file provided to me...but this was not the case. After about an hour of tinkering, restarting, and googling, I decided to try and pirate a copy of the software that I was entitled to the full working version of. Took about two minutes to download and have it running.
- r00t4ccess 5y ago
  How are you liking cubase?
- ushakov 5y ago
  maybe somebody returned the hardware but kept the license?
elcomet 5y ago
I mean if you would rather have paid you could have left the money to the author and pirate the mp3 anyway.
- another_story 5y ago
  I do wish all artists had a donate page. Most do not.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  How much of that money goes to the author instead of amazon?
  - wsostt 5y ago
    Why’s that relevant? The payment is divided by the terms of the agreement with the author and associates. It was mutually agreed by everyone in writing.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Not the customer. Should they be able to pirate/donate and feel ethically okay?
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      How could it not be? I want to pay the creators, not some useless middlemen who only exist to solve the problems created by copyright.
- wsostt 5y ago
  I’ve taken this approach in the past.
dane-pgp 5y ago
> There was language that might have implied this was the case, but it was not clear or I was oblivious, probably the latter. For what it's worth, the language and layout was probably A/B tested and painstakingly tuned to maximise the probability of you making that mistake. Don't blame yourself when there's this unfair power imbalance, blame them for using their power against you maliciously.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > For what it's worth, the language and layout was probably A/B tested and painstakingly tuned to maximise the probability This sort of belief (that corporations do extensive testing and tuning of language) seems quite widely held, but I've never seen much support for it. I've frequently seen claims that Amazon must have "A/B tested and painstakingly tuned" the company name, whereas it was really just the founder's whim after watching a documentary, and never received any testing of any kind.
  - tux3 5y ago
    Sometimes this happens as a sort of 'evolutionary' process. If a dodgy company has better wording for a misleading product, its deception will work better, so you can have highly tuned wording without anyone having to run an explicit A/B test.
    - patcon 5y ago
      Good point :) I'm glad to be reminded of that framing: a/b testing is just evolutionary selection within the same company-shaped container, but it's happening in the larger ecology even if you're not trying to run it.
  - rp1 5y ago
    Have you ever worked at a large corporation like Facebook or Amazon? They have extensive internal A/B testing frameworks that record a wide variety of user metrics for arbitrary control and treatment exposures. It's very easy to set up an A/B test and pretty much necessary for almost all changes. Additionally, employees are expected to have concrete artifacts when they go up for promotion, and A/B test results are often a large part of that.
wildrhythms 5y ago
Gabe Newell: "Piracy is an issue of service, not price."
pengaru 5y ago
We just need the technology improved slightly to solve this problem. Artists should be seeding high quality files to the torrents themselves, in formats that are signed and include a crypto wallet for sending "donations". Then the playback software just needs to check the signature to ensure you're giving money to the actual creator and not some imposter if you want to throw money their way, through a payment ui the players conveniently make available to you. There's just no need for the middle-men who make it all miserable, and exploit control of the audience for their own gain via advertising/"recommendations"/propaganda etc. Torrents have fixed the distribution problem, and no consumers are really interested in depriving their favorite artists from making a living. It's just a glaring omission that the torrent system doesn't incorporate a reliable artists compensation circuit, like it's just unfinished.
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  That's a very interesting thought, but the one thing I think would be a problem is fake torrents with other parties bitcoin wallets embedded. Also some bands don't want to operate on "donations" and want to set a price for the download. I wonder how that would work to be able to set a price. Of course you could avoid this by only getting the torrent from the official band's website, but fakes would certainly be a problem.
- garbagecoder 5y ago
  Trent Reznor started doing that 15 years ago.
  - pengaru 5y ago
    Really? Strange that none of the torrent-sourced NIN albums in MP3 format I have contain anything like a crypto wallet in the id3 tags... But it really isn't sufficient for the artist to just stick a wallet address somewhere in files seeded, and hope for the best. The format needs to formalize support for it, my players need to verify and make that information conveniently accessible to me, preferably in a one-click-to-tip-artist using my configured crypto wallet kind of fashion. For me this is one of the actual legitimate use cases of cryptocurrency. These microtransaction kind of business models where folks like artists are happy to receive tiny amounts like tips if they can get it repeatedly from all their fans globally, passively, just by having created their art and putting it out there where it's all effectively "long tail" revenue, stacking as they produce more work, ad infinitum.
busymom0 5y ago
Had a similar experience recently. Tried to buy 3 songs from a particular artist on Apple Music and for some reason, my Mac got the downloaded music and can play it but my iPhone refuses to recognize any of my purchases tracks despite being logged in the same account. Ended up pirating then tracks even though I had also paid for them already.
nelblu 5y ago
THIS! I had similar problem with watching a movie trilogy on Google play movies. The movie won't play on my computer but only played on android app (no i didn't have any firewall or special ad blocker on my PC). I called google customer service and asked them to fix, it took them 3 days to get back and the problem was still not fixed, needless to say I was mad and they refunded instantly. Next thing I just downloaded it.... I'd have loved to pay but if movie studios (or whoever is responsible for this sh#tshow) will go out of their way to not give me a mp4 or similar device/service independent playable format then I couldn't care less about their loss.
jbluepolarbear 5y ago
How long ago was this? I bought an mp3 from Amazon (The Touch - Stan Bush) in 2019 and I’m still able to download the mp3.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
matheusmoreira 5y ago
It's insane how these companies get away with this. Nobody is "buying" anything, they're licensing the content and that comes with a ton of restrictions. This should be considered false advertising at the very least.
shrimp_emoji 5y ago
Also try to buy some J-Pop only available on www.amazon.co.jp. :p
disparate_dan 5y ago
I’m surprised to hear this. I thought that Amazon had moved to offer all mp3 music as DRM-free. I’ve bought a lot of music from them and never been unable to download anything so far.
mdekkers 5y ago
Absolutely. I am a chronic expat, and frequently move countries. Due to ridiculous restrictions, I am unable to get movies and TV shows, in English, with English subtitles. Most of the time it is dubbed in $native_language without subs. I want to pay for my media. But it want it in English please, with subs. The copyright lobby won’t let me, so I grab torrents. For free. Same with Formula1. I had a annual subscription to watch races online, in English, until they made some deal with some local broadcaster, meaning I need to sign up to the local broadcasters’ service on terrestrial, cable, or satellite (the ‘90 called, they want their broadcasting model back) and have commentary in $native_language. - I have disposable income - I’m happy to fork some of this over to the media companies - I consume media on an industrial scale - They refuse to provide a product that is consumable for me So, thanks, IPTV and torrent sites!

cute_boi 5y ago

And the problem with downloading using cloud is you have to use their apps and requires them to supply your phone data forever which is no no in my book. Imagine the dystopia there would be if there were no piracy. You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back".

lovelyviking 5y ago
>You got refunded but in my country many sites have implicit rule "Once you purchase it, we can't return it back". Do they specify what you actually purchase, I can't figure out what is it you purchase in such cases.
zozbot234 5y ago
Don't they have your data as part of the Amazon account anyway? Why does that even matter?

lovelyviking 5y ago

>went straight to a pirate site Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose I presume. What a web site providing access to the music has to do with it? The whole 'buy mp3' idea always have been troubling for me because I can't figure out exactly what I actually buy there. What is it I purchase? The right to listen for some composition? The right to listen it in that specific mp3 format ? The right to listen it more then one time because I have access to the file? What do I actually possess after the purchase that I didn't possess before? If it's my property then what is it? Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited? For instance it belongs to me but somehow there are some limits to play it in my own restaurant, isn't it? It's all presented as you buy something and it's clear what you buy. But if you are trying to think about it's more and more unclear. It looks more like some bully simply blocks access to something he got using some leverage over the author then sells you 'unblock' feature while author is stripped away from any rights by the same bully and have no ability to sell it directly to you. Isn't it a case now days of redundant MIM? Another issue is with how long it is blocked by paywall. The initial idea was how much? 10 years ? 15 years? How come that let's say Beatles are still protected from public? How that even possible and why nobody rises the issue of abusing initial idea?

muspimerol 5y ago
All of your questions have to do with copyright, which has little to do with the format of the thing you're purchasing (an mp3).
lelandfe 5y ago
> Pirates rob ships in the see and use guns for that purpose I presume. What a web site providing access to the music has to do with it? "Piracy" has been a term of art in the copyright world for over 100 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyrightpirates.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Copyrightpirates.jpg > Is it a property at all if the usage of it is limited? If you buy a copy of a book, you are not eligible to reprint that book and sell it yourself. There are limits on what folks can do with copyrighted works they buy. It might be worth reading, for instance, about the American concept of first-sale doctrine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
- betterunix2 5y ago
  "Piracy" has been a propaganda term in the copyright world... FTFY
  - 123pie123 5y ago
    Piracy implies theft and sounds more serious; where as copyright infringement does not sounds as exciting... (from wikipedia...) Copyright infringement is the use of works protected by copyright law without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make derivative works Theft is the taking of another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.
  - akomtu 5y ago
    The correct term is probably greed: not giving back to the author of music, movie, software you use. But greed is also the foundation of our economy, so copyright owners had to come up with a different word.

ecf 5y ago

It took me about half an hour of constant retries for the rented Apple TV movie I downloaded for offline use to play. Each time, for some reason or another, was blocked with the error message “This movie can only be played on displays that support HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection)”. I was on a plane with no internet, so troubleshooting the error was impossible. Furthermore, I can’t test playback of a movie in the future because doing so starts the three day expiration timer. In the future I guarantee I’ll be torrenting.

laurent92 5y ago
Torrenting + crossing a border… Not a good idea. Even having “photos for personal use” while crossing the boarder isn’t a good idea. I’m so afraid of TSA…
- goodpoint 5y ago
  "crossing A border" is not the same thing as "crossing the US border".
- jimktrains2 5y ago
  The TSA handles neither customs nor border patrol.
  - garbagecoder 5y ago
    Right, but they do handle the security screening and it’s all DHS
donmcronald 5y ago
I have Apple TV for the year because I got a new iPad and I still "pirated" Foundation because the Apple TV app for Roku isn't very good. I hate the interface, the playback skips (very infrequently), and the subtitle support is pretty bad. There's no way Plex and Emby should be better than Apple's equivalent, but they are IMO.
- 5y ago

ligerzer0 5y ago

I recently bought some hardware which came with license for software ( vst plug-ins). After registering the hardware, then making an account with the third party who provides the software, I was able to download a demo version which I should then have been able to unlock into a full version using the serial number and license file provided to me...but this was not the case. After about an hour of tinkering, restarting, and googling, I decided to try and pirate a copy of the software that I was entitled to the full working version of. Took about two minutes to download and have it running.

r00t4ccess 5y ago
How are you liking cubase?
ushakov 5y ago
maybe somebody returned the hardware but kept the license?

elcomet 5y ago

I mean if you would rather have paid you could have left the money to the author and pirate the mp3 anyway.

another_story 5y ago
I do wish all artists had a donate page. Most do not.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
How much of that money goes to the author instead of amazon?
- wsostt 5y ago
  Why’s that relevant? The payment is divided by the terms of the agreement with the author and associates. It was mutually agreed by everyone in writing.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Not the customer. Should they be able to pirate/donate and feel ethically okay?
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    How could it not be? I want to pay the creators, not some useless middlemen who only exist to solve the problems created by copyright.
wsostt 5y ago
I’ve taken this approach in the past.

dane-pgp 5y ago

> There was language that might have implied this was the case, but it was not clear or I was oblivious, probably the latter. For what it's worth, the language and layout was probably A/B tested and painstakingly tuned to maximise the probability of you making that mistake. Don't blame yourself when there's this unfair power imbalance, blame them for using their power against you maliciously.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> For what it's worth, the language and layout was probably A/B tested and painstakingly tuned to maximise the probability This sort of belief (that corporations do extensive testing and tuning of language) seems quite widely held, but I've never seen much support for it. I've frequently seen claims that Amazon must have "A/B tested and painstakingly tuned" the company name, whereas it was really just the founder's whim after watching a documentary, and never received any testing of any kind.
- tux3 5y ago
  Sometimes this happens as a sort of 'evolutionary' process. If a dodgy company has better wording for a misleading product, its deception will work better, so you can have highly tuned wording without anyone having to run an explicit A/B test.
  - patcon 5y ago
    Good point :) I'm glad to be reminded of that framing: a/b testing is just evolutionary selection within the same company-shaped container, but it's happening in the larger ecology even if you're not trying to run it.
- rp1 5y ago
  Have you ever worked at a large corporation like Facebook or Amazon? They have extensive internal A/B testing frameworks that record a wide variety of user metrics for arbitrary control and treatment exposures. It's very easy to set up an A/B test and pretty much necessary for almost all changes. Additionally, employees are expected to have concrete artifacts when they go up for promotion, and A/B test results are often a large part of that.

wildrhythms 5y ago

Gabe Newell: "Piracy is an issue of service, not price."

pengaru 5y ago

We just need the technology improved slightly to solve this problem. Artists should be seeding high quality files to the torrents themselves, in formats that are signed and include a crypto wallet for sending "donations". Then the playback software just needs to check the signature to ensure you're giving money to the actual creator and not some imposter if you want to throw money their way, through a payment ui the players conveniently make available to you. There's just no need for the middle-men who make it all miserable, and exploit control of the audience for their own gain via advertising/"recommendations"/propaganda etc. Torrents have fixed the distribution problem, and no consumers are really interested in depriving their favorite artists from making a living. It's just a glaring omission that the torrent system doesn't incorporate a reliable artists compensation circuit, like it's just unfinished.

brokenmachine 5y ago
That's a very interesting thought, but the one thing I think would be a problem is fake torrents with other parties bitcoin wallets embedded. Also some bands don't want to operate on "donations" and want to set a price for the download. I wonder how that would work to be able to set a price. Of course you could avoid this by only getting the torrent from the official band's website, but fakes would certainly be a problem.
garbagecoder 5y ago
Trent Reznor started doing that 15 years ago.
- pengaru 5y ago
  Really? Strange that none of the torrent-sourced NIN albums in MP3 format I have contain anything like a crypto wallet in the id3 tags... But it really isn't sufficient for the artist to just stick a wallet address somewhere in files seeded, and hope for the best. The format needs to formalize support for it, my players need to verify and make that information conveniently accessible to me, preferably in a one-click-to-tip-artist using my configured crypto wallet kind of fashion. For me this is one of the actual legitimate use cases of cryptocurrency. These microtransaction kind of business models where folks like artists are happy to receive tiny amounts like tips if they can get it repeatedly from all their fans globally, passively, just by having created their art and putting it out there where it's all effectively "long tail" revenue, stacking as they produce more work, ad infinitum.

busymom0 5y ago

Had a similar experience recently. Tried to buy 3 songs from a particular artist on Apple Music and for some reason, my Mac got the downloaded music and can play it but my iPhone refuses to recognize any of my purchases tracks despite being logged in the same account. Ended up pirating then tracks even though I had also paid for them already.

nelblu 5y ago

THIS! I had similar problem with watching a movie trilogy on Google play movies. The movie won't play on my computer but only played on android app (no i didn't have any firewall or special ad blocker on my PC). I called google customer service and asked them to fix, it took them 3 days to get back and the problem was still not fixed, needless to say I was mad and they refunded instantly. Next thing I just downloaded it.... I'd have loved to pay but if movie studios (or whoever is responsible for this sh#tshow) will go out of their way to not give me a mp4 or similar device/service independent playable format then I couldn't care less about their loss.

jbluepolarbear 5y ago

How long ago was this? I bought an mp3 from Amazon (The Touch - Stan Bush) in 2019 and I’m still able to download the mp3.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

matheusmoreira 5y ago

It's insane how these companies get away with this. Nobody is "buying" anything, they're licensing the content and that comes with a ton of restrictions. This should be considered false advertising at the very least.

shrimp_emoji 5y ago

Also try to buy some J-Pop only available on www.amazon.co.jp. :p

disparate_dan 5y ago

I’m surprised to hear this. I thought that Amazon had moved to offer all mp3 music as DRM-free. I’ve bought a lot of music from them and never been unable to download anything so far.

mdekkers 5y ago

Absolutely. I am a chronic expat, and frequently move countries. Due to ridiculous restrictions, I am unable to get movies and TV shows, in English, with English subtitles. Most of the time it is dubbed in $native_language without subs. I want to pay for my media. But it want it in English please, with subs. The copyright lobby won’t let me, so I grab torrents. For free. Same with Formula1. I had a annual subscription to watch races online, in English, until they made some deal with some local broadcaster, meaning I need to sign up to the local broadcasters’ service on terrestrial, cable, or satellite (the ‘90 called, they want their broadcasting model back) and have commentary in $native_language. - I have disposable income - I’m happy to fork some of this over to the media companies - I consume media on an industrial scale - They refuse to provide a product that is consumable for me So, thanks, IPTV and torrent sites!