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by T3OU-736 2311 days ago
(IANAL) This is fairly pedantic, and I do apologize foe this, but it feels inaccurate to state (or to think) that you were able to buy those movies. We don't buy movies. At least in the US, we buy license/right to view. This gets... into interesting legal territory, but also this leads to situations like digital assets being unavailable after the account to which they are licensed being deleted.
3 comments

> We don't buy movies. At least in the US, we buy license/right to view.

(IANAL) That part is the same even if you buy a music CD or a Blu-Ray disc. You're only granted a license to play it for your personal use (and you're not even allowed to play at a public event or broadcast it). But, you're legally allowed to make backups for yourself and (in certain instances) encode them for use with a different mechanism. That's one of the things that iTunes (taking a popular example) helped revolutionize, with CD ripping and place-shifting the content for convenience. DRM, along with making the breaking of DRM illegal (is it still illegal for all kinds of content? I haven't kept up) is what messed this whole thing up.

> This is fairly pedantic

Congrats on reaching self-awareness, HN!

I was going to pedantically point out his spelling error, but it seemed a bit over the top.