I think Digital Asset rights fights are going to be big in the next couple of decades. Especially as account owners start to mature and realize their investments and start asking hard questions such as estate planning. (Can you pass on your digital assets/libraries to your children? The answers there [which currently are most "no"] are going to surprise an increasing number of people over the next few years.)
When my wife and I did our estate planning we had the lawyer put specific terms in to help ensure that our future (and now current) kids would assume ownership of all digital accounts. At the time there was only one example from another state we were able to use that had been proven successful in court, so that’s what we adopted.
Now that we’ve moved to California I need to update the documents to fit our laws as well the current understanding of the law is. Point being I’m seeing a lawyer soon for this specific case alone and the wording MUST be tested in court for us to even know where to start. For anyone studying law, IP law will make some money for now and quite a while still.
P.S. if anyone can recommend a Bay Area estate attorney with this experience please let me and others know!
Yes, it's going to be an interesting up hill legal battle that will either need a lot of expensive court cases or some really smart people in legislatures, and in this climate it feels like we can count on the former a lot more than the latter.
Many terms of service agreements terminate with the "owner" and are very explicit that accounts are "nontransferable", and both are problems that are going to be big fights.
Uptake of subscription services might make this a non-issue, if it is sizable enough to make a minority of people who want to own media. If the providers of subscription services can solve the disappearing and exclusive content problems. Maybe fights over rights will be there instead, with 'exclusive' distribution rights to media being limited and a right to buy. I tend to think that a change such as requiring copyright holders to sell to everyone or no-one under the same terms would mean us consumers would no longer be stuck needing to hoard, and most of us would be happy to pay our monthly fees to have access to everything delivered to our TVs.
I'm more afraid that uptake of subscription services will hit that worst case scenario problem of prolonging the fight just long enough that people give up on the fight in a war of attrition before subscription services simply prove again why (digital) landlords cannot be trusted and (digital) renters have no rights.
A big part of my concern here is that copyright terms are so long today that any subscription/rental-focused world is a multi-generational digital feudalism. With a larger and "closer" to the current generation public domain it might be much easier to trust competition among subscription companies. You allude to this indirectly in trying to open the market, but there will always be "exclusive" distribution rights so long as copyright casts such a long shadow from the big castles on all the lowly consumer sharecroppers.
While I doubt we'd see much legislative interest in shortening copyright terms and enlarging the public domain, fighting for digital asset rights from digital retailers that use words like "own" and "purchase", given long histories of consumer protection laws and consumer protection court cases, seems a lot more plausible, and a lot more worth fighting. I worry that a lot of people won't care to fight so long as the castles make subscription services seem like good sharecropping just long enough for most people to give up, and then it will be too late and there won't be a big enough public domain to protect us.
I think it reduces the risk to consumers, but it won’t eliminate the need. It’ll be a long while before my entire Steam library will be available via subscription.
I'm not going to debate ethics or local legalities here, but I believe that pirating (where feasible) is perfectly fine as an alternative to preserving what these sellers impose restrictions on. Where it does get tricky is, in addition to pirating, whether to pay for the DRMd walled garden items and voting with one's wallet that what they're doing is fine, so that the artists/developers behind the content get something. I don't have a black and white answer to this. Sometimes it seems like supporting these evil corporations is evil.
This is very easy to do for music, books and movies/shows. It's a bit more difficult to do this on mobile platforms when it comes to apps and games (a lot more so on iOS where jailbreaks are sometimes few and far between).
The FSF's "Defective by Design" campaign is a bit helpful, but most of the world has moved on to being tied up with subscriptions and DRM everywhere, and doesn't seem to care as much to demand change.
As someone who was a teen in the early '00s when torrenting became quite mainstream, I was surprised to see it fall away entirely in favour of streaming services, despite the lack of ownership of the content, and needing to subscribe to multiple services to get the shows you wanted.
I never really stopped either, but as I got older and had more money, I find that I watch/listen to a fraction of the shows/bands I used to, so I'm happy to support them by purchasing digital assets (DRM-free MP3s) and physical (vinyl, DVD).
The DVDs will be ripped to my HDD; they are mine after all.
That looks quite expensive and doesn't disclose details about the kinds of disks used (upfront) and the connection speeds allotted. The seed times are also too short with the ratio "or" time clause. Anyone wanting to seed to maintain an archive of content for the future may find this tedious. There seem to be many others that provide more (cheaper, faster and more features/flexibility).
I don't get it. You delete or close the account you use to access the digital content, what is the expectation here? That you can keep accessing it without an account? How would they know what you own?
There isn't an issue with the purchase being somehow bad. The issue is they're intentionally destroying the means to authenticate they were the ones who purchased it.
I'm totally on board with purchases being tied to a single company being an issue, but for a lot of people the value of digital books and music is the online availability. You're going to need some sort of auth for that to work.
I have this problem right now, sort of. I purchased dozens of Kindle books through my personal Amazon account over the years. Now I prefer to do so through my business account. Yet, I want all of them available through the same device. Well, that’s a pain in the behind. I have to call Amazon support for help and have been procrastinating because I know it will be a one hour ordeal.
This is why I prefer to purchase digital books as PDF files. I keep them on Dropbox and my local drive and they are great to handle and read.
Calibre. Convert those books to DRM-free formats asap and you're good to go. They become completely yours. I do it by default for all my Amazon kindle format purchases. It's "forbidden" but if I paid near physical book retail pricing for it, as far as i'm concerned, that copy of digital content deserves to be mine.
Apple did this to my wife when she moved countries. Property is theft, apparently so some are justified in stealing it without compensation. How it is legal in any civilized country or not against WTO rules i can't understand. Maybe it is illegal. Maybe it is contrary to WTO rules?
If there's one thing I've learned with all these app stores and digital stores, a better way to handle this when you move countries is to create a new account for that country and also retain the older account (if possible, without a payment method, just to have access to older purchases and to free items).
Ideally, software would make sure that you can use the same account across countries as long as you can attach the appropriate payment methods. They don't do this even for content that's not controlled by giant corporations that are stuck in the past.
(IANAL)
This is fairly pedantic, and I do apologize foe this, but it feels inaccurate to state (or to think) that you were able to buy those movies. We don't buy movies. At least in the US, we buy license/right to view. This gets... into interesting legal territory, but also this leads to situations like digital assets being unavailable after the account to which they are licensed being deleted.
> We don't buy movies. At least in the US, we buy license/right to view.
(IANAL) That part is the same even if you buy a music CD or a Blu-Ray disc. You're only granted a license to play it for your personal use (and you're not even allowed to play at a public event or broadcast it). But, you're legally allowed to make backups for yourself and (in certain instances) encode them for use with a different mechanism. That's one of the things that iTunes (taking a popular example) helped revolutionize, with CD ripping and place-shifting the content for convenience. DRM, along with making the breaking of DRM illegal (is it still illegal for all kinds of content? I haven't kept up) is what messed this whole thing up.
I've been eye-ing a lot of movies on Google Play recently. Wasn't sure about making the jump, but now I'm curious. What makes you think they're going to fail? Any big warning signs?
That was too aggressive. Better to say that it's failed for me, and I suspect it will fail for others. YMMV.
In my case, I lost access to one of my Google accounts, for no apparent reason, and I have been unable to regain access. The movies I have are actually attached to my other account, but the message seems clear--they can go away at any time with no recourse.
In principle this is true for Amazon, Apple, and other Play competitors. In practice, I haven't heard of such cases, and because their economic model is different, this seems a lot less likely, to me.
More broadly, Google has a track record of discontinuing services, which also makes me nervous.
It looks like Google's current focus has been moving things out of Google Play sub-brands to YouTube sub-brands with their own new apps. Or at least that's what ads and upsells in YouTube itself keep trying to tell me? No idea if Google has made any public announcements one way or the other, but the growing confusion certainly doesn't help anyone figure out what Google's strategy here is (or if it even has one or even if this is just like that "new messenger app every year, X% chance one dies this year" russian roulette thing they do).
Readit News
Now that we’ve moved to California I need to update the documents to fit our laws as well the current understanding of the law is. Point being I’m seeing a lawyer soon for this specific case alone and the wording MUST be tested in court for us to even know where to start. For anyone studying law, IP law will make some money for now and quite a while still.
P.S. if anyone can recommend a Bay Area estate attorney with this experience please let me and others know!
Many terms of service agreements terminate with the "owner" and are very explicit that accounts are "nontransferable", and both are problems that are going to be big fights.
A big part of my concern here is that copyright terms are so long today that any subscription/rental-focused world is a multi-generational digital feudalism. With a larger and "closer" to the current generation public domain it might be much easier to trust competition among subscription companies. You allude to this indirectly in trying to open the market, but there will always be "exclusive" distribution rights so long as copyright casts such a long shadow from the big castles on all the lowly consumer sharecroppers.
While I doubt we'd see much legislative interest in shortening copyright terms and enlarging the public domain, fighting for digital asset rights from digital retailers that use words like "own" and "purchase", given long histories of consumer protection laws and consumer protection court cases, seems a lot more plausible, and a lot more worth fighting. I worry that a lot of people won't care to fight so long as the castles make subscription services seem like good sharecropping just long enough for most people to give up, and then it will be too late and there won't be a big enough public domain to protect us.
This is very easy to do for music, books and movies/shows. It's a bit more difficult to do this on mobile platforms when it comes to apps and games (a lot more so on iOS where jailbreaks are sometimes few and far between).
The FSF's "Defective by Design" campaign is a bit helpful, but most of the world has moved on to being tied up with subscriptions and DRM everywhere, and doesn't seem to care as much to demand change.
companies came and went, my torrents are still with me.
sharing is caring.
I never really stopped either, but as I got older and had more money, I find that I watch/listen to a fraction of the shows/bands I used to, so I'm happy to support them by purchasing digital assets (DRM-free MP3s) and physical (vinyl, DVD).
The DVDs will be ripped to my HDD; they are mine after all.
I'm totally on board with purchases being tied to a single company being an issue, but for a lot of people the value of digital books and music is the online availability. You're going to need some sort of auth for that to work.
This is why I prefer to purchase digital books as PDF files. I keep them on Dropbox and my local drive and they are great to handle and read.
Ideally, software would make sure that you can use the same account across countries as long as you can attach the appropriate payment methods. They don't do this even for content that's not controlled by giant corporations that are stuck in the past.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
See also, "The Right to Read":
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
(IANAL) That part is the same even if you buy a music CD or a Blu-Ray disc. You're only granted a license to play it for your personal use (and you're not even allowed to play at a public event or broadcast it). But, you're legally allowed to make backups for yourself and (in certain instances) encode them for use with a different mechanism. That's one of the things that iTunes (taking a popular example) helped revolutionize, with CD ripping and place-shifting the content for convenience. DRM, along with making the breaking of DRM illegal (is it still illegal for all kinds of content? I haven't kept up) is what messed this whole thing up.
Congrats on reaching self-awareness, HN!
In my case, I lost access to one of my Google accounts, for no apparent reason, and I have been unable to regain access. The movies I have are actually attached to my other account, but the message seems clear--they can go away at any time with no recourse.
In principle this is true for Amazon, Apple, and other Play competitors. In practice, I haven't heard of such cases, and because their economic model is different, this seems a lot less likely, to me.
More broadly, Google has a track record of discontinuing services, which also makes me nervous.
Full cash refund is honest. Anything else is fraud.