[dbingham]

"This law I broke shouldn't exist" is the basis of civil disobedience and is how many of the freedoms we enjoy were won and the oppressive laws of recent history were struck down.

It may or may not succeed in courts, because our "justice" system is anything but. Even if it doesn't succeed in court, it's still a worthwhile stance and it may succeed in other ways. Especially if enough people who recognize where justice actually lies stand up to support those taking the risk to point it out.

The line between "rent seeking" and "return on investment" lies at the spot past which those who produced a work have been fairly compensated for their time and effort, past that, it's rent seeking. If you want a good metric, break the return down to an hourly wage for each participant in producing the work. Does it seem obscene? That's because it is.

[xhkkffbf]

Rent is the basis for all forms of savings through investment. It allows people to work hard for a time and then take some time off. Yes, some will be rent seeking while drinking rum at the beach bar, but so will the sick people and the retired people. Rent makes it possible for society to offer disability insurance and retirement savings.

[randomhodler84]

And Usury was well known to the ancients as one way to destroy a society.

Rent is not the basis of savings through investment, yield is; of which rent is one kind. Renting a movie at blockbuster made sense in the 90s as plastic shells of magstripe were a scarce good. Today, literally millions of devices could stream their entire lib for free via ad supported streaming apps.

We live in different times. Holding on to artificial constraints for old-times business model nostalgia will look so quaint in a few decades.

[SpelingBeeChamp]

Those “ad supported streaming apps” are still reliant on copyright.

Without it, why would anyone choose to view the movie with ads when they can just download it and watch it with no ads?

(Legally, since in this hypothetical, copyright doesn’t exist.)

Or are you just arguing for ad-supported viewing of content? Which is what currently exists for an enormous body of material. See, for example, YouTube.

[randomhodler84]

Why indeed, I know how I consume media.

I support a wide range of monetization strategies and access to content by the most amount of people.