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I disagree with the interpretation that it needs to be held physically. Digital ownership is still ownership. I go out of my way to find music on Bandcamp, games on GOG, and rip movies myself using MakeMKV.
I wish I could encourage people to continue embracing physical media but most people value convenience over true ownership. And most companies value market capture and "security" over user rights. In crypto the sentiment of "not your keys, not your wallet" is held a core truth, yet people use 2factor authentication and Passkeys without respecting the same truth. I am not arguing against the use of 2factor, but at the same time certain accounts can not be logged into freely without push notifications in Duo or Microsoft. I still don't see a universal ability to export Passkeys, and I believe that's by design.
I hope laws catch up to modern technology in terms of digital goods. I can't imagine companies choosing to open up their walled gardens otherwise.
Files on a hard disk that you own are still files that you physically own. The only difference between those files and, say, a DVD, is that the encoding is more space-efficient.
There are pixel perfect 4k drm-free rips out there made by people who poured thousands of hours into understanding codecs. They will work on any platform, forever, you can stream them or play offline.
These rips can be freely distributed to friends and family, your kids will be able to play them, they're easy to back up. Physical media are a legacy solution.
And it doesn't stop you from getting a revocable or whatever other license the creators prefer to fund their work.
whenever I want to play Deathloop, I download it from torrents despite "owning" it on Steam, all because Denuvo really likes my SSD, and whenever I want to go online, then, well, yeah, I have to suffer. still, not regretting the purchase, cuz this money went to Arkane.
Unrelated to the content: Claude really likes tags
From September 1, 2026, due to our content licensing agreements, you will no longer be able to access your previously purchased content from Studio Canal, and it will be removed from your video library.
Thank you, PlayStation Store [1]
At least in 2023 it was two sentences and then they somehow negotiated new licencing arrangements after the massive backlash 10 days before the end date. [2]
Guess we'll see if this clawback has the same backlash.
[1]: https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/legal/psvideocontent/
[2]: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/
So when they 'sold' the content, they were already aware that they were selling something with an expiry date. Why would you even agree to a license to resell something with a time limit?
There should be some kind of law that says that any license agreement intended for reselling to the public should be a perpetual license.
Which is it, Sony?
If they renegotiate and extend the arrangement then update the UI with the new date.
Sony couldn't seriously believe they were going to be able to renew these licenses forever given how many streaming services are out there who need to fill their catalogues.
Instead it's better for sales to show a "buy" button with no date[1] so customers don't back out when they realise they'll be spending close to the retail purchase price to only rent it for a few years.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvJSpB9cb6Y
The button says "buy" not "rent" or "license".
That should be enough to defeat all the fine print, click wrap hidden clause clever maneuvering bs. The merchant is lying to the buyer. The merchant should bear liability for deceiving the buyer. The merchant (Sony) knew what they were selling. They lied to make it seem like you'd have that video in your library forever. Sony needs to give a refund with interest. Simple as that.
The tension is that digital goods are somewhere between. Especially when the delivery mechanism is streaming, and/or DRM keys that need to be renewed.
Sure, many people want a one-time download with no promise or obligation to re-deliver it in the future. Then again, many people don’t want the burden of caring for bytes for the rest of their lives and prefer to download on demand.
This whole thing is basically just “different people want different models of commerce for digital content”
That's the thing. If they are truly goods, they cannot be in between! Otherwise they are being handled as services and as such they will be terminated at some point. So unless we redefine the word, a true "purchase" can never depend on future actions from the provider (like renewing some DRM).
Agree that people want this - but this is an undue burden on the provider side. You have to perpetually maintain and provide access to content FOREVER including all the systems and support staff to auth.
For example, I can buy DRM free music from the iTunes Store, download the files, and they’re mine. I can play them back on anything that supports the file type, convert the files, back them up, etc.
Meanwhile, if I check a book out from the library, I can hold it, it’s physical, but it’s not mine and I can’t do whatever I want to it.
If you hold the copyright they are yours, but most files downloaded from iTunes and like services are unlikely to be yours.
On the other hand you can back up a DRM free download, like the games on GOG, despite these being a purely digital download.
So overall I don't think the physical form matters that much compared to DRM.
Beyond that, Steam and the digital media model allowed a great many people to publish games that wouldn't otherwise have been able to publish games. It made the indie world of games possible. It also did more than anyone to bridge the platform gap between windows and linux.
I can see a bean counter making a very convincing case that it's cheaper to go back to Windows and avoid all this Linux reverse engineering gubbins which isn't bringing in an immediate profit, especially when they're giving away all theirs efforts by open sourcing Proton.
https://delistedgames.com/oxenfree/
Enjoy something when you enjoy it, however you enjoy it. In the end you can’t keep anything but that.
Somehow the concept of ownership has been twisted to so that obligations only flow in one direction. Rules for thee, not for me.
It had changed from the English edition to the German translation!
Amazon eventually admitted that this was some kind of glitch, but they were uninterested in fixing it. I got a refund, but there was no way for me to read the book.
If they refused to refund his money, then... yeah, it does make you want to hoist the black flag, doesn't it?
I tend to purchase a lot of blu-rays, in fact if I don't buy the movie on Apple iTunes then it's almost always the case that I buy the blu-ray; then once I have the blu-ray I go to the torrent sites and download a version of the movie.
Why? Because I earn enough money that I feel like I have no excuse not to buy my media: but I also want it to be my media; and torrenting is more convenient than using blu-rays.
The blu-rays have one more major benefit than iTunes or the torrents though: if I'm ever without internet or my NAS dies... well, I can just dump a disc into my console and watch whatever movie I was going to watch anyway.
One time I was moving apartments, there was no internet and I hadn't set up my computers yet; decided to watch a movie with my girlfriend, grabbed a disc and set up the playstation.
Lo-and-behold... it didn't work.
Why? -- not because the disk was broken, not because the playstation had broken: but because I didn't have internet access.
The playstation has to connect to the internet to play blu-rays.
I didn't know of this because I always just used torrents and had the disks as a "license"...
So I tried my laptop: no dice either, VLC refused to play, Linux had a really bad time.
I tried with my macbook, of course no macbook came with a blu-ray player, and the one I had needed two USB-A slots, so it was a ball-ache to get the thing hooked up and I finally got something working by hotspotting my phone and googling around.
Anyway, what the fuck.
It was at that moment I realised; even physically owning things isn't actually owning them anymore.
I still don't technically pirate, but I no longer feel even the slightest derision for those that do, and I work in the entertainment industry where piracy puts people out of work (I've seen it).
My guess is that Sony didn't want to pay the licensing fees for every PS4, so, the first time you play a Blu-ray, it connects to Sony to get a license. From then on, you can play them without internet.
What happens when those servers go offline?
What happens if I reinstall the PS4?
Sony was the principle architect of Blu-Ray, if even they can’t build a system that comes with decryption keys then who can?
Blu-Ray players don’t have access to the internet, do they?
Also, yeah, my PC not working was part of the issue.
Funny enough, if you keep your PS4 on an old version and jailbreak it, you can just go in and activate the license yourself. No internet or servers required. Turns out, you can also pirate games if you do this. Piracy wins again?
> Sony was the principle architect of Blu-Ray, if even they can’t build a system that comes with decryption keys then who can?
The even weirder thing is that Sony did build this, with the PS3 and their standalone players. They just skimped on the PS4 (and I assume PS5).
I think Sony just really started half-assing the video player part of their consoles after the PS3. For example, the PS4 Pro, which is specifically advertised for 4K capabilities, cannot play 4K Blu-rays. In contrast, when Microsoft updated the Xbox One, they added UHD Blu-ray support to every model, even the cheapest one.
In real life, as revocable as they may be, my digital purchases have withstood the test of time far better than my physical copy purchases. It matters who you buy from. It is understandably different for something you find value in having a physical collection.
Right, so "they" can (and do) take away your purchased content basically at any time. You don't even purchase the actual content anymore. Is anyone actually doing anything about it? How successful are they? The only well-known way of actually owning your content seems to be piracy.
indie games only exploded due to being digital only, if Indies were to publish physical copies they would go out of business or they would be less of them.
a lot of people complain about amazon - but It has provided an avenue for out of print books to continue being sold - through on demand printing. yeah physical products gets extinct too.
the era of the cheap dvd movie financed a lot of independent films - streaming killed that.
so like everything in life - you win some, you lose some.
& yeah - if you can't hold it - you don't own it.
Frank Herbert, Dune
I think we do what we want come hell or high water.
There's another side to that as well: many people (contentiously or not) realized that when something is free, then you are the product. Now look at penai, anthropic, google, etc. Anyone that has basic GCSE level math skills can work out that their pricing does not cover their costs. Some people are in denial about it, some don't care and some truly believe that they are not the product cause they pay what is effectively a symbolic subscription. Or all three, but still, you are paying for something you don't own.
I don't come from a wealthy family and when I was a kid, all the software I used for making dumb games like flash, photoshop, etc were pirated. Same with music and movies. Eventually I switched over to Linux and open source projects. When I grew up and could finally afford those things, it only felt right to pay for a netflix subscription, spotify and whatnot. But due to the vile invasion in my personal space and the 0 guarantee that I'll have access to my favourite song the next morning, I got fed up and went back to self-hosting and pirating(to a degree). One of my best friends is a musician and I know that spotify is a big f-u to most artists since they have a winner-takes-all policy which makes me feel a lot less guilty. And frankly, if it is something I enjoy, I'll just head on over to the artist's website and buy a digital copy as a form of gratitude(even though I have often already downloaded the music): an album which I had very high hopes for dropped yesterday, I listened to it, liked it, downloaded it and bought a digital copy about an hour ago. Despite having it on my navidrome library since last night. At the end of the day, the artist will get a better compensation that way compared to what they'd get if I was listening to them on spotify, even on repeat.
So while the author has the right idea, sadly it's only part of the story.
What this post is actually pointing out is that intellectual property that has transferrable physical representation has more value to the consumer.
And intellectual property that does not have transferable physical representation has more value to the producer.
Reselling or gifting a book you've read to a friend is wholesome.. it feels good. Truly.. but every time we do that we also take from the artist.
No, every time we do that, we do not give to the artist. But not giving is not the same as taking.
Are you sure that's true? If so, in which century did it start being true?
The difference between ownership of a physical object and ownership of an intellectual one is a matter of conventional. It's easier to define ownership of an object that is excludable, but that's human convenience, not a physical law.
Is that why it did fall apart?
Fighting physically for ownership predates fighting judicially for ownership.
To the extent that you can "own" another animal: the ownership of a female by a male is definitely a thing in the animal kingdom.
And before the first law was ever written, human slavery (estimated to be at least 4000 BC, with mentions in the first law ever written) did exist too.
Ownership predates the law that later on codified the concept of ownership.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution
Which empowered Congress to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
Scientists and the artists and their "exclusive rights" have built quite a lot over the centuries.
The obvious answer is that you take away a purchase the person to give the gift would have made. One could argue that there is also value in propagating someone’s art and potentially increasing the artists customer/patron base. Think of it as advertising or to put it in the context of a drug deal, the first hit’s free. The gift recipient may then go on to buy another work from that artist and even pass on the one they were given to someone else, continuing the cycle.
I’d also argue that there isn’t widespread agreement on reasonable compensation for artists. Personally, I don’t consider artists to be special enough in the context of people that make and produce goods, that they should get unique treatment. Why does a family deserve the financial benefits of trademarks and copyrights decades after the artists death. That’s just one example, but in a time when many’s artists view their livelihoods to be at risk because of AI, it’s not popular to engage in any debate that undermines the artist in any way.
The other side of this is something no one speaks about: Spotify, youtube made it possible for me to listen to _any_ music from anywhere. This kind of profound open access to art should not just be dismissed. The concerns about price increase are laughable because without spotify I wouldn't be exposed to this music in the first place.
I think the obsession with owning it physically is because of many reasons
1. a sense of identity forms when the access to own things has barrier - a whole niche/hobby forms with owning vinyl that is separate from the art itself
2. there is a sense of loss of agency when the art you like is taken away from you - this unpredictability is one of the few reasons I agree with the article
3. subscription services allow normies access to all the same art that you might have had access and dilutes your own identity
4. owning tangible things is just nicer - there's no better way to put it
Overall there's a tradeoff that subscription services give vs what they take away. I'm not very obsessed with art enough that I need to purchase them physically. Personally, youtube is all I need.
If you grew up in any past era where owning a physical 'thing' was the default, you naturally feel the inherent lack of ownership in a digital version of that same thing.
If you grow up in a time of mega platforms that can give you almost all of a certain media type for a subscription fee, the idea of lining up at midnight to pay 3x that fee for one plastic disc from one artist/publisher must sound insane and suboptimal.
It was a good time though.
I'm guessing its just a feral fascination of owning a physical thing rather than an abstract thing which was my last point. But I think it is that but with a combination of limited supply - owning something even physical, if it is abundant, defeats the purpose.
> Would you be able to explain why you liked owning things that isn't already explained by my points 1) 2) 3) 4)?
Your point 4 may have covered everything, but it didn't actually explain anything. So it's a bit unfair to be asking jgorn to explain, because you didn't actually explain either.
I think it's a good middle ground: you pay a subscription, artists at least get a little something (the biggest issue for artists is the unlimited amount of fully AI-generate slop music), and you get to have actual DRM-free files.
Ripping physical music CDs to bit-perfect FLAC files --and automatically verifying with online databases of other people's rips that your rip is instead bit-perfect-- is kinda a big thing in the audiophile world too.
Isn't this untrue with surprising frequency? Decoding devices phone home, come under new copyright laws, etc etc etc.