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Why is it legal to buy and sell used books/discs but illegal to buy and sell used digital files? (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by _number8_@lemmy.world to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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this contradiction always confused me. either way the official company is "losing a sale" and not getting the money, right?

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[-] randomthin2332@lemmy.world 67 points 9 months ago

There's a few things about this

Many times you don't own the digital good, you subscribe to it. No I'm not joking, that's why services can usually take it away at any time. You normally own "a licence to play it on a single PC" or similar.
This isnt apples to oranges per se. Selling digital goods is fine, it's copying it. Similar to how photocopying a book and selling it would not be okay.
It's important to note there is a narrative push by companies too. They spend lots of money putting videos on every DVD saying "downloading is stealing" because if society thinks piracy and stealing is the same, it helps them litigate and make more money.
Your idea of a lost sale is a hard one, from a media company point of view, it's about making money. So if you can make people believe "a download is a lost sale" or "sharing a digital file is a lot sale" etc, then you can use that to sue individuals, isps, sharing sites, search engines etc and make more and more money while also having more power over your product.

[-] crossmr@kbin.social 14 points 9 months ago

if you live in the EU you own your digital purchases.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 21 points 9 months ago

It's kind of not tested though.

If you've never been given the option to download it and save it and use it from there, how would you "own" it if the streaming service takes it offline?

If you can't transfer ownership of something, or have it past the lifespan of the shop you bought it from, do you really own it? I would say not.

[-] Squizzy@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

That's not the ownership though, that's a subscription to a service. Ownership is something like buying songs on iTunes not listening to them on Apple music.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 points 9 months ago

You can buy individual movies on Amazon without a subscription. This doesn't mean you own it. If they stop hosting it, it's gone.

[-] Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

But that is where the difference is, that's not streaming or at least not as the term is used. That was a purchase of a specific title.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 points 9 months ago

streaming

noun

a method of transmitting or receiving data (especially video and audio material) over a computer network as a steady, continuous flow, allowing playback to start while the rest of the data is still being received.

Whether it's subscribed, "purchased" or free, if you don't have the full file to copy and do what you want with it, it's streaming.