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Comment by barbariangrunge | Hacker News Reader

Extremely creepy that we’re losing the ability to consume media without being watched and analyzed every moment we do so. I think this is more invasive than people realize, even without meta’s eye tracking on its way

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Quite right, but the solution to this isn't physical discs, or owning the "movie file", it's legislative. We need more restrictive legislation around storing then data mining user activity, and how that information is used. This applies to everything we do on our devices, but also interaction in the real world too.

With all due respect, and even considering that I am generally a fan of the "no technical solutions to legal problems", but this concrete example is where I draw the line: there is a clear benefit of a 3rd party _not being able_ to trace you _at all_ ; compared to whichever legal restrictions you want to put on it which may not even be physically nor technologically enforceable (at the end of the day they have the addresses and "bytes of the movie requested" for every user they served it to, no matter what the law says).

Not to mention the public (as usual) doesn't even seem to mind about their user activity being mined; at this point, even "western democracies" do it with various coatings of paint. Such democracies enforcing companies not to mine user activity, appetizing and trivial as this mining is, is just wishful thinking both today as well as at any point of history.

I would never exchange a broadcast medium where it is _impossible_ for the broadcaster to track me with one where tracking me is practically a side effect of its normal operation, even if I had the personal written guarantee of the current President of the Republic that the broadcasters would not be able to actually use any of the data they mine from it.

Owning a physical disc also comes with additional legal protections. Once you own the copy, many agreements become non-enforceable. This applies to a lesser degree to software (since the installation step involves making a copy), but even then there are protections.

Owning a copy doesn't just protect you, but the content itself as well. It means that Disney can't edit or censor the work post-release. It means they can't stop it from being accessed entirely.

Which is why media companies hate physical discs.

They view the second hand market as lost revenue and libraries as legal thievery.

...or just drastically shorten the copyright terms to a few years, and watch it wherever and however after it's in public domain.

That's a pipe dream, it's just not going to happen. Pushing for copyright change is a distraction for making actual change.

We need change now.

Pushing for copyright change is actual change. It's just unlikely to happen while our law makers are representing the interests of corporations instead of the people.

And this will end up only hurting smaller creators. Disney can afford to churn out a ton of content every few years, whereas a novel/movie/art/etc. may be an individual's life's work.

So is the code I wrote 5 years ago and I don't have the right to rent seek the whole world for next 70 years with it.

What does this even mean? If you chose to work for someone, you don't own shit.

It means what I wrote it means - there's no inherent reason why any content creator should be entitled to rent for a text they wrote or image they put together for their whole lifetime. A carpenter selling his work of art doesn't get rent for 70 years. Neither does a painter. Or a software developer based on the code they commited. What makes a writer or a singer (in reality, for MOST content that would be a publisher megacorporation) so special, that they deserve rent until end of life for a piece of text they wrote?

Let me reiterate, VAST, VAST majority of all cultural works aren't owned by authors themselves, but their publishers which don't pass on most of the rent they collect. Huge piece of this is owned by rent-seeking megacorporations collecting rent for things they did not create and which royalty agreements have passed long since.

Make copyright 20 years - most profits from content are made in first 5 years. 15 extra on top to be fair. After that, the artists will just actually have to create something new to earn money - just like everyone else in the world.

In no way are smaller creators "hurt" by shortening copyright. They'd still be able to enjoy their special privileges long enough to make plenty of money, and can continue to make money on their works long after they have entered the public domain.

Someone who only ever published a single work almost certainly was never a professional author / artist / whatever.

Really? That would have been news to Harper Lee.

No it wouldn't.

Sure, but owning a physical disc / movie file is also part of it.

> We need more restrictive legislation around storing then data mining user activity

How would such a law be enforced?

You don't know if your data is being mined and it's way to easy for a company to simply lie to a regulator about it. If they are following good security practices, it would be impossible for a regulator to really know whether or not that's going on.

It's either that or give the government backdoors into info systems so they can verify nobody is mining data... which seems not good.

I'd want some way to coerce companies into making physical media but I'm not sure that can be done. Perhaps as part of the library of congress? It seems like it would probably be reasonable for the government to say "If you won't provide physical media prints of your content, we will".

> I'd want some way to coerce companies into making physical media but I'm not sure that can be done.

Don't worry about physical media. Formats come and go. In order for a company to have any copyright protections at all on a work, a high quality digital version should have to be submitted to the copyright office which should automatically make that copy available at copyright.gov the instant the copyright on the work expires. Any edits or censored versions a company puts out later would then need to be copyrighted and submitted to the copyright office separately making sure that the originals are always preserved and available.

I'm not a defender of piracy. I buy stuff when a DRM-free version is available. But I've been thinking of piracy lately as a form of civil disobedience and actually a net benefit for mankind (sci-hub being a clear example)

If the whole ‘vote with your wallet’ thing is the only recourse for consumers, sounds like this is the system working as intended. I guess historical boycotts didn’t have viable piracy. But beyond that sounds like this is the desired/incentivized behavior.

It makes piracy that much more important.

I've always had mixed emotions about the whole piracy subject, but they have become less mixed and more supportive recently.

Seeing Harmy's "Despecialized" versions of the original Star Wars trilogy was a watershed for me. They're the best way of seeing the originals without Lucas's strange 90's CGI inserted into a 1970's movie, but technically they're piracy. (Oddly the pirate in a sense created a transformative work to more accurately re-create the original experience, but I'm sure Disney would prefer to see him crucified for the effort).

Anyway, I'm going to watch what I want and not worry about the philosophical questions at this point; I will worry about keeping the downloads anonymous though ;)

Personally I think piracy is the future. It's a net good for society and a normal behavior, and it doesn't hurt anyone. Corporations are just greedy.

These giant content monopolies are on their way out anyway, with personal AI tech that can generate movies and content on demand coming within 10 years.

Completely unfettered piracy is arguably not a net-good for society. I would also say the same about the current 95-year copyright term. There's a huge space between those two poles though that can be explored.

People sharing content is natural human behavior, and in 20 years of studying piracy it hasn't been found to hurt content producers.

Agreed. I went all-in on paying for streaming years back and cut back on my pirating. Now that things are getting significantly more user-hostile, I'm finding myself pirating a lot more often. Oh well.

They clearly don't want our money anyway.

One day, piracy won’t be viable. Some new tech and/or legislation will gradually wipe it out (Eg, required software running on everyone’s machines validating every file, invasive stuff like that could happen in 20 years), maybe not today, but one day. We can’t rely on it

Our ISP reads torrents, then a random content owner sends a nastygram if the name matches something from the last 40 years or so (also depending on how popular).

I mostly download ancient stuff which flies under the radar; that's how I figured the enforcement parameters.

The only way piracy won't be viable is if manufacturers succeed in taking control of computers away from consumers.

I don't think we will ever let that happen.

I have been told (but not confirmed) that recent versions of iOS won't let you add non-DRM protected music to your library (and for a monthly fee you can get a service that provides you with DRM protected versions of any non-DRM protected music you have). That seems bonkers to me, so does anyone know what the actual story is there?

Since day one, iOS has never let you just add MP3s to the music library on the phone directly - you've always had to sync it through iTunes on a computer.

This made sense when the behavior was inherited from iPods and two-way sync was difficult, but then they never had any incentive to add the ability once people stopped connecting their phones to computers anymore and they could just force people to buy all their music from them instead.

> I don't think we will ever let that happen.

The number of iPhones is on the rise, the desktop share's declining.

If you're reading Cory Doctorow books and blogposts, that's exactly what "they" are working on and the part of the population that cares about this may be a lot smaller than you think.

I know they are trying, but there will always be people with the knowledge to resist, like the HN crowd.

I can see more devices like iphones being sold and locked down, but I can't see open computers not being sold anymore, not so long as there are companies and people with a will to make them. Look at System76 as an example.

It's happening already. "Trusted Computing" is only the start. Can you even buy a CPU that isn't filled with that shit? Or a motherboard where every last chip is open/fully documented and verifiable?

Try to watch Netflix on System76 computers in 4k. I heard it's impossible.

Hence piracy.

I hope you're doing it anonymously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37016638

Not even slightly worried. In the US they have to notify the ISP first and there is a 'strikes' system.

Most ISPs don't care.

Things have changed drastically (a lot more than I expected) since the mobile revolution.

True, but at the same time, no-one buys DVDs anymore because of streaming: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/08/the-death-of-the-dvd-why-sal...

We can start by moving the things we can to services that respect our privacy. Over time you can pry back some of your autonomy.

I’ll gladly take a situation that’s 10x more restrictive than it is now to only have the ability to consume media that is on one of 10 TV channels.

Yarr.

Funny, because when the Apple Vision Pro was introduced I didn't hear any worries.

There absolutely were complains, you weren't at the right place to listen

That could be. In the end 90% still buys Apple.

HN people generally think of themselves as smart folks but frankly when it comes to voting (with their feet) they behave pretty much like average people.

> HN people generally think of themselves as smart folks but frankly when it comes to voting (with their feet) they behave pretty much like average people

I can’t help but notice that you’re detailing the thread with some counterfactual trolling. Maybe stop congratulating yourself for being so much smarter than everyone else and think about how you could state a coherent thesis and support it with data?

But messaging my ego is so much easier!

And the other (100 - Apple)% buy Google, which is arguable worse on privacy than Apple (Sent from my Pixel 6).

Yes I know there are more libre phones out there, but they are a rounding error in terms of market share.

iPhone market share is 21% [1], so it’s unclear where you’re getting the 90% figure.

[1] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...

To be fair, as I've learnt, the iPhone has more than 50% market share in the USA. Which is relevant given that this is a discussion about HNers, who I assume most of which live there.

That's global market share. Also, I don't think if it's a wild guess to say that HN folks have more disposable income than a random world citizen.

I haven't bought an Apple product in about a decade; I don't even know what the Apple Vision Pro is.

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