I'm guessing you are extremely young as that is not how digital purchases have historically worked. The concept of "you bought a license to use it" hasn't been around long. Before that, you would be given an access code to go to a publisher's website like Disney and download a copy of the content you purchased. It wasn't tied to any licensing server or authentication system past that point, you just had a digital copy of your purchase.

[–] drunkensailor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I think legally, rights holders have always been asshats. I remember something called a V-C-R and when media was on magnetic tapes... even back then, there were warnings at the beginning of films. That was back before there were stream content and you had to physical drive or walk to buildings that contained the videos and pay for a rental... and a lot of poeple would make their own copies.

I think the big things that have changed is:

The DMCA (and I mean the bill, not the notices people get bc of the bill) made "fair use" - like recording a personal copy of a rented or broadcasted film/music/etc - a lot tricker, legally speaking
People moving to consume most of their "standard" tv content from "no"-cost (technically paid for by non-skippable non-targeted ads) public broadcast over radio waves and picked up via tv antenae just like radio stations but with video to cable-tv networks that were tightly controlled by greedy bastards. (hint: all of those greedy cable-tv bastards are mostly all the same guys trying to control streaming services today, they just moved from cable to internet).
The expanse of the itnernet + increase of world population / percent of the world thats connected means that one copy is spread a LOT more than when a guy made a copy from a video rental store
Most companies have gotten more aggressive about marking their territory and pissing legal warnings all over there content than in the old days

That said, I hate big companies and even if it is morally untenable, I will still continue to pirate, bc fuck em. If I could download a car or a barrel of whiskey, I'd pirate those too. maybe someday we'll get star trek-style replicators and i can finally download a car.

[–] Morgikan@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, I remember the days of renting VCR players and acting like we didn't already own one so we could play on one and record off the other. I think a lot of this is due to the rise in Internet infrastructure. 15 years ago streaming services wouldn't have been doable. There was no licensing, just files to download. You'd even get Digital Download codes in your DVD case when buying a movie, so you had multiple copies. Really sad how things are consolidating.

[–] drunkensailor@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

There was no licensing, just files to download.

I think some kind of licensing was tehcnicall there, it was just easy to ignore back then bc they weren't pushing it in our faces every second (like i remember warnings on beginning of movies even before 2000s). I kinda remember one of my friends getting music off amzaon a long time ago but for stuff like that i assume it was just a EULA that they could click once and be done with (no clue how it works present day). Maybe it depends on exactly what we're talking about, but just saying I'm confident that greedy bastards would have some kind of legal something tied to it, even in 2000s before you could download. I just don't care - don't let em know you real info and fuck em 😀

[–] Whirlybird@aussie.zone -3 points 11 months ago

I'm not "extremely young", in fact I'm likely older than you. That is always how digital purchases have worked.