Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/07/15/sony-deletes-a-bunch-more-movies-from-the-accounts-of-people-who-bought-them/

by nekusar • 6 days ago

706 448 6 days ago

jmclnx• 6 days ago

And yet Sony wonders why people pirate their movies. In this case here the owners who had their movies stolen should be able to steal them back.

joe_mamba• 6 days ago

Sony's recent movies aren't even worth pirating

trencedamp12• 6 days ago

Madame Web anyone

s_dev• 6 days ago

Into and Beyond the Spiderverse are flawless movies.

mrweasel3• 6 days ago

If you cared enough, I do wonder if you could win in court, if you pirated a movie that you purchased on the PS5, but Sony removed. It would cost you an ungodly amount of money to defend yourself against Sony, and I don't know the exact words of the "license", but it seems like a reasonable action to take.

Sohcahtoa823• 6 days ago

It'd be a case where the spirit of the law clashes with the letter of the law.

Sony's lawyers would argue about how things are, while your defense has to argue about how things should be.

Which way it goes likely depends on how sympathetic the judge is rather than actual arguments being made.

cube00• 6 days ago

I wonder if their use of a "buy" button would potentially weaken their case regardless of the language they put in the EULA.

i_play_stax• 6 days ago

Piracy is not theft.

esalman• 6 days ago

This.

If I didn't pirate movies and games and Windows and apps when I was young, I probably wouldn't be in a position to pay for multiple streaming and Xbox subscription now.

robin_reala• 6 days ago

Obviously media permanence is the best solution, but in the absence of that we just need laws that say that if the purchase isn’t time limited to something a reasonable user would consider a rental (48hrs? a week?) then companies that withdraw access rights need to refund in full the purchase cost.

jagged-chisel• 6 days ago

Let's add inflation to that. Or charge interest for the loan.

kmeisthax• 6 days ago

The most frustrating thing about all of this is that if I'd published a game on PlayStation and then told Sony to rip it out of people's libraries, they'd tell me to pound sand. The contracts you sign to ship games on PlayStation specifically include redownload rights. So Sony knows this is a problem, and yet for whatever reason decided NOT to secure the rights they'd need for the digital purchases to actually work like a purchase.

k_roy• 6 days ago

This is nothing new and the reason I went from being the biggest media collector to collecting nothing now.

To put it in perspective, I bought Get Him to the Greek on Prime video shortly after it came out.

A month later, the "exclusive broadcast rights" changed, and I was no longer able to access it.

bell-cot• 6 days ago

need to refund in full the purchase cost.

In practical terms, the logistics of many-years-later refunds would be unwieldy at best. Do the purchase records still exist? What if I no longer have that credit card or email address? How can you prove you're the heir of the deceased? What if I now live in a country where the "deletion" status is different? And how could you stop all the scammers who smelled free money?

Alternative: The gov't randomly picks 24 citizens from a pool of applicants who reasonably prove that they were harmed by the deletion. Those 24 are given legal authority to fiat-revoke all copyright protection on a "reasonable and proportional" number of the deleting corporation's currently copyrighted works. Or upstream of them, as "appropriate".

inigyou23• 6 days ago

Doesn't matter. It should be up to the corporation to figure it out or else it's illegal and they get fined 300% of their total yearly revenue for each affected person.

abeyer• 6 days ago

They clearly must have the records if they have the ability to retroactively revoke access to it, as they must know who had the access to revoke. Perhaps the user needs to update their payment method to get the refund, or like everyone else who deals in other people's money, you apply the existing laws around unclaimed funds if you're truly unable to process the refund.

tencentshill• 6 days ago

People owning their own media was always a pain to these companies. They tried to make disposable DVDs at one point!

151552• 6 days ago

What a fun balance sheet that will create. Seems easier to just exit the business.

joshuaissac• 6 days ago

There are services like Movies Anywhere and UltraViolet (now defunct) that store a licence when the user purchases one from an in-network licensor. Then the user can access the content via any supported platform.

The problem is that these are not legally mandated, so they can shut down (as UltraViolet did). If the ability to move the licence to another platform is mandated by law as a condition of continued copyright protection, this problem would largely disappear.

WorldMaker• 5 days ago

I think the laws we aren't worried enough about needing yet are digital estate laws, too. If I build a massive library in the real world there's no question it's a part of my estate plan for a will and is inheritable by family (or other persons I choose). I've got a massive Steam library. What happens when I pass? Steam's EULA implies that there are not necessarily survivorship rights, the account is mine personally and may shut down or disappear when I pass away. Almost every digital service EULA has and must have logic of that sort to protect itself/simplify account ownership as a concept.

We've got pragmatic answers of password sharing and Steam is one of the better example in the current moment because among other things it has some Family Sharing support. But I can't go to my lawyer and ask for a list of passwords (and device PINs and passkey details etc) to be attached to my will with the explicit idea of divvying up parts of my digital library to different relatives. Lawyers don't really want to discuss detailed digital estate planning today because it isn't allowed by these service EULAs and because they don't want to have to fine tooth comb every single possible service EULA. It's a catch-22 that probably needs real legislation or very expensive very public court cases or both to help push it to the forefront of people's minds (and make it enough of a priority that service EULAs have to adapt).

pluralmonad• 6 days ago

Hopefully most of these folks that have been scammed know how to sail the high seas.

chuckadams• 6 days ago

Which is a bit tricky on a Playstation. Sure you can scrounge up some Jellyfin-ish sort of thing, but most people buy on the console platform because they specifically don't want to jump through hoops.

lemoncookiechip• 6 days ago

If they offered refunds this would still be terrible.

They don't even offer refunds.

trencedamp12• 6 days ago

I read recently that PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse, and also Xbox has been gutted by layoffs, and there's a backlash against Nintendo for the switch 2 pricing.

Is the age of the console finally coming to an end?

ryanm101• 6 days ago

To be fair had RAM prices not screwed up the steam machine consoles would have been dooms earlier. They are about to enter a slow decline before death

inigyou23• 6 days ago

Consoles are suffering from the RAM price crisis just as much as PCs.

ColdStream17• 6 days ago

Maybe, they still aren't going to have the same economy of scale or the business loss leading tendency of some consoles.

Valve doesn't want to be subsidizing hardware that can be used as a desktop. that puts them on the back foot.

But I suspect Xbox is eventually going to go the path of Steam cube and end up licensing out hardware/software spec and let multiple vendors make hardware.

The 3DO sales model may rise again some 35 years after the fact.

treyd• 6 days ago

Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs.

We have this now, every PC has some kind of graphics hardware, and has for many years. Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands, but the technical justification for their product category hasn't existed for 15+ years now.

dpoloncsak3• 6 days ago

The main thing consoles have going for them, imo, is the standardization of hardware. It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world.

Some console gamers seem to think PC gaming requires hours of fiddling with settings and drivers. I think we've all had that experience on PC (cough Bethesda cough), but I doubt to the degree the console-side would have you believe. Most AAA games will self-optimize their settings to a playable state, and indie games don't tend to demand more than your standard gaming laptop can provide...but I'm sure we've all been burned some 10-odd years ago buying a Steam game that just wouldn't run on your iGPU...that experience sticks around in the brain a while

bluescrn5• 6 days ago

Consoles don't have true 'generational leaps' any more either, the huge leaps forward in tech used to drive excitement/sales.

Now we get incremental improvements, cross-generation games, and backwards compatibility. And AAA game development isn't exactly doing well these days.

moger777• 6 days ago

I think they still make sense for the non technical user. Having an idiomatic control makes setup far easier than on a PC and the UI for a console is designed to be used with a controller instead of a keyboard and mouse. This makes dealing with a television easier. I don't see consoles disappearing ever for those reasons.

naravara5• 6 days ago

Specialized graphics hardware hasn’t been the selling point of having a console since at least 2002 with the first XBox.

The selling point of consoles is that they’re a software platform, with development incentives, standardized hardware, standardized UI conventions, and a centralized storefront to be able to conveniently and natively play stuff on your TV without fussing about.

Valve has barely started to muscle in on the platform benefits of gaming on a PlayStation or XBox, but the more they start to do so the more they end up making design trade-offs that start to look like another console.

mvkel• 6 days ago

Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs.

This has almost never been true. GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64.

Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't. Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows, except for GPUs, which should probably be renamed to Model Training Units.

I would posit that what we're seeing is a reflection of a content problem, not hardware. Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base. People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.

afavour3• 6 days ago

That doesn't really make sense. Consoles have always occupied a different space to PCs, not least because they plug into living room TVs. Very few people are going to trade that for a (considerably more expensive) PC.

Gaming PCs also require specialized knowledge, more maintenance, etc etc. Consoles are pick up and go. I very much doubt they're dead yet.

mschuster91• 6 days ago

The thing with PCs is... they are open. Open means piracy and more importantly it means cheats.

A console is a far easier thing to defend against cheaters than a PC - absent true hardware vulnerabilities (which become more and more expensive, now that stuff like voltage glitching, clock cutting and whatnot is all known and accounted for), you are basically limited to botted input and AI-assistance based on what can be seen on the screen.

dabinat• 6 days ago

Another appeal of consoles is being able to sit on a couch and play. Most PC chairs are not as comfortable.

p_j_w2• 6 days ago

Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands

This is entirely wrong. Consoles have been riding consistency and ease of use. Sure, if you look just at the spec sheet consoles make no sense. But when you look at the whole experience combined with price, this is where consoles have always won. It's always been easier to hook my console up to the TV and start playing. The Steambox closes this gap with the overall experience, but still loses out on price.

If consoles continue to enshittify, this might change.

ColdStream17• 6 days ago

The last generation where there really felt to be a big advantage to consoles was with the Xbox 360. Having Xbox live integrated at an OS level for cross game chat, messaging and music control was something that felt genuinely unique at the time and something that could only come from top down strategy. But Steam caught up with all of that and consoles didn't really innovate forwards from that either.

The last big thing on consoles would have been the standard high speed SSD's and even then it hasn't been exploited as much as one would have liked. Ratchet and Clank : Rift apart did, but it feels like an exception, even then it works pretty well on the PC version even without the custom compression hardware.

bluescrn5• 6 days ago

PC gaming isn't exactly in a healthy place either (at least when it comes to hardware pricing/availability). Post-Covid GPU prices were bad enough even before the AI bubble ruined everything.

cryo322• 6 days ago

Yeah. I gave up a couple of years ago after Epic broke my account and I lost my purchases irrecoverably. I have actually started playing board games with people now. This is so much better for me. And cheaper. And you can't taken them away.

Hitton• 6 days ago

I wouldn't be surprised if consoles got replaced by video game streaming. Not the next generation and probably not even the generation after that, but that will be most likely it.

zarzavat• 6 days ago

Video game streaming requires a high quality internet connection to a nearby data center. It can work in certain places but there's always going to be places where it doesn't work, and consoles don't have that problem.

ColdStream17• 6 days ago

I have been hearing that since 2009 with Onlive and it still seems just as far away now as it was then.

Current streaming services struggle at times to deliver consistent performance and quality, having low latency input involved in it just makes the problem worse.

add-sub-mul-div• 6 days ago

People age out of wanting to sit in their bedroom with a handheld and become adults who have living rooms. For home gaming there will always be demand to play games on a real sized screen.

inigyou23• 6 days ago

Yeah so get a PC and install some games

saidinesh5• 6 days ago

I think the steam deck proved otherwise too..

I haven't had enough motivation to sit on my couch and game after a long day ..

But the same game, in bed, on my deck was so much nicer..

All I can now say is having a dedicated device, that's not your laptop/computer to play games is definitely a market - be it Steam machine (/custom builds), hand held gaming, or just regular consoles..

trencedamp12• 6 days ago

Some adults then lose that living room to their offspring and have to go back to playing in the bedroom.

I speak from experience

rrgok• 6 days ago

I would say the future is cloud gaming.

nazgulsenpai• 6 days ago

Sadly, I agree with you. I don't like it, but it seems pretty clear.

trinsic2• 6 days ago

The cloud gaming echo chamber has conveniently arrived to save the day by mimicking the solution to fix the problem the same industry created. Problem, Reaction, Solution.

criddell2• 6 days ago

Sadly, the future might be phone gaming. The mobile gaming market is as big as the console and PC markets combined.

jayd16• 6 days ago

Its ok for some thing but the lag is simply too much for popular genres of games.

plopz• 6 days ago

What is that, like stadia?

redwall_hp2• 6 days ago

It's just loud Internet people. The Switch 2 is the second fastest selling game system of all time, and is keeping up with the trajectory of the first Switch, which shipped the most units of any gaming system. It'll probably get further boosts as Splatoon Raiders comes out (Splatoon is huge in Japan) and other anticipated titles.

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2026/06/switch-2s-first-ye...

I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation. Nobody buys movies there and people who care about physical games are a minority...there are already Slim models without optical drives and GameStops are mostly Funko Pops because most people buy games online. It's too soon to have actual concrete data besides useless internet sentiment reporting though. And a lot of that is just vague anger about prices for all computing hardware being up...and everything else in the US.

We're also at the ending stages of the PS5 lifecycle, but before a PS6 announcement. (With an unprecedented price increase this late in the cycle.) So there's no buzz about what's next, a large base of people who already have the existing thing, and an expectation that it will cost more.

Meanwhile, the anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 is on the way, and a PC release isn't on the table anytime soon.

JauntyHatAngle• 6 days ago

I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation

As a counterpoint to that. Most of my 30+ year old dad gamer friends (all of us are the type to own a PC, switch and ps5 pretty much) all are considering whether this will be our last sony generation as most of us are either physical copy people or suspect the pricing will be bad without a second hand market to compete.

I don't think there is a mass exodus coming up, but a slow decline in console gaming for certain types of gamers, peaking in ps6 and digital only coming out is possible - whether that is more of a hit than the control of the market Sony will get from digital only is another question though.

For example I doubt it'll stop many playing GTA 6, but general purchases on Sony vs PC may be weighted to the latter a bit more now than previously as that physical collection part is dead now for Sony, and arguably worse than the PC market in terms of there being only one store front for digital.

iceflinger• 6 days ago

Splatoon is mainly a competitive multiplayer shooter but the new Raiders game is a more traditional adventure game, I expect the sales for it will be insignificant as far as actually pushing new consoles.

preg_match2• 3 days ago

The switch and switch 2 are unique because:

- Nintendo is the only console player putting out high-quality first party games at an acceptable level. Yes this is arguable but I won't.

- The switch and switch 2 are reasonably priced, even cheap. Again arguable - the switch 2 had a lot of backlash for it's price. But 450/500 vs 800, come on now.

- The switch and switch 2 are hybrid consoles, both home consoles and portable. Again, I've had people argue with me that the switch is not a home console. I used it for 7 years exclusively hooked up to my monitor and TV. It's a home console.

The overall perception of Nintendo is that they're largely evil and greedy, and they are. But once you look at the value prop itself and the $$$, it's not crazy because Microsoft and Sony are also evil and greedy. Consumers see price tags, not pop culture discourse. They see the Switch 2 is the best priced new gen console, and that the games are actually typically equivalent in price or cheaper especially when stupid DLC is factored in. People were paying 100+ dollars for single games 5 years ago on Sony and Microsoft platforms. Yes Mario Kart world is 80 dollars. But big picture.

mghackerlady• 6 days ago

Nintendo will always exist, which I'm mostly okay with

ColdStream17• 6 days ago

They have their faults but they still seem to have their same goals in mind.

qwerpy• 6 days ago

That backlash was nearly entirely on that other social media website that HN hates being compared to. And yet again, not representative of actual people. The xbox part may be true. I’d be extremely surprised if any PlayStation users in volume move to PC, that might be another loud opinion from that crowd due to the physical disc outrage. They would pay twice as much, have a less seamless experience, and still have worse graphics/performance.

I say this as a primarily pc gamer. It’s not for most people.

fg137• 6 days ago

PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse

Source? Is that reddit?

It simply doesn't make sense.

rvz• 6 days ago

HNers continue to never know that they are in their own bubble. The same reason why Linux on the Desktop is an ongoing meme.

alexchantavy• 6 days ago

PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse

PC is even more digital-only than Playstation. No one buys physical games on PC. The only difference is that Valve has been a very good steward over Steam. Theoretically, PC can get as enshittified as PS.

I guess there are other DRM-based purchasing platforms, and there's also DRM free ones like GOG so PC gamers have choice, but those feel niche mostly.

trencedamp12• 6 days ago

The difference is that there is no one steward. You don't need steam, there are lots of other ways to get your games. GoG, Itch.io, Windows Store, or just the developers webpage.

On PlayStation, switch, or Xbox you have only one gatekeeper, and they do not respect you

saratogacx• 6 days ago

The thing about PC though is that there is no exclusivity. Steam built an extremely well respected brand but if that were to turn, the moat is shallow, install a competing client and buy games from there instead. The only internal competition for consoles is digital or physical retail (Or I guess buying game codes could be pseudo-digital).

ColdStream17• 6 days ago

I get where you are coming from but that is a little reductionist.

PlayStation I think is just going to have a slow bleed as the benefits to the platform seem to be... A new God of war in a few years?

Xbox is being scrapped for parts and is now a zombie console. I suspect they are going to try the 3DO model and try to out source the hardware to any company that wants to buy their SOC and OS licence.

Switch 2, actually doing damn well. Credit to Nintendo, they can be a little rough on pricing something's but they know how to stick to the core of the business. They have managed to keep the momentum between generations and that is difficult to do.

It is a shame, if it wasn't for the high hardware costs, the Steam cube could have made a real don't in Sony/MS but that is not the world we are in. But a PC in a box that isn't locked down can never achieve the same kind of margins that a console can.

CafeRacer• 6 days ago

I've sold my PS5 several months ago. You can get a pretty gameable laptop and gog/steam prices are better. And I can install mods. Tree Sentinel Thomas Mod for example.

mortenjorck• 6 days ago

As bad as this is, it’s worth noting that this is the same incident that was widely reported earlier this month. Sony has only rugpulled hundreds of purchased titles from customers once this year.

So far.

bluescrn5• 6 days ago

But their timing was amazing, doing it just days before they announced that they were ending releases of games on physical media.

cubefox• 6 days ago

Interesting also that even this article doesn't mention "DRM" anywhere despite the fact that this is exactly the worst case scenario DRM critics have always warned about.

(Personally I would consider DRM okay if Sony's behavior here was illegal without a full refund.)

jonhohle• 6 days ago

This has happened since the beginning of DRM. I had a roommate who bought hundreds of dollars of music from the Walmart music store because WMAs were like 59¢ instead of 99¢ from iTunes. It seems like not even a year later they shutdown the store and the certificate expired and PlaysForSure stopped playing for sure. That was around 2003.

20 years later will anyone do anything about it? Of course not.

What is going to be the event that gets laws to change? Probably not a few movies viewable only from Sony devices.

goldenarm• 6 days ago

IANAL, but is it illegal to have a "Buy" button that is just a disguised "Rent" button?

If not, should we change the law?

vman81• 6 days ago

They'll argue you're "buying" a license that they can revoke when they feel like it. My feelings on the matter have been summed up by someone else more clever than me as:

If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.

Garvi• 6 days ago

Copying something isn't stealing by any legal definition. It's copyright infringement.

pdpi3• 6 days ago

The problem is that we've always been buying licences, it's just that the licence used to be attached to a physical object, so transferring the licence was as easy as transferring ownership of that physical object.

It's never been legal to copy a book, film, or music album and sell the copies, for example, because the licence doesn't allow it. Hence freeware, shareware, and copyleft licences.

iwontberude2• 6 days ago

Piracy isn’t stealing because copies don’t destroy the original

151552• 6 days ago

"Stealing" in basically all common law jurisdictions requires intent to deprive the rightful owner of the property.

kazinator5• 6 days ago

Selling someone a license, and then revoking it is like destruction of property. The injured party is owed a refund in the amount of the present day replacement cost.

It's the same as if someone sold you a toaster with a remote self-destruct feature, and then invoked the self-destruct. They owe you a new toaster.

dathinab3• 6 days ago

They will argue that, but this is unlikely to hold up in front of court even in the US.

The problem isn't it being illegal.

But they instead bank on most people not having the means (money/time) or will to sue them over this. Especially given that the actual "damages" you can effectively sue for often relatively small for most users (likely <15€ per movie, so for most account <100€ per person "per situation where you could sue").

And if there is an exception (someones losing hundreds of movies or class action law suite) settling is likely still cheaper for Sony.

This is the problem with many laws the cost of breaching them is often too small (but only IFF you are a huge company with their own lawyer department etc.).

If management would be personally liable with _mandatory prison sentences_ for the CEO/Company Owners if it seems the law was knowingly breached because penalties are cheaper then benefits (or repeated offenses etc.) things probably would look quite different.

Other approaches to counter this includes things like penalties of base+%of yearly revenue, %yearly Profite etc. The problem here is this approaches are often a mix of unfair (e.g. same revenue with large profit margin is penalized way less) and/or can be fudged/circumvented (e.g. if based on profit, but even if based on revenue it can be partially circumvented in some situations. So I think making executive personally liable might be the only way to fix this.

RiverCrochet2• 6 days ago

Then the button should say "Buy Revocable License."

Inevitably people will ask what that means. That will lead to a FAQ on the company's site somewhere, and various videos on the social media explaining it periodically with lots of comments. That will be a good thing.

Corporate marketing teams will eventually settle on something better sounding but technically legal, something like "Premier Anytime Access" for specific movies (versus "Bronze 24-hr Access"), or similar.

tshaddox3• 6 days ago

Piracy has never been stealing. If you get into trouble with the legal system for piracy, it's for copyright infringement, not larceny.

inanutshellus• 6 days ago

"we're training the public that they're 'buying' a revokable license, not the song" ~MPAA ;)

imglorp• 6 days ago

I'm hoping someday this will go the same way as other companies trying to redefine "unlimited", "free", or "lifetime". I hope lawyers reclaim "buy", "own", and "purchase" from shitbag marketers back into contract law, where they have English meanings.

https://retailwire.com/t-mobile-att-verizon-fined-10-2m-for-...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/lawsuit-t-mobile...

At the very least, if Sony yanks your purchase, they should merely refund it in full.

teeray• 6 days ago

A $10m fine for mobile telcos is a rounding error. “Softer quarter due to outstanding legal and regulatory obligations…” The fines need to be a standard percentage of income or the personal assets / freedom of officers needs to be on the line if we want those punishments to change behavior.

mrweasel3• 6 days ago

Apple was sued for having revoking access to hundreds of movies that a customer purchased. They tried to claim that "No reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely".

Sadly the case was settled, see: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/apple-settles-alleg...

inigyou23• 6 days ago

So basically "you should have expected to be scammed because everyone knows we are always scamming everyone"

dd8601fn2• 6 days ago

Not even a defense of Apple here… but I think most everyone does know. We just agree to bury our heads in the sand and not to do anything about it as long as service continues in good faith.

It comes up occasionally ever few years, whenever Amazon claws back an ebook or something like this (particularly egregious) thing happens. But then we just go back to normal.

Blurays are obscenely customer hostile too, but I decided a long time ago that they’re as close as I’m getting to owning a copy.

At least I have way to inoculate myself against this scenario without outright stealing.

But now even Blurays are getting harder to buy. Some of the bigger titles I try to buy aren’t being made… or never were (streamer exclusives).

qingcharles• 6 days ago

California Assembly Bill 2426 (AB 2426), effective 1 January, 2025. Expands the state's false advertising laws to explicitly ban companies from using words like "buy," "purchase," "own," or "keep" if what the customer is actually getting is a revocable digital license governed by shady T&Cs.

dataflow• 6 days ago

Is it working/being enforced? Anecdotally I haven't seen or heard of any changes in verbiage, but I haven't been paying that much attention.

ikekkdcjkfke• 6 days ago

Remember that the power is always with the people. We can enact any law we want

giancarlostoro• 6 days ago

Effective after most people likely bought their movies.

em500• 6 days ago

I don't think this type of legislation will have any kind of real world effect. Apple App store labels all their buttons with "Get". Google Play Store just prints the price on the button for paid apps/games.

apparent7• 6 days ago

I've wondered how they'll draw the line on this. If Amazon or Apple has a buy button and it means you get to have ongoing access to the content for as long as Amazon/Apple is around, then for a 30 year old person there's a decent chance that's as good as buying the thing. But if it's hazier, as in the case of Sony's revocation based on losing rights in later years, then you're obviously not getting the same thing. How does CA's law apply to this continuum of circumstances?

bix6• 6 days ago

Amazon still shows me a buy option for movies?

Razengan• 6 days ago

Unrelated, but that is such an unfortunate acronym.. There's no way the people who perpetuated it didn't know what they were doing

I propose, let's see..

Definitely Isn’t Legal Doctrine, Obviously

or.. Based Only On Basic Speculation

perhaps Consult Official Counsel, Kindly

or more succinct, This Isn’t Trained Solicitor Advice

xerox13ster• 6 days ago

Respectfully, and for the pun: all of those are as ass as IANAL.

I don’t understand what is wrong with NAL/NLA not a lawyer/not legal advice.

NopIdoN• 6 days ago

be utterly mercenary when helpful interlocutors suggest trusting legal expertise

chillfox3• 6 days ago

Pretty sure you could get some action from the ACCC here in Australia if you go through the process to lodge a complaint.

pnw2• 6 days ago

Why, do you want Sony to add mandatory Digital ID to their platform?

NoMoreNicksLeft2• 6 days ago

If Walmart sold you a lawnmower, but you had to leave the lawnmower in their store, would you consider it your property just because they let you start it up and hear it rumble?

If you wouldn't do that for Walmart, why would you do it for Sony?

IAmBroom2• 6 days ago

That's a truly weird analogy.

VibrantClarity• 6 days ago

People are buying vehicles at great cost that can be remotely disabled. If the analogy were slightly less tortured, I'm sure the answer would be yes.

amiga386• 6 days ago

Not even "Rent". Rentals are priced by the time you rent for. If you want to rent something for 30 years, you can, and you'll keep paying for 30 years.

This is a one-time cost and you just don't know when they're going to snatch it back from you. They won't tell you. They won't even give you a notice period. They don't know themselves. They only find out when the licensor they're sublicensing from demands "too much" for ongoing licensing and they just give up and pretend they didn't sell you that and take your money.

The button would have to be "Licence, subject to unilateral revocation at any time."

Fezzik• 6 days ago

At the same time, I expect consumers to have a skosh of sense - I would never expect a third party to hold any sort of digital media remotely for me, in perpetuity, just because I gave them a few bucks. I know they should, based on allowing consumers to “buy” movies but, at the same time, I have a good enough understanding of the world to know that’s not likely.

ibejoeb2• 6 days ago

Laws like that are just going to give rise to new tortured wording. You're buying a revocable license to view the content under certain conditions. It was already in that territory even with physical media; that's what region locking is. Likewise, if bitrot set in and your disc became unplayable, the distributor didn't send you a new one. You never had a perpetual, irrevocable, and otherwise unrestricted license to view that content.

I'm not saying that it is not worth trying to fix this, but now that the technology enables content owners to more fully control your access, they're not going to be keen to relax that only to leave that money on the table.

card_zero• 6 days ago

What? "You never had a license" - no, of course not, that's not what buying is. You had a phonograph record or whatever, and it didn't get replaced when worn out in the same way that the shoe manufacturer doesn't replace your worn out shoes which you have bought. Region locking, what about it? It's interference with ownership too.

Things you can buy have to be accurately described as what you actually get, so "buy this" ought to be an accurate description of what the deal actually is, too.

zaptheimpaler• 6 days ago

It’s good but will ultimately end up like the GPDR popups. Everything will say rent, won’t change the fact that you can’t actually own anything. The law should instead give us real ownership.

tshaddox3• 6 days ago

This is always a cute proposal, but what are people expecting to happen? If such a law actually rolled out with strong enforcement, all the buttons would just change from "Buy" to "Rent", which wouldn't meaningfully improve access to and fair usage of media.

lukan3• 6 days ago

It would create consciousness about the whole affair and not just in some nerd circles, but in the general population. People know the difference of buying and renting and they will be enraged if found out they have been scammed.

acd• 6 days ago

Isnt there an issue with "Buy" and different countries marketing laws? Ie it implies "Hold" or "TemporaryKeep".

Guess it will be an upswing of BlueRay movies. Already happening with LPs and CDs

tremon• 6 days ago

This anti-consumer stuff also applies to physical Blu-rays: each BD can contain a revocation list of player keys and distributor keys, and official players are required to update their keylists from that. Every time you insert a new disc in your player, you're playing russian roulette with your existing library.

galleywest2003• 6 days ago

How does that work if my player is offline? A dedicated BluRay player has no reason to connect to the internet.

toast0• 6 days ago

Blu-Ray key revocation does not work that way. Players with revoked keys simply can't play discs that were encrypted to disallow them.

Discs that worked with a player will continue to work, as long as the physical mechanisms are still good.

Technically, maybe, since the player authenticates with the drive, if you updated the firmware on the drive you could lockout the player. I could see windows update potentially helpfully pushing a bd-rom drive firmware update, but it's not happening on a standalone player.

It's not ideal that your existing player might not read new discs, but hopefully you use your discs soon after purchase and you could return them if you can't get a firmware update with a new key. (Of course, I'm guilty of buying discs to watch eventually; will be annoying if my keys were revoked)

bogometer• 6 days ago

if you cant hold it your hands, you don't own it. used dvd and bluray on ebay are cheaper anyway. another underutilized resource - the public library - mine has a huge catalog of movies you can borrow for free.

naravara5• 6 days ago

If you can hold it in your hands you still might not necessarily own it. Remember DivX? (The medium, not the codec).

ssl-35• 6 days ago

Remember Meraki?

teroshan• 6 days ago

another underutilized resource - the public library

As an indication of where things are going on this front, from the same publisher: Sony announced that games are not going to get distributed as physical copies anymore. So no new video games to be borrowed from public libraries, and even if you can borrow older games the new Playstations probably won't even have a disk tray to read them.

Whatever your stance on video games being something that is worth having in a library is, if they could get away with it that's probably their ideal end game for movies as well.

inigyou23• 6 days ago

Time for libraries to start carrying hard drives full of pirated copies, I guess.

bellowsgulch• 6 days ago

If someone can take it away from you after you've paid for it.*

Physically holding things in the digital age, where someone can remotely change your software, or render it unusable, isn't true ownership.

WalterGR• 6 days ago

For more recent takes:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389 - "Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For" (reclaimthenet.org)

636 points | 15 days ago | 304 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904 - "Sony erases digital content from libraries" (arstechnica.com)

184 points | 16 days ago | 76 comments

CommanderData• 6 days ago

Everyone of these stories makes a great case for piracy. Torrents or illegal online streaming sites.

inigyou23• 6 days ago

It truly does

xvxvx• 6 days ago

They removed ‘A Shaun The Sheep Movie: Farmageddon’. OK Sony, this is war.

chaostheory• 6 days ago

I guess they want the masses to start sailing the high seas again

butterfi• 6 days ago

Its all a bit hand wavy nonsense. Own a physical copy? How long until its unplayable because either the media corrupts or the player isn't available? The only real "ownership" is the IP, everything else is just renting.

nemomarx4• 6 days ago

own a physical copy, rip it into a digital format. legal and works pretty well to keep up with the times

cesaref• 6 days ago

All information is ephemeral, but I don't honestly think that argument holds much weight here.

I'm currently listening to a record which was pressed before I was born, and that will outlast me. My CDs were ripped around 2000 to a drive and i've streamed then since. I've still got the CDs though, and the last time I played one it worked fine on my 1989 vintage transport.

I think i'm good.

another-dave• 6 days ago

Why wouldn't a player be available though? CD/DVD players won't just suddenly stop working. My CDs and CD players at home from the 1990s are still working completely fine.

If they do want to posit it as this, I'd personally be fine if they said "a CD will work for 100k plays before corrupting" so you'll have 100,000 credits to stream The Wizard of Oz before you need to purchase it again.

But they need to say that upfront.

atomicnumber3• 6 days ago

I trust the pressing on a CD or vinyl to remain readable SIGNIFICANTLY more than I trust any corporation to do literally anything, including "continue to exist".

1970-01-012• 6 days ago

A laser-engraved QR code can store 3KB, enough for an entire ebook. The file format isn't the problem here.

mrguyorama2• 6 days ago

The DVDs I got in my childhood 20 years ago still work just fine, the drives to read them are $20 or less, and ripping them to a format I can use more conveniently and backup however I want is a single button click.

Plastic discs are the optimum data distribution format. They degrade in the same time frame as a paper book, essentially lifetime, you retain legal rights like the first sale doctrine, you can easily format shift for safety and storage, and nobody can take any of that from you ever, and you can use that data however you like, as long as you aren't trying to sell bootlegs.

Books and plastic discs are infinitely better than the digital realm. The consumer rights are so much stronger and better.

shevy-java• 6 days ago

Well - I actually think the problem is not Sony being malicious here, per se, but the legislation. There has to be a guarantee as if it were a physical copy, as-is. The right to repair movement has the same cause ultimately. You purchase something, you own it, no matter what counter-legalese is tried.

The USA really needs to stop being a corporate-country. Weren't the republicans all about the people at one point in time? Now they are all about the billionaires and family dynasties pillaging what they can, with the forerunner the mad orange king pillaging the most. And starting wars he loses by default, after promising to not start wars.

inigyou23• 6 days ago

I don't think they were ever all about the people.

nemomarx4• 6 days ago

when do you recall them being about the people? it's gotta be before Bush so maybe I just didn't grow up with it

21asdffdsa12• 6 days ago

Once its deleted it becomes a indefinite p(irate) license.

MYEUHD• 6 days ago

Previous discussions:

Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For (294 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389

Sony erases digital content from libraries (74 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904

xpct2• 6 days ago

If you bought movies on a digital platform that would later go under (could be Sony one day), what would happen to your collection? Is it transferable in any way? If not, it's already a risk no matter which platform you use.

stronglikedan4• 6 days ago

that's the point. you don't "buy" movies from digital platforms. you merely rent them, regardless of what the button said

xpct2• 6 days ago

Well I'd say these are different risks. It's either tied to the agreement Sony has with the movie provider, or with the platform itself. Either one could pull out. Or, my point, the company could also go under.

What is the agreement tied to?

1970-01-012• 6 days ago

     boolean bought = true;
     boolean owns = false;

        if (bought && owns) {
            System.out.println("Purchase resulted in ownership.");
        } else if (bought) {
            System.out.println("Purchase did not result in ownership. You have rented.");

SlightlyLeftPad• 6 days ago

Without laws to force companies to honor this, The only reasonable answer to this ownership issue will end up being piracy. Also, “Buying” the movie and making a copy of it for personal use shouldn’t be illegal.

stronglikedan4• 6 days ago

Also, “Buying” the movie and making a copy of it for personal use shouldn’t be illegal.

Unless I missed something recently, it's not illegal. You've always had the right to make backups of content that you purchased legally. It's the distribution that has been illegal.

Jtarii• 6 days ago

It is legal to rip a digital copy of a movie you purcahsed from itunes to your hard drive?

I would have assumed it would have at least been against whatever TOC you agreed to when signing up to itunes.

akkartik• 6 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A... outlaws circumvention of DRM.

demosthanos2• 6 days ago

Recent and very related:

Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation (797 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456

So Sony is simultaneously announcing that all purchases will be digital from now on while actively demonstrating that digital purchases aren't actually purchases. They're clearly communicating that they believe in a future where no one owns games any more.

stronglikedan4• 6 days ago

They're clearly communicating that they believe in a future where no one owns games any more.

They've been foreshadowing that future for years, but the gamers keep on bending right over and even squeezing the lube bottle for them. They haven't, and likely won't, be given a reason to stop marching toward that future.

jeremyjh3• 6 days ago

Yet people have been “buying”games from Steam the same way for more than two decades…

demosthanos2• 6 days ago

First, I think people should buy from GoG for exactly this reason.

But also, the difference is that Steam has as far as I can tell never yanked a game from someone's account and failed to refund them for it. Games either get delisted and you retain access to them or they're removed entirely and they refund you. The only exception is online-only games whose developer stops maintaining the server, but I think it's reasonable for steam to not claim responsibility for the developer's malfeasance.

So Steam has this model of licensing-not-ownership on paper but in practice treats purchases as much closer to ownership. Sony clearly does not.

j1elo• 6 days ago

I we are heading towards a digital world, we need to solve the issue of how to ensure by legal means that in 800 years people will still be able to study current day media and arts.

chrisweekly• 6 days ago

I know I'm not the only one here who remembers the Sony rootkit debacle in the age of CDs. One of the all-time worst companies I can think of when it comes to mistreating customers.

ndsipa_pomu6• 6 days ago

Oracle enters the chat

FitchApps• 6 days ago

So the only "buy" option one has now is to torrent the movie? At least no one is going to delete the mp4 file.

anal_reactor• 6 days ago

The problem with torrents is that they naturally die when people lose interest.

k4rli• 6 days ago

If it's something worth watching, then very unlikely. 99.9% of movies/tv simply aren't.

xboxnolifes• 6 days ago

Same goes for streaming. Torrents die much slower, since you only need a few people to care.

ndsipa_pomu6• 6 days ago

Yes, but there's a lot of old media available on torrents that is not available elsewhere such as on on streaming services. I'm a bit of a datahoarder and will often download obscure films/tv just because they are obscure and difficult to find. It's surprising how media from the 1980/90s is only available on a couple of torrents. A more recent example (early 2000s) would be the BBC series Monkey Dust that only had the first series released on DVD due to issues with the music licensing and possibly the content which was contentious.

antihero• 6 days ago

There's also Usenet.

Cshaya• 6 days ago

physical media forever and always <3

anigbrowl• 6 days ago

The same story again?

Previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48691346

and several others.

Looking in search, it seems there's a Sony hate thread almost every day over the last month, and many of them are just reposts of the same thing (eg >10 submissions about Sony's decision to stop manufacturing game discs in 2028). It's also odd that these stories are attracting hundreds of comments every time; for comparison several submissions about about Xbox laying off ~5000 people have attracted less than 10 comments between them.

It's looking like astroturf at this point. I don't have any connection to Sony, direct or indirect; it's just a weird pattern on HN.

marcosdumay• 6 days ago

People like to hate Sonny products since that time they distributed malware on music CDs.

sbr464• 6 days ago

Yes, the chairman of StudioCanal is.

dcchuck• 6 days ago

Curious what others use to store media for home/remote use.

I naively assumed my purchases from [company A] would mean I have permanent/immutable access. Even in the case of access not being revoked, I've found content itself changes over time. Usually related to jokes which have "not aged well" let us say.

I'm not here to champion leaving in that content. Or defend nostalgic rewatching. It just feels strange to not acknowledge.

RetroTechie• 6 days ago

Curious what others use to store media for home/remote use.

A limited selection of CD/DVD/BluRay, a large collection of songs in mp3 & other formats (many ripped from CD myself @ some point, others downloaded), a bunch of movies in h264/h265 etc (mostly via torrents).

Books / documentation / retrogames & more on various devices.

Generally when adding anything, I look for replay value. Play/watch/listen once & never revisit stuff I save to /dev/null.

In common between all the above: storage media under my control, and useable offline.

K0balt• 6 days ago

Seems like a class action suit ready-made? Idk why this isn’t absolutely lawyer-crack.

I mean, on one hand you have centuries of precedent about what “buy” means, and on the other you have one party depriving another party of access to their property , without providing alternative access, defacto depriving them of their property in absolute terms.

This seems like a clear case of theft, conspiracy to commit theft, and fraudulent advertising, interstate commerce in the pursuit of an organized criminal enterprise , etc.

stackedinserter• 6 days ago

How do people still "buy" any movies after all these stories?

If "buy" means you can watch it on this specific device while logged in with this specific account, for some limited time, then downloading it to your disk is not "theft".

Seriously, my brain, deformed by years of file sharing, can't get it.

m4632• 6 days ago

Isn't this where some lawyers step in and file a class action lawsuit?

not_your_vase• 6 days ago

This has happened dozens of times, and it will keep happening as long as people don't care about it.

Long live offline physical media, and The Pirate Bay.

metalman• 6 days ago

How is Sony not commiting piracy, ok not piracy, because a pirate at least makes an open frontal attack and says "har har har", and girls fantisise about bieng abducted by swashbucklers, but Sony is like some perv stealing peoples underware , or more accuratly a contract underware theef working for the real perv who knows where you live and nobody else like this stuff at all, zero fantasies, 100% icky perve

ocd• 6 days ago

Sony and other vendors got to remove the concurrency problem of tangible items, and it's only fair the internet of file sharing gets to solve the concurrency problem of a public library in the same way.

runamuck• 6 days ago

Is there any way to buy long (decades) lasting physical media?

Nevermark3• 6 days ago

Revocation should come with full refunds.

That would:

1. Balance the revocation economically, for both parties, while leaving the decision to the "seller".

2. The trade becomes the time-value of money vs. the time value of access. Inherently fair. The seller nets interest, and the inflation drop on the original price. What an accountant would come up with, yet automatic.

3. Provide users the remunerative recourse for "resuming" their "perpetual" license with another provider.

4. Motivate the avoidance of revocations, as who wants to have anti-sales.

Maybe there are good reasons for revocations. Fine, but purchasers should not "Get" randomly screwed, while the seller who had control of their sourcing arrangements loses nothing.

"Get" instead of "Buy" does not address the problem. If "Get" requires the user to gamble, it should be "Gamble". "Get for five years" or "Get for 5 viewings" would be ok. But "Get" without a clear definition is inherently misleading. Another dark pattern.

(Also: By law, contracts must be something given for something taken. A one-sided uncompensated nullification-at-will option is a sneaky way around that. Companies that nullify without compensation, or less than full price where the licensing agreement made no refund amount declaration, should be required to return customer money with interest to reflect the bad faith contract. IANAL, just a believer in justice, especially where simple accounting provides answers.)

dev_l1x_be• 6 days ago

Also they would need to adjust the refund it with inflation.

thfuran• 6 days ago

Plus interest

maerF0x03• 6 days ago

A consumer friendly policy could be:

1. Proration for a "lifetime" access (87 years) denied. In many cases probably close to 90% refunded.

2. irrespective, a Full refund for those who had never viewed the purchase.

3. A refund equal to the purchase price on the streaming platform newly acquired. Or a lifetime access (87 years) of the monthly billed streaming platform.

Skunkleton• 6 days ago

Or get this - you get a drm free copy and they let you redownload/stream it for and undefined (hopefully long) period of time. After that you can play your copy or use a copy from elsewhere.

danlitt• 6 days ago

This presumes that it is reasonable for a seller to remove the capacity in principle to buy the digital good. They might refuse ever to sell a copy again, and only permit renting it. Since copyright grants a long monopoly this opens up scope for crazy market distortion - you could, for instance, delete the Beatles discography from the entire world until the price doubles. This tends not to happen, but there is nothing preventing it, and it seems inherently wrong.

Reason0772• 6 days ago

”Revocation should come with full refunds.”

Of course it should. If Sony are not doing that then it sounds like grounds for a class action?

I remember when Google shut down Stadia. To their credit, they automatically refunded everything I’d ever purchased on the platform. Nice little windfall.

apparent7• 6 days ago

The lawsuit would have to prove that Sony didn't abide by it's T&Cs, which it seems like they may well have. The issue then is whether it's OK to have T&Cs that seemingly conflict with the "buy" characterization that customers are presented with.

StilesCrisis2• 6 days ago

They even refunded the controller and Chromecast Ultra, which still work to this day (just not to play Stadia).

rlpb• 6 days ago

Revocation should come with full refunds.

That's not enough. If I purchase something, I expect to rely on being able to keep it. Its value to me could well be much higher than just the purchase price.

Revocation should come with consequential damages together with the cost of recovering them.

protimewaster• 6 days ago

I agree. I honestly think it's strange that it's often viewed as "good enough" to get a refund.

If I paid $5 for a movie, I did that because I want the movie more than the $5. If I didn't, I would've kept the $5. You giving me $5 and taking the movie away is just replacing the thing I value more with the thing I value less.

The other issue is that, if I paid $5 for a movie 10 years ago, that's now more than $5 due to inflation. If you give me $5 back, you're short.

vitally36432• 5 days ago

It should be refunded with interest.

jjav3• 6 days ago

Revocation should come with full refunds.

If I buy, say, a shovel and the hardware store sends someone to break into my house and steal the shovel back, hopefully they'd get arrested for the crime.

We should not be treating digital purchases any different. If I bought it, I bought it. It's mine forever.

But the oligarchs will never let that happen. So, in practice, always buy either the physical media or at least a DRM-free digital copy in an open format that you can save in your hard drive and play forever just like you can with a physical copy.

If neither of those are available I'd recommend just not buying. Or rent it for a one-off viewing with the full understanding that it is a one-off rental, priced accordingly.

mindslight• 5 days ago

Or just pirate. There is no need to buy into the corpos' model, especially for this topic. Do you know what doesn't just spontaneously disappear? An .mp4 sitting on zfs.

The only reason these parasites survive is that there is very little advertising money behind user-empowering software, so setting something up for yourself looks daunting. Meanwhile the proprietary solutions market themselves as being straightforward, easy, and ultimately trustable. But as this action and countless similar ones demonstrate, this is far from the truth.

raxxorraxor• 6 days ago

In my opinion an ethical and moral permission for piracy regardless of law and small prints. Although in case of the latter, these are not valid in many countries with basic consumer protection anyway (doesn't make piracy a lawful response, but still). And I think in these cases it would be worthwhile to remind Sony about necessary compensation.

Their licensing issues aren't the problem of the buyer.

crest• 6 days ago

Revocation should include inflation compensation to make it always a loss for the revoking party. That they won’t have an incentive to cheat by „selling“ movies without having a perpetual license to sell to the buyer.

aeturnum• 6 days ago

Sony is obviously the villain here (and pretty much always) but I think this points to an unsolved problem with our model of digital ownership: it's based on the media company providing a service...forever? People in this thread are saying customers should get refunds and I disagree - customers should get video files!

We need a model of digital ownership that does not involve the media owner forever delivering that media on demand. Doing away with that requirement would be good for all involved. Sony has been a bad actor here and deserves every possible sorrow - and also I would like a model that retains the balance of physical media: companies give you a copy that works 'til it wears out and it's your job to keep it in working condition.

smelendez• 6 days ago

This is how it now works with music, I believe. Apple, Amazon, Bandcamp, etc. all sell you access to DRM-free files along with the ability to download or stream them in perpetuity.

StilesCrisis2• 6 days ago

The iTunes store originally sold m4p (protected) files, not m4a files.

jamesfinlayson2• 6 days ago

Is it really the ability to download them all in perpetuity? Google Music (RIP) gave you five downloads or something like that and I thought that was on par with Apple Music at least.

dawidpotocki• 6 days ago

Qobuz always shows me the following message after purchasing (downloads are DRM-free FLACs):

Certain works may be withdrawn from the service for legal reasons, such as a revocation of rights. The titles purchased will then no longer be available for re-download. Download your purchases quickly.

jamesfinlayson2• 6 days ago

it's based on the media company providing a service...forever? People in this thread are saying customers should get refunds and I disagree - customers should get video files!

Very much agree. And while Steam could disappear tomorrow, all of the games that have been delisted are still downloadable if you bought them (I think The Movies was one of the early ones - delisted in 2007 maybe, but you can still download it if you bought it back then).

Braxton1980• 6 days ago

Perhaps we could get the video files and burn them to a disc like disc that can be played back in a special machine

ColdStream17• 6 days ago

Almost like a Digital Video Disc, no idea what we would call it however?

hapticmonkey• 5 days ago

But if you just gave customers the video files, they’d get leaked. We can’t have 4K Dolby Vision + Atmos files just floating around for people to pirate!

Oh wait, despite all the DRM we have that anyway. What a huge waste of effort all this protection has been.

deepsun• 6 days ago

Do the customers get full refund? They are definitely entitled to.

AtlasBarfed• 6 days ago

How is this not a class action lawsuit?

ashishb• 6 days ago

Many of my friends are surprised that I purchase mp3s and store them in Google Drive instead of listening on Spotify or YouTube.

Heck, I even wrote a player for this [1] The problem is that licensed media like this are always going to become inaccessible over decades.

It happened with Apple[2] and Microsoft (PlaysForSure[3]) as well.

1 - https://musicsync.ashishb.net/ 2 - https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/you-dont-own-your-di... 2 - https://www.cnet.com/culture/playsforsure-officially-dead/

abustamam• 6 days ago

"If buying digital media isn't ownership, then piracy isn't stealing."

I'm all for buying media. People worked hard on that stuff. They deserve to be compensated.

But if I buy something and then it can randomly be taken away from me at the whims of the publisher or copyright owner or whoever the hell, then I don't "own" that. And if ~I can't~ they won't let me own digital media, I have no qualms over acquiring such media in other ways, given the ongoing war against physical media anyway

firen777• 6 days ago

I guess companies saw SKG being effectively thrown out by the EU, got bold enough and decided to normalize this practice to the rest of the digital medium.

jqpabc123• 6 days ago

Not your disk, not your data.

tjpnz• 6 days ago

Why does Sony seem to be the only one having this problem? Do Google and Apple also engage in this practice?

supermatt• 6 days ago

It's not rocket science. If they want to revoke a license, they should buy it back at the price they sold it. Consumer law should dictate there be no permissible alternative, and should apply retroactively.

Personally, I dont like theses digital "purchase" licenses at all. The only "rights" DRM is used for is to restrict those of the consumer - a far cry from the transferable digital rights that big-media touted that resulted in them receiving overreaching protections for copyright in the first place.

Unless they are transferable, all digital licenses should be short term (<= 1mo) and marked clearly as a rental to avoid consumer confusion.

sharts• 5 days ago

Easy fix — customers get immunity if caught pirating said content. That’s really all it means to have a license to something anyway.

ghusto• 5 days ago

There are a lot of well thought out good solutions being posted here, but you have to bear in mind that these companies don't see a problem to be solved in the first place. It's like telling a mafia boss the solution to the cops being after him is to quit doing criminal things.

The solution is piracy.

Fizzadar• 5 days ago

This is why people pirate.

Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

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