5 ms·

To play devils advocate, couldn’t that allow a single purchase of a movie to be watched by millions of people? At which point no studio would sell it digitally.

To play devils advocate, couldn’t that allow a single purchase of a movie to be watched by millions of people? At which point no studio would sell it digitally. In theory this could’ve happened with DVDs, but it was too much hassle for a single disc to be shared by that many people. You could compromise with restrictions on how many times a file could be sold etc, but that concedes the point of a digital good not really being your property. And it might be used as a Trojan horse for even more DRM and surveillance.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
> To play devils advocate, couldn’t that allow a single purchase of a movie to be watched by millions of people? At which point no studio would sell it digitally. You're not thinking creatively enough. One day, somebody's going to use the law and make the "sales" API-driven. This will then turn it into a rental service where you can "buy" a game for two hours for $37.50 and then "sell" the game back to the mother ship for $36.50 of credit. The mother ship being, of course, whatever VC firm puts millions into having the world's largest Steam account. I don't have to like the current ecosystem of no-transfers and DRM, to acknowledge breaking all that down would have major economic consequences against studios. Right now is especially not the time to be asking for this, because the whole video game industry is in deep financial trouble at the moment.
- protimewaster 2y ago
  Why is this worse than a company renting out physical copies, though? This is the way games rentals work for physical copies. The renter buys one copy and rents it out numerous times. (It's also the way libraries work for books, of course.)
  - IanCal 2y ago
    The amount of time makes a practical difference. Books you take out for a week or more usually, games rentals and films (from the olden days when I'd get to go to an actual store) were at least several days. Renting a film is something you could do from the second you start watching it to the second it finishes. Going from a few days to hours makes this in the region of 10-100 times faster turnaround. Having to physically move things just adds significant time.
    - protimewaster 2y ago
      I'm still not seeing it the issue, though. A significant portion of the world's population lives within a short distance of a library. Even if each individual library branch serves a relatively small chunk of the population, the collection of libraries effectively makes a global network that enables people to almost instantaneously rent books, movies, and games. Having this exist out in the world really doesn't ruin things.
      - IanCal 2y ago
        It's nowhere near instantaneous for physical items. I live near a library and it's a drive or a half hour walk away, open a few days a week during shortened times. That's nothing like clicking a button and renting a film for exactly the length I watch it for.
- sn0wf1re 2y ago
  Isn't that just a (expensive) library? And libraries are constantly being lobbied against by publishing groups, yet there doesn't seem to be major harm (financial) caused by them.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    The difference is that libraries are local and so the impact is minimal. With software you can share it out to anyone in the world.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago
  Oh dear, imagine if people bought a bunch of books, let’s say Harry Potter, and then let anyone come in and read books for a fee! Or even rent them! would be horrible! Isn’t it hilarious how having property rights and freedoms over Things You Paid For is now unthinkable??
  - spacebanana7 2y ago
    The challenge with digital goods is having a system where multiple people can have property rights. Digitising your library example, would likely result in a price of zero. Someone like Apple would be well placed to turn its books app into a library of books it purchased once. And use this to get more hardware sales. The current system of only one entity having rights isn’t desirable. But alternatives aren’t easy. Even if you tried to rule out sales for profit then marketplaces and bulletin boards would make things complicated.
catlikesshrimp 2y ago
Cannot be resold for a year after last purchase.
protimewaster 2y ago
I don't feel like this would be a major issue in practice. People can already pirate, sneak into the theater, etc., if they want to game the system. Most people aren't interested in routinely selling and buying their media, so I would wager that most digital copies will end up on the digital "shelf" just like physical copies do, rather than being routinely sold off.
- spacebanana7 2y ago
  One person could buy a million ‘new’ units of a movie and continuously rent them out (via short term repurchase agreements) on demand to make something resembling a streaming site.
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  - prattmic 2y ago
    I can’t quite tell if this is satire! You may be familiar with a small startup (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix) in the business of buying a million DVDs and continuously renting them out on demand to make something resembling a video rental store.
    - xp84 2y ago
      I'm pretty sure that even video rentals were not allowed without the consent of the copyright holder. The videotapes or DVDs you could buy at retail weren't licensed for commercial use. Lending them without cost, like a library, I don't think they could stop you. But commercially renting out the physical media wasn't an automatic right, as far as I know.
  - protimewaster 2y ago
    I don't see why that's an issue, either. A library can already buy multiple copies of books/ games and loan them out. It's not streaming, sure, but somebody with a little patience can avoid buying a copy by just going to the library.
eviks 2y ago
How long would millions of sequential hours of watching take for the devil to have its due?
n_ary 2y ago
In theory, same is very much applicable for nearly all non-hygienic physical goods, but that did not make any business to stop. A popular book can change hand a million times and save a lot of money, carbon emission, tree cutting, paper production cost, transport and logistics. The problem is careful usage and patience, i.e. not spilling coffee or food and waiting may be a year before a copy is available.
- pests 2y ago
  Isn't there a quote about how if libraries didn't already exist, they couldn't be created in the modern day?

gjsman-1000 2y ago

> To play devils advocate, couldn’t that allow a single purchase of a movie to be watched by millions of people? At which point no studio would sell it digitally. You're not thinking creatively enough. One day, somebody's going to use the law and make the "sales" API-driven. This will then turn it into a rental service where you can "buy" a game for two hours for $37.50 and then "sell" the game back to the mother ship for $36.50 of credit. The mother ship being, of course, whatever VC firm puts millions into having the world's largest Steam account. I don't have to like the current ecosystem of no-transfers and DRM, to acknowledge breaking all that down would have major economic consequences against studios. Right now is especially not the time to be asking for this, because the whole video game industry is in deep financial trouble at the moment.

protimewaster 2y ago
Why is this worse than a company renting out physical copies, though? This is the way games rentals work for physical copies. The renter buys one copy and rents it out numerous times. (It's also the way libraries work for books, of course.)
- IanCal 2y ago
  The amount of time makes a practical difference. Books you take out for a week or more usually, games rentals and films (from the olden days when I'd get to go to an actual store) were at least several days. Renting a film is something you could do from the second you start watching it to the second it finishes. Going from a few days to hours makes this in the region of 10-100 times faster turnaround. Having to physically move things just adds significant time.
  - protimewaster 2y ago
    I'm still not seeing it the issue, though. A significant portion of the world's population lives within a short distance of a library. Even if each individual library branch serves a relatively small chunk of the population, the collection of libraries effectively makes a global network that enables people to almost instantaneously rent books, movies, and games. Having this exist out in the world really doesn't ruin things.
    - IanCal 2y ago
      It's nowhere near instantaneous for physical items. I live near a library and it's a drive or a half hour walk away, open a few days a week during shortened times. That's nothing like clicking a button and renting a film for exactly the length I watch it for.
sn0wf1re 2y ago
Isn't that just a (expensive) library? And libraries are constantly being lobbied against by publishing groups, yet there doesn't seem to be major harm (financial) caused by them.
- threeseed 2y ago
  The difference is that libraries are local and so the impact is minimal. With software you can share it out to anyone in the world.
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
Oh dear, imagine if people bought a bunch of books, let’s say Harry Potter, and then let anyone come in and read books for a fee! Or even rent them! would be horrible! Isn’t it hilarious how having property rights and freedoms over Things You Paid For is now unthinkable??
- spacebanana7 2y ago
  The challenge with digital goods is having a system where multiple people can have property rights. Digitising your library example, would likely result in a price of zero. Someone like Apple would be well placed to turn its books app into a library of books it purchased once. And use this to get more hardware sales. The current system of only one entity having rights isn’t desirable. But alternatives aren’t easy. Even if you tried to rule out sales for profit then marketplaces and bulletin boards would make things complicated.

catlikesshrimp 2y ago

Cannot be resold for a year after last purchase.

protimewaster 2y ago

I don't feel like this would be a major issue in practice. People can already pirate, sneak into the theater, etc., if they want to game the system. Most people aren't interested in routinely selling and buying their media, so I would wager that most digital copies will end up on the digital "shelf" just like physical copies do, rather than being routinely sold off.

spacebanana7 2y ago
One person could buy a million ‘new’ units of a movie and continuously rent them out (via short term repurchase agreements) on demand to make something resembling a streaming site.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- prattmic 2y ago
  I can’t quite tell if this is satire! You may be familiar with a small startup (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix) in the business of buying a million DVDs and continuously renting them out on demand to make something resembling a video rental store.
  - xp84 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure that even video rentals were not allowed without the consent of the copyright holder. The videotapes or DVDs you could buy at retail weren't licensed for commercial use. Lending them without cost, like a library, I don't think they could stop you. But commercially renting out the physical media wasn't an automatic right, as far as I know.
- protimewaster 2y ago
  I don't see why that's an issue, either. A library can already buy multiple copies of books/ games and loan them out. It's not streaming, sure, but somebody with a little patience can avoid buying a copy by just going to the library.

eviks 2y ago

How long would millions of sequential hours of watching take for the devil to have its due?

n_ary 2y ago

In theory, same is very much applicable for nearly all non-hygienic physical goods, but that did not make any business to stop. A popular book can change hand a million times and save a lot of money, carbon emission, tree cutting, paper production cost, transport and logistics. The problem is careful usage and patience, i.e. not spilling coffee or food and waiting may be a year before a copy is available.

pests 2y ago
Isn't there a quote about how if libraries didn't already exist, they couldn't be created in the modern day?