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pelagicAustral | on: Xbox goes down. You can't play games you own on disc
This is the same effect of wanting to watch an old film... If you want to do it the legit way, you will have to face all kind of hurdles, starting from finding a service provider that might have the film, then forget about all the modern audience "edits" they put on these things, at times the quality isn't even good, the audio tracks are messed up...

So you either give these jackals at least 30 to 60 minutes of your life (plus money) for the luxury of using their crap services and obtaining a half-assed version of what you want, or you just go to good old Forum McTorrent and get what you actually want for free.

schnevets | parent | next
The streaming service is a Cathedral: You've paid your tithe to the temple of HBO Max? Marvelous, please come in, my child and gaze upon our wonders! What? James Cameron's True Lies? It is not in our collection, please remain here and we can watch Commando together! It's just as good!

The digital copy is a Bazaar: You wander the booths of Prime Video, iTunes, and... Fandago!?! They assure you their copy of True Lies is the best! Ignore that other booth... you may save $2 but are you certain that video will still exist in a year?

And the whole time you know that just under the bazaar is the Underground/Black Market where all is preserved and all can be had, but you'll need to work for it.

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trompetenaccoun | parent | next
From a moral PoV pirating old movies isn't a big issue, especially in cases where the original makers are already dead. At that point you're only feeding Hollywood bosses, shareholders and decendants. Same as torrenting music from dead artists. I don't care for Jimi Hendrix' greedy sister or 'Authentic Brands Group', which owns the rights to Elvis Presley's music. These people can create their own art instead of living off other people's work.
mawadev | root | parent | next
but enough about anthropic
ciupicri | root | parent | next
What if Jimi Hendrix wanted for his sister to benefit from his work?
ndriscoll | root | parent | next
Hendrix has been dead for twice the length that copyright originally lasted, and for longer than the copyright period at the time he was alive (i.e. during his life when he was assessing the economic fairness of creating his music, he would've expected his work to already be public domain today). My daughter is older than her grandmother was when that music was written. Why would we care any more than e.g. what Francis Scott Key wanted?

A decent proxy for the maximum appropriate length of copyright might be when the next generation starts making those edits or disclaimers for changing culture (so the original is no longer considered appropriate for current markets), so at most ~20 years or so. One generation, and then it is history/heritage to pass on (or critique, as the case may be).

whycome | root | parent | next
Who made his guitar? It seems like he made all his art on the back of someone else’s work… they should be getting royalties for every track made with their product

(I’m pointing out the absurdity of trying to assign ownership within a system of shared creation)

ciupicri | root | parent
I don't think that the guitar manufacturer asked for royalties.

On the other hand there are video cameras that you can't use for commercial purposes because they lack the appropriate video codec license from MPEG-LA :-) (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42735824)

inigyou | root | parent
Too bad because she isn't either way. It's all going to shareholders and top executives.
autoexec | root | parent
If we had a sane copyright system everything older than 10 years would be in the public domain
wbl | parent | next
Physical DVD is the way. Praise Criterion
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dwedge | parent
I don't know if I agree with you with this example. Sure it's annoying to find a streaming service but once done it generally works. Usually true with a film or TV show through the "forums" too, but not always. Sometimes it's the wrong episode, sometimes it's the wrong language, sometimes one particular show keeps buffering even for no obvious reason. And even though it's quite rare, you never know until you're sat with your wife or friends watching it, because who checks the show in advance?
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