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Comment by senko | Hacker News Reader

I've seen the phrase "Own it in {HD/BluRay/4K}" so many times and always cringe. You're just owning a limited license (extremely limited, in the case of digital goods) to watch.

The average HN user can spot the difference and say "of course you don't own it, and in case of streaming, you only have access for as long as the service is around", but that's not what the average consumer sees. "Buy" and "own" have very strong meanings and repurposing those for marketing purposes to mean "limited lease" is bending the truth to the point of breaking.

But of course, "lease it for a limited time, to watch on a limited set of devices, in a geographically limited region" doesn't sound so valuable as "buy and own it".

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This 'of course you dont own it' is false. Compare with a book, which you can own. The law makes sure you stil can't distribute limitless copies, even if you own it. But you can inherit a book, lend it out, be sure it stays around after the vendor would rather take it back, even swatting flies as a purposes it wasn't ment for.

Licensing, and specifically the EULA, was popularized by Microsoft, to make sure you didn't get the rights on their software you have on a book. Would you tolerate a book with any of these: Disclaimer of warranty or fitness for purpose; Automatic revocation; Forbidding critique; Monitoring. Presumably you could license books instead of sell them, and add all anti-rights.

It is not false, just books never had such a problem and so the license wasn't deemed necessary to put anywhere. You own the paper that it's printed on, but you don't own the pictures or the words in the order they are written down.

The protection that a book has against being copied is that the format makes it more difficult to copy it quickly/cost-effectively for most people. You can do what you are saying with a DVD such as inherit it, though it's terrible for killing flies.

But the fact is that you are not allowed distribute a "copy you made" at all of a book without agreement from the copyright holders/owners or to the extent the law dictates.

The difference is you don’t need to make a copy of a book to use it. That’s what gives EULA’s their power. A copy of Windows on a DVD that you can’t copy to a HDD is at best decorative rather than useful.

A book on the other hand could be read by thousands of people in it’s lifetime.

>The difference is you don’t need to make a copy of a book to use it. That’s what gives EULA’s their power.

While often assumed to be the case, that's probably not true. Copyright law generally allows for incidental copying necessary to use a product. And, in fact, (US at least) law has been amended over time to explicitly allow certain types of copying needed for functional purposes. So licensing is probably not, in fact, necessary. Rather licensing came in at a time when it wasn't clear that software could be copyrighted.

you can copy books, movies and audio that you own as long as it's not for re-distribution.

Another way of looking at it is that you don't own the book neither. You have a licence, bound to a physical copy (that you own though, and that is transferable). The thing that changed in the last 20 years, is that we are now buying licences that are not even bound to physical copies, and that are expresly nominative.

I suspect that if books would have allowed this sort of mecanism (on a technical level) it would have been used. From the publisher point-of-view, it just makes sense.

The generation growing up now does not see media as an asset that they want to own for the rest of their lives, and they are perfectly happy paying 10€ / month for unlimited access to media. Hell we're having a hard enough time to get people to care about the planet in 20 years, so getting them to care about this is going to be a hard sell.

I have plenty of bookshelves in my house and plenty of other media too--though at least some of that is ripped and the discs are sitting in boxes in the attic. I also spent way too much time and effort earlier in my life hauling that stuff around (plus a ton of other paper) when I moved.

I at least like to think that, if I were younger today and especially if I were living in a small and/or shared city apartment, I'd have a whole lot less "stuff" and would rely a whole lot more on digital content.

ADDED: To your other point. Anything covered by copyright law has some restrictions on your rights as an "owner." So you can't copy a book and give those copies away. (You can probably digitize and otherwise make copies for personal use--certainly you can as a practical matter.) You can't give public reading performances (Most obviously in the case of stage plays. You don't even have mechanical licenses as in the case of music.)

Licensing (probably) came in with the IBM System/360 when IBM was starting to sell some of its software separate from its hardware primarily for anti-trust reasons. At the time, whether software could be copyrighted was still something of an unsettled legal matter and, therefore, IBM considered copyright a weak protection so they settled on licensing. And, of course, because of first sale doctrine a lot of companies subsequently latched onto the idea even after software came to be seen as clearly copyrightable.

> Licensing, and specifically the EULA, was popularized by Microsoft

Without sounding like an old carmudgeon, but "Licensing" and "EULA"'s were around long before MS arrived on the block and were already "popularized" within the IT business. MS, Apple etc just picked up where the old minicomputer and mainframe hardware and software vendors left off.

you can lend and re-sell books, dvds, blurays, tapes, cds and records. if you have the physical medium, for all intents and purposes you own it.

you can even copy it for backup purposes. even if it requires you to break the encryption to do so.

Fully agree with you.

I also sense there is an increasing acceptance by consumers, that it is normal to not be allowed anymore to own a legal copy of a digital work (e.g. picture, movie, music, software, etc.) for personal use. Most of these companies now treat their consumers defensively and as potential copyright infringers who will exploit the first occasion to get rich.

I don't accept that.

So I try to organize my digital consumption on an assumption that I will neither have internet access nor a "subscriber account" at time of consuming (e.g. software, video game, e-book, movie, etc.).

Products like "Spotify", "Netflix" or "Steam", and those "modern" video game consoles that treat you like a cheater if you try to log off and refuse to be constantly transmitting telemetry about you don't have a place in my wallet. I'd prefer

Sadly, I know I am losing the battle, all my friends gladly pay their monthly fees to not own anything anymore. I guess it's just a question of when I will get tired.

EDIT: forgot to mention, the thing I don't mind paying for a "limited access" is going to the cinema/theater and newspapers. Those two activities get quite a lot of attention from my wallet :)

I've seen the phrase "Own it in {HD/BluRay/4K}" so many times and always cringe. You're just owning a limited license (extremely limited, in the case of digital goods) to watch.

That's technically correct, but revoking the license for a specific DVD is effectively impossible. If you have the plastic disc you will be able to play it until the disc wears out. The same should be true for digital purchases, or the limitations should be made clearer.

DVD regions limit where you can watch something. Performance rights limit to who you can show it. Copyright limits how you can distribute it. These kinds of things were happening before and are something we're accustomed to, but I agree DRM and the possibility to rescind access makes it much worse.

That's why I'm a happy streaming subscriber. No lies there.

This is nothing at all like DVD region coding except in the intent of the perpetrators.

Region coding does not prevent me from buying and playing a disc from any region, in any region.

It's just a technical hurdle which works well enough for the publishers business model, in that the inconvenience has the desired effect on 99.9% of consumers.

But once I own the disc, I own the disc. Same for the player.

It's entirely and fundamentally different from anything delivered only as a service or worse as services masquerading as products, like software and devices that don't actually function without a service to allow it.

And the encryption is so pointless I forgot it even existed until just now.

What's it like for blu-ray? I seem to recall that there's a master key or the like involved, which may require updating the br-player to successfully decode new discs if they change the key later on (which I also seem to recall...). Not FUDing, just not recalling completely, so can be completely off..

Even if, and it's a big if, whatever online store you "bought" your digital content from is around forever and never arbitrarily bans your account with no way to appeal, you still get less value out of your purchase. You could lend a physical medium to a friend or resell it. Can't do any of that with a digital purchase. Yet, somehow, digital purchases still often cost as much as the real thing.

Movies are a mixed bag. But once you own the disk - you, for all intents and purposes, own the movie.

I can resell the disc. I can rip and backup the disc and thus have endless copies for myself, preventing me from having to re-purchase that disc. (ripping DVD is much easier than Bluray, I'll admit).

IMHO, if i can control a piece of property (or a copy of it) for an indefinite amount of time, if i can copy/backup, watch it as i please, when i please, how i please, on what i please - no i don't "own" the movie per se, but the license granted to me by that physical purchase means the contents of that purchase are mine to do with what i feel like, short of showing it to 100 people in a theater or offering it up on a pirate network.

As a side note: I "own" my media. I have 500+ books, 400+ vinyl records, 1000+ CDs, hundreds of movies on DVD and bluray (80% ripped to a dual Plex/Jellyfin media server.)

Things don't "disappear" from Spotify for me. Amazon can't take my copy of 1984 off my Kindle. Microsoft can't shut off my access to e-books. Apple can't take back the movies I've purchased.

The reality is, i - the consumer - have control.

The future everyone is contributing to, IMHO sounds like the Great Reset conspiracy: "you'll own nothing and be happy". Happy paying rent in pepertuity to megacorps for access to things youd have, for cheaper, if you owned it outright.

Do you prefer Jellyfin over Emby? I'm evaluating which to set up right now.

Emby is duplicating all the "sins" of Plex, IMHO.

Jellyfin isn't as nice as Plex and it's Roku app could use a UI rework, also having to put in IP/User/Pass on every client is a PITA. But overall i prefer it. It shows promise and i feel over the long haul it'll be the most consumer friendly option.

I always make a point to refer to subscription-based software like Adobe CC as software rentals, not purchases.

It’s a rejection of the whole concept of private property, where people own nothing and have no rights. Imagine if these practices had been applied for centuries to groceries and tools - you had to sign a contract specifying your rights etc for every single thing in your life for century after century. It would be perverse

Apple plays with "owning" and "leasing" here. Sure "owning" sells better.

I don't think this is the interpretation of people's expectations.

"Own it on BluRay" I think is very well understood by the vast majority of the commons and probably even those on HN. They own that BluRay and their 'rights' are confined but within expectation.

I don't think people have the expectation to "Start Broadcasting and Putting Ads in Brad Pitt's New Film".

They can however, spin up their BluRay in 30 years and watch the movie, which is fair.

I suggest the case against Apple has a kind of merit as well, if people 'own it' they should be able to watch it whenever they want, even 10 years from now, which is not a very long time.

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