You Don't Really Own the Digital Movies You Buy (2021) | Hacker News Reader

You Don't Really Own the Digital Movies You Buy (2021)

nytimes.com

30 pointsindigodaddy61 comments

One of my great frustrations with the industry is that they've reduced us to this. It did not have to be this way. They could have built a system that allowed people to move media around on home servers, keep offline copies, effectively treated the customer like an adult who understands they paid for one copy of the movie and the reality of digital systems means that movie might actually exist at several places at once. Yet here we are.

I spend a lot of money on media. I go to the movies regularly, I "purchase" movies on digital services, I buy physical media when I can. I think it's important to try to support the things you enjoy in the ways they want you to support them. I also do not believe there's a morally conscionable way to engage with media completely within the law. These villains are happy to make it legally impossible to view a series if it gives them a financial boost. It's just another way in which our legal system clearly departs from the lived experience of "what makes sense.

I understand and respect people who have a more anti-copyright take on our media ecosystem. I get where they are coming from and I support them. I also think it's really important to keep in focus what an unreasonable and imbalanced and a-historical arrangement media companies are insisting on. It's perfectly possible to create a legal system of digital ownership that is in line with physical ownership. There are no boundaries - it could even involve drm! But they absolutely refuse to create one.

My wife and I use our travel trailer when the weather is nice. Most times we are in areas where there's no coverage. We don't want to pay for any kind of services that will add cost to our trip. So we use our DVDs and BRs, which I have ripped to hard disk. No commercials and works every time!

Completely agree. I bought the entire “Yellowstone” series on Blu-ray so my wife and I could watch in the truck camper during our West coast road trip.

But I do own all these MKVs I bought 100% legit pinky swear, yarr-harr-harr.

Ah a fellow rum drinking parrot afficionado!

I bought a movie once and the seller stole it back. So I stole another copy. Still got it. Checkmate fuckers.

There is still not been a distribution platform better than bittorrent. Yeah, it's annoying dealing with trackers, but not half as annoying as subscribing to ten different services access everything I want.

Soulseek is good for music!

Buying bluray and dvd movies and CDs on ebay or craigslist (or better yet: finding in little free libraries while walking) and ripping them to disk and then serving locally (via jellyfin and mopidy) and selectively copying onto phone/table SD cards (e.g. before traveling) has gone pretty well for me. It's pretty cheap, has the convenience of digital media, feels like I have full control, and is legal. I often bring HDMI cords with me on vacation to hook up laptop to TV for showing.

Really been loving whipper for CD encoding https://github.com/whipper-team/whipper

Ripping a movie you check out from a library is legal??

Also, you probably mean CD decoding, not encoding.

Little free librarys are boxes of free things (books, movies, etc.) in many neighborhoods. They aren't actual libraries. You're expected to take something and leave something else, generally.

I mean encoding in the sense that it takes PCM data and uses a compression algorithm (flac) to make losslessly encoded/compressed files capturing a perfect copy of what was on the disk. So sure, there's a decoding from CD grooves step and then an encoding to flac step technically.

>ripping them to disk... and is legal

I like your system and am thinking of setting up something similar. But, correct me if I'm wrong, I thought ripping was always illegal. Or is ripping for personal use without intent to distribute ok?

Ripping a personal collection for personal use is legal.

Depending on your current location, the size of the collection, whether you’re the original purchaser of the physical copies, and a million other variables.

But just to clarify: a DVD loaned by a library doesn't fall under a "personal collection", right? It seems like it would be hard to argue Fair Use if you're ripping a loaner.

True for real libraries. But little free libraries I mention are little neighborhood boxes with free stuff in them that you can take for keeps, at which it becomes part of your personal collection.

Companies even using the word "Buy" for situations like this should be illegal.

I rarely agree with "make it illegal" solutions, but in this case, I think you're exactly right. Slapping a "Buy" button on something that is ultimately a rental seems like a deceptive practice. Too bad it's industry standard.

I have great nostalgia for physical media beyond the current reemergence of vinyl records. Compact cassette, minidisc, CD, reel to reel, and digital audio tape are in my hifi system.

I also love blu-ray and DVD. I just bought “Mank” on Blu-ray despite being easily seen on Netflix.

Obviously I’m an outlier. Yet my 26 year-old daughter has become enamored with cassette tapes and CD’s when the used car she bought had a head unit capable of playing both.

So it’s not just me being old and nostalgic. Beyond the familiar arguments about the art and extras that come with physical media - I do have a problem paying monthly for access to music or movies. Or having digital purchases disappear when formats become obsolete. I still pay for these services, but I like the idea that I can stop paying and I lose nothing I love.

I’ll probably buy a copy of Wes Anderson’s Netflix short “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”. It’s utterly delightful and will look spectacular on my 12 foot projection screen - much better than the Netflix compression allows.

I’m familiar with all the streaming and digital purchase arguments. But I’m curious if my daughter and her friends are a precursor to a fatigue with the ephemeral nature of digital purchases.

I do not miss having to store physical media. It took up so much space, and would get damaged.

Or have your car broken into and your entire collection of cassettes stolen.

Thankfully, that was right around the time CDs became popular, so I replaced them all with CD's

And then my car was broken into again and they were stolen too.

It would be very interesting to hear a 26year old's comparison of compression between mp3-4, cassette (i miss my dolby expander), radio, and vinyl vs cd and also streamed audio (film or music). I once endured a shitty mp3 of AC/DC (bon version) and it made me gag. Played a vinyl version to the dude...they had no idea of what dynamic range was.

Someone singing from the bottom of a well while covered in a wet blanket vs anything else.

If you pull out a good-quality pre-late-'90s recording on almost any medium, it will destroy the dynamically-compressed "remastered" version that is streamed today. I wonder if this is, in fact, what his daughter likes. The sonic quality and non-fatiguing nature of well-mastered music is seriously enough to make a person LIKE the music more and play it more.

It's depressing and disgraceful that everyone has incredible fidelity available, but the publishers have rendered it moot by destroying the music itself at the source. Rolling dynamic compression back was a nearly hopeless idea once the "loudness war" took off, but as time goes on it's even worse because young people will never have heard good-sounding music and don't even know how shitty it sounds today... unless they are accidentally exposed to it like this. And even then, they're not going to identify the issue and call for change.

The problem isn't data compression. An MP3 of a 45 RPM record from the '80s will sound better than the Apple Lossless copy of the "remastered" version from 2017.

Luckily us parrot enthusiasts can get stuff in lossless flac. Sometimes even recorded from vinyl.

The straight market is frankly for stockholmized suckers.

You realize that lossless FLAC doesn't address this problem at all, right? A 100% faithful copy of dynamically ruined music is... still ruined music.

A vinyl source might be less compressed, though.

Ya I was thinking that. I assume that the source is something of quality. I mean what's the point otherwise? It isn't like they're selling it.

Indeed. But so many people just don't know what the problem is.

Good riddance to my tiny music collection that would get scratched if I didn't handle them like an archaeologist handling a 2000 year old mummified ball of yarn.

"my daughter and her friends are a precursor to a fatigue with the ephemeral nature of digital purchases"

Maybe, but I strongly suspect that her preference is a great example of LISTENER fatigue caused by the dynamic compression that has destroyed all post-'90s releases.

I wish Apple and Spotify would somehow put the boot down and reject ruined masters, the way Netflix dictates technical quality for new material. That's really the only hope of fighting the "loudness war" that has ruined music for your daughter's entire life now.

Your daughter, and a vast numbers of her peers who are so into '80s music, should be a wakeup call on this issue. But unfortunately there are very few people who even understand what it is... even artists who decry the shitty quality of today's recordings often blame data compression and want to increase sampling rates or bit depth. NO. The problem is dynamic compression. Period.

The strangest part is, the compression has absolutely zero benefit. From the listening experience, to the production process, to the business aspects of making music, it has no redeeming qualities.

Exactly. I'd say it's the saddest part. The one time I remember reading that some record exec was challenged on it, and the excuse was "nobody wants to have the quietest CD in the changer."

WHAT? As if anyone on the planet would go over to the changer, eject this allegedly offending CD, look at the label, and then declare, "Welp, I'm never buying another album put out on Arista records!"

The utter stupidity of it is mind-boggling.

And add to that the fact that, if people wanted compression so much, it could be done by THE PLAYER. In fact, this used to be done. My 1996 Mustang's CD player has a "Compress" button on it, to make listening to highly dynamic music more feasible in a noisy car environment.

> My 1996 Mustang's CD player has a "Compress" button on it, to make listening to highly dynamic music more feasible in a noisy car environment.

I believe _this_ is where the issue mostly originated (well, radio, really). Radio is already massively compressed, and many people were either listening to things in the car, on some tiny little radio in the kitchen, or with awful cheap headphones with their walkman's built-in radio.

All of these weren't great environments to start with, and the dynamic range of radio was tiny given the overall bandwidth available to most FM stations.

So, companies compress, people get used to it, and thus the horror continues.

For sure, radio stations always compressed in order to sound "stronger" on the dial. Just another reason that compressing the actual recording was unnecessary.

Right, and because radio stations do that I'd wondered whether marketing choose to "make it sound like radio" so people don't complain when they buy the disc

Not out of the question. When I was a little kid I'd buy 45s and notice this difference. I asked for an equalizer for Christmas, thinking this was the issue.

But of course it wasn't, and before long I realized that I liked the sound of the records better.

People have such short memories. Amazon once even remotely deleted Orwell's 1984 - of all books - straight from users' devices.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

Many physical copies come with a digital copy included. It makes little sense to just buy a digital copy imho. Not only that, the digital copy is often with movies anywhere and you can watch on any video streaming service (amazon, vudu, etc...)

Indeed, even some new vinyl records come with download codes which is neat

>>It makes little sense to just buy a digital copy imho.

Maybe to you. Some people don't own digital media players anymore. There are many titles that have to be rented or bought digitally and are not available on streaming services.

Case and point: https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/national-lampoons-christm...

Maybe you and I live in alternate universes, idk.

I do however really own the movies I pirate as long as i don't run out of disc space

I still buy DVDs but mostly old stuff. Turns out a lot of releases are flat out not available anywhere else. Especially things like documentaries, foreign language, and sports (season higlights, competition recaps etc)

Movies? Absolutely the thing I care the least about owning.

Little things take up so much space for something that I at most want to watch again every three years.

If I look at my (now old) DVD collection, I realise I've not watched them for... 10 years at least. There's only one movie that I get the urge to watch at least once a year, if not more, and for some unknown reason, it's Shrek. And I don't even own the DVD. I guess that one I should buy.

I buy DVDs from ebay from a couple of bucks.

Mainly because when I want to watch a specific movie it's not on the one streaming service that I pay for.

Wait until they discover the current state of video game consoles. How can I ever own a streaming game?

Admittedly, Weird Uncle Nintendo is still pretty good about selling game cartridges and not mandating always-online play. But they're once again the industry outlier.

I don't buy physical media for two reasons:

- kids destroy them

- I watch things once

Maybe there's a market for an exchange/swap service that also offers resurfacing? Shipping would have to be dirt cheap and hassle free.

It's okay to tell your kids not to touch fragile things. I promise, you won't scar them for life.

But it sounds like owning physical media isn't practical for you anyway if you just watch something once. That alone is sufficient reason, you don't need to blame the kids.

I also realized that giving media as gifts is dead as well. Hardly anyone that I know uses CD/DVD/Blu-Ray players any more.

This is very true. Everyone always asks me to get them Netflix vouchers and stuff like that now. I'll give them the cash and they can make their own poor decisions.

I certainly watch DVDs still but I even run into people my age who think that's almost a bit weird. And I have CDs but rarely play them.

Why not use MakeMKV to remux it for them, from the fragile and DRM-infested Blu-ray into a sane .mkv on a USB drive that they can plug into the back of their TV: https://nitter.net/turtlekiosk/status/1709057325170905363

Just what I've always wanted, a USB drive of a pirated movie!

I agree with your premise but it feels like something is lost here.

No you give them the Blu-ray and the USB drive

Gifting only the USB drive makes more sense for a nice movie collection like in the linked Twitter thread

We do rarely. Two reasons: One, because we watch Harry Potter enough and it wasn't worth buying the set on demand, and Two, I usually cannot keep track of which service we bought a particular movie on.

I also have a Roku and a large USB thumb drive, so if I have time, I rip a movie onto the thumbdrive, thus, creating our own little on-demand service.

You technically don't really own the movies you buy on disc either, which makes this headline a bit... weird.

You own the media (the physical DVD or BluRay disc), not the movie.

More or less the same thing applies to books and video games too.

* With some exceptions ofcourse, e.g. when the content is in the public domain or has a copyleft license.

Wow the HN algorithm buried this one. In the 200’s currently..

You're just figuring that out now????

>You can watch the item as often as you want, but the terms specify that you can’t “sell, rent, lease, distribute, publicly perform or display, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any right to the Content to any third party.”

Terms can specify what they want, but enforcement is another thing. I am pretty sure, you can resell movie DVDs in any country.

This is talking about digitally purchased content. You would have to first remove the DRM to sell them to someone (unless you buy one movie per account)

Doesn’t matter. In a few years I’ll use AI to generate any movie I want. Shit like this makes me look forward to that time. Oh, and seeing all those Los Angeles mansions they live in.

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