This is why the digital good I buy the most of is music. MP3s are just dumb files. There’s no subscription fees, no DRM. Nothing but digital watermarks. The “service” is the ability to redownload and stream the songs that I’ve purchased on other devices, but I also store the raw files on my fileserver.
Now, the challenge for the vendor is that I can also just as easily pirate these same files.
And yet somehow I still buy.
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Large Corporate Landlords: There’s a perception that these entities buy up substantial amounts of property, making it difficult for individuals to purchase a home due to increased prices and limited supply.
People keep looking for the bogeyman here but this is one where that’s too facile. Rents in Canada have skyrocketed, and REITs rent out their properties. Sure, they rent them out as expensive as they can, they’re jerks. But they’re profiteering off of the shortage of rental properties. And if they’ve got a crapload of property, and they’re profiting from the shortage… well they’re not really the cause of the shortage when they’re offering a lot to rent, are they? They’re profiteering from it, but they’re not causing it. If there was truly endless money buying up everything and then renting it out, prices to buy would climb, but prices to rent would plummet, and that’s obviously not happening.
You want to look at the cause? Look at people who prevent new housing from getting built. Petty bureaucrats. Wealthy NIMBY neighbours.
And yes, as much as it goes against Canadian values: if you’ve got more immigrants than you’ve got new housing, you’re going to run out of homes, and the people who have homes can price them as high as they want because everybody needs a roof.
There are places with wild eviction laws, you can just break in and immediately have tons of rights. I’d say that’s a decent way to pirate an apartment.
But if you’re going to pirate anything, why not make it a house?
Back in the day, you weren’t allowed to plug a private phone into AT&T’s network. You had to rent phones from Ma Bell, for something like $10/month, back when $10 would fill a gas tank.
Between that and Columbia Music Club, so when Netflix was still sending DVDs in the mail, I decided I’d rather buy one movie a month than rent 4. Ripping them wasn’t so easy in those days, but there was already library organizers. Now, it’s like 20 years later and I’ve got something like 250 movies I can watch any time. Mostly good ones, now spread over four different streamers, if they’re even out there. Plenty to keep me entertained.
It’s a corollary of Pratchett/Vimes “boots theory.” More expensive to buy stuff, and the first few years you go without a lot, but in the long run, you get enough for less.
I do the same. Over the years I’ve accumulated a few hundred movies, that fit in half a book shelf. I have stuff to watch for years and if I’ve got less money in the future I can still watch my movies.
And most people decided that, rather than spend a lot of money to own a collection of movies in tech that will eventually be obsolete, they’d rather pay a subscription for a bigger library that meets most of their needs.
On the other hand, courts do generally enforce click-wrap and sign-in-wrap contracts. Click-wrap contracts require that consumers click “I agree” by means of an immediately available pop-up box. See Caspi v. Microsoft Network, 323 N.J. Super. 118. Sign-in-wrap contracts include a hyperlink, often labeled as “Terms of Service” or “Terms and Conditions,” that is located by a sign-up button. Sign-in-wrap contracts require that users electronically accept the terms by clicking “I accept” or “I agree” as the last step of the sign-up process before allowing consumers to use their products or services.
There’s more information on that page, but essentially, no, they can in fact be legally enforced. Exceptions revolve around clauses that violate existing law or that cannot be enforced for other reasons.
Literally all of these things have existed this way my entire life, but the article is making it seem like this is all brand new shit. They’re not trying. They’ve succeeded years ago.
I’ve been saying this for a decade with Apple, and then with digital Games. I once lost some games I bought from my digital ps library, just vanished. I had deleted the purchase emails cause it was so long ago, and since they had no record of me owning them on my end, they won’t give them back. You could lose your entire game library that you’ve spent hundreds on, cause you unknowingly broke the terms, and now all your money is gone. At least with a hard copy, nobody is busting your door down and taking your discs. Also why do digital Games cost as much as discs, when they’re essentially leased, you saved the company manufacturing and shipping costs.
Unfortunately, many games nowadays are digital only, especially on PC. The last "physical" game I bought (Mass Effect Andromeda... yeah, I know) was just a box with a key to redeem on Origin. While DRM-free games are a thing, it's not always an option.
businessinsider.com
Aktywne