Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
In this day and age ownership of digital media is often an illusion. When you buy a book or movie there are severe restrictions on what you can do with these files. In some cases, purchased content can simply disappear overnight. These limitations keep copyright holders in control, but they breed pirates at the same time.
[...] Millions of people have now replaced their physical media collections for digital ones, often stored in the cloud. While that can be rather convenient, it comes with restrictions that are unheard of offline.
[...R]esearchers examined how the absence of the right to resell and lend affects people's choice to buy. They found that, among those who are familiar with BitTorrent, roughly a third would prefer The Pirate Bay over Apple or Amazon if they are faced with these limitations.
These rights restrictions apparently breed pirates.
"Based on our survey data, consumers are more likely to opt out of lawful markets for copyrighted works and download illegally if there is no lawful way to obtain the rights to lend, resell, and use those copies on their device of choice," the researchers concluded.
The paper in question is two years old by now, but still very relevant today. While we don't expect that anything will change soon, people should at least be aware that you don't always own what you buy.
Source: https://torrentfreak.com/you-dont-really-own-that-movie-you-bought-but-pirates-180915/
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday September 19 2018, @01:31AM (15 children)
I regard dead tree books as a good investment.
I might buy an eBook reader and some technical books if I travel for work, but that's the only scenario I can imagine that would lead me to do so.
I store nothing in the cloud. I'm able to prevent doing so accidentally by refusing to log in to iCloud. That results in endless pestering by login dialogs but I am very determined.
A day or two some Soylentil posted his admiration for Apple because they are so respecting of everyone's privacy. Guess Again:
If you store it in iCloud, Apple will hand it over to the Polizei.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Wednesday September 19 2018, @09:29AM (6 children)
I buy pulp fiction on a kindle, this isn't stuff I'm going to be re-reading in years to come, it's like a soap opera.
I used to buy them as real books - and have problems disposing of them later, but after a trip to Sydney was extended by 10 days I'd run out, so bought a book to read on my tablet.
Since having the book available on my phone I read far more now, as I can read a chapter while I'm waiting for a train, or whatever. This has the side affect of meaning I spend less time rotting my brain on social media (which is what would normally fill those gaps). Yes I could carry a book round with me, but the reality is I don't.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @10:52AM
you still write "affect" instead of "effect", so I suggest you spend even less time on social media.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 19 2018, @11:26AM (4 children)
Another good use for ebooks is textbooks. It's nuts to make kids carry around 30 lbs of dead tree in their backpacks. Loading everything up onto a large tablet makes much more sense.
Textbook publishers, however, will never go for that, so we ought to shift our education culture to use open source textbooks instead. There are only so many ways to teach the quadratic formula, and my experience with textbook explanations is that they have gotten worse over the decades as math and tech phobes have gained more control of education.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Wednesday September 19 2018, @03:05PM (2 children)
They're slowly coming around. Either that or my recent instructors are just picking books that tend to have ebook versions. Got my last ~$200 text book for $30 as a pdf (legally) and not some nonsensical "e-rental."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @04:34PM
yeah with fucking drm included which is what this article was about to begin with...people who pay taxes and send their kids to slave indoctrination centers and still have no rights to the books they bought are ridiculous fucks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @03:14PM
I've taken a bunch of courses now with ebooks online
I can't access any of them anymore
Complete BS
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @04:21PM
Textbooks, manuals, and other reference material are the one thing I prefer real books for. Ebooks don't make it easy or convenient to find what you want in a large work. Hopefully this will improve, but trends in UI seem to be toward less utility rather than more so I'm not holding my breath. The kindle is great for novels, but I have a hard time with anything useful.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday September 19 2018, @11:51AM
So did I until there was no more room in the house for books. Then we had to move to a smaller place. The books in a storage cell are not very useful, and having to pay for storage is a liability.
I read ebooks a lot now. They're the ones I can get copies of easily. And, yes, I back them up. and I don't use a kindle, so Amazon has little power over my library.
Where ebooks often don't work is for mathematics. In the middle of a paragraph, I suddenly encounter "Recall formula 6.43." And I have to page around awkwardly to find it and then I've lost my place and I can't recall why I needed to recall it. That's a flaw in the book formatting and the ebook reader of course, but it's still a problem. Less of a problem with modern browsers and html, but that's not how e-math s published.
Also art reproductions aren't great in ebooks, but this is really a problem with display technology.
-- hendrik
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday September 19 2018, @02:07PM
Paper wears out. I don't know how many books I've discarded over my life because the spine broke. With correct archiving I'm not worried about bit rot.
Paper can burn. Unless you like photocopied 'backups'... Every ebook I own is backed up and stored offsite.
Paper has bulk. Size required to store 200 novels? Maybe 6000 in^3. Size required to store 200 ebooks? 1 microSD, about .5 in^3.
I love paper too, but for all my novel reading give me ebooks. Ones where I own the file and they, are not DRM'd, and while I like my e-Readers I can read them on any machine that can run Calibre.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday September 19 2018, @02:37PM (3 children)
Neither did I... Until I did.
I used to think the same way, but changed about 10-15 years ago. I started buying technical books from O'Reilly. They really are beneficial IMO.
Gone is trying to read the book while on the can... Lets face it, one of the few times that you actually have time to read in today's world. Now this is only possible with ebooks if you are ok using a tablet in there.
I'm a big guy... but ebooks are a lot easier to bring around. All of them can fit on a single thumb drive... I used to be able to fit no more than 3 or 4 technical books in a laptop bag. Only 1 or 2 for the heftier books with a 2 inch or wider spine. It is now easy to bring my entire tech book collection around with at all times either on the previously mentioned thumb drive, or with plenty of room to spare on my laptop's hard drive. Not to mention a cloud back up on a free dropbox account.
Some ebooks are great with wonderful layouts including linked chapters and indexes that bring you to the location you need to read with a single click. That is much easier than on a dead tree edition. Even if the ebook scrimped and does not have links within the contents, most readers have a search function to bring you to relevant text.
After years with technical books, I am now fine with fiction as well. While I used to want to read a paper page instead of the screen, now I am ok with either, and honestly I have a monitor in front of my face all the time now so I am used to that medium even more.
I even have Dungeons and Dragons books in pdf form now. Humble Bundle has had multiple ebook specials featuring Pathfinder pdfs. (These are watermarked with my email address, but unrestricted as well.)
The only real benefit to paper books now is that they still work in a power outage.
Note: I only get ebooks with unrestricted pdfs. I can make my copies and backups and not worry about having them taken away.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Wednesday September 19 2018, @03:28PM (1 child)
I have a similar story. I maintain that I only read DRM free ebooks, and thanks to sources like the Humble Bundle those books do exist.
One exception to DRM free: I will play the DRM game when borrowing books from the library. With my Kobo, that means using Adobe to load the book to my device. The book will be unreadable after the checkout duration. I'm not thrilled about it (and some people may use Calibre to strip the DRM), but I feel supporting my library when I cannot find a DRM free book elsewhere is a noble cause.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hendrikboom on Wednesday September 19 2018, @05:40PM
Calibre doesn't strip DRM. Some independently produced plugins for Calibre do; they are likely illegal in the United States. Please don't imply that Calibre is a scoff-law; I don't want anyone to start restricting its use. It's bad enough that it is happening with Kodi, which is also being unjustly called a lawbreaker.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday September 21 2018, @04:58PM
There are waterproof ebook readers -- ones that allegedly can survive for two hours under two metres of water. My youngest daughter reads her Kobo Aqua in the bath. No problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @02:53PM (1 child)
I've tried to buy ebooks a few times. Something always gets in the way.
No, I won't give my credit card to google.
No, I won't give out my DOB.
No, I won' t pay more for an ebook than I would pay for an actual book.
There's a bunch of books I'd love to have in epub format but they just don't sell them.
I won't install a special app on my phone just to be able to read a book. Fuck off. epub or another open format or die.
Perhaps I will never purchase an epub file in my lifetime. At this rate it is likely.
Their competition is selling books for free. Think about that for a moment and compare it to the Netflix model.
Wash rinse repeat for Audio books.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday September 21 2018, @04:53PM
There are a few publishers with a policy of no DRM on their ebooks. TOR and Baen come to mind. Perhaps their customers are technical enough to appreciate it.
And a few authors, mostly indie authors who need to establish a reputation. Even if those books are copied illegally, they help towards a reputation.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @01:59AM (6 children)
The rat-faced jews _need_ to control every hollywood movie you have the misfortune of seeing and they _need_ to school every young person to get used to censorship and a Big Brother police state. It has been happening all over the world. Terrorism is gifted to places that do not have it by channeling money and material to criminal members of a society and sending their agents to run the jewish terrorist organizations.
Resist the jews, get educated about them and pass the knowledge on to those who still do not understand why they cannot own movies they bought or why books they bought suddenly disappear. Stop cooperating with the jews. Jews are not our friends.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 19 2018, @06:03AM (2 children)
Funny how when you replace "Jew" by "anti-Semite" throughout that post, it actually makes more sense.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @10:52AM (1 child)
Jews are not semites. They are invaders from Khazaria.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:28PM
*whistles in a key of R*
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 19 2018, @11:30AM
But they make such tasty bagels. Also, their numerous obscure religious holidays deliver blessed relief from the alternate side parking rules.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @04:50PM (1 child)
i don't know enough jews to hate them all, or anything, but i'm not funding hollywood for shit. it's much more moral to download from TPB. all hollywood and new york do is spew self serving mind control (like it was a conspiracy or something). :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:30PM
That isn't more moral, but whatever you need to tell yourself. I don't have a problem with pirates, it isn't real theft and only promotes the "mind control" content anyway. Still, there are real people that need to be paid real money to produce this stuff. I just wish the profits were more evenly spread around instead of big name actors getting a disproportionate portion of the pie along with the execs who only constipate the whole process.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by crafoo on Wednesday September 19 2018, @02:49AM (4 children)
Some people want the best, most useful version of a product. If you give them a option that is better and more useful than the paid version you lose those sales.
Pretty much the thing that steam tried - make the paid version at least slightly more valuable than the free version. Some people will always pirate, but they were never really customers. Don't cripple your paid-product in an attempt to do what? Just make it worse? Try to kill secondary markets? Of course those people will just go pirate instead.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday September 19 2018, @03:26AM (3 children)
They were potential customers.
If we could get a reasonable*selection of entertainments (movie, "tv", game, whatever), at a reasonable* price, we'd most likely pay.
* "reasonable" for "suppliers" seems to be defined as "contains advertisements, warnings an other stuff, and you can't move it to your own storage device.
Going to the movies costs alot. Staying at home to watch should not cost only half the ticket price (or more!)
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 19 2018, @11:18AM (2 children)
I took the kids up to the Prospect Park bandshell for Celebrate Brooklyn! a couple weeks ago to see Jonathan Coulton perform. It was a great show. He writes clever songs around nerdy themes. We could have grabbed the new album off bit torrent, but bought a CD and a T-shirt because we wanted to support his work.
It occurred to me we weren't rewarding him for those songs, we were investing in the next songs, those he hasn't written yet.
The recording industry isn't about creating new music, it's about extracting infinite reward from music that already exists, in a sort of cultural necrophilia. They feast on the dead.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday September 19 2018, @12:59PM (1 child)
Indeed. I happen to like cds, and will buy them from performers at shows, where the money actually goes to the performer, as cash into their hand. Then I rip the cd, knowing, eventually, it will get scratched, or lost.
Not sure how much artists make on things like soundcloud, but buying from an artist's website seems to be similar.. Straight to the artist, not to the leeches.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @03:00PM
Would you still buy it if you could not rip it?
I don't buy DVDs or even have a blueray player because I can't back it up - which is legal here!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @02:54AM (2 children)
So, I can pay, with a button marked "buy", and yet I do not own what I just bought?
Or I can pirate, and then I own, free and clear, the item.
That's why this info-graphic is a good illustration of why pirating is better: http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg [imgur.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @09:30AM
See also:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/09/13/apple-is-deleting-bought-films-from-itunes-accounts-and-dont-expect-a-refund/#10a6cca85f74 [forbes.com]
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html [nytimes.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-customers-kindle-deletes-account [theguardian.com]
https://www.pcworld.com/article/172953/amazon_kindle_1984_lawsuit.html [pcworld.com]
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3073457/windows/how-microsofts-nasty-new-windows-10-pop-up-tricks-you-into-upgrading.html [pcworld.com]
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Wednesday September 19 2018, @09:32AM
I wouldn't be happy with a dvd that didn't have the logos, especially now.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by black6host on Wednesday September 19 2018, @03:50AM
From the summary:
Don't expect anything will change soon? Hell yes it will, your rights will diminish with every passing breath if the lobbyists have their way...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @05:19AM (2 children)
Representing digital goods in a quantified manner is the only use for so-called "tokens" that have bcome popular in the cryptocurrency space that has ever made any sense to me. A token that represents a game/album/book and is saleable/tradeable by the possessor would restore much of the rights that are currently missing in digital goods. How you would tie the token to the good without depending on centralized control would need to be solved before such a system could exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:50PM (1 child)
It is a moot point, pirates will still be able to pirate. Maybe since the whole system has not come crashing down yet we should just stick to "please pay for your digital goods". If pirates become too common then we may start getting less garbage content. Win fucking win.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @03:02PM
Download what you want.
Run a program to find what it costs and who to pay for what you have.
Pay them. Keep it up until your collection is covered.
Win = Win
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Wednesday September 19 2018, @05:56AM (1 child)
No, when I buy a book, there is no file. Just a bunch of paper sheets with stuff printed on them, glued together on one side, and with a more or less fancy cover. And the only restrictions books have are the restrictions the physical media impose.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by Myfyr on Wednesday September 19 2018, @07:34AM
True. But keeping it that way sometimes requires doing things like taking the fight all the way to the Supreme Court. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday September 19 2018, @06:22AM (1 child)
Not cheap because it costs a lot to make a movie. When you do it right it costs millions of dollars. Home Alone 2 -- one of our best movies -- that one cost $20 million to make. And made more than $350 million in sales. Incredible box office for that one. Because I'm in it. You want to buy it, not cheap. Because it's part of a set. So, probably, you have to buy the whole set together. Then it belongs to you. In a way. Because you can't just do whatever you want. You show it to folks, you have to pay the residuals. But you can have a lot of fun. Ted Turner, he bought MGM/UA's movies. Including Casablanca. Very boring film until he came along. Because they didn't make it right. They saved money on film, they did it with black & white film. Ted spent the money to put in the colors that it needed so badly. And people went, WOW, incredible job, incredible movie!!! And Ted became very very famous.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday September 19 2018, @02:46PM
So please do not pirate...
Buy a legitimate copy of "Full Disclosure." Or, if you prefer not having your childhood memories of Mario Kart's Toad used to describe presidential genitalia; support the authors and buy legitimate copes of "Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House" and "Fear: Trump in the White House."
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Insightful) by garfiejas on Wednesday September 19 2018, @12:09PM
Using terms like own and buy made it easy for people to subscribe to DRM management systems; The EU/US forced Apple to change "Free" to "Get" on the App store if you remember, so words really do matter https://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/19/apple-replaces-free-button-with-get/ [macrumors.com]
And its not just media, with IoT devices, do you really "own" them if they're permanently connected to a "service provider" and won't work or significantly degrade when not connected?
Its important to realise that You don't control these devices, you merely "inform" the real owners of the device of your intentions (a "wish", with all that implies :-), they may or may not decide to implement them, but they're the ones in control not you.
I'm not saying that all DRM schemes are inherently bad (though where will our culture be in 20 or 30 years if we don't "own" anything?) or all IoT/Mobile platforms are insidious electronics in our homes, work places and cars designed to gather behavioural data sold to the highest bidder.
The language just needs legally enforcing, its not "free" if it requires in-app subscriptions; I can't "buy" or "own" it if I can't sell it, its a subscription; I can't "control" e.g my home - if it requires some 3rd party connection to function, I inform them of my "wishes".
(Score: 2) by JustNiz on Wednesday September 19 2018, @05:01PM
> people should at least be aware that you don't always own what you buy.
True but is this really the problem?
There are many stories out there of big company X arbitrarily deciding to change their store or DRM and simply not caring one bit about totally cutting off everyone that already bought DRM'd stuff.
Are all those people that continue to buy cloud rather than hard media really not aware of any of those stories, or even of that possibility?
I'm guessing people aren't that stupid so that really isn't the usual case. I think they know but still stupidly choose convenience/convention over risk, partly because that's how their phone/favourite app/media player is also pushing them.
They already know, but only start caring after they got caught and its too late,
The bottom line is people need to wise up, and only buy physical formats that you control and even sell on if you want.
Next best is only media that is both DRM-free and downloadable, but that's a poor second because you still cant re-sell it.