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The license agreements and ToS for all of this has various "we can terminate this in any way we want at any time we want for any reason we want" clauses, which
by anonymousab 3y ago
The license agreements and ToS for all of this has various "we can terminate this in any way we want at any time we want for any reason we want" clauses, which is effectively a magical bulletproof solution in many countries.
- eru 3y agoAnd customers are free to refuse to engage with companies that have such clauses in their terms-of-service.
- Mordisquitos 3y agoDo companies that do not have such clauses and provide comparable services exist? If not, customers are not free to refuse to engage even in theory. If those companies exist, is there any practical way for customers to know which ones they are? If not, customers are not free to refuse to engage in practice. The only freedom that customers (=citizens) have is to engage into a cartel (=state) to impose their collective interests (=democratic choice) on companies by force (=law). Companies are then free to refuse to engage with states which have such customer-protective clauses in their laws.
- eru 3y ago> Do companies that do not have such clauses and provide comparable services exist? If not, customers are not free to refuse to engage even in theory. Yes, and you can found more of them, too. > If those companies exist, is there any practical way for customers to know which ones they are? Yes.
- passwordoops 3y agoCare to elaborate? Honest question because I'd genuinely like to know
- eru 3y agoThere are plenty of companies that sell you physical media. Even analog format like vinyl and cassettes. GoG (good old games) sells you games without DRM. There are others like that, too. Some companies, like id, open source many of their works. You can buy DRM free music and videos.
- i80and 3y agoThere is not any significant DRM free digital movie marketplace, and the reality is that movies aren't fungible: if I want to watch Strange World or Doctor Who, I'm not going to just instead watch an indie arthouse film that happens to be available without DRM
- eru 3y agoMedia is as (un-) fungible as always. Your complaint sounds a bit like complaining that you can't buy an iPhone that runs Windows. Bundling is a thing in the economy. You can't buy a Porsche with a Tesla engine either. You can still buy movies on DVDs, which still can't be disabled remotely. DVDs are very digital. Yes, you can complain that there's no 'significant' movie marketplace without DRM. But you have to complain to and about your fellow consumers: their patronage ultimately decides which suppliers become 'significant'.
- simonh 3y agoThey are also free to vote for a government that will protect their rights against egregious and plainly deceptive marketing practices, so they don't each have to do that stuff individually. Companies act as a collective enterprise, so can citizens.
- eru 3y agoYes, citizens can form companies and clubs and cooperatives.
- gambiting 3y agoThe thing is, company can put literally anything they want in their ToS, they can say we're free to break your legs for any reason whatsoever at any point of our choosing, that won't make it legal. Courts frequently rule based on the customer's and market expectation vs what ToS say all the time, and the consumer wins more often than not.
- compsciphd 3y agocontracts that have contradictory clauses, might generally find those clauses to be nulled out by the courts. in this case using the term "buy" and in their ToS use the terms license / termination, might find the front and center "buy" term causes the license / termination terms to be nulled out, as the concept of "buy" doesn't fit with the concept of "license" and "termination".