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0 pointsBoorishBears6y ago0 comments

I’m not commenting on the efficacy of DRM.

For movies and shows, to me it’s a speed bump to try and keep people who don’t really mean to steal, but would gladly copy the disk and give it to all their friends as a favor.

Gaming and software is also pretty similar, it’s a speed bump. Maybe keep you from casually copying the software onto everyone’s machine.

Denuvo showed the game industry DRM can buy you some freedom from piracy in the most critical sales period, even if only for a few days, but yeah it’s not infallible (and is sold with that caveat)

I actually feel like on commercial software part of it is it let’s the nail you with DCMA if you circumvent their DRM directly, but I’m not a lawyer and that’s just my musings...

The thing is, they pay 10k a seat because it makes them revenue.

Bur entertainment isn’t about revenue, it’s about enjoyment.

People pay 400$ to get their family into an amusement park for one day of entertainment.

Netflix is what? 13$ a month for access to 3,000+ movies, and how many shows?

Entertainment value is not a fungible good or anything, but to me that’s a very favorable comparison.

I’ve never felt I wasn’t getting my money’s worth for the 30$ I pay to literally always have something to watch on TV...

0 comments

skinkestek6y ago

I happily pay for Spotify.

I've done for years.

I also, less happily, pay for Netflix. I refuse to pay monthly fees for the rest of them but I'll pay to rent a movie online sometimes.

My issues with this whole thing:

- things I buy (i.e. not rent) aren't really mine and can disappear at any time if the publisher decides so (or just fail to keep their DRM servers alive.)

- massive abuse of copyright for something it wasn't meant for.

- the idea that it is OK to keep Europeans away from huge parts of the collection for no good reason.

As I've said multiple times: I'll happily pay more for media, but there is one rule

- no more subscriptions: anything subscription-based must replace one of my existing subscriptions.

- reasonable prices

imgabe6y ago

I also happily pay for Netflix. And Amazon. And HBO. and Disney+. So, if something isn't on one of those services, yeah, I'm going to pirate it. I've already tithed more than enough to the entertainment industry. Most of the time the thing I want to watch isn't available on the services yet, but will be in 3-6 months. Like movies that just came out on video and they want to milk people who will pay $20 to watch it right away before it goes to all the streaming services. Nuts to that.

BoorishBearsOP6y ago

It’s your choice. If we were on any other forum I would get this mentality a little more but a tech forum of all places.

“I paid this one developer and this other developer and all of them are selling copies of the binaries so it’s not like each copy is worth anything anyways, and it’s ok if I steal a copy of this third developer's software because paying these developers means I deserve all the software that isn’t made by them too because developers in general want way more money than I think their software is worth”

???

It’s kind of like, most of us get to see how the bacon is made, and should get all of this nonsense about “the marginal cost of a movie” is silly. A lot of people here make very good money because 1000 hrs of development can become 1,000,000 dollars of revenue because the output of that 1000 hrs can be sold again and again and again ad nauseum.

To me the movie industry and the software industry are two sides of the same coin, if anything we have the more extreme version of their setup with much better margins.

If you want to steal a movie because you can’t afford it or you feel entitled to have “all the stuff I wanna see right now immediately how dare they make me wait for my movie that I deserve or give me the choice to pay more for earlier access so they can squeeze all the profit from the multi million dollar investment they made” and tell other people what they have the right to price their creative product go right ahead.

That entitlement coming from technologists will still get me though.

imgabe6y ago

That's one way to look at it, I suppose. Lots of software that's for sale also only exists because of open source work that the creators released for free. Some of it is probably even used in the movie industry.

I'm not against making a profit and it doesn't look like the movie industry has any trouble doing that.

Entitlement has nothing to do with it. I don't believe that the movie industry owes me anything. It's just that this option exists and when they make it harder (or in some cases impossible) to pay for something than it is to get it for free, what do you think is going to happen?

Suppose each grocery story required everyone who entered to submit to a body cavity search and complete an application detailing their entire credit history before anyone was allowed to shop at the store. Meanwhile, Fat Tony has some groceries that "fell off a truck" that anyone can walk up and buy. Who are people going to shop at? Again, I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying, what do you think is going to happen when you make it harder for people to buy your stuff than it is to steal it?

Your options are

1. make it harder to steal - which doesn't really work for digital works. This is the industry's main strategy.

2. make it easier to buy. The music industry seems to have figured this out and it's no longer worth pirating compared to simply subscribing to Spotify. Once they felt that the only way anyone should get their music is by paying $20 for a CD (which was really a price-fixing cartel but that's neither here nor there). They had to come to terms with the fact that nobody is going to pay whatever fantasy price they think they can charge when it can be had for free and the movie industry is going to have to learn the same lesson.

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