Digital (meant here as bit-for-bit) copies are effectively impossible with analog media. If I copy a book (the whole book, its layout, etc., and not just the linguistic content), it will ultimately look like a copy, and each successive copy from that copy will look worse. This is of course true with forms of tape media and a lot of others. But it isn't true of digital media, where I could share a bit-for-bit copy of data that is absolutely identical to the original.

If it sounds like an infinite money glitch on the digital side, that's because it is. The only catch is that people have to own equipment to interpret the bits. Realistically, any form of digital media is just a record of how to set the bits on their own hardware.

Crucially: if people could resell those perfect digital copies, then there would be no market for the company which created it originally. It all comes down to the fact that companies no longer have to worry about generational differences between copies, and as a result, they're already using this "infinite money glitch" and just paying for distribution. That market goes away if people can resell digital copies, because they can also just make new copies on their own.

[–] Samsy@lemmy.ml 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

it will ultimately look like a copy, and each successive copy from that copy will look worse. This is of course true with forms of tape media and a lot of others. But it isn't true of digital media, where I could share a bit-for-bit copy of data that is absolutely identical to the original.

There is one exception: reposted memes, they are losing pixels more and more. /s

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Only because of incompetent people using lossy reproduction methods out of ignorance

[–] loobkoob@kbin.social 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

And also just websites compressing images without the user getting any input. A meme that goes from Facebook to Twitter to Reddit to Twitter to Tumblr to Reddit to here will likely be compressed every time it gets reuploaded. Most social media sites use some form of image compression.

And it obviously doesn't help that artefacts from compression are multiplicative.

[–] Adalast@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This is why you use PNG or GIF formats. Lossless compression on the PNG side and a LUT on the GIF side. Nothing to get compressed since it is literally just a grid of numbers and a table with the hex codes.

I really wish the social media companies and phone manufacturers would switch to PNG. So much better than JPG.

[–] Aopen@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Lemmy compresses uploads to jpg without asking too

[–] Adalast@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I know, is sad. Would love to see them converting the JPG to PNG. I do see a lot of images coming off here as GIF though, which Facebook doesn't let me send to people because fuck Facebook.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The storage demands between small compressed JPEG’s and decent quality PNG’s is massive. That’s a lot to ask of people who are self hosting this without any of us paying for it. Especially since 99% of the images loaded up here are one off jokes that are compressed versions from somewhere else already. Pretty clear example of “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze” IMO

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If only google hadn’t decided to shit all over JXL. We could have lossless images with an excellent compression algorithm (at least better than the .zip style deflate png uses) at this very moment.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago

Too true

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What about physical media containing digital data, e.g. a CD?

[–] Silentiea@lemm.ee 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's technically illegal to make a copy of that data for yourself and then to sell the original (while keeping the copy). That obviously doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but...

[–] Machinist3359@kbin.social -1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's not that straightforward. Copyright is different in that infringement is only enforced by rightsholders through litigation. That means they hato find you, sue you, and make a convincing argument that your backup is harming their market viability.

On that last point, some personal backup is unlikely to be found to be infringing. It's more problematic if it's something shared or done in a significant scale.

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You cannot endlessly duplicate digital data without some loss.

[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 2 points 9 months ago

This assumes a conversion on each copy. That's not how digital copying works. We CAN share the same file indefinitely by copying the data without loss indefinitely. It's when you transcode/reencode the data that you introduce loss.