What's the objection? Is the infrastructure to support work-from-home too expensive? I could see that-- there's not really much sensitive or intensive that would involve higher-dollar robust connections and support structure for something like serving up course materials, so if you still want people available but not on-site, give them something at least somewhat worthwhile to chew on.
but then freedom to circumvent hardware was always a bit dicey as a software freedom.
Although I agree with some amount of your stance, I must object to this. The freedom to do whatever you want with your own bought-and-paid for technology (with the exception that you not backfeed damage into or steal content out from anyone else's outside system) should belong to the person who buys something. It's your stuff!
Unions were vitally necessary organizations, working to protect and promote workers' fundamental rights. Unions are vitally necessary organizations, working to protect and promote workers' fundamental rights.
These sentences need not be mutually true. Yes, in their time, unions helped correct a number of glaring fundamental injustices, and they helped to bring a bit of sanity and equity into the worker/company relationship. I'd even agree that there's a real chance that backsliding of these rights could happen if unions were abolished. Still, though, the automotive unions sped their own demise. A strictly adversarial relationship with the "company" and political power-grabbing sped realistic compensation demands into blindly overzealous bread-and-circus demands that choked off the system that employed them (as well as much popular sympathy).
Compare some modern union versus non-union policies and benefits: Although some benefits and terms might be reasonable-- and one might reasonably say that the non-union worker is the one being slighted-- many other union benefits and terms are so obviously and stratospherically ludicrous compared to reasonable market-set terms that it's no great stretch to say that these unions' workers are operating in an unsustainable la-la land. Then, once the unsustainable demands on the company finally crack it, it's just all that further a fall back to the real world for formerly overpaid and now over-extended out-of-work auto workers.
We could really use a Ross Perot type of election right now. Political stance aside, the next election would be perfect for a self-backed third-party candidate with the resources to actually wedge themselves into the realistic political arena.
I've often heard that, aside from cockpit device interference, allowing widespread cellphone use on a quickly-moving plane with a wide range of "view" would overload the infrastructure on the ground, with the cellular network having to cope with handing off calls from tower to tower much more often, and at much more rapid a rate.
Given that cellphones aren't outright banned on planes (just having them on is prohibited), television is sometimes available on flights, and by the time you're on TV, you'd most likely know something is up, the "panic prevention" bit sounds fishy.
The only thing I'd watch out for there is malicious "honeypot" APs. Granted, 99% (according to a Bureau of Bullshit Statistics report from 2005) of these people are just ignorant or willfully open, but given the amount of passwords and information that my computer can spew out-- even in cookies and connection attempts-- I'm always wary of hooking my machine up to any network I don't know.
That said-- if you're too lazy to do the simple setup to stop your router from spewing "C'mon in!" invitations across the open airwaves, you shouldn't be complaining when they do. If you're too stupid, you shouldn't be using the technology that's obviously over your head.
I think the problem stems from two issues: 1.) WiFi, or the tech attached to it, needs a more verbose handshake and identification protocol. The SSID and "openness" is just not explanatory enough for the consumer dipshit market. 2.) The question of encryption should be framed in more of a "Turning off open access" than a "Turning on security" idea. It would help those who wanted to open their WiFi, while encouraging security for those who didn't.
I'm just afraid that such precedent of "unauthorized access" could leak into things like the Web, and make things like deep-linking or finding "hidden" un-linked-to pages into an offensive act.
I'd say "In my opinion, Michael Jackson is a Child Molester" still falls along the lines of just tacking "in my opinion" onto a factual statement. "Michael Jackson is a Child Molester" is a factual statement provable completely without the speaker's feelings-- "child molester" is a universally-definable state of being. "I wouldn't be surprised if he were a child molester" or "In my opinion, he's certainly capable of child molestation" would be more "opinion" statements-- there is no provable/disprovable statement there that relies on anything but the speaker's perceptions.
If you have paper-trails that are shown to the voter-- even unmarked and nonsequential paper-trails-- there is a physical record that the voter can verify and "throw a flag" on if it comes out incorrect. That, and pre-testing and examination of the process can make voting secure enough that anonymity need not be given up.
Different strokes for different folks. Some might be more adept at convincing than hacking. Also, with the exception of the actual coercion (which can easily be performed offsite), the bribe-and-examine method utilizes legal methods that don't involve suspicious "breaking in" to anything.
I think it would really depend on attitude and where they drew the line. If it were something with larger tracks, where a full, say, third of the school was in each section, I doubt there would be much haranguing. If it was one class of "exceptionals" that the faculty visibly fawned over, I could see there being retaliatory shit by others who felt slighted.
Excerpting and paraphrasing aren't a problem, as far as they are necessary to disseminate the facts. The law realizes that stifling the dissemination of facts is destructive to society, and that's why fair use exists. However, verbatim copying of a news article also duplicates value-added aspects of the work which are not essential to the information, or the subsequent societal benefit. These aspects being, namely, the work and expertise of the particular writer and the resulting specific description of them.
If the distributor wanted, they could make a "news round-up" consisting of cited and paraphrased (rewritten) summaries of interesting articles, but just duping them and sending them out-- especially in a mass-mail manner-- is over the line.
The problem is that you can't sort the marginally interested from the opportunists who may have paid, when there's a choice between free and paid. To say that there's only lukewarm demand, and that's what's driving piracy over purchase, overlooks the fact that it's still competing, even in the market of people that may have paid, with the same content sans price.
They are paying in units of "risk of getting caught" which are currently valued far lower than the currency units used to otherwise obtain that music / software / movie / whatever.
A rare, and true, point. The question is whether one has the grounds to call foul when their number comes up.
It's amazing what you can do when you don't have to... y'know... MAKE THE FILM.
That said, I do think that the "industries" could take cues from people like the competitive movie pirates or places like AllOfMP3. I've seen faint sparks... glimmers of hope around, for instance, the independent and small-label music distributors. Things like adding perks (CD-ROM portions, music videos, documentary DVDs) to increase legitimate-format sales rather than the oft-hurdled roadblocks to prevent piracy. (I'm not sure about the indie film industry... not really as much of an aficionado.)
I think the whole argument is a complexity issue. The optimal level of regulation for business is unknown, argued-over, skewed by perspective, gray, mushy, and changes based on the prevailing circumstances.
(Granted, this stance is just a cop-out from taking a stance, but I still think it's rather true.)
I get the feeling it's something like this. TSA's minding their business, doing their jobs, keeping things relatively secure. Then, boom, 9/11 happens and everyone's looking at them. They go nuts, run around screaming, "AIEEE!!! Our pants are down! We've got to do something about this! We've got to do anything about this! Make a list of things... something, anything, about this... and DO THEM!" While they're running around fumbling and screaming, lightning strikes, the polarity of the earth changes, and their face is stuck that way forever... and sadly, the sanity still hasn't drained back in.
That, and the promos for the 11:00 news need simple, gripping, decisive solutions, or someone's ass cleanly on a platter if something goes wrong.
I'm curious what the next hairbrained terrorist scheme will be, and what sort of totally senseless travel restrictions will be added as a result. Any ideas?
The British Underground thing was an effective departure, as was the Spanish train bombing, but the whole crashing-cars-into-the-terminal thing was... an odd choice to say the least. I'm just surprised there haven't been completely, wildly different vectors of attack, given especially that anything involved in transportation, air travel especially, is too eagle-eyed and bothersome to be easily effective.
Then again, life often shows that most hackers are script-kiddies, most burglars are morons, terrorists rarely come at it imaginatively, and those who could design the perfect crime (or even "better") often have more fulfilling jobs designing something else.
Running servers, encoding media, and delivering files are all overhead borne by info-media renters. Granted, they tend to be less costly overheads. That lesser cost, though, is often passed along to consumers in the form of options, enhancements, and price. Overhead and physical plastic isn't everything-- there is still value injected into the bit-stream by the work of creating it, and value extracted from it by the entertainment or information it provides. As the overhead costs diminish, this value should still be accounted for.
The encumbrance that limits the value of a rental versus a purchase is physicality-- the media is tied to a physical object, and basic laws of property, along with your contract with the rental outlet, mean that you are held liable if you fail to return the physical object. This encumbrance has side-effects which benefit the rental houses and the producers-- namely, that a person must either re-rent from the rental house or buy a copy of the media (short of other outlier methods like recording TV) in order to obtain further or permanent use. This fact is compensated for by the fact that renting content for a single-use period nearly always costs far less than buying. There is a market for this lesser service because many people need only single-use value from some content, and enjoy paying a lesser rental rate.
Sales are the same with digital media. A producer may set a purchase price based on the value of bestowing the benefits of the content upon the consumer, thus subdividing the recoupment of the cost of production and rewarding a job well done. The media is delivered in response to reciept of the purchase price, just as with physical media. The lesser overhead of the purchase price may result in price cuts or greater features, but in any case, the sale means that consumer and producer have agreed upon what price is fair. A sale is made. Information-only media's copy-based nature, however, unbinds it from the single-object nature inherent in physical goods, and given the laughable flimsiness of "the honor system", any rent-and-return systems (or rent-and-delete-the-copy systems) would be unsupportable without artificial restrictions.
Still, though, a market exists that does not wish to pay purchase price to use content once. It would not be feasible for producers to try and support this "low price/one time" market by selling all purchases at a lower, rental-like cost. However, by artificially restricting the media, they can retain the potential "value" in the fact that the viewer must re-rent or buy to re-watch, as in physical rental, and put out a "value-lessened" product at a lower but still mutually fair, "value-lessened" price.
It's complex, and a bit abstract, but it's not simply anticompetitive or stupid. Basically, it boils down to: Content, and the scope of its use, has value. If you want them to offer you a lesser-cost "rental" price, then you ought to accept the lesser-value "rental" terms. DRM simply enforces that, because simple promises won't.
Although...
My thinking here is pretty well limited to the companies that overtly advertise their services as access time or rental. I am opposed to DRM such as FairPlay or WMDRM on sites that, for all intents and purposes, make you think you're buying the music, especially if you're paying a purchase-worthy price without added value. Granted, everyone should read the purchase terms, and on an individual level I don't have sympathy for those who don't, but fleecing the stupid still is poor taste and practice.
It's not easy for me to do a duplicate, I should have to buy a tape, a player/recorder, it takes time,... So, I prefer to pay for it, consume it, and then return it.
Pure information rental is not at all a service to me.
I still don't see the difference-- at least not one that would justify one being a service and the other not-- between renting information delivered on a disc or tape, and renting information delivered on the wire. It's the same content, merely a difference in delivery method. DRM protection, in rental instances, serves merely to enforce the terms in the same way that the physical nature of a tape or disc, and associated physical property ownership laws, more naturally do.
You are an author? Then, sell to me your goods and let me do what I want with it, or else shut up. I can surely live without it.
If you live that attitude, and do live without objectionable content, I applaud you for that.
The "creator" (I prefer author) is rewarded for what he does, not for how many times I listen to his work. DRM is not here to protect author's rights, only to protect ditributors' money.
Distributors don't deserve to be paid? If they're being overpaid, or not providing a service, then let authors go elsewhere. The authors and distributors made an agreement. The distributor is an agent of the author. Both are partly to blame for the final product. Either the authors lack judgement or the distributors are providing a service. In either case, the author is neither forced nor free from responsibility for the actions of their distributor.
The author, instead, should be glad that I listen to his works many times. It is good pubblicity for him.
Unless you're the author's publicist, what place do you have determining what actions are best or desired for that author's publicity? Also, what good is "free publicity" if the action you're trying to promote is waylaid out from under you?
"Rental" of informations (easily copiable goods) in the information age, is not much different than selling a software with a closed license.
It should be avoided. It should be illegal.
Err... Why?
Rental, and other temporary agreements, open a channel for people to pay less for products/benefits than they would normally on the basis that they use it for only as long as it immediately suits them. In the case of ephemeral information rental, similar distribution costs and methods of "buy" versus "rent" may, at first glance, make separate renting terms and prices look unfair and artificial. Some of the price/value trade-off is still there though, even in information-rental. The producer can be convinced to trade for a lower cost-- and the consumer can receive it for less-- because not as much of the producer's value is given away in a rental. For instance: the producer still retains the opportunity to sell a copy of the content to the consumer some time in the future, or perhaps rent it again.
And no, it's not exactly the same than a VCR rental, which is not SO easy to copy.
So should the rights of a creator be wholly bound by the difficulties of their media or the strength of their DRM?
No... this is pretty much out-and-outright a rental, presented as such in both the overt advertisement and the fine print. It's up-front explained that you get timed amount of ephemeral streaming video, monthly, as part of your contract with Netflix. To say they're selling you anything is like saying that because you can get a video from Blockbuster for a night, you've "bought" it, and you've got the legal and moral rights to rip a copy-- after all, the ones and zeros are in your house... and if you have gone that far, why not just discard all pretense, fire up BT, and rip them off directly.
If you agree beforehand, though, that it's not an unrestricted "sale", does it apply? It sounds like it's still legally dubious. From your link:
Some U.S. case law allows manufacturers to restrict the first-sale doctrine by a clickwrap contract or other agreement. The case law is conflicting, however, and the legality of allowing first-sale doctrine rights to be abrogated by contract has been questioned.
Slashdot Mirror
What's the objection? Is the infrastructure to support work-from-home too expensive? I could see that-- there's not really much sensitive or intensive that would involve higher-dollar robust connections and support structure for something like serving up course materials, so if you still want people available but not on-site, give them something at least somewhat worthwhile to chew on.
Patch CD. See: Bart's PE.
but then freedom to circumvent hardware was always a bit dicey as a software freedom.
Although I agree with some amount of your stance, I must object to this. The freedom to do whatever you want with your own bought-and-paid for technology (with the exception that you not backfeed damage into or steal content out from anyone else's outside system) should belong to the person who buys something. It's your stuff!
Unions were vitally necessary organizations, working to protect and promote workers' fundamental rights.
Unions are vitally necessary organizations, working to protect and promote workers' fundamental rights.
These sentences need not be mutually true. Yes, in their time, unions helped correct a number of glaring fundamental injustices, and they helped to bring a bit of sanity and equity into the worker/company relationship. I'd even agree that there's a real chance that backsliding of these rights could happen if unions were abolished. Still, though, the automotive unions sped their own demise. A strictly adversarial relationship with the "company" and political power-grabbing sped realistic compensation demands into blindly overzealous bread-and-circus demands that choked off the system that employed them (as well as much popular sympathy).
Compare some modern union versus non-union policies and benefits: Although some benefits and terms might be reasonable-- and one might reasonably say that the non-union worker is the one being slighted-- many other union benefits and terms are so obviously and stratospherically ludicrous compared to reasonable market-set terms that it's no great stretch to say that these unions' workers are operating in an unsustainable la-la land. Then, once the unsustainable demands on the company finally crack it, it's just all that further a fall back to the real world for formerly overpaid and now over-extended out-of-work auto workers.
We could really use a Ross Perot type of election right now. Political stance aside, the next election would be perfect for a self-backed third-party candidate with the resources to actually wedge themselves into the realistic political arena.
I've often heard that, aside from cockpit device interference, allowing widespread cellphone use on a quickly-moving plane with a wide range of "view" would overload the infrastructure on the ground, with the cellular network having to cope with handing off calls from tower to tower much more often, and at much more rapid a rate.
Given that cellphones aren't outright banned on planes (just having them on is prohibited), television is sometimes available on flights, and by the time you're on TV, you'd most likely know something is up, the "panic prevention" bit sounds fishy.
The only thing I'd watch out for there is malicious "honeypot" APs. Granted, 99% (according to a Bureau of Bullshit Statistics report from 2005) of these people are just ignorant or willfully open, but given the amount of passwords and information that my computer can spew out-- even in cookies and connection attempts-- I'm always wary of hooking my machine up to any network I don't know.
That said-- if you're too lazy to do the simple setup to stop your router from spewing "C'mon in!" invitations across the open airwaves, you shouldn't be complaining when they do. If you're too stupid, you shouldn't be using the technology that's obviously over your head.
I think the problem stems from two issues: 1.) WiFi, or the tech attached to it, needs a more verbose handshake and identification protocol. The SSID and "openness" is just not explanatory enough for the consumer dipshit market. 2.) The question of encryption should be framed in more of a "Turning off open access" than a "Turning on security" idea. It would help those who wanted to open their WiFi, while encouraging security for those who didn't.
I'm just afraid that such precedent of "unauthorized access" could leak into things like the Web, and make things like deep-linking or finding "hidden" un-linked-to pages into an offensive act.
I'd say "In my opinion, Michael Jackson is a Child Molester" still falls along the lines of just tacking "in my opinion" onto a factual statement. "Michael Jackson is a Child Molester" is a factual statement provable completely without the speaker's feelings-- "child molester" is a universally-definable state of being. "I wouldn't be surprised if he were a child molester" or "In my opinion, he's certainly capable of child molestation" would be more "opinion" statements-- there is no provable/disprovable statement there that relies on anything but the speaker's perceptions.
If you have paper-trails that are shown to the voter-- even unmarked and nonsequential paper-trails-- there is a physical record that the voter can verify and "throw a flag" on if it comes out incorrect. That, and pre-testing and examination of the process can make voting secure enough that anonymity need not be given up.
Different strokes for different folks. Some might be more adept at convincing than hacking. Also, with the exception of the actual coercion (which can easily be performed offsite), the bribe-and-examine method utilizes legal methods that don't involve suspicious "breaking in" to anything.
I think it would really depend on attitude and where they drew the line. If it were something with larger tracks, where a full, say, third of the school was in each section, I doubt there would be much haranguing. If it was one class of "exceptionals" that the faculty visibly fawned over, I could see there being retaliatory shit by others who felt slighted.
Dark City, a bit.
Excerpting and paraphrasing aren't a problem, as far as they are necessary to disseminate the facts. The law realizes that stifling the dissemination of facts is destructive to society, and that's why fair use exists. However, verbatim copying of a news article also duplicates value-added aspects of the work which are not essential to the information, or the subsequent societal benefit. These aspects being, namely, the work and expertise of the particular writer and the resulting specific description of them.
If the distributor wanted, they could make a "news round-up" consisting of cited and paraphrased (rewritten) summaries of interesting articles, but just duping them and sending them out-- especially in a mass-mail manner-- is over the line.
The problem is that you can't sort the marginally interested from the opportunists who may have paid, when there's a choice between free and paid. To say that there's only lukewarm demand, and that's what's driving piracy over purchase, overlooks the fact that it's still competing, even in the market of people that may have paid, with the same content sans price.
They are paying in units of "risk of getting caught" which are currently valued far lower than the currency units used to otherwise obtain that music / software / movie / whatever.
A rare, and true, point. The question is whether one has the grounds to call foul when their number comes up.
Hmm... so it seems. Well, let me be the first to say "Mod parent informative."
It's amazing what you can do when you don't have to... y'know... MAKE THE FILM.
That said, I do think that the "industries" could take cues from people like the competitive movie pirates or places like AllOfMP3. I've seen faint sparks... glimmers of hope around, for instance, the independent and small-label music distributors. Things like adding perks (CD-ROM portions, music videos, documentary DVDs) to increase legitimate-format sales rather than the oft-hurdled roadblocks to prevent piracy. (I'm not sure about the indie film industry... not really as much of an aficionado.)
Hear, hear.
I think the whole argument is a complexity issue. The optimal level of regulation for business is unknown, argued-over, skewed by perspective, gray, mushy, and changes based on the prevailing circumstances.
(Granted, this stance is just a cop-out from taking a stance, but I still think it's rather true.)
I get the feeling it's something like this. TSA's minding their business, doing their jobs, keeping things relatively secure. Then, boom, 9/11 happens and everyone's looking at them. They go nuts, run around screaming, "AIEEE!!! Our pants are down! We've got to do something about this! We've got to do anything about this! Make a list of things... something, anything, about this... and DO THEM!" While they're running around fumbling and screaming, lightning strikes, the polarity of the earth changes, and their face is stuck that way forever... and sadly, the sanity still hasn't drained back in.
That, and the promos for the 11:00 news need simple, gripping, decisive solutions, or someone's ass cleanly on a platter if something goes wrong.
I'm curious what the next hairbrained terrorist scheme will be, and what sort of totally senseless travel restrictions will be added as a result. Any ideas?
The British Underground thing was an effective departure, as was the Spanish train bombing, but the whole crashing-cars-into-the-terminal thing was... an odd choice to say the least. I'm just surprised there haven't been completely, wildly different vectors of attack, given especially that anything involved in transportation, air travel especially, is too eagle-eyed and bothersome to be easily effective.
Then again, life often shows that most hackers are script-kiddies, most burglars are morons, terrorists rarely come at it imaginatively, and those who could design the perfect crime (or even "better") often have more fulfilling jobs designing something else.
Running servers, encoding media, and delivering files are all overhead borne by info-media renters. Granted, they tend to be less costly overheads. That lesser cost, though, is often passed along to consumers in the form of options, enhancements, and price. Overhead and physical plastic isn't everything-- there is still value injected into the bit-stream by the work of creating it, and value extracted from it by the entertainment or information it provides. As the overhead costs diminish, this value should still be accounted for.
The encumbrance that limits the value of a rental versus a purchase is physicality-- the media is tied to a physical object, and basic laws of property, along with your contract with the rental outlet, mean that you are held liable if you fail to return the physical object. This encumbrance has side-effects which benefit the rental houses and the producers-- namely, that a person must either re-rent from the rental house or buy a copy of the media (short of other outlier methods like recording TV) in order to obtain further or permanent use. This fact is compensated for by the fact that renting content for a single-use period nearly always costs far less than buying. There is a market for this lesser service because many people need only single-use value from some content, and enjoy paying a lesser rental rate.
Sales are the same with digital media. A producer may set a purchase price based on the value of bestowing the benefits of the content upon the consumer, thus subdividing the recoupment of the cost of production and rewarding a job well done. The media is delivered in response to reciept of the purchase price, just as with physical media. The lesser overhead of the purchase price may result in price cuts or greater features, but in any case, the sale means that consumer and producer have agreed upon what price is fair. A sale is made. Information-only media's copy-based nature, however, unbinds it from the single-object nature inherent in physical goods, and given the laughable flimsiness of "the honor system", any rent-and-return systems (or rent-and-delete-the-copy systems) would be unsupportable without artificial restrictions.
Still, though, a market exists that does not wish to pay purchase price to use content once. It would not be feasible for producers to try and support this "low price/one time" market by selling all purchases at a lower, rental-like cost. However, by artificially restricting the media, they can retain the potential "value" in the fact that the viewer must re-rent or buy to re-watch, as in physical rental, and put out a "value-lessened" product at a lower but still mutually fair, "value-lessened" price.
It's complex, and a bit abstract, but it's not simply anticompetitive or stupid. Basically, it boils down to: Content, and the scope of its use, has value. If you want them to offer you a lesser-cost "rental" price, then you ought to accept the lesser-value "rental" terms. DRM simply enforces that, because simple promises won't.
Although...
My thinking here is pretty well limited to the companies that overtly advertise their services as access time or rental. I am opposed to DRM such as FairPlay or WMDRM on sites that, for all intents and purposes, make you think you're buying the music, especially if you're paying a purchase-worthy price without added value. Granted, everyone should read the purchase terms, and on an individual level I don't have sympathy for those who don't, but fleecing the stupid still is poor taste and practice.
VCR rental is a service to me. So I pay for it.
... So, I prefer to pay for it, consume it, and then return it.
It's not easy for me to do a duplicate, I should have to buy a tape, a player/recorder, it takes time,
Pure information rental is not at all a service to me.
I still don't see the difference-- at least not one that would justify one being a service and the other not-- between renting information delivered on a disc or tape, and renting information delivered on the wire. It's the same content, merely a difference in delivery method. DRM protection, in rental instances, serves merely to enforce the terms in the same way that the physical nature of a tape or disc, and associated physical property ownership laws, more naturally do.
You are an author? Then, sell to me your goods and let me do what I want with it, or else shut up. I can surely live without it.
If you live that attitude, and do live without objectionable content, I applaud you for that.
The "creator" (I prefer author) is rewarded for what he does, not for how many times I listen to his work. DRM is not here to protect author's rights, only to protect ditributors' money.
Distributors don't deserve to be paid? If they're being overpaid, or not providing a service, then let authors go elsewhere. The authors and distributors made an agreement. The distributor is an agent of the author. Both are partly to blame for the final product. Either the authors lack judgement or the distributors are providing a service. In either case, the author is neither forced nor free from responsibility for the actions of their distributor.
The author, instead, should be glad that I listen to his works many times. It is good pubblicity for him.
Unless you're the author's publicist, what place do you have determining what actions are best or desired for that author's publicity? Also, what good is "free publicity" if the action you're trying to promote is waylaid out from under you?
Wake up!
Yes?
"Rental" of informations (easily copiable goods) in the information age, is not much different than selling a software with a closed license.
It should be avoided. It should be illegal.
Err... Why?
Rental, and other temporary agreements, open a channel for people to pay less for products/benefits than they would normally on the basis that they use it for only as long as it immediately suits them. In the case of ephemeral information rental, similar distribution costs and methods of "buy" versus "rent" may, at first glance, make separate renting terms and prices look unfair and artificial. Some of the price/value trade-off is still there though, even in information-rental. The producer can be convinced to trade for a lower cost-- and the consumer can receive it for less-- because not as much of the producer's value is given away in a rental. For instance: the producer still retains the opportunity to sell a copy of the content to the consumer some time in the future, or perhaps rent it again.
And no, it's not exactly the same than a VCR rental, which is not SO easy to copy.
So should the rights of a creator be wholly bound by the difficulties of their media or the strength of their DRM?
Woops... looks like I should've been up a level there or something.
No... this is pretty much out-and-outright a rental, presented as such in both the overt advertisement and the fine print. It's up-front explained that you get timed amount of ephemeral streaming video, monthly, as part of your contract with Netflix. To say they're selling you anything is like saying that because you can get a video from Blockbuster for a night, you've "bought" it, and you've got the legal and moral rights to rip a copy-- after all, the ones and zeros are in your house... and if you have gone that far, why not just discard all pretense, fire up BT, and rip them off directly.
If you agree beforehand, though, that it's not an unrestricted "sale", does it apply? It sounds like it's still legally dubious. From your link:
Some U.S. case law allows manufacturers to restrict the first-sale doctrine by a clickwrap contract or other agreement. The case law is conflicting, however, and the legality of allowing first-sale doctrine rights to be abrogated by contract has been questioned.
Such as?