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Comment by bambax | Hacker News Reader

> you will no longer be able to view your previously purchased Studiocanal content

This can't be real. It reads like a joke. Something users purchased can no longer be accessed? I think that's the definition of stealing.

Good thing we still have torrents.

FYI: Some torrent search engines are blocked by ISPs in Europe, at the DNS level; this is easily circumvented with a VPN, but it's also easy to bypass using DNS-over-HTTPS in Firefox [0].

[0] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-dns-over-https

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Unfortunately the term purchase for digital acquisitions is misleading. If I purchase a dvd I can lend it to my family, I can pass it on free to a friend to watch, or I can sell it second hand. If I don't dispose of it, it's mine for life.

That just doesn't apply to these digital acquisitions which are tied to the account and which the terms do allow to be revoked.

They aren't purchases but more like very long term rentals. Of course fewer people would spend money if they were told the truth so the media companies misleadingly say "purchase". (And since they all say purchase it would be very hard for one to break rank).

It's why something like Netflix of Kindle Unlimited can work well, at least you know you are spending an amount each month for basically unlimited access to the catalog.

I have no doubt a small claim would result in a judgement made against Sony for the original purchase price of the item. Hopefully citizens will exert the right to do so.

I recently noticed the small print on event tickets I purchase from Ticketmaster make it clear that I am actually purchasing a "license" to access the event. The ticket does not guarantee entry and the license is non-transferable, revocable without refund, etc.

Unfortunately this is a phenomenon that extends beyond digital media.

That's too bad for Ticketmaster because the large print calls them a "purchase". How are consumers supposed to know which parts of their business communications are lies and which are truth? Or rather, why should Ticketmaster get to choose which of their words count and which are just decoration?

IANAAL, but I thought there was a legal principle that ambiguities in a contract would resolve in favor of the party that didn't write the contract. In all probability, the verbiage of the contract is all licensing and it is only marketing copy that is ambiguous.

More like, that's too bad for consumers! In my experience, Ticketmaster doesn't care one bit.

When I was 17, I purchased tickets to an all-ages show via Ticketmaster's location in my local mall. At some point in time between my purchase and the event, it apparently became age-restricted. (It was an electronic music event, and this was at the peak of tv-news-driven anti-"rave" hysteria.)

I arrived at the venue on the night of the show, and they wouldn't let me in, despite my ticket clearly saying "all ages". The promoters blamed the venue for the age restriction change, I believe truthfully. But the venue box office wouldn't give me a refund since my tickets were from Ticketmaster.

So I called Ticketmaster the next day. They claimed all events are wiped from their system after the event ends, and no amount of escalation can possibly result in a refund for a prior event. Naturally they gave me the runaround and said to take it up with the venue box office :/

My takeaway was never trust Ticketmaster, they simply don't honor their own large print on their tickets.

we live in a society where we give too much credit for law system which does not work. you can say anything in font 150 and add a 4px height text that flashes for couple of seconds in a TV add and it is fine.

you can say purchase and change the definition of purchase elsewhere and whenever you want. remember that these contracts reserve the right to be self driven and changed.

They call them purchases. They should not be allowed to use that terminology. They are rentals.

To be clear I agree with you. However I am, only very slightly, sympathetic to these companies as is always the case one company doesn't want to stand out in a bad way by renaming!

> Unfortunately the term purchase for digital acquisitions is misleading.

This is why I will only purchase things I can actually keep, like CDs, DVDs, paper books and so on. It seems old fashioned, until you have a few "purchases" wiped out by some policy change out of your control.

It’s not stealing, it’s in the contract. That’s why I only Torrent

Anything that has the word "purchase" in it should be legally mandated that there be a way for users to access it indefinitely: in this case, perhaps making it possible to download with some sort of offline DRM. (You can do this, say, with Audible books that you buy.)

Anything which is cloud-only and may disappear at any time should be labelled something else, like "lease".

It depends if purchase is defined in the countrys laws. Otherwise it can be defined as anything within the purchase contract.

you are responding to prescriptivism with descriptivism

As long as they didn't use the word in the definition of the word.

Yeah good point, it seems like something that should have rolled into all those privacy laws.

They'll just bury somewhere in the contract that you are purchasing the limited access to the good, not purchasing the good itself.

It's not they'll like they will do it. This is what they have done.

That is what they do but should not be what they can get away with.

Sure, they always argue that you are only "renting" them for a one-time-fee, and that the rent agreement could end at any time for any reason.

But them using the word "purchased" in this very announcement (not a mistranslation btw) gives weight to the argument that this is intentional deception of the customer. An even easier case in Germany, where courts acknowledge that customers don't read the terms of service, so any "surprising" terms hidden in the TOS aren't legally binding.

I think it’s specifically purchasing a license to view the content.

Is the "content" described as "Movie Title" or "License to view Movie Title for a limited time arbitrarily determined by us"?

Exactly. These scumbags are not to be trusted. Ever.

Not so fast. Every contract must be balanced, otherwise it can be challenged (and likely overruled) in courts.

If they have the right to terminate your license and withdraw access to the content, you should also have the right to terminate the contract and withdraw your money.

It cannot work just for one side without any practical reason.

This is not true. The contract just needs to have consideration. It doesn't have to be "fair" in your opinion.

Some countries recognise the power imbalance in consumer contracts and prohibit unfair terms. For example:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/unfair-contract-t...

I can't say for where you live, but it is true where I live.

Might not be true in Japan, but Sony is doing business worldwide, they have to follow each country's legal principles.

That's why I don't buy ebooks on Amazon.

I download elsewhere, store somewhere safe and upload to my kindle for reading.

These corporations want us to be ethical and respectful to copyrights, but they act unethically when it comes to respecting consumers' basic rights.

Thanks for linking to firefox's dns-over-https instructions. I wasn't aware that I can just enable that in the settings.

You should use a VPN anyway if you're going to torrent.

why? I have never used a VPN for decades and terabytes of torrenting. Not a peep from my ISP (virgin media, uk)

Because not everyone lives in the UK? And even if you do, ISPs can store data long-term, waiting for the laws to change and then retroactively find which customers they should keep a closer eye on.

Not to mention the non-ISP groups which also monitors the DHT for who downloads content they "own", ready to serve the data to governments at request.

Fair enough, that makes sense. I meant to ask "why should I", my miscommunication.

Not in France, at least not immediately. The antipiracy authority first sends you an email (1st warning), then an IRL letter (2nd warning). When you receive the IRL letter, THEN you should VPN (or SOCKS or whatever) for one year, then you can go turn it off until you receive your 2nd warning again, if that happens.

I received my fair share of 1st warnings during the past ~15 years. I only received my first 2nd warning this year. I configured a systemd service `ssh -D myvps` and configured deluged to use this SOCKS5 proxy. Waiting for next April to turn it off...

I don't get it, why would you want to put yourself on their radar at all? Why not just use a VPN from the start?

You should completely ignore the parent's advice.

Care to elaborate why?

Because I don't care? What worse can happen to me?

I firmly believe that sharing "cultural products" (sic) between individuals not seeking profit should not be illegal, and that any attempt to restrict this is vain at best, and most likely counter-productive for society as a whole.

> I received my fair share of 1st warnings during the past ~15 years.

Out of curiosity, how has this changed over years? Are they getting worse or better? My feeling is that they are completely ineffective. Anecdotically, none of my friends living in France mentioned getting emails, and some of them do torrent with abandon.

They are now pennyless and can't even send a letter if their lives depended on it. It's a complete failure.

Well I was surprised to receive the "lettre avec accusé de réception" recently. So HADOPI's not dead yet, unfortunately...

Ineffective to prevent torrenting, they definitely are. But I think they are winning on the ideas front unfortunately. The idea that 'pirating' is immoral has made its way to the general public. I wonder if I'll see the time where everyone is convinced that you're stealing something when you lend a book to a friend, or when you play music in your house and some people that aren't spotify subscribers can hear it.

Depends on where you live. In Brazil for example it's perfectly legal to download copies, you're just not allowed to distribute or profit off them.

Due to the way bittorrent works, downloading is inherently distributing.

It's not inherent, there exist antisocial clients which don't seed.

You dont want to argue technicalities in court, better to just use Chinese video streaming websites.

It's just the same technicality as if you said "due to the way how video streaming works, downloading is inherently distributing". It just isn't. You can do it (videoconferencing has this as a default), but it's irrelevant.

Sure they exist, does anybody actually use them? We're talking about the average user, not someone who is so in the scene they have multiple private tracker accounts.

Bittorrent, by definition at the protocol, includes sharing all pieces you have downloaded as soon as the piece is completed and finished its hash check[1]. The fact that there are nonstandard workarounds for this changes nothing for the broadly shared default that almost nobody is going to go out of their way to change, especially if it means using a specialized client.

[1]: https://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html

> Some torrent search engines are blocked by ISPs

Not this one: http://piratebayo3klnzokct3wt5yyxb2vpebbuyjl7m623iaxmqhsd52c...

And that's why I'm still this weirdo who buys DVDs and even CDs.

Me as well. But unfortunately there is a trade off. For example I buy most my Nintendo Switch games in the physical form so my kids can trade them back and forth. But there have been times when my case full of games has gone missing and I panic about $600 in games last. Thankfully I have always found my games but I could see how easy it could be to lose a lot of money fast. With digital I just download the game any time I want even if I lose my switch just sign into the account on a new switch and get my stuff.

Have you ever considered adding a gps tracker to it? They are tiny, cheap and I think exceptionally well suited for the particular usecase of always finding a half grand in nintendo cartrides.

You can buy DRM-free digital and lossless music though. It's only the movie industry that has it backwards.

This is why I actually own all our movies on Blu-ray. These days they are cheap online and locally (I averaged $6 per movie with the most common ones being cheapest and rare ones the most expensive - $8 for the entire original Star Wars trilogy in Good box condition, and players are $7 on average at Goodwill), they are easily ripped if that is your thing into 1080p streams that still look better in some circumstances than highly compressed 4K streams, and they can be resold later and never taken away.

Even though it cost quite a bit to get the collection - after you do the math of the cost of HBO Max, Netflix, Disney+, and [insert typical random streaming service here]... it might pay off in only a few years while retaining some resale value. It is also super fun to go bargain hunting - $2.99 for the first 4 Pirates of the Caribbean movies [literally, for me at a thrift shop]? Score!

> FYI: Some torrent search engines are blocked by ISPs in Europe, at the DNS level

And some of those now resolve the IP addresses of popular torrent sites, and block their IP addresses -- or rather, redirect connection attempts to a local anti-piracy page.

I know this to be the case for at least one ISP, but it's the biggest one in the country, and needless to say they have a video on demand business as well.

Forging DNS is one way to gain a "special" reputation for an ISP.

That doesn't matter in a duopoly. I expect the other half of the duopoly does the same thing, since they tend to move in lockstep.

You can also use goodbyedpi to circumvent blocked sites by ISPs

https://github.com/ValdikSS/GoodbyeDPI

Isn’t that a transaction between the user and Studiocanal that Sony just mediated? The right to view the content should still be valid through a different platform.

> This can't be real. It reads like a joke. Something users purchased can no longer be accessed?

This is relatively common and has been since before you were born

> I think that's the definition of stealing.

It's not. This is, though:

> Good thing we still have torrents.

I don't like what Sony is doing here, but it's really weird for you to try to hold the moral high ground while also announcing that you do something much worse than they did.

> it's really weird for you to try to hold the moral high ground while also announcing that you do something much worse than they did.

That's likely because you're viewing it through a different lens than the person you're replying to. Try to look at it this way...

- Company sold ownership of an item to individual. This is what "purchase" means to most people.

- Company then decided that individual should no longer have access to item, so takes it away.

- Individual knows that company has no (moral) right to take away item, so takes it back.

From a moral view, if you agree on what purchase means, the individual is completely in the right. If you don't agree on what purchase means, then the individual is not in the right. There are a lot of people that do not believe that companies should be able to use a word and just define it as meaning something totally different in their specific case ("purchase" when they mean rent, "unlimited data" when they mean limited, etc); and that when a company uses a word, they are morally bound to its common definition. For such a person, the OP's statements are internally consistent.

> That's likely because you're viewing it through a different lens than the person you're replying to

Is that lens "being a creator and wanting my copyrights to be honored too?"

> From a moral view, if you agree on what purchase means

There's no need to "agree" on what purchase means. It just has a meaning. That meaning doesn't come from either of us. If you disagree, you're simply wrong. The law and the definitions of words are not a matter of being negotiated in online comments, even though online comments misunderstanding descriptivism might have told you that they were.

This is really just a bunch of self serving word salad, redefining words so that you can steal things and pretend you're somehow fighting back against Elsevier, who is in no way involved in this

If you've gotten to the point of trying to argue by framing everything in terms of whether someone agrees with an obviously incorrect definition of a word, then I'm not sure why you spent the time.

You seem to have lost track of the story, besides. The discussion wasn't actually about pirating what was already paid for. That's obviously fine, and something I myself have had to do. The story was "the reason I pirate is that in theory this could happen." Those two positions are leagues apart.

> There are a lot of people that do not believe that companies should be able to use a word and just define it as meaning something totally different in their specific case

Literally what you're doing in your comment, mister "if you agree on what means," but okay

Anyway, companies actually cannot do this, and if you believe that they can, try asking a lawyer about it. I'd ask you to show me a single case in American history where big-spooky-they've done this, but I know you can't, so I'm not going to waste the time. If you offer something for free then redefine free to mean "costs $100," then the court will just say you don't get your $100, and get a fine for false advertising. I have no idea why you thought this was a thing.

You spend an awful lot of time attempting to use what generic people believe as a way to argue.

Generic people believe in homeopathy, chiropracty, and astrology, too. Belief isn't a valid foundation for a discussion of this form, even if you had evidence of it, which you do not.

> For such a person, the OP's statements are internally consistent.

Manson was internally consistent too. Who cares? Internal consistency was never challenged and isn't relevant. (This seems like pleading for intellectual authority, frankly.)

This is simple.

1. Parent poster is trying to justify taking things that aren't free without paying for them, by pointing fingers at other groups and saying "well this one non-music publishing entity did something bad first, so the whole music purchasing system should be refused"

2. You've confused that with recovering things you paid for and can no longer access through one authority, which is actually not piracy or even illegal at all under American law, obviously not immoral, and something I would never bother arguing against (something I can't imagine anyone ever arguing against)

3. You need to explain to me that there's nothing wrong with the thing that is very obviously not what I was talking about

Okay, cool, thanks for your help

It appears you are confusing copyright infringement with theft. At least in the US, these are very different things.

You sold someone a copy; they end up with a copy. Your copyright was honored.

You don't have a moral right to take away the copy you sold just because you managed to bait-and-switch them with a TOS that says you can take it back whenever you want.

I feel like you didn't even read what I read. I was arguing that, once I've purchased a copy of something, I have a moral right to that copy. I was not talking about downloading a copy of something I did not purchase, which is what you _appear_ to be indignant about.

> There's no need to "agree" on what purchase means. It just has a meaning. That meaning doesn't come from either of us.

Correct. And the online store told me I "purchased" the item. Then they decided that "purchase" doesn't mean what everyone (see your comment above "It just has a meaning") agrees it means, and they took it away from me.

> You seem to have lost track of the story, besides. The discussion wasn't actually about pirating what was already paid for. That's obviously fine

No, it wasn't. Specifically, the thread I was replying to looks like this...

> > > you will no longer be able to view your previously purchased Studiocanal content

> > This can't be real. It reads like a joke. Something users purchased can no longer be accessed? I think that's the definition of stealing.... Good thing we still have torrents

> it's really weird for you to try to hold the moral high ground while also announcing that you do something much worse than they did.

There was nothing in the response indicating they went out and downloaded the content _instead_ of buying it. My read was "They purchased it from company, company decided to take it away from them, good thing they can take it back (via torrent)".

If you're going to jump down someone's throat and rant about how they don't understand or are playing word games, at least take the time to see if there is a reading that is consistent with what they are saying.

>There's no need to "agree" on what purchase means. It just has a meaning. That meaning doesn't come from either of us. If you disagree, you're simply wrong. The law and the definitions of words are not a matter of being negotiated in online comments, even though online comments misunderstanding descriptivism might have told you that they were.

We quite literally change the meaning of what words mean through common parlance, that includes online 'negotiation'. We constantly 'negotiate' the meaning of words as a society. Literally now literally means literally *and* figuratively.

For normal people 'purchase' doesn't mean rent indefinitely. There have also been tons of class-action law suits that have been settled over disputes of the meaning of the contract or that the contract is partially invalid as it would break the law. The meaning of the contract is quite literally what the words used actually mean.

If I purchase or already have a legal copy of a game, am I then morally wrong (and culpable) for downloading a copy of the internet? You seem to say that's not the case, but you can absolutely read the original comment in that way, as well as the way you're implying.

> since before you were born

Color TV didn't exist when I was born (or VCRs).

Your remark makes me think you don't know what you're talking about and just assume things without thinking for yourself.

Wow. You call copyright infringement "stealing" (which it is not) but give the company a pass for removing the content they paid for (which is much closer to "stealing").

Really hard to take this comment in good faith

> Wow. You call copyright infringement "stealing"

So does the US government. So does the EU court system.

> > I don't like what Sony is doing here, but > > but give the company a pass for removing the content they paid for

I didn't give the company any passes. What are you talking about?

> Really hard to take this comment in good faith

What you're reacting to isn't my comment.

No, the US government calls it "copyright infringement". If it was called "stealing", it would fall under the general theft laws. Instead, it has its own body of law.

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