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

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.

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.

> Certain works may be withdrawn from the service for legal reasons, such as a revocation of rights.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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

- 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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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..

I speak from experience

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

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.

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.

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)

What is the agreement tied to?

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

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.

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.