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Google Will Let You Share Movies, Apps, and Music You Buy With Up To Six People (cnet.com)
Google reportedly plans to introduce Google Play Family Library plan later this month which will enable users to share their Android apps, games, and media purchases with five different people. The feature, which is similar to Apple's Family Sharing plan, is something that many will find super useful. If nothing, you can split the cost of an app or a music album with your friends. CNET reports:It works like this. Everyone in the group will be able to access every single app, video and book that's available to the [primary] account holder. If you decide to let the kids run wild on your media collection, you can even remove specific titles from the library to keep it more kid-friendly, or hide certain artists you might not want to share with others. You don't have to pay extra to sign up for the Google Play Family Library, but you will need a credit card saved to the account for future purchases. To avoid any financial snafus that might come with multiple account users, Google will send a receipt so there aren't any unpleasant (or expensive) surprises.
Voluntarily providing Google even more information about you! Sounds wonderful, where do I sign up?
Yeah really, man! Anybody got 50 cents?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
try to stop me.
This just drives me nuts. For our family we have @lastname.com accounts — I know, weird that our last name is "lastname," right? — and we're not eligible for this reason. So because we pay Google *actual money* for our service, we have to pay *more money* to share videos than people with free @gmail.com accounts.
Of course there are plenty of reasons why a real business might not want to allow this on their @business.com accounts, but Google has them covered: when you have Apps for Work, you can turn off pretty much any subset of Google services for your users. I can make it so that my users can't use Hangouts, for example, or can only use Hangouts with each other. (Of course I don't bother because for our purposes it doesn't matter, but a business might care.) Just give us the same option for this, Google! Let admins turn this off. Or default it to off and let me turn it on!
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Although " You don't have to pay extra to sign up for the Google Play Family Library "
It turns out that if you try and do this now you WILL be stung for the full Family Plan $15/m, so best wait intil the real launch is announced.
Wishes 2016
Modern app appers app apps with other apps, NOT SHARING LUDDITE software like the LUDDITES at LUDDITE Google!
Apps!
This plus YouTube Red means Google's Play service just blow the competition away. Now they just need to re-write all their apps to modern interface standards and they'll have a solid platform! It's not 1990 guys, you're app don't have to work on 56k anymore.
I appreciate the minimalistic code, but not using standardized hotkeys and not using drag and drop or right click is just ridiculously bad interface design at this stage of the game. The gmail text editor is joke.. I don't know how it has stayed that bad for that long.
Simplicity has it's place, but it's childishly simplistic and people want to use this for fully professional uses. Why can't google use Font Size instead of BIGGER smaller. WTF is that. Why does their text box not just have the tools on top like EVERY OTHER ONE EVER. Who told Google we needed them to reinvent the text box with less features?
Dumbing down the entire world so it fits into a smartphone is a really really bad idea people. STOP IT! BAD HUMANS!
Until Google can compete with piracy, I will keep pirating.
Because they just had to figure some way to literally "one-up" Apple.
with anyone I want.
It cost me about $150 CDN to get a non profit SOCAN license of my steamcast station. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be much for for a non profit/hobby on demand station. Just upload all my tracks to a server and anyone I know can now listen to them anytime they want Split that between 10 people and its $15-20 per year.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
About half of what you said makes sense. For example:
> It's not 1990 guys ...
> Why can't google use Font Size instead of BIGGER smaller. WTF is that.
font-size was introduced in html 3.2 January 1997 and deprecated in December of the same year. Why? Because you don't KNOW what font size is appropriate for my eyes on the screen I happen to be looking at right this moment. What you DO know is "this part should be the small print" and "this part should be big print". Larger and smaller are correct. font-size=9 is wrong. It was an experiment, and it took less than a year to realize it was a complete failure.
Might Google (and apparently Apple before them, if I'm reading this right) be encouraging copyright infringement? It used to be that most people probably assumed they can't legally share with anyone (but sometimes you do it anyway). But a lot of people now live in a twisted world where they run DRM-implementing software, and they "buy" files via purchase agreements (EULAs), etc. The purpose of all this stuff is to replace copyright law, but legally, it doesn't exactly. You might have an agreement with Google that their software will let you share with 6 people, but was the copyright holder a party to that agreement? You might be infringing 6 times, with Google committing contributory infringement.
And weirder: suppose the copyright holder is onboard. Let's say it's not copyright infringement, because there's 50 pages of legalese (which all parties have signed in their blood, though the consumer didn't actually read it) which permit the copies. Now what? A person has no idea what is permitted. All they know, is what their software allows or doesn't allow. Wanna copy a file? Try it. If it works, then it was ok.
At that point, it's anybody's guess whether the software actually implements the EULA. But let's just wildly assume the software exactly matches the agreement. You're going to have a growing population totally ignoring copyright law (rather than sometimes choosing to obey, and sometimes disobey). This means they're going to become less and less informed over time. A typical user will simply have no idea what is lawful and what isn't.
And that's fine (ignorance has become an ideal to strive for -- go ask a member of you-know-who-political party), but if the new defacto status quo is "you're permitted to do whatever the software allows" then what happens when someone trained by this new order starts using good software? (Where "good" software always tries to Just Work, never against the user. i.e. Free Software)
The responsibility used to be the consumers, but it'll be delegated to a machine now. But of course, in the eyes of the law, it'll still be the human who is on the hook. A clueless human, by most of today's peoples' standards.
I can't find any way to look at this, which doesn't end up in typical people getting set up to become criminals, waiting for the day they anger the wrong person and the normally-unenforced laws are suddenly enforced.
"Copyright? What's that?"
"It's the thing we've got you on!"
"But I paid for it!"
"Nevertheless, you infringed."
I have tons of movies and shows now that I've purchased through Google. The one major lacking feature, it the ability to sort or organize your content. I want the kid to be able to be in the "kid" profile and only see the kid shows and not be able to choose The Revenant. Just like Netflix has, Google had no foresight on this.
I find this kind of creepy. Couldn't it at least have been ".org"?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Let them buy their own ultrapron!! (Angry Dome).
... you could share that book, cd, dvd, or even floppy set with however many people you liked (or wanted to risk). Now, you can have google count out how much you share, and block you if your rentals are over the limit. Down with possessions! Everything As A Service for everyone! Clouds! Progress! Cloudy progressy goodness!
Or I can buy it at the local store, and then loan it to anyone I want, or even resell it to recoup some of my investment. And there's no danger that Google changes the deal in the future, and I have to pray they don't change it again.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
but you will need a credit card saved to the account for future purchases.
WTF is this? Why can't I just continue to pay for my Google purchases the ways I have been? (Such as purchasing credit when I feel I need it.) I really don't like the idea of saving my credit card information to my Google (or any other) online account. This has numerous disadvantages. I'm concerned about the many hacks that occur to both on-line and brick-and-mortar retailers. And I'm concerned about charges being made against my account that shouldn't be.
Just this week I tried to make a purchase on Vudu with a promotional code that Vudu had sent me in email while logged into my Vudu account on my Roku. I went through the process of selecting and buying a show. But before ever presenting a screen to enter a promo code, Vudu tried to complete the sale through my credit card on file. That is when they found out that the information they had was no longer current. If it had been, I would have ended up being charged for a show that I really didn't want to buy and was only getting because of the promo code that I was sent. Just another good reason that I don't want to enter credit card information until I see what I'm being charged and agree to the purchase, and I don't want that information saved "for later".
There also seems to be the implication that others in my "family" might be able to make purchases on my behalf. Otherwise why does any purchase related change have to be put in place when you create a "family"?
Please don't respond back about getting the unwanted purchases revoked through my credit card company. I've fought charge-back battles before and the credit card companies do like to say "you authorized it" even when the actual charge is bogus. It seems much smarter to not invite the problem in the first place.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It is a RENTAL. Period.
The only difference is whether it's a short term rental, like 48 hours or somesuch, or a long term rental for a few years until: "we are discontinuing our DRM servers". Or try this: "our licensing with the content provider has changed, and what you bought, you can no longer watch.".
Unless you can download a DRM free copy that you can play on any of your devices, then you didn't really BUY anything.
And if you did buy a downloadable DRM free copy, then you already don't have any problem with your immediate household members being able to 'access' the content.
Will people ever learn. There was Microsoft's "Plays For Sure". Which was then discontinued, and everyone's 'purchased' content became locked to their devices -- which probably don't work any longer. Then there was Zune, and the same fate for all of your 'purchased' content. Certain Disney content on Amazon which people had purchased became unplayable because Disney had new exclusive licensing for some of that content that people had previously purchased. And Amazon has 'disappeared' content from devices before, in one instance because Amazon realized that they didn't have a license to 'sell' it to you in the first place.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
If you can control what I do with something after I give you money then I didn't buy it.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
It gets better. I "bought" a book through Google Play. All that actually downloaded was a 150-byte decryption key. The book itself only downloads to their Play reader and for all I know, only the parts you are actively reading at the moment.
"Own it" indeed.
I was helping troubleshoot the tablets my sister had bought for her kids, and noticed that you could access her gmail and text messages from all of them. I asked why she was logged into her Google account on her kids tablets, and she said it was the only way to let the kids use the apps and movies that she'd bought with the account back in the day when all their family had was one Android phone which they gave to keep the (at the time) one kid occupied during car rides.
It's a huge security hole that's needed to be plugged for a while now. If a kid loses their tablet, whoever finds it potentially has access to all your Google stuff.
Or will this be another Google service only available in USA ?
Considering megacorporations continue to use their financial power to keep extending copyright I'll use my power to continue responding to that by just stealing all the content I would like to possess. Thanks, but no thanks, Google. You can stick your idea right up your mom's ass.
It is a government spy apparatus. Use duckduckgo.com
but with verbiage like "many will find super useful" and "split the cost of an app or a music album with your friends", TFS reads like an advert.
Note to editors: I understand the need to generate revenue, but fer chrissake, when you've got something that can actually be written like a tech story, don't turn it into a fscking Slashvertisement!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Google will, 'let', me share with up to 6 people?
Fuck you Google.
When computers stop being able to process, store, retrieve, transmit, and copy information; maybe I will take you up on that offer.
Until then, I do believe you can go to hell while I continue to use a fecking COMPUTER to do, oh you know, COMPUTER-Y type stuff like, uhh, process, store, retrieve, copy, and transmit information!
I will congratulate you and the likes of netflix, hulu, amazon, and many many others on using a combination of exploitative techniques to manufacture convenience of access to entertainment, though. *shrug* touche~