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One under-appreciated limitation on digital movies is geographic restrictions. You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no long

by stewx 4y ago

One under-appreciated limitation on digital movies is geographic restrictions. You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due to licensing. Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. You can sell your DVDs at a yard sale or on eBay but not your iTunes movies. IMO, our competition law should require vendors to allow re-sale of digital goods. Big benefit for consumers.

antoinec 4y ago
> Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. I get your point but I don't see how this could actually work. As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? It's not like it would come with a box that would look used/damaged, or a DVD with scratches on it.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  As a buyer: to get it cheaper. As a seller: to obtain money for something you no longer value at its purchase price.
- chucksmash 4y ago
  > As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? Because it is the same thing, but cheaper. > And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? Because otherwise people won't buy it from you, they'll buy it from ITunes. Even if the lower price doesn't make sense for digital media that aren't degraded through use, lower price (that lets you recoup, say, 90% of what you paid) would be needed to make people go through hassle of not just buying it "new."
  - Avicebron 4y ago
    True, and if the market economy was working as it should. Then if enough people were selling old digital music at lower prices, Itunes would have to lower their prices. Essentially what their doing is anti-competitive.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      You could even imagine an automated system where you buy a song for some two cents and then sell it back after you're done listening to it for a one cent. You could have users make their collections available on a market place and pay them some fraction of the profits you make.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - scarface74 4y ago
        Music bought on iTunes hasn’t had DRM since 2009
        mattl 4y ago
        Depends where you’re based. Japan had DRM on iTunes for some time and also DRM-free songs on iTunes were a paid upgrade globally for a while too.
        terinjokes 4y ago
        The ability to upgrade was only available for songs purchaseable as DRM-free on iTunes. I still have tracks in my library with the DRM because the distributor went out of business, making it impossible to upgrade.
        mattl 4y ago
        Oh wow. Which tracks?
  - antoinec 4y ago
    I'd be curious to see if a system like that exists already for some kind of digital asset: secondary sales for something that is not limited in quantity, and can still be bought from the source at a higher price.
    - carlgreene 4y ago
      VST plug-ins have a pretty robust secondary marketplace. See kvraudio.com
    - apetresc 4y ago
      Certain NFT marketplaces have this characteristic.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    @antoinec steam does exactly this. you can sell on steam and pay steam their cut, or sell steam keys elsewhere for the same or more money without steam taking a cut.
  - shockeychap 4y ago
    The only problem with this is that with physical media, there's an intrinsic amount of "friction" that prevents gaming the system. It's not convenient to, for example, have five people buy and share one set of DVDs. The hassle of moving the disc around (which gets dramatically worse with distance) incentivizes people to buy their own copy. But digital buying and selling would make it rather easy for one person to "sell" their movie to a friend for next-to-nothing and then "buy" it back when they want to use it. And we can be a thousand miles away with no problem. There are ways to correct this, such as imposing reasonable floors on the sale price, or not permitting the sale of a title for something like 30 days after a transaction. I'm just saying that these things would need to be factored into any proper solution, ideally via legislation.
    - frankfrankfrank 4y ago
      The friction you are overlooking would be, e.g., the platform to sell the media and the likely cost to do so. Not only that, but you are also not aware of the fraudulent price that is charged for the media now precisely because the market is a monopolistic fraud. If movies were priced at what they are really worth, they would be some … and easily significantly … lower lower price, e.g., $.50 rent and $2 to buy. If you want to evaluate how much the movies/content is really worth, just take the price you pay for a streaming service and divide it by the content you consume. For example; $5 month, divided by 80 hours of viewing (which seems low for most) and you come to $0.06 per hour, or about $0.12 per movie. Using this conservative estimate, are you going to bother selling a digital movie for less than $0.12? No. But that is precisely why the industry has monopolized the market and added DRM, because they want to keep their fraudulent scheme going to deprive people of their earnings. But what it’s really about is, as instituting a new form of slavery where you are given everything for “free” just like like slave of all other eras, but you are deprived of far more at a far greater intangible cost for it.
    - necovek 4y ago
      Loaning a copy to a friend, which is what your example basically is, should also be protected by consumer laws.
      - 4y ago
- bigyikes 4y ago
  >as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? A seller would do this to undercut iTunes, making a sale much more likely. >As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes Because the seller would likely price it lower than iTunes. The real question is: how does this affect the digital goods market overall? Does allowing re-sale make iTunes unprofitable? Does it make movie production unprofitable?
  - the_af 4y ago
    > Does allowing re-sale make iTunes unprofitable? I doubt it. Does reselling used physical books make the book publishing business unprofitable?
    - iggldiggl 4y ago
      I'd wager that physical vs. digital media does somewhat affect the outcomes here…
      - the_af 4y ago
        It probably does, I think mostly in the sense digital media is relatively new and misunderstood -- even today -- and publishers thought they could get away with an iron grip they simply could not have with physical stuff. So it's probably not that they lose profitability, but more that the extraordinary profit margins of digital get capped back to normality. Disregarding piracy [1], if I can sell a digital item and lose access in the process (so that I'm not making duplicates out of thin air), then what's the harm? That it's easier and more efficient to do used sales this way? Well, aren't free market proponents all about efficiency? Or is it just when it doesn't affect their profits? [1] If we don't disregard piracy, then all bets are off and whatever the publisher wants becomes irrelevant.
        iggldiggl 4y ago
        > if I can sell a digital item and lose access in the process Which is exactly the problem with digital media – how do you prove that to the satisfaction of everybody involved, i.e. especially the rightsholders? On the one hand, the fact that almost all of the music market and parts of the e-book market for example operate without DRM shows that in those cases the publishers/labels have somewhat resigned themselves to trusting the users to remain relatively honest in that regard, but I suspect that a platform explicitly designed for reselling digital content would still draw some additional scrutiny of the unwanted kind. Somewhat ironically, DRM would solve that particular problem – at the price of introducing additional restrictions during day-to-day usage that I wouldn't be happy about, though, either. E.g. looking at my personal music library, it would likely restrict the choice of software players and good luck implementing that kind of personalised DRM with hardware media players which might not even have any kind of internet connection. I've also invasively (albeit losslessly reversible) applied replay gain adjustment to my whole media library because some media players and e.g. my car radio don't support the tagging-based adjustment, and in some rare cases I even had to edit some files [1], neither of which would be possible with DRM-protected files. And of course it would introduce a continuing dependence on the existence of whoever is providing the DRM in order to access those media files you've supposedly "bought". [1] The version of 3:47 EST on iTunes turned out to be missing the mouse squeak at the end – because of no DRM, I was able to find a complete, but otherwise slightly worse-sounding version (more surface hiss) on Youtube, lift the squeak off of it, de-noise it, and tack it onto my purchased version without having to lossily transcode that the main bulk of that song again.
- frankfrankfrank 4y ago
  It’s rather simple, because you want to sell it. If you want to hold out for selling it at market price while the buyer will prefer buying it directly from the source, then so be it, or if you want to sell it immediately, you price it at bargain prices or even free if you don’t care, i.e. value the item anymore. What we are witnessing here is a total destruction of markets and commerce between free humans. What you and many are are also missing, including the author, is that the whole system is a fraud because the prices we asked to pay (I refuse) are fraudulent themselves because of it. You are “buying” a movie at a price, precisely because the whole system is rigged in a fraudulent manner where you are not able to actually own it and you are not able to sell it, and you can’t rent it or even lend it; therefore it is not actually a market price, it is a monopoly price based on cartel control and total cornering of the market. It’s essentially no different than the fraudulent price of diamonds or any of the frauds that have been prosecuted where people corner and manipulate the market of, e.g., onions, famously. Some may have heard the phrase “you will own nothing and be happy” expressed by your global rulers. This topic is precisely manifestation of that and people don’t seem to realize it. You own nothing related to media that you think you own and you think you are happy for it, without yet realizing what a fraud and trap it is, even as the encirclement of slavery progresses all around us. Especially in America there are many people who, if you were to look at closely, literally own not a single thing they think they have; and in many cases own less than they are even worth. Every single thing can be yanked out from under people like that on a whim … legally. A recent famous example of that is the Tesla that was disabled because Tesla didn’t like something. Slaves of the past were also “happy and didn’t own anything” since their healthcare was “free” and their groceries were “free” and their housing was “free”, etc.; all provided for “free” by government of and by the feudal lord or plantation owners. In case people have forgotten the most relevant case of what the author writes about; remember when Amazon simply deleted a book from users’ kindles without even asking, let alone receiving consent? This was about 4 years ago now. That book that Amazon just disappeared off people’s devices with no evidence of their actions other than some coincidental proof of purchase people had retained … 1984.
  - rvz 4y ago
    Yes. That is the scam. It's no different to the rest of them. If Stadia hasn't already taught anyone that it is a scam then I don't know what will.
abraxas 4y ago
Unfortunately geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits movie format. DVDs were regionally locked as well and even analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats that were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM). That said, the situation is quite a bit worse now as the modern DRM is harder to circumvent and geolocking more granular than ever before. But the intent to lock us down was always there from the movie industry, just not the capability until recently.
- the_af 4y ago
  > DVDs were regionally locked as well To be fair, those of us who tend to complain about these things also raised hell about DVDs back then. Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. It was such a relief when the restrictions were hacked away (was it that an encryption key got leaked? I don't remember the details).
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    DVD has an incredibly weak 40-bit encryption scheme due to US regulations on exporting cryptography when it was developed. As a result, it was broken very quickly after launch. It has no real key revocation system (just stop including keys for certain defeated devices in new releases), and nowadays a computer can brute-force every possible decryption key within seconds, rendering revoking stolen drive keys completely pointless. As the region lock is enforced by software only, an unofficial player like VLC does not need to pay the region lock any heed. Blu-ray on the other hand... well, where do I start? 128-bit AES, key revocation, host authentication, virtual machine fixup tables, digital signing, Media Key Block updating, Java applications... Let's just say Blu-ray is stuck in an odd place where the underlying technology isn't really that defeated, even though hackers have made keeping up with their stolen device keys from hacked players very impractical for the Blu-ray Disc Association. (Revoking a drive key requires a 90-day heads up for manufacturers to roll out new keys for the effected model, which means that if hackers manage to steal 4 device keys per year... from over a decade and a half of different players, many not receiving updates anymore...)
    - 4y ago
LopovJack 4y ago
That is feature of DRM and has nothing to do with digital movies. If you bought DRM locked product that you are not really an owner. You can play video file anywhere in the world and any time. Second issue is if you bought it trough a service and keept it there, then you definitely not the owner...
- stewx 4y ago
  Ok, "digital movies as most consumers know them". People aren't buying DRM-free digital movies. (Technically, DVDs and Blu-rays are digital as well, but we don't call them that)
  - jandorn 4y ago
    Doesn't matter if you are talking about downsides. Digital movie has no downsides, DRM on other hands has as we all know. Only valid complaint here is DRM and it always was. We were warned but nobody listened.
astorsnk 4y ago
>> You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due to licensing. Maybe this is true from the perspective of the license but it's not something Apple enforces through tech. For example, I have a two iTunes accounts for two countries. I can purchase content through both and use that content anywhere without restriction. They make it a big pain because you can't switch your account to a different geo after it's created but with multiple accounts your content isn't actually restricted.
- stewx 4y ago
  Jumping through hoops doesn't work for most consumers. Nor should they have to do it.
  - 411111111111111 4y ago
    The original point was that you might loose access to purchased movies because the licensing doesn't allow you so watch it from a different locality. This is currently untrue for Apple/itunes and that's the only point they made. There are currently no hoops for anyone to jump through unless you want to sidestep the law or licensing agreements, which is another discussion entirely. Potential buyers still have to consider the original point however, as even if Apple doesn't enforce it currently, there is no assurance that it won't in the future. And there is no guarantee that it's gonna be the same if theyre buying on another platform. Didn't Google and Amazon have competing platforms for example?
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  Maybe iTunes wasn't a good example but it has happened to me with other services. I live in the Netherlands where I bought a subscription for the Formula 1 TV service. Last year I was in the UK visiting family and was unable to watch races there, despite havng already paid for them, as the geo restrictions were different.
  - astorsnk 4y ago
    >> Last year I was in the UK visiting family and was unable to watch races there, despite havng already paid for them, as the geo restrictions were different. Yep, thank sucks. You can thank brexit for that. AFAIK services offered in one EU country have to work throughout the EU (so if you were in Germany it would have worked). This meant that on holiday (coming from UK to Spain) a few years back I was able to watch F1 live on my phone via the NowTV/Sky app. This year - geo restricted.
KingFelix 4y ago
Final space was also interesting. Another show that got the chopping block for tax purposes. They were removed from AMazon, even if you purchased the seasons! Piracy returns?
- benabus 4y ago
  Came here to say this. I thought "Now that it's not streaming, I've at least got a copy on Amazon Prime!" Nope. Not anymore. And definitely can't get Season 3 any longer. Complete bullshit.
- 5pComb 4y ago
  -"Piracy returns?" It never gone. 4Tb USB HD + Good Torrent Tracker = All problems solved.
- deadbunny 4y ago
  Thankfully we never went away and we have a lot of the shows/films/music that are no longer commercially available archived for future generations.
OhNoNotAnother1 4y ago
volleygman180 4y ago
> re-sale of digital goods Sounds a lot like a problem that NFTs could fix
- SkyBelow 4y ago
  That would be one way of handling the technical how, but it isn't technical problems that are stopping companies from doing this. Places like Steam already have digital marketplaces yet games aren't resalable.
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  No, introducing artificial scarcity does nothing to fix the problem.
- deadbunny 4y ago
  Steam has a list of licences I own for the games I have on Steam. They could easily add 2nd hand sales to the Steam store and just transfer that license to another user. No need for a Blockchain when Steam have a perfectly working database.
  - cgrealy 4y ago
    The issue with resale of digital content is that there is no discernible difference between new and used. Why would anyone ever pay full price for a "new" game if there were "second hand" copies that were completely identical to a new version available for less? I don't care about EA or Activision losing out on that 10th private jet, but second hand sales would absolutely hurt small creators doing great work.
    - anikom15 4y ago
      Used sellers can’t create new copies of the game. Used markets have more of an impact on retailers and dealers than on manufacturers.
    - stewx 4y ago
      One way to be fair to stores is to not require them to host the marketplace for buying and selling the used copies. People looking for "used" copies of movies and games would have to leave the official store and use third-party web sites to buy and sell. This creates a layer of inconvenience which would level the playing field somewhat. Another way to improve fairness to stores could be to allow them to charge a "transfer fee" of perhaps 5-10% of original MSRP for transferring any used content.
dewey 4y ago
> You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due to licensing. In the EU we have an interesting law regarding that, if you subscribe to Netflix in Germany and then travel to another EU country you'll still get the same catalog as in your home country. If you have a US account and travel to the EU you'll get access to the catalog of the country you are in.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  do you have a link to this law?
  - dewey 4y ago
    It's the Portability Regulation: https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-9-2-2018/4728 https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-9-2-2018/4728
iggldiggl 4y ago
> Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. Which, as I've recently noticed, in turn has the interesting (and from the consumer point of view somewhat unfortunate) side effect that if a particular online release is pulled from distribution, it becomes completely unavailable (at least through legal channels) from one moment to the next. Whereas with physical media first of all being pulled from distribution doesn't automatically mean that all existing stock in all stores worldwide is being recalled (it can happen, but the process is not as intrinsically linked as it is with digital distribution), and secondly in any case there's always the second hand market to completely legally fall back to, so the onset of unavailability is a more gradual process, especially for more popular media where there's a sizeable second hand market offering available. With digital media on the other hand you more or less immediately have to fall back to under-the-table sources if that happens…

by stewx 4y ago

antoinec 4y ago

> Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. I get your point but I don't see how this could actually work. As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? It's not like it would come with a box that would look used/damaged, or a DVD with scratches on it.

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
As a buyer: to get it cheaper. As a seller: to obtain money for something you no longer value at its purchase price.
chucksmash 4y ago
> As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes? Because it is the same thing, but cheaper. > And as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? Because otherwise people won't buy it from you, they'll buy it from ITunes. Even if the lower price doesn't make sense for digital media that aren't degraded through use, lower price (that lets you recoup, say, 90% of what you paid) would be needed to make people go through hassle of not just buying it "new."
- Avicebron 4y ago
  True, and if the market economy was working as it should. Then if enough people were selling old digital music at lower prices, Itunes would have to lower their prices. Essentially what their doing is anti-competitive.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    You could even imagine an automated system where you buy a song for some two cents and then sell it back after you're done listening to it for a one cent. You could have users make their collections available on a market place and pay them some fraction of the profits you make.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - scarface74 4y ago
      Music bought on iTunes hasn’t had DRM since 2009
      - mattl 4y ago
        Depends where you’re based. Japan had DRM on iTunes for some time and also DRM-free songs on iTunes were a paid upgrade globally for a while too.
        terinjokes 4y ago
        The ability to upgrade was only available for songs purchaseable as DRM-free on iTunes. I still have tracks in my library with the DRM because the distributor went out of business, making it impossible to upgrade.
        mattl 4y ago
        Oh wow. Which tracks?
- antoinec 4y ago
  I'd be curious to see if a system like that exists already for some kind of digital asset: secondary sales for something that is not limited in quantity, and can still be bought from the source at a higher price.
  - carlgreene 4y ago
    VST plug-ins have a pretty robust secondary marketplace. See kvraudio.com
  - apetresc 4y ago
    Certain NFT marketplaces have this characteristic.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- LegitShady 4y ago
  @antoinec steam does exactly this. you can sell on steam and pay steam their cut, or sell steam keys elsewhere for the same or more money without steam taking a cut.
- shockeychap 4y ago
  The only problem with this is that with physical media, there's an intrinsic amount of "friction" that prevents gaming the system. It's not convenient to, for example, have five people buy and share one set of DVDs. The hassle of moving the disc around (which gets dramatically worse with distance) incentivizes people to buy their own copy. But digital buying and selling would make it rather easy for one person to "sell" their movie to a friend for next-to-nothing and then "buy" it back when they want to use it. And we can be a thousand miles away with no problem. There are ways to correct this, such as imposing reasonable floors on the sale price, or not permitting the sale of a title for something like 30 days after a transaction. I'm just saying that these things would need to be factored into any proper solution, ideally via legislation.
  - frankfrankfrank 4y ago
    The friction you are overlooking would be, e.g., the platform to sell the media and the likely cost to do so. Not only that, but you are also not aware of the fraudulent price that is charged for the media now precisely because the market is a monopolistic fraud. If movies were priced at what they are really worth, they would be some … and easily significantly … lower lower price, e.g., $.50 rent and $2 to buy. If you want to evaluate how much the movies/content is really worth, just take the price you pay for a streaming service and divide it by the content you consume. For example; $5 month, divided by 80 hours of viewing (which seems low for most) and you come to $0.06 per hour, or about $0.12 per movie. Using this conservative estimate, are you going to bother selling a digital movie for less than $0.12? No. But that is precisely why the industry has monopolized the market and added DRM, because they want to keep their fraudulent scheme going to deprive people of their earnings. But what it’s really about is, as instituting a new form of slavery where you are given everything for “free” just like like slave of all other eras, but you are deprived of far more at a far greater intangible cost for it.
  - necovek 4y ago
    Loaning a copy to a friend, which is what your example basically is, should also be protected by consumer laws.
    - 4y ago
bigyikes 4y ago
>as a seller, why would I sell it at a lower price than what it is on iTunes? A seller would do this to undercut iTunes, making a sale much more likely. >As a buyer, why would I buy an iTunes movie from someone else and not from iTunes Because the seller would likely price it lower than iTunes. The real question is: how does this affect the digital goods market overall? Does allowing re-sale make iTunes unprofitable? Does it make movie production unprofitable?
- the_af 4y ago
  > Does allowing re-sale make iTunes unprofitable? I doubt it. Does reselling used physical books make the book publishing business unprofitable?
  - iggldiggl 4y ago
    I'd wager that physical vs. digital media does somewhat affect the outcomes here…
    - the_af 4y ago
      It probably does, I think mostly in the sense digital media is relatively new and misunderstood -- even today -- and publishers thought they could get away with an iron grip they simply could not have with physical stuff. So it's probably not that they lose profitability, but more that the extraordinary profit margins of digital get capped back to normality. Disregarding piracy [1], if I can sell a digital item and lose access in the process (so that I'm not making duplicates out of thin air), then what's the harm? That it's easier and more efficient to do used sales this way? Well, aren't free market proponents all about efficiency? Or is it just when it doesn't affect their profits? [1] If we don't disregard piracy, then all bets are off and whatever the publisher wants becomes irrelevant.
      - iggldiggl 4y ago
        > if I can sell a digital item and lose access in the process Which is exactly the problem with digital media – how do you prove that to the satisfaction of everybody involved, i.e. especially the rightsholders? On the one hand, the fact that almost all of the music market and parts of the e-book market for example operate without DRM shows that in those cases the publishers/labels have somewhat resigned themselves to trusting the users to remain relatively honest in that regard, but I suspect that a platform explicitly designed for reselling digital content would still draw some additional scrutiny of the unwanted kind. Somewhat ironically, DRM would solve that particular problem – at the price of introducing additional restrictions during day-to-day usage that I wouldn't be happy about, though, either. E.g. looking at my personal music library, it would likely restrict the choice of software players and good luck implementing that kind of personalised DRM with hardware media players which might not even have any kind of internet connection. I've also invasively (albeit losslessly reversible) applied replay gain adjustment to my whole media library because some media players and e.g. my car radio don't support the tagging-based adjustment, and in some rare cases I even had to edit some files [1], neither of which would be possible with DRM-protected files. And of course it would introduce a continuing dependence on the existence of whoever is providing the DRM in order to access those media files you've supposedly "bought". [1] The version of 3:47 EST on iTunes turned out to be missing the mouse squeak at the end – because of no DRM, I was able to find a complete, but otherwise slightly worse-sounding version (more surface hiss) on Youtube, lift the squeak off of it, de-noise it, and tack it onto my purchased version without having to lossily transcode that the main bulk of that song again.
frankfrankfrank 4y ago
It’s rather simple, because you want to sell it. If you want to hold out for selling it at market price while the buyer will prefer buying it directly from the source, then so be it, or if you want to sell it immediately, you price it at bargain prices or even free if you don’t care, i.e. value the item anymore. What we are witnessing here is a total destruction of markets and commerce between free humans. What you and many are are also missing, including the author, is that the whole system is a fraud because the prices we asked to pay (I refuse) are fraudulent themselves because of it. You are “buying” a movie at a price, precisely because the whole system is rigged in a fraudulent manner where you are not able to actually own it and you are not able to sell it, and you can’t rent it or even lend it; therefore it is not actually a market price, it is a monopoly price based on cartel control and total cornering of the market. It’s essentially no different than the fraudulent price of diamonds or any of the frauds that have been prosecuted where people corner and manipulate the market of, e.g., onions, famously. Some may have heard the phrase “you will own nothing and be happy” expressed by your global rulers. This topic is precisely manifestation of that and people don’t seem to realize it. You own nothing related to media that you think you own and you think you are happy for it, without yet realizing what a fraud and trap it is, even as the encirclement of slavery progresses all around us. Especially in America there are many people who, if you were to look at closely, literally own not a single thing they think they have; and in many cases own less than they are even worth. Every single thing can be yanked out from under people like that on a whim … legally. A recent famous example of that is the Tesla that was disabled because Tesla didn’t like something. Slaves of the past were also “happy and didn’t own anything” since their healthcare was “free” and their groceries were “free” and their housing was “free”, etc.; all provided for “free” by government of and by the feudal lord or plantation owners. In case people have forgotten the most relevant case of what the author writes about; remember when Amazon simply deleted a book from users’ kindles without even asking, let alone receiving consent? This was about 4 years ago now. That book that Amazon just disappeared off people’s devices with no evidence of their actions other than some coincidental proof of purchase people had retained … 1984.
- rvz 4y ago
  Yes. That is the scam. It's no different to the rest of them. If Stadia hasn't already taught anyone that it is a scam then I don't know what will.

abraxas 4y ago

Unfortunately geolocking isn't new or unique to the pure bits movie format. DVDs were regionally locked as well and even analog media like VHS tapes used color encoding formats that were specific in different regions (NTSC vs PAL vs SECAM). That said, the situation is quite a bit worse now as the modern DRM is harder to circumvent and geolocking more granular than ever before. But the intent to lock us down was always there from the movie industry, just not the capability until recently.

the_af 4y ago
> DVDs were regionally locked as well To be fair, those of us who tend to complain about these things also raised hell about DVDs back then. Geo-locking is such an obviously bad idea for consumers. It was such a relief when the restrictions were hacked away (was it that an encryption key got leaked? I don't remember the details).
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  DVD has an incredibly weak 40-bit encryption scheme due to US regulations on exporting cryptography when it was developed. As a result, it was broken very quickly after launch. It has no real key revocation system (just stop including keys for certain defeated devices in new releases), and nowadays a computer can brute-force every possible decryption key within seconds, rendering revoking stolen drive keys completely pointless. As the region lock is enforced by software only, an unofficial player like VLC does not need to pay the region lock any heed. Blu-ray on the other hand... well, where do I start? 128-bit AES, key revocation, host authentication, virtual machine fixup tables, digital signing, Media Key Block updating, Java applications... Let's just say Blu-ray is stuck in an odd place where the underlying technology isn't really that defeated, even though hackers have made keeping up with their stolen device keys from hacked players very impractical for the Blu-ray Disc Association. (Revoking a drive key requires a 90-day heads up for manufacturers to roll out new keys for the effected model, which means that if hackers manage to steal 4 device keys per year... from over a decade and a half of different players, many not receiving updates anymore...)
  - 4y ago

LopovJack 4y ago

That is feature of DRM and has nothing to do with digital movies. If you bought DRM locked product that you are not really an owner. You can play video file anywhere in the world and any time. Second issue is if you bought it trough a service and keept it there, then you definitely not the owner...

stewx 4y ago
Ok, "digital movies as most consumers know them". People aren't buying DRM-free digital movies. (Technically, DVDs and Blu-rays are digital as well, but we don't call them that)
- jandorn 4y ago
  Doesn't matter if you are talking about downsides. Digital movie has no downsides, DRM on other hands has as we all know. Only valid complaint here is DRM and it always was. We were warned but nobody listened.

astorsnk 4y ago

>> You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due to licensing. Maybe this is true from the perspective of the license but it's not something Apple enforces through tech. For example, I have a two iTunes accounts for two countries. I can purchase content through both and use that content anywhere without restriction. They make it a big pain because you can't switch your account to a different geo after it's created but with multiple accounts your content isn't actually restricted.

stewx 4y ago
Jumping through hoops doesn't work for most consumers. Nor should they have to do it.
- 411111111111111 4y ago
  The original point was that you might loose access to purchased movies because the licensing doesn't allow you so watch it from a different locality. This is currently untrue for Apple/itunes and that's the only point they made. There are currently no hoops for anyone to jump through unless you want to sidestep the law or licensing agreements, which is another discussion entirely. Potential buyers still have to consider the original point however, as even if Apple doesn't enforce it currently, there is no assurance that it won't in the future. And there is no guarantee that it's gonna be the same if theyre buying on another platform. Didn't Google and Amazon have competing platforms for example?
AlecSchueler 4y ago
Maybe iTunes wasn't a good example but it has happened to me with other services. I live in the Netherlands where I bought a subscription for the Formula 1 TV service. Last year I was in the UK visiting family and was unable to watch races there, despite havng already paid for them, as the geo restrictions were different.
- astorsnk 4y ago
  >> Last year I was in the UK visiting family and was unable to watch races there, despite havng already paid for them, as the geo restrictions were different. Yep, thank sucks. You can thank brexit for that. AFAIK services offered in one EU country have to work throughout the EU (so if you were in Germany it would have worked). This meant that on holiday (coming from UK to Spain) a few years back I was able to watch F1 live on my phone via the NowTV/Sky app. This year - geo restricted.

KingFelix 4y ago

Final space was also interesting. Another show that got the chopping block for tax purposes. They were removed from AMazon, even if you purchased the seasons! Piracy returns?

benabus 4y ago
Came here to say this. I thought "Now that it's not streaming, I've at least got a copy on Amazon Prime!" Nope. Not anymore. And definitely can't get Season 3 any longer. Complete bullshit.
5pComb 4y ago
-"Piracy returns?" It never gone. 4Tb USB HD + Good Torrent Tracker = All problems solved.
deadbunny 4y ago
Thankfully we never went away and we have a lot of the shows/films/music that are no longer commercially available archived for future generations.

OhNoNotAnother1 4y ago

volleygman180 4y ago

> re-sale of digital goods Sounds a lot like a problem that NFTs could fix

SkyBelow 4y ago
That would be one way of handling the technical how, but it isn't technical problems that are stopping companies from doing this. Places like Steam already have digital marketplaces yet games aren't resalable.
NoGravitas 4y ago
No, introducing artificial scarcity does nothing to fix the problem.
deadbunny 4y ago
Steam has a list of licences I own for the games I have on Steam. They could easily add 2nd hand sales to the Steam store and just transfer that license to another user. No need for a Blockchain when Steam have a perfectly working database.
- cgrealy 4y ago
  The issue with resale of digital content is that there is no discernible difference between new and used. Why would anyone ever pay full price for a "new" game if there were "second hand" copies that were completely identical to a new version available for less? I don't care about EA or Activision losing out on that 10th private jet, but second hand sales would absolutely hurt small creators doing great work.
  - anikom15 4y ago
    Used sellers can’t create new copies of the game. Used markets have more of an impact on retailers and dealers than on manufacturers.
  - stewx 4y ago
    One way to be fair to stores is to not require them to host the marketplace for buying and selling the used copies. People looking for "used" copies of movies and games would have to leave the official store and use third-party web sites to buy and sell. This creates a layer of inconvenience which would level the playing field somewhat. Another way to improve fairness to stores could be to allow them to charge a "transfer fee" of perhaps 5-10% of original MSRP for transferring any used content.

dewey 4y ago

> You buy a bunch of iTunes movies in Canada, then move to the USA, and you no longer have the right to watch them anymore due to licensing. In the EU we have an interesting law regarding that, if you subscribe to Netflix in Germany and then travel to another EU country you'll still get the same catalog as in your home country. If you have a US account and travel to the EU you'll get access to the catalog of the country you are in.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
do you have a link to this law?
- dewey 4y ago
  It's the Portability Regulation: https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-9-2-2018/4728 https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-9-2-2018/4728

iggldiggl 4y ago

> Another significant issue with digital movies and games is the inability to resell the content once you're done with it. Which, as I've recently noticed, in turn has the interesting (and from the consumer point of view somewhat unfortunate) side effect that if a particular online release is pulled from distribution, it becomes completely unavailable (at least through legal channels) from one moment to the next. Whereas with physical media first of all being pulled from distribution doesn't automatically mean that all existing stock in all stores worldwide is being recalled (it can happen, but the process is not as intrinsically linked as it is with digital distribution), and secondly in any case there's always the second hand market to completely legally fall back to, so the onset of unavailability is a more gradual process, especially for more popular media where there's a sizeable second hand market offering available. With digital media on the other hand you more or less immediately have to fall back to under-the-table sources if that happens…