[WorldMaker]

I think digital asset law is a hugely under-explored issue. I think one of the biggest fights that currently is hugely emblematic of the overall problem and going to surprise a lot of people in the near-ish future: inheritance. Can you inherit your parents accounts if they pass? Could you play their PSN games and watch their Movies Anywhere movies?

Right now there's no protection for that. None of the major digital services directly support transferal of licenses and most of them directly forbid it in their terms of services.

GDPR got some pressure from some of the EU members to explore the issue and GDPR itself wound up punting the ball back to individual countries for now rather than wade into digital asset protections/inheritance.

[ryandrake]

This should not be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Tech companies have conducted a sustained campaign to water down the notion of ownership to the point where it is meaningless and it’s impossible to truly own a digital good. You don’t own “your” software, you license it and that license can be revoked. You don’t own “your” Netflix account, your access to it is at Netflix’s pleasure. Most of you don’t even own “your” Email address, you are one account suspension away from losing it. Even self-hosters are dependent on the mercy of their domain name registrar ultimately.

I don’t know what the solution is. The free market obviously has no incentive to fix this. Users won’t vote with their wallet until they get burned and then it’s too late.

[xvector]

This is part of why I bought my own NAS. All my movies and TV are downloaded to the NAS before I view them. Once Lidarr has support for Spotify imports I’ll be hosting all of my own music too.

I can stream all this content too - the experience is not much different from Netflix or Spotify and the content is usually much higher quality (lossless audio and higher bitrate video). The experience is more private too - no analytics on what you watch, no one harvesting you for ads.

I feel so much secure truly “owning” my content than having it bound to some service that can disappear at any time, along with the content on it. I’ve lost countless songs and videos due to Netflix or a music service’a contract ending.

For data resilience and redundancy, just perform encrypted backups to your cloud service of choice.

[conradev]

> All my movies and TV are downloaded to the NAS before I view them

> I feel so much secure truly “owning” my content

Do you actually purchase the content? If so, where do you buy it from? Is it even possible to purchase DRM-free content from major studios online?

For music, I can purchase music DRM-free from the iTunes Store or Bandcamp and actually own it, which is awesome.

[cocacola1]

I just rip my Blu-Rays and stream them through Plex.

[gruez]

considering nearly all commercial blu-rays are protected with AACS (which you have to bypass to rip), what you're doing violates the DMCA. also, there's a growing amount of content from streaming services (netfilx/prime originals) that's not available on blu-ray and is not trivial to rip.

[shakna]

However, many regions allow format shifting, which can overrule that particular part of the DMCA. Though the rules are, again, regional.

[paulie_a]

Who cares if it violates the dmca? And honestly it is simply easier to just pirate the content vs ripping it, there are literally no consequences. And yes it is trivial to rip from streaming services.

[celticninja]

DMCA only applies in the US, making copies of items you own for personal use is legal in the UK for example.

[namanyayg]

I am trying to set up my own such NAS, currently using Plex to manage movies & TV and for streaming on my PS4. Haven't figured out a solution for music and just use Spotify. Any software you can advise to help me create a better setup?

[xvector]

Movies: I use Radarr. Radarr searches public movie databases for movies, and then talks to another piece of software I use called Jackett to actually initiate the download. Jackett searches for and obtains torrents from your favorite (completely legal of course) trackers.

The end UI is super simple. Search for a movie. Click Add. The software takes case of the rest. It automatically downloads the movie and replaces it with a higher quality version when one is available.

TV: Switch out Radarr for Sonarr above.

Music: Still working on this, but set up an MPD server on the NAS and listen using an MPD client on mobile. A good client seems to be Rigelian for iOS.

All super easy to set up. All the software is dockerized (check the linuxserver docker repo for most of this) and secure to access - set up a VPN server on your NAS and use a client like Tunnelblick on Mac or OpenVPN on iOS to access it.

So now I can have lunch with my coworkers, and if we're talking about a movie that sounds interesting, I open up Radarr on my phone (it has a nice mobile web interface), search and click download. It'll be ready for viewing in all its Blu-Ray HDR10 7.1 surround-sound glory by the time I get home.

Some Docker images you might find useful:

1. https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/sonarr/

2. https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/radarr/

3. https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/jackett/

4. https://hub.docker.com/r/haugene/transmission-openvpn/

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I'm surprised at all the recommendations for Plex here considering its subscription model. It's a good product but I recently switched to Kodi and it offers all of the functionality I need and then some. It doesn't seem to randomly lose access to my NAS like Plex did either.

[29083011397778]

I've been using Airsonic for music and podcasts, hosted on a headless Linux server. Supports caching, gapless playback,and more. DSub is a pretty solid client for android, with the Play Store version supporting Android auto and casting to chromecast. Everything's FOSS, too

[ryandrake]

I use a computer running FreeNAS with a shared NFS amount for the audio and video content. You can use SMB (Windows shares) too. I use a low powered set top box and a Mac Mini both running Kodi as clients. Works great.

[WorldMaker]

Why rent with Spotify? Amazon still has DRM-free MP3 sales (don't pay for a Music Subscription, buy albums), and Bandcamp, CD Baby, and Magnatune are even better places to shop.

[Xunxi]

There are other opensource projects with no mothership

https://github.com/streamaserver/streama

[wrboyce]

Just a minor thing, but I’m pretty certain Plex are performing all sorts of analysis on your usage.

[will123195]

> I don’t know what the solution is.

Decentralize all the things.

[gowld]

If that's true then there's no need for legislation because the service contracts cover it. Law is only needed if the contracts are ambiguous.

[foota]

Only if the public likes the way that service contracts are working.

[reaperducer]

None of the major digital services directly support transferal of licenses and most of them directly forbid it in their terms of services.

Considering the amount of money that people sink into digital services, I’m surprised this hasn’t already been through the courts in the case of divorces.

[WorldMaker]

Anecdotally I've seen a lot of divorcees still using their ex's old Netflix account or similar. It probably hasn't made it yet to the list of things on the radar of Divorce Attorneys for the simple practical matter that it's currently easy enough to (continue to) share passwords, but yes I'm very surprised we've not yet seen a huge court battle over digital assets in a divorce or inheritance drama yet.

[CobrastanJorji]

It'd be lovely to see a return of the first sale doctrine, as well. We gave up the right to own a movie when we went to streaming. I want to be able to sell my stuff again. More importantly, I want Netflix to be able to offer streaming of everything they have the DVDs for.

[dwighttk]

>I want Netflix to be able to offer streaming of everything they have the DVDs for.

That is why it will never happen.

[reymus]

Could you explain?

[dwighttk]

The people who own streaming rights would go from having something that is worth money to something that is completely worthless.

Netflix is one of those companies so even they wouldn’t fight for it.

[toast0]

Netflix has a right to rent physical discs, but streaming is different than lending. I would love for movies to have compulsory licensing like music does though.

[Gaelan]

> Netflix has a right to rent physical discs, but streaming is different than lending.

I’m curious about this. I mean it’s different in terms of implementation and law, but conceptually it’s pretty similar.

Side-note-thought-experiment: in places where it is legal to “pirate” content you own, could Netflix get around this by renting a DVD to you (but holding in in escrow for you at their location) then providing you streaming access to that DVD?

[toast0]

Streaming in my mind is more like asking your friend to come over to watch a movie, than lending them the movie to watch themselves.

Exhibition rights are significantly different than private viewing rights.

At the end of the day, the results are roughly the same, one more person has seen the film. But there's a lot of subtlety in how that happens.

[homero]

No they got shutdown https://www.wired.com/2011/08/zediva-preliminary-injunction/

[s73v3r_]

You can't own the stream, but you can still buy the DVD, and first sale still applies there.

[hrktb]

Isn’t it currently akin to a library membership ? Or at least that’s how I would put it if I was a service owner.

You also won’t get irl memberships transfered by inheritance, so the debate will be short if it goes this way.

[acjacobson]

I think this line of argument works for something like a Netflix or Spotify account where you have a monthly fee for unlimited access. The problem OP is referencing is when you buy a specific movie or album on iTunes or Prime for instance. That doesn't seem so clear cut because while the license says one thing the consumer expects that they now 'own' the item forever.

[hrktb]

Yes, iTunes or Prime pages still show a 'buy' button which is confusing.

I think people understand it better nowadays though, as they get burned more and more with services that don't work on a specific device, or the service shuts down. Or more probably they cancel the monthly payment and all the stuff they 'owned' can't be watched anymore.

[TeMPOraL]

Or Steam.

All the games I have there should be inheritable. Also, I'd love to be able to put ones I don't play on sale. But that's obviously not going to happen.

[thaumasiotes]

One reason this issue isn't explored much is that it doesn't have much in the way of practical implications. You don't need permission from Movies Anywhere to inherit your parents' Movies Anywhere account -- as long as you learn the password, you can just use the account without bothering to notify Movies Anywhere of anything.

[WorldMaker]

Right, but this isn't protected anywhere. It's a fragile practicality. If you inherit that shared password do you inherit the right to recover it if you lose it again? Movies Anywhere is locked to a certain number of devices, do you have the right to unlock/remove old devices of the original account holder?

At one point I debated trying to build a system to help escrow digital asset things like passwords in Trust for the purposes of wills/digital estate planning/inheritance, but quickly realized the first major flaw of that is that as soon as you try to systematize it you immediately get into a fight over how much it violates various terms of service agreements forbidding account and password sharing entirely.

[thaumasiotes]

You're right, but I would still bet that the sheer ease of working around the issue stunts the development of formal legal approaches to it.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd rather have established practice dictate the law than the other way around.

[Gaelan]

Until they find out and kill your account.

[thaumasiotes]

Find out how?

[TeMPOraL]

Through ubiquitous tracking.