Comment by eska
11 hours ago
It should be illegal to have others purchase what you as a company only licensed and therefore aren’t legally allowed to sell.
11 hours ago
It should be illegal to have others purchase what you as a company only licensed and therefore aren’t legally allowed to sell.
What's funny is that Sony has done this before![0] I've had a personal boycott against Sony products due to this.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OtherOS
Yep. I had tons of Sony games across the first three Playstation consoles. I was a grad student with a PS3 at the time and I actually used Yellow Dog Linux on it as a computer to write papers when my laptop broke. Then the update came and I chose to ignore it, but that meant I couldn't play online games. Soon new games required a firmware update (still remember putting in the Dark Souls disc and being stunned I wasn't allowed to play it!).
And with games it's just getting worse (Sony announced they won't make discs starting 2028; the Switch 2 takes carts but very, very few games release on a cart). If you care about control over the games you purchased, if you care about going back and playing older games, then the only choice is to use platforms that are DRM free. (Or, well, non-legal means.)
Kinda. On Steam I can still play games I bought 18 years ago.
Still walled garden, but they act way better.
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I joined the class action lawsuit and got a small check a decade later. My proof that I had OtherOS ended up being timestamped whinging on the ars technica forums. My ps3 stopped working shortly after receiving the check due to bad solder, which was I guess fitting.
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Nintendo outright ships incomplete games on carts sometimes, requiring a day 1 patch to have the game in a non-buggy state (one of the recent pokemon games was like this)
And "gamers" refuse to listen to reason and assume physical copy = they can play it for eternity, when in reality, in 5 or 10 years when a server is inevitably shut down, they're forced to pirate. Nintendo does not allow offline patches.
> the Switch 2 takes carts
I believe the switch 2 carts don't contain the actual game, just a license key. The game is downloaded on first run.
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I boycot Sony since they blocked my PSN account, which got hacked due to them! Purchases I made are not available, ... I really took a disliking before when they refused to fix my Vaio laptop, ... this was the last drop!
Good, but only laws will keep them on check. If I boycotted all companies that have done something wrong, I would boycott all of them. I keep that option for the worst offenders. Laws and regulations is what keeps companies in check.
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> In November 2018 final payouts for members of the class were sent in the amount of $10.07.
Gosh this is ridiculous
Likewise, I've avoided all Sony products since the rootkit scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
They make it up as they go along. Their 2005 Audio-CD EULA includes provisions purporting to require the immediate deletion of all copies if a user files for personal bankruptcy
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/12/summary-claims-against...
When the debtor files bankruptcy ownership immediately moves to the bankruptcy estate. This supposed obligation to delete might be disclosable on the executory contracts schedule.
If buying is not owning, piracy is not theft.
A buddy of mine is pretty insistent on physical media, wherever possible, and honestly, at this point, he's been proven right again and again.
Sad that most executable code (games, software, etc) these days is digital only and requires drm calls to a license server to install. I will not pirate executable code.
Piracy was never theft.
It was a copyright violation. Which, I don't give one fuck about.
Yeah. Copyright monopolists equate copyright infringement to literal high seas piracy because it's the only way they can make any impact. Nobody would give a fuck otherwise.
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The fact that lawyers dreamt up the notion of "Imaginary Property" called it "Intellectual Property" and built a business around the scam for themselves, and other people take it seriously is some of the most compelling evidence that humans suck.
In the digital age where the cost of copying itself is functionally zero, we're supposed to pay people over and over again for a thing created once is like the human race taking advantage of itself.
I get making money for labor, novelty, and producing things but repeated payments thereafter would feel like a scam to any reasonable alien.
'Copyright' is humans at their most greedy and selfish.
I like how succinct this is.
Plenty of people purchase digital movie rentals from Apple, Youtube, etcetera because they know they will watch it once, and the lower price in exchange for a temporary license is acceptable to them. I don't think banning this is pro-consumer.
It should, however, be illegal to tell your customers that they are purchasing/buying media without explicit "Rent" language (which implies a non-expiring license) when you do not yourself have the right to grant non-expiring licenses.
They often have two tiers, a rental tier and a purchase tier. If you purchase the assumption is it will be available forever.
Seems like a bad assumption at this point even if it goes against expectations. We've seen on multiple occasions now from different companies where a digital purchase wasn't forever. This is no way an endorsement of the behavior, but if that's your assumption then the quip "you know what happens when you assume" wins again.
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> Plenty of people purchase digital movie rentals from Apple, Youtube, etcetera because they know they will watch it once, and the lower price in exchange for a temporary license is acceptable to them. I don't think banning this is pro-consumer.
Many of these services offer cheaper rental options. When you go for the more expensive "buy" option, the assumption that you are actually buying it to keep should hold true.
Agree... if they want to sell it, parent company must agree on forever licenses for each user. Regardless of reselling license getting cancelled.
I bet there’s a class action coming.
And Sony made it easy for them too by using this verbiage: “previously purchased content”
Because they were purchases, not rentals. Under no circumstances would a customer reasonably assume that their purchase would be revoked for reasons completely outside of their control.
Studio Canal directly got paid for each individual purchase. It isn't all on Sony, Studio Canal sold a product then took it away.
> Studio Canal sold a product then took it away
If that's the case, why isn't Sony suing Studio Canal? The proper license for Sony to get is one which doesn't allow Studio Canal to take it away after sale in any way. So did Studio Canal somehow hack into Sony HQ to violate that license, or did Sony simply screw over its customers by not getting the proper license in the first place?
They're both to blame. Studio Canal insisted on a licensing agreement that works this way, and Sony agreed to it to sell their content.
For Sony, the correct move here would have been to not list Studio Canal titles in the first place, and put out a very public statement saying that they aren't being listed until Studio Canal agrees to make purchased licenses perpetual as they should be.
> Both to blame
IANAL but I think the US law approach is to rely on chaining, so the #1 blame is on Sony until Sony proves it isn't.
1. Consumers who were damaged sue Sony for damages.
2. If Sony loses, Sony sues Studio Canal for damages.
3. If Studio Canal loses... ?
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