
Florida prisons sued for erasing $11M worth of prisoner music purchases - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/20/18233317/florida-department-of-corrections-class-action-lawsuit-william-demler-jpay-mp3-song-access
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est31
Sadly, disowning the customer is very common in the new age of digital
copyright enforcement.

For example, your itunes collection is specific to you. If you die, it's
deleted and is not transfered to your heirs. Similarly, Amazon is removing any
books you purchased from your kindles if the seller sold them illegally. Also,
if you violate any of their terms of service, they often delete the entire
collection as well.

IMO there should be a law requiring digital licenses of any content to be
fungible similar to physical copies. You should be allowed to transfer them to
another service, even if the service stops existing, or they believe you
breached some contract.

This would make licenses even more fungible than bank money is today: right
now if a bank goes bankrupt, you might not see any money in your accounts,
even though it's _your_ money and you are no investor or anything. It's
because every bank is "minting" it's own currency. There are models which are
different where you have a central bank handing out digital money to the
banks.

~~~
ghaff
That’s pretty much true with DRM free music files though isn’t it? That’s one
of the few bright lights in the whole digital media space. My MP3s aren’t tied
to either Apple or Amazon.

~~~
est31
The file is fungible and that's great, but the license isn't. It's still bound
to Amazon/Apple etc. and you can't give it to someone else, without
Apple's/Amazon's permission. With CDs/DVDs, Walmart or wherever you bought the
CD from, has no say onto what you do with it afterwards. Whether you give it
to someone else, sell it, etc.

Of course, if you have a perfectly fungible system, you could have websites
where you are being lended a medium for a short time (e.g. one day) for really
low amounts of money and of course this would be bad for content creators as
it would dramatically lower the sales. However, that can be countered by other
means e.g. minimum restriction on lending duration (e.g. one day) and fees
that content creators get on ownership transfer and each lending interaction
(e.g. 5% for the first 5 years after movie release, afterwards 1%).

~~~
ghaff
All that (may) be true in theory. In practice, absolutely nothing keeps you
from sharing MP3s with friends so long as it’s not with your 10,000 closest
friends and I’m not sure how seriously the publishers even care about that any
longer given the rise of streaming.

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hutzlibu
Isn't life in prison hell allready, by beeing locked in?

Why make it more miserable on purpose and forbid people to use a own mp3
player? (aside from exploiting money)

And why not allow a smartphone or laptop with internet access in general? (and
only make exceptions for cartell leaders etc. to not let them continue their
buisness inside)

How can you hope to reintegrate people back to society, if you allmost totally
disconnect them from normal people and give them only other disconnected
criminals to interact with?

~~~
IshKebab
Cartel owner: Can I borrow your laptop?

~~~
hutzlibu
Yes you can said the snitch...

Obviously there can be surveillance for dangerous people.

~~~
therein
Strip SSL, wait until the cartel uses OTP.

~~~
Something1234
What is the meaning of OTP in this context? One time pad crypto?

~~~
therein
Yeah.

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Hasz
It seems like every private sector prison services company is abusing
prisoners for profit. Whether it's outrageously expensive phone calls, this
nonsense, or the worst quality food they could find, it's disappointing to see
the profit motive crush human dignity.

Prisions should serve to reform inmates, not slowly antagonize them every day.

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kartan
> Demler’s complaint involves Florida’s digital music player program, which
> let inmates buy a specially designed media player for $99 or $119, then buy
> individual songs or audiobooks for $1.70 apiece.

I guess that the bigger is the inmate population the easier is to make more
money.

> But in 2018, the FDOC switched to a new company called JPay, which didn’t
> honor the earlier purchases. The agency required inmates to trade in their
> music players for new multimedia tablets, or to pay $25 and have the players
> shipped to someone outside prison.

That is a perfect business. You have literally captivated customers.

I think that USA do not see inmates as human beings. That is the only way to
explain what happens there. But, they are human and abusing them is as much as
a crime as abusing anyone else.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
> I think that USA do not see inmates as human beings. That is the only way to
> explain what happens there. But, they are human and abusing them is as much
> as a crime as abusing anyone else.

Most people in the US don't. Which, combined with its history of racism, goes
a long way towards explaining the school-to-prison pipeline.

~~~
wernercd
> history of racism

US is one of the least racist - up to and including freeing slaves.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/05/15/a-fascinating-
map-of-the-worlds-most-and-least-racially-tolerant-
countries/?utm_term=.a56a927e068b)

~~~
hopler
The article is about something else -- whether people admit racism to a
survey. Americans know that racism is "politically incorrect".

How many countries had millions of slaves (15% of the population) to free?

Also interesting that you say "up to and including freeing slaves", which
_excluded_ the racially founded prison industrial complex that was created to
replac e slavery after the 13th Amendment.

Not saying US is the worst, am saying not to ignore USA's ugly history and
present, especially USA claims to be the world leader in freedom and human
rights.

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strictnein
Tucked as an aside at the end of a paragraph:

    
    
       (They could also pay to ship a CD containing the music)
    

How much was that? Strangely lots of other prices are mentioned, but not that
price. My guess is that it was low and possibly reasonable. Not that it really
excuses the prisoners getting sort of f'ed over, just that it would kind of
cut into the article's main thrust.

~~~
jstarfish
No inmate service is ever low- or reasonably-priced.

It costs inmates $1/minute just to make a domestic phone call.

Even the digital items purchased are almost 2x retail price.

May not seem like much to you, but also mind that prison wages are measured in
cents and subject to taxation.

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rajacombinator
What a corrupt nation this is that such practices could come to exist.

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iambateman
The headline was confusing to me...all inmates spent $11M collectively, there
isn’t a single inmate who spent $11M on songs.

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
That's why the headline says "inmate _s_ ".

