Not limited to PlayStation. Apple's been doing this for years.
I have iTunes music going back to the day the store opened. Some of it is now missing from the iTunes cloud (or Apple Music or whatever it's called this week). It would be gone forever had I not made a local backup.
At least Sony's contacting customers. I was looking for songs I knew I had and couldn't find them until I searched a local backup.
When I complained, I got a boilerplate "tough titties, sometimes we lose licensing" response.
Always keep hard copies people.
This foolishness of trusting someone else to host your stuff for you? Well now you know.
I wonder why their license affects your local copy of a purchased product.
Imagine a supermarket losing the contract to sell Nescafé, so Nestlé comes into your house to take their coffee. Okay, Nestlé would totally do this anyway, but it’s bizarre.
As described, the Apple version is that they won't remove local copies you already have? They just can't facilitate copying a new instance to your device.
I have a smart playlist that gets automatically populated with songs in my library that are not available (evidently pulled) on Apple Music anymore, and it is growing with tunes that I like and that are sometimes impossible to find elsewhere. If I had the foresight to get actual copies, I could still listen to them. I don’t think there’s any way to download them, but I didn’t “buy” them via iTunes Store, just streamed them.
If I download it on my iPad I’m pretty sure it will delete itself or eventually got deleted on an update. I might be wrong but this is how these systems work.
Sony and Apple aren’t the only offenders. Google Play Music did something similar 12 years ago or so. It’s been a bit but I recall permanently losing access to a lot of music I owned at the time.
I don't remember that happening. What I do remember is that Alphabet decided to axe Google Play Music, but they announced that months in advance and made it fairly easy to download my entire collection. Which is why I now have a couple hundred gigabytes of music backed up on several devices.
Wrong, Kotaku. Lots of digital things are ours. Digital files on our personally owned HDDs and SSDs. Digital movies on DVD and Blu-Ray discs on our shelves. Digital ISO files on hard drives that are ripped from the aforementioned digital physical DVDs.
What you meant to say is, streaming content is not ours - and that is true by definition, because the data is streamed from somewhere else. Someone else can always delete files, take down servers, or go out of business entirely.
The word digital contrasts with analog. Digital and physical are two independent axes - there are digital physical things, digital virtual things, analog physical things, and analog virtual things.
This is technically true, but not helpful. These online services have buttons that say "rent" and "buy", they don't say "rent for a little while" and "rent for a longer but unknown amount of time". Of course they can go out of business, but the impression they intentionally give to the customer is that if you click "buy", you get access to the movie for as long as the site exists.
If you're the ethical type you can "buy" it on one of these services and then pirate it in order to keep it in perpetuity. If you're the less ethical type you can skip the "buying" step.
> Digital movies on DVD and Blu-Ray discs on our shelves.
It actually already got a bit more fuzzy with Blu-Ray and especially with later BD+ doesn't it? You own some encrypted data, but there is absolutely no guarantee you will always have access to a player with the right keys and a TV that is compatible and isn't refusing to play it.
It already drove the needle way past acceptable copy protection, do not buy Blu-Rays!
> It actually already got a bit more fuzzy with Blu-Ray and especially with later BD+ doesn't it? You own some encrypted data, but there is absolutely no guarantee you will always have access to a player with the right keys and a TV that is compatible and isn't refusing to play it.
Buy this definitions, DVDs are also problematic, given they're also encrypted.
Blu-rays are universally cracked by this point, so I fail to see the problem. MakeMKV is not going away to the point you won't be able to rip your blu-ray.
UHD blu-rays are a different story, since they added more encryption.
They should absolutely be forced to provide either a refund or a downloadable copy, this is absurd. It sounds like they didn't actually have the license necessary to be able to sell these movies in any reasonable way.
Not to worry, eventually somebody will file a class action lawsuit, and after mere 12 years of litigation everybody affected will get $2.17 in store credits (in another 5 years).
Exactly — they should have just offered a lease until the end of the licensing agreement: “Pay $X today and watch this movie as many times as you want through June 2026!”
So... I used to work in the "digital movie & TV selling" industry. Our product detail pages, like pretty much all our competitors, had language on the call-to-action buttons that said "purchase" (and also, as an alternative, "rent," for 48- or 72-hour viewing).
At one point, about 10 years ago, one of the major Hollywood studios came to us and required us to change that because they believed that exactly this sort of thing would happen and we would all be setting ourselves up for liability because consumers would rightfully assume that that meant they owned the movie "forever."
and this should include musics and similar in games (excluding stuff like sessional content)
if you sell a game you should have to have bought a license to use the music (and similar) in the game permanently (for given game sold, new sold revision can change what they contain but only if there isn't deceptive advertisement and it's very clearly labeled that it's a different revision/the content changed!).
Single player games putting out "seasonal content" is kind of obnoxious too though so I wouldn't exclude them all. One example is the Moogle Chocobo Carnival and Assassin's Festival in Final Fantasy XV which players had to work very hard to patch back into the game after it was removed. The limited time Stellar Blade Summer Event wasn't nearly as impressive as the carnival, but it was still a black mark on a game that was otherwise refreshingly free from bullshit.
Yes, it is very comfusing. "Buy" buttons should be replaced by "License" buttons when you are licensing stuff instead of buyimg it. There should be a law for that.
That's a big can of worms, since it applies to approximately 100% of all software. You only ever buy a license that allows you to use software, almost never actually buy software.
And if that one-time purchased software stops working at an arbitrary date, it should be subject to the same rules. Especially online software or software requiring servers to run.
You can still offer limited-time subscriptions, of course, and you can extend the minimum deadline for your server-dependent software to free as often as you want, just make sure people know what the deal is when they buy your software.
DVDs and other media also aren't yours to buy, they're just licenses and a physical container to use that license. You can buy software the same way you can buy a DVD, and you can rent software the same way you can rent a movie on a digital storefront.
Copyright law has been playing semantic games with "buy" and "own" for decades. When I buy(1) something, it's mine, and I can do what I want with it. The person whom I buy it from doesn't have the right to rescind my rights over the thing I bought. When I buy(2) a software license, does the seller have the right to claw back the license? If not, then buy(1) and buy(2) are conceptually identical, and there's no difference between buying a license and buying the (copy of the) software. If yes or unknown, then buying(2) is not buying(1), as it does not grant ownership, but something else; not even over the license.
So what kind of transaction is buying(2) something? What do you get in exchange for money? It's clearly not a good, so is it a service? Is continued permission to use the software a service? Then if that service is interrupted the consumer should be entitled to some kind of reimbursement from the provider, right? Because otherwise the provider has an incentive to stop the service.
Have there been situations were licenses are mass revoked? That would be quite nasty, I don’t recall any. My licenses to Things, Alfred, Little Snitch, etc. still work to this day. They don’t even bother with upselling.
Oftentimes that end date is not clearly knowable and can't be communicated explicitly, but consumers should still be aware of the fact that their rights are limited. While the Gaben lives valve will store many people's games - when the Gaben dies... well, it's going to suck - but it'll probably take a while to completely suck, we'll probably go through drawn out enshittification first. This outcome seems inevitable[1] but it is likely a fair distance off.
1. Unless you write a damned clear company charter, Gabe, get on that.
Have you ever bought a ticket to a concert ? what did you actually own ?
I get the feeling, but this whole outrage about what words mean is sterile if you don't actually engage with what is sold here, by who from who, what was the contract, how it was setup and why.
How do you feel about the right holders who also didn't bother providing simple "buy, download and it's forever yours" avenues to get that content ? Or are you just happy being outraged and will go back to your daily life afterwards ? (that's what I'll do, because I was already renting stuff when video tapes were a thing, and I see the current situation as a logical equilibrium, including what happens on the seven seas)
This comparison makes no sense. When you buy a ticket to a concert you fully expect to be allowed access to said concert. If it gets cancelled because this or that studio owns some random right you fully expect to be refunded.
> I was already renting stuff when video tapes were a thing
Good for you. These guys also propose rental with a rent button, and a purchase button for what you'd expect be purchasing the movie. Do you still not see what the issue is and why the debate on what word means is anything but sterile?
> Or are you just happy being outraged and will go back to your daily life afterwards ?
Wow, this is gratuitous and extremely belittling. I hope you feel good smelling your own farts.
> Have you ever bought a ticket to a concert ? what did you actually own ?
A ticket that would allow you entrance into a particular concert. Is this some sort of rhetorical question? I can't decipher what it's attempting to illustrate.
Piracy is justified especially when it comes to movies!
If I am buying a DVD, I own that copy regardless of the studio and the distributor being in legal trouble or not. If I "buy" or "purchase" something online, I expect the same thing.
I'm not always a fan of the EU over-regulating some things but I feel like they should start fining companies who want to re-define the meaning of the word purchase
"PlayStation Store users who bought a limited license to play a movie on approved devices and approved displays, revocable at any moment with no or minimal notice".
Jellyfin + Jellyseer + PassThePopcorn has served me and my friends/family well. I pay $50/mo now for a seedbox with 16TB but it serves 20 people. I would self-host for $0/month but my current apartment only has Xfinity, not AT&T and the upload isn’t enough to self-host.
It’s less about the money and more about:
1) Having a single place to go for any TV show or movie. I found it very frustrating trying to figure out what service had which show - sometimes none of them have it (a few things are still not streamable at all - e.g. “Sharky and George”)
2) Knowing that my streaming service isn’t downgrading the video quality. Even my lay friends notice the picture quality improvement vs Amazon / Hulu etc.
3) Jellyseer lets my friends request media that gets auto-downloaded. So it’s a curated list of content which helps me discover high quality stuff to watch.
I take advantage of AWS S3 for multimedia storage duty these days. My goal is to maintain stable access to content I enjoy without worrying about data loss or the burden of time it takes or maintain all the storage infrastructure.
If it costs me a little bit of money to store this information, I don't consider it to be "losing" the piracy game. I still have a lot of control and no one has a clue what I'm storing thanks to symmetric encryption, guid names and fixed chunk sizes. As far as Amazon is concerned, it appears as if I'm just running backups for some boring enterprise application.
Could Amazon take it all away tomorrow? Sure. But I've had an account with them since 2014 and something like this has never come up before. At worst, I'd expect a deprecation warning with a solid 12 months of time to figure out an alternative.
There is no way you are going to beat the durability of S3 at home. Durability seems to be ~the entire point here. At some level you need to consider which evil is the lesser evil, at least if you value your free time and the possibility of actually enjoying all this media you've spent so much effort acquiring.
I had to move, haven't settled yet, so my entire setup of Radarr/Sonarr/Kodi + torrent in a VPN container is gone and I miss it so much. The result is that I haven't been watching any movies or TV show for the past year or so. I miss them, but doing it legally or setting up something anew on a VPS is too much work or too much risky.
That said, wouldn't you have an invite for PassThePopcorn? Never heard of this one, I thought it was yet another iteration of that popcorn streaming app that was popular a decade ago. I always managed with public trackers, never cared about the entire interview process: I hate it for work, I hate it for fun even more. Email in the profile if you wish to share.
How did you find your way into PTP? I’m in a few but PTP it sounds like they expect you to be a mass uploader. I’m and seeder but how would anyone even “find” me? Do I need to be involved in the forums of the private trackers I use today?
This discussion applies to any product from every virtual store, including game stores.
Unless you get an irrevocable full digital copy of the product, the “buy” button should technically be called “lend” or “borrow”, as you lose the product when the shop disappears.
But that doesn’t solve the deteriorating ownership problem as consumers will choose to borrow due to convenience even if they know they get to keep nothing. Especially if that is the “only” option.
Digital products are hollow and short-term, yet still asking full price or even quadruple the price of physical products (happens a lot with games).
Consumer protection would mean that buying means owning, with all perks and hassle that comes with it.
There currently are no long-term protections. “Stop killing games” is a reflection of that, but needs to broaden.
However, you will stop owning that copy the moment the DVD deteriorates to the point of becoming unreadable. Physical media is a good start, but DRM-stripped digital is the ideal.
If you buy a DVD you have the right, in every sane jurisdiction I'm aware of, to rip the movie from the DVD into an iso. You can then discard/recycle the media and retain the digital copy you have the right to view privately in perpetuity. It is a single consumer license though, as is logical, so it's likely illegal for you to continue to watch the ripped iso if you resell the media with the content still on it or resell the media with any portion of the value coming from the markings from the content or the fact that it used to contain that content. You probably want to shove it in a closet somewhere or just reuse it as rewriteable media for whatever purpose you need - retaining physical ownership of the media makes things simplest legally.
everything degrades. We live in a world ruled by entropy. Even digital stuff degrades. It has to be stored somewhere, in some form, and there is always a risk of loss. No matter what.
>I own that copy regardless of the studio and the distributor being in legal trouble or not.
You also get the play the same version stored on DVD regardless where you are. You are limited by location when you purchase it online, and sometimes they might even automatically swap the version / cuts for you depending on your location.
We really need a storage media that last 100+ years, store 200GB+, tiny footprint, and inexpensive to produce.
How is it that Steam manages to avoid yanking games from people's libraries even after the games are delisted for licensing issues, etc? I have multiple games that you can't "buy" anymore, but Steam doesn't stop me from reinstalling them as often as I like.
Are they negotiating that as part of the deal with their vendors? Or is it as simple as "We're not dicks." ?
That's just how Valve's license agreement works. You publish with Steam and you grant Valve the right to publish the work in perpetuity.
The licensing deal made by movie studios does not work like that because the studios are intentionally predatory. The distribution agreements are temporary and can involve periodic payments. Literally Netflix rents movies from the studios and rents them back to you. The studios reserve the right to cancel distribution deals at any time.
When a movie or show gets removed from Netflix sucks but no as much since it's a subscription and you can cancel if they don't have what you like but what you do with something you bought
> How is it that Steam manages to avoid yanking games from people's libraries even after the games are delisted for licensing issues, etc?
Steam isn't innocent either. The instance that comes to mind is Order Of War: Challenge (https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-remov...) but I've also seen people say other games have been removed from their libraries or silently replaced with "remastered" versions that removed things like licensed music. Publishers have also taken games from people's libraries by revoking their keys. Steam says publishers can do this whenever they want. In one case, after the sale they thought a player should have paid them more money (https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/w9jpd5/warning_publi...)
I feel these license agreements have to be set up in such a way people that already bought their movies get to keep them, like okay Sony lost the licences and they shouldn't sell it to new customers but existing customers should get to keep their movies. Since companies don't care the government needs to force their hand and put it into law
Exactly. Sony/Playstation can lose their right to issue further licenses, but the existing licenses should be honoured. As that's apparently not baked into the existing contracts, someone needs to legislate that such basic consumer rights are required, and all existing and prior contracts interpreted as if these rights were in place.
Make it work the same as delisted games where you can go into your purchase history and click download.
The problem is that existing customers don't "have" anything. They stream the movie on demand from Sony's servers. And Sony can't keep the movie on their server anymore. The entire delivery model is broken.
It's just a matter of negotiating sensible licensing deals. But that would require the distributors to actually care a little bit about not screwing over their customers.
Look how it works over at Steam. If a license expires, even if the publisher goes out of business, Steam removes a game from its storefront, but the files are still on their servers and they keep them available for anyone who purchased a license. I think the only cases where they actually removed files from their servers and blocked redownloads were when there was an actual legal or liability issue forbidding them from continuing to offer the files (for example if they contain malware).
Even if they did download the movie, Sony would be legally required to remotely delete it, because they can. The only way that doesn't happen is if they can't, such as when you download an mp3 on a PC from a company that is not Microsoft.
I found a local store that specializes in used movies on DVD, BluRay, 4K discs and video games from Atari to PS5. I’ve started picking up hard copies of everything so I’m (a) not tracked and (b) can’t have my stuff taken away.
I believe DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and players will increase in value over time, almost like samizdat printing presses -- underground video viewers that let us watch movies without the monolithic globalist corporate police state observing, penalizing, demanding identitification, and trying to extract an ounce of monopolist rentier blood.
I don’t know it sounds a lot more likely to me that piracy will just come back in popularity in a big way instead. Why pay inflated prices for old machines that will certainly break and old discs when you can just download a DRM free copy easily for free?
When streaming first took off piracy hit all time lows, but it’s already been coming back in a big way and I’m sure will only continue to do so going forward as things like this keep happening and streaming keeps getting more expensive and fragmented.
I find it a bit sad that everyone is dumping on Sony here, considering it's StudioCanal that is presumably demanding the movies be made inaccessible to customers, but presumably is not offering to refund the royalties they collected. I't's natural for people to direct their ire at the reailer to whom they gave their money, but in my view its the rightsholder who is generally the abd guy in these situations.
(For those without the background: In 2020, Sony bought Crunchyroll and in 2024 merged it with Funimation (acquired by Sony subsidiary Aniplex in 2017). Since Crunchyroll had the larger streaming service, this was done by moving the Funimation library to Crunchyroll. However, Funimation also has a business selling digital copies, not just streaming access, which was discontinued including access to purchased media)
Which in many (not all) states can promptly be followed by a Motion to Transfer/Notice of Removal/whatever local custom to a county/circuit/district court.
Once moved to a higher court, you will lose because you don't know the procedures, deadlines, and customs of that venue. Then, the counterparty will often be awarded fees.
Wow, "purchasing a revokable license" is an insane concept. Purchase of something revokable in general feels like... not purchasing? If there was a definite time bound that's one thing, but imagine if I sell a revokable license and then revoke it a week later -- it seems like that would be allowed?
I don't mean to disagree with you, and I have basically no expertise in this area, just shocked by the whole thing.
Would likely win in the UK as we have an unfair terms regulation, a small claims court could easily rule it an unfair as any reasonable consumer would assume they were purchasing the movie to watch whenever they want to.
ISTM there's a good argument for a plaintiff to ask the court to ignore that on the basis that it's a contract of adhesion and one that's effectively unreadable for anyone without a law degree. We're not talking about terms and conditions that fit on a single sheet of paper in a normal font, bu thousands upon thousands of words.
What’s wild is there is no legal way to actually buy and truly own movies anymore. Any major service is a license and if you can even get a DVD the legality of ripping it is questionable since you have to break DRM. I have purchased a few movies (surf films) from people who actually give you the digital file and it is so wonderful.
This remains my favourite quote from any user agreement I've ever seen, from the PlayStation Terms of Use:
> Use of the terms "own," "ownership", "purchase," "sale," "sold," "sell," "rent" or "buy" in this Agreement or in connection with the Content does not mean or imply any transfer of ownership of any content
I mean, this is chef's kiss level of deceit. No parody could top that.
Any jurisdiction where a company can just put "when we say you'll own it, it doesn't mean you'll own anything" in their contracts and get away with it, is broken.
What will the end game in this licensing scheme be? I reckon once enough movies have been sold, the reputational damage of taking them away would become so large that streaming services will be strongarmed into accepting increasingly unreasonable fees.
A Jellyfin or Plex server can be had for real cheap using used hardware. A Ryzen 3 build can be found for next to nothing here in Brazil[1], so I imagine it’d be even cheaper in the US.
Add an old Quadro card for hardware decoding, or go with an Intel CPU for Quick Sync, throw some IronWolf drives inside, install your favorite Linux distro, and you’re off to the races.
Yes, managing a server is more work than just signing up for Netflix or whatnot, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
[1]: A quick search shows me a Ryzen 3 3200G build with 16 GB of RAM for $200, and electronics are super expensive in Brazil.
How soon until the digital distributions are owned by just a few cartels, and later when it’s suitable for them, they also modify digital movies to suit a political agenda without letting you know?
Top movies include Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, The Graduate, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Room, Silver Linings Playbook, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Pan's Labyrinth.
Sony sucks and I will never give them another dime. Had a PS5 with a 120+ games (majority PS4), also PSVR2, got f-ed over by Sony when they would not refund in incorrect game purchase I'd bought literally minutes before asking for the refund. Gave up my PS5, I will never purchase anything from Sony ever again. Recommend everyone else do the same.
Arbitrage baby. Rent the movie from the studios, and then sell it to your customers! Before they know what happened, the sheriff is coming to evict them from the house they thought they bought, but you can just pocket the difference!
This is ridiculous. I thought at first that it concerned pirated movies that people were playing on their playstation.
But no. It's purchased content. That is being deleted. That's insane. Even if an EULA states they can do this, there should be statutory rights that overrule this.
I notice that Sony calls it "previously purchased" content. As if it's ok to do this because it's been a while ago.
Makes me glad I never got in the habit of buying digital copies of movies or TV shows. This a one off many reminders that if you really want to purchase a title, get the Blu-ray or DVD
I'm more cynical here. I suspect these are films (or many of them at least) are ones "they" don't want you to see... ever. It's censorship, so no remastering.
"due to our content licensing agreements" ..so this is just Sony placating to someone else's demands. The question is who are "they" and why these films? Maybe these films end up being revised with alternate endings or tweaked characters.
If you see these films, what sort of person will you become? Is that someone who is undesirable?
Terminator 2, Rambo 1, Cliffhanger and Total Recall. We can't have that!
It's just a theory.
Are PlayStation users younger than average? That's important to note too.
Also interesting: recently YT removed the ability to see Likes in one's uploaded video list, only views and comment counts. The message could be: "be well-known, but don't be popular" Why?
Yet I think "Sort by Likes" would be a boon for YT creators and that never even existed, with the Likes column even removed a week or two after I suggested it.
If you're not experienced in media servers, I'd recommend a QNAP NAS and then install either Jellyfin or Emby. (Plex has really gone downhill in the last 10 years imho.) QNAP is terrible for experienced users, but as Baby's First NAS it's absolutely sublime.
Is it just me who thinks that everything went wrong when we accepted the closed model hardware and their ecosystem?
If it was an open ecosystem, we would have alternative options like we have in PC such as GoG for games. I know movie industry is stupid to begin with but it’s reasonable the make DRM free copy of the movies you own or even pirate at this point given how hostile the whole industry is until they move to more open approaches.
Maybe EU should crack down on closed eco systems and make it mandatory to side load things officially on anything that runs external apps.
If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't theft.
Not limited to PlayStation. Apple's been doing this for years.
I have iTunes music going back to the day the store opened. Some of it is now missing from the iTunes cloud (or Apple Music or whatever it's called this week). It would be gone forever had I not made a local backup.
At least Sony's contacting customers. I was looking for songs I knew I had and couldn't find them until I searched a local backup.
When I complained, I got a boilerplate "tough titties, sometimes we lose licensing" response.
Always keep hard copies people.
This foolishness of trusting someone else to host your stuff for you? Well now you know.
I wonder why their license affects your local copy of a purchased product.
Imagine a supermarket losing the contract to sell Nescafé, so Nestlé comes into your house to take their coffee. Okay, Nestlé would totally do this anyway, but it’s bizarre.
As described, the Apple version is that they won't remove local copies you already have? They just can't facilitate copying a new instance to your device.
I still think this is crazy, mind.
Because it's not a purchased product. It's a sub-license of Apple's license for you to temporarily play a work.
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With Apple, you can at least download the media you bought and keep it.
Could you do that with these PlayStation store movies?
I have a smart playlist that gets automatically populated with songs in my library that are not available (evidently pulled) on Apple Music anymore, and it is growing with tunes that I like and that are sometimes impossible to find elsewhere. If I had the foresight to get actual copies, I could still listen to them. I don’t think there’s any way to download them, but I didn’t “buy” them via iTunes Store, just streamed them.
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If I download it on my iPad I’m pretty sure it will delete itself or eventually got deleted on an update. I might be wrong but this is how these systems work.
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Sony and Apple aren’t the only offenders. Google Play Music did something similar 12 years ago or so. It’s been a bit but I recall permanently losing access to a lot of music I owned at the time.
I don't remember that happening. What I do remember is that Alphabet decided to axe Google Play Music, but they announced that months in advance and made it fairly easy to download my entire collection. Which is why I now have a couple hundred gigabytes of music backed up on several devices.
> Reminding Us Nothing Digital Is Ever Truly Ours
Wrong, Kotaku. Lots of digital things are ours. Digital files on our personally owned HDDs and SSDs. Digital movies on DVD and Blu-Ray discs on our shelves. Digital ISO files on hard drives that are ripped from the aforementioned digital physical DVDs.
What you meant to say is, streaming content is not ours - and that is true by definition, because the data is streamed from somewhere else. Someone else can always delete files, take down servers, or go out of business entirely.
The word digital contrasts with analog. Digital and physical are two independent axes - there are digital physical things, digital virtual things, analog physical things, and analog virtual things.
This is technically true, but not helpful. These online services have buttons that say "rent" and "buy", they don't say "rent for a little while" and "rent for a longer but unknown amount of time". Of course they can go out of business, but the impression they intentionally give to the customer is that if you click "buy", you get access to the movie for as long as the site exists.
If you're the ethical type you can "buy" it on one of these services and then pirate it in order to keep it in perpetuity. If you're the less ethical type you can skip the "buying" step.
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I think you're playing language games here. What does an "analog virtual thing" look like?
Digital = expressed by discrete bits of encoded digits (1s and 0s). Analog = lossy and necessarily physical
A "digital physical thing" is just a physical thing (disc) with digital things encoded on it.
>What does an "analog virtual thing" look like?
The image of an apple, stored as an analog signal on a magnetic tape.
>A "digital physical thing" is just a physical thing (disc) with digital things encoded on it.
Correct, a digital physical thing stores digital virtual things, and an analog physical thing stores analog virtual things.
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> Digital movies on DVD and Blu-Ray discs on our shelves.
It actually already got a bit more fuzzy with Blu-Ray and especially with later BD+ doesn't it? You own some encrypted data, but there is absolutely no guarantee you will always have access to a player with the right keys and a TV that is compatible and isn't refusing to play it.
It already drove the needle way past acceptable copy protection, do not buy Blu-Rays!
> It actually already got a bit more fuzzy with Blu-Ray and especially with later BD+ doesn't it? You own some encrypted data, but there is absolutely no guarantee you will always have access to a player with the right keys and a TV that is compatible and isn't refusing to play it.
Buy this definitions, DVDs are also problematic, given they're also encrypted.
Blu-rays are universally cracked by this point, so I fail to see the problem. MakeMKV is not going away to the point you won't be able to rip your blu-ray.
UHD blu-rays are a different story, since they added more encryption.
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Digital in this context is merely shorthand for "digitally distributed", as opposed to "physically distributed"
They should absolutely be forced to provide either a refund or a downloadable copy, this is absurd. It sounds like they didn't actually have the license necessary to be able to sell these movies in any reasonable way.
Not to worry, eventually somebody will file a class action lawsuit, and after mere 12 years of litigation everybody affected will get $2.17 in store credits (in another 5 years).
Exactly — they should have just offered a lease until the end of the licensing agreement: “Pay $X today and watch this movie as many times as you want through June 2026!”
When this was originally tried under the OG "DIVX" brand name, everybody (including me) threw a fit.
Some warned that everything would work that way eventually anyway, and everybody (including me) blew them off.
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it should not be legal for the product page to say “purchase” or “buy” when in reality you’re only renting it with a to be determined end date
So... I used to work in the "digital movie & TV selling" industry. Our product detail pages, like pretty much all our competitors, had language on the call-to-action buttons that said "purchase" (and also, as an alternative, "rent," for 48- or 72-hour viewing).
At one point, about 10 years ago, one of the major Hollywood studios came to us and required us to change that because they believed that exactly this sort of thing would happen and we would all be setting ourselves up for liability because consumers would rightfully assume that that meant they owned the movie "forever."
"Rent for 48h", and... "Rent until we say the time is up"?
and this should include musics and similar in games (excluding stuff like sessional content)
if you sell a game you should have to have bought a license to use the music (and similar) in the game permanently (for given game sold, new sold revision can change what they contain but only if there isn't deceptive advertisement and it's very clearly labeled that it's a different revision/the content changed!).
Single player games putting out "seasonal content" is kind of obnoxious too though so I wouldn't exclude them all. One example is the Moogle Chocobo Carnival and Assassin's Festival in Final Fantasy XV which players had to work very hard to patch back into the game after it was removed. The limited time Stellar Blade Summer Event wasn't nearly as impressive as the carnival, but it was still a black mark on a game that was otherwise refreshingly free from bullshit.
Yes, it is very comfusing. "Buy" buttons should be replaced by "License" buttons when you are licensing stuff instead of buyimg it. There should be a law for that.
That's a big can of worms, since it applies to approximately 100% of all software. You only ever buy a license that allows you to use software, almost never actually buy software.
I'm quite alright with that can of worms being opened for software. Enthused, even.
And if that one-time purchased software stops working at an arbitrary date, it should be subject to the same rules. Especially online software or software requiring servers to run.
You can still offer limited-time subscriptions, of course, and you can extend the minimum deadline for your server-dependent software to free as often as you want, just make sure people know what the deal is when they buy your software.
DVDs and other media also aren't yours to buy, they're just licenses and a physical container to use that license. You can buy software the same way you can buy a DVD, and you can rent software the same way you can rent a movie on a digital storefront.
Copyright law has been playing semantic games with "buy" and "own" for decades. When I buy(1) something, it's mine, and I can do what I want with it. The person whom I buy it from doesn't have the right to rescind my rights over the thing I bought. When I buy(2) a software license, does the seller have the right to claw back the license? If not, then buy(1) and buy(2) are conceptually identical, and there's no difference between buying a license and buying the (copy of the) software. If yes or unknown, then buying(2) is not buying(1), as it does not grant ownership, but something else; not even over the license.
So what kind of transaction is buying(2) something? What do you get in exchange for money? It's clearly not a good, so is it a service? Is continued permission to use the software a service? Then if that service is interrupted the consumer should be entitled to some kind of reimbursement from the provider, right? Because otherwise the provider has an incentive to stop the service.
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What's the can of worms? Either actually sell a copy, or if you're merely selling a license then say so explicitly.
I'm reasonably certain when I ordered linux CDs in the 90s, no one put a limit on the time frame I could be using them
Have there been situations were licenses are mass revoked? That would be quite nasty, I don’t recall any. My licenses to Things, Alfred, Little Snitch, etc. still work to this day. They don’t even bother with upselling.
Yes, 100%, and that end date should be very clearly listed too.
Oftentimes that end date is not clearly knowable and can't be communicated explicitly, but consumers should still be aware of the fact that their rights are limited. While the Gaben lives valve will store many people's games - when the Gaben dies... well, it's going to suck - but it'll probably take a while to completely suck, we'll probably go through drawn out enshittification first. This outcome seems inevitable[1] but it is likely a fair distance off.
1. Unless you write a damned clear company charter, Gabe, get on that.
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Have you ever bought a ticket to a concert ? what did you actually own ?
I get the feeling, but this whole outrage about what words mean is sterile if you don't actually engage with what is sold here, by who from who, what was the contract, how it was setup and why.
How do you feel about the right holders who also didn't bother providing simple "buy, download and it's forever yours" avenues to get that content ? Or are you just happy being outraged and will go back to your daily life afterwards ? (that's what I'll do, because I was already renting stuff when video tapes were a thing, and I see the current situation as a logical equilibrium, including what happens on the seven seas)
> Have you ever bought a ticket to a concert ?
This comparison makes no sense. When you buy a ticket to a concert you fully expect to be allowed access to said concert. If it gets cancelled because this or that studio owns some random right you fully expect to be refunded.
> I was already renting stuff when video tapes were a thing
Good for you. These guys also propose rental with a rent button, and a purchase button for what you'd expect be purchasing the movie. Do you still not see what the issue is and why the debate on what word means is anything but sterile?
> Or are you just happy being outraged and will go back to your daily life afterwards ?
Wow, this is gratuitous and extremely belittling. I hope you feel good smelling your own farts.
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> Have you ever bought a ticket to a concert ? what did you actually own ?
A ticket that would allow you entrance into a particular concert. Is this some sort of rhetorical question? I can't decipher what it's attempting to illustrate.
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In California it isn't legal
Pretty sure the Terms of Use say just that. They should update the language on the frontend though.
Renting what? The non-exclusive, revocable license? Because that's what purchase or buy means.
No, that’s not what “purchase” or “buy” means.
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Piracy is justified especially when it comes to movies!
If I am buying a DVD, I own that copy regardless of the studio and the distributor being in legal trouble or not. If I "buy" or "purchase" something online, I expect the same thing.
I'm not always a fan of the EU over-regulating some things but I feel like they should start fining companies who want to re-define the meaning of the word purchase
> If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-jame...
Correct: it's copyright infringement, not theft.
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Piracy isn't stealing regardless of whether or not buying is owning.
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> PlayStation Store users who bought movies
"PlayStation Store users who bought a limited license to play a movie on approved devices and approved displays, revocable at any moment with no or minimal notice".
There, FTFY.
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Jellyfin + Jellyseer + PassThePopcorn has served me and my friends/family well. I pay $50/mo now for a seedbox with 16TB but it serves 20 people. I would self-host for $0/month but my current apartment only has Xfinity, not AT&T and the upload isn’t enough to self-host.
It’s less about the money and more about:
1) Having a single place to go for any TV show or movie. I found it very frustrating trying to figure out what service had which show - sometimes none of them have it (a few things are still not streamable at all - e.g. “Sharky and George”)
2) Knowing that my streaming service isn’t downgrading the video quality. Even my lay friends notice the picture quality improvement vs Amazon / Hulu etc.
3) Jellyseer lets my friends request media that gets auto-downloaded. So it’s a curated list of content which helps me discover high quality stuff to watch.
I take advantage of AWS S3 for multimedia storage duty these days. My goal is to maintain stable access to content I enjoy without worrying about data loss or the burden of time it takes or maintain all the storage infrastructure.
If it costs me a little bit of money to store this information, I don't consider it to be "losing" the piracy game. I still have a lot of control and no one has a clue what I'm storing thanks to symmetric encryption, guid names and fixed chunk sizes. As far as Amazon is concerned, it appears as if I'm just running backups for some boring enterprise application.
Could Amazon take it all away tomorrow? Sure. But I've had an account with them since 2014 and something like this has never come up before. At worst, I'd expect a deprecation warning with a solid 12 months of time to figure out an alternative.
There is no way you are going to beat the durability of S3 at home. Durability seems to be ~the entire point here. At some level you need to consider which evil is the lesser evil, at least if you value your free time and the possibility of actually enjoying all this media you've spent so much effort acquiring.
I had to move, haven't settled yet, so my entire setup of Radarr/Sonarr/Kodi + torrent in a VPN container is gone and I miss it so much. The result is that I haven't been watching any movies or TV show for the past year or so. I miss them, but doing it legally or setting up something anew on a VPS is too much work or too much risky.
That said, wouldn't you have an invite for PassThePopcorn? Never heard of this one, I thought it was yet another iteration of that popcorn streaming app that was popular a decade ago. I always managed with public trackers, never cared about the entire interview process: I hate it for work, I hate it for fun even more. Email in the profile if you wish to share.
How did you find your way into PTP? I’m in a few but PTP it sounds like they expect you to be a mass uploader. I’m and seeder but how would anyone even “find” me? Do I need to be involved in the forums of the private trackers I use today?
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Where did you get a seedbox with 16 TB for just 50$/month?!
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How did you get a private tracker?
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This discussion applies to any product from every virtual store, including game stores.
Unless you get an irrevocable full digital copy of the product, the “buy” button should technically be called “lend” or “borrow”, as you lose the product when the shop disappears.
But that doesn’t solve the deteriorating ownership problem as consumers will choose to borrow due to convenience even if they know they get to keep nothing. Especially if that is the “only” option.
Digital products are hollow and short-term, yet still asking full price or even quadruple the price of physical products (happens a lot with games).
Consumer protection would mean that buying means owning, with all perks and hassle that comes with it.
There currently are no long-term protections. “Stop killing games” is a reflection of that, but needs to broaden.
Edit: clarification
However, you will stop owning that copy the moment the DVD deteriorates to the point of becoming unreadable. Physical media is a good start, but DRM-stripped digital is the ideal.
If you buy a DVD you have the right, in every sane jurisdiction I'm aware of, to rip the movie from the DVD into an iso. You can then discard/recycle the media and retain the digital copy you have the right to view privately in perpetuity. It is a single consumer license though, as is logical, so it's likely illegal for you to continue to watch the ripped iso if you resell the media with the content still on it or resell the media with any portion of the value coming from the markings from the content or the fact that it used to contain that content. You probably want to shove it in a closet somewhere or just reuse it as rewriteable media for whatever purpose you need - retaining physical ownership of the media makes things simplest legally.
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> DVD deteriorates to the point of becoming unreadable
If I am the reason for damaging my purchase then I am fine with that characteristic of the purchase.
Same happens with books, you buy the copy and if you don't take care of it, soon it will become unreadable.
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everything degrades. We live in a world ruled by entropy. Even digital stuff degrades. It has to be stored somewhere, in some form, and there is always a risk of loss. No matter what.
punishing customers for not using BitTorrent seems like a weird strategy but I’m not an MBA so what do I know
The amount of people who are willing to tolerate the "cable-ization" of streaming services is far larger than those who will torrent
The trick is to punish them more if they do use BitTorrent
California did. All the stores, like Steam, just changed.the word to "rent" or "purchase license" when you're in California. It's a start.
>I own that copy regardless of the studio and the distributor being in legal trouble or not.
You also get the play the same version stored on DVD regardless where you are. You are limited by location when you purchase it online, and sometimes they might even automatically swap the version / cuts for you depending on your location.
We really need a storage media that last 100+ years, store 200GB+, tiny footprint, and inexpensive to produce.
They'll combine the "buy" and "rent" buttons if there's ever any realistic pressure to change. The typical consumer doesn't care.
It's almost already like this. Buying a movie is sometimes the exact same price or only a dollar more. They know what they're doing.
Initially, the new button might say "buy license" and then eventually it will go back to just "buy".
This isn't exactly a case of lack of regulation but IP rights/arrangements expiring. The world needs less IP protection laws, not more.
How is it that Steam manages to avoid yanking games from people's libraries even after the games are delisted for licensing issues, etc? I have multiple games that you can't "buy" anymore, but Steam doesn't stop me from reinstalling them as often as I like.
Are they negotiating that as part of the deal with their vendors? Or is it as simple as "We're not dicks." ?
That's just how Valve's license agreement works. You publish with Steam and you grant Valve the right to publish the work in perpetuity.
The licensing deal made by movie studios does not work like that because the studios are intentionally predatory. The distribution agreements are temporary and can involve periodic payments. Literally Netflix rents movies from the studios and rents them back to you. The studios reserve the right to cancel distribution deals at any time.
When a movie or show gets removed from Netflix sucks but no as much since it's a subscription and you can cancel if they don't have what you like but what you do with something you bought
> How is it that Steam manages to avoid yanking games from people's libraries even after the games are delisted for licensing issues, etc?
Steam isn't innocent either. The instance that comes to mind is Order Of War: Challenge (https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-remov...) but I've also seen people say other games have been removed from their libraries or silently replaced with "remastered" versions that removed things like licensed music. Publishers have also taken games from people's libraries by revoking their keys. Steam says publishers can do this whenever they want. In one case, after the sale they thought a player should have paid them more money (https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/w9jpd5/warning_publi...)
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I feel these license agreements have to be set up in such a way people that already bought their movies get to keep them, like okay Sony lost the licences and they shouldn't sell it to new customers but existing customers should get to keep their movies. Since companies don't care the government needs to force their hand and put it into law
Exactly. Sony/Playstation can lose their right to issue further licenses, but the existing licenses should be honoured. As that's apparently not baked into the existing contracts, someone needs to legislate that such basic consumer rights are required, and all existing and prior contracts interpreted as if these rights were in place.
Make it work the same as delisted games where you can go into your purchase history and click download.
The problem is that existing customers don't "have" anything. They stream the movie on demand from Sony's servers. And Sony can't keep the movie on their server anymore. The entire delivery model is broken.
It's just a matter of negotiating sensible licensing deals. But that would require the distributors to actually care a little bit about not screwing over their customers.
Look how it works over at Steam. If a license expires, even if the publisher goes out of business, Steam removes a game from its storefront, but the files are still on their servers and they keep them available for anyone who purchased a license. I think the only cases where they actually removed files from their servers and blocked redownloads were when there was an actual legal or liability issue forbidding them from continuing to offer the files (for example if they contain malware).
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Even if they did download the movie, Sony would be legally required to remotely delete it, because they can. The only way that doesn't happen is if they can't, such as when you download an mp3 on a PC from a company that is not Microsoft.
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I found a local store that specializes in used movies on DVD, BluRay, 4K discs and video games from Atari to PS5. I’ve started picking up hard copies of everything so I’m (a) not tracked and (b) can’t have my stuff taken away.
I believe DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and players will increase in value over time, almost like samizdat printing presses -- underground video viewers that let us watch movies without the monolithic globalist corporate police state observing, penalizing, demanding identitification, and trying to extract an ounce of monopolist rentier blood.
I don’t know it sounds a lot more likely to me that piracy will just come back in popularity in a big way instead. Why pay inflated prices for old machines that will certainly break and old discs when you can just download a DRM free copy easily for free?
When streaming first took off piracy hit all time lows, but it’s already been coming back in a big way and I’m sure will only continue to do so going forward as things like this keep happening and streaming keeps getting more expensive and fragmented.
What good is a disc player when your display... can't... show it? Can't have unauthorized computing devices connected to displays in the future.
I expected better from Sony's lawyers. How did they not get the right agreement to keep purchases in perpetuity?
I find it a bit sad that everyone is dumping on Sony here, considering it's StudioCanal that is presumably demanding the movies be made inaccessible to customers, but presumably is not offering to refund the royalties they collected. I't's natural for people to direct their ire at the reailer to whom they gave their money, but in my view its the rightsholder who is generally the abd guy in these situations.
No — both the person who pulls the trigger and the person who gives the order are criminals.
Sony created a contract where this was possible, is who sold the product to customers, and is physically carrying out the act.
They deserve every bit of blame.
'Criminals'? Get a grip.
A decade ago they pulled my purchased copy of mortal kombat 2. Not the first time they've done stuff like this.
I stuck to buying hard copies and dwindled off the series as they started to charge just to play multiplayer.
Again? They already tried to pull that one a few years ago.
[1] https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Sony%27s_attempted_removal_of_...
They did get away with it in 2024:
https://filmstories.co.uk/news/funimation-streaming-app-to-s...
(For those without the background: In 2020, Sony bought Crunchyroll and in 2024 merged it with Funimation (acquired by Sony subsidiary Aniplex in 2017). Since Crunchyroll had the larger streaming service, this was done by moving the Funimation library to Crunchyroll. However, Funimation also has a business selling digital copies, not just streaming access, which was discontinued including access to purchased media)
they can do it as many times as they want until it works, then that's precedent
Off to small claims court people should go. Amazon tried something similar and got in trouble because people when after them.
And people wonder why some people sail the high seas.
> Off to small claims court people should go
Which in many (not all) states can promptly be followed by a Motion to Transfer/Notice of Removal/whatever local custom to a county/circuit/district court.
Once moved to a higher court, you will lose because you don't know the procedures, deadlines, and customs of that venue. Then, the counterparty will often be awarded fees.
I believe you’d lose in small claims court as all of the streaming companies make it clear you’re purchasing a revokable license.
Wow, "purchasing a revokable license" is an insane concept. Purchase of something revokable in general feels like... not purchasing? If there was a definite time bound that's one thing, but imagine if I sell a revokable license and then revoke it a week later -- it seems like that would be allowed?
I don't mean to disagree with you, and I have basically no expertise in this area, just shocked by the whole thing.
Would likely win in the UK as we have an unfair terms regulation, a small claims court could easily rule it an unfair as any reasonable consumer would assume they were purchasing the movie to watch whenever they want to.
ISTM there's a good argument for a plaintiff to ask the court to ignore that on the basis that it's a contract of adhesion and one that's effectively unreadable for anyone without a law degree. We're not talking about terms and conditions that fit on a single sheet of paper in a normal font, bu thousands upon thousands of words.
Tech EULAs are just absurdly long, and I'm sure they've expanded since this article was written in 2020: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/terms-of-service-visualizin...
No, that is not what the plain meaning of “purchase” is.
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No refunds. Sounds like Playstation customer support. The most customer-unfriendly policies a company could think of.
What’s wild is there is no legal way to actually buy and truly own movies anymore. Any major service is a license and if you can even get a DVD the legality of ripping it is questionable since you have to break DRM. I have purchased a few movies (surf films) from people who actually give you the digital file and it is so wonderful.
Would love to know how hidden the fine text was on that buy button. Unless it said rent this should be illegal.
I suppose it's time to form a new media consumption habit.
I'd recommend qbittorrent over transmission tbh.
I'd recommend usenet over torrents tbh.
I'd recommend anonymous torrents in I2P over non-anonymous standard implementation.
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I own a playstation. I do not buy digital games, only discs. See the article for why not.
The game discs hold digital data. They're certainly not analog.
it's common to refer to download-only purchases as digital and discs as physical
Analog is not the opposite of digital in this context. I feel like you knew that though.
This remains my favourite quote from any user agreement I've ever seen, from the PlayStation Terms of Use:
> Use of the terms "own," "ownership", "purchase," "sale," "sold," "sell," "rent" or "buy" in this Agreement or in connection with the Content does not mean or imply any transfer of ownership of any content
I mean, this is chef's kiss level of deceit. No parody could top that.
Any jurisdiction where a company can just put "when we say you'll own it, it doesn't mean you'll own anything" in their contracts and get away with it, is broken.
Fix the headline to say Sony
What will the end game in this licensing scheme be? I reckon once enough movies have been sold, the reputational damage of taking them away would become so large that streaming services will be strongarmed into accepting increasingly unreasonable fees.
I will only buy digital media from DRM free stores, which as far as I know, means I can buy music, not movies.
I don’t trust any provider to honor purchases I made 20 years from now. I really wish I could, as it would simplify things for me.
A Jellyfin or Plex server can be had for real cheap using used hardware. A Ryzen 3 build can be found for next to nothing here in Brazil[1], so I imagine it’d be even cheaper in the US.
Add an old Quadro card for hardware decoding, or go with an Intel CPU for Quick Sync, throw some IronWolf drives inside, install your favorite Linux distro, and you’re off to the races.
Yes, managing a server is more work than just signing up for Netflix or whatnot, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
[1]: A quick search shows me a Ryzen 3 3200G build with 16 GB of RAM for $200, and electronics are super expensive in Brazil.
N5105 boards are also super cheap, and low power draw, but still with the transcoding hardware. Great experience with mine.
How soon until the digital distributions are owned by just a few cartels, and later when it’s suitable for them, they also modify digital movies to suit a political agenda without letting you know?
Movies have been pushing political agendas pretty much since the beginning of cinema.
Buddy I hate to tell you, but this already happened several years ago.
Here is the full list of the 551 movies and TV shows being removed: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/
Top movies include Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, The Graduate, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Room, Silver Linings Playbook, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Pan's Labyrinth.
Sony sucks and I will never give them another dime. Had a PS5 with a 120+ games (majority PS4), also PSVR2, got f-ed over by Sony when they would not refund in incorrect game purchase I'd bought literally minutes before asking for the refund. Gave up my PS5, I will never purchase anything from Sony ever again. Recommend everyone else do the same.
Nobody can delete 551 or even 1 movie from my Plex library other than me or the hard drive grim reaper.
Arbitrage baby. Rent the movie from the studios, and then sell it to your customers! Before they know what happened, the sheriff is coming to evict them from the house they thought they bought, but you can just pocket the difference!
This is ridiculous. I thought at first that it concerned pirated movies that people were playing on their playstation.
But no. It's purchased content. That is being deleted. That's insane. Even if an EULA states they can do this, there should be statutory rights that overrule this.
I notice that Sony calls it "previously purchased" content. As if it's ok to do this because it's been a while ago.
There's actually a statutory right that says they have to do this.
Makes me glad I never got in the habit of buying digital copies of movies or TV shows. This a one off many reminders that if you really want to purchase a title, get the Blu-ray or DVD
By not teaching the younger generations the virtues of piracy, millennials have failed them.
It'll be all the more critical in years to come when we get more and more AI remastered versions of stuff so even stuff pre-2020 is slop.
I'm more cynical here. I suspect these are films (or many of them at least) are ones "they" don't want you to see... ever. It's censorship, so no remastering.
"due to our content licensing agreements" ..so this is just Sony placating to someone else's demands. The question is who are "they" and why these films? Maybe these films end up being revised with alternate endings or tweaked characters.
If you see these films, what sort of person will you become? Is that someone who is undesirable?
Terminator 2, Rambo 1, Cliffhanger and Total Recall. We can't have that!
It's just a theory.
Are PlayStation users younger than average? That's important to note too.
Also interesting: recently YT removed the ability to see Likes in one's uploaded video list, only views and comment counts. The message could be: "be well-known, but don't be popular" Why?
Yet I think "Sort by Likes" would be a boon for YT creators and that never even existed, with the Likes column even removed a week or two after I suggested it.
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This is making me mad enough that I’m going to spend my weekend figuring out a media server and pirating movies.
If buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing. Fuck those guys.
It’s been 20 years since I’ve pirated shit, but here we are again…
If you're not experienced in media servers, I'd recommend a QNAP NAS and then install either Jellyfin or Emby. (Plex has really gone downhill in the last 10 years imho.) QNAP is terrible for experienced users, but as Baby's First NAS it's absolutely sublime.
Thank you for mentioning Emby. I've been using it for years. It's rarely ever mentioned in the Plex/Jellyfin conversation.
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> If buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing
A queerly sticky ego defense mechanism.
At this point, "piratery" is not just valid, it's our obligation
Sony is “stealing” 551 movies from customers.
Is it just me who thinks that everything went wrong when we accepted the closed model hardware and their ecosystem?
If it was an open ecosystem, we would have alternative options like we have in PC such as GoG for games. I know movie industry is stupid to begin with but it’s reasonable the make DRM free copy of the movies you own or even pirate at this point given how hostile the whole industry is until they move to more open approaches.
Maybe EU should crack down on closed eco systems and make it mandatory to side load things officially on anything that runs external apps.
Wow.