Playstation removing previously purchased Discovery content | Hacker News Reader

Playstation removing previously purchased Discovery content

playstation.com

241 pointsintunderflow174 comments

> you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed

Content you purchased. Their wording. Not content you rented, not license you paid for.

They are effectively stealing the content you purchased.

If it lives on their servers you never really owned it.

Then they should let you download it

That's my policy, one way or another I'm downloading a copy for safekeeping.

Then selling it was fraud, surely. I'm not a lawyer, but I've never understood how these online storefronts haven't been sued out of existence for claiming that you can "buy" something when they clearly mean something more akin to "leasing access to it until they feel like it".

Wake me up when Sony executives serve hard time for federal fraud charges. I’m afraid there is no justice for citizens victimized by the ownership class.

We could all band together and buy Sony out of it’s self

dibs on ceo

It’s almost always only financial and rarely significant enough to be meaning to the company at hand, to which it often gets lowered even further on appeal more often than not

From Louis Rossmann on YouTube: "If paying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing."

(shamelessly copied from the top comment on /r/piracy on this very subject)

I'd add that if you paid a price similar to buying a physical copy then it's a stronger case. And most of these digital 'buy' prices have literally no discount compared to a Blu-ray, which is shameless.

When the price is the same you're still getting the short end of the stick when you 'buy' digitally.

Digital license has lower quality video and audio

You cannot re-sell your digital license

You have a non-zero chance that your license will get revoked

also you commonly get a digital license too that you can register with those same digital services when you buy physical anyways (at least for movies/tv shows).

> If paying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing.

I'm stealing that (no pun intended).

It’s never been about whether piracy was stealing or not. It’s about what the courts have to say on the matter. Find yourself on the wrong end of a big copyright case and your life gets ruined, regardless of what word you use to describe it.

> It’s never been about whether piracy was stealing or not. It’s about what the courts have to say on the matter. Find yourself on the wrong end of a big copyright case and your life gets ruined, regardless of what word you use to describe it.

How many individuals have actually had their lives ruined, outside a very small number of people like Alexandra Elbakyan? Plenty of companies have been shutdown over the matter and plenty of scene groups have been raided but ever since Aaron Swartz prosecutors in the US seem to have little appetite for such cases and Europe has always been lenient as far as criminal penalties go. The latest scene group raids that made it to HN's front page ended in 60 day suspended sentences for the offenders which is a complete joke as far as penalties go. Nonviolent offenses that are barely worth prosecuting in most jurisdictions if not for media industry handwringing.

It's a very small number, admittedly, but the damage is huge.

People in general aren't great at dealing with low-probability high-impact events. I think we're also not so great at dealing with legal and economic issues where the effect on most people is tiny but a small number are either affected extremely negatively (by losing these cases) or extremely positively (becoming tremendously wealthy as copyright holders).

I was sued and lost a lot of money. It made my life very difficult at that time and I regret my actions. I did learn a lot about the legal system and the industry, and it inspired me to get a law degree and license, so it wasn’t all for naught.

Correct. Copyright infringement is... infringement. Not piracy or stealing.

People treat infringement with more of a Robin Hood mentality than normal stealing since you're copying rather than taking, and because big Intellectual Property Owners all happen to be tax cheats who all do fraudulent accounting to claim their profits all come from their Irish subsidiary yet feel entitled to government enforced monopolies on intellectual property.

You generally get sympathy if you're poor and infringing or being infringed, and don't if you're rich.

You should tell that to the cops after you rent a car and refuse to return it. I’ll make the popcorn.

> Their wording.

Saved [0], for whatever it's worth.

[0] https://archive.is/3qOGV

You don't actually "purchase" physical media. It's still licensed. The question for digital purchases is how perpetual the license is. This is different from Spotify and Netflix where you clearly are renting it, and there's no confusion over that.

They are plainly stating that it was purchased.

You can do whatever you want to with physical media, license be damned. Most people won't go further than making a physical copy to load on to their NAS. This is a license violation, but there won't be any enforcement because mass distribution via torrents is a much bigger threat.

Let me know how your unlicensed movie theater goes.

There will never be enforcement because such a provision is not enforceable.

Is the purchase of physical media actually license?

Clearly there are restrictions to what you can do with it (duplication, public performance, and so forth), but those restrictions are defined by copyright law. The notable exception is software, but it could be argued that licenses were a product of the need to duplicate software (e.g. install it to a hard drive). That said, modern software licenses do go far beyond that.

Then again, I may be misinterpreting the meaning of license. I have always views them as modifications to the rights granted by copyright law.

Buying a book is just that a purchase. Copyright only applies when a copy is being made, thus no license is needed or implied. You can read it and then sell the physical book because you’re not making physical copies, but you can’t read it to a large audience because that requires a specific license.

Buying a physical CD or an action figure of some copyrighted character follows that same principle, the wishes of the original publisher becomes irrelevant until copyright applies. So you can for example take family photos of your kid holding that Barbie without issue, even make copies of it and back it up to the cloud with no problem.

TLDR; To say a license exists implies some additional privilege, but that’s simply not the case here.

Maybe you license physical media, but I don't. I purchase it and do with it as I please under the fair use laws of the United States.

Unfortunately, this is not the case with physical media that contains licensed material. IF a case were pursued, you would likely pay whatever penalty without any real contest (like 99% of criminals who attempt an insanity plea).

https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...

>> "The first sale doctrine, codified at 17 U.S.C. § 109, provides that an individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner. The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) & (c). Since the first sale doctrine never protects a defendant who makes unauthorized reproductions of a copyrighted work, the first sale doctrine cannot be a successful defense in cases that allege infringing reproduction."

Devil's advocate: you can purchase a license. The law uses terms like "purchase" and "ownership" in reference to temporary/conditional delegated ownership all the time. The legalese in contracts usually looks something like "purchasing a temporary use-right over X."

For a good — and centuries-old — example, a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leasehold_estate is something that's "owned"... but only for a certain number of years.

Perhaps the leasehold model is interesting. With the PlayStation example, they can withdraw access to the content at any time, whereas a leasehold gives you restricted ownership for a fixed period of time.

They're not stealing anything. People should read the legal contracts they sign or to which they otherwise agree. Streaming services typically include a clause about the right to remove content for any reason and regardless of who has purchased it. This is exactly why their courtesy notice doesn't include a word about refunds and a perfect example of the serious societal problem of people having a knee-jerk reaction to something merely because they haven't been paying attention and didn't do much (if any) research prior to venting their frustrations to the world.

Not sure why you're excusing mis-selling. Legal small print isn't allowed to contradict the key points and larger text, of the context of the sale.

Lawyers and judges themselves don’t read the fine print and it would take an inordinate amount of time for people to read the fine print of every service they were offered. Nobody has time to do such things.

Which is precisely why the courts tend to view misleadingly offering something for sale in the advertisement, and then adding contradictory conditions to that sale in the fine print, as just defrauding their customers. This blame the consumer mentality is impractical, unworkable, and legally wrong.

I’ve noticed something strange on my iTunes account recently - missing tv shows I absolutely remember buying at one point, but nowhere to be seen now.

One I remember is “Adventure Time”. Just now searched my email and found receipts from iTunes Store for “Adventure Time Vol 1” dated 22 Nov 2013. I see receipts for the other seasons of the show too, they were not rentals as far as I’m aware. Then sometime in last few years the content disappeared from my account and devices. In fact I just opened up iTunes Store now, found the Adventure Time series still available on iTunes, but it’s asking to pay and saying I don’t have. This is exactly same AppleID I used 10 years ago to buy this content ugh.

Did you change countries on the account? IIRC that can remove content that has different licensing in the new country.

Contact their support? I'd love to know what they say.

I contacted support about a missing TV show and they apologised and gave 5 free rentals.

Piracy is morally justifiable if this is the alternative.

Piracy is always justifiable. -Aaron Swartz or something

Piracy is a complex topic, no need to reduce it into black/white trivial one.

Say you grew up as poor (90% of the world easily) and buying 1 original music CD equals to a week of net salary of your hard working parents just routed to that. This was the situation of me and all my peers when I was growing up. There was simply not an option to buy it legally, unless you accepted to go few days in full hunger mode (which folks think is easy until you are actually there and would literally kill people for food, our mind is really interesting and often very rational place).

So you either pirate or have nothing. Nothing was stolen with creating a copy since those money would never go to copyright owners. Now imagine computer game would require 2 or 3 weeks of similar sacrifice. Again, my choldhood/teenage years. On top of the fact you sometimes can't even buy it legally unless you commit to serious travel.

Yeah, I could go on for a very long time, just my own experiences, not even involving the simple fact that in many places including my current one downloading is completely legal and laws are very much OK with that. If I ever wanted to support artists I would send them money directly, there is always a way if one is serious enough.

But rich western kids want to do visible poses on trivialized topics and 'statements' to their peers even though its long term in vain and zero sum game, not wonder about deeper stuff and actually act upon it (with respect to exceptions).

This is what a lot of anti-piracy outfits do not understand. There is content I as an Indian can either not access because it is geographically limited or because it is just not within my means. Granted, lately the second problem has vanished.

If I hadn't pirated games as a kid, I would not have bought my PS5 or my Nintendo Switch or the Steam Deck. My Steam account has, like everyone else's, a few hundred games now and it's also full of games I once pirated. Funnily enough I haven't played them after purchasing them. But I bought these so I can install them easily. I'm still mad that I cannot find a legal copy of TMNT Out of the Shadows so I have to resort to using piracy for it but that doesn't work on the deck and I need to maintain a Windows PC if I want to play it.

I recently cancelled my Netflix Subscription and bought 6 8TB drives to build a NAS. I haven't gotten around to it yet but I've been downloading a couple of shows I've watched previously and miss, some of which can't be found on OTT in India.

If in 2023 you are telling me I cannot watch something because I am in India or because the production company simply didn't put it on a streaming platform, that gives me impetus to pirate it.

And if you have a show but without either certain episodes for the sake of censorship or if you're missing entire seasons even though it's been a year or more, that is definitely grounds for piracy.

It's even worse with manga and comics. I cannot legally gain access to some manga because they're not sold here and because I can't find them online. Tachiyomi exists and I love it.

Don't even get me started on how ebooks are fleecing us all. I switched to a Boox from a Kindle and I love my decision.

If I buy a book, I own that book. I can burn it, I can lend or give it to a friend, I can read it as many times as I like, and nobody can legally come and take it away from me.

Also no one can come and say "you only bought the book not the words inside it" and use whiteout to cover up the words.

Which is basically what revoking a license to a digital only piece of content is.

With DRM you never purchase _content_. You only purchase a _license_ to access it.

Words do matter. I sense possible legal grounds for reimbursments if it wasn't crystal clear to the layman.

They wrote "previously purchased Discovery content". Should I believe you or Sony's official statement? ;)

Anyway, never buy content you can't crack (make it drm-free) or even better, buy drm-free stuff from the start, but if you really want the best service with the highest quality that has the best portability go ask a pirate, it's been the same since 1600.

> They wrote "previously purchased Discovery content". Should I believe you or Sony's official statement? ;)

You should believe that Sony is trying to scam you. :-)

No their legal team would have wrote something like that:

Your previous purchased and limited license to consume media from our partner Discovery is hereby revoked as we can written in our EULA (you have accepted that with your first setup of our excellent product THE PS5 super-slim) we love our customers and have a great day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_promise

> Anyway, never buy content you can't crack (make it drm-free) or even better, buy drm-free stuff from the start

I agree entirely (in principle), but this isn't an option for certain platforms like the iOS App Store, or download-only games consoles (and I've been burned myself: most notably by EA removing their older games from the iOS App Store: not just them removing the ability to purchase old games, but even for people who had already paid for them to reinstall them (and who actually saves their IPA files? Is it even possible to install IPA files from a PC now that iTunes is dead?)

This is something that can only be done by law or something - IIRC, the recent pro-consumer legislation coming from the EU doesn't address "getting-to-keep-what-we-paid-for" - I'm hoping they'll get around to that soon, along with getting protections for data-sovereignty: it's kinda shocking how many popular Apps/SaaS services out there still don't let you export your data.

You can very well choose different platforms. That's the entire reason I don't buy iPhones or consoles.

You don't need EU mommy to regulate the entire industry and make it harder for the next ios / android alternative

You can definitely live like a hermit, but the problem is that more and more things don't have open alternatives.

> make it harder for the next ios / android alternative

If the regulation prevents an alternative from being malicious I see that as a good thing?

> You can definitely live like a hermit, but the problem is that more and more things don't have open alternatives.

This site is called "Hacker News", and not "Technology Hipster News". Since you likely are a hacker, you should have a pretty good idea what to do ... :-)

You're at least a decade late if you think "hacking" (in the sense of building things) is going to get you out of this situation. The problem with these platforms is network effects and lack of interoperability and not in the technical effort required to build an alternative.

This is in fact where regulation can help (and like the EU's DMA already attempts to) get us back to a state where you can actually "hack" your way out of it by building an alternative that will be viable because it can interoperate with the incumbents.

---

Or, are you suggesting piracy? I mean I sure know what to do, but none of my non-technical friends know, and frankly I'd rather live in a world where I can just pay a reasonable sum and not have to spend time maintaining a Plex/Jellyfin/*arr stack.

> You're at least a decade late if you think "hacking" (in the sense of building things) is going to get you out of this situation. The problem with these platforms is network effects and lack of interoperability and not in the technical effort required to build an alternative.

In the 90s, the same "arguments" held for Microsoft's applications. The hackers decided to build GNU/Linux and other open source operating systems.

And Microsoft got hammered down by anti-monopolistic regulations, which allowed for an open web and thus the Linux desktop, exactly the kind of regulations GP's asking for (DMA).

> The hackers decided to build GNU/Linux and other open source operating systems.

Copyright law wasn't used to prevent adversarial interoperability back then. It does now, which is why you can't build alternative clients anymore unless you're out of reach of the US legal system (and even then, good luck getting it onto any app store since again, there are now gatekeepers to merely _installing_ software on one's machine).

>This is something that can only be done by law or something

I'm 100% on your side with that, artist should be fairly paid, consumer should not be f**'d, it's really that easy ;)

Pretty sure they are going to have to refund everyone. That has happened with these kind of B2B disagreements in the past, google stadia was the last one I think.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-get-your-google-stadia-re...

Although there is probably plenty of others.

Read your own article. The byline reads:

> Google is taking the unprecedented step of paying back users for all the games they bought on its cloud gaming platform.

Google _voluntarily_ refunded their customers. It's unheard of and was, frankly, extremely unexpected. Good for Google and good for Stadia customers.

In the same article it points out microsoft also refunded their ebooks when they deleted content people bought.

Assuming these were sold as a perpetual licence (and by the wording Sony used it looks like they were), by removing the content they are in breach of contract, that gets expensive and messy quickly, quicker easier and cheaper just to refund them.

There is obviously some kind of legal disagreement happening between Sony and Discovery, I doubt this is the end of it.

Ths smart move is to only refund users who get their lawyer to write a letter.

The terms will have said the license was perpetual for downloads made but only five years for redownload or streaming, as do the terms for iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, YouTube's store, Vudu and every significant player in the market.

But it was not really unprecedented. They gave full refunds when they shut down Google video.

I really don't like the idea that refunds make theft acceptable (and don't tell me this is not theft, because it is)

If someone broke into my house, stole something worth $100 and left behind $100 in cash, that wouldn't make it not theft, so why should this be different? If I buy a product, I should have full control over it for the purposes of personal use, nobody should have the right to take it from me without my consent, that's stealing and a refund doesn't justify it. If a corporation can do this and get away with it, the law has failed.

Voluntary refunds like this are often the result of a risk assessment. What is the risk to their brand, what is their risk legally. One could argue that they only did this to avoid damage to their brand and the damage to the industry if it had become the catalyst to laws changing around content licensing.

I hope PlayStation does not refund customers and that this is the catalyst we need to change content licensing to consumers. A purchased license should cross transcend platform lock-in and the removal of content from a given platform. If no platform exists for your content to be consumed then you should have the legal right to download the content.

It should not be legal to sell a perpetual or indefinite license on a specific platform. If it was clear that the license was only valid for x number of years consumers could factor that into their purchasing decision.

This already happened with Canal content on the PlayStation video store a few years back (and that unquestionably affected orders of magnitudes more customers).

Nothing will change about this legally, nor the vast majority of customers seemingly care very much.

Is this not also true with, say, a VHS tape? In what sense do you "own" it? You aren't legally allowed to copy it or whatever. It's still just a license.

You're allowed to copy a VHS tape, you're just not allowed to distribute copies of VHS tapes.

You still own the physical tape itself, and you have a perpetual right to play, copy, and modify the tape as much as you like, for personal use.

My point is that in a physical tape you still only own a license of the content. This is a slightly less restrictive license than digital DRM, and is governed by copyright law, but is still a license.

Of course you can copy it. You just can’t sell that copy to someone else while keeping your own copy too. That’s copyright infringement.

I’m not sure what you’re on about with “license” in this context. You own the VHS. Do with it what you like.

There are tons of things you can't do with it. You can't exhibit it publicly. You don't own the movie on the tape! You just own a tape.

I am refuting the original poster's claim that "With DRM you never purchase _content_. You only purchase a _license_ to access it." This is true, but is meant to imply there is an alternative. There isn't, a you only have a license to the content in all cases, including DRM-free physical media.

Ok, your original post was ambiguous then because you didn't talk about content at all, you talked about "in what sense do you own [A VHS]", so people explained how owning a VHS is different from licensing digital media.

Mostly that your license to the content of a VHS cannot be revoked arbitrarily after you purchase the VHS itself.

I suppose. But the original post also omitted this distinction. I’ll add that the same inability to revoke also applies to digital media with no DRM.

> for personal use

This is why it's still a license. Public performances are explicitly forbidden. So it's still not "yours."

That's not a license. That's a law. Laws are not licenses.

Go learn about land mark Universal vs Sony time shifting and RIAA v Diamond space shifting copyright cases.

Or, at very least stop spreading misinformation.

How unhelpful!

The BBC got this right when they shut down their online store a few years back. Every customer was offered a full refund.

Oh my bad. I didn't know the store says "License This Movie" instead of "Buy Now" or "Own" on all the buttons.

Why not refund people for their purchases then if the content is being removed?

And give back money? Preposterous!

Even Google had the courtesy to refund everything Stadia!

If you want to really own something, buy physical media. Simple as.

I just pirate.

I'll stop when my rights are respected, promise.

I’ve heard many “pirates” say similar things, and when their condition is met, they find a new demand. Why would an IP rights-holder believe you?

Why not just buy physical media where available, and abstain where an acceptable legal option is not provided?

You misunderstand, I'm not trying to convince rights holders. I hope they go out of business, and I hope my piracy is what does it. It's just that, knowing myself, I know I wouldn't bother with the hassle of pirating if there were a better alternative, like I stopped pirating games and just buy them on Steam now.

I've recently started pirating again specifically because everything has been pulled off of netflix.

I'm not going to be nickle & dime'd. You were getting paid for my consumption and now you're not.

Well said. Users pirating content vs the largest companies on earth fucking users in every way they can possibly get away with is a great example of "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic".

They don't just fuck users, they fuck their employees as well. How many writers' strikes have there been now? How much of an open secret was Weinstein raping and abusing actresses?

I hope the whole system dies, and maybe something better will take its place. I'm sure I won't miss Guardians of the Galaxy XXIV.

Indeed, GotG is really going to peak around volume 16.

> I'm sure I won't miss Guardians of the Galaxy XXIV.

Is this because you thought GotG 1-3 were bad and they are just going to keep making more bad stuff, or because you thought GotG 1-3 were good but have pretty much wrapped up the story of those characters so it is now time to stop, or something else?

(not who you're asking, but I saw this negative and thought it deserves an answer)

It's a much wider criticism. Not a specific series... or even media.

There are perverse incentives between producer, actor, and consumer in entertainment and so many other things.

In this light, I'd argue piracy is moral by not providing support to a corrupt system. Or at least serves as a means to prevent such a state

Neither, Hollywood has been playing it so safe that they don't dare produce anything original any more, and it has become much more boring as a whole lately.

Gabe Newell himself said "piracy is a service problem," and it really shows because buying on Steam is 10x more convenient as a Linux user than pirating the game.

Especially with Linux gaming, I think Valve has made it more convenient to just buy games.

Steam is a godsend for Linux. I no longer have to even check where a game plays, I know that a Steam game will play on Linux. Nowadays I buy games mostly as thanks to Valve's Linux efforts, as I don't really tend to game much.

It's still not every game, checking protondb before buying is good advice.

That's true, that's oversimplification on my part. I tend to like older, non-AAA games, and I haven't had a single one of those fail so far.

When it's harder to legally pay for media than it is to pirate, it's your own fault when people pirate.

> Why would an IP rights-holder believe you?

Because in addition to all the filthy pirated booty I stole, I would also show them this:

    * My 350+ physical CD collection
    * My 200+ physical DVD/Blu-Ray
    * My entire merch collection for Nine Inch Nails (>$1000)
    * My entire merch collection for Rings of Saturn (>$1000)
    * My merch collection from many, many, many other bands
    * Pages of receipts from Bandcamp and other e-media distributors
    * Pages of receipts from direct payments to artists themselves
    * The mass of ticket stubs I've acquired from live shows
    * The mass of movie ticket stubs I've acquired from theaters

I'm never paying for entertainment again. I paid my dues and the industry has done nothing but fuck me and everyone else.

Fuck them. It's over.

Have fun paying to sing "Happy Birthday".

Fortunately at least “Happy Birthday” is in the public domain as of 2016.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to refuse to do business with the media companies who are, indeed, evil and dishonest in how they do business. By all means, never give them another dime.

But you also don't have the right to decide "but I still want to consume the content that comes out in the future" and take it without paying. Doing that is no better, morally, than this shit which Sony is pulling. It's taking something which doesn't belong to you. If one does that, then their ideals are hollow and they really were just rationalizing their own selfish behavior. I'm not accusing you specifically of that, but it is depressingly common.

This is The Way.

Why can't you do both? I own several DVD sets of TV shows I like because I want to support what little physical media is being released these days. I don't subscribe to any streaming service whatsoever, so I can use that money to only support what I want.

Or don't purchase things in DRMd walled gardens.

Even better stop supporting / participating in DRMd walled gardens.

Physical media (one that is left) is encrypted with remotely revokable licenses as well, so not sure what are you implying here.

It's not, WTH are you on about. My old Blu-Rays, will still play in my old Blu-Ray player 50 years from now. Those keys are burned in the DVD and in the player's chip and can't be remotely revoked because they run on physics, not magic.

Technically speaking, even bluray degrade over time so those key might get unreadable, not sure of the average lifespan since there is conflicting info on it but it seems to be around 100 year (ideal condition).

That's assuming you only ever run old Blu-Rays on that player.

Blu-Ray has a thing called BD+ on it, which lets content companies run arbitrary native code on your player (among other things). It also lets you update your player's key revocation list for HDCP. So either of these mechanisms could be used to render your old purchased content unplayable.

That's fun... if you connect your DVD player to the internet.

No, they can ship updates on new disks and the player will read the code when it reads the movie.

So, pop in a new disc, and it comes with a new list of all the content that is not allowed to be played anymore? Ergo your old discs stop working because your player now knows the license expired or something stupid like that?

That's literally evil.

Yep, it was even part of CSS (the older DVD DRM), but there they could "just" prevent playback of a given disc on certain players.

AACS2 allows for carrying revocation lists on discs now.

Do you have any sources for this?

I did a work on DRM during my master degree. It's somewhat true, it's called Broadcast Encryption. They can stop your players ability to read new disks. They can't stop existing ones though, unless the disk requires online component or something.

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, but I call it Digital Restrictions Management cause that's what it is from users point of view.

Interesting, thanks for sharing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD%2B

The one thing I'm not 100% certain on is if HDCP revocation list updates go through BD+ or if there's a separate mechanism for those updates. However, BD+ code gets to inspect your player software and modify it, which is sufficient capability to do updates, even if they don't use it for such.

I also don't know if they continue to release updated BD+ code or if they've given up on that.

Where are you going to find a working 50 year old Blu-Ray player 50 years from now?

I have continuously rediscovered that files in inaccessible formats become inaccessible after time, time and time again.

Er, I own working DVD readers, CD readers, and cassette players, and I don't personally own anything that can play 8-tracks or records but I know other people who do. Why would Blu-ray be the first exception?

I have no arguments about Blu-ray specifically, but with no open implementation I have general concern for the viability of the files. And relying on hardware working at all is a fickle proposition, even across the span of months or years.

You do have the ability to strip the DRM from the BR and burn or archive a copy of the content sans DRM. Of course you still have to contend with maintaining the longevity of the medium that the data is stored on but at least the content is free and in the clear for eternity.

Did they crack AACS 2 yet? A couple of years ago it was still a problem to backup UHD BRs.

I've been able to rip 4K UHD but only using specific models of drive. (some LG drives). Would really like to use Pioneer as they are more reliable but they are not cracked yet(as far as I know).

AACS2 is the DRM scheme on BluRays (usually used on newer UHD ones) and has the ability to remotely revoke ability of decoding for players. That can either be done with payload on other discs or via internet connection if the player has it.

They already did that for PC playback for example, revoking keys for several players.

gog.com for games gets you DRM free versions

Sometimes

Luckily, it is clearly marked on the GOG store pages which games are and aren't DRM free.

which is rich for a company that prides itself for DRM-free stuff. There should be ZERO exceptions.

If you keep giving Sony money (including for physical media) they will keep doing things like this.

Even physical media has DRM.

Stop giving companies money when they abuse you. It’s a vote for more abuse.

nope. get content at a local library and burn a backup copy, in case the library burns down or something. You're doing them a favor.

Also many libraries get more funding if they get more patronage.

That’s not necessary. You can own DRM free digital media. Music you buy from Apple iTunes has been DRM free since 2009.

That won’t make sense forever. Already barely does. Giving people access to their stuff without DRM is the way.

This and things like inheritance when someone passes away are things that will have to be regulated since we can’t trust these companies to do the right thing.

Allowing people to download what they purchased and allowing account transfers to your kids when you pass away should become legal rights.

In these scenarios the company selling product should offer either full refund, or the price the product is being sold with in some other store so the customers are made whole.

Piracy at it again.

If the vendors pirate your money, it's only fair you pirate their content.

The problem is that the long nose of the law only points in one direction.

When it comes to piracy the nose of the law isn't very long. Get a good VPN and don't worry about it.

No idea why people want to pay money to be scammed by these media companies who see you as a number in a spreadsheet and nothing more.

>Get a good VPN and don't worry about it.

The point is that one side can "legally" do that the other can not (in most countries). It's really not about the technical side of it, but the legal one.

The word "legal" simply means "the wish of those in power, written down on paper." There are few exceptions, but certainly not in the copyright law.

Isn't it time for a big lawsuit against some large ISPs (like Verizon) for allowing Sony to scam people like that? If there are 2 people scammed, Sony can get away with a warning, but if there is 3th - they should disconnect all Sony related servers from the internet. That should be fair.

It's hard to make any sort of argument towards piracy being immoral when stuff like this is allowed to happen.

This is not piracy. Piracy is duplicating content, this is theft. From what I was told by mafiaa, this should be punished harshly.

I think GP's sardonic point was that this sort of thing is more analogous to actual piracy than torrenting is -- people are actually being deprived of things they purchased here.

Yeah, I got that, but I thought this was a good time to point out that this is actual theft.

Or depending on the facts maybe closer to fraud in many jurisdictions. If Sony knew that they didn't have the right to allow customers to watch the content perpetually, but they intentionally deceived them by using words like 'purchase' to make them think they did, then perhaps in many jurisdictions this would be intentional deception to secure unlawful gain, i.e. fraud, on a massive scale.

If this was a genuine mistake on Sony's part, and not intentional deception maybe it is more a civil product liability matter (as long as they refund customers) rather than a criminal one.

Disclaimer: IANAL, not legal advice.

Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods.(1)

This term was coopted by the MAFIAA because literal descriptions such as file sharing or unauthorized copying are not objectionable to the general public who see them as minor / insignificant and thus are not sensational enough to draw the outrage needed to enact disproportionate criminal penalties(3) and thus preserve their monopolistic(2) profits.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracy

2 - By way of ridiculously long copyright terms or distribution oligopolies / monopolies

3 - See 'conspiracy to commit' charges carrying de-facto life in prison penalties

I know. But the word had been redefined by them, and then we might as well throw it back into their amoral faces.

The figurative IP rights infringement sense of the word "piracy" is over 250 years old.

Source: OED [1],

2. fig. The appropriation and reproduction of an invention or work of another for one's own profit, without authority; infringement of the rights conferred by a patent or copyright.

1771 Luckombe Hist. Print. 76 They..would suffer by this act of piracy, since it was likely to prove a very bad edition.

[1] https://archive.org/details/the-oxford-english-dictionary-19...

"Your honor, the act of downloading a movie creates a new copy of it, and if the value of this movie is as much as the prosecutor claims, downloading creates value."

The word "piracy" is only applicable to sketchy businesses who profit off someone else's work without permission.

Crazy how we have beautiful technology that makes content ownership trivial, cheap and supremely easy to access -- but greedy companies take a dookie on all that potential. :(

I'm at 560 movies with AV1. I started my local collection again after a long time. My family uses my Jellyfin.

Proud pirate, I buy some games occasionally, do not have Netshits or any other streaming service and for sure not buying a stupid console to have to play to be able to play online. God forbid buying videos on an P$ story. The fact that these dumb console people get lured into paying monthly just to play games online shows they do not deserve better. I would be unthinkable to pay to play a game online on PC, with some eceptions like WOW.

Actions like these reinforce piracy. If you can't transfer it off to a Drive, or back it up somehow, you don't own it.

Just pirate everything

This is exactly why digital content under a subscription such as PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass is a total scam no matter how long you have subscribed to the service. You never owned the content in the first place.

Buy the physical medium.

I don't think rentals are a scam. You know that you won't have access if you stop renting. The problem is when something is called a "purchase" but it isn't.

With those you know you are not buying them, but getting subscription. Like any other digital subscription they offer access to large library of products for pretty reasonable price.

Then again a digital newspaper subscription be a scam as well if they did not offer you full permanent access to all issues released during time you subscribed.

Weekly reminder that if buying isn’t owning, copying can’t be stealing.

'puchased'

About 1318 titles.

Another argument for piracy.

Yet another example of why people shouldn't "buy" content that they don't have control over.

Arrrgh forever

People don't own the stuff they paid for, by design.

Pirate it or get it in Blu-ray.

Pirates win again!

This is why iTunes Movies are the only place I'll buy things - not because this won't ever happen, but because I can download and continue to play those movies offline so long as iTunes software continues existing.

All iTunes movies have DRM. Read their agreement carefully and you'll see the same thing as Sony and everyone else – they are selling you a license to the media which they can revoke at any time. And Apple has done this plenty of times in the past with movies, books, apps, music.

Yes, but Apple doesn't revoke downloaded content. I'm fully aware they've done this before.

> ... so long as iTunes software continues existing. That's exactly where the problem lies

It's been 22 years and there's no sign it's going anywhere

No complaining unless you're willing to publicly disclose which of the nine seasons of Finding Bigfoot you purchased.

All of them.

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