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Comment by thesnide | Hacker News Reader

With DRM you never purchase _content_. You only purchase a _license_ to access it.

Words do matter. I sense possible legal grounds for reimbursments if it wasn't crystal clear to the layman.

They wrote "previously purchased Discovery content". Should I believe you or Sony's official statement? ;)

Anyway, never buy content you can't crack (make it drm-free) or even better, buy drm-free stuff from the start, but if you really want the best service with the highest quality that has the best portability go ask a pirate, it's been the same since 1600.

> They wrote "previously purchased Discovery content". Should I believe you or Sony's official statement? ;)

You should believe that Sony is trying to scam you. :-)

No their legal team would have wrote something like that:

Your previous purchased and limited license to consume media from our partner Discovery is hereby revoked as we can written in our EULA (you have accepted that with your first setup of our excellent product THE PS5 super-slim) we love our customers and have a great day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_promise

> Anyway, never buy content you can't crack (make it drm-free) or even better, buy drm-free stuff from the start

I agree entirely (in principle), but this isn't an option for certain platforms like the iOS App Store, or download-only games consoles (and I've been burned myself: most notably by EA removing their older games from the iOS App Store: not just them removing the ability to purchase old games, but even for people who had already paid for them to reinstall them (and who actually saves their IPA files? Is it even possible to install IPA files from a PC now that iTunes is dead?)

This is something that can only be done by law or something - IIRC, the recent pro-consumer legislation coming from the EU doesn't address "getting-to-keep-what-we-paid-for" - I'm hoping they'll get around to that soon, along with getting protections for data-sovereignty: it's kinda shocking how many popular Apps/SaaS services out there still don't let you export your data.

You can very well choose different platforms. That's the entire reason I don't buy iPhones or consoles.

You don't need EU mommy to regulate the entire industry and make it harder for the next ios / android alternative

You can definitely live like a hermit, but the problem is that more and more things don't have open alternatives.

> make it harder for the next ios / android alternative

If the regulation prevents an alternative from being malicious I see that as a good thing?

> You can definitely live like a hermit, but the problem is that more and more things don't have open alternatives.

This site is called "Hacker News", and not "Technology Hipster News". Since you likely are a hacker, you should have a pretty good idea what to do ... :-)

You're at least a decade late if you think "hacking" (in the sense of building things) is going to get you out of this situation. The problem with these platforms is network effects and lack of interoperability and not in the technical effort required to build an alternative.

This is in fact where regulation can help (and like the EU's DMA already attempts to) get us back to a state where you can actually "hack" your way out of it by building an alternative that will be viable because it can interoperate with the incumbents.

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Or, are you suggesting piracy? I mean I sure know what to do, but none of my non-technical friends know, and frankly I'd rather live in a world where I can just pay a reasonable sum and not have to spend time maintaining a Plex/Jellyfin/*arr stack.

> You're at least a decade late if you think "hacking" (in the sense of building things) is going to get you out of this situation. The problem with these platforms is network effects and lack of interoperability and not in the technical effort required to build an alternative.

In the 90s, the same "arguments" held for Microsoft's applications. The hackers decided to build GNU/Linux and other open source operating systems.

And Microsoft got hammered down by anti-monopolistic regulations, which allowed for an open web and thus the Linux desktop, exactly the kind of regulations GP's asking for (DMA).

> The hackers decided to build GNU/Linux and other open source operating systems.

Copyright law wasn't used to prevent adversarial interoperability back then. It does now, which is why you can't build alternative clients anymore unless you're out of reach of the US legal system (and even then, good luck getting it onto any app store since again, there are now gatekeepers to merely _installing_ software on one's machine).

>This is something that can only be done by law or something

I'm 100% on your side with that, artist should be fairly paid, consumer should not be f**'d, it's really that easy ;)

Pretty sure they are going to have to refund everyone. That has happened with these kind of B2B disagreements in the past, google stadia was the last one I think.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-get-your-google-stadia-re...

Although there is probably plenty of others.

Read your own article. The byline reads:

> Google is taking the unprecedented step of paying back users for all the games they bought on its cloud gaming platform.

Google _voluntarily_ refunded their customers. It's unheard of and was, frankly, extremely unexpected. Good for Google and good for Stadia customers.

In the same article it points out microsoft also refunded their ebooks when they deleted content people bought.

Assuming these were sold as a perpetual licence (and by the wording Sony used it looks like they were), by removing the content they are in breach of contract, that gets expensive and messy quickly, quicker easier and cheaper just to refund them.

There is obviously some kind of legal disagreement happening between Sony and Discovery, I doubt this is the end of it.

Ths smart move is to only refund users who get their lawyer to write a letter.

The terms will have said the license was perpetual for downloads made but only five years for redownload or streaming, as do the terms for iTunes, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, YouTube's store, Vudu and every significant player in the market.

But it was not really unprecedented. They gave full refunds when they shut down Google video.

I really don't like the idea that refunds make theft acceptable (and don't tell me this is not theft, because it is)

If someone broke into my house, stole something worth $100 and left behind $100 in cash, that wouldn't make it not theft, so why should this be different? If I buy a product, I should have full control over it for the purposes of personal use, nobody should have the right to take it from me without my consent, that's stealing and a refund doesn't justify it. If a corporation can do this and get away with it, the law has failed.

Voluntary refunds like this are often the result of a risk assessment. What is the risk to their brand, what is their risk legally. One could argue that they only did this to avoid damage to their brand and the damage to the industry if it had become the catalyst to laws changing around content licensing.

I hope PlayStation does not refund customers and that this is the catalyst we need to change content licensing to consumers. A purchased license should cross transcend platform lock-in and the removal of content from a given platform. If no platform exists for your content to be consumed then you should have the legal right to download the content.

It should not be legal to sell a perpetual or indefinite license on a specific platform. If it was clear that the license was only valid for x number of years consumers could factor that into their purchasing decision.

This already happened with Canal content on the PlayStation video store a few years back (and that unquestionably affected orders of magnitudes more customers).

Nothing will change about this legally, nor the vast majority of customers seemingly care very much.

The BBC got this right when they shut down their online store a few years back. Every customer was offered a full refund.

Oh my bad. I didn't know the store says "License This Movie" instead of "Buy Now" or "Own" on all the buttons.

Is this not also true with, say, a VHS tape? In what sense do you "own" it? You aren't legally allowed to copy it or whatever. It's still just a license.

You're allowed to copy a VHS tape, you're just not allowed to distribute copies of VHS tapes.

You still own the physical tape itself, and you have a perpetual right to play, copy, and modify the tape as much as you like, for personal use.

My point is that in a physical tape you still only own a license of the content. This is a slightly less restrictive license than digital DRM, and is governed by copyright law, but is still a license.

Of course you can copy it. You just can’t sell that copy to someone else while keeping your own copy too. That’s copyright infringement.

I’m not sure what you’re on about with “license” in this context. You own the VHS. Do with it what you like.

There are tons of things you can't do with it. You can't exhibit it publicly. You don't own the movie on the tape! You just own a tape.

I am refuting the original poster's claim that "With DRM you never purchase _content_. You only purchase a _license_ to access it." This is true, but is meant to imply there is an alternative. There isn't, a you only have a license to the content in all cases, including DRM-free physical media.

Ok, your original post was ambiguous then because you didn't talk about content at all, you talked about "in what sense do you own [A VHS]", so people explained how owning a VHS is different from licensing digital media.

Mostly that your license to the content of a VHS cannot be revoked arbitrarily after you purchase the VHS itself.

I suppose. But the original post also omitted this distinction. I’ll add that the same inability to revoke also applies to digital media with no DRM.

> for personal use

This is why it's still a license. Public performances are explicitly forbidden. So it's still not "yours."

That's not a license. That's a law. Laws are not licenses.

Go learn about land mark Universal vs Sony time shifting and RIAA v Diamond space shifting copyright cases.

Or, at very least stop spreading misinformation.

How unhelpful!

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