Comment by ssl-3
4 days ago
AFAICT, you're right.
A standalone offline player that can play Movie A today will be continue to be allowed to play Movie A forever.
Subsequently-purchased movies B, C, and/or D may or may not work (because of shenanigans like key revocations systems), but Movie A still plays fine even after these later titles have been introduced.
It's ugly, but it's not quite a brick.
The ugly part is shaped like this: A person buys a new movie and it doesn't work. They can't return the movie to the store because it's been opened, so now they're left with a disc they can't use and with less money than they had before. (Solutions include figuring out how to update the player's firmware if it's still supported, spending more money on a newer player, or becoming an Amish leatherworker and forgetting about all of this nonsense for the rest of their days.)
Possible solutions include small claims court. You can't refuse a refund for a defective product just because you had to open the box to find out it was defective.
Yeah, the distributed responsibility might make this difficult, but maybe not impossible.
Is the disc defective because it doesn't play in a labeled player, or is the player defective because it doesn't play a labeled disc?
Can the licensing body be held responsible?
In point of fact, you'd probably get your money back in small claims court just by suing the store, with evidence that your player plays other discs, just not this particular disc.
Unfortunately, that doesn't really fix the problem, so much as show that an angry-enough consumer with time, energy, and money, can usually get a token of recompense.
I think by default it's whichever one you bought later. The judge may tell you it's the other one. But it doesn't matter because either way the store has to issue a refund.
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