Ownership rights are buried in the fine print and downloading or buying physical copies may be the only ways to keep your favourites
*What rights do you have to the digital movies, TV shows and music you buy online? That question was on the minds of Telstra TV Box Office customers this month after the company announced it would shut down the service in June. Customers were told that unless they moved over to another service, Fetch, they would no longer be able to access the films and TV shows they had bought. *
Corporations have also already proved very difficult to actually hold to account. They can basically do as they please, with relative disregard for any consumer protections that may already exist. It’s not good, but it can get worse.
Unironically the future of capitalism, as it devolves into feudalism with more killer robots.
You’ve got the CEO (Absolute Monarch) who owns all the shit and you work on it in exchange for not being killed or deported. Maybe you get some treats from time to time. More likely, you just get someone from the PMC to tell you to pray more.
Humans in power are too egocentric to not be kept in check.
A handful of humans with the power to deliver unlimited genocide on their neighbors are hard to keep in check.
The idea that you could trust a corporation, any corporation, at its word is laughable on its face, and yet the courts have been relying on them to “follow the rules” unsupervised for years. Now capitalism doesn’t make anything that isn’t designed as a piece of shit that falls apart, and everything is a lie that they’re also making money from, from plastics recycling (not real and they make money on the chemicals they sell to the recycling industry) to the content you make that they get paid for and you don’t.
The idea that you could trust a corporation, any corporation, at its word is laughable on its face
We’re surrounded by corporate entities all trying to leech profit out of us.
It’s less a question of trust and more of information alternatives. When all you can hear is the din of advertisement, it’s difficult to chart a path through the racket.
You’re bound to get suckered by someone, eventually.
same. I buy a lot of software/games and media/music/movies, and before I buy I always make sure I can pirate it down the road if I need to. if I can’t, I reconsider how much I need it. I’ll switch to my pirated copy at the drop of a hat without a drop of guilt. if it has annoying or unperformant drm? it makes me sign up for an account to use my paid software on my own computer? its servers go down and it won’t boot? switched.
i tried to get into streaming but i grew increasingly uncomfortable with paying forever as titles appear and disappear at the whim of suits. how could that possibly be a pleasant UX for customers?
i’d take the hassle of having discs or managing a server any day of the week over paying these goons for access to their files which they happily negotiate away for financial reasons. it’s just a disgusting paradigm. when netflix was starting streaming, i thought (i was like 15) we were emerging into a great new age, where every show you could ever want was on one beautiful service.
now they won’t even let you share accounts or screenshot the fucking show (a pig-headed anti-piracy measure which is mind-blowingly stupid given every single show on there is available for free if you know where to look ANYWAY. what are they DOING.)
fuck streaming, fuck netflix, fuck spotify. crash and burn. topple like the house of cards you are.
Streaming in general is great. Streaming services are a mixed bag of results, but overall our options are excellent at this point in time. You can have streaming services with no contract, pay for one month and abandon it if you don’t like it. There are also numerous FREE streaming services with lots of great content.
It’s important to understand the above in the context of how it used to be before Streaming was an option. There was basically only the option to have a cable or satellite TV on contract, or use OTA antenna TV, or watch everything on disc / tape. So yeah I think streaming is great.
Having said all that, I buy anything I want to keep perpetually on disc. 4k Blu-ray for movies and CDs for music (I bought 3 albums on CD over the last couple weeks). Games don’t fit on discs anymore so I try to get stuff on GOG when it works out.
More and more it is becoming a good idea to store things on your own private equipment. If we don’t demand ownership of our own possessions we will soon own nothing
There are obvious responses here along the lines of embracing piracy and (re-)embracing hard copy ownership.
All that aside though, this feels like a fairly obvious point for legal intervention. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are already existing grounds for legal action, it’s just that the stakes are likely small enough and costs of legal action high enough to be prohibitive. Which is where the government should come in on the advice of a consumer body.
Some reasonable things that could be done:
Money back requirements
Clear warnings to consumers about “ownership” being temporary
Requiring tracking statistics of how long “ownership” tends to be and that such is presented to consumers before they purchase
If there are structural issues that increase the chances of “withdrawn” ownership (such as complex distribution deals etc), a requirement to notify the consumer of this prior to purchase.
These are basic things based on transparency that tend to already exist in consumer regulation (depending on your jurisdiction of course). Streaming companies will likely whinge (and probably have already to prevent any regulation around this), but that’s the point … to force them to clean up their act.
As far as the relations between streaming services and the studios (or whoever owns the distribution rights), it makes perfect sense for all contracts to have embedded in them that any digital purchase must be respected for the life of the purchaser even if the item cannot be purchased any more. It’s not hard, it’s just the price of doing business.
All of this is likely the result of the studios being the dicks they truly are and still being used to pushing everyone around (and of course the tech world being narcissistic liars).
I always thought it should be “unlock”, because that’s more what is happening. you’re not buying it, renting has a connotation of a fixed term ownership time, but unlock describes the action… they’ve had the movie the whole time sitting there, probably in a CDN near your home already, but you’re not allowed to see it until you pony up. it’s locked away.
I understand that things don’t last forever. But and it sounds selfish to say and maybe people might agree, I’d like for these things to last as long as I’m alive to view them whenever I please.
Though I’m really sick of this god damn hot potato shit with the content that’s spread across several streaming platforms. As well as unstable services. “Oh, we’ve shut this down, fuck your purchases” “Oh, we couldn’t sustain this platform, go elsewhere”.
It means a lot to the customer. Doesn’t mean dick to these services.
Consumers are getting fucked. Media companies will continue to make it worse while trying to improve their bottom line. How long until it is all pay per view at sky high prices that only keep going up?
I try to own my media in physical form as much as possible. But I don’t think it will be long until physical is not an available format. Or unaffordable, like vinyl is now.
We should have resisted and stopped the DMCA. We should stop all media being rental only. But we do not resist, we comply. We bend over and get fucked like the sheeple we are.
Until consumers take control of their government they will continue to take it up the ass from corporations. They count on you to comply.
Don’t use scripts unless you know how it works otherwise you will have trouble troubleshooting when something doesn’t work. But by the time you read and understand how the script works, you already learn how to deploy it manually.
That’s why I’m always interested in self-hosting. I have my own Plex and Jellyfin seedbox server for the private trackers I’m in, with a VPS hosting an OpenVPN to make it look like I’m in a different country, just to make it that much safer. It works damn well.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !selfhosted@lemmy.world
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You will own nothing and be happy.
This is why sites like lemmy are important.
We need to put an end to corporate tyranny.
Humans in power are too egocentric to not be kept in check.
Corporations had already proven they cannot be trusted with any long-term leasing or subscription long before they started passing that phrase around.
Corporations have also already proved very difficult to actually hold to account. They can basically do as they please, with relative disregard for any consumer protections that may already exist. It’s not good, but it can get worse.
Yep, we are what make these sites important.
Unironically the future of capitalism, as it devolves into feudalism with more killer robots.
You’ve got the CEO (Absolute Monarch) who owns all the shit and you work on it in exchange for not being killed or deported. Maybe you get some treats from time to time. More likely, you just get someone from the PMC to tell you to pray more.
A handful of humans with the power to deliver unlimited genocide on their neighbors are hard to keep in check.
Digital Restrictions Management
The idea that you could trust a corporation, any corporation, at its word is laughable on its face, and yet the courts have been relying on them to “follow the rules” unsupervised for years. Now capitalism doesn’t make anything that isn’t designed as a piece of shit that falls apart, and everything is a lie that they’re also making money from, from plastics recycling (not real and they make money on the chemicals they sell to the recycling industry) to the content you make that they get paid for and you don’t.
The whole thing needs to go, all of it.
We’re surrounded by corporate entities all trying to leech profit out of us.
It’s less a question of trust and more of information alternatives. When all you can hear is the din of advertisement, it’s difficult to chart a path through the racket.
You’re bound to get suckered by someone, eventually.
Leopards ate my face.
I download or capture everything I pay for. I paid for it, it’s mine.
same. I buy a lot of software/games and media/music/movies, and before I buy I always make sure I can pirate it down the road if I need to. if I can’t, I reconsider how much I need it. I’ll switch to my pirated copy at the drop of a hat without a drop of guilt. if it has annoying or unperformant drm? it makes me sign up for an account to use my paid software on my own computer? its servers go down and it won’t boot? switched.
If purchasing isn’t ownership, piracy isn’t stealing.
i tried to get into streaming but i grew increasingly uncomfortable with paying forever as titles appear and disappear at the whim of suits. how could that possibly be a pleasant UX for customers?
i’d take the hassle of having discs or managing a server any day of the week over paying these goons for access to their files which they happily negotiate away for financial reasons. it’s just a disgusting paradigm. when netflix was starting streaming, i thought (i was like 15) we were emerging into a great new age, where every show you could ever want was on one beautiful service.
now they won’t even let you share accounts or screenshot the fucking show (a pig-headed anti-piracy measure which is mind-blowingly stupid given every single show on there is available for free if you know where to look ANYWAY. what are they DOING.)
fuck streaming, fuck netflix, fuck spotify. crash and burn. topple like the house of cards you are.
Streaming in general is great. Streaming services are a mixed bag of results, but overall our options are excellent at this point in time. You can have streaming services with no contract, pay for one month and abandon it if you don’t like it. There are also numerous FREE streaming services with lots of great content.
It’s important to understand the above in the context of how it used to be before Streaming was an option. There was basically only the option to have a cable or satellite TV on contract, or use OTA antenna TV, or watch everything on disc / tape. So yeah I think streaming is great.
Having said all that, I buy anything I want to keep perpetually on disc. 4k Blu-ray for movies and CDs for music (I bought 3 albums on CD over the last couple weeks). Games don’t fit on discs anymore so I try to get stuff on GOG when it works out.
Streaming was great when it was just Netflix and had a ton of content. Now it is just cable TV on demand.
More and more it is becoming a good idea to store things on your own private equipment. If we don’t demand ownership of our own possessions we will soon own nothing
Don’t disagree but surely it’s not impossible to add some regulations to protect the consumers here.
Legislation is always years behind tech.
Which means it’s just about due.
There are obvious responses here along the lines of embracing piracy and (re-)embracing hard copy ownership.
All that aside though, this feels like a fairly obvious point for legal intervention. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are already existing grounds for legal action, it’s just that the stakes are likely small enough and costs of legal action high enough to be prohibitive. Which is where the government should come in on the advice of a consumer body.
Some reasonable things that could be done:
These are basic things based on transparency that tend to already exist in consumer regulation (depending on your jurisdiction of course). Streaming companies will likely whinge (and probably have already to prevent any regulation around this), but that’s the point … to force them to clean up their act.
As far as the relations between streaming services and the studios (or whoever owns the distribution rights), it makes perfect sense for all contracts to have embedded in them that any digital purchase must be respected for the life of the purchaser even if the item cannot be purchased any more. It’s not hard, it’s just the price of doing business.
All of this is likely the result of the studios being the dicks they truly are and still being used to pushing everyone around (and of course the tech world being narcissistic liars).
Another thing to add - these services can’t use the word ‘buy’ because that implies ownership. They should be forced to use a word like ‘rent’.
I always thought it should be “unlock”, because that’s more what is happening. you’re not buying it, renting has a connotation of a fixed term ownership time, but unlock describes the action… they’ve had the movie the whole time sitting there, probably in a CDN near your home already, but you’re not allowed to see it until you pony up. it’s locked away.
Oh for sure. All of this is clearly a situation where the law is slow to catch up.
I understand that things don’t last forever. But and it sounds selfish to say and maybe people might agree, I’d like for these things to last as long as I’m alive to view them whenever I please.
Though I’m really sick of this god damn hot potato shit with the content that’s spread across several streaming platforms. As well as unstable services. “Oh, we’ve shut this down, fuck your purchases” “Oh, we couldn’t sustain this platform, go elsewhere”.
It means a lot to the customer. Doesn’t mean dick to these services.
I assumed this was about an actual library and not some shmuck who got suckered into a thinly veiled rental service.
Consumers are getting fucked. Media companies will continue to make it worse while trying to improve their bottom line. How long until it is all pay per view at sky high prices that only keep going up?
I try to own my media in physical form as much as possible. But I don’t think it will be long until physical is not an available format. Or unaffordable, like vinyl is now.
We should have resisted and stopped the DMCA. We should stop all media being rental only. But we do not resist, we comply. We bend over and get fucked like the sheeple we are.
Until consumers take control of their government they will continue to take it up the ass from corporations. They count on you to comply.
*Arr Suite, QBT, and a Jellyfin Server. Done and done. There are scripts to set it all up in less than 30 seconds…
Don’t use scripts unless you know how it works otherwise you will have trouble troubleshooting when something doesn’t work. But by the time you read and understand how the script works, you already learn how to deploy it manually.
This!
Just another victim of WEF.
That’s why I’m always interested in self-hosting. I have my own Plex and Jellyfin seedbox server for the private trackers I’m in, with a VPS hosting an OpenVPN to make it look like I’m in a different country, just to make it that much safer. It works damn well.