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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

Historically media has had a limited play-life. 78s, 45s and 33 warped, broke or got scratched, etc., tapes wore out, broke, got tangled etc., CDs scratched or deteriorated after some time. There are exceptional specimens for all the above, but a good number don’t survive long unless owned by an aficionado who took care of their media.

With digital you can have backups and in theory they could last forever as you convert the format into whatever is popular.

How do they price this? Do they not do CRCs and hashes and let your bits rot over time and have you buy a new one? How do you approach this commercially? Make music or video very, very faddish so even if it lasts forever no one will want to listen to or watch something out of style ten yeas hence?

I’m not defending Apple. I’m asking how do you price things reasonably if they potentially last forever?

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> I’m asking how do you price things reasonably if they potentially last forever?

They can potentially last forever, but humans don't. Since Apple's stuff is associated to a personal account, I don't see an issue here, vinyls can also last for a life.

On the other hand, consumers have lost the right to lend, give or sell the stuff they buy. That's not priced either, and we see every possible move be done to make these operations user-hostile, if not forbidden.

For CD’s it’s legal to make backup copies in the US which are digital and thus don’t degrade.

Many of the oldest recordings still work, and can be played indefinitely with an optical needle. The time value of money means the possible purchase by a small fraction of buyers 20+ years out isn’t worth much at the time of sale. It’s only moving forward in time that makes anyone care about these sales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable

I’m curious are iTunes and similar stores licensing the music to you? I’m guessing it is a license and not ownership. In either case I can see them addressing this problem of lower velocity with subscription only licensing where you license tunes for X amount of time.

Obviously not in the interest of consumers but I can see why sellers would go this route.

All Copyright is a license, you buy a physical CD you are also buying a copyright license. You are attempting to make a distinction when none is present or valid

Licenses are not all the same. They have different terms.

No you don’t get a license with a CD, you just get an object.

It’s only copying that’s protected not existing physical copies. It’s the same with a book you get the physical book and that’s it. If the copyright expired then you can do all kinds of stuff with the book that you don’t otherwise get to do, barring a few exceptions that apply universally.

You're forgetting the performance license. With a (consumer grade) CD you get the rights for private performance of a non-commercial nature.

You don't usually get the rights to play the music for large audiences or for commercial use - those cost extra.

If you didn't get those rights then you couldn't even play the CD in the privacy of your own home, as that constitutes a performance of the work.

(Of course I kind of think there's something fundamentally strange with the idea of having to get "performance rights" for a recording that you supposedly own, but that doesn't change the law right now.)

Copyright does not include an exclusive right to private performance. There is nothing to license here. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106

It said "Buy" on the buttons on iTunes the last time I used it years ago.

How do you price real estate when it lasts forever? (The land, not the buildings)

Of course there's an actual answer to this as well, the economic concept of a discount rate; things far in the future are worth less than they are in the present, by an amount depending on interest minus inflation.

Has has been perfectly legal for decades for a person to make backups of their physical media

So this line of thought is completely incorrect, digital distribution did not invent the ability to have backups of media you purchased

That’s not in dispute. What I’m saying is for the most part these media wore out and often times people had to repurchase those media. I’ve known people who had to replace many of their CDs. They didn’t get to go to the store and “return the defective one” for a warranty replacement.

and I have known many people that lose digital data because they did not back it up, they had to then repurchase that content, including things like DRM free ebooks, or drm free media

This is not a valid line of objection, just because if someone destroyed their CD and did not have a backup would have to rebuy, same is true if someone did not backup their DRM free content.

This HAS NOTHING TO DO with the ability to backup, or the fact that physical media may degrade over time. That is a non sequitur and a red herring all in one

In reality this is not even about digital media copyright, but more about the rights of digital platforms to unperson you and seize your legally purchase products for any arbitrary reason (or in many cases no reason at all)

I agree with your point that Apple should not be able to yank/revoke access and treat your account differently than anyone else’s other than by court order. This is worrisome.

My initial question was tangential and more thinking out loud how they deal with lower sales velocities.

To the extent there is " lower sales velocities. " of which you have presented no evidence to back that claim, you would also have to present evidence that the lower sales velocities were directly caused by a transition from physical to digital sales.

I would find that data to be very interesting, and based on what I know about the industry I would also say that neither one of those claims can be supported by any data I am aware of

I don't know. I have many tapes at home.~15-25 years old. I almost never touch them, but when i do they seem to work fine. Maybe the quality is bad, but i have nothing to compare it to.

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