Do you actually own anything digital?::From ebooks, to videos and software, the answer is increasingly no

  • Xtremis77@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Well, I have 10 Tb of pirated digital content sitting safely at my own home, so I would say yes, yes I do own a lot of digital stuff.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Those are rookie numbers. Need to start getting entire TV shows in 4k and things you’ve seen previously but may want to watch again in the future quickly and easily.

        • BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Personally can’t justify many series in 4k, some of the ones I have only ever got SD releases (DVD at best) but there are a few I can justify 4K for. Mainly very cinematic shows such as The Mandelorian or The Last of Us. As long as they have subtitles in the other shows and are available in their best original release resolution it’s fine for me.

          For example if the original Doctor Who series had a 4K release for it’s entirety it would probably be my entire server lol. 693 episodes in 480p is almost 300GB.

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Y’all are chumps.

        I got 6TB SSD and 16TB HDD.

        But I guess it’s less than half full so… Idk, maybe Im the chump with too much headroom.

          • foggy@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            If I can figure out a way to make my next server upgrade a tax write off, I’ll flex back.

            • Resol van Lemmy@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              It’s probably the entire database of World Cup matches (including qualifier matches), plus the entire database of entries to the Eurovision Song Contest (including those of national finals), in addition to every single thing that happened at the 'Lympic Games. All in glorious 8K quality (yes, everything got upscaled by world class upscaling software).

            • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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              9 months ago

              Just general movies+tv shows.

              It started as a classic Disney film collection and has expanded quite dramatically over the last 7ish years.

              Now a days I’ve got a half a dozen users feeding requests into Ombi along with a bunch of imdb lists being monitored; growing the library entirely automatically.

              /edit: who am I kidding, it’s just hundreds of copies of one man one jar with different filters applied…

    • 69420@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      They’re my bytes, and I’ll put them in whatever order I wish, thank you very much.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    9 months ago

    If it’s on my Jellyfin server, I own it as much it’s possible to own anything.

    If they wanted me to pay for it, maybe they shouldn’t have dicked me around, watering down my subscribed services while simultaneously jacking up the price.

      • stoy@lemmy.zip
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        9 months ago

        Gog provides DRM free installers when buying games at their store

        • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          And plenty of steam games are DRM-free too.

          I really wish steam made it clear though. Should have to come with a tag stating DRM/no DRM. Shit, let us filter games by its DRM status.

            • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Nah, it’s optional

              However, because steam doesn’t tell you which games are DRM, and companies have been known to arbitrarily add DRM in updates, I generally treat steam games as being DRM games

      • The Menemen!@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Nah, you can buy it legally and break the drm illegally. That is what someone I know very well does with my, ahm, their ebooks.

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 months ago

          Removing DRM from content you bought is actually legal

          What’s illegal is doing so for the purposes of sharing whatever was DRM’d in the first place

          Not that it stops me

      • cynar@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Fyi, steam doesn’t add additional DRM to games. So long as the maker hasn’t added anything significant, you can often just copy the game folder out, and run it independently. There’s nothing (in theory) to stop you backing it up yourself.

        • daniskarma@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          There’re few games that work like that. Many use the steam basic drm, making the game not launching if a valid steam session is not running.

          That’s why I have the generic steam crack. In case they pull the plug some day.

  • User79185@discuss.tchncs.de
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    9 months ago

    GOG, buy music in mp3/flac format, not sure about video. I guess you can pay for subscription and just pirate stuff you like to keep real ownership.

    • MashedTech@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I like that on GOG you know you own it because they let you download the installer DRM free so you literally can keep a separate copy of all of your purchases. You will always have access to them regardless of what happens to GOG. Videos, music, games, everything they sell.

  • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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    9 months ago

    If you’re on Lemmy, you almost certainly understand the problem and know how to acturally own digital stuff.

    The problem is all the normies who can’t even see the problem. We need everyone to be protected by law and it all to be citizen oriented. As the moment, it’s all stacked in favour of exploitive multinational companies. Maybe ever was it so, but we need to fight that.

    We treat it as a tech problem, something to work round, but it’s a political problem and we need to solve it politically.

    • Sanyanov@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      This.

      Also, we all here are aware of the problem, to the point where such posts are nothing but circlejerk.

      The article might come as eye-opener to some, but certainly not here. Time for solutions. And they are political.

      • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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        9 months ago

        Drives me mad the main stream seam unaware/ignoring that it’s about anything free piracy. You hear next to nothing about the problem of DRM, digital ownership, digital freedom or even proper competition in proper markets. There is sometimes mentions of Right To Repair, but they never follow the thread. Or talk about how the internet runs on FOSS. A FOSS system like Debian is a wonder, that still, after 15y of use, floors me when I think about it. A utopian vision of humans can do.

        • Sanyanov@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          I get you

          Drives me even more insane when they actively complain about losing access to something, or not having it available offline, and do nothing about it

          Like, here’s the super simple solution, just take it!

          But they won’t sacrifice a tiny bit of their habit to break free. They’ll keep on whining about the world and not doing anything, even when they are directed to it with the most simple, grandma-style guidance.

          • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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            9 months ago

            They can’t really perceive what is being done to them. They can notice something, but can’t quite put it all together.

            Voices like EFF, OpenRightsGroup, FSC, etc, need to be heard and made understandable by normal people, news and government.

      • thegreekgeek@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        Seriously, sometimes I wish we could get all the shitty execs and politicians alone in a room with all of us and just insult them for their shitty behavior, like the Chevy Chase comedy central roast.

        I mean who wouldn’t want to see the expression on the head of Nestle’s face when he’s told his mother should have swallowed?

        • Sanyanov@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          They know full well we hate them, that wouldn’t help, and would vent the anger we need to make an actual sensible change.

  • kerrigan778@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Possession is 9/10ths of the law, so I 90% own a whole lot of stuff I pirated while I don’t own most things Ive paid money for… Great system guys

  • LainOfTheWired@lemy.lol
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    9 months ago

    It all depends on the licence. Even if you buy something on physical media you may not technically own it. If something has a FOSS licence MIT, BSD, GPL, etc Then yes you do own your copy and no one can change that.

    • Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      I may only have a license to view the contents of a dvd, but at least I’ll always be able to view it as long as it’s in my possession and I have a dvd player.

      Content you can only access remotely via someone else systems (or requiring remote authorization via there systems) can be taken away at anytime regardless of the terms of your license, even supposedly “indefinite/permanent/lifetime” licences.

      Both of these items use the same term ‘purchase’. This term used to refer to the first situation only, but now it covers both.

  • Commiunism@lemmy.wtf
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    9 months ago

    No, and once I became aware of the fact realized that I was kinda screwed when it came to video games.

    Every single video game I have purchased is on Steam, and considering its DRM and licence business model, I had multiple conversations with my friends who also had the same worry and wondered what would happen if Steam shut down one day. Valve did state that they’ll remove the DRM if the platform shut down, but there’s no way of knowing the future as million things can happen and for all we know, they might change their minds or not be in a position to remove the DRM once the time came.

    • Test_Tickles@lemmynsfw.com
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      9 months ago

      Not “if”, but “when”.
      But don’t worry, before that they will start dropping games to save on storage costs, so odds are you will no longer have access to anything you “own” way before they go under.

    • Euphoma@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      TBH, the default steam DRM is trivial to remove yourself with steam emulators and stuff, and many indie games dont even use it. The real problem is 3rd party DRM like Denuvo, which Valve probably can’t remove even if they wanted to.

    • jabjoe@feddit.uk
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      9 months ago

      Only if the DRM is broken. DRM can make the player stop working sooner. It’s literally about making the media less playable.

  • Brownian Motion@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The only “digital” I download, is something that I can put on my personal storage. If I can download it to Nintendo Switch and then move it to USB or SD card, then I can clone the sd card and therefore I own it. (immediate usage might be different, and they may chose to delete if it is put back on the Switch. But I still own it, I just need to find an alternative method to use it).

    Same goes with games/movies/whatever. If I can download it and store it on my NAS, I own it.

    If you are paying for “digital” but you cannot acquire a copy of it, then it is NOT “Digital” it is streaming. You are paying for the privilege of using some services’ electronic library, but you do not own anything on it.

    I’ve been watching this argument lately, and its amusing. The whole Sony thing about Discovery (or whatever it was) has nothing to do with ownership. You were paying to access a library that Sony curated. Sony dropped the contract with the other party, and chose to tidy their library. You just have access to it, because they let you. You do not have any ownership whatsoever, you signed a T&C that says Sony curates the library and they can do what they like.

    People seem to have a hard time using words like “content”, “streaming” and “digital” vs “electronic copy”, “local digital copy” and “DLC”; and then confuse "ownership and “content access”.