> As of August 31, 2022, due to our evolving licensing agreements with content providers, you will no longer be able to view your previously purchased Studiocanal content and it will be removed from your video library
Sounds about right for Sony.
I had a Sony Bravia TV for several years, and bought it because it came with a "Netflix compatible" sticker.
Netflix however wasn't really compatible from the get-go, and they promised it would work in the next upgrade. I wasn't in US/EU so simply returning it wasn't possible.
They kept promising it would work in the next upgrade, and I would upgrade, even though each time it was making the TV incredibly sluggish.
Eventually five or six years passed and the TV stopped receiving upgrades and it never had Netflix.
At this point (and even 5 years ago), getting a little streaming HDMI stick will provide an infinitely better customer experience for a ~$35 investment. Most smart TVs just don't have a great user experience compared to the devices designed around that.
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This was brought to the EU and the EU didn't do anything
I see the point for subscription based services, but in this case they should have an agreement to continue streaming for those who have purchased it. The content provider has been paid for it too, right?
I am not a lawyer, but I don't think licensing agreements like this is not enough in a consumer court. When you purchase something, the consumer expects to be able to access it for as long as the distributor exists.
The services use the term "Purchase" or "Buy". If that is not actually the case, they should call it something else. Otherwise it is misleading the consumers, no matter where they hide the small print in the license agreement.
At a minimum I would expect a refund, as they are no longer providing the service that was paid for.
what if i honored your copyright as long as it "suited me", then one day it didnt.
That is already how consumers behave. You're living the dream right now!
Individuals may have a lower risk, but the cost is high if someone decides to come after you. Large corporations can take the legal costs far more easily.
However, direct-download sites generally do not confer risk onto their users in the same way. Even if the site gets taken down or sued, copyright owners generally don't care about following their logs to find individual downloaders. While they still probably can be sued[1], there's no reason for a legitimate party to do so. At that point the copyright holder got what they wanted, and marching down to everyone in the server logs' house to make sure they delete their infringing movies is absolutely stupid.
For the same reason I've never liked the idea of "P2P YouTube alternatives". People rightfully complain about how they mishandle anything related to copyright, and they do, but the alternative is having every copyright holder with a chip on their shoulder financially cripple anyone who watched a video they didn't like.
[0] Legal scholars will probably object to my use of the word "extort". Yes, if you have a legal claim for relief then threatening to sue for it is not extortion, it's just the law. However, the only way to actually make antipiracy enforcement at an individual level not financially crippling is to cross the line into actual extortion. The Prenda Law and Strike 3 Holdings incidents are good examples of how easy it is to do so.
[1] The law is actually somewhat ambiguous on where the infringement actually is when you download something. I used to think "uploading equals infringement", but there's been some court opinions arguing that either both uploading and downloading are infringements, or that they infringe different parts of copyright. Nobody's bothered to prosecute a direct-download pirate to the point where this matters.
Of course there's also Japan which has a law that explicitly makes mere downloading infringing. There be dragons.
You don't get to steal from a musician because Sony cheated you
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> why are we "expected" to honor their copyright
Because you don't want to be a thief
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> they do not honor their commitments
They do, in fact.
It seems like you just assumed they committed to something they didn't, and are angry now that you've finally read the actual commitment.
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> what if i honored your copyright as long as it "suited me", then one day it didnt.
Then you'd be a thief who pointed fingers at other people to justify your own choices
elsevier copyrights papers on their own name. should we fuck with them ?
>It seems like you just assumed they committed to something they didn't, and are angry now that you've finally read the actual commitment.
sony committed to keep those movies but now they are backtracking on that commitment. why?
Unironically yes. Fuck Elsevier and what they've done to academic publishing.
This days after Nintendo letting us know they 'are unable (read- unwilling) to offer refunds.
We need consumer protection laws that do something, because since the 1990s businesses have made anti-consumer practices their bread and butter.
They don't fear us, the laws, or government in general. Businesses fucking lie cheat and steal every single day.