Another point to pirating for those who are still keeping track.
Especially with the recent fragmentation of the streaming market, it is time for consumers to return to giving content producers the middle finger until they sort their shit out.
I started pirating once I got a seedbox and it's been great. I can get pretty much whatever media (movies, games, music, etc) I want, in any version I want, and enjoy it whenever/wherever I want. No censorship to keep things PC, no dependence on internet or streaming provider availability, just total freedom. The only tradeoff is falling down the data hoarding rabbit hole: I've accumulated about 12TB of stuff in just a couple of years so I have to figure out how to upgrade from my external HDD setup (or if I should just keep buying external HDDs).
With just a few Apple Shortcuts and communication with an API and my seedbox is dead simple to use. My wife can browse a torrent site, hit a shortcut which grabs the magnet link (which is normally incompatible with iOS and is super annoying) does a POST to my seedbox BitTorrent api (included in the BitTorrent client!) and have basically anything ready to watch five minutes later on PLEX.
I don't suppose you could share which site(s) you're using these days?
I recently tried torrenting for the first time in a while, and it seems like many of the sites I used to use (e.g PB, KAT) are either dead or mining crypto.
For a lot of reasons, a lot of programming is not longer available on disks. AppleTV/Netflicks and such don't release blu-ray/dvds or a lot of programming, so if you want permanent access..
There doesn't appear to be a way to purchase a lot of content with a guarantee that you can access anytime you like.
> There doesn't appear to be a way to purchase a lot of content with a guarantee that you can access anytime you like.
This is outside the scope of the "studio canal" movies. But you're correct. And if I'm being frank (and probably being a bit of an ass too), there's no inherent right to view this content.
Personally, I view this the same way I do AAA games. There's so many good games out there without all the BS of modern (read: greedy) AAA games that I don't feel the least bit of need to play them. I pay for good games, and I get to play good games.
Don't let FOMO around shows and movies that companies don't want to make available in a reasonable manner control your watching habits. Pick other (often better, even if not as shiny) entertainment, and support those creators.
> If content creator want people to buy their content, then they should sell it.
They are selling it. Just because they're not selling in precisely the way you want them to, that does not mean that you're entitled to the content anyway.
You justify your piracy all you want, but let's not pretend that you'd fork over the cash to legitimize your entire library of pirated entertainment if it showed up tomorrow on some store that offered exclusively freedom-respecting DRM-free downloads (okay, maybe you would, but most people wouldn't).
> > If content creator want people to buy their content, then they should sell it.
> They are selling it.
The word "sell" means something different. They are not selling it if all they are doing is renting it.
Which is their right if that's what they want, but there needs to be some legislation to prevent them from calling it a sale when it's really merely a short-term rental.
Ignoring the piracy aspect, I don't really understand this mindset. Why must you own a piece of media in perpetuity? Do you value things like going to a live concert where you only get the experience? IMO most Hollywood content made today is really not worth watching a second time.
That is part of the problem. I want to permanently buy records of older quality movies. Instead of offering me that, they want to sell me jurassic rehash 7.
Respectfully, that's a fantastic set of "rules" which will justify unconditional piracy, since no studios of any size will offer anything but a license to watch their content. That's how the market has been built.
I disagree. People said the same about music, and now you can buy DRM free mp3 and flac downloads because of previous pirating pressure. Most piracy is a symptom of bad services.
Just because you're buying an unencumbered MP3 or flac file doesn't mean you're free to do whatever you want with it. You're still licensed for just you and you can't make copies to send to all your friends (how enforceable that is is something that's above my head).
I'd say that most modern media piracy is still a matter of cost and convenience. If you're the kind of person that watches a couple of movies a week, at $20 a pop the cost adds up fast. Plus you have to go to the store or order online and wait for a DVD to show up. With piracy you can watch right away. It's one of the reasons Netflix was such a game-changer.
Somehow along the way a lot of people got it into their heads that all entertainment (and also news and educational materials. Basically, anything that doesn't have a physical form) should be free (free as in beer and free as in freedom) and they'll go through some impressive mental contortions to rationalize their piracy any way they can.
"An unjust law is no law at all...has become a standard legal maxim around the world."[1]
"Thomas Aquinas [argued] ... a law only need to be obeyed if it is [among other things] ... for the common good."[1]
The question we have to ask is: Is current copyright law unjust?
Well, it allows telling people that they are buying something (in large print, even if the fine print says something else) then taking that thing away.
And copyright on digital goods allows unprecedented control over how tools are used, when and where content can be shown, and how things that we've paid for can be retained and resold.
And it is also clear that recent copyright laws were written for the benefit of a few corporations, not for the common good.
So I'm beginning to believe that current copyright law is unjust and should be disobeyed as a principled form of civil disobedience, not merely for convenience or to save money.
> Respectfully, that's a fantastic set of "rules" which will justify unconditional piracy, since no studios of any size will offer anything but a license to watch their content. That's how the market has been built.
That's clearly not true, since starting from the 70s up until fairly recently one could always buy the movies to keep for life.
> Even DVDs will fail this test.
You'll have to explain that thinking, since they don't. I buy a DVD (which is the only way I buy movies) and it's mine to keep forever. If I get tired of it, I can resell it to someone else.
Maybe in theory. In practice, I disagree. Care to elaborate if you mean anything other than what's technically said on the box? Even the most recent DVD releases work on the oldest of DVD players without any firmware updates/online drm that could revoke a license or something.
this is true. I do like to support content creators.
The thing about TV and movies for me is that I hardly every re-watched things so streaming felt ok (I still do this). Though the pandemic though I did bust out some of my very modest DVD collection and rewatched and dug a little deeper, which I enjoyed.
Some of the DVD "extras" where pretty fun and haven't migrated to streaming/youtube. (for example some of the music in "The Life Aquatic" was music from "The Royal tannenbaums reversed and adjusted. Written by a guy from Devo).
This is the my take as well, that often gets me in trouble. I just don't get the entitlement. Someone makes a movie, and gives you one option to view it. Permanently, once, for 2 years, whatever it is. Now you have the choice to watch it or not. Instead, people go into the negotiations with the starting assumption that they will consume the content, and it's up to the producer of the content to get them to pay for it. I don't get it.
I think the underlying problem is that people assume that buying the movie means they own it like they own a DVD of a movie. Technically, a DVD also just grants you a license and doesn't "sell" you the actual movie, but you're holding the thing in your hand, and unless you physically break the DVD, you're guaranteed to be able to watch it forever, heck, you can pass it down to your grand-grand-children.
I think it's only natural that people make the same assumption when it comes to buying a movie on a service like the PlayStation store. "Buying" ultimately means "owning that thing" to people. You can put all the legalese you want in the fine print, but it's flat out fucking bullshit to be frank. You shouldn't need to be a lawyer to understand what clicking the button labeled "buy now" really does.
Buying/storing disks requires a lot of space and hardware many people do not own anymore though, plus if you want to rip them to a personal media server you still need to break the DRM which depending on the country can be illegal
Given that we're talking about movies on the PS store, even the PS5 has an edition with a blu-ray / DVD player. If you care about being able to play media over time (including games), you'll want that disk version in the first place.
Piracy still not required. More convenient, yes. But not required.
> if you want to rip them to a personal media server you still need to break the DRM
In the case of DVDs, you can just back them up by imaging the DVD with all parts intact—no deCSS necessary. This is partially what made DMCA anticircumvention legislation so braindead. The people hardest hit were those whose behavior was otherwise ethical and legal. The folks selling burned/counterfeit copies at the flea market or in the street, on the other hand, were undeterred, because (a) DMCA didn't make anything impossible—it just made a new class of things illegal—but the thing the bootleggers were doing (copyright infringement) was _already_ illegal! and (b) system used on DVDs restricts playback; it's not a copy protection system—because (again) if you want to copy a DVD, you can: you just make sure to copy the "DRM" parts, too.
No - another point to those who purchase physical media. Pirates are partially responsible for why we have DRM in the first place.
Physical media (especially 4K Blu Ray Discs with their ~80-90GB movie sizes) are higher quality than pirate streams, have resale value, are fully legal, and you can share them easily with friends without them raising an eyebrow.
> Pirates are partially responsible for why we have DRM in the first place.
I'm not sure that's true. DRM has never prevented piracy. It's to the point that I'm not even sure they were trying to.
> Physical media (especially 4K Blu Ray Discs with their ~80-90GB movie sizes) are higher quality
Maybe, but when they even have higher fidelity they seem to always be worse in other ways. No subtitles. Subtitles that you CANNOT turn off. Subtitles only in your local country language (so no watching with visiting friends and family), even though in other countries the same movie is being sold with the "right" subtitles. Not the "good edition".
Unless you have a big 4K TV you cannot even buy the quality experience that piracy provides, at any price.
They also still include DRM, require dedicated hardware to read, usually come out months after a series is streaming on streaming services. And Blu Ray rips can be found on torrent sites.
DRM that has been broken for, like, a decade now with software easily available for the task. As for torrenting, no reason you can't torrent first and buy later if that's what you want to do. Or heck, torrent while owning the original disc if you feel morally OK with that. They are plenty a real alternative for most people.
Nobody ever said you had the right to just conveniently watch any movie you like, however you like, and never pay a dime if there is a reasonable way to pay but less convenient.
Sony threatened to ban my account and I'd lose all the games and other content I paid for, if I did a charge-back on them when they had a security breach and I kept getting fraudulent charges on my card that they wouldn't refund.
Sony did ban my account after I did a chargeback because they let me double charge myself for a month of Playstation Plus. I asked for a refund because it was clearly a duplicate charge and they refused because it had been more than three weeks (could have been two weeks, the timeline is fuzzy).
Imagine the non-digital version of this: after you win a dispute with a company, they send goons to break into your house and smash everything you ever bought from them.
The main difference is that in case of a physical purchase, your continued access doesn't depend on any entities other than yourself. In case of a digital purchase, it does. The upside of physical media is that not only the seller forfeits all and any control of it at the moment of sale, but that you can also resell it once you no longer want it.
This would upset me. Admittedly, I do not attach credit card info to platforms and try to use gift cards when possible, but instances like these make hesitate purchasing anything digital.
My Playstation has been in a box since then, I will never again use another Playstation product and to this day try to minimize all business that I do with Sony.
I wish there was a way to crowdfund lawsuits in situations like this, with the stipulation that the legal strategy is optimized for setting legal precedent. E.g., settling out of court is not an acceptable solution.
There should be legislation around this, same for music and games. If you "buy" it, you should be able to download it in a DRM-free, non-proprietary format.
I'd settle for "if they take it away from you, they have to refund it". But the problem with either regulation is the response will be just to stop selling things. Instead they will grant you a 99 year lease or some other such fiction.
Agreed. Part of the problem is digital goods pretty much never have a right of resale. That's bullshit, particularly for e-Books where the electronic copy often costs more than the resellable paper copy.
That and consolidate accounts. I "bought" movies with two different google accounts and there is no way to transfer from one to the other. You also cannot be logged in i to two differwnt accih t at the same time with an Android TV.
All this bad faith is doing is pushing people to pirate more, not less.
Happened to me with Bandcamp. Support was kind and helpful. After I gave them proof of my purchases, they just merged the collections to my current one. Excellent experience. I wish it was always like this.
You can try https://families.google.com/families which will share your purchases across accounts, however, it does not work for connecting a regular Gmail and Google Workspace account together.
As far as I know, only the family manager can share purchased content. If you have different content from two different accounts and join them in a group, only one of those accounts can share their content. Also, groups are limited to six members total only (managers + 5).
In the physical world, if I "buy" something, I can lend it, give it, or even sell it to somebody else.
Alos, the fact that the content is linked to an account rather than a biological person raises other issues about digital identity.
90% likely, the small print specifies that what was bought was the right to access that file provided that a couple of conditions remain met, and one of the conditions is "until 1. august 2022" or something like that.
You may assume that other streaming companies will do similar things. They're all squeezed between customers who want to pay low prices for the service and rights holders who want high prices for their concent. The rights holders offer a lower price for time-limited access than for permanent access, and the streaming companies take that offer. Film at 11.
> 90% likely, the small print specifies that what was bought was the right to access that file provided that a couple of conditions remain met, and one of the conditions is "until 1. august 2022" or something like that.
Note that this happened in Germany, where judges generally treat fineprint as "Whatever."* - the way something is communicated and customer's reasonable expectations matter a lot.
* Where fineprint contradicts more prominent text.
Moreover, in a world where advertising "purchase this cheese* (contains no actual milk)" is illegal, why would advertising "purchase* this movie (actually a time-limited rental)" be legal? How could that not be deception of the customer?
Note that this happened in Germany, where judges generally treat copyright owners as gods with greater rights than others, even when the copyright owners hurt themselves.
See, that's not how I remember the 90's. I remember getting offered floppy disks with every bit of software out there. Their overly restrictive copy protection often consisted of "what's the 5th word on the 10th page of the manual" or similar.
The prices were not really outlandish, though they were representative of catering to a new and niche market. It's just that the barrier to copying was so low and distribution was so easy and risk free.
Basically, it was the equivalent of a physical store with no employees, locks, or security systems. Thus everyone went in and got what they wanted without putting money in the "honor box".
I was thinking more about movies and music. I would agree with you on software, more or less, but I think adding DRM was inevitable once the capitalists got control away from the engineers and inventors.
This has happened again and again on lots of platforms. I’ve had this happen when microsoft shut down their ebook store, and when an album disappeared from my itunes account and apple support shrugged at me.
Generally the way I view it: if drm is involved, purchase does not mean purchase, it means rent for an unknown time period. I judge prices for digital content accordingly. If drm is not involved you are always on the hook for your own backups.
My theory is that companies that jumped into the cloud content space didn't really think out long term what it means. It means hosting the purchased content forever, or providing a digital download for it if you no longer wish to host it.
Yes they are testing the boundaries, and I think they will be surprised to see the amount of pushback, bad PR, and probably legal action that they get when people can no longer access the content that they purchased.
Sure, there probably is. But if you bought a smartlock and the EULA had fine print buried in it saying "Usage of this lock grants consent for us to enter your home and steal your DVDs" that wouldn't fly.
Obviously that's a silly example, but my point is just because something is in a EULA doesn't make it legal, and even if it legal, maybe it shouldn't be.
Right. Similarly I don't think courts like enforcing contracts that effectively say, "we can arbitrarily renege on our end and still keep your money". (Not a lawyer, not legal advice, hope someone with more knowledge chimes in.)
I am fairly confident that when you signed up, you agreed to a terms of service that said something to the extent of, "You don't own these things you buy, we do, and we reserve the right to take them away without notice and without reason."
I agree with your sentiment, but you can buy or purchase a license, unfortunately.
I skip these licensing games and pirate video content. I pay for music and video games (not Ubisoft) because those industries have made it just as easy as piracy as well as reasonably affordable.
Sure you can, but if you asked the average person on the street what they thought they were buying when they clicked that button, the response you’d get is “the movie”, not “a license to watch the movie”.
And what kind of meaningful difference would it make when all the buttons in all the stores (including ones selling physical media) would say "License Now"?
The companies think it makes enough of a difference to be worth lying. So I think it's worth forcing them to stop lying. You're probably right that it wouldn't have a catastrophic effect, but it might be enough that they do reconsider things.
The bar for companies to lie is ridiculously low. Especially the bar for SONY to lie.
If they're not legally obligated to tell the truth about something, they'll bullshit around it even if the difference is a fraction of a percent positive.
Then surely it wouldn’t be a problem for them to change the wording, yes? And they wouldn’t object to legislation requiring this more accurate labeling?
There is a difference between a physical medium and digital one. You can read it all the time, you can resell it, you can tear it apart if you like, and the store cannot ever trespass on your property to take it back because they went out of business or they want to charge you recurrently or something.
I imagine the people downvoting you are saying "well, I didn't even read the license agreement!" or "I wish the license agreement didn't say that!", but of course neither of those are relevant. If people don't understand how licenses on digital goods work by now, or are under the delusion that those licenses can't or won't be enforced, they're doomed to be surprised by stuff like this over and over.
I don’t know why they’d do something like this. Do they think that putting a damper on the entire digital purchases market, and the playstation store in specific, will somehow make them come out on top?
Is this just a middle manager somewhere trying to make a quick buck by scrapping a loss making product?
Aren't the other digital services like the Apple movies store and Amazon the same way? That's what has kept me from buying digital content specifically movies, since it's just like renting but costs more.
Yes. All the digital platforms rely on licenses with the actual rights holders. A producer used to license movies across multiple platforms for largest reach but as the market continues to splinter and fracture and large studios keep being bought out by content houses (Netflix, Prime, Disney, etc) the incentive to have a wide distribution channel is being replaced with an incentive to hoard licensed content to pull higher subscriber numbers.
If the rights holder pulls the license and you own the movie on that platform, you no longer own the movie. Digital purchases need to be able to follow a user from service to service but I'll be long gone before that happens.
They are indeed like that, although it is relatively rare for digital content to be completely delisted in a way where you can't even re-download existing purchases.
I know Apple in particular traditionally had/has a method to back up your movie purchases physically to your hard disk, but that is probably a little blurrier in the world of tvOS and iOS.
For iTunes music, Apple has always stated that music storage and backup is the customer's responsibility, that re-downloads are essentially provided as a courtesy.
> I know Apple in particular traditionally had/has a method to back up your movie purchases physically to your hard disk, but that is probably a little blurrier in the world of tvOS and iOS.
AFAIK movie "purchases" are still by-and-large only available with DRM, so ultimately I still have to rely on Apple for continuing access to such movies, though, locally backed-up or not.
> For iTunes music, Apple has always stated that music storage and backup is the customer's responsibility, that re-downloads are essentially provided as a courtesy.
On the other hand music is mostly DRM-free these days (is there actually any notable music store left that sells DRM'd files?), especially including iTunes/Apple, so while as you say re-downloads might be provided as a courtesy, I have absolutely no need to rely on Apple for ongoing access to my purchased music collection.
Yeah, I think the idea was that as long as Apple's DRM services are still up, your backed up movies will still function even if they are taken off the store. But I am not 100% sure about whether that is/was true.
As you mentioned, iTunes music hasn't had and DRM in many years.
Still, TV streamers don't really have significant storage space, so that's kind of a problem for the average person.
Since Apple renamed iTunes and turned it into a Music-only app, my movie library seems to have moved to the Apple TV app's "Library" section.
I chose a movie and clicked the cloud download icon. The movie downloaded, and now it just has a checkbox in the interface. I don't seem to have any other control from within the TV app (it doesn't even let me delete it off my system from that interface, and I don't have a lot of confidence that this app is guaranteeing that the app will remain locally downloaded without intervention).
Once I clicked the download icon, I notice that the file is located in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Movies/[Movie Name]/[Movie File Name].m4v
Presumably, I could back up that file manually on my own and it would work even if taken off the iTunes Store (Hopefully?), but that it might not work if Apple went out of business.
You'd probably also have to back up wherever those apps store the decryption keys for that content and then hope that you never trigger the case where those apps decide that those keys aren't valid on your computer any more and you require a re-authorisation from Apple's servers.
I never buy anything online for this very reason unless I have some gift card or something to spend. the only exceptions are some video games which only available online for purchase, and I make no delusions that they cannot be taken away. I download and install the games I really want to keep around, and buy the physical copies when I can (make sure it actually is a physical and not some download code in a box)
retro gaming has none of these flaws. you get a physical copy, no dlc to download or patches to install, and I don't need to update my machine to play anything, passable bugs usually or just fun glitches, and you get a collectable that can be displayed on a shelf. win win win win.
Digital gaming is like a junkies idea of a good time. consumption driven, interchangeable, constantly changing and needing the next fix....no respect for the gamers they milk, especially since their profit margins are so high with digital consummables and loot
Hasn't Valve publicly stated that if they go out of business or something they will make all their games accessible? [1] Obviously a forum post isn't exactly top-tier evidence but if it's true that's at least a tiny bit reassuring.
All that said, I usually buy my games off GOG when they're available there, simply because I like the guarantee that the games will continue to work even if they decide that I'm not cool enough to serve.
> Hasn't Valve publicly stated that if they go out of business or something they will make all their games accessible?
Valve is currently facing a situation where a game on Steam that includes third-party DRM will completely stop working in September of this year. There's no way they'll be able to follow through on this commitment outside of their own titles.
They refer to Steam DRM, which a lot of games use, not just their own. Of course that doesn't solve the issue for games that use some other DRM or that for some reason require some servers to run.
I made a decision years ago that I would stop buying things on steam and only buy them in GOG. It was hard sometimes - gog only got older games and definitely not the best of the newest titles.
I found that I would simply hold off on buying each new title for "a year or two" and if I wanted it still and it wasn't on gog I would buy from steam. I found that after "a year or two" I had no interest in it. I'm not sure why that is - likely psychological - but it kept me on gog.
So, I agree - gog is great. I appreciate them. But its hard for most to make that shift.
For those who don't know about MoviesAnywhere, basically if you own a movie on iTunes or Google Play (or whatever Google has renamed it to since last I ever looked) or vice versa or on both for that matters, it unlocks the movie on all other platforms. So anytime I buy movies at Walmart if they have a code I'll unlock it directly and double check that MoviesAnywhere is working as intended. This should guarantee I would assume that if one service stops selling movies, I can still watch them on the other remaining services. If not, at least I bought the physical movie which remains unused in the meantime.
I'd never heard of this, and sadly its US only, but I'm really curious now. Does this make videos accessible on all platforms, or is it yet another video player I need installed everywhere that than lets me play back video I bought elsewhere?
It also looks to be funded by a selection of major studios, does that mean it only supports releases from those studios?
> Does this make videos accessible on all platforms, or is it yet another video player I need installed everywhere that than lets me play back video I bought elsewhere?
In my experience, both. I use the app on devices that don't use my shared iTunes account (vacation home for example), but other than that, everything I've looked for shows up in my iTunes library.
Not in Germany. The landlord only has access in emergencies or in your presence, and the preventing renter from accessing whatever they rented isn't legal under any sane circumstances.
Of course you can terminate the contract, but for rented flats or houses that includes 3 to 9 months of notification period (depending on how long the contract is already running).
Germany and Austria are not exactly "at-will" countries: existing legislation is about balancing the interests of both parties, and when in doubt favors the regular person.
yeah you have some better arrangements that were gained to be clear in part through union organizing, not just because landlord and govt decided to be nice. we're "at the mercy of the lord" only as far as we let ourselves be collectively
Most landlords, that aren't part of a huge company, actually take care of the property and such. As in they provide a service on top of just allowing you access. With digital licensing, not even that exists.
I think that's the part of these things that bothers me (almost) the most. I want to say that Stallman is an "extremist", because I generally don't like what he has to say, but it does seem like a lot of his fears are coming to fruition.
Stallman has "prominent outspoken contrarian" syndrome: he's made the unfortunate conjecture that, because his contrarian ideas have been validated in one field (where he is a relative expert), his contrarian ideas and behavior in unrelated areas (in which he is not an expert) must also be valid. It turns out, not only are his other ideas based in fantasy, they are actively antisocial and damaging to the people and institutions around him (some of which he has played an outsized role in building). See also: Freeman Dyson, Ben Carson.
I paid $100 extra for a PS5 with a disc reader, and buy physical copies of all my games, for exactly this reason. Not only does it work out to be cheaper in the long term (because you can resell the games), I can also use it completely offline and get to actually OWN the content I paid for.
Sadly it's seeming more and more like this is the last console generation that will have this support.
The value of physical copies will also likely increase as are the case for old PSX games. Dragonball GT and Megaman Legends come to mind and other titles have really become ridiculously expensive.
Same thing with arcade cabinets, manual ICE sports cars ($20,000 1991 Honda Beat anyone?)
I'm not a resident of Austria or Germany but might the affected customers have some options through small claims? IME those tribunals tend to side overwhelmingly with disaffected consumers and an argument centered on ToS might not carry as much weight.
It's still inconceivable to me that we've allowed companies to put drm on video files and ebooks so they can snatch anything you bought legally from your hands
This is why I install cfw on all my playstation whenever I get the chance. I got mad that the PSX games they sold dont even work properly because they are running it emulator mode.
I just downloaded a massive dump of every playstation 1, 2, and 3 and play it on sd card on the original hardware.
Only if a game is interesting/or i like I end up purchasing.
What tons of FOSS people always say and they're not wrong. You don't own anything that is really a licensed "work". You have to make a copy of it, often in violation of the license, if you really want to own it for your own viewing/use/systems.
I am sure you, personally, are a good person. At least I want to believe it. Its more a me-failing than a you-failing. I've been told by people I consider wise, that to believe in the goodness of others brings grace into your life.
That said, I believe that many in the world who say things like 'crypto solves this' have ill intentions and are looking to introduce more bag holders to the world. I think it would help if you explained why you believe this. It would certainly have helped me.
Where does "bag holding" come into this conversation? Crypto doesn't have to be tied to a token or any exchange of monetary value. Its just a piece of tech. None of it really requires a token if you don't want it to. IPFS storage, for example, doesn't require any tokens or create any bag holders.
I encourage you to look beyond what you've read about crypto.
No: because once you have the keys to decrypt the movie once, you can decrypt it forever. I can just buy the NFT, store a decrypted copy of the movie, then pass it on to someone else for 90% of resale value.
I think you're imagining some kind of high quality digital ownership contract system built on top of blockchains.
But the part that actually solves the problem is the digital ownership contract, and there is basically no benefit in this situation from using blockchains.
Yes. I made a post long ago on reddit explaining this in detail but can't really be bothered to find it.
But basically you can solve this with crypto in fashion that
A) Allows you to actually own the game/movie
B) Allows you to redownload it from third parties in case the first party disappears, including incentives for third parties to actually want to serve you the data
C) Allows you to have a reasonable second hand market (such as with physical goods) that both allows you to resell your stuff, and doesn't completely cannibalize the IP owner because people buy the movie second hand for cents and immediately cell it for the same price after watching it. This is done with fees and/or timelocks and/or max transfers.
You can't solve this with crypto alone without some (external, legal, non-crypto) way to force Sony (and others) to permit these conditions.
The existence of some platform (crypto or otherwise) where (a) (b) and (c) are supported is not a solution, since obvious financial incentives and all the historical experience clearly show that Sony (and others) will distribute their content there if and only if that platform can prohibit these things, especially (c).
The key problem is a misalignment of incentives where content producers have a strong desire to distribute things only in a user-hostile way and the market power to do so - it's a market problem, not a tech problem, it is not possible to solve this problem by providing some new user-friendly platform or technology.
> You can't solve this with crypto alone without some (external, legal, non-crypto) way to force Sony (and others) to permit these conditions.
My original reddit post explaining all this (it was only focused on games, but something similar could be done to movies) did include the fact that the game developer would indeed have external agreements with distributors/publishers/etc (think steam, gamestop, microsoft store, walmart, amazon, etc) to make all this work.
Not really, I think? The video would still have to be hosted somewhere by somebody. How would a crypto token be any more valid than the license they grant you now if the video goes away?
How would it do so? You wouldn't store gigabytes on the blockchain, so what you would store would just be a marker that you had a license to watch something. But as the owner of the copyrights isn't the person making it available, and the third-party who do make it available have lost the right to do so, I'm not sure what crypto would add here.
