this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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Tech never promised anything. They cut the price for people to be dependent to them and then rise the price.
It's just basic capitalism.
Right. This is how it works. The marketplace sustained a value for watching entertainment at home (cable tv). When pricing outstretched customer desire to use the product, the business changed to start selling the service connection in addition to advertising to create another revenue stream. It got so ubiquitous that people don’t even remember that OTA tv was the majority solution for decades and was completely funded by ads. Eventually, prices stabilize and the business can only make more money by acquiring a larger share of the market or innovating something new. They’ll always try to increase that price, but it is balanced by how many customers choose to give up the service.
When streaming platforms disrupted that business model, they were cheap because they had to convince the marketplace to change. As adoption got more prolific, pricing changes to recoup early losses… then to increase value to become more attractive to the customer and gain more market share… then to increase profits.
We are still at the point you can cancel the service and jump around on a monthly basis, but the days of 12 month contracts are right around the corner… and they’re coming fast.
It has honestly never been so reasonable to just buy the blue ray disks and just rip them to store locally. The other alternative is to pirate the media, but at least it's still legal to rip your own media, and honestly for how much we're all paying for streaming it's not unreasonable to just buy the titles we repeat watch outright.
Of course, were probably not far from them phasing out DVD runs entirely, or for the DMCA to be amended to remove the fair use exception for personal use. I'm pessimistic enough to think they'll outlaw VPNs in the US too, and then all we'll have is SSD drops.
where I am currently living, you can't even rip stuff for PERSONAL use, which I think is ridiculous. I understand making it illegal if you're profiting off it, or selling it, etc. but if it's only ever used personally by you, I don't see why not?
If you see the law as an extension of collective democratic interests and compromise, then yea, it should absolutely be legal.
But if the law is an extension of the interest of capital, as it is in the US, then why should you be allowed to do that? Every ripped DVD is opportunity cost for streaming or renting services.
Edit: if IP holders got to litigate this is court, they'd argue that "most people" who rip DVDs only do that to illegally share them, and most "normal people" prefer the flexibility and choice in a streaming service. The same argument is now routinely used in defence against rent control and public housing: most people who rent want to be renters, otherwise they wouldn't pay the HUGE FEE for the privilege over buying a house.
Completely blind to the coercion involved in making those choices the only reasonable options, and that it does NOT constitute consent
Depends on where you live.
In the Netherlands it is legal to "pirate" media, since they pay a small fee (2-5€) on every device that could play those media, and use this money to pay the artists.
That socialism thing sure does sound awful.
They will not outlaw VPNs. Every major company uses a form of VPN to allow workers to connect remotely. No chance this will happen.
They could still compel VPN providers to give them information about users and user activity, if something like the RESTRICT act passes in order to limit access to international networks/apps.
Not exactly a ban, but it would absolutely negate the intended purpose for most VPN users (myself included).
When I go to France, I'm blown away by the number of tv channels they get for free over the air. It's incredible.
It really is crazy that you can have venture capitalists operate at a loss for a decade just to change the entire infrastructure of society to be dependent on them in the future. Really undermines any kind of microeconomic common sense that is supposedly the basis of capitalism.
Just goes to show that wealth distribution is so fucked if a small group of people can burn billions of dollars on essentially a bet. Just because they have enough bets placed that they know some will payoff.