Yes, it is very comfusing. "Buy" buttons should be replaced by "License" buttons when you are licensing stuff instead of buyimg it. There should be a law for that.
Piracy is justified especially when it comes to movies!
If I am buying a DVD, I own that copy regardless of the studio and the distributor being in legal trouble or not. If I "buy" or "purchase" something online, I expect the same thing.
I'm not always a fan of the EU over-regulating some things but I feel like they should start fining companies who want to re-define the meaning of the word purchase
They should absolutely be forced to provide either a refund or a downloadable copy, this is absurd. It sounds like they didn't actually have the license necessary to be able to sell these movies in any reasonable way.
Not to worry, eventually somebody will file a class action lawsuit, and after mere 12 years of litigation everybody affected will get $2.17 in store credits (in another 5 years).
Sony sucks and I will never give them another dime. Had a PS5 with a 120+ games (majority PS4), also PSVR2, got f-ed over by Sony when they would not refund in incorrect game purchase I'd bought literally minutes before asking for the refund. Gave up my PS5, I will never purchase anything from Sony ever again. Recommend everyone else do the same.
How soon until the digital distributions are owned by just a few cartels, and later when it’s suitable for them, they also modify digital movies to suit a political agenda without letting you know?
How is it that Steam manages to avoid yanking games from people's libraries even after the games are delisted for licensing issues, etc? I have multiple games that you can't "buy" anymore, but Steam doesn't stop me from reinstalling them as often as I like.
Are they negotiating that as part of the deal with their vendors? Or is it as simple as "We're not dicks." ?
I feel these license agreements have to be set up in such a way people that already bought their movies get to keep them, like okay Sony lost the licences and they shouldn't sell it to new customers but existing customers should get to keep their movies. Since companies don't care the government needs to force their hand and put it into law
What’s wild is there is no legal way to actually buy and truly own movies anymore. Any major service is a license and if you can even get a DVD the legality of ripping it is questionable since you have to break DRM. I have purchased a few movies (surf films) from people who actually give you the digital file and it is so wonderful.
What will the end game in this licensing scheme be? I reckon once enough movies have been sold, the reputational damage of taking them away would become so large that streaming services will be strongarmed into accepting increasingly unreasonable fees.
Not limited to PlayStation. Apple's been doing this for years.
I have iTunes music going back to the day the store opened. Some of it is now missing from the iTunes cloud (or Apple Music or whatever it's called this week). It would be gone forever had I not made a local backup.
At least Sony's contacting customers. I was looking for songs I knew I had and couldn't find them until I searched a local backup.
When I complained, I got a boilerplate "tough titties, sometimes we lose licensing" response.
Always keep hard copies people.
This foolishness of trusting someone else to host your stuff for you? Well now you know.
Sony and Apple aren’t the only offenders. Google Play Music did something similar 12 years ago or so. It’s been a bit but I recall permanently losing access to a lot of music I owned at the time.
I don't remember that happening. What I do remember is that Alphabet decided to axe Google Play Music, but they announced that months in advance and made it fairly easy to download my entire collection. Which is why I now have a couple hundred gigabytes of music backed up on several devices.
I wonder why their license affects your local copy of a purchased product.
Imagine a supermarket losing the contract to sell Nescafé, so Nestlé comes into your house to take their coffee. Okay, Nestlé would totally do this anyway, but it’s bizarre.
As described, the Apple version is that they won't remove local copies you already have? They just can't facilitate copying a new instance to your device.
Wrong, Kotaku. Lots of digital things are ours. Digital files on our personally owned HDDs and SSDs. Digital movies on DVD and Blu-Ray discs on our shelves. Digital ISO files on hard drives that are ripped from the aforementioned digital physical DVDs.
What you meant to say is, streaming content is not ours - and that is true by definition, because the data is streamed from somewhere else. Someone else can always delete files, take down servers, or go out of business entirely.
The word digital contrasts with analog. Digital and physical are two independent axes - there are digital physical things, digital virtual things, analog physical things, and analog virtual things.
A Jellyfin or Plex server can be had for real cheap using used hardware. A Ryzen 3 build can be found for next to nothing here in Brazil[1], so I imagine it’d be even cheaper in the US.
Add an old Quadro card for hardware decoding, or go with an Intel CPU for Quick Sync, throw some IronWolf drives inside, install your favorite Linux distro, and you’re off to the races.
Yes, managing a server is more work than just signing up for Netflix or whatnot, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
[1]: A quick search shows me a Ryzen 3 3200G build with 16 GB of RAM for $200, and electronics are super expensive in Brazil.
Top movies include Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, The Graduate, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Room, Silver Linings Playbook, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Pan's Labyrinth.
46 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 60.3 ms ] threadAnd people wonder why some people sail the high seas.
If I am buying a DVD, I own that copy regardless of the studio and the distributor being in legal trouble or not. If I "buy" or "purchase" something online, I expect the same thing.
I'm not always a fan of the EU over-regulating some things but I feel like they should start fining companies who want to re-define the meaning of the word purchase
[1] https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Sony%27s_attempted_removal_of_...
I stuck to buying hard copies and dwindled off the series as they started to charge just to play multiplayer.
Are they negotiating that as part of the deal with their vendors? Or is it as simple as "We're not dicks." ?
If buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing. Fuck those guys.
It’s been 20 years since I’ve pirated shit, but here we are again…
It'll be all the more critical in years to come when we get more and more AI remastered versions of stuff so even stuff pre-2020 is slop.
I have iTunes music going back to the day the store opened. Some of it is now missing from the iTunes cloud (or Apple Music or whatever it's called this week). It would be gone forever had I not made a local backup.
At least Sony's contacting customers. I was looking for songs I knew I had and couldn't find them until I searched a local backup.
When I complained, I got a boilerplate "tough titties, sometimes we lose licensing" response.
Always keep hard copies people.
This foolishness of trusting someone else to host your stuff for you? Well now you know.
Imagine a supermarket losing the contract to sell Nescafé, so Nestlé comes into your house to take their coffee. Okay, Nestlé would totally do this anyway, but it’s bizarre.
<old man yelling at the wind sounds>
I still think this is crazy, mind.
I don’t trust any provider to honor purchases I made 20 years from now. I really wish I could, as it would simplify things for me.
Wrong, Kotaku. Lots of digital things are ours. Digital files on our personally owned HDDs and SSDs. Digital movies on DVD and Blu-Ray discs on our shelves. Digital ISO files on hard drives that are ripped from the aforementioned digital physical DVDs.
What you meant to say is, streaming content is not ours - and that is true by definition, because the data is streamed from somewhere else. Someone else can always delete files, take down servers, or go out of business entirely.
The word digital contrasts with analog. Digital and physical are two independent axes - there are digital physical things, digital virtual things, analog physical things, and analog virtual things.
Add an old Quadro card for hardware decoding, or go with an Intel CPU for Quick Sync, throw some IronWolf drives inside, install your favorite Linux distro, and you’re off to the races.
Yes, managing a server is more work than just signing up for Netflix or whatnot, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
[1]: A quick search shows me a Ryzen 3 3200G build with 16 GB of RAM for $200, and electronics are super expensive in Brazil.
Top movies include Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, The Graduate, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea, Room, Silver Linings Playbook, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Pan's Labyrinth.