Very fascinating.
Reminded me of FlexPlay from 2003, "self destructing" DVDs for short-term rentals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexplay
Reminded me of FlexPlay from 2003, "self destructing" DVDs for short-term rentals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexplay
The first post recommended by tumblr at the bottom of this article was about FlexPlay (and DIVX): https://foone.tumblr.com/post/705631633513005056/so-regardin...
Realistically - there is a considerable difference in the resources required to create a digital copy of a good vs a physical copy. The digital good has the slight upside that when companies abuse consumers through predatory pricing practices (literal rent-seeking...), they are destroying slightly less of the environment in the process.
Like, yes, someone invested a lot of capital up front and hopes to make a profit by selling time-limited access to what they bought, thereby making the goods accessible to people who don't have the up-front capital.
I can see preferring to own, but as a moral position, "rent-seeking" is synonymous with "risk-taking" and "access-providing."
For my part I am very happy to be able to rent a digital movie for $4 rather than buying a DVD for $20. The risk to me is lower and I'm more likely to try movies I wouldn't take a $20 chance on.
In this scenario, the predatory pricing is a key aspect of how it becomes rent seeking, and a well-functioning market would not have predatory pricing. And the root issue is tied in to how current US copyright law has major flaws.
Someone making content and renting it out wouldn't count, while say the App Store fee would.
As a developer, I made a couple of hundred thousand dollars from the Apple App Store. You know how much value the App Store provided me? Way, way more than the 30% I paid (this was years ago).
Without a portal that could direct millions of people to find my app, I probably would have made tens of dollars.
So we can debate fair pricing, but the idea that aggregators don’t provide any value isn’t an indictment of aggregators, it’s a confession of not understanding the business.
Good point. Another often unappreciated point is that it's way easier to convince people to give their credit card to Apple than it is to convince them to give it to some random web site. Especially if they've already given their credit card to Apple, as many of them have.
Plus it's not like CD's/DVD's are incredibly resource-intensive. Remember AOL CD's you got sent for free? A quick Google says one billion of those were sent out. There's about as much plastic by weight in an average Chinese takeout, or a single plastic clamshell of fresh greens at the grocery store.
Awesome for the environment? Of course not. But "disgustingly greedy"? Nope, just a tiny drop in the bucket of plastics usage.
I loved the story of DIVX. As a format, it never actually got hacked to unlock unlimited viewing of the far-cheaper-than-DVD discs.
It never got hacked not because its security was great (after all - a static disk which received unlock codes over dialup, had to have some significant attack surface), but because it sucked and wasn't worth hacking.
Video quality was lower than that of DVD's and soon enough after release, the pricing of used DVD's was close enough that buying DIVX made no sense at all. To say nothing of paying a premium price for all of that in the players.
Having now read about Red tapes, it seems like pure folly that DIVX should have been attempted.
It didnt make it out of the test marketing stage, thankfully.
Does that mean I own every book I've checked out of a library? Every hotel room I've stayed in?
Producers rent seek. More at 11
The licensing of the music on certain movies didn't anticipate the internet. And the studios never came to an agreement. As a result you can buy DVDs of movies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullets_Over_Broadway, but you can't rent them off of any streaming service. Given that most of us no longer have DVD players, they seem destined to only survive in pirated copies. If that.
But the second tier ones don't. There isn't so much money to be made from fixing them, nor is there the public pressure. So they languish..indefinitely.
If they (all these companies) ever fully sort out audio rights, start providing great-quality copies of movies without screwing with them (the 4k77 and related projects are far and away the highest-quality copies of the original, unmolested Star Wars trilogy available, period, for any price, and they're entirely a very-expensive-to-produce volunteer fan-made effort, available for free! WTF?), stop cutting episodes, and stop revoking access to things, I can finally scrap that stupid server. It's 1000% not worth the cost and effort just to avoid paying for the things I watch. Buuuuut if I'm maintaining it anyway, for other reasons, well, that's another matter.
I actually see piracy as a moral imperative. Without it, we would not be able to properly preserve culture.
https://www.amazon.com/My-Fair-Lady-Audrey-Hepburn/dp/B08NDY...
https://www.amazon.com/Bullets-Over-Broadway-John-Cusack/dp/...
A couple of years ago it wasn't true. I know because I tried to watch both and not a single streaming service, including Amazon, had it.
But other than that I can't think of a lot of examples.
We really should allow renters to stay indefinitely at rentals and also pass on the general maintenance responsibilities on to them as well.
Renting things like appliances doesn't make sense since you require exclusive access to them and generally use them for their entire lifespan. While houses mostly exist before and after your need for them.
Most consumers aren’t going to rent a movie they can only watch a few for a 10% discount off the price of unlimited views.
For example, Apple typically prices movie “purchases” around 4x of a 24 hr rental (75% off), and that has essentially zero marginal cost of production. With physical media there would be no profit.
I thought I did not have a reason to employ a name or even think of productions like this as a format.
But, as you point out, the right name is unclear, and just calling it "a video" begs for a "what format?" discussion.
I like "video essay" quite a lot myself. Documentary can work too, but seems a bit off and I am struggling to express why.
Maybe one of us can ask the Technology Connections guy what name he would use. We might get a whole video on the subject!
I am going to ask. Join me. Very curious what he would say, and he would be among the top people qualified to talk about these things too.
Seems more than a documentary. Can totally be a video essay.