Comment by Anamon
9 hours ago
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).
Both parties are incentivized for this abuse of consumer ownership. When this deal was arranged, there was plenty of precedent. Sony probably got a better price from Studio Canal by including the provision to mandate removing the films from customer accounts when the contract ended. The studio would be ok with the discount because it would improve leverage with the next customer, to whom it could pitch that their market is larger. No one (or at least no PlayStation customers) currently own their product.