If not, should we change the law?
In a browser, the top category on Google's "Movies & TV" is "New to buy or rent". The buttons on the page for a movie are labeled "$X.XX Buy" and "$X.XX Rent". In the Google TV app on my android phone, the two buttons are "Rent 4K // $X.XX" and "Buy 4K // $X.XX".
The splash images in the Apple TV app iOS say "Buy or rent it now.", and the buttons on the page for an individual movie are labeled "Buy $X.XX" and "Rent $X.XX".
Movies, on digital marketplaces, have had this kind of distinction for a lot longer than games have.
Strangely, some kindle books actually do meet california criteria of "buy" by allowing a download of the book in .pdf or .epub format.
But when you go to buy them, it still seems to say:
By placing an order, you're purchasing a content license & agreeing to Kindle's Store Terms of Use.It is only later in your library that it quietly says:
Download available in additional formatsPaid apps largely failed as a business model though (why would a consumer take a risk on buying a paid app that they can't try before they buy) so most apps that you pay for are free apps with IAP subscriptions... which I guess makes it a little more explicit that you're renting the app, for better or worse.
EG. A mapping app that includes a one time bundle of maps that don’t get updated can be sold as a one time purchase. If you provide continuous updates, which most people expect now, pulling off a one time purchase business model is HARD. The other option is versioned access or time limited support, which is really just a subscription model by a different name. That said I wish versioned access was still a thing. Photoshop CS is still fine for what I want, I’m happy to pay for an upgrade when it makes sense, but a continuing subscription to software that hasn’t substantially changed in a decade sucks.
Societies have gotten really good at convincing people they don’t have power so it’s rarely exercised but it’s always worth remembering the difference between abstraction and the underlying reality.
If they stop believing money has value (so they wouldn't want to come to my house), men with guns will come to their house, force them out of it and change the locks.
This isn't a voluntary system, it's a forcibly imposed one.
You’re assuming there’s going to be large groups of people that believe money still has value. However, there’s nothing inherently different about the first group of people with guns and the second group of people with guns.
If hypothetically there’s a large moon heading to earth so everyone is going to die, everyone is responding to the same situation.
Are we taking about abolishing the fiat currency system or bringing back the guillotines ?
If you haven’t been paying attention lately, laws are only as good as they are enforced and it has become obvious that the ruling class is not going to enforce laws against themselves.
The solution here is not something most people are willing to inconvenience themselves over
Then the wind shifted and, suddenly, we could and we did. It took them decades to undo that progress and decades more to reassert their grip.
Don't self-sabotage by imagining that it is impossible to achieve change through democracy. We've done it before and we can do it again.
The laws in this country are primarily written by and for large corporations. They’re not going to meaningfully practically restrain them just because something got passed.
a) Consumers don't have enough money already, so they're both stressed out and getting fewer things for themselves. These combine to mean that they're less likely to be willing to give up what little luxuries they have left, even if you're just asking them to substitute one media property for another.
b) The companies being targeted are just too damn big. The consolidation that began in the '80s has reached truly ludicrous levels in 2026, meaning that the company can just...ignore drops in profits for months or even years while consumers get worn out.
How much content really is only on Sony’s store, and how much of it would wear you down if you didn’t consume it within X years?
There are truly painful boycotts (try boycotting the only ISP in your area), and boycotts that are an inconvenience. This one is a far cry from losing a luxury or getting worn out.
The point of a government in society is for people who give a shit to guide this kind of thing.
Is it? What’s the most effective boycott you can think of ever achieved?
Completely different circumstances as the protest was very organised and the target far smaller than a multi national company and the reason was far more important than access to a few films
Demos doesn't have capital. People never had power. Whenever they've thought they won ... they just damaged position of someone powerful for someone even more powerful without even knowing it.
By this logic, in consumerism power comes from consumers, but maybe it's more complicated than that?
Clearly this law needs to be worded harsher, so the button MUST say "rent" if you are renting.
No, there is a much better alternative.
No renting of copyrighted works for money. The customer owns a copy or GTFO.
That immediately destroys several useful and viable business models that actually work in that they provide more access to more creative work to more people while the rights holders also make a return.
I am in favour of copyright reform but not of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Does it though? The incremental revenue from customers renting something and then renting it again is going to be very small. The "loss" from providing them with a permanent copy instead would be a rounding error, especially for a product with no marginal cost.
Meanwhile rentals are an attempt to cheat the public out of a bunch of rights they would otherwise have under First Sale etc. Which turns your access argument on its head, because the thing they're being denied is the ability to sell their copy when they're done with it, which in turn denies less well off customers the ability to buy a cheaper copy second hand.
Sadly the case was settled, see: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/apple-settles-alleg...
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
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.
- If the license terms include a section on termination, and termination is done in accordance with the license terms, it's fine legally.
- Licenses can be transferable but that doesn't make them non-terminable.
I could be wrong, though.
It's pretty crappy that we got to the point that overly simple actions (like clicking on buttons or breaking stickers on packages) can be considered accepting license terms. Is that really a "meeting of the minds"?
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.
The license isn't what takes away your permission to redistribute copies; copyright law does that by default. The license is only reminding you that it's not lifting that default, not granting you that permission.
Copying is neither here or there. There is an understanding that when you buy a book, you own the physical thing.
If I sell you a toaster and then remotely cause it to self-destruct, I owe you a new toaster.
Grandparent referenced "if buying isn't owning then copying isn't stealing". I would say that "if buying isn't owning, then stealing isn't stealing".
If a toaster is offered to sale to the public which the seller can remotely destroy at any time, and not pay anyone a cent, and the law upholds that, then it's morally fine to just walk out of their store with that toaster without paying.
It only mattered that if you sell it you lose it, i.e. you can't buy 1 sell (or gift) 10.
Similarly in analog times this where not unilaterally cancelled licenses. Which are effectively nothing more then time limited licenses where you just don't know how long. (1: un
In law areas outside of copyright this kind of license cancellation terms are often seen as predatory, fraudulent and abusive practices. And _sometimes outright illegal no matter how well you communicated what the license/contract does_ before it was acquired (in some countries).
(1: unilateral cancellable without a brach of license/contract from you side and some other special edge cases to be more precise)
Which is the crux of the problem, not that it isn't attached to physical media, but that it can be cancelled in a mostly despotic manner and you (often) can't make (relevant) backups or similar to protect the availability of the medium either.
What I'm getting at is that people are getting the shape of the problem wrong (it was never ownership vs licensing), so the solution has to be different too. E.g. Bluray AACS revocation provides the technical means through which licences for physical media can be revoked just like purely downloadable stuff can.
Yes, physical media being de facto irrevocable is the important part, but even that has caveats (such as Bluray AACS revocations).
Hence why you don't get tried for theft when you commit digital piracy. Which, as absurd as it might sound, sometimes (/in some cases) would be better to be tried for due to very unbalanced laws.
But also it should be pretty obvious that this isn't what people mean when they say "if buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing" and a intentionally misinterpretation of statements based by nitpicking formulations is neither contributing anything meaningful nor is it appreciated (in most situations).
Full House: Angelina Jolie reboot (Starring Angelina Jolie baby clones)
Behind a system of rights there is always a philosophy, which either postulates rights, or certain primary rights, as being somehow inherent or "inalienable", or else somehow justifies the establishment of rights without circular reasoning ("we need these rights so we can have nice things").
https://retailwire.com/t-mobile-att-verizon-fined-10-2m-for-...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/07/lawsuit-t-mobile...
At the very least, if Sony yanks your purchase, they should merely refund it in full.
This is the obvious solution to most problems but of course they're the ones writing the laws so it'd never happen in a trillion years.
This is a one-time cost and you just don't know when they're going to snatch it back from you. They won't tell you. They won't even give you a notice period. They don't know themselves. They only find out when the licensor they're sublicensing from demands "too much" for ongoing licensing and they just give up and pretend they didn't sell you that and take your money.
The button would have to be "Licence, subject to unilateral revocation at any time."
I propose, let's see..
Definitely Isn’t Legal Doctrine, Obviously
or.. Based Only On Basic Speculation
perhaps Consult Official Counsel, Kindly
or more succinct, This Isn’t Trained Solicitor Advice
I don’t understand what is wrong with NAL/NLA not a lawyer/not legal advice.
If you wouldn't do that for Walmart, why would you do it for Sony?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389 - "Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For" (reclaimthenet.org)
636 points | 15 days ago | 304 comments
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904 - "Sony erases digital content from libraries" (arstechnica.com)
184 points | 16 days ago | 76 comments
Long live offline physical media, and The Pirate Bay.
Is the age of the console finally coming to an end?
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2026/06/switch-2s-first-ye...
I can't say I know anyone IRL who has any interest in leaving PlayStation. Nobody buys movies there and people who care about physical games are a minority...there are already Slim models without optical drives and GameStops are mostly Funko Pops because most people buy games online. It's too soon to have actual concrete data besides useless internet sentiment reporting though. And a lot of that is just vague anger about prices for all computing hardware being up...and everything else in the US.
We're also at the ending stages of the PS5 lifecycle, but before a PS6 announcement. (With an unprecedented price increase this late in the cycle.) So there's no buzz about what's next, a large base of people who already have the existing thing, and an expectation that it will cost more.
Meanwhile, the anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6 is on the way, and a PC release isn't on the table anytime soon.
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.
The best games I've played in the last year would run on a PS4 and probably even a PS3 with a little optimization, yet we're already at the "end" of the PS5. It's so disingenuous. We should be squeezing everything we can out of the wonderful hardware we have today instead of chucking it for the new shiny thing, but instead we're force fed a new box, with a new exclusive title, with graphics you can barely distinguish from what we already have and more restrictions on what you can do.
We have this now, every PC has some kind of graphics hardware, and has for many years. Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands, but the technical justification for their product category hasn't existed for 15+ years now.
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
I've never considered that my old 360 was probably sold at a loss, knowing I'd buy LIVE and all the games they take a cut/license fee off of, but that makes complete sense to me
If something runs on a Steam Deck, you can be sure it will run on your >= Steam Deck-equivalent device.
It used to be a selling point of console indeed, however nowadays console are separated by Pro/Non-pro, different revisions and you aren't really guaranteed on how well your game is going to run unless you watch a Youtube let's play of the game you want.
Let me tell you, as someone that repairs a TON of XBox 360s, this comment is very, VERY wrong. The GPU isn't even the same revision between the same batch runs. Did you get Xenos? Zeus? Jupiter? That determined one set of things needed for install/refurbish. Is that a Valhalla motherboard in your hands? That just limited you to a very narrow and specific set of hardware you could utilize.
Oh and performance between all of those models varied WILDLY. Silicon lottery is a fucking JOKE on the XBox 360.
What really mattered to end users though was "this disc says Xbox 360. Can I put it in the box at home that says Xbox 360 and have the game run properly?" This didn't really matter if it was a Jasper motherboard or not. The game ran practically the same from a user perspective regardless of which board revision you had. I can go pick up any generation of 360 that still powers on and any 360 game off the shelf and it'll work pretty much how the developer intended.
Meanwhile, if you don't really know anything about computer specs, who knows if a game will run on your computer? This was a $3,000 gaming PC, it should run anything! I bought it in 2002 though, is that a problem? The Radeon 9700 Pro from that red GPU company, probably better than that Radeon RX9070 right? Bigger number and all, and after all its Pro. And its got 128 MEGA bytes, probably better than that other card's 16 something or other.
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.
Video cards existed, but 3D accelerators didn't really catch on until the 3dfx Voodoo, which came out about the same time as the N64. Even Quake II which came out a year later still offered software rendering.
> Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't.
I'm only a single point of data, but I was a console gamer that transitioned to PC gaming, but that transition happened during the N64/PSX era. It was near the end of the PS2 cycle that I was full PC.
> Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows
Because prices are at all-time highs. I have a monster PC that I probably spent around $6,000 building, but with prices skyrocketing, it'd run me $10,000 to build it today. A few months ago, it would have been $11,000.
> Video games have gone the way of Hollywood, with sequels and derivatives, and an uninterested consumer base.
In the AAA world, this is true. So many gamers that only play Call of Duty, Fortnite, Minecraft, or a sports game. For CoD and the sports games, they reliably buy the latest release every year despite the lack of anything really being different.
But the Indie world is huge and full of innovation. Balatro, Stardew Valley, Disco Elysium, Slay the Spire, Cuphead, I could go on.
> People would rather watch a YouTube video of someone playing a video game than play a video game.
I don't think that's true at all. Maybe for high-level play, or if the streamer has highly entertaining commentary, but otherwise definitely not true.
The draw of consoles was the ease of use. N64 problem solving was just off/on
N64 came out in the USA in September 1996.
3dfx Voodoo was released to consumers in October 1996.
But there might be a generational change coming. Basically the entire cohort of parents in my kids’ kindergarten is much more intentional about what kinds of games they’re playing and how they’re spending their “screen time.” I see a lot more people just giving their kids retro-consoles and emulation rather than setting them loose on the kiddie grooming and dopamine receptor-frying skinner-boxes.
I suppose it’s one of the benefits of having a generation of parents who grew up with formative memories of playing video games themselves combined with a growing awareness of UI dark patterns and their long term impacts on cognitive development and well-being.
Then there’s the convenience. I don’t want to play games where I work. I want to play on my TV. I have no interest in moving my workstation into my living room. Streaming with Moonlight works well enough, but there’s still lag. Even if I wanted to move my PC to the living room, the setup isn’t as nice. The Steam Machine has HDMI CEC and can power on with a controller — all the major consoles have had that for years.
Even if I accepted all that, no one else in my household could play anything while I’m working on my computer.
Things are a little weird now. If I’m going to have to go all digital, Steam Family is by far the best option of those with DRM. But, due to the astronomical cost of components, consoles are still pretty attractive.
Thanks to recent moves by Sony, this is no longer the case!
I was talking about game compatibility and you brought up an utterly unrelated point and referenced non-specified “recent moves by Sony”. Forgive me for giving you the benefit of the doubt and inquiring if there were platform changes that would affect compatibility.
Clawing back games isn’t a particularly new risk. If you issue a chargeback, Sony bans your account, losing your library and any wallet funds you may have. And I already indicated that if I have to go all digital, then Steam is far more attractive. But there’s no guarantee any given game I buy on Steam is going to play on any given device. If I purchase a PS5 game I can be fairly certain it will run on a PS5 and what the performance is going to be like.
But, yeah, thanks for reminding me: physical games are still a major benefit for consoles. I buy Switch cartridges almost exclusively because Nintendo's DRM implementation is horrible for a family library. I lend games to friends and family members. I've even sold games and bought used ones. Steam Family is great, and the best of the current DRM options. But, while physical still exists, it's a good reason for favor consoles that has nothing to do with technical acumen.
The point being, if the game says its made for that generation of Playstation, it will run well on that generation of Playstation. There's no comparing specs to figure out if it'll run well on your specific hardware arrangement.
When I get a new Switch game, I know it will play perfectly fine on my Switch as how the developers intended it to be experienced. When I try and play a new game on my PC-gaming handheld, who knows how well it'll run until I try it or spend time reading reviews from others with similar hardware trying to play the same game.
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 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.
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 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.
In a lot of the metro area where I live cloud gaming over 5G wireless is actually very feasible. I do it from time to time. I've tried it in a few other cities as well, with generally positive results.
There are some games that just don't work well over cloud streaming though.
Jokes aside I do agree that streaming doesn’t work reliably for all game genres and client geographies, mostly due to latency
PC is even more digital-only than Playstation. No one buys physical games on PC. The only difference is that Valve has been a very good steward over Steam. Theoretically, PC can get as enshittified as PS.
I guess there are other DRM-based purchasing platforms, and there's also DRM free ones like GOG so PC gamers have choice, but those feel niche mostly.
On PlayStation, switch, or Xbox you have only one gatekeeper, and they do not respect you
I say this as a primarily pc gamer. It’s not for most people.
Retro hardware prices have been going up fairly significantly though, especially for Amiga stuff.
I speak from experience
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..
Sure, it won’t beat a tricked out gaming PC with some $4000 GPU in it, but it will probably be competitive with console gaming. Granted, the PS5 is 5-6 years old by now, but my phone has more power in every measure.
My “dream” everyday device is still a phone that docks with a display, keyboard and mouse, and magically transforms into a desktop OS. On the to mobile apps would allow access to the same data, but touch optimized instead.
It’s similar to comparing Netflix to the Criterion Streaming platform. Technically you’re doing the same thing, sitting on the couch watching a big screen, but the experience being pitched is a totally different one and the target customer doesn’t really overlap.
There was a time when regular families had desktop computers at home. The marketing was intense, the machines were expensive, and the sales numbers were real. The PC was the gateway to all of the spoils of the internet and things were booming.
Now families tend to have a collection expensive personal pocket supercomputers, instead. It's hard to justify the cost of a properly-stodgy computer when everything is online and the machines that everyone already has in their pockets are Good Enough to get things done (including entertainment).
But I can accept that I'm not everyone.
I suspect that we'll have whole generations of people who manage to grow up and grow old and without ever having, or even seeking, the opportunity to spend quality time gaming on PCs.
I think that's alright. Things are allowed to change.
You used to be able to dial TIM on a landline phone to check the time (for free?). Then you (if you were a computer nerd) checked it on your computer, then on your cellphone. Because that's what was available. There was no connection between knowing the time and landline phones - people just had landline phones so it was a convenient way to deliver the service. That's how it is with mobile games now.
Remember Java and Flash applets? You could make anything you wanted as a native application, but RuneScape took off because you didn't have to install it.
The "big family computer" became an iPad.
If you are a games studio and have resources for three projects this year, do your investors want to see a phone, PC, or console game?
The problem is that these are not legally mandated, so they can shut down (as UltraViolet did). If the ability to move the licence to another platform is mandated by law as a condition of continued copyright protection, this problem would largely disappear.
In practical terms, the logistics of many-years-later refunds would be unwieldy at best. Do the purchase records still exist? What if I no longer have that credit card or email address? How can you prove you're the heir of the deceased? What if I now live in a country where the "deletion" status is different? And how could you stop all the scammers who smelled free money?
Alternative: The gov't randomly picks 24 citizens from a pool of applicants who reasonably prove that they were harmed by the deletion. Those 24 are given legal authority to fiat-revoke all copyright protection on a "reasonable and proportional" number of the deleting corporation's currently copyrighted works. Or upstream of them, as "appropriate".
Similarly, we should put in a law to force consumers who post bad reviews to prove they actually transacted with the business. If they can't, they have to go to every person who saw the review and personally retract it.
Can't figure out who saw it? Tough. It's up to you to figure out, or else it's illegal and they get 5000 years in prison for every view it got.
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.
I naively assumed my purchases from [company A] would mean I have permanent/immutable access. Even in the case of access not being revoked, I've found content itself changes over time. Usually related to jokes which have "not aged well" let us say.
I'm not here to champion leaving in that content. Or defend nostalgic rewatching. It just feels strange to not acknowledge.
Previously:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48691346
and several others.
Looking in search, it seems there's a Sony hate thread almost every day over the last month, and many of them are just reposts of the same thing (eg >10 submissions about Sony's decision to stop manufacturing game discs in 2028). It's also odd that these stories are attracting hundreds of comments every time; for comparison several submissions about about Xbox laying off ~5000 people have attracted less than 10 comments between them.
It's looking like astroturf at this point. I don't have any connection to Sony, direct or indirect; it's just a weird pattern on HN.
Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation (797 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745456
So Sony is simultaneously announcing that all purchases will be digital from now on while actively demonstrating that digital purchases aren't actually purchases. They're clearly communicating that they believe in a future where no one owns games any more.
They've been foreshadowing that future for years, but the gamers keep on bending right over and even squeezing the lube bottle for them. They haven't, and likely won't, be given a reason to stop marching toward that future.
So far.
They don't even offer refunds.
As an indication of where things are going on this front, from the same publisher: Sony announced that games are not going to get distributed as physical copies anymore. So no new video games to be borrowed from public libraries, and even if you can borrow older games the new Playstations probably won't even have a disk tray to read them.
Whatever your stance on video games being something that is worth having in a library is, if they could get away with it that's probably their ideal end game for movies as well.
If "buy" means you can watch it on this specific device while logged in with this specific account, for some limited time, then downloading it to your disk is not "theft".
Seriously, my brain, deformed by years of file sharing, can't get it.
Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For (294 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48747389
Sony erases digital content from libraries (74 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904
Unless I missed something recently, it's not illegal. You've always had the right to make backups of content that you purchased legally. It's the distribution that has been illegal.
I would have assumed it would have at least been against whatever TOC you agreed to when signing up to itunes.
Guess it will be an upswing of BlueRay movies. Already happening with LPs and CDs
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 mean, on one hand you have centuries of precedent about what “buy” means, and on the other you have one party depriving another party of access to their property , without providing alternative access, defacto depriving them of their property in absolute terms.
This seems like a clear case of theft, conspiracy to commit theft, and fraudulent advertising, interstate commerce in the pursuit of an organized criminal enterprise , etc.
boolean bought = true;
boolean owns = false;
if (bought && owns) {
System.out.println("Purchase resulted in ownership.");
} else if (bought) {
System.out.println("Purchase did not result in ownership. You have rented.");(Personally I would consider DRM okay if Sony's behavior here was illegal without a full refund.)
20 years later will anyone do anything about it? Of course not.
What is going to be the event that gets laws to change? Probably not a few movies viewable only from Sony devices.
The USA really needs to stop being a corporate-country. Weren't the republicans all about the people at one point in time? Now they are all about the billionaires and family dynasties pillaging what they can, with the forerunner the mad orange king pillaging the most. And starting wars he loses by default, after promising to not start wars.
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.
I'm currently listening to a record which was pressed before I was born, and that will outlast me. My CDs were ripped around 2000 to a drive and i've streamed then since. I've still got the CDs though, and the last time I played one it worked fine on my 1989 vintage transport.
I think i'm good.
If they do want to posit it as this, I'd personally be fine if they said "a CD will work for 100k plays before corrupting" so you'll have 100,000 credits to stream The Wizard of Oz before you need to purchase it again.
But they need to say that upfront.
Plastic discs are the optimum data distribution format. They degrade in the same time frame as a paper book, essentially lifetime, you retain legal rights like the first sale doctrine, you can easily format shift for safety and storage, and nobody can take any of that from you ever, and you can use that data however you like, as long as you aren't trying to sell bootlegs.
Books and plastic discs are infinitely better than the digital realm. The consumer rights are so much stronger and better.