Comment by rolph
3 days ago
streaming is downloading, otherwise it wouldnt be visible on your hardware. if you pay for a stream and the distributor downloads it to your buffer, the only thing preventing it from persisting is wrapping the data to contain it in a file structure. if we really want to split hairs, everytime the data is accessed a streams bits are copied into registers, but those bits have no identity beyond 1 or 0
if you dont distribute this to others or brag on a forum about all your streams, no one will even know.
The argument is that it doesn't create another copy, so it's more analogous to receiving a broadcast. Like, if a pirate radio station plays copyrighted music, then the mere act of receiving those signals isn't a copyright violation. But recording that broadcast would be.
> But recording that broadcast would be.
Is this seriously true in the US? I doubt this is the case in any European jurisdiction.
Recording radio and TV is legal in any other case (the relevant companies didn't want that to be the case either, but we hadn't yet fallen far enough down the hole yet for that possibility to disappear).
To make another comparison:
You record House on your Tivo = Legal (you now have a file you can play anywhere (barring DRM, but libre DVRs exist), you've copied it)
You 'record' House on Netflix (either literally with OBS or just capturing the video stream via some other means) = Illegal
The only difference is the source. The actual video stream could be functionally identical. There's the fact that actual TV and radio isn't on-demand, but that to me is just an implementation detail, and not an inherent reason to treat them differently (then again, I'm not deep into the mindset of defending copyright).
Bear in mind that "illegal broadcast" is important here. A pirate radio station does not have a license to play the music it's playing. If recording pirate broadcast is legal, then effectively all copyright laws are moot so long as the copyrighted material is transmitted over radio.
Tivo is legal because cable providers are legally transmitting their cable programming.
Things get different on Netflix because recording Netflix requires circumvention of DRM, which is its own can of worms.
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the thing is its not like a radio or TV broadcast. some countries consider open broadcast to be public domain so once its broadcast its public, you just cant sell it like its yours.
when a server downloads data to you, the server is creating a copy on your hardware right out of the gate.
a stream is a download. a central server, is pushing bits into your hardware, and making a copy on your hardware.
restricting any copying at all means your hardware cant use what you were legally given, because by a split hair definition, the bits are being copied when they move from memory address to register address vice versa.
appending header and footer to a data structure is not copying the data.
the real problem unilaterally, is when you are not a legal distributor, and you provide a copy to someone else. [dont do that]
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There is a good epigram about DRM that goes something like
"Asking a computer to not copy things is like asking water to not be wet."
Water isn't "wet" , but has the ability to "wet" other objects.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/is-water-wet
it's all just silly semantics but even under the highly specific definition in the article I would say water is wet.
the articles definition "a liquid’s ability to maintain contact with a solid surface" Water has this property therefor water is wet.
On the topic of silly semantics, science as a discipline has the tendency to paint itself into linguistic paradoxes where the words does not mean what it means.
An example is "bug" where there is a (sighs) true bug(a very specific type of insect) But the one that really bothers me is Stonehenge. Stonehenge is the origin of the term, it literally means hanging stone. but... they started cataloging other similar circle-of-stone type monuments and calling them henges, a henge got defined to be more specifically a circle of stones with an inner ditch. But Stonehenge has an outer ditch.... So Stonehenge is not a henge... (Sighs again).
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