Hacker News Reader

Comment by res0nat0r | Hacker News Reader

This is a nice, but typical Reddit solution which is a bit more complicated in reality. There are outstanding distribution licenses with many companies for many different parts of the world which can't just be wiped away so this service can just spring to life.

Also Steam works well because it really isn't easy for the common consumer to copy a Steam game vs. as easy as it would be to copy a single unencrypted movie file to share casually with their friends. It is much easier to buy a movie on this Steam type clone and then put it online or give it to everyone you know, which the industry won't want.

Until you get a Steam like service written for OSX, Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone and streamable via the web with proper copy protection this will not fly.

View on HN

> There are outstanding distribution licenses with many companies for many different parts of the world which can't just be wiped away so this service can just spring to life.

Copyright is not a right, it s a privilege given to promote the creation of new works in exchange for reasonable access to that work.

Hollywood could easily lobby the government about their contracts not being in the spirit of copyright and that they need to be wiped clean in the interest of the American people.

Instead, they lobby to reduce the reasonable access even further. Forcing people into pirating even more.

I guess they know they have a better chance changing the law for 300 million people than to change it for a couple of other corporations. Pretty sad, really.

> Copyright is not a right, it s a privilege given to promote the creation of new works in exchange for reasonable access to that work

From the U.S. Constitution, on the powers of Congress: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."

Copyright is not a right

I don't think you've thought that through.

Forcing people into pirating

Nobody is forced into pirating.

You are right that I did not choose my words very carefully. The underlying point still stands.

> streamable via the web with proper copy protection

That won't fly with me. If I'm paying for content, I expect to be able to make backups and put it on any device I want/need. Again, proposing paid solutions that are harder and more inconvenient than free is just not feasible. You can argue the ethics all day long; but economically, no way.

On the other hand, a large proportion of people will pay for a subscription rather than per-view. That won't work for me or a lot of other users, but something like e.g. Spotify is definitely the music industry's best bet for now.

If, as you say, these kinds of solutions won't fly with the big content companies, they're just not going to survive in the long run.

"Until you get a Steam like service written for OSX, Linux, Windows, Android, iPhone and streamable via the web with proper copy protection this will not fly."

So... you're saying it should be web-based?

I'd also argue the common steam user can torrent just as well as anyone else, they choose not to (at least 95% of the steam users I know) because they can get a legit copy at a fair price.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com