In New Zealand, there is a provision in the copyright law that handily makes having a copy legal, while also making it impractical for most people.

Prior to the addition of the format-shifting provision, making a copy was always illegal (eg that recording on your VCR was illegal). Adding the provision made it legal, but subtly also not generally useful.

The format-shifting exception allows the owner of the physical media to make a copy themselves, for their own use. If they transfer ownership of the physical media they must destroy the copy (they can’t even pass on the convenience to the next owner).

Since making copies is more technical than is practical for the masses, most cannot take advantage of the provision - and that’s the way copyright owners like it.

Shh. Don’t let the current NZ government hear. They’ll want to bring zero-hour contracts back… Anything hurting this many workers is likely to be very popular with their donors.

Two comments pointing in a pixelated direction… Gotta be something to that…

Thanks.

I thought the pre-election debate was bad enough for that… but it made no difference to the result (at least not in the right direction).

This is possibly the first US President where lies-per-minute might be a useful metric.

Why would you watch it, when you can get an itemised list of the lies later anyway.

It’s not a big step to my study and decent sized displays. I don’t watch much on the phone of any real duration… It’s just not the same. And a fair bit of the casual watching is technical material - tiny screen sucks for that.

And then the big screen for watching movies together.

Partly I wonder if it’s just because some people like to watch the world burn…

Attaboy Mr President. You win ‘race to armageddon’… The ‘Pillock of Peace’ will be all yours once there’s no one around to make war.

November (7th?)… It’s gonna be a long year.

We don’t have the greatest controls here. A large amount of law passing has been passed ‘under urgency’ for the weakest of reasons - let’s you bypass most of the debate and public opinion. This government has no shame (not that a sense of propriety should be the control we count on to rein in political ambition and ideology… or possibly obligations to donors… ahem).

Mind-blowing indeed… since he managed to overlook all those deaths, the loss agency in their governance, the inequalities of wealth, education and health, the fact that home ownership looks likely to become a statistical anomaly for Maori.

…and you know, let’s remove use of their language and references to the treaty from education…

Please don’t lump all ‘old white men’ in with that arsehole.

You’ll hurt my feelings.

Amongst a smattering of largely ineffectual feel-good changes, there is a lot of horror from this government - in laws as well as words shaping our social landscape.

It boggles my mind that in two short years we seem to have stepped back into the 80’s for race relations, social policy, opinions on law and order, and on matters of the environment.

It’s a disgrace.

I do hope, come November, that enough victorious voters of this round are shamed enough to recognise their error - and that enough of those that didn’t vote because “it wouldn’t count” get up and make a damned difference.

Whatever reruns were playing on the channel we had… Beggars can’t be choosers (though I note, some beggars are quite choosey - odd).

Hysterical laughter is excusable. Something has to give or you’ll pop a blood vessel.

It gets crazier by the day.

Gosh. If only there were some way for Russia to avoid this… Let me think…

Three years… amateurs. If my Note10+ still had software support I probably could go another couple of years.

…And given they’ve taken some features away on the S25 Ultra and S26 Ultra, I’m not actually sure I want to pay such a premium price to stay with Samsung (as much as I do like this device).

I imagine Mrs Claus more like an Enderverse Hive Queen.

All of the Elves and Santa’s are just extensions of the self. This is how she can compile ‘the list’. You think those Santa’s and Elves are just doing dress up for the season, but all year they are extensions of the Santa hive, watching to see who is naughty and who is nice.

Did your parent ever put on a Santa hat? They walk among us.

This is also how ‘Santa’ delivers all of the presents in a single night… They are all ‘(Mrs) Santa’.

Not quite literally I think.

But without all that prejudice, just think of all of the missed reaction-video income…