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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Well I wish that is true. But It isn't actually your property. You are only purchasing a perpetual right to use that item under the terms and condition. It is the sad state of things Silicon Valley decided ownership is no longer a thing and everything should be "service", so they gain the control of all asset management right.

There is some part of me that increasingly hate Silicon Valley.

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> You are only purchasing a perpetual right to use that item under the terms and condition

To clarify for others: parent is not talking about subscriptions.

When you "buy" content on these platforms, they are not actually yours to take away for ever like a physical book. The software you consume them on e.g a Kindle or iTunes, is actually capable of remotely deleting "your" content at any time, and they are supposedly within their legal right to do so.

They have essentially hijacked the word "buy", it does not implicitly mean what it used to mean, you cannot really buy a copy of a piece of music or a book or a film from any of these large platforms today without removing the DRM and making a local copy (which is technically illegal).

My wife "purchased" a French movie on Amazon Prime Movies à few years ago (because it was pretty much the only way she could acquire it without piracy)

Recently she tried to watch it and Amazon just had "you can't access this content." Maybe Amazon didn't renew the license with publisher, maybe not, but in any case, Amazon really proved to me that no, we do not own digital content.

So, I pirated it for her. If doing things the "right/legal way" is going to screw us over because of fine print, then why bother?

In some countries "piracy" of itens you own is a gray area, because in the past you could make copies of medias, such tapes, as backup.

ObXkcd: https://xkcd.com/488/

> Amazon really proved to me that no, we do not own digital content.

Amazon does not make laws. If a thieve steals your car that does not prove that you don't own the car. The car ownership is still yours, but it has been stolen.

Would you download a car? advertisement has gone all the way around and now big companies are just stealing our property.

This reminded me of pirating a Game of Thrones episode when I was a customer of HBO. My wife and I signed up for HBO max to watch the final season as it was airing. The quality turned out to be pathetically poor. During the Battle of Winterfell episode, the pixelation was serious enough to make the action difficult to make out.

I went ahead and torrented the episode the next day to rewatch it in all of its intended glory. Then a few days later, I got a letter from my ISP telling me that HBO was very upset with me and threatening to cut off my service. I felt compelled to send them a reply, explaining the situation and telling them to eat it.

You mean your ISP actually new you were pirating GoT ?

yeah, ISPs join popular torrent swarms, collect IPs, pick the IPs that they own, and contact their customers

>They have essentially hijacked the word "buy"

Yes.

Part of me thinks that was the reason why Steve Jobs hated Music Subscription. He said "no" to Beats many times before his death. And why Apple ( at the time ) worked really hard to get rid of DRM in movies ( but failed ). And iTunes Music is DRM free. May be it is time to remind our self how we got DRM free music on iTunes, with Steve's "Thoughts on Music"

https://web.archive.org/web/20070207234839/http://www.apple....

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