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1. How much cost is really involved in keeping up the DRM server in maintenance mode on Azure?

2. Maybe this will give the EFF enough case study to argue (successfully, finally) that the DMCA allows corporations to create rules that violate other existing laws such as the right of first sale.

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For 2, it's unlikely. When pushed on DRM shutdowns and loss of use, surviving businesses usually refund purchases. It's going to be really tough to show harm, when the purchase has been refunded (or offered to be refuneded).

"Microsoft will refund customers in full for what they paid, plus an extra $25 if they made annotations or mark-ups."

that... I mean, if they automatically refund everyone? that sounds... really pretty good? I mean, I've got a few grand into my kindle books. I bet I have more than a grand in obsolete technical books alone. If the kindle was no longer the dominant platform (or rather, if there was another platform with more books) if you wanted to pay me several thousand dollars to re-buy my library on a different platform? Sure, I'd take that deal.

(I mean, if it's not an automatic refund, if it's instead the more usual "we'll refund if you remember to call us between this time and that time, and if you are willing to argue for hours, that is a very different sort of thing, of course. I just think you can make the argument that we should be very forgiving of businesses if they want to unwind in a way that causes them to refund every penny of revenue they ever acquired.)

if you wanted to pay me several thousand dollars to re-buy my library on a different platform? Sure, I'd take that deal

And what do you do when the media you want isn't available on another platform?

In the recent article about the burning of the Universal music archive we learned that less than 11% of recorded music is available online. Anyone who subscribes to a streaming service knows content comes and goes.

The only way to keep the things you buy is to actually own them. Not continually rent them from one online service after another.

>The only way to keep the things you buy is to actually own them. Not continually rent them from one online service after another.

Eh, as someone who has owned (and lost or destroyed) a bunch of physical things, my experience is that I have to continually rebuy physical things I use; I mean, records, CDs, books... these all get lost and destroyed in various ways if you carry them around with you and otherwise use them. I don't think that the way I own and store things is more reliable than a major content licensing platform. If I use a thing consistently and long term, then licensing it is certainly more reliable than buying a physical copy, and may very well be cheaper for me than buying physical copies new.

I'd argue that what protects availability of things that go out of print is more that other people own the thing and can sell me a copy when mine is lost or destroyed. You could argue this is a bit of a tragedy of the commons, or it could be, if E-books started pushing physical books out of print (as opposed to books that are e-only mostly being books that wouldn't have been printed at all before the advent of e-book technology)

Of course, for things that are rare (and things that are popular are a lot less likely to go out of print) this gets expensive pretty fast, but first sale doctrine does assure me that I can usually get a copy, if I'm willing to pay enough, while the possibility does exist, with electronic copies, that I won't be able to get a copy at all... that's true.

This is why copyright should only be granted on things that don't have DRM, or where a system is in place to release the un-limited copies when support of licensed copies ends.

We should allow licensing, but only if the companies allow the benefit of that - perpetual replication allowing goods to never fail - to accrue with the licensees.

Yeah, the point is to encourage creation; I agree that there should be some requirement that you must distribute a work to keep that copyright.

Encouraging creation is part of the deal, preserving culture, and enabling wider education were also parts of the deal -- Queen Anne (or her advisers) seem to have really valued the availability of literature for the people (or at least the priveleged people with access to the BL and Uni libraries).

eh, but copyright as it stands now, decreases the availability of literature (I mean, aside from how it encourages creating it, which is super important, of course.) so those things couldn't have been reasons for creating copyright law as it stands in the US.

(an interesting side effect, as a person willing to spend money on books? It's a lot easier to get a good e-book of something still under copyright than of something out of copyright. Like, I'm super happy to pay $20 or whatever for something better-than-gutenberg and that's really a lot of effort. I don't really know how they do it, 'cause half the for pay out of copyright books for kindle on amazon are worse than just downloading the .mobi from gutenberg. For anything public domain, you have to wade through a sea of badly formatted garbage, even if you are largely price insensitive; price isn't a reasonable signal either way. On the other hand, if it is in public domain, you almost certainly will be able to find an e-book of it, and the quality you get just hitting gutenberg really isn't that bad, while if it is in copyright, if it is an obscure book, your only real option is paper.)

I wonder how much of my problem with finding well formated kindle books is my own lack of familiarity with the search tools and publishing houses? or with amazon's lack of features (like, some sort of rating for the publisher would be useful here. Right now, amazon makes it really hard with their combining of reviews for different formats/editions/publishers. Like sometimes the kindle version and paper version (for out of copyright books) will be different publishers, and amazon just glomps the reviews together, making it really quite difficult.

>those things couldn't have been reasons for creating copyright law as it stands in the US //

I don't think your analysis stands, there was a deposit system in USA too so that all copyright books were deposited at the Library of Congress. In order to get your copyright you had to place on deposit two copies that people could, with access to the library, view and which would be preserved even if your work only had a short run and other copies were lost.

https://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/jan04/deposit.html

Everything else I thinkg I can agree with. Particularly the problems with Amazon's review and ratings system -- I guess it must work to bring more money to Amazon, but it's really annoying.

Ah, perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you meant availability to the general public; I mean, two archival copies of a work doesn't do a lot to ensure I can read it; as I understand, if you can't find the rightsholder, that still doesn't let you print copies until copyright is up.

>Everything else I thinkg I can agree with. Particularly the problems with Amazon's review and ratings system -- I guess it must work to bring more money to Amazon, but it's really annoying.

I personally think it's amazon's biggest problem; some of their products are distinctly premium; The kindle experience is way more expensive than just buying used books... and for in copyright books, it's a premium I'm happy to pay. I spend a lot more on books now that I have a kindle (I read a little more... but I also pay more per book)

The same goes for goods. Like, I'm happy to pay extra for something that arrives fast and that is what it says on the tin. I mostly (but not always) get that from major brand goods that sell a lot, but for unbranded stuff? I might as well go to aliexpress or something; the reviews don't match the product quite often.

I personally think that this is amazon's biggest problem; at least it's amazon's biggest problem when it comes to getting more of the money I spend. I don't know how representative I am.

From past shutdowns, I've never seen anything that past purchases are refunded, such as when Microsoft killed off Plays4Sure (ironically).

presumably they do this to avoid getting sued and having a precedent set though?

The right sale doctrine doesn’t apply to products like these; these are licenses to use. If they were first sale doctrine products, you could sell your goods on secondary markets, which you cannot.

But did they use the word 'buy' in their online store? Did they list the item as 'book title' instead of 'book title license'?

I'm sure there's a "licensed, not sold" line buried somewhere in the EULA, but why would that take precedence over the prominently-displayed "buy"? Is the "buy" a lie? If so, how is a consumer supposed to know which statements are lies and which are not? For all they know, the EULA could be the lying one.

This is all from a US point of view - Europe has disallowed using such shenanigans to rob consumers of their rights: https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/3/3134867/eu-court-of-justic...

I keep hearing complaints in the US that EU regulations strangle companies, but as a consumer I’m wildly envious. When I vaped, I tried to get a new disposable part in the EU. I had to upgrade my whole mod because the parts on the market in the US were illegal in the EU because they leaked. The US is sold products that force you to buy more “juice” and make messes. And in the EU, the juice flavors must each pass tests to show they’re not harmful. In the US that’s considered an undue burden.

> I keep hearing complaints in the US that EU regulations strangle companies, but as a consumer I’m wildly envious.

It's all a matter of what the regulations actually are. Most of them get sold as "consumer protection" but in practice are written by the industries the consumers are supposedly being protected from, in order to create barriers to entry and destroy competition.

> The US is sold products that force you to buy more “juice” and make messes.

Is there something forcing you to buy those ones? Can't you just order the EU one and have it shipped to you in the US? (And if the thing preventing that is regulations, well, "we need more regulations" is probably the wrong fix.)

> in practice are written by the industries the consumers are supposedly being protected from, in order to create barriers to entry and destroy competition.

Requiring 3rd party certification that your food/vape juice/whatever won't harm me should definitely be a barrier to entry. If that means there's less competition and higher prices, so be it. Consumer safety should come before the need for more competition and lower prices.

> Requiring 3rd party certification that your food/vape juice/whatever won't harm me should definitely be a barrier to entry.

So then don't buy anything without third party certification. But why shouldn't you be able to choose the EU's certification rather than the US, or a private one, if you want to?

> So then don't buy anything without third party certification.

You can't tell how compliant with food safety standards a manufacturer is when you're standing in front of a supermarket shelf. It's better to just know that every juice on the shelf met some minimum food safety standard.

> You can't tell how compliant with food safety standards a manufacturer is when you're standing in front of a supermarket shelf.

How can you tell any better how compliant they are with local law? The penalty can be the same for misusing the seal of the standards organization, it just gives you the choice of whose standards you're willing to accept.

> It's better to just know that every juice on the shelf met some minimum food safety standard.

But that isn't what happens. It immediately goes from requiring that the food is not rat poison to prohibiting donut holes and restricting hamburgers on Sundays and requiring apple pie to be served with cheese.

Conversely, the US is far more strict with diesel emissions, while the EU allows for a LOT more loopholes to favor certain companies that prop up certain economies..

The US is to my knowledge far less strict with any emissions, and have very limited emission inspection. Do you have any example of areas where the US are more strict, including inspections that validate the rules?

With regards to diesel vs. gasoline: Where I live, gasoline is 5 times more expensive than it is in the US, so diesel have been favored solely for its efficiency. We consider anything below ~25km/l (or ~60MPG) to be inefficient, and anything below ~20km/l (or ~50MPG) to be terrible, and that has been our standard for close to 20 years. NOX vs. CO2 is always a discussion, but we do our best to burn as little as possible of anything.

We also try to disincentivize owning old cars that are legal by older standards by having taxes on emission technology (e.g. no modern DPF), as well as fuel efficiency.

(Not that I'm fossil-fuel apologetic—I'm going to get an EV as soon as its affordable. Cars are pricey here.)

That's a difference in priority between particulate emissions and CO2 emissions, right? With one favoring a relative reduction in soot and the other favoring a relative reduction in CO2. That's my understanding anyway, I'm not a car guy.

Not soot. Nitrogen oxides (NOx). Soot is easily taken care of and tires create a lot or particulate emissions from road travel.

Forget sale doctrines, DRM effectively prevents a consumer from leaving to a competing service. It seems to me to be more of a matter of antitrust law since it gives a company way too much control over how a consumer, well, consumes.

There is one partial exception - digital movies.

Movies Anywhere is owned by Disney but is a partnership with four other studios. You can buy a movie from iTunes, Amazon Prime, Google Play, or Vudu and get credit for purchasing it from other stores.

There should be some crackdown on selling licenses over products. It is abused to absurd extends.

Indeed. Some stores sell this license above market rate as well compared to an actual purchase of a good. Infuriating.

The button says buy and purchase. Not rent or lease.

If it was honest and said that I suspect fewer people would buy them. Sorry, license them.

but you are buying. a license.

The argument is that if you are buying a licence, the retailer is obligated to tell you you're buying a licence. Current advertising, shopping, and checkout flows instead communicate that you are buying an eBook.

That’s a descriptive argument (describing what is, based on technicalities). I’m making a proscriptive argument about what should be. When DRM replaces an entire market, it’s reasonable for customers to have similar expectations. Eg when I die, I should be able to bequeath my library.

So does the first sale doctrine not have any teeth at all? What is to stop companies from throwing a license on everything they sell, making the first sale doctrine meaningless?

Could a bookseller add a license to a physical book, and suddenly you can't sell it or lend it out?

It does have some teeth. Disney v Redbox ended up ruling that Redbox could not resell digital copies of movies from bundle packs because Disney had in the terms that it was only allowed to be sold together.

But there is another case that went all the way to the supreme Court regarding resale of textbooks. Kurtsang v wiley. Textbook publisher Wileyclaimed that because they put "not for sale in the US" on their cheaper, but nearly identical international version textbooks, that meant they could dictate as such.

But the defendants prevailed and the supreme Court ruled that the first sale doctrine applied and lawful purchasers of the books could import them and sell them wherever they want.

This is a rather recent precedent because Costco lost a similar case v Omega a few years earlier, but it did not set a precedent.

The textbook one did.

But I suspect that there were some additional copyright and licensing complexities that made the Disney case different. Especially since it was two copies of the same item, just in different formats. Also, Disney, so probably the most experienced, well funded, and vicious gang of lawyers in existence.

But I'm not sure if a straightforward resale of a digital item has been tested in the courts. It seems with the Kurtsang v Wiley precedent, you would have a good chance of winning.

> "Could a bookseller add a license to a physical book, and suddenly you can't sell it or lend it out? "

Probably. I mean, they're already selling physical items laden with DRM (DVD/bluray), presumably in those cases they are selling you "a license to watch the disk." The ability to restrict first sale of DRM'd movies is probably on their TODO list I'd wager, or their list of greatest regrets.

Incidentally, years ago, they did manage to invent a self-destructing DVD obsensibly for rental-without-return purposes. Technology Connections has a good video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccneE_gkSAs

The actual answer appears to be that you can sell add-on digital content which is licensed only for sale with the physical item, and that’s OK. But you cannot add license terms to the physical book itself, the book can be resold freely. That’s recently been affirmed by the Supreme Court.

Hypothetically if they had the technology to create a paperback book that self-destructs when anybody but you opens it, would that business model be illegal? As far as I know, SCOTUS said companies can't use the legal system to prevent resale of their books. But did they say that technical solutions are also banned?

If you buy a product which is designed for a single use, knowing that it’s a single use product, and obviously this is something that would have to fail gracefully and safely, I really don’t see a problem with that.

Obviously companies (and therefore customers) should be paying for the ecological impact of their waste product.

Has that been decided by the courts for the various digital product types (software, books, music, videos, etc.)?

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