As always, the paying user has the worst experience. “Purchase” a show, can only watch on a certain console of a certain brand, no transfers, no backups, then it suddenly disappears from the library and nothing can be done.
If media companies insist on draconian DRM, then they should pay for full refunds to their loyal customers when one day they decide to delist that specific show.
I think when this happens you DO get a refund, (usually a coupon for the same service, but still). This is a situation where villanizing Sony would be, but not necessarily correct. Obviously they have no interest to remove previously purchased content from user libraries. (like this).
So the question is, on what possible grounds can a company change licensing AFTER sales have been made. This is the same fucking mess as with the soundtrack being retroactively removed from GTAIV. How is this legal?
A coupon for the same service is not and does not resemble a refund.
Yes, villainizing them is entirely correct. If they sold the license 100 years ago and stopped providing it, they should be legally liable for a 100% refund of the purchase price, plus interest. If they fucked up their contracts in a manner in which they aren’t able to serve the content to purchasers until the end of the time, it’s entirely their own problem.
When companies fight regulations they use statements THIS unreasonable to fight better legislation, for framing everyone who supports better regulation, as completely unreasonable whining anti capitalistic bigots, who just want regulation that makes conducting any business basically impossible.
With this logic, if your DVD rots, does the company who originally released the DVD owe you a full refund plus interest?
No, backing it up is your obligation.
A digital purchase means they owe you access, in the format your purchased, as long as they exist. Nothing short of that can possibly be acceptable if there is any copy protection at all.
God, I hope these bastards get sued 'cause little doubt they won’t be refunding the poor schmos who’ve just been robbed of their property.
To be fair, Sony might go for that. This is incredibly embarrassing for them as well, and it does erode the trust in their service which is really important for a marketplace like this. Sony will be handing out coupons probably, but this is still damage to their brand.
I’m sure they covered this in the terms of service that they know no one ever reads.
In many countries that wont work. The Terms of service need to only include reasonable and expectable clauses, as they are not negotionable.
And “purchase doesnt mean ownership, we take it from you anytime we want” is neither reasonable nor expectable.
Also this should run under criminal fraud imo. The customers were deliberately deceived by the term “purchase” into believing they would be granted ownership.
That argument might fly in the EU, but in the current US political climate? Not so sure. Hopefully they’ll keep making laws with actual teeth to drag these multinational corporations to change things that may lower their bottom line
That list of shows that’s being removed is huge too.
God I hope people reconsider purchasing products from companies that do these kind of things to them.
At some point you think if they get smacked up the side of their heads enough times that they will actually wake up and do something about it.
Modern consoles are a scam.
I still like having a console strictly for games, but not for media stuff. Plus since it’s an Xbox, you can subscribe to Game Pass and treat every game as a rental.
That doesn’t do anything to help game preservation though, which sucks. But between the sheer volume of games and the “every game is a rental” attitude, I treat new games as a one-time experience that I probably won’t care about returning to.
Fortunately though, the games I care most about having access to forever are easily backed up and can be played with an emulator if necessary.
Fucking assholes. This is why piracy is justifiable, and in some cases, even necessary.
“We sincerely thank you for your continued support.”
As in stfu and keep giving us money?
Looks perfectly translated to me
Absolutely insane.
I can understand extreme cases, like some sort of disputed IP where their contact to sell the content turns out not to be with the actual rights holder, resulting in no longer serving the content (with an unconditional full refund). But past that they should be legally required to host the content until the heat death of the universe.
Give it another 10 years, you won’t “own” anything. It’ll be “licensed.” Weird tho. Digital content is endless. But you can’t “own” it; physical things are finite, but we’re like here take it! It’s yours! Call a cop or shoot anyone trying to take it.
Seems backwards to me.
It’s all Discovery shows. They ended the agreement to have their shows on the playstation network. It’s more than likely due to the Warner Brothers Merger and them deciding to take all their toys away to try to force users onto HBO Max, but I don’t know the details here. There was probably nothing Sony could do. But if you paid for them individually via Sony then then Discovery should honor that as they got paid at the time of the sale.
There was probably nothing Sony could do
Wrong, Sony could issue full refunds to customers or ask WB the royalties back. Sony should had a clause in their contract with discovery that allowed them to host the video files indefinitely, if it was voided all the royalties to be refunded as a penalty fee.
When Google closed their digital magazine store, they let users download the PDF or to get a full refund.
Google again, closed stadia and everyone got a full refund even if all the devs were paid
When a game is delisted on Steam, Valve continues to host the files for previous customers.
But here no, they already got the money, they know that console users are used to just STFU, they saw that they can save a lot of money by deleting hundreds of TB of video content, and seized the opportunity
At least have the decency to do a partial refund where only the royalties paid to Discovery are kept. Or if not a money refund a store credit as goodwill. Or a prorated refund/store credit according to how many times it was viewed. Never viewed = full refund, viewed once, keep the price of a rental, and so on. Or force WB to transfer the license in another digital locker.
But no, nothing.
Had I purchased that video content just to see it disappear from my archive, I wouldn’t ever trust them anymore for future purchases and exclusively resort to piracy. (Well I do it already but this is an example) It’s a lose-lose situation for Sony and for WB. The rightholders do extensive campaigns “please pay for movies and show, don’t steal them”, then if someone believes them and *purchases" the video content, he is the one that will actually get something stolen
Yeah this is one of the reasons I’ve been slowly moving my gaming time over to Steam as they very rarely do stuff like this and if they delist the game, if you’ve already purchased the game you can still play it 99.99% of time. Sad to see Playstation go down this route.
"As of 31 December 2023, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library.
We sincerely thank you for your continued support.
Thank you,
PlayStation Store"
Since you didn’t read the article
Your point?
Unfortunately it’s the same situation on steam. You are only buying licenses to games you don’t actually own it, they can be taken away at any time with no recourse. Steam might be doing good now in this regard but it’s hard to say if it will stay like this forever.
The day Gabe Newell no longer owns Valve/Steam things will begin to change, I’m sure.
That’s 1318 items, according to that table, counting by seasons. Insane.
Whoever wrote that list probably isn’t being paid enough.
This has actually always been my reason for piracy. I’ve always been able to afford games, thankfully, so I’ve used piracy as a means of demoing games as demos became more and more rare and more commonly and more importantly I’ve used piracy as a means of preserving games. I have no problems paying for a game if I can also keep it indefinitely and play it forever, and thanks to piracy that is actually possible.
Some series have a weird pattern of deletion.
LA Ink | Season 1
LA Ink | Season 6
LA Ink | Season 7
Lolwut. Does it mean 2-5 are still availiable or they never were?
It’s all Discovery Channel’s properties, and it’s a good day to rewatch their classics and seed them.
just got my multi season science fiction show downloaded via the salty seas. apparantly it would cost $50-85 to download or stream from the “legit” vendor. A vendor that bought the rights and closed the ability to access previous seasons. So, not going well for the loyal customers.
Now THAT is stealing.
almost like “purchasing” it was the real crime.
sony is going to steal
