6 ms·

The only reason it existed for the last year was they didn't want to negotiate to move licenses to Crunchyroll, so I suspect the remaining Funimation-but-not-Cr

• ocdtrekkie 3y ago
  Wow. Ditching digital copies is just a garbage move. Generally Ultraviolet and now Movies Anywhere at least offer some robust persistence between services, but even movies not covered by those have been transferred to another service when someone shuts their streaming service down. I believe Vudu sells a lot of this content too, so if they really even cared about consumers they likely could've transferred the digital copies there.
• 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y ago
  I thought the intent was, "We should make the service trustworthy enough that customers are comfortable not owning things" e.g. Lots of gamers trust Steam. I don't hear of high-profile games going missing from Steam. And unlike a console or streamed game, at least you can back it up and try to crack the DRM in the future. Can't say that about basically any video platform.
  • incrudible 3y ago
    In this case you actually did get a physical copy, the digital one was just a bonus. Nothing stopped you from selling the physical copy and keeping the digital one either.
  • wlesieutre 3y ago
    Generally when a game goes missing from Steam you can still play it, they just stop selling new copies due to licensing agreements on things like music expiring. But The Crew is making news recently for planning to pull the plug on their servers. This will also kill its single-player components because Ubisoft are dicks who made the single-player still require servers. https://www.ign.com/articles/the-crew-delisted-from-all-digital-storefronts-servers-shut-down-early-2024 https://www.ign.com/articles/the-crew-delisted-from-all-digi...
    • A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
      My household has simple rules: no Ubisoft, no Sony, no Blizz/Activision. It helps that all three have been getting progressively worse over the years.
      • bryondowd 3y ago
        Just out of curiosity, why Sony? Only negative thing I can recall hearing about them is blocking cross play to protect their console lead, which didn't seem too unreasonable to me.
        • wlesieutre 3y ago
          The Funimation shutdown is Sony Going back further, installing a rootkit on to customer computers to prevent ripping audio CDs
        • pixelatedindex 3y ago
          I think there was a Discovery snafu as well? Like if you bought titles from the Discovery Channel on PSN, you don’t have access to those anymore. But I do think Sony should get a pass here. Or you have to blanket ban all digital goods but that seems detrimental. I understand the feeling though, as I too don’t buy anything digital outside of Steam.
• charcircuit 3y ago
  >so people are losing access to things they've paid to "own". They would still own the physical copy of it. Having the bonus goods that come with the thing you buy not be available forever is nothing new.
  • JoshTriplett 3y ago
    > Having the bonus goods that come with the thing you buy not be available forever is nothing new. That doesn't make it OK, that just makes it a long-standing bad thing.
  • jmward01 3y ago
    Nothing is a 'bonus' when you buy something. You paid for it, you should get it. I have never pirated a single thing in my life, but I am seriously thinking about doing it now. I have been forced to pay for the same thing many times over because the copy I 'own' doesn't transfer and it stops working. Why is it a crime if I rip a DVD I paid for but not theft if they stop providing a service that was paid for?
    • Larrikin 3y ago
      Where is it a crime to rip a DVD you own?
      • arcanemachiner 3y ago
        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Legality https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripping#Legality Looks like the UK, probably Canada, and maybe the US.
• dimmke 3y ago
  This is one of those issues that I really see both sides of. I think it's unreasonable to expect a company to be able to provide the ability to download content you bought once in perpetuity. Because it costs money, and companies shut down etc... Where it gets dicey is if the removal of availability of an item means you can no longer consume it even if you already have it downloaded. That's where regulation should come in. I just don't think it's tenable to have a regulation that says "If you're a company that sells digital goods with copy protection, you must always keep those goods available for download in perpetuity"
  • caconym_ 3y ago
    Is it a straightforward download? I've never used any of these "digital copy" codes but I always assumed they let you stream it on a closed platform rather than just giving you a DRM-free file you can do whatever with. Seems like this would be way less problematic if they offered a full download for a limited time. The real digital copy is on the disk itself, for those with an optical drive and a few minutes to search the web for appropriate software...
    • jonathankoren 3y ago
      All things are possible in software. It’s just that rich guys say what we’re not allowed to do.
    • dimmke 3y ago
      I think that's the problem is that it's different on a case by case basis. For example, a book I bought for Kindle on Amazon was recently taken off the store. But I am still able to download and access the book. It sounds like in this case, it was a locked down streaming situation that's going away because the company is simply merging into Crunchyroll and this is kind of a dangling thing they don't feel like bringing over with them. I'm not sure what the solution is - you could argue that the people who bought the physical media did so with the expectation of being able to also stream it digitally. But it's not like Funimation has the ability to just be like "Here's the video file, go ahead and download it" - even if they had the will to do so they likely don't have the legal ability. But they do retain access to a physical copy and of course, could just rip it. I think there is copy protection for DVDs and Blurays but that's long since been cracked. Not ideal from a legal/consumer rights perspective, but from a pragrmatic perspective it's the easiest solution (actually easiest would just be pirating an existing rip online likely.)
• joshspankit 3y ago
  > Remember that when e.g. Ubisoft wants you to be comfortable not owning things... Ubisoft took that profitable tactic from media companies (who have been wildly successful at using it. Who even questions the fact that music is licensed?) who ironically got it from software. I can’t remember who got the idea first, but Microsoft used the licensing model almost exclusively and that model hit the market hard to take away individual rights and give those rights to the companies. I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone on HN that those long “Click to Agree” documents are almost all licenses but there are people out there that don’t know that there was a time those didn’t exist and tangibly owning things was a core value of western culture.
  • eslaught 3y ago
    Music is the perfect counterexample to what you're saying. It's the only remaining digital platform where it's still possible to buy legal, DRM-free copies of digital files, which you can download to your own machine and thus ensure you retain access. Ebooks, audiobooks, movies, games all work like you say. (Less so with games, at least there are alternatives like GOG. But mainstream games are by and large not available without DRM.) Even podcasts are going that direction. But music, somehow, inexplicably, remains DRM-free even with all the mainstream labels.
    • mod50ack 3y ago
      The explanation is that CDs came along before DRM was a thing. The industry could not break compatibility with over a 15 years' worth of CD players, especially since people had them in their cars, etc. The home playing software always had the ability to rip CDs; you could do that long before iTunes was a thing. It was only a matter of time before record labels gave up on DRM. Now, since CSS was cracked, DVDs are, in practice, no harder to rip. But a company like Apple can't ship a DVD ripper in iTunes.
      • sspiff 3y ago
        > The industry could not break compatibility with over a 15 years' worth of CD players, especially since people had them in their cars, etc. Sure, not at first. But how long has it been since most people interacted with a CD player now? Most teenagers haven't, ever. Yet here we are, music is still being sold on CDs. Not that I want to put the music industry on some kind of pedestal as a paragon of virtue in the digital age, but it's certainly odd and noteworthy. > Now, since CSS was cracked, DVDs are, in practice, no harder to rip. But a company like Apple can't ship a DVD ripper in iTunes. DVD quality is not really of sufficient quality for most consumers today, though. Meanwhile, CD quality continues to match or exceed modern streaming services.
• koolba 3y ago
  They should refund all “purchases” that will no longer exist. I bet it’s going to be cheaper than the eventual class action lawsuit.
  • joshspankit 3y ago
    There would only be a lawsuit if the at-purchase license agreement for some reason didn’t cover revoking.
    • lmm 3y ago
      In any country with a decent government there would be a lawsuit. When you write "Buy" in big letters on the button, you have an obligation to treat that as a sale, whatever crap you wrote in the hundred-page small print.
      • fxtentacle 3y ago
        Yeah, which means in the US you can probably get away with it. And fleecing the US market will bring in more profits than you lose to EU lawsuits.
• p1mrx 3y ago
  https://help.funimation.com/hc/en-us/articles/23103586580244-Funimation-End-of-services https://help.funimation.com/hc/en-us/articles/23103586580244... > We understand that you may have concerns about your digital copies from Funimation. https://theportalwiki.com/wiki/Announcer_voice_lines#Chamber_07 https://theportalwiki.com/wiki/Announcer_voice_lines#Chamber... > The Enrichment Center respects your right to have questions or concerns about this policy.
• fxtentacle 3y ago
  I think Cory Doctorow nailed the formulation here: If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing. Otherwise, if there are no negative consequences for a company deleting everyone's purchases, what will stop them from doing it every year just to boost profits?
  • cobbal 3y ago
    It's pithy, and I certainly wish more things were sold instead of licensed, but by this logic anything in a museum is also free for the taking.
    • otabdeveloper4 3y ago
      No. Copyright infringement is not legally theft.
      • cherryteastain 3y ago
        Correct, penalties for copyright infringement are far more draconian than theft.
    • stepbeek 3y ago
      But a museum doesn’t ask you to “buy” an exhibit… The misleading aspect of digital “ownership “ is in the use of the word buy.
    • breakfastduck 3y ago
      A museum isn't offering a purchase. Also, this is the same old false equivalence - taking a copy of something is NOT the same as taking the original, where only one instance of an item can exist and taking it deprives the original owner of their possessional.
    • suoduandao3 3y ago
      If the Museum originally got it from someone who stole it from somewhere else, there's a reasonable argument to be made. James Acaster's comedy bit on the british museum comes to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73PkUvArJY&pp=ygUcamFtZXMgYWNhc3RlciBicml0aXNoIG11c2V1bQ%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x73PkUvArJY&pp=ygUcamFtZXMgY...
• austin-cheney 3y ago
  When it comes digital media if you don’t have it sitting on a hard disk in your physical possession free from DRM you don’t actually own it.
• citizenpaul 3y ago
  Wait until the MBA'S realize that constant spinning off streaming services and shutting them down can be a business strategy for infinite money reselling the same product access has been lost to Maybe they already have? Probably would be most effective on 5+ year cycle to give people time to forget.