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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 e

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.
- shockeychap 4y ago
  If you're talking about loaning a physical copy of a movie to a friend, sure. We have to make arrangements to get the "thing" from one location to another. Surely you can understand that freely "loaning" digital copies - with none of the friction involved in physical media transport - would de-incentivize purchasing by others. If you want that, fine. But that will jack up the price of movies, since a lot fewer of them will be sold.
  - necovek 4y ago
    With streamed digital copies, one can limit simultaneous playback. Simply "loaning" it in a service where you select who do you loan it to will add friction, and considering how any little friction (instead of torrenting or getting BR disks) is keeping people on streaming services anyway, it's unlikely it would move the needle too much.
    - cxr 4y ago
      > Simply "loaning" it in a service where you select who do you loan it to will add friction Interesting observation! Digital-only copies traded in a form not comprising the embodiment in a physical "vessel" allow for a theoretically efficient handshake-and-exchange process, but in practice, there's lots of friction involved. Grievance: "Hey, you can't do that! It's too easy!" Response: "Easy? Have you ever used an app with a 10-foot UI that's controlled by a TV remote?" See also: <https://xkcd.com/949/ https://xkcd.com/949/> ("File Transfer").
  - samdcbu 4y ago
    We already have exactly this system for library e-book lending. There is a queue of people on the waitlist for a book and once loan period for the current reader is expires it is automatically loaned (no scare quotes because it is in every way a loan) to the next person in the queue. I don’t see why the same couldn’t be done for other forms of media. Movies, albums, maybe even software licenses. This system will likely result in a fairly minor decline in VOD revenue due to fewer individuals purchasing their own digital copy because they are once again able to loan works to others and take advantage of the same sharing of works that was taken for granted with physical media. If someone borrows a friends license to a movie to watch it once instead of being forced by the studios to buy or rent their own copy then there will be some lost revenue but I think that revenue only existed in the first place because of the walled garden scheme of owning nothing that exists right now. I also think if VOD licenses actually had value and guaranteed longevity they would be more appealing to consumers.
denton-scratch 4y ago
> There are ways to correct this Those aren't "correcting" anything; the internet came along and stole their lunch. What needs correcting is the business model.

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.

shockeychap 4y ago
If you're talking about loaning a physical copy of a movie to a friend, sure. We have to make arrangements to get the "thing" from one location to another. Surely you can understand that freely "loaning" digital copies - with none of the friction involved in physical media transport - would de-incentivize purchasing by others. If you want that, fine. But that will jack up the price of movies, since a lot fewer of them will be sold.
- necovek 4y ago
  With streamed digital copies, one can limit simultaneous playback. Simply "loaning" it in a service where you select who do you loan it to will add friction, and considering how any little friction (instead of torrenting or getting BR disks) is keeping people on streaming services anyway, it's unlikely it would move the needle too much.
  - cxr 4y ago
    > Simply "loaning" it in a service where you select who do you loan it to will add friction Interesting observation! Digital-only copies traded in a form not comprising the embodiment in a physical "vessel" allow for a theoretically efficient handshake-and-exchange process, but in practice, there's lots of friction involved. Grievance: "Hey, you can't do that! It's too easy!" Response: "Easy? Have you ever used an app with a 10-foot UI that's controlled by a TV remote?" See also: <https://xkcd.com/949/ https://xkcd.com/949/> ("File Transfer").
- samdcbu 4y ago
  We already have exactly this system for library e-book lending. There is a queue of people on the waitlist for a book and once loan period for the current reader is expires it is automatically loaned (no scare quotes because it is in every way a loan) to the next person in the queue. I don’t see why the same couldn’t be done for other forms of media. Movies, albums, maybe even software licenses. This system will likely result in a fairly minor decline in VOD revenue due to fewer individuals purchasing their own digital copy because they are once again able to loan works to others and take advantage of the same sharing of works that was taken for granted with physical media. If someone borrows a friends license to a movie to watch it once instead of being forced by the studios to buy or rent their own copy then there will be some lost revenue but I think that revenue only existed in the first place because of the walled garden scheme of owning nothing that exists right now. I also think if VOD licenses actually had value and guaranteed longevity they would be more appealing to consumers.

denton-scratch 4y ago

> There are ways to correct this Those aren't "correcting" anything; the internet came along and stole their lunch. What needs correcting is the business model.