Not sure what plastic discs have to do with anything when you can leagally buy tons of content from Hulu, Lovefilm, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix and tons of other places digitally with ease.
Congratulations, friend... you have managed to take away the one concern that actually confers a benefit, and replaced it with a bill payable directly to telecom.
You should be a patent attorney.. on the Internet!
I don't know about Lovefilm, but the rest of the solutions you proposed all require an ongoing commitment to pay every month, they don't provide any copy, and they are useless without an additional recurring payment to a third party that was not involved in producing content. You misunderstood my comments about the plastic discs. I hate them because they take up space, but I love them because they can be copied!
Why are there ads in Hulu Plus?
Again, a thousand channels I will never use, and I don't get a copy of the merchandise to keep for myself. What happens when I move out to the boonies and I can't get good internet? Oh yeah, I cancel all of my web-based subscriptions and I can never watch any of my favorite shows again. How about my favorite content providers? Sure, the partners will be paid, 70% of Hulu's revenue goes to... the advertising partners.
OK, I wasn't able to find any hard numbers on how much MrScruff gets for his contribution. But you know, I don't care, if I lose my access when I cancel my credit card and internet subscription. Tell me what ongoing benefit the ISPs provide! New content? No... they just provide peering, and hopefully reliable access, and then they also mail a bill every month. And guess what... it's more than Hulu is charging.
But you're right. They earned that money. The telecom lobbyists and the streaming advertisement providers made sure that I can't legally obtain a copy of anything new for myself, and now I'll have to go on needing them forever, no matter how much favorite content I've amassed into my collection. My archives will never be complete, at least not until I've received next month's internet bill.
edit: well played, I see you can delete your own comment on HN for a limited time. Was responding to a comment about how this kind of thinking will be illegal for some time. Not sure we're at thought police, but I can't remember all of what you said. Thanks for thought-provoking.
I'm guessing from 'Unfortunately' that you're on the side of keeping the information free/available and not the side of selling the same shows to the same customers over and over again as many times as you can.
Sure, you can download them, but you want to keep them when your computer shits the bed? Good luck with that, I hope you had the foresight to de-authorize your machine so your license could be transferred to another one, some time before it crapped out and took your files down with it.
Our fair use rights flew out the window long ago. I liked those. I don't remember the last time I wanted to rent a movie.
How come there's not anyone selling magnet links to their content? It's not like they are any easier to copy than the movies themselves. You could even include a nonce in the files so you can trace back to the people who are sharing illegally.
What if there's something harmful or illegal in your content? Wouldn't it suck if I couldn't share it with my lawyer so he can help me sue you into the ground?
(that's the Royal you... like I said, I still think you're on my side in all of this. played Ingress, res0nat0r?)
I thought about it, and realized how fucked up the idea of including a nonce in a torrent is.
First of all, it would break how torrents currently work. It's not a cloud if everyone is sharing a slightly different file. I don't think you can trick the people and their computers into also sharing the part that allows their influence to be tracked, and still enjoy the benefit of the torrent protocol.
Maybe you could. I don't want to go there.
Second problem with this idea, it would not enjoy the same DMCA protections that CSS offers. (Would it?) It's a federal crime to remove a copyright control. So you put the nonce into the file to identify the buyer, and you sue him when he's caught sharing... no wait, on second thought, you pay him a referral fee, a percent of the revenue that you collect from when you sue the folks who shared under him without paying. I am trying to put a name on it, something that sounds less like a slur than what I'm actually thinking. New breed of Hollywood Jew. There, I said it.
Anyone sharing without a valid nonce could be thrown in jail then, if you can prove that they removed it (in order to share and not be tracked.) I love slippery slopes.
