Playstation store will remove customer’s purchased movies
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Especially with the recent fragmentation of the streaming market, it is time for consumers to return to giving content producers the middle finger until they sort their shit out.
I get it, this is the failure of a service, but piracy is hardly the only option.
Piracy still not required. More convenient, yes. But not required.
People will pirate. Whether or not it's right or wrong is irrelevant. even if it's not "That much harder to X, Y, Z", people will do what is easiest.
And piracy isn't illegal? I know which one is definitely more legal and more ethical.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/924197-REG/case_logic...
or
https://www.amazon.com/Snap-N-Store-Double-Storage-6-125-SNS...
> .. and hardware many people do not own anymore
https://www.amazon.com/Blu-Ray-Player-External-Laptop-Burner...
~3 months of Netflix standard gets you storage for 100s of discs plus a drive to play them on.
In the case of DVDs, you can just back them up by imaging the DVD with all parts intact—no deCSS necessary. This is partially what made DMCA anticircumvention legislation so braindead. The people hardest hit were those whose behavior was otherwise ethical and legal. The folks selling burned/counterfeit copies at the flea market or in the street, on the other hand, were undeterred, because (a) DMCA didn't make anything impossible—it just made a new class of things illegal—but the thing the bootleggers were doing (copyright infringement) was _already_ illegal! and (b) system used on DVDs restricts playback; it's not a copy protection system—because (again) if you want to copy a DVD, you can: you just make sure to copy the "DRM" parts, too.
There doesn't appear to be a way to purchase a lot of content with a guarantee that you can access anytime you like.
This is outside the scope of the "studio canal" movies. But you're correct. And if I'm being frank (and probably being a bit of an ass too), there's no inherent right to view this content.
Personally, I view this the same way I do AAA games. There's so many good games out there without all the BS of modern (read: greedy) AAA games that I don't feel the least bit of need to play them. I pay for good games, and I get to play good games.
Don't let FOMO around shows and movies that companies don't want to make available in a reasonable manner control your watching habits. Pick other (often better, even if not as shiny) entertainment, and support those creators.
If content creator want people to buy their content, then they should sell it.
Cant do that with DVD.
I’m not saying you are wrong for not wanting those terms.
Even DVDs will fail this test.
I'd say that most modern media piracy is still a matter of cost and convenience. If you're the kind of person that watches a couple of movies a week, at $20 a pop the cost adds up fast. Plus you have to go to the store or order online and wait for a DVD to show up. With piracy you can watch right away. It's one of the reasons Netflix was such a game-changer.
Somehow along the way a lot of people got it into their heads that all entertainment (and also news and educational materials. Basically, anything that doesn't have a physical form) should be free (free as in beer and free as in freedom) and they'll go through some impressive mental contortions to rationalize their piracy any way they can.
"Thomas Aquinas [argued] ... a law only need to be obeyed if it is [among other things] ... for the common good."[1]
The question we have to ask is: Is current copyright law unjust?
Well, it allows telling people that they are buying something (in large print, even if the fine print says something else) then taking that thing away.
And copyright on digital goods allows unprecedented control over how tools are used, when and where content can be shown, and how things that we've paid for can be retained and resold.
And it is also clear that recent copyright laws were written for the benefit of a few corporations, not for the common good.
So I'm beginning to believe that current copyright law is unjust and should be disobeyed as a principled form of civil disobedience, not merely for convenience or to save money.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_unjust_law_is_no_law_at_all
Maybe in theory. In practice, I disagree. Care to elaborate if you mean anything other than what's technically said on the box? Even the most recent DVD releases work on the oldest of DVD players without any firmware updates/online drm that could revoke a license or something.
That's clearly not true, since starting from the 70s up until fairly recently one could always buy the movies to keep for life.
> Even DVDs will fail this test.
You'll have to explain that thinking, since they don't. I buy a DVD (which is the only way I buy movies) and it's mine to keep forever. If I get tired of it, I can resell it to someone else.
They are selling it. Just because they're not selling in precisely the way you want them to, that does not mean that you're entitled to the content anyway.
You justify your piracy all you want, but let's not pretend that you'd fork over the cash to legitimize your entire library of pirated entertainment if it showed up tomorrow on some store that offered exclusively freedom-respecting DRM-free downloads (okay, maybe you would, but most people wouldn't).
Not the same. Honestly they should be forced to say "rent until we change our minds" instead of "buy" in the advertisements and interfaces.
Do you mean rent? See parent poster's clarification for the term "buy":
> and when I mean buy, i do not mean "rent for a non specified duration"
> They are selling it.
The word "sell" means something different. They are not selling it if all they are doing is renting it.
Which is their right if that's what they want, but there needs to be some legislation to prevent them from calling it a sale when it's really merely a short-term rental.
I think it's only natural that people make the same assumption when it comes to buying a movie on a service like the PlayStation store. "Buying" ultimately means "owning that thing" to people. You can put all the legalese you want in the fine print, but it's flat out fucking bullshit to be frank. You shouldn't need to be a lawyer to understand what clicking the button labeled "buy now" really does.
this is true. I do like to support content creators.
The thing about TV and movies for me is that I hardly every re-watched things so streaming felt ok (I still do this). Though the pandemic though I did bust out some of my very modest DVD collection and rewatched and dug a little deeper, which I enjoyed.
Some of the DVD "extras" where pretty fun and haven't migrated to streaming/youtube. (for example some of the music in "The Life Aquatic" was music from "The Royal tannenbaums reversed and adjusted. Written by a guy from Devo).
Physical media (especially 4K Blu Ray Discs with their ~80-90GB movie sizes) are higher quality than pirate streams, have resale value, are fully legal, and you can share them easily with friends without them raising an eyebrow.
They're not a real alternative for most people.
Nobody ever said you had the right to just conveniently watch any movie you like, however you like, and never pay a dime if there is a reasonable way to pay but less convenient.
I'm not sure that's true. DRM has never prevented piracy. It's to the point that I'm not even sure they were trying to.
> Physical media (especially 4K Blu Ray Discs with their ~80-90GB movie sizes) are higher quality
Maybe, but when they even have higher fidelity they seem to always be worse in other ways. No subtitles. Subtitles that you CANNOT turn off. Subtitles only in your local country language (so no watching with visiting friends and family), even though in other countries the same movie is being sold with the "right" subtitles. Not the "good edition".
Unless you have a big 4K TV you cannot even buy the quality experience that piracy provides, at any price.
As a customer, using legal options is worse than piracy.
Maybe for movies, but game consoles have had a lot of success with it and have prevented a piracy.
I recently tried torrenting for the first time in a while, and it seems like many of the sites I used to use (e.g PB, KAT) are either dead or mining crypto.
You may assume that other streaming companies will do similar things. They're all squeezed between customers who want to pay low prices for the service and rights holders who want high prices for their concent. The rights holders offer a lower price for time-limited access than for permanent access, and the streaming companies take that offer. Film at 11.
Note that this happened in Germany, where judges generally treat fineprint as "Whatever."* - the way something is communicated and customer's reasonable expectations matter a lot.
* Where fineprint contradicts more prominent text.
All this bad faith is doing is pushing people to pirate more, not less.
In the physical world, if I "buy" something, I can lend it, give it, or even sell it to somebody else.
Alos, the fact that the content is linked to an account rather than a biological person raises other issues about digital identity.
Happened to me with Bandcamp. Support was kind and helpful. After I gave them proof of my purchases, they just merged the collections to my current one. Excellent experience. I wish it was always like this.
In some cases this has been tried in court and the decision has been that a sale is a sale and that you can do what you will with it.
See, for instance, https://www.lw.com/thoughtLeadership/CJEURulesResaleofUsedSo... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
After all, why sell what you can rent?
The prices were not really outlandish, though they were representative of catering to a new and niche market. It's just that the barrier to copying was so low and distribution was so easy and risk free.
Basically, it was the equivalent of a physical store with no employees, locks, or security systems. Thus everyone went in and got what they wanted without putting money in the "honor box".
Obviously that's a silly example, but my point is just because something is in a EULA doesn't make it legal, and even if it legal, maybe it shouldn't be.
I skip these licensing games and pirate video content. I pay for music and video games (not Ubisoft) because those industries have made it just as easy as piracy as well as reasonably affordable.
If they're not legally obligated to tell the truth about something, they'll bullshit around it even if the difference is a fraction of a percent positive.
Not defending their behavior. In fact I hate their license!
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/you-have-not-bought-your-com...
Generally the way I view it: if drm is involved, purchase does not mean purchase, it means rent for an unknown time period. I judge prices for digital content accordingly. If drm is not involved you are always on the hook for your own backups.
Is this just a middle manager somewhere trying to make a quick buck by scrapping a loss making product?
I know Apple in particular traditionally had/has a method to back up your movie purchases physically to your hard disk, but that is probably a little blurrier in the world of tvOS and iOS.
For iTunes music, Apple has always stated that music storage and backup is the customer's responsibility, that re-downloads are essentially provided as a courtesy.
AFAIK movie "purchases" are still by-and-large only available with DRM, so ultimately I still have to rely on Apple for continuing access to such movies, though, locally backed-up or not.
> For iTunes music, Apple has always stated that music storage and backup is the customer's responsibility, that re-downloads are essentially provided as a courtesy.
On the other hand music is mostly DRM-free these days (is there actually any notable music store left that sells DRM'd files?), especially including iTunes/Apple, so while as you say re-downloads might be provided as a courtesy, I have absolutely no need to rely on Apple for ongoing access to my purchased music collection.
As you mentioned, iTunes music hasn't had and DRM in many years.
Still, TV streamers don't really have significant storage space, so that's kind of a problem for the average person.
Since Apple renamed iTunes and turned it into a Music-only app, my movie library seems to have moved to the Apple TV app's "Library" section.
I chose a movie and clicked the cloud download icon. The movie downloaded, and now it just has a checkbox in the interface. I don't seem to have any other control from within the TV app (it doesn't even let me delete it off my system from that interface, and I don't have a lot of confidence that this app is guaranteeing that the app will remain locally downloaded without intervention).
Once I clicked the download icon, I notice that the file is located in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Movies/[Movie Name]/[Movie File Name].m4v
Presumably, I could back up that file manually on my own and it would work even if taken off the iTunes Store (Hopefully?), but that it might not work if Apple went out of business.
If the rights holder pulls the license and you own the movie on that platform, you no longer own the movie. Digital purchases need to be able to follow a user from service to service but I'll be long gone before that happens.
retro gaming has none of these flaws. you get a physical copy, no dlc to download or patches to install, and I don't need to update my machine to play anything, passable bugs usually or just fun glitches, and you get a collectable that can be displayed on a shelf. win win win win.
Digital gaming is like a junkies idea of a good time. consumption driven, interchangeable, constantly changing and needing the next fix....no respect for the gamers they milk, especially since their profit margins are so high with digital consummables and loot
All that said, I usually buy my games off GOG when they're available there, simply because I like the guarantee that the games will continue to work even if they decide that I'm not cool enough to serve.
[1] https://forums.evga.com/Steam-replies-to-what-will-happen-if...
Valve is currently facing a situation where a game on Steam that includes third-party DRM will completely stop working in September of this year. There's no way they'll be able to follow through on this commitment outside of their own titles.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/you-wont-be-able-to-redownl...
If you link your GOG and Steam accounts, some publishers allow GOG to give you access to the games you own on Steam on their platform :)
I haven't seen anything new offered to me in years, but I haven't bought from steam in years. Likely a correlation.
Thanks for bringing this up.
I found that I would simply hold off on buying each new title for "a year or two" and if I wanted it still and it wasn't on gog I would buy from steam. I found that after "a year or two" I had no interest in it. I'm not sure why that is - likely psychological - but it kept me on gog.
So, I agree - gog is great. I appreciate them. But its hard for most to make that shift.
For those who don't know about MoviesAnywhere, basically if you own a movie on iTunes or Google Play (or whatever Google has renamed it to since last I ever looked) or vice versa or on both for that matters, it unlocks the movie on all other platforms. So anytime I buy movies at Walmart if they have a code I'll unlock it directly and double check that MoviesAnywhere is working as intended. This should guarantee I would assume that if one service stops selling movies, I can still watch them on the other remaining services. If not, at least I bought the physical movie which remains unused in the meantime.
It also looks to be funded by a selection of major studios, does that mean it only supports releases from those studios?
In my experience, both. I use the app on devices that don't use my shared iTunes account (vacation home for example), but other than that, everything I've looked for shows up in my iTunes library.
I need to look into if I can back up my digital movie purchases onto physical media. This maneuver is outrageous.
Of course you can terminate the contract, but for rented flats or houses that includes 3 to 9 months of notification period (depending on how long the contract is already running).
Germany and Austria are not exactly "at-will" countries: existing legislation is about balancing the interests of both parties, and when in doubt favors the regular person.
Customers'. It's not targeting one person :)
Sadly it's seeming more and more like this is the last console generation that will have this support.
Same thing with arcade cabinets, manual ICE sports cars ($20,000 1991 Honda Beat anyone?)
I just downloaded a massive dump of every playstation 1, 2, and 3 and play it on sd card on the original hardware.
Only if a game is interesting/or i like I end up purchasing.
DRM-free is the only solution.
That said, I believe that many in the world who say things like 'crypto solves this' have ill intentions and are looking to introduce more bag holders to the world. I think it would help if you explained why you believe this. It would certainly have helped me.
I hope you have a pleasant day man.
I encourage you to look beyond what you've read about crypto.
But the part that actually solves the problem is the digital ownership contract, and there is basically no benefit in this situation from using blockchains.
So "crypto" wouldn't be the solution.
But basically you can solve this with crypto in fashion that
A) Allows you to actually own the game/movie
B) Allows you to redownload it from third parties in case the first party disappears, including incentives for third parties to actually want to serve you the data
C) Allows you to have a reasonable second hand market (such as with physical goods) that both allows you to resell your stuff, and doesn't completely cannibalize the IP owner because people buy the movie second hand for cents and immediately cell it for the same price after watching it. This is done with fees and/or timelocks and/or max transfers.
The existence of some platform (crypto or otherwise) where (a) (b) and (c) are supported is not a solution, since obvious financial incentives and all the historical experience clearly show that Sony (and others) will distribute their content there if and only if that platform can prohibit these things, especially (c).
The key problem is a misalignment of incentives where content producers have a strong desire to distribute things only in a user-hostile way and the market power to do so - it's a market problem, not a tech problem, it is not possible to solve this problem by providing some new user-friendly platform or technology.
My original reddit post explaining all this (it was only focused on games, but something similar could be done to movies) did include the fact that the game developer would indeed have external agreements with distributors/publishers/etc (think steam, gamestop, microsoft store, walmart, amazon, etc) to make all this work.