Comment by rickdeckard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rickdeckard | Hacker News Reader

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The model for media already transitioned from the consumer owning the content (CDs, DVDs,...) to the consumer having a permission to consume the content. The industry deliberately drove this transition so they can earn from each consumption and break the reselling-market.

The fact that they also wanted to DIRECTLY replace the CD/DVD by showing a "Buy Movie" button, but actually using the same licensing model, the same infrastructure and the same utterly careless approach on content-management:

For this we don't need a new economic model. The industry WANTED this model, and executed it without the connected responsibilities.

A court should have already found this practice to be illegal years ago, either the careless handling of sold property, or the explicitly misleading sales of VOD with the claim that the customer will actually OWN a copy of the content.

I don't see a technical problem that if the content I purchased at some point is no longer economic for the seller to host on his platform, that he is required to allow me to download it or send me a USB-stick with the content...

> the content I purchased [...] is required to allow me to download it

This would work if laws mandate that media like movies, eBooks, music must be downloadable DRM-free by purchasers, which will probably never happen as the entire industry is built against peer-to-peer file sharing and media piracy.

The industry likes this model but the consumers do not. They like the convenience of having all their media in a single nice UX like Netflix, PlayStation store, or Spotify. They do not like that profits are usually directed away from creators, and that "ownership" in these stores is more like temporary licensing of DRM content. This is where a new economic model could be introduced to fund some media production and distribution - for those creators and consumers willing to embrace it.

I don't think the law needs to mandate DRM-free purchases at all.

If a company wants to operate a model where they sell you something but they will store/"maintain" it for you to use at any time, they are free to do so under the conditions that they define.

But if they decide at one point that it's no longer economic for them to store/"maintain" your goods, they should be required to return them to you.

Right now, they simply inform you that the goods you purchased are no longer available to you as it no longer fits their interest to maintain them. And that's something that should be legally challenged in my opinion.

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