You Still Don’t Own What You Bought: Purchased TV Shows From PS Store Go Bye Bye
from the you-bought-the-right-to-be-disappointed dept
Thank you for joining us for your latest lesson in how you don’t actually own the things you buy when you buy them digitally. Over a year ago, we discussed a story out of Germany and Austria where a deal expired between Sony and movie distributor StudioCanal, which resulted in 100s of movies being delisted and deleted, both from the PlayStation Store and from the PlayStations of those who bought them. Yup! People bought a thing, got a thing, and then had that thing clawed back from them once the licensing agreement wasn’t renewed. You can guess for yourself whether members of the public who “bought” these movies had any idea that them disappearing long after purchase was even a possibility, but don’t overthink it, you know the answer.
But maybe you thought, “Sucks for Germany, but that wouldn’t happen here in America.” Well, turns out it sucks for some of us, too, as the exact same thing happened here, only with shows and content produced by Discovery and purchased through the PlayStation Store.
The latest pothole in the road to an all-digital future was discovered via a warning Sony recently sent out to PlayStation users who purchased TV shows made by Discovery, the reality TV network that recently merged with Warner Bros. in one of the most brutal and idiotic corporate maneuvers of our time. “Due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library,” read a copy of the email that was shared with Kotaku.
It linked to a page on the PlayStation website listing all of the shows impacted. As you might imagine, given Discovery’s penchant for pumping out seasons of relatively cheap to produce but popular reality TV and documentary-based shows, there are a lot of them. They include, but are not limited to, hits such as: Say Yes to the Dress, Shark Week, Cake Boss, Long Island Medium, Deadly Women, and many, many more.
And MythBusters, too, which feels like that show missed an opportunity to bust the myth that you own what you bought when you purchase something digitally. The reality is that there is no good way to actually retain these shows in cases like this. Some that “bought” Discovery content are freaking out, understandably.
“Is there a way I can save this content?” asked one panicked PlayStation user on Reddit. “I use PS4…But I have bought many seasons of shows such as Dual Survival that I do not wish to lose. I was actually under the impression since I owned it, I wouldn’t ever lose it…”
Whatever else is true, it’s obvious that platforms aren’t doing nearly enough to actually inform customers of what they’re buying, leasing, renting, whatever. It would be one thing if this content was ripped away and everyone on all sides realized that was a possibility. That just isn’t the case.
And just as in the Germany instance, there’s no chance that any of this comes with any refunds or givebacks. Well-meaning customers who paid money for this content simply don’t have it anymore. And it just isn’t like having a Netflix account or something like that, where the product catalogue is constantly in flux. It’s people who are buying a show, or the season of a show. But they’re really not. They’re renting it until some combination of Sony and the licensee decides they’re not.
And that just isn’t a tenable future.
Filed Under: culture, licensing, ownership, playstation, tv shows
Companies: sony, warner bros. discovery
Comments on “You Still Don’t Own What You Bought: Purchased TV Shows From PS Store Go Bye Bye”
False Advertising
I just fundamentally don’t understand why they are allowed to use the phrase “buy” or “purchase” for these kinds of indefinite rentals.
That should absolutely be false advertising, and any judge that says consumers should read the fine print of the licensing terms associated with the purchase demands far too much of the consumer.
They shouldn’t be required to label these as “rentals”, with a call to action such as “RENT” (and then they can explain that it’s an indefinite rental that can be revoked at any time, or may last forever).
Re:
It’s a question of “what are they selling”. They don’t say so explicitly, but in the fine print you’ll find you’re buying not the item but a license for the item. More specifically, a license for the item from the seller, not a general license for it. So when you “bought” that movie from the PS Store what you were unwittingly buying was a license to stream that movie from the PS Store. After they removed the content you still own that license, but it didn’t contain any term obliging them to make that movie available for streaming for any particular span of time so your license is now worth the paper it’s (not) printed on. Sucks to be you, doesn’t it?
Now, it shouldn’t be this way. In the UCC there’s clauses that set the rules for consumer transactions that say the terms are what the consumer would expect and require that any seller who wants to change them has to do so explicitly and in writing before the buyer hands over their money. But the sellers have managed to get everybody thinking that the UCITA applies (only Virginia and Maryland adopted it, every other state rejected it) and consumer purchases of software etc. aren’t subject to the UCC’s rules. But nobody’s brought a clean case to court, one where they can prove they didn’t accept any new terms after the sale was completed. Since the courts accepted click-wrap licenses, that’s almost impossible for online content accessed through an account and incredibly difficult with in-person sales of things that don’t require an account.
Re:
Just get physical, physical
just get physical (don’t give into digital)
let me see your wallet talk, your wallet talk
let me see your wallet talk…
Piracy can’t be stealing if buying doesn’t mean owning.
Re:
Louis Rossmann argues that what Sony and Discovery did here amounts to theft.
Big corporations love to shoot themselves in the foot and blame everyone else for the resulting wound.
Re: Re:
It’s called ‘conversion’, meaning that the terms of the actual contract, versus what was implied at the time of sale, provided for this action to take place, at the seller’s desire. IOW, the buyer had/has no say in the matter.
In most State laws, this act of conversion is a civil matter, but…. if applied injudiciously, a smart attorney can persuade his State’s AG to consider it a matter of committing a fraud upon the consumer. Again IOW, the contract benefited one party far outside of the norm of equal benefit for both parties. That act of fraud is usually a part of the body of law considered Unlawful Business Practices, and/or Consumer Protection Laws. In any case, it becomes a criminal matter, something that even Sony is not going to want to deal with.
But the contract itself is where it will all come down to – was the buyer made aware of this potential for loss of use, or not. And remember, these were on-line purchases, so in theory, the buyer should’ve been able to read the contract first, before signing on the dotted line.
Should be interesting.
Re:
Oh, look, another smug ignorant parroting of that quote.
Piracy was never stealing, its copyright infringement. It’s still a felony.
You did buy something, a license (permission) to view the content which can be revoked at any time per the EULA which you signed as a binding contract. You never ever had a single right to the copyrighted material. That’s what All Rights Reserved means. Not even buying physical media gave you those rights to own the copyrighted work. The difference was you owned the plastic or wood fiber the copyrighted material was embedded in. That tying of copyrighted material you didn’t own to the property you did own was the keystone.
Just because you have a license to drive and your car doesn’t mean you can drive your car if your license is revoked. Just because you pay someone for permission to drive someone’s car doesn’t mean you own their car. A license will never be property.
Nothing that has happened was illegal, immoral, unethical, or unexpected. If society wasn’t a collective of uneducated ignorant fatalists who actually paid attention to their rights instead of letting them be systematically decimated, we could have nice things, but we don’t.
I am not a corporate ballwasher because I actually understand how the law works, even if the law is oppressive. It was consumers that lined up to abandon physical media that didn’t connect to the internet; the last control they had. If you think the same government that gave corporations nearly infinite copyright terms is going to make your license purchases a form of ownership, you’re in for a rude awakening.
Re: Re:
Most people would assume that if they bought a copy of a movie, they would own that copy in perpetuity. Considering how few companies are upfront about the fact that thought-to-be-permanent digital purchases could disappear for reasons beyond “the service is shutting down”, you’ll have to forgive those people for thinking a purchase is a purchase instead of a long-term rental.
And if more people were clearly informed up front that digital purchases were for licenses instead of actual copies of what they were purchasing, that might mean something.
One could easily argue that misleading people into thinking they were purchasing a copy of a show to own before later cutting off access to that copy because of a licensing issue is both immoral and unethical.
And yet, I don’t see you complaining about how companies rarely say “you’re purchasing a license to this digital product” instead of “you’re purchasing this digital product”. Yes, customers could be more savvy about what they’re paying for—and companies could also be far more upfront about what they’re selling. If that hurts digital sales for companies, so be it.
Re: Re: Re:
But at this point they shouldn’t. And I don’t mean that as victim-blaming, I mean by now there should’ve been years worth of media stories highlighting this problem so informed consumers could make a choice. The situation won’t change until a backlash or dropping sales forces it.
Re: Re:
“I am not a corporate ballwasher…”
He said while choking on something suspiciously testicle shaped.
Re: Re: Re:
Scrotum-shaped, actually.
Re: Re:
Nonsense. Nothing that happened was illegal? That’s likely true. Courts would have to decide that, which would mean someone would have to actually TAKE it to court, which would mean having enough money to pay the legal fees. Unlikely.
But nothing UNETHICAL happened? GTFO of town with that. Sony did knowingly and intentionally lead consumers to believe that as long as The Playstation Store was available, and the consumer had a device authorized to access it, that said consumer would be able to play the content they purchased.
There may be some lines in the fine print that protects them from legal action because “technically they stated the terms,” but you would have to be naive to the point of purposeful ingorance to not see that making people believe one thing while “technically saying or not saying” another is like 60% of what marketers do.
Did you EVER see a storefront like Sony’s that said “buy a license for X dollars?” No. They say “buy for X dollars.” Why? If what they’re SELLING is a license, and they actually want people to KNOW that they’re buying a license, then you tell me, why do they never actually SAY “buy a license?” Why do they HIDE those details away in the fine print, in a sea of other details, instead of putting it front and ceter?
They are purposely deceiving their customers and that is ABSOLUTELY unethical.
Re: Re:
The ads don’t say “license” oreven “buy a license”. They say “buy x“.
Yes it is unethical (or immoral if you roll that way). Infringement may be illegal or a civil tort, but screw content owners like these. They’re fucking around, and they’re gonna find out. They’re going to lose customers. They’re also going to lose their shit, at no extra cost, when a few years from now they have infringement stats (mostly made up) for the content they yanked from law-abiding purchasers.
Re: Re: Re:
Sure, and one could call it fraudulent. But when such things become common and expected, courts tend to accept them. Like how stores advertise something for $100, then charge people $110 claiming “sales tax” (it’d be fraud in most countries, but not the USA where it’s become “normal”).
In other words, if the people getting screwed by this stuff don’t stand up soon, it’s not likely to stop. Except perhaps by everything becoming a subscription service, such that fake-“buying” won’t even be an option.
Re: Re:
Actually Copyright law made it possible to own certain lawful software but still not own the Copyright to it. There is also first sale doctrine and RAM doctrine. The concept of “only getting a license” isn’t true unless you agree to legally enforceable terms making it so. Certain copies of Software doesn’t come with a contract doing so and even if you were getting a license in a payment of a fee, it would probably be hard to enforce “revocable at will” in some places, especially if it’s silence on revocability, assuming paying money for it counts as a consideration. Though I was mainly focusing on non-cloud here. I’m not sure about online-only cloud involving certain services.
Re: Re:
Oh, look, another smug ignorant parroting of that misinformation.
Wikipedia would very much beg to differ.
Re:
If every infringement is a lost sale, is every instance of someone losing what they bought like this a “stolen purchase”?
Re: Re:
Well, it’s always annoyed me that Techdirt goes along with the bogus and dysphemistic MAFIAA definition of “piracy”. If y’all started using the term to refer to this stuff instead (and/or “Hollywood accounting” and such), it’d feel much more appropriate.
Meanwhile pirates look at all this and wonder what’s even going on, or what even incentivizes people to make legit purchases if this is what happens when you do.
Imagine paying for a meal at a restaurant that demands that you induce vomiting afterwards once your done eating the meal, or asks for a pound of flesh cut from your body because they determined that that bit of your body benefited from the meal you purchased.
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Re:
Spoken like a true copyright minimalist who would absolutely steal a car just because he doesn’t get to have one for free.
Re: Re:
Pirates aren’t inconvenienced by DRM or licensing issues or artificial scarcity. Those things affect paying customers—y’know, the people who “buy” content the legal way. If piracy has more of an incentive than paying for content you won’t be able to access forever, that seems like a skill issue on the part of the content distributors.
Re: Re: Re:
And this is not even the stupidest pro-copyright shit that sabroni has foisted on the site before…
Re: Re: Re:
This has always blown me away. All those stupid “anti-piracy warnings” at the start of movies you buy on physical media. Know what the first thing pirate do when they rip movies for the internet?
They take those out. The people who are actually downloading movies never see those warnings. The only people they’re their inconveniencing are the paying customers.
Re: Re: Re:2
Yeah, and it has the side-effect of constantly reminding them that a much better option exists and they should definitely not use it. I suspect many companies would be willing to pay to have their major competitor mention them constantly; like, the Pepsi people would probably be happy if every can of Coke said “don’t drink Pepsi” on it.
I have to wonder whether there’s something more complex going on here, like an attempt to maintain their definition of “piracy” and keep the topic from slipping under the radar. After all, if people “forgot” the MAFIAA definition of piracy, the term could be repurposed to describe what they do to their artists (like that guy who played Darth Vader in some perpetually-unprofitable movie you’ve probably never heard of). And maybe people would be more likely to question copyright entirely.
Then again, they could just be idiots.
Re: Re:
Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t BUY a car if the dealership was allowed to tow it out of my driveway in the middle of the night if they wanted to….
Re: Re:
If i could simply make a perfect copy of a car, and the original owner could rive away with it without ever knowing(or, even if they did know, it did noting to change their car at all) I would absolutely do it. But I also have no problem paying for something if the deal is fair.
If you have infinite amounts of something, that costs noting to reproduce, there is no reason to EVER take it away from someone, especially if they paid money to have access to it.
For Example: I paid for Scorched Earth(remember that 90s DOS gem?) a couple weeks ago because I truly enjoyed the hell outta that game, and I am the more common type of pirate who doesn’t mind paying for what I use, I just won’t be cheated or punished for doing so.
Re: Re:
Son you make out of the blue look like the head of MENSA.
Re: Re: Re:
Now hold on here! Sabroni’s never been that level of deranged, unhinged or fucked in the head.
Re: Re: Re:2
He’s a copyright maximalist.
He IS that fucked in the head.
Re: Re: Re:3
Nah, out_of_the_blue was way worse.
Re: Re: Re:3
And that’s not the only place he’s fucked in…
Re: Re:
Spoken like a true idiot who conflates physical objects with digital content and thinks they’re real clever for saying it.
Re: Re:
Spoken like a true copyright maximalist who would absolutely include tech in the purchase price of a car only to lock the use of that tech away from the purchaser with software that is illegal to remove under the DMCA just because he can. Hello, BMW.
Re: obligatory xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/488/
I don’t understand the decision here. It could be done and is often done with purchased games that the game is kept accessible to owners and simply no longer purchasable.
The step to not only blocking new sales, blocking redownload for existing owners, but also going in and wiping it off their system seems like a few steps too far.
It’s digital so it’s okay will surely be the argument by too many corporate shills but the realistic comparison here is if a company stopped working with a bluray maker/distributor, and then every bluray with their content self destructed.
Re:
“the realistic comparison here is if a company stopped working with a bluray maker/distributor, and then every bluray with their content self destructed.”
Don’t give them any ideas….
Pirates remain unaffected and look much smarter than consumers once again.
You wouldn't steal a show (you already paid for) would you...
Well that’s one way to penalize those that were willing to shell out the money to ‘buy’ your content and in the process encourage them not to make that mistake again.
It would be one thing if the ‘licensing dispute’ took the affected shows out of store while leaving untouched any copies that were already purchased but by going scorched earth like this Sony and Warner Bros’s just nuked any moral high grounds against copyright infringement they might have previously had. Good luck convincing people that watching a show or downloading a game without paying is some terrible crime against society after you just took back content that people paid for due to a spat between two companies.
That’s one of the biggest problem with DRM, they sell them as products but they are basically services. As long as a file is bounds to the Terms of use/service, the seller has “all rights reserved”.
“Say Yes to the Dress”, “Shark Week”, “Cake Boss”, “Long Island Medium”, “Deadly Women”… that’s Discovery for sure! And only deserve a right-click > Delete Permanently even before they remove their content.
Re:
“…the seller has ‘all rights reserved’.”
I think you mean the production company. Whenever I buy a book, the law doesn’t allow the retailer that sold it to me to prevent me putting it in a photocopier, for example; only the author (and/or illustrator/photographer, etc.) and publisher have that right.
Questions raised...
I am curious based upon this, who exactly mandated that the physical PS5 version of the new Cyberpunk 2077 “Ultimate Edition” comes with a code for a digital copy of the expansion, while the XBox version ships with the entire game and expansion on 3 discs.
Clearly the latter is the only console option for true game preservation and genuine long term ownership, as you can play the complete finished product anywhere any time, and offline, as long as you have original hardware.
But if CDPR did so for one platform but not the other, did Sony insist they did not do so for PS5? Did Microsoft insist they had to for XBox? Why is there not parity in the different console releases?
Re:
It probably is due to restrictions on the part of Sony. If you buy the PC version from the GOG.com store, which is part of CDPR, it is completely DRM-free. You can install it through their Galaxy client, which will keep it updated automatically, but you can also download the installation files to store on your own computer. These can be installed at any time, and can also be copied and shared with other people. They do this with all the games on GOG. Until I got broadband at home this is how I did it with anything I bought from them. I would download the installation files on my phone at work, where I had access to the Wifi network, and then copy them to my computer.
This is why I immediately pirate every single thing I’ve paid for access to (that isn’t an actual subscription, obviously), and always have done. At this point I’m about two shakes of a dead exec away from regressing back to pure piracy, unless Sony is fine with granting me the ability to revoke my payment the moment they revoke access. I sort of doubt they’d enjoy being on the receiving end of the rug pull, though.
Re:
Why would anyone at Sony even remotely care what you do? There are always more sheep to be fleeced.
Re: Re:
Because despite all Sony’s bad behavior, this person is still willingly funding them. The obvious message is that Sony can fuck the customers a little bit harder. It’s a useful thing for them to know.
Re: Re: Re:
I’m funding them, am I? Citation needed. I’m afraid I can’t seem to find any payments to Sony from any of my accounts since around the PS4 Pro launch. Do I have accounts I’m not aware of? If so I’d love for you to enlighten me, smartass.
Re: Re:
Why indeed?
For the record: I stopped giving Sony money a bit after the PS4 Pro launched, whenever that was. That was actually a good purchase though, I thought.
Tangent time! I got the Glacier (Arctic? Can’t remember) white 1 TB, bundled with a second controller and a year of PS+, for stupidly little money thanks to some absolute tool(s) at a local electronics chain, and I didn’t even realise. Had the console for about a year and sold it a few weeks before Christmas and very, very nearly broke even on the purchase price despite starting the listing at just north of ~100 USD. The Glacier/Arctic white units were apparently hard to come by around here at the time.
Re:
If you’re giving money to the likes of Sony, the only message you’re sending them by doing this is that everything they’re doing is A-OK.
We’re talking about a major copyright maximalist film/music studio here. You’re just giving them the funding to shut down the very sites you rely on for your “backups”, and to lobby against people like you (you know they’re not gonna give more to the writers/actors/etc., right?). If they’ve managed to convince you this is somehow ethically necessary, you may want to rethink it.
Re: Re:
What is it with you lot and assuming everyone except you yourself is completely bereft of sense? How in the actual hell did you manage to conclude I spend my days spraying Sony execs with a fire hose of money?
The message I’m sending them? “People like” me? Are you actively trying not to be taken seriously? Übermensch or not, fam, I’d advise you get the fuck off that there intellectual high horse, quick, fast, and in a hurry, ’cause it looks imaginary from where I’m standing.
Not only Digitally
It is no longer necessary to specify the “digitally” qualifier, see from yesterday: https://www.techdirt.com/2023/12/05/carmakers-push-forward-with-plans-to-make-basic-features-subscription-services-despite-widespread-backlash/
Re:
According to a recent CBC story, many car dealerships won’t do non-“digital” purchases. You’ve gotta take a loan, which can only be done via computer.
And, anyway, all that subscription crap is “digital” too. You would own all the physical bits, and just couldn’t legally copy—because of copyright and the DMCA—the digital bits to make the hardware work.
If I want to keep it I download it. Simple as that. Pirates won’t see stuff disappearing unless there’s hardware failure and no backup.
As Stephen said, if something bought doesn’t mean you own and keep it then they can’t claim piracy is ste3aling. It’s actually self-defense.
I’m sure we’ll never know why but, I’d love to know exactly where the negotiations broke down for the licensing. Sony has enough money to pay whatever dumb markups Discovery has in mind. On the other side though, those Discovery properties have enough pull to demand way too much money.
Re:
Discovery probably went “It’s mine now. You can’t have it,” and put it on their own streaming service unimaginatively named Discovery+.
Here’s the reality of the matter- if you can make a copy of it, you own it. I’d advise making one right now, if not several. Oh, and anything stored “in the cloud” doesn’t really count, because you have no absolute guarantee of being able to access it. Hard drives aren’t that expensive, and you certainly have the time to populate one (or several) with all that cool stuff you own. Whether you have the motivation to do so would be entirely your affair. This has been a public service announcement.
Re:
If it’s DRMed, you can copy it but the copy won’t work. And in this case, neither will the original. Not a very useful definition of ownership.
Re: Re:
If it’s DRMed, you can copy it but the copy won’t work. And in this case, neither will the original. Not a very useful definition of ownership.
this is making my decision way back to buy a lifetime license to DVD Fab Platinum an almost prophetic choice 🙂
Re: Re: Re:
That (DVD Fab Platinum) looks like a nice piece of software.
What’s the best equivalent for Linux?
Re: Re: Re:2
Probably Handbrake. Tried others, stuck with this. Works just like it says on the tin.
Re: Re: Re:3
DVDs are increasingly becoming unavailable for new films. Blu-rays will probably go away too, and it’s possible that all non-streaming non-theater options will be gone soon. Enjoy it while it lasts.
However, if you’re ripping your own discs, you’re probably funding the fight against yourself in some way. Consider just getting a VPN. We know the film companies are using every excuse to avoid paying the people who work on the films, so why try so hard to pay the companies?
Re: Re: Re:4
Maybe for niche films. If you want this year’s biggest Hollywood films on DVD, Amazon’s probably having an end-of-year sale on all of them.
Re: Re: Re:5
Well, Best Buy has announced they’ll no longer be selling DVDs, and Disney has promised to stop releasing physical media altogether in certain parts of the world. For people who want this stuff, I think it’s all downhill, even if “increasingly unavailable” is a somewhat premature statement.
Call those announcements “trial balloons” if you like; if it goes well for Best Buy and Disney, other companies will get onboard. And I’m not too optimistic about Amazon “saving” us, given that physical media is a direct competitor to one of their own services.
Re: Re: Re:6
Two things.
Re: Re: Re:7
Yes, that’s fine; I merely meant to point out the perverse incentive with relying on Amazon to get DVDs, which I’m sure some people are doing. I’d think it’d be better to use some company that doesn’t benefit from their demise. A company like Best Buy… oops.
By the way, the “certain parts of the world” Disney’s abandoning? I thought it’d be some low-income country where “bootlegs” are available on every street corner, but it’s Australia. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, in July 2023, was the most recent Blu-Ray or DVD published by Disney in Australia, and they don’t currently plan to ever publish another.
Re: Re: Re:
Somebody’s never heard of Copy][PC. Just sayin’…..
Re: Re:
If it’s DRM’ed, you can’t make a copy. A copy that doesn’t work isn’t a copy. Are you a lawyer, by chance? My definition is perfectly valid if you don’t try to weasel-word it into something else. If you’re looking for a fight, look elsewhere. You clearly forgot to pack any weapons.
Re: Re: Re:
This isn’t an attempt at any kind of “weaseling” or argument. Computers copy data, and I consider it important to point out that DRM-purveyors have not been able to change this fundamental truth. “DRM prisons” rely on people voluntarily locking themselves up, by buying something that basically doesn’t work (and thus, under your definition, may not be a “copy”) and opting in to software that, at best, sometimes makes it work, depending on the whim of a madman. And since computers are so wont to copy, the whole thing’s usually backed by laws to further restrict the public.
In other words, the public would have every advantage here, as soon as they decided to stand up for themselves.
I wonder if you could do a credit card dispute of the charges…
Re:
Chargebacks typically have to be filed within 120 days. There may be some exceptions, but going back years is unlikely to be an option.
Anyone else remember when Amazon did this with e-books of George Orwell’s 1984?
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I thought in that case they did it because it was an illegally published version, and they refunded the money. Most people git upset because Amazon went in and actually removed it from devices, not just from the their account.
Re: training manual
what was suppose to be a story ended up being a training manual and is now a playbook for the sheeple to follow along of what the elite have in mind for the rest of us!
Re:
I remember when Amazon removed Disney content in some countries because Disney stopped licensing is those countries. At least in that case, people could use their VPN to spoof they were in another country and access the content they paid for.
Anyway, if a company is going to delete content that people paid for, shouldn’t those people get a refund?
1st world problem
It’s just entertainment…
Now you nervous…
cause you didn’t read…
the Terms of Service…
If I can’t copy it…
do I really own it…
especially when…
I need to clone it…
So, in the future…
just buy Physical…
cause when the service/server stops…
your sh– will still be visible…
This makes sense to me...
Instead of “rent or purchase”, shouldn’t digital movies be labeled “rent or rent (and pay more)?
Sony's lawyers are incompetent.
Amazon’s agreement with content producers includes this clause:
Sony should have put some similar verbiage in their agreement with StudioCanal.
Re:
Does their agreement with Sony have that clause? My guess is that Sony’s lawyers would’ve negotiated to remove it, because the Sony executives would’ve held it against them otherwise. Whereas I doubt they’re holding this incident against the lawyers; probably no Sony employee’s bonus is predicated on them not screwing their customers.
Forecasted years ago
Foreshadowing is Such a fun thing.
I know a solution! :D Har! Har!
Let’s choose a simple solution. Everyone should start pirating these shows and share it with others. Anyone who legally bought it should be allowed to have that as they bought it! And if Sony starts to complain about it then remind them that they cannot steal money from their buyers.
That’s gonna be a classy class action. 😀
Contract Law Reform?
“It would be one thing if this content was ripped away and everyone on all sides realized that was a possibility.”
As nice as that would be, would it fix the main issue though? In this scenario, many would know what they are getting into but what about the concern of ownership and preservation for many software? Wouldn’t it better if we have laws to not allow contract law to circumvent around ownership?
One thing that could be very useful is to not only replace “purchase/buy” with “rent” there, but be required to have a fixed date too and have a rental cap to 3 years (to avoid another circumvention) for a single payment. That way Sony might likely use a real purchase option and the future of lawful ownership for many certain software can be legally obtained.
That being said, I’m not too familiar about how this service works so I was thinking in terms of a legal enforceable kind. If this story is more about cloud based like Stadia then I’m not as sure. I keep hearing so many people talk about this story as “digital only future” as troubling so it made me assume this was focused on non-cloud mainly.
Re:
Oh, this can get dicey, to be sure. But it’ll be a fun ride along the way!
Replacing the word ‘buy’ with ‘rent for a fixed period of time’ is good, but that assumes a level of trust on both parties – the renter won’t copy it, and the seller won’t yank it a priori. A concrete term in the contract needs to spell out exactly the penalty for early termination on the seller’s part, equally so if the buyer is caught making a copy. (A defense to that would be that the law does allow for one backup copy of anything you purchase, rent, lease, license, etc.)
But let’s go further, shall we? Is Sony the true Seller here? Or are they simply a reseller, a middleman if you will? They contracted, in some form, with another party to provide widespread marketing and delivery services for that other party. But they didn’t contract for, nor negotiate for, any manner of copyright ownership, did they. Hence, they are in the precarious and unenviable position of knowing that some time down the road, the actual owner may get uppity and refuse to renew the contract. Where does that leave Sony? Right, smack dab in the middle if ShitVille.
In fact, the only way they can renege on their end of the contract with the so-called purchasers of goods is if the original owner required that contract to include terms requiring Sony to go back and remove the content in question. But even there, neither of those parties are somehow authorized to circumvent the CFAA and waltz into a user’s computer with a fired-up blow torch.
So suppose for the sake of argument that Sony included terms in the fine print of the contract with the purchaser. Could a court say “This sounds fair and there’s no problem here”? Good question. I’d argue that the purchaser has no equal benefit in compensation for (allegedly!) giving up the right to a secure computer. And once again, can a court find good cause to ignore the CFAA? None of them have so far, when it’s used against a private party, aka an alleged hacker. (Aaron Schwartz, anyone?)
Like another AC said above, this should be interesting, to say the least.
same with amazon
PURCHASE SOME MOVIES AND AFTER A COUPLE OF YEARS I NO LONGER HAVE ACCES AND WAS NOT REFUNDED