7 ms·

Extremely creepy that we’re losing the ability to consume media without being watched and analyzed every moment we do so. I think this is more invasive than peo

Extremely creepy that we’re losing the ability to consume media without being watched and analyzed every moment we do so. I think this is more invasive than people realize, even without meta’s eye tracking on its way

samwillis 3y ago
Quite right, but the solution to this isn't physical discs, or owning the "movie file", it's legislative. We need more restrictive legislation around storing then data mining user activity, and how that information is used. This applies to everything we do on our devices, but also interaction in the real world too.
- tjoff 3y ago
  Sure, but owning a physical disc / movie file is also part of it.
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  ...or just drastically shorten the copyright terms to a few years, and watch it wherever and however after it's in public domain.
  - samwillis 3y ago
    That's a pipe dream, it's just not going to happen. Pushing for copyright change is a distraction for making actual change. We need change now.
    - TheCleric 3y ago
      And this will end up only hurting smaller creators. Disney can afford to churn out a ton of content every few years, whereas a novel/movie/art/etc. may be an individual's life's work.
      - izacus 3y ago
        So is the code I wrote 5 years ago and I don't have the right to rent seek the whole world for next 70 years with it.
        thereisnojesus 3y ago
        What does this even mean? If you chose to work for someone, you don't own shit.
        izacus 3y ago
        It means what I wrote it means - there's no inherent reason why any content creator should be entitled to rent for a text they wrote or image they put together for their whole lifetime. A carpenter selling his work of art doesn't get rent for 70 years. Neither does a painter. Or a software developer based on the code they commited. What makes a writer or a singer (in reality, for MOST content that would be a publisher megacorporation) so special, that they deserve rent until end of life for a piece of text they wrote? Let me reiterate, VAST, VAST majority of all cultural works aren't owned by authors themselves, but their publishers which don't pass on most of the rent they collect. Huge piece of this is owned by rent-seeking megacorporations collecting rent for things they did not create and which royalty agreements have passed long since. Make copyright 20 years - most profits from content are made in first 5 years. 15 extra on top to be fair. After that, the artists will just actually have to create something new to earn money - just like everyone else in the world.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        Someone who only ever published a single work almost certainly was never a professional author / artist / whatever.
        TheCleric 3y ago
        Really? That would have been news to Harper Lee.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      Pushing for copyright change is actual change. It's just unlikely to happen while our law makers are representing the interests of corporations instead of the people.
- AshamedCaptain 3y ago
  With all due respect, and even considering that I am generally a fan of the "no technical solutions to legal problems", but this concrete example is where I draw the line: there is a clear benefit of a 3rd party _not being able_ to trace you _at all_ ; compared to whichever legal restrictions you want to put on it which may not even be physically nor technologically enforceable (at the end of the day they have the addresses and "bytes of the movie requested" for every user they served it to, no matter what the law says). Not to mention the public (as usual) doesn't even seem to mind about their user activity being mined; at this point, even "western democracies" do it with various coatings of paint. Such democracies enforcing companies not to mine user activity, appetizing and trivial as this mining is, is just wishful thinking both today as well as at any point of history. I would never exchange a broadcast medium where it is _impossible_ for the broadcaster to track me with one where tracking me is practically a side effect of its normal operation, even if I had the personal written guarantee of the current President of the Republic that the broadcasters would not be able to actually use any of the data they mine from it.
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    Owning a physical disc also comes with additional legal protections. Once you own the copy, many agreements become non-enforceable. This applies to a lesser degree to software (since the installation step involves making a copy), but even then there are protections.
    - cogman10 3y ago
      Which is why media companies hate physical discs. They view the second hand market as lost revenue and libraries as legal thievery.
    - autoexec 3y ago
      Owning a copy doesn't just protect you, but the content itself as well. It means that Disney can't edit or censor the work post-release. It means they can't stop it from being accessed entirely.
- cogman10 3y ago
  > We need more restrictive legislation around storing then data mining user activity How would such a law be enforced? You don't know if your data is being mined and it's way to easy for a company to simply lie to a regulator about it. If they are following good security practices, it would be impossible for a regulator to really know whether or not that's going on. It's either that or give the government backdoors into info systems so they can verify nobody is mining data... which seems not good. I'd want some way to coerce companies into making physical media but I'm not sure that can be done. Perhaps as part of the library of congress? It seems like it would probably be reasonable for the government to say "If you won't provide physical media prints of your content, we will".
  - autoexec 3y ago
    > I'd want some way to coerce companies into making physical media but I'm not sure that can be done. Don't worry about physical media. Formats come and go. In order for a company to have any copyright protections at all on a work, a high quality digital version should have to be submitted to the copyright office which should automatically make that copy available at copyright.gov the instant the copyright on the work expires. Any edits or censored versions a company puts out later would then need to be copyrighted and submitted to the copyright office separately making sure that the originals are always preserved and available.
amelius 3y ago
Funny, because when the Apple Vision Pro was introduced I didn't hear any worries.
- LordShredda 3y ago
  There absolutely were complains, you weren't at the right place to listen
  - amelius 3y ago
    That could be. In the end 90% still buys Apple. HN people generally think of themselves as smart folks but frankly when it comes to voting (with their feet) they behave pretty much like average people.
    - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
      iPhone market share is 21% [1], so it’s unclear where you’re getting the 90% figure. [1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...
      - amelius 3y ago
        That's global market share. Also, I don't think if it's a wild guess to say that HN folks have more disposable income than a random world citizen.
      - als0 3y ago
        To be fair, as I've learnt, the iPhone has more than 50% market share in the USA. Which is relevant given that this is a discussion about HNers, who I assume most of which live there.
    - acdha 3y ago
      > HN people generally think of themselves as smart folks but frankly when it comes to voting (with their feet) they behave pretty much like average people I can’t help but notice that you’re detailing the thread with some counterfactual trolling. Maybe stop congratulating yourself for being so much smarter than everyone else and think about how you could state a coherent thesis and support it with data?
PrimeMcFly 3y ago
It makes piracy that much more important.
- jjulius 3y ago
  Agreed. I went all-in on paying for streaming years back and cut back on my pirating. Now that things are getting significantly more user-hostile, I'm finding myself pirating a lot more often. Oh well.
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    They clearly don't want our money anyway.
- barbariangrunge 3y ago
  One day, piracy won’t be viable. Some new tech and/or legislation will gradually wipe it out (Eg, required software running on everyone’s machines validating every file, invasive stuff like that could happen in 20 years), maybe not today, but one day. We can’t rely on it
  - PrimeMcFly 3y ago
    The only way piracy won't be viable is if manufacturers succeed in taking control of computers away from consumers. I don't think we will ever let that happen.
    - fsflover 3y ago
      > I don't think we will ever let that happen. The number of iPhones is on the rise, the desktop share's declining.
    - c120 3y ago
      If you're reading Cory Doctorow books and blogposts, that's exactly what "they" are working on and the part of the population that cares about this may be a lot smaller than you think.
toastal 3y ago
We can start by moving the things we can to services that respect our privacy. Over time you can pry back some of your autonomy.
glimshe 3y ago
I'm not a defender of piracy. I buy stuff when a DRM-free version is available. But I've been thinking of piracy lately as a form of civil disobedience and actually a net benefit for mankind (sci-hub being a clear example)
- nighthawk454 3y ago
  If the whole ‘vote with your wallet’ thing is the only recourse for consumers, sounds like this is the system working as intended. I guess historical boycotts didn’t have viable piracy. But beyond that sounds like this is the desired/incentivized behavior.
paulcole 3y ago
I’ll gladly take a situation that’s 10x more restrictive than it is now to only have the ability to consume media that is on one of 10 TV channels.
MollyRealized 3y ago
Yarr.
nunez 3y ago
True, but at the same time, no-one buys DVDs anymore because of streaming: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/the-death-of-the-dvd-why-sales-dropped-more-than-86percent-in-13-years.html#:~:text=At%20its%20peak%2C%20DVD%20sales,than%20DVDs%2C%20launched%20in%202006 https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/the-death-of-the-dvd-why-sal...

samwillis 3y ago

Quite right, but the solution to this isn't physical discs, or owning the "movie file", it's legislative. We need more restrictive legislation around storing then data mining user activity, and how that information is used. This applies to everything we do on our devices, but also interaction in the real world too.

tjoff 3y ago
Sure, but owning a physical disc / movie file is also part of it.
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
...or just drastically shorten the copyright terms to a few years, and watch it wherever and however after it's in public domain.
- samwillis 3y ago
  That's a pipe dream, it's just not going to happen. Pushing for copyright change is a distraction for making actual change. We need change now.
  - TheCleric 3y ago
    And this will end up only hurting smaller creators. Disney can afford to churn out a ton of content every few years, whereas a novel/movie/art/etc. may be an individual's life's work.
    - izacus 3y ago
      So is the code I wrote 5 years ago and I don't have the right to rent seek the whole world for next 70 years with it.
      - thereisnojesus 3y ago
        What does this even mean? If you chose to work for someone, you don't own shit.
        izacus 3y ago
        It means what I wrote it means - there's no inherent reason why any content creator should be entitled to rent for a text they wrote or image they put together for their whole lifetime. A carpenter selling his work of art doesn't get rent for 70 years. Neither does a painter. Or a software developer based on the code they commited. What makes a writer or a singer (in reality, for MOST content that would be a publisher megacorporation) so special, that they deserve rent until end of life for a piece of text they wrote? Let me reiterate, VAST, VAST majority of all cultural works aren't owned by authors themselves, but their publishers which don't pass on most of the rent they collect. Huge piece of this is owned by rent-seeking megacorporations collecting rent for things they did not create and which royalty agreements have passed long since. Make copyright 20 years - most profits from content are made in first 5 years. 15 extra on top to be fair. After that, the artists will just actually have to create something new to earn money - just like everyone else in the world.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Someone who only ever published a single work almost certainly was never a professional author / artist / whatever.
      - TheCleric 3y ago
        Really? That would have been news to Harper Lee.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Pushing for copyright change is actual change. It's just unlikely to happen while our law makers are representing the interests of corporations instead of the people.
AshamedCaptain 3y ago
With all due respect, and even considering that I am generally a fan of the "no technical solutions to legal problems", but this concrete example is where I draw the line: there is a clear benefit of a 3rd party _not being able_ to trace you _at all_ ; compared to whichever legal restrictions you want to put on it which may not even be physically nor technologically enforceable (at the end of the day they have the addresses and "bytes of the movie requested" for every user they served it to, no matter what the law says). Not to mention the public (as usual) doesn't even seem to mind about their user activity being mined; at this point, even "western democracies" do it with various coatings of paint. Such democracies enforcing companies not to mine user activity, appetizing and trivial as this mining is, is just wishful thinking both today as well as at any point of history. I would never exchange a broadcast medium where it is _impossible_ for the broadcaster to track me with one where tracking me is practically a side effect of its normal operation, even if I had the personal written guarantee of the current President of the Republic that the broadcasters would not be able to actually use any of the data they mine from it.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  Owning a physical disc also comes with additional legal protections. Once you own the copy, many agreements become non-enforceable. This applies to a lesser degree to software (since the installation step involves making a copy), but even then there are protections.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    Which is why media companies hate physical discs. They view the second hand market as lost revenue and libraries as legal thievery.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Owning a copy doesn't just protect you, but the content itself as well. It means that Disney can't edit or censor the work post-release. It means they can't stop it from being accessed entirely.
cogman10 3y ago
> We need more restrictive legislation around storing then data mining user activity How would such a law be enforced? You don't know if your data is being mined and it's way to easy for a company to simply lie to a regulator about it. If they are following good security practices, it would be impossible for a regulator to really know whether or not that's going on. It's either that or give the government backdoors into info systems so they can verify nobody is mining data... which seems not good. I'd want some way to coerce companies into making physical media but I'm not sure that can be done. Perhaps as part of the library of congress? It seems like it would probably be reasonable for the government to say "If you won't provide physical media prints of your content, we will".
- autoexec 3y ago
  > I'd want some way to coerce companies into making physical media but I'm not sure that can be done. Don't worry about physical media. Formats come and go. In order for a company to have any copyright protections at all on a work, a high quality digital version should have to be submitted to the copyright office which should automatically make that copy available at copyright.gov the instant the copyright on the work expires. Any edits or censored versions a company puts out later would then need to be copyrighted and submitted to the copyright office separately making sure that the originals are always preserved and available.

amelius 3y ago

Funny, because when the Apple Vision Pro was introduced I didn't hear any worries.

LordShredda 3y ago
There absolutely were complains, you weren't at the right place to listen
- amelius 3y ago
  That could be. In the end 90% still buys Apple. HN people generally think of themselves as smart folks but frankly when it comes to voting (with their feet) they behave pretty much like average people.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    iPhone market share is 21% [1], so it’s unclear where you’re getting the 90% figure. [1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/ https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...
    - amelius 3y ago
      That's global market share. Also, I don't think if it's a wild guess to say that HN folks have more disposable income than a random world citizen.
    - als0 3y ago
      To be fair, as I've learnt, the iPhone has more than 50% market share in the USA. Which is relevant given that this is a discussion about HNers, who I assume most of which live there.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > HN people generally think of themselves as smart folks but frankly when it comes to voting (with their feet) they behave pretty much like average people I can’t help but notice that you’re detailing the thread with some counterfactual trolling. Maybe stop congratulating yourself for being so much smarter than everyone else and think about how you could state a coherent thesis and support it with data?

PrimeMcFly 3y ago

It makes piracy that much more important.

jjulius 3y ago
Agreed. I went all-in on paying for streaming years back and cut back on my pirating. Now that things are getting significantly more user-hostile, I'm finding myself pirating a lot more often. Oh well.
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  They clearly don't want our money anyway.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
One day, piracy won’t be viable. Some new tech and/or legislation will gradually wipe it out (Eg, required software running on everyone’s machines validating every file, invasive stuff like that could happen in 20 years), maybe not today, but one day. We can’t rely on it
- PrimeMcFly 3y ago
  The only way piracy won't be viable is if manufacturers succeed in taking control of computers away from consumers. I don't think we will ever let that happen.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    > I don't think we will ever let that happen. The number of iPhones is on the rise, the desktop share's declining.
  - c120 3y ago
    If you're reading Cory Doctorow books and blogposts, that's exactly what "they" are working on and the part of the population that cares about this may be a lot smaller than you think.

toastal 3y ago

We can start by moving the things we can to services that respect our privacy. Over time you can pry back some of your autonomy.

glimshe 3y ago

I'm not a defender of piracy. I buy stuff when a DRM-free version is available. But I've been thinking of piracy lately as a form of civil disobedience and actually a net benefit for mankind (sci-hub being a clear example)

nighthawk454 3y ago
If the whole ‘vote with your wallet’ thing is the only recourse for consumers, sounds like this is the system working as intended. I guess historical boycotts didn’t have viable piracy. But beyond that sounds like this is the desired/incentivized behavior.

paulcole 3y ago

I’ll gladly take a situation that’s 10x more restrictive than it is now to only have the ability to consume media that is on one of 10 TV channels.

MollyRealized 3y ago

Yarr.

nunez 3y ago

True, but at the same time, no-one buys DVDs anymore because of streaming: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/the-death-of-the-dvd-why-sales-dropped-more-than-86percent-in-13-years.html#:~:text=At%20its%20peak%2C%20DVD%20sales,than%20DVDs%2C%20launched%20in%202006 https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/the-death-of-the-dvd-why-sal...