Comment by II2II
13 hours ago
> They must feel free to do as they please since they know consumers are trapped.
My take is somewhat difference: Sony is offloading the cost of their prior decisions onto consumers.
For things like movies, they should have negotiated a contract where sold copies are sold copies and cannot be revoked (even if their right to sell/rent copies lapse). For things like the PS3 store, it cannot be run indefinitely. That said, from my understanding, the authorization keys expire if the clock battery on the PS3 dies. That should not be permitted.
I don't think that this is a "do as they please" situation. I think it is a case of bad decisions being made in the past. For some, like the movies, there isn't much they can do to fix the problem after the fact. There is absolutely no incentive for the rights holders to let consumers continue to access previously purchased content (especially with Sony taking all of the blame). Even something like offering refunds to people who purchased the movies is problematic. In all probability, all of their contracts have similar terms. They would have to refund everyone for every purchase in the long run.
Other stuff, like access to PS3 purchases, are likely fixable. The question is: where is the incentive? They could create a patch for old consoles, but it would only affect a small number of customers who still have those consoles. (Worse yet, it wouldn't do anything for those who stored their consoles in the closet -- only to pull it out later to discover the authorization keys are invalid.) The math probably doesn't work out for them so they aren't going to do it.
> They would have to refund everyone for every purchase in the long run.
That is the minimum they should do. At best they should offer the movie collections for free through competitors.
There's no limit to what the best they could do is. A full refund is just what's simple, fair, and quick. I wouldn't put it past them to try to find some legal basis that the minimum is actually less than that in certain jurisdictions though.
A forced refund to something you purchased years ago is not fair at all. At the very least they should have to pay current market price for a replacement.
The trouble with that is you cannot operate a business where you pay your suppliers for a product then give everything away.
I am saying that as a reflection of reality, not to absolve Sony. Someone at Sony must have understood that their licensing agreements were incompatible with the definition of sale. Someone else likely stuck some clauses into the EULA to reflect that, fully realizing that no-one reads those things (also realizing that it is not reasonable to expect consumers to read an EULA for every transaction in their life). The someone who is now responsible for executing the outcome would also understand that there is the potential for legal action on such a matter, but they also understand that there are legal machinations that will, at worse, limit the damages to a sum that is lower than the cost of refunding the full value of each and every purchase made through their service.
Sounds like fraud.
> For things like movies, they should have negotiated a contract where sold copies are sold copies and cannot be revoked (even if their right to sell/rent copies lapse).
This is how movies work on GOG.
In what might not be a coincidence, they haven't released any movies for many years, and the product category isn't even visible if you don't already own a movie through them.