Comment by warfangle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by warfangle | Hacker News Reader

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> don’t yell and scream about how you’re losing business to piracy when your stuff isn’t even available in the box I have on top of my TV.

I ran into this a few months ago. I was bored and slightly drunk from brunch on a Saturday afternoon, and got it in my mind that I’d catch up on the final four Harry Potter movies. Whatever. That it was Harry Potter isn’t necessarily the point. Three of these films - Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, and Part 2 of Deathly Hollows - were available on Amazon video for rental. Score!

Of course, I didn’t realize Part 1 of the Deathly Hollows wasn’t available on Amazon when I started this drunken marathon. But you can believe after the first two, I was in the mood for more. And I wasn’t about to ruin the series by watching Part 2 before Part 1. I won’t say what route I took to watch it, but these were my legal options after scouring Netflix Streaming, Hulu+, Amazon OnDemand and iTunes:

* Wait two-to-three days for a DVD to arrive from Netflix

* Go to Blockbus..oh.

* Go to a DVD sto..oh. I mean, I suppose I could’ve taken the train 20 minutes to Best Buy at Union Square, bought the DVD of a film I was only going to watch once, take the train 20 minutes back home and … shit. I don’t have a DVD player anymore.

I won’t tell you the course of action I took. Only that the entire experience was exasperating, annoying, and thoroughly made me want to not watch the rest of Harry Potter. And I wanted to give them money.

I don’t get how this is hard to understand.

I have a nice story, too.

Just the other day my Macbook died; "green light of death", i.e. it's not charging and not turning on anymore (presumably the battery is dead).

On the harddrive of said Macbook I have ~$300 worth of purchased iTunes movies that I cannot access anymore. I had never bothered to back them up because I was under the naive assumption I could just re-download them when needed. A service that I took for granted not only because I do it with their apps and music all the time, but also because most of their movies were more expensive than the equivalent DVD.

Well, needless to say, apple does not allow to re-download purchased movies.

I may still be able to recover that harddrive. But I'm most certainly not buying movies from apple anymore.

This happened to me recently. I had nearly 2 TB of movies and TV shows on an external hard drive that decided to die on me when I moved it. After some messing around, I was able to coax the drive to boot up again and list files, but it takes hours for me to move the files off of that drive and onto another. Luckily, I buy my TV from iTunes, which lets me re-download everything onto another device, but those movies are lost forever.

I've been looking into other digital download options, but Amazon's not compatible on a Mac, and I enjoy watching movies in HD quality. I don't blame Apple for the restrictions that Hollywood puts on them, but I'm also not going to spend more effort than I need to to watch my movies. Downloading them is the most convenient way to watch, there are no ads, and the quality is amazing. I don't understand why this is so hard for the studios to get right.

This is news to me. When looking at an iPad recently the guy in the Apple store told me that anything I bought on iTunes could be moved to a new device should I ever upgrade. So long as I have the same AppleId (email?)

What else is non-transferable? Books? Music? Apps? (Can iDevices do other things?)

It's transferable, but not necessarily by downloading again from Apple. You just back up your downloads and then you can transfer them from device to device.

Not that it makes any sense not to allow people to download stuff multiple times, especially when said stuff is DRM'd, but try reasoning with the movie studios.

It might get better in the future though. Music is now mostly DRM free and you can re-download directly from iTunes. That changed not that long ago. If the music industry can change there's hope for the movie industry as well.

You can redownload: music, apps, books, TV shows. Movies aren't in that list. Also, you might not be able to redownload something if it's been taken off the store.

http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/

If you contact Apple support they'll let you redownload all of your purchases.

is that really a problem with itunes? if your house burned down, you'd lose all of the movies you had on DVD. at least with itunes movies, you can legally make backups of the files.

Well, I'll flat out admit that I'm an idiot. I should have read the fine-print, they surely did tell me somewhere that I'm not allowed to re-download m̶y̶ their movies.

But then again. It's 2012. Is it really such an outrageous assumption that I'd be able to re-download digital content that I paid dearly for?

Steam lets me re-download my games as often as I want. Amazon and all ebook vendors let me re-download my books. Google let's me re-download my android apps. Apple let's me re-download my apps and mp3s.

It just honestly never occurred to me that iTunes movies would be different. When I paid $16.99 for an iTunes movie while the same DVD would have costed $9.99 I was actually mentally justifying the markup with the convenience of not having to care about backups...

For a reasonable but not specifically informed consumer, I think it's likely they expect to be able to re-download movies from iTunes, particularly since music, apps, etc. can be re-downloaded.

In the US, tends to err on the side of consumer protection, even in the face of a click-through license to the contrary. While Apple will let you re-download if you call (apparently), if I'd lost >$100 in iTunes movies and they wouldn't, I'd call AmEx and charge back the purchase. Or go to small claims, just for the novelty of winning against Apple.

However, I just pirate music, tv, and movies shamelessly (and buy Blu-Ray physical media, since I like 1080p, and rip). MPAA and RIAA declared war on everyone else about 15 years ago, so fuck them. The only reason I pay is for convenience.

Sure , but houses rarely burn down. Computers crash a lot. In fact, I'd venture to say that most (or maybe close to most?) computers end up in some state where their owners either can't or think they can't retrieve data from them. Based on the likelihood of this happening to their customers, it'd be decent to let users re-download media you know they've already paid for and been given access to...

In addition to this is the commonly stated idea that you don't own a copy of a movie, you only have a license to watch it. If that's the case, I should be able to acquire the movie data assuming I have already paid for a license to watch said movie. Right now, consumers get the worst of both worlds.

Is it really that usual? I've used computers daily for 23 years, and I've never had a hard disk crash.

According to this http://hdd-compare.com/en/blog/hard-disk-drives-rma-statisti... or http://www.hardware.fr/articles/773-6/taux-pannes-composants..., it seems that you have betwwen 0 to 3 % chance to return your hard drive. That is quite higher to incident that can cause your full collection of DVD and CD to be destroyed.

"I don’t get how this is hard to understand."

Because the 'other side' doesn't understand why you think they have to make it easy for you to buy Harry Potter 7.1 and if they don't, why you think you get to circumvent their processes.

You wanted to give them money on your terms. They want you to give them money on their terms. I think that sums it up.

You wanted to give them money on your terms. They want you to give them money on their terms. I think that sums it up.

It is the responsibility of the producer to meet the terms of the consumer, or else go out of business.

Interesting. I think this points out a difference between my lifetime and my parents. Lots of thing (most of things?) were negotiated. I can't even imagine negotiating for something like a candy bar at the grocery store and I certainly can't even try to negotiate with the studios on a movie rental. This complete inability to show any flexibility by the studios (and many other businesses) shows that the inelasticity of the market.

I am going to be a little naughty and quote my good friend who I had this very conversation over email with about two years ago

---- ME:

It just dumbfounds me that, with card in hand they cant make this shit work. I had the same problem with microsoft and fallout3 extensions, after I went through microsofts increadibly evil market place for games thing, bought myself some credits (why can't I just use money guys) and downloaded the extensions, I had to jerry rig them to work with fallout3 because that version I downloaded with steam, and MS has a clause in their terms about versions of fallout downloaded from competing software devlivery systems.

In fact steam is the only on of these fucking things I have ever used that just works (in fact it works a bit too well its nearly as dangerous to my wallet as amazons one click)

Hint guys, If you cant make it like steam, or amazons one click, just pack up shop and go home, the more hoops I jump through, just to appease your circle jacking business people and "Information architects" the more likly I am to just pirate the software.

My Friend:

> > It just dumbfounds me that, with card in hand they cant make this shit work. I feel your pain.

But you're expecting it to work because you see it as a transaction, you buy it, they give it to you. They on the other hand are living in crazy bugfuck dying-media-company world (it's Sony), where it's actually an opportunity for you to STEAL FROM THEM. And so people who a) don't know how software works and b) aren't operating with a full deck to start with dictate how the process gets built. They add this and demand that in this big committee (all the more efficient because it's actually a tree of committees), and some poor schmoe programmer implements it the way he's told.

The real surprise is that they manage to sell /anything/.

"They want you to give them money"

Clearly not.

I have a story too, I really wanted an apple and when I came into the super market they had this HUGE line and they only accept credit cards on purchases above 5$.

I won't tell you the course of action I took, but I really wanted an apple.

Obviously, totally their fault and its OK since they are a failing industry.

The thing is. There is a finite number of apples.

There are more important differences:

1. Apples are fungible; one apple is as good as the next one: unlike Harry Potter movies you can consume apples in any order.

2. Nobody holds the copyright on a particular apple. There are many companies growing apples.

3. You can grow apple trees in your own garden from seeds. If this takes too long, you can buy a tree.

4. You can not download an apple. 5. Eating destroys apples. 6. Apples can rot. etc...

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