Anytime I've rented or borrowed something, from an actual place, they have placed a defined return date on it.

"We'll revoke access when we feel like it" doesn't sound like a proper rental. How do I know I'll even be able to finish watching the movie once before it is revoked?

The courts generally require contracts to have "mutual interest" or whatever the term is. Basically, both parties have to get something out of the deal. I pay the money, I get access to the movie.

If the rental period is indefinite, then the only reason to stop offering it should be technical or logistical - IE something actually broke in the company's systems. We were stupid, consolidated on this one cloud system that turned out to be based in one room in some guy's basement, there are no backups, and there was a fire.

Not a company decision to not renew a licensing agreement.

I agree.

Probably not as good for Sony, like I said, the money they saved on the contracts was probably minimal to nothing, now they're eating a whole lot of bad press over it. For those who have lost the titles and care, how likely are they to buy from Sony again?

I mean, will it censor you if you ask about the Chinese premier looking like Winnie the Pooh or tienaman (sp?) square....will it say it can't answer that...or give answers that only praise china?

Genuine question with potential genuine concerns....

Well, yes. For many years, presidential candidates, both Democratic and Republican, referred to the United States as "the indispensible nation". And my reaction was always, "Doesn't that mean the US is a single point of failure for civilization?"

We are currently performing an experiment which addresses this question: can the US enjoy the benefits of soft power without the cost? That's the whole point of obeying *norms*. No individual force is going to punish you if you are treacherous, mercurial, foul-mouthed, disrespectful and generally unpredictable. Everyone will punish you.

I think an inevitable cost of this experiment will be that the world will decide that the US can't be a single point of failure for global democracy any longer. In many ways, that's something that will be good for us. But it's also going to cost us in painful ways. When the world decides to move away from the dollar as the international reserve currency, you will see both inflation and higher interest rates on everything from credit cards to mortgages, to business loans that will offset the export advantages. We will need *more* business investment to shift the economy to producing low value goods again, so the transition will be rocky.

I think it's pretty f-ed up to say a company has to give their IP and trade secrets to their competitors (aka, your friends) so they can take their business, and then call it fairness. It isn't, it's theft.

Kinda sounds like China's business model, eh?

However, why couldn't Google just yank their servers out of the EU..and station them all around the EU. Sure, there might be a little performance hit, but at least they'd not be compelled to follow the EU rules, and I doubt the EU will firewall all things google, you know?

;)

I regret to inform you that you have woefully underestimated it. The actual retail rate offered to consumers is closer to $2200 US per gallon. Sources: internet-ink.com, cbc.ca. This $14 million fine is only worth like, seven thousand gallons, or less than 200 oil barrels of ink.

This might not work out the way you think. Generally speaking, with torrenting, you are not prosecuted for downloading the media. The prosecution is for UPLOADING the media, at least fragments of it, to others.

You'd need to set yourself up as an absolute leech - 0% upload. Might take a while to get the media file in that case. In which case one is unlikely to get the threatening letter in the first place.

Yes, the court system is nitpicky enough for that to matter.

At least to be like Steam - it is understood that people who buy things get said license in perpetuity.
IE they might buy a 10 year license for SELLING said titles, but they still get to provide said titles to those that purchased them after the license expired.
It sounds like Sony, for what was probably a trivial savings, wrote bad contracts. Or their system can't handle not having something for sale yet still downloadable by those who have previously purchased it.

Yes, but once one is ripping, the important part is the digital copy without DRM under your control, not the DVD itself.

Even the physical copy in hand doesn't guarantee continued possession. Besides just needing to protect the disc from things like fire, physical abuse, and more, an awful lot of DVDs only last a decade or two.

I'm sure they have some definition for it somewhere in the legislation, probably an appendix or glossary.
"Designed to be worn on the body during operation or use, such as watches, hearing aids/headphones, body monitors, glasses, etc..."

Two decades old would probably mean you're considering NiMH rechargeable vs Alkaline primary - 1.2V vs 1.5. On the other hand, NiMH cells have much lower internal resistance, which makes it such that NiMH cells can actually provide more power, as the 1.5V of Alkaline gets pulled down to 1.2V or less much faster, as load increases.
Today, it'd be LiIon more often, though lithium primary cells exist as well, and both tend to be ~3V and low internal resistance. Yes, the primary cell, along with chemistries like zinc-air, are very long lived, but as it is easy to make the battery last all day and then just recharge at night, not actually that big of a deal.

1. Sony should be forced to refund the original purchases, no matter how old they are. If the consumer was only "borrowing" the media, then Sony was only "borrowing" the money.
2. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of Rum. IE Piracy.