Submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/22/opinion_column/
Do you actually own anything digital?::From ebooks, to videos and software, the answer is increasingly no
If it’s on my Jellyfin server, I own it as much it’s possible to own anything.
If they wanted me to pay for it, maybe they shouldn’t have dicked me around, watering down my subscribed services while simultaneously jacking up the price.
you don’t have to pay for it, but you’re also not entitled to it no matter how much they dick around with their service.
do you really feel like they’ve wronged you in some way and pirating gets you even?
Yes.
Wronged me? Yep. Absolutely.
What do you mean by “entitled” here? Could you explain that word in that context to me?
Mate lets start a new 123.movies from your servers we will be millionares
Yes, because I go out of my way to make damn sure of it.
How ? Please share so that people like me can learn. I’ve started watching Louis Rossman YouTube videos and that guy actually makes sense about how companies are treating their customers.
Not the OP, but I’m buying DRM free ebooks and software only, and for every album, movie or series I purchase, I’ll download a pirated copy that I add to my offline storage + backup.
If a book I want is not available without DRM, I’ll buy a hardcover and a pirated copy.
Pirate stuff. That’s the easiest way to make sure you own it
Hello, owner of lemmy.world!
i do if i pirated it and say i do
Based af
ARRR!!!
Can it be taken from you, at any time, for any reason or no reason at all?
If yes, then you don’t own it.
I mean, that technically applies to everything. The government can seize your land, the police are in the news every few days for straight up taking money out of people’s homes and vehicles and shooting dogs, robbery is still a living profession, etc
There’s really not a lot that sentence doesn’t apply to, if anything at all.
Can the US government cease my land?
I think you continued to make his point in a dark way.
When it comes to the US government at least, there are 4th Amendment protections in place, so no, your property can’t be seized “for any reason or no reason at all”.
Theft is a thing, but it’s random and you have the right to defend yourself in your own home. You also aren’t at risk for losing EVERYTHING. Not in the way you are if your digital library license gets revoked.
If I can actually download it and it’s DRM-free, yes.
The only certain way to own digital products is apparently to pirate it illegally.
Gog provides DRM free installers when buying games at their store
Nah, you can buy it legally and break the drm illegally. That is what someone I know very well does with my ebooks.
Fyi, steam doesn’t add additional DRM to games. So long as the maker hasn’t added anything significant, you can often just copy the game folder out, and run it independently. There’s nothing (in theory) to stop you backing it up yourself.
I think I own my fingers, so them.
Those who down voted you are either idiots, or hate clever wordplay
or they just hate OP for still having their fingers
Or they saw that I made the same joke five hours before this one? :p
GOG, buy music in mp3/flac format, not sure about video. I guess you can pay for subscription and just pirate stuff you like to keep real ownership.
I like that on GOG you know you own it because they let you download the installer DRM free so you literally can keep a separate copy of all of your purchases. You will always have access to them regardless of what happens to GOG. Videos, music, games, everything they sell.
Yep, I always check GOG first when I want to buy a game on PC.
If your on Lemmy, you almost certainly understand the problem and know how to acturally own digital stuff.
The problem is all the normies who can’t even see the problem. We need everyone to be protected by law and it all to be citizen oriented. As the moment, it’s all stack in favour of exploitive multinational companies. Maybe ever was it so, but it we need to fight that.
We treat it as a tech problem, something to work round, but it’s a political problem and we need to solve it politically.
This.
Also, we all here are aware of the problem, to the point where such posts are nothing but circlejerk.
The article might come as eye-opener to some, but certainly not here. Time for solutions. And they are political.
Drives me mad the main stream seam unaware/ignoring that it’s about anything free piracy. You hear next to nothing about the problem of DRM, digital ownership, digital freedom or even proper competition in proper markets. There is sometimes mentions of Right To Repair, but they never follow the thread. Or talk about how the internet runs on FOSS. A FOSS system like Debian is a wonder, that still, after 15y of use, floors me when I think about it. A utopian vision of humans can do.
Seriously, sometimes I wish we could get all the shitty execs and politicians alone in a room with all of us and just insult them for their shitty behavior, like the Chevy Chase comedy central roast.
I mean who wouldn’t want to see the expression on the head of Nestle’s face when he’s told his mother should have swallowed?
This is why I don’t want Lemmy to become huge. Keep the idiots out.
Aye, I be ownin’ it all, mateys!
Aye aye, only the finest and cleanest wares on my drives
I’ve got a digital watch
My digital watch, a Pebble, stopped working. The company who maintained it got bought by Garmin. Garmin broke my digital watch 🙃.
Mine is a Casio I’ve had for about 30 years, I’m pretty sure it’s mine by now
The only problem with your story is that Garmin didn’t buy any Pebble assets.
Possession is 9/10ths of the law, so I 90% own a whole lot of stuff I pirated while I don’t own most things Ive paid money for… Great system guys
Like Doctorow said, if you cant own it you can’t steal it.
No.
It all depends on the licence. Even if you buy something on physical media you may not technically own it. If something has a FOSS licence MIT, BSD, GPL, etc Then yes you do own your copy and no one can change that.
If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing.
We get it, every comment on every Lemmy post. We get it.
I may only have a license to view the contents of a dvd, but at least I’ll always be able to view it as long as it’s in my possession and I have a dvd player.
Content you can only access remotely via someone else systems (or requiring remote authorization via there systems) can be taken away at anytime regardless of the terms of your license, even supposedly “indefinite/permanent/lifetime” licences.
Both of these items use the same term ‘purchase’. This term used to refer to the first situation only, but now it covers both.
I liked the explicit way version 2 of the GPL explained it:
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program).
Version 3 says the same, but less clearly (note that “affirms” is entirely different from “grants”):
This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program.
We still own all our CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays, so them as long as the players still exist.
Only if the DRM is broken. DRM can make the player stop working sooner. It’s literally about making the media less playable.
No, and once I became aware of the fact realized that I was kinda screwed when it came to video games.
Every single video game I have purchased is on Steam, and considering its DRM and licence business model, I had multiple conversations with my friends who also had the same worry and wondered what would happen if Steam shut down one day. Valve did state that they’ll remove the DRM if the platform shut down, but there’s no way of knowing the future as million things can happen and for all we know, they might change their minds or not be in a position to remove the DRM once the time came.
Not “if”, but “when”.
But don’t worry, before that they will start dropping games to save on storage costs, so odds are you will no longer have access to anything you “own” way before they go under.
The only “digital” I download, is something that I can put on my personal storage. If I can download it to Nintendo Switch and then move it to USB or SD card, then I can clone the sd card and therefore I own it. (immediate usage might be different, and they may chose to delete if it is put back on the Switch. But I still own it, I just need to find an alternative method to use it).
Same goes with games/movies/whatever. If I can download it and store it on my NAS, I own it.
If you are paying for “digital” but you cannot acquire a copy of it, then it is NOT “Digital” it is streaming. You are paying for the privilege of using some services’ electronic library, but you do not own anything on it.
I’ve been watching this argument lately, and its amusing. The whole Sony thing about Discovery (or whatever it was) has nothing to do with ownership. You were paying to access a library that Sony curated. Sony dropped the contract with the other party, and chose to tidy their library. You just have access to it, because they let you. You do not have any ownership whatsoever.
People seem to have a hard time using words like “content”, “streaming” and “digital” vs “electronic copy”, “local digital copy” and “DLC”; and then confuse "ownership and “content access”.
I actually wonder if the files you download off Bandcamp have DRM on them or not.
They do not have DRMs.
Good to know
I am curious why you think that. I download Bandcamp files and place it on a home server, and I have never had any problems. It is conceivable that they have a tracker or some bull shit connected to it, but more than a little unlikely.
Bandcamp files play fine on non bandcamp-approved playing devices. This is a big win on my book.
I guess that answers my question. Thanks, mate.
Yes I own things because I simply don’t pay for something if I’d need to open proprietary software or a pay a subscription fee to use it.
It’s really quite simple and remarkably easy to do, it’s just more mental load to decide what to buy and people just want to pay monthly and forget about it and get mad when it stops magically working.
You wouldn’t pay to not own a car
Idk, lots of people lease… So I guess they would
You technically own the car, but some functionality is behind software locks and these days even paid subscriptions. How much do you really own?
Ahem, what about car rentals when you travel? 😜 Just kidding: in this case you know very well you’re not owning the car and only using it for a very short time
Digital restriction management
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) like access control technologies, can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. DRM technologies govern the use, modification and distribution of copyrighted works (e.g. software, multimedia content) and of systems that enforce these policies within devices. DRM technologies include licensing agreements and encryption.Laws in many countries criminalize the circumvention of DRM, communication about such circumvention, and the creation and distribution of tools used for such circumvention. Such laws are part of the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and the European Union’s Information Society Directive – with the French DADVSI an example of a member state of the European Union implementing that directive.Many users argue that DRM technologies are necessary to protect intellectual property, just as physical locks prevent personal property from theft. For examples, they can help the copyright holders for maintaining artistic controls, and supporting licenses’ modalities such as rentals. Industrial users (i.e. industries) have expanded the use of DRM technologies to various hardware products, such as Keurig’s coffeemakers, Philips’ light bulbs, mobile device power chargers, and John Deere’s tractors. For instance, tractor companies try to prevent farmers from making repairs via DRM.DRM is controversial. There is an absence of evidence about the DRM capability in preventing copyright infringement, some complaints by legitimate customers for caused inconveniences, and a suspicion of stifling innovation and competition. Furthermore, works can become permanently inaccessible if the DRM scheme changes or if a required service is discontinued. DRM technologies have been criticized for restricting individuals from copying or using the content legally, such as by fair use or by making backup copies. DRM is in common use by the entertainment industry (e.g., audio and video publishers). Many online stores such as OverDrive, use DRM technologies, as do cable and satellite service operators. Apple removed DRM technology from iTunes around 2009. Typical DRM also prevents lending materials out through a library, or accessing works in the public domain.
If you own a physical object and it has an internet connection than you don’t actually own it.
I guess I didn’t buy my phone or my laptop then?
You did, but you are the product
You bought it but you don’t own it. The companies that made them can always decide to reach through the internet and rearrange them better to their liking
I own a digital watch
Why do I need to own them?
Hell yeah I do.
No. Not unless you have it stored on media that you own and control.
Does anyone?
IMO, nobody owns ideas. Only execution.
My fingers
Oui mes empreintes.
Xtremis77@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Well, I have 10 Tb of digital content sitting safely at my own home, so I would say yes, yes I do own a lot of digital stuff.
BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Right there with you buddy, 13TB and growing. Self hosted media servers are the best.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Those are rookie numbers. Need to start getting entire TV shows in 4k and things you’ve seen previously but may want to watch again in the future quickly and easily.
foggy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Y’all are chumps.
I got 6TB SSD and 16TB HDD.
But I guess it’s less than half full so… Idk, maybe Im the chump with too much headroom.
69420@lemmy.world 10 months ago
They’re my bytes, and I’ll put them in whatever order I wish, thank you very much.
yoz@aussie.zone 11 months ago
Torrent that Shit so that it can leave forever
Xtremis77@lemmy.world 11 months ago
I do 😉