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Playstation is erasing seasons of Discovery shows from customer libraries
- taspeotis 3y agoDid they remove it again? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38492747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38492747
- b8 3y agoStallman is right once again that electric content/IP such as ebooks, movies, etc. are a bad idea.
- lttlrck 3y agoElectronic content/IP has upsides including convenience and environmental (less raw material, less waste and no shipping) Ownership could do with better regulation but ownership is an issue with physical goods...
- mattl 3y agoIf they have DRM. If they don’t, the only issue is making sure you have backed up your stuff.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoAlways download the FLAC version off Bandcamp ... and back them up.
- andsoitis 3y ago> Stallman is right once again that electric content/IP such as ebooks, movies, etc. are a bad idea He also melodromatically states on his personal page that Netflix is a threat to freedom (https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html). Ironically, the documentary, Revolution OS, that he stars in, is not free https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/revolution-os https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/revolution-os
- wmsmith 3y agoHonestly, stories like this (and similar when streaming services change catalogs) is why I've gone back to DVDs. Nobody has knocked on my door (yet) to get those back. Han Shot first! I had to find an old VHS to see this with my own eyes.
- petee 3y agoI've been doing the same; the UHD rescans of classics like 2001 and Casablanca look fantastic. But now I'm even considering keeping my dad's old Betamax collection with the state of things, movies disappear from existence now... Btw, Panasonic actually makes a UHD player that doesn't include 'apps' and only has ethernet for updates and local streaming; hope restored!
- xena 3y agoIf it has ethernet for updates, they can add cancer at any moment.
- petee 3y agoYou could disable updates, as well as just not plugging it in. I appreciate the possibility of updates since most things I own that can't be updated have odd bugs that drive me crazy.
- fnimick 3y agoFYI, blu-ray discs include executable code to, among other things, update the banlist of encryption keys on your player when you try to play a new movie. Even if you never plug your player in, there's still the very real possibility that putting in a new disc will update your player such that your old discs no longer work due to a key revocation.
- petee 3y agoDo you know if UHD implemented something similar? Its not the same tech, though doesn't mean they couldn't have added it. If it is at that point, then the only solution is VHS and rips, short of preventing revocation within a bluray player
- lusus_naturae 3y agoThis has to do with licensing agreements with content providers, to which the solution seems to be that there need to be third-party escrow holders that maintain the license purchased by an individual so that Sony/Playstation is no longer responsible or required to pay for continued licensing of that content. This would fall under FCC regulations, and could definitely be brought to their attention via consumer action.
- tzs 3y agoMaybe something like "Movies Anywhere" but for TV series instead of movies?
- VanTheBrand 3y agoThis wouldn't change anything. If the underlying license for a piece of content linked to your movies anywhere account expired, it would be removed from movies anywhere as well as the original service you bought it from. There's a possibility that maybe because it's an edge case it might end up still in the library of a synced service but that would be more of an unintended coincidence.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bragr 3y agoMovies Anywhere is hardly a 3rd party though. It's wholly owned by Disney and I suspect it will only last as long as it meshes with their streaming strategy.
- evandale 3y agoMaybe something like "The Pirate Bay" instead of dealing with a fragmented market that's just as bad as 90s cable?
- crazygringo 3y agoA platform like Sony should not be allowed to sell content for purchase if it doesn't own the rights to stream it to purchasers in perpetuity. There should never have been a contract that required renewal with Warner Bros. in the first place. Sure you can require renewal in order to sell it to new users, and if you don't renew then new users can't buy it. But the idea that Sony didn't originally have the right to stream it in perpetuity to existing purchasers is absurd. I don't care what the fine print of the user agreement said -- this is a perfect example of what consumer protection laws are for. I mean, what's next -- can I rent a house for a year, sell that house to someone and pocket the money, and then at the end of the year they find out it's not their house anymore because I didn't renew my lease...? Because that's basically what Sony has done here.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoSure. it's probably fraud but I wouldn't be shocked if it happened before. But there's a lot more regulation on housing for obvious reasons. Thing here is that usually you get to keep delisted content you bought. I can still download that Scott pilgrim game on my PS3 that was delisted almost a decade ago.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoMore last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38492747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38492747
- andrewstuart 3y agoI buy DVD's from eBay. Mainly because the streaming service rarely has the actual thing I want to watch and there's no way I'm going to subscribe to a whole bunch of streaming services.
- keep_reading 3y agoDo you get your TV from eBay too? DVDs look so terrible on modern screens. 720p is the bare minimum acceptable resolution
- AlexandrB 3y agoThey're alright. Just takes a little getting used to. Several shows have also had terrible post-dvd releases, so the DVD version is sometimes superior in other ways. I'm thinking of the cropping done for widescreen in The Simpson and The Wire as well as the notoriously bad Buffy[1] HD release. [1] https://www.themarysue.com/remastered-buffy-is-a-butt/ https://www.themarysue.com/remastered-buffy-is-a-butt/
- andrewstuart 3y agoI mainly watch YouTube.
- adastra22 3y agoAt least where I am, the term DVD is sometimes encompassing of BluRay as well.
- autoexec 3y agoI love physical media, but too often media companies are refusing to release their shows on any form of physical media to drive subscriptions to streaming services. Disney is notorious for this.
- n8cpdx 3y agoWith the recent price hikes I’ve decided to cancel and start buying 4K blu rays. Better quality and then I own a physical copy that won’t get yanked away. Max in particular has troubled me with their decision to withhold classic HBO content because it is apparently cheaper for them (e.g. Westworld). Unfortunately, this has turned into a full blown collection hobby, so I’m likely not going to save any money. But there’s nothing wrong with a new hobby I guess. Fortunately the local record store has plenty of cheap used disks.
- amanzi 3y agoCompanies should be forced to provide a refund in this situation - either Sony or Discovery.
- m0llusk 3y agoDigital media and the Internet have made copies nearly free. Because of this it no longer makes sense to base profits on charging for copies. Business models need to change. Alternatives like Pay to Release where only previews are available until the customer pool pledges enough to make copies available do not have piracy as an easy failure mode.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoThis would never take off because you're capping the profit you can make as well as excluding some recovery of costs for an unsuccessful product. i.e. If you spend $10 million making a movie, and will only release it when customers pledge $50 million, you're eliminating any chance of becoming a billion dollar blockbuster, and also any chance of being unsuccessful but still recouping a million dolars. Heck you could even become a cult classic 20 years later and make more money back. Also could you image crew moral if there was constantly a high chance that the thing you've spent a year working on goes completely unreleased?
- dang 3y agoRecent and related: Playstation removing previously purchased Discovery content - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38492747 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38492747 - Dec 2023 (174 comments)
- thiht 3y agoWithout surprise I see no mention of a refund. I fail to see how their « licensing agreement » is any of the customer’s business. They « sold » something they didn’t have the right to sell, instead of renting it. Sony should be forced by law to renew the licensing with their provider at any price, so that customers keep getting what they paid for. That, or a refund.
- superkuh 3y ago"If paying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing." - Louis Rossmann
- sonicanatidae 3y agoMy favorite variation is the, "well yes, you did buy seat heaters in your car, the hardware is there, the software is there and you over paid for all of it, including taxes. Now, that'll be $10 per month for us to enable it".
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoThat's no different than IBM selling a mainframe with more processors and storage than you've paid to access.
- sonicanatidae 3y agoYou're correct. There is no material difference.
- marcosdumay 3y agoExcept that the IBM one is B2B, preceded by negotiations. But then, what is important is what the customers were told they are buying. And while IBM didn't sell anything they didn't deliver (on the mainframe business), the cars are sold through 3rd parties famous for being sleazy, so I'd bet their customers experience was all over the place.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- f4c39012 3y agoI understand this, but when there is a charge for viewing then piracy is stealing. My issue with this is the use of the word "buy". If DRM can remove my access, and I don't have perpetual ownership and control of that DRM, then it isn't buying and shouldn't be labelled as such. I can then make an informed choice "rent" vs "watch-as-many-times-as-the-drm-provider-lets-me". It should have the side effect of encouraging there to be a _real_ "buy" option
- mcpackieh 3y agoWhen it comes to Sony, even buying physical media in a store sucks. I'll never forget that Sony deliberately used music CDs to infect people's computers with malware.
- theandrewbailey 3y agoThis is why I'm uncomfortable with paying for digital things that don't come in files and can't be used offline.
- mcpackieh 3y agoYeah, I've bought a lot of software that gave me a digital download with no DRM/bullshit. I've bought a comedy central special this way too, as well as dozens of albums and books. It's a perfectly agreeable arrangement, but some companies don't want to sell me a clean no-bullshit product and so I won't buy anything from them at all. The Rossman quote is very apt. If the "purchase" of a file won't give me ownership of the file, then pirating the file isn't theft.
- Grieverheart 3y agoI don’t completely agree with Rossman here. You are buying the streaming right and not the file. What I agree on though is that they don’t make that clear to their customers.
- izzydata 3y agoThey use terminology such as "purchase" to intentionally lead you to believe that it is a purchase and not renting. Also when they do make it more obvious that it is a license they make you think it is a perpetual license rather than temporary.
- robertlagrant 3y agoThis is similar to buying a DVD. You don't buy the right to the video playing on your TV; only the right to play it on your TV from this exact physical disc. If the disc breaks, you have to buy it again.
- danaris 3y agoThis has, AFAIK, been ruled not to be the case. You have the right to back up DVDs you legally bought for precisely this reason.
- nehal3m 3y agoWhen it comes to games (at least when the box even contains physical media anymore) I want the physical versions so I can sell them or borrow them to friends. I do not have a PlayStation right now, but I do have an account floating around. Can I do the digital equivalent yet, or are purchases still permanently tied to your account?
- paxys 3y agoYou cannot transfer digital purchases on any platform. Ironically enough you can at least still buy/sell discs on locked-down consoles, but that option has disappeared completely from the PC.
- jonhohle 3y agoNo, and it seems like something that will need to come through legislation unfortunately, imho. Imagine if books (historically) couldn’t be lent or libraries created. It’s time to tip the scales toward the buy side for a while. I’m sure the most profitable companies in history can stand a few decades of slightly lower profit.
- phone8675309 3y agohttps://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
- wongarsu 3y agoOn Steam you can kind of borrow to friends by enabling family sharing (which gives them access to your whole library). You have to log in on their computer to enable it, and if they play a game from your library you can't play it at the same time (same as with a physical disk). I believe some of the consoles also have limited sharing features, or at least had them.
- baal80spam 3y agoThat's why I refuse to use Steam.
- toasted-subs 3y agoI don't mind steam, mostly because PCs being more general purpose than consoles.
- andruc 3y agoIt's not obvious to me what one has to do with the other here.
- sonicanatidae 3y agoMe either.. lol
- mablopoule 3y agoI think that the idea is that it's potentially more mod-friendly than if all the files resides on a physical support.
- danpalmer 3y agoI feel like at this point Valve have proven themselves to be good stewards of the Steam platform in this regard. Games aren't retracted and they're very reasonable with refunds. I assume their contracts for listing on Steam are quite different in order to support this. I'd be interested to hear more about the inside of these sorts of things.
- mcpackieh 3y agoSuppose I trust Valve to be well run for as long as Gabe Newell is around to control the company... how long is that? He's 61 years old, and even if he isn't inclined to ever sell the company he could still kick the bucket with no warning. The man is not exactly a paragon of physical fitness. I know there is this meme among gamers that if anything ever happens to Valve they will release all the games they distribute from DRM but this doesn't make any sense because, except for Valve's own games, they don't have the legal right to do that; whoever comes into legal possession of Valve wouldn't allow it. The fact that Steam DRM is weak and easy to crack, presently, is a bit more comforting but even so I'm not interested in paying for a product that is even nominally under DRM. So I buy games without DRM, from GOG/etc, or not at all (I don't pirate software, simply because that's too sketchy for me.)
- tbm57 3y agoit seems like console manufacturers could just add a software update that prevents users from playing certain pieces of purchased physical media? the 'always online' paradigm is just as annoying as digital/physical ownership here
- erellsworth 3y agoIn my opinion, crap like this is the best argument in favor of sailing the seven seas.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nottorp 3y agoDo not buy console titles you think are good enough to replay later on consoles except on disc. That's for games. For video content, i'd say do not "buy" anything digital. The video content industry has Kafkaesque licensing agreements and a pathological fear of "piracy" so you're guaranteed to lose access either because someone's agreement thrice removed from whoever you "bought" the content from expired, or because the latest copy protection that was in fashion when you "bought" it is now unsupported. Edit: hey, can your kids inherit your "digital content"? They can inherit your disc collection.
- foxyv 3y agoI've found Amazon Video to be fairly consistent. I don't buy many movies, nor rewatch them often, but they have done well by me. But the video game companies are fond of planned obsolescence and have happily abandoned their customers for decades. Buying a video from Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony is just asking to have it disappear when they build their next "Store."
- CharlesW 3y agoAmazon is no safer in this respect. https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=202095490#:~:text=Availability%20of%20Purchased,download%20or%20streaming https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=202095490#:~:text=Ava.... "Availability of Purchased Digital Content. Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions or for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming."
- foxyv 3y agoI think every service that doesn't allow you to download the video in MP4 will have something like this. Amazon just seems to not have exercised this option on me yet. I can't say the same for the Playstation store. In the future I would love to have a digital collection of DVDs and BluRay backed up to Glacier or something.
- llamaInSouth 3y agoI like the digital MP3s I own... (not what they mean, probably) maybe they should call it cloudy ownership?
- lb1lf 3y ago"Clownership"?
- jmclnx 3y agoThis is where the US Federal Gov should step in. But the pols are too busy counting donations (bribes) from these companies. If I buy digital content, I should be able to download it on removal media and use it off-line (esp. in the case with movies/music). I should be able to sell it (which is still legal). But these companies want you to "rent" instead of own. So I never buy digital anything. No wonder many people head to pirate bay because of the rights they loose. I hope the US Gov (and other govs) wake up to this, but as always donations (bribes) trumps people's rights all the time. (no pun intended).
- Swizec 3y ago> This is where the US Federal Gov should step in. But the pols are too busy counting donations (bribes) from these companies. Freakonomics once asked a corruption researcher who is more corrupt, China or America? She said: Well in America you can't really call it corruption if it's legal. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-the-u-s-really-less-corrupt-than-china/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-the-u-s-really-less-corr...
- gruez 3y ago>Freakonomics once asked a corruption researcher who is more corrupt, China or America? She said: Well in America you can't really call it corruption if it's legal. Are we reading the same article? >ANG: So if we compare it to the standard index, the similarity that we see is that the United States, overall, total corruption is much lower than in China, and that’s totally expected. But what the U.C.I. is able to add is that it unbundles this total score into four categories, and by doing so, we can see more nuance and we can see that first of all, in both countries, the United States is much lower on petty theft, grand theft, and speed money than in China. But they have roughly the same amount of access money.
- Swizec 3y agoFrom the 2nd paragraph at top: > ANG: I think it’s more complicated in this country. Corruption in China is still of an illegal form. But corruption in this country has become so legalized and institutionalized, it’s hard to say that it’s “corrupt.” Some people would be really offended by the word.
- mariusor 3y agoSomehow I think this one is not Sony's fault entirely. Time Warner has recently moved towards "unifying all their streaming platforms" which meant that a lot of adjacent services will close/migrate to Discovery+ directly. I am someone that suffers the fallout of them shutting GCN+ down, which gives me about two weeks to watch around 100 cycling documentaries that the GCN people have put out in the past 3-4 years. Granted I haven't paid for them individually, so it's not as painful as for the Sony customers, but they will be shutting down access to all of them without any backup plan and without a look back. The people at GCN seem to be as baffled as everyone else about this move. Luckily they still have a good presence on their Youtube channel where they have more accessible content.
- a_cardboard_box 3y agoYou can blame Sony for not securing the rights to keep the content available. If I rent a car and sell it to you, it's my fault when the owner takes it back.
- pitaj 3y ago> Time Warner You mean Warner Bros Discovery
- koffiezet 3y ago> Somehow I think this one is not Sony's fault entirely. Sorry but if you allow your platform to sell 3rd party content, you better have some consumer protections built-in in your contract with that 3rd party in case of such a scenario.
- refracture 3y ago>Somehow I think this one is not Sony's fault entirely. I understand the sentiment of that, but as harsh as this sounds I really don't care. The least bad thing Sony could do right now is refund everybody. I learned my lesson with Sony back in the Sonic Stage days. They are not to be trusted with digital purchases, period.
- 999900000999 3y ago
- pluc 3y agoI've been using this arguments for years when it comes to owning music. Can't understand why anyone would rent from Apple or Spotify.
- lb1lf 3y agoFor many, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal or whatever serves as an addition to, not a substitute for a large music collection. Over the years, I've amassed some 2,200 LPs, 2,500 CDs or so, lots and lots of live recordings on cassette, CD-R or DAT tape - yet still I keep a Spotify account to keep up-to-date on what's being released, checking out artists recently being brought to my attention &c - there's no denying that the '(Almost) all the music in the world for one flat fee' is an attractive proposal when checking out new stuff. Spotify's artist compensation is laughable, though, so whatever good stuff I find, more often than not I seek out physical media. (Much to my wife's despair...)
- skydhash 3y agoSame, I have digital files for albums I care about and an Apple Music subscription, for ease of play (Homepod and Apple TV).
- lotsofpulp 3y agoI don't care enough about music to deal with the costs of owning it, relative to the monthly cost of streaming it. If it goes away, it goes away. If it is something I really, really like, then I pay for the mp3 file, but that is rare.
- Cacti 3y agoA lot of people simply don’t value ownership of
- renegade-otter 3y ago$10 a month for botomless music discovery options is an unreal bargain.
- ben7799 3y agoI'm quite happy with the monthly streaming "lease" from Apple or Spotify. "Buying" digital files from Apple/Amazon whoever is where I feel like the least value is. At least for music they've mostly gotten rid of the DRM, so they lose the ability to take your music back. But at this point buying digital files saves nothing over CD. I feel like you either need to just stick with streaming or if you must purchase buy CD/Vinyl as it's pretty easy to argue it's a better product other than the case of wearing a vinyl record out, which is awfully rare. My biggest exposure to digital ownership is books, followed by games. I am very very unlikely to care about re-playing games. Books I'm a little more likely to re-read. But paper books take up a lot of space and I'm more likely to have to get rid of them before I get to re-read them. TV/Movies I just don't care, I watch it once and that's enough, so it's rare I would ever buy them. And even if I have to buy them it's less than going to the theater once.
- glitchc 3y agoBuying physical media isn't even the safeguard it was before. Now games require a patch before they're usuable, or the game can be blocked from running until the console itself is patched to the latest version. We're in a new era where consoles are fully connected platforms and the OEMs use them as gatekeeping tools to control the ecosystem.
- khalilravanna 3y agoIs this actually true? I don’t think I’ve ever been fully blocked from anything because you can always just turn off the internet and then boot the game to bypass these things (Switch for example). The only way then is the game itself would have to block you (conceivable but I don’t recall seeing it). Some specific examples would be helpful.
- glitchc 3y agoSwitch is very good about this actually. My son's Switch hasn't connected to wifi since he got it, and still runs swimmingly. PS and XBox, however, are very different beasts. Often, when a new system update comes out, certain features are blocked until the update is installed. Similarly, you can buy a new game on a physical disc, and find that it requires a minimum OS version, forcing you, once again, to go online just to play the darn game.
- khalilravanna 3y agoAh good to know. I also forgot the obvious case where a game’s disc only contains a subset of the content on it and a download is required for the rest. It’s not really a day one patch but just the game is too large to fit on a disc.
- Jackson__ 3y agoPlenty of games on the Nintendo Switch are limited to the latest few versions of their firmware, unable to boot unless updated. This list appears a bit outdated, but its a good start: https://gbatemp.net/threads/list-games-required-firmware-version.485959/ https://gbatemp.net/threads/list-games-required-firmware-ver...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago[flagged]
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoIf you download something from a torrent, that's digital ownership too, and it doesn't suck. The "digital" is not the issue here, the "ownership" is. If you "buy" something, there should be an implied right of ownership, lending to others and resale, and we probably need a better regulation of those. If you can't do that, you're not buying but leasing/borrowing and that should be clearly noted. And this should be true for physical items too... buy a cloud enabled camera with features requiring cloud access? Manufacturers should put guarantees for how long they intend to support those features at the purchased price, and refund the customers if they fail to do so. It's a lot easier and more scammy to sell a "camera that you can watch on your phone" than if it had a large label "guaranteed to work at least until 1.1. 2025" on the box... you'd reconsider buying that product if you knew that it'll maybe last only a few months or maybe a year or two, but you have no way of knowing that in advance (ahem, Nest). I could expand this also to parts and software availability, right to repair, etc.
- vannevar 3y agoThe way the law is currently structured, there is no such thing as digital ownership, only licensing. And since there is an enormous disparity in negotiating power between consumers and massive copyright owners, the prevailing licensing terms overwhelmingly favor the copyright holders. The solution is to change the law. But the disparity in power between corporate copyright holders and consumers manifests itself in politics just as it does in the market.
- alistairSH 3y agoFrom Sony's website... As of 31 December 2023, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library. Note the use of "purchased" (not "licensed"). To a layman, purchased means "I bought the thing" not "I bought an ephermeral license to the thing". US consumer protection law sucks goat ass - language around digital content licensing could easily be "fixed" (but won't because our government is a revolving door with industry insiders).
- beltsazar 3y agoMany don't realize that when you buy anything digital, you don't "own" it—what you actually buy is a license to access the content, which can be revoked at any time and for any reason. When that happens, you can't really sue them because there must be a clause in the ToS, that you've agreed on, that covers it. For most media, the only way to "own" it digitally is, unfortunately, by piracy.
- Sparkyte 3y agoSony does have a stance that we should buy physical media. I don't disagree with this either. They have a large investment in physical media and rightfully so they were one of the originals behind blu-ray technology. Also streaming is typicaly subpar quality to blu-ray while it is still decent.
- Decabytes 3y agoI'm fine with digital content being ephemeral, if it is priced appropriately. I'm talking about $1 per game/movie if there is a possibility that I will lose access to it through no fault of my own, and I don't get access to the files
- VoodooJuJu 3y agoI'm afraid nothing will change because Zoomers are inured to this stuff. They expect it and they accept it. They understand they own nothing and they're happy about it.
- TheRealNGenius 3y ago[dead]
- hyperific 3y agoI try to buy PlayStation titles on disk as much as possible because I learned this lesson early on. A while back someone took control of my PlayStation Network account and deauthorized my PS3. I reached out to Sony and they said I'd have to wait the standard 6 month period until I could deauthorize the squatter's devices. During that time I lost access to any game I didn't have physically on disk. It showed me how ephemeral digital "ownership" is. I still pay for digital copies of games from time to time but much of my PS2-4 library is physical.
- justin_oaks 3y agoWhile I've never had a game, video or book deleted from my library, I feel like I'd be justified (morally, not legally) to pirate it if it were deleted from my library. I'm still wary of buying digital items, but the availability of pirated versions does give me some comfort
- meroes 3y agoYou might not even know for a while if it happens. I didn’t realize Steam stole an expansion pack bundled with game in the original purchase from my library till years later.
- namrog84 3y agoSteam is generally pretty good about that stuff. Even if it can't be purchased anymore, most people who bought can still download. The true pull takedown on steam are very rare and usually they are legally obligated to for some reason.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- uuddlrlrbaba 3y agoIts inconvenient as hell but I still opt to buy physical copies of games whenever possible. This way I can play them usually without an internet connection, and resell or trade the game.
- acomjean 3y agoI'm that way too. But I wonder how good the program is on the disk. Everytime I put a disc in the console it downloads a huge file of patches and bugfixes..
- yumraj 3y agoI see two solutions, there may be more: 1) Sony refunds the price. This is the least that should happen. 2) Else, the purchase should be honored by Discovery and it should provide an alternate means for users to access this content by transferring the purchase OR provide download for use without restriction. In parallel, there should be a class action filed.
- shmerl 3y agoBuy DRM-free. We need more DRM-free video that can be paid for though.
- sowbug 3y agoBUY* now! *Borrow Until Yanked. Terms and conditions apply.
- wiseowise 3y ago> And Sony isn’t offering any compensation for titles you’ve already bought or a way to transfer those purchases to another store. This is outrageous.
- iforgotpassword 3y agoIs Popcorn Time still a thing? I remember it was an overnight success until users got sued because BitTorrent, and the project pressured to eventually shut down. Could we have a super easy p2p streaming platform that integrates with Tor? I.e. tracker running as onion service and every user being a Tor relay?
- tungah 3y agoI don't know about TOR alternatives, but Stremio + real debrid is amazing, or so I hear.
- sampa 3y agolicenses get revoked, drm servers die and rutracker.org still provides
- b8 3y agoAgain, Stallman was right about the dangers of ownership of "digitally purchased" content like VOD, e-books etc. Of course, there's ways to de-drm content on some platforms, which technically violates DMCA, but having the content locally without DRM (that requires phoning home/encryption) is key. The DMCA should be reformed to allow de-drming content owned by you. This mostly applies to digital content and cases such as: your account being banned, licensing issues resulting in content being removed, buy in x country which later gets blocked etc. However, cases like making copies to store off-site in case of a fire, natural disaster, robbery or on digital storage (NAS, cloud etc.) should be allowed especially for people who pay. I thought it'll happen though. Perhaps a federal law entailing consumers for refunds for such cases such as Sony's recent actions should be created.
- kmeisthax 3y agoThat reform can happen administratively. DMCA 1201(a)(1) empowers the Copyright Office to create new 1201 exceptions for specific acts of breaking DRM. As far as I'm aware, nobody's specifically brought up just format-shifting to the Office[0], but there's already favorable precedent for format-shifting media you own being legal (e.g. RIAA v. Diamond). Furthermore, DMCA 1201 is specifically written to avoid creating new copyright restrictions beyond "don't break DRM to infringe copyright". Breaking DRM to make a fair use is perfectly legal. If a judge so chose they could decide that format-shifting is not only legal, but that breaking DRM to do it is fine, too. This will never actually happen, however, because getting individual plaintiffs into court to sue them for ripping their own DVDs is hideously expensive. You would never actually see someone sued under DMCA 1201 for merely ripping their own media. The only people who actually need to worry about violating this half of DMCA 1201 are large corporations' software licensing departments. So this reform would be useless and this argument is purely academic. There's, of course, another half of DMCA 1201 that is far more insidious, and is the real reason why DRM seems unbreakable. Subsection (a)(2) forbids the production of DRM breaking tools, and this section has no exceptions whatsoever. This is what actually makes DRM ironclad - otherwise, companies would sell DRM breaking tools for people to use for legal purposes, and then everyone would use them to pirate everything. Everything but the most insidious, consumer-hostile, backstabby DRM[1] would be completely devoid of value. What might work would be a mandate to provide lawful access to decryption tools or unencrypted copies of a work for any case that the Copyright Office would otherwise say is legal to break DRM for. If the DRM vendor doesn't comply, then subsection (a)(2) no longer applies to their system and it's legal to sell the tools to break it. So they either have to come up with a way to format-shift works that you purchased, or I can just sell a decryption tool and their shit gets pirated 12 ways to Sunday. [0] To be clear, bunnie keeps asking for a rather wide 1201 exception that keeps getting denied every three years, I'm not sure if that counts. [1] see also: any Apple ][ game
- autokad 3y agoyeah, people fell hook line and sinker for put 'your everything on the cloud'. Now if someone doesn't like the way you think, all the things you 'purchased' can be blocked'. all 'your' photos, gone.
- thedangler 3y agoMake NFTs. That way you can claim your copy again from anyone who licenses it out. And if you sell your digital copy the original owner can earn royalties. Hell you can even make it so its costs $1 to register it to a new device. Lots of possibilities here. Or am I wrong?
- indymike 3y agoLet's use "digital rentals" instead of "digital ownership". Ownership is the wrong word.
- dcdc123 3y agoI am pretty sure the issue here is Sony purchased some sort of pay-per-stream license and effectively sold the users unlimited streams rather than a perpetual license and gambled that most users would not watch the content all that much and they could make more money. Now they are no longer able or willing to pay to renew their license which makes the content unavailable to the users. I assume they could have licensed it in some way that allowed true perpetual access for the users that purchased it but that would have cost more and they would have made less. ^^ just in case it wasn't clear those are all assumptions of mine
- AdmiralAsshat 3y agoUnfortunately, if they get hit with a class-action lawsuit and the eventual payout is less than the amount of money in profit they made from this deal, Sony would just consider this "the cost of doing business."
- Log_out_ 3y agoYou wouldn't pirate stuff you bought.
- xlii 3y agoIt should be titled: "Playstation keeps reminding us why Playstation sucks." Personal experience: I had a huge PS3 games collection, but PS4 came out and Sony no longer was interested in keeping PS3 going (except for re-released). I had no machine outside of used one, and because my library was massive it only gathered dust in shelf. One day I finally sold it off which brought less than 10% of its purchase value. It barely covered cost of work that I put into cataloging and cleaning boxes. So I swore to never go physical drives. Today with Steam (where I have 4 digit title count) I don't really care, it's probably easier to pass down my account than 2 containers worth of dusty drives. And even recently I played Braid that I bought almost 15 years ago. I think it all boils down to the "slippery slope" argument. Sony and Nintendo showed multiple times - through remasters and re-releases - they don't give 2 cents about end-customer as long as they're happy and fed. But not every business is like that. As far as I know Amazon also took some book of people's Kindles, but still (for many) convenience of not having to build your own library in a small metropolitan apartment.
- pwg 3y agoAnd these companies wonder why so many continue to pirate. Pirated copies do not get erased due to the whims of the copyright owner.
- ranting-moth 3y agoGosh, but you wouldn't download a car even if you could, would you?
- Loughla 3y agoOnce metal 3d printing is affordable in the home, I'm absolutely downloading a car.
- gosub100 3y agoCarbon fiber might even be possible before metal, for at least the structural frame. Probably wouldn't pass a single NHTSA test, but imagine how cool it would be if you could assemble your vehicle this way, with a CAD system doing the heavy math calculations, then go to a junk yard and get your suspension, axles, motors, etc. Plug the motor into an rPi that is your (whatever they call automotive computers, ECU?). Not sure how you'd do the interior or exterior, and the SRS would never work right. But you could theoretically get most of the way there, to a dune buggy.
- johnnyanmac 3y agodownloading a car is easy. Getting it registered at the DMV is the hard part. Very easy attack vector unless this is just going to be a street racing car.
- bigbillheck 3y agoI might.
- wilsonnb3 3y agoWhat percentage of people who pirate do you think do it for ideological reasons, rather than just liking free stuff?
- EvanAnderson 3y agoConsumer protection hot-take: It should be illegal for revocable or conditional licenses (time limited, region or geo-locked, tied to off-prem DRM servers, etc) to be marketed as being "sold". The term "rental" (and whatever that does to the end user's perception of price-to-value) should be required in those cases.
- crazygringo 3y agoThe problem is "rental" is already taken for things like 3-day or 7-day or whatever rentals. Reusing the term would cause even greater confusion. "Buy license" or "License" (as a verb, although it's ambiguous in English) is more accurate... but that still doesn't tell you any of the fine print, so I'm not sure it does any good at all. (After all, anyone who cares at all about this stuff already knows it's a license, and doesn't need to be told.) In a case like this, how the heck are you supposed to know that whether or not your license continues is dependent upon whether or not Sony and Warner Bros. can come to an agreement to renew it?
- acdha 3y agoRental works just fine there, it’s just a different time period. Media companies don’t want that because they know people immediately understand it’s not worth as much as a permanent license, which is all the more reason to restrict “buy” to things which convey a lifetime grant with the ability to resell it.
- lukeschlather 3y agoIt shouldn't be legal to market a "sold" license that can be revoked at the sole discretion of the licensor. Sony can't sell you a license unless Warner Bros. has given them a license to sell you, and if Warner Bros. can pull the license it's not legally a sale. There's no confusion as long as Warner Bros. and Sony are acting in good faith.
- crazygringo 3y agoA million percent agreed. I seriously do not understand how Sony and Warner Bros. signed a deal like this in the first place.
- davidmurphy 3y agoRegulation needed