We need some kind of modern equivalent to the old proposed Digital Media Consumer's Rights Act but which protects people's rights to digital media they buy. These should never be sold and then taken away with no compensation like this. We need a law that forces companies to treat digital files the same as a physical purchase. They can't take it away and have to allow people to resell and loan out as well. And in cases of online games where you can buy something, and then later they can ban you which deprives you of being able to use what you bought, that should come with requirements that the company must provide full compensation of the purchase price. It should also ban EULA's and TOS from defining these things as only licenses even though they are structured as a purchase in a store.
I know it'll never happen with the people we have in government these days, and the anti-consumer organizations, like the ESA, that are out there now claiming things like running private servers for Minecraft is illegal and piracy. (Yes, they really said that. Despite the fact that Minecraft has always provided the server and allowed this for 15+ years)
They make it up as they go along. Their 2005 Audio-CD EULA includes provisions purporting to require the immediate deletion of all copies if a user files for personal bankruptcy
What's funny is that Sony has done this before![0] I've had a personal boycott against Sony products due to this.
"The feature was controversially removed by Sony since system firmware update 3.21, released on April 1, 2010.[2] A class action lawsuit was filed against Sony on behalf of users, but was dismissed with prejudice in 2011 by a federal judge. The judge stated: "As a legal matter, ... plaintiffs have failed to allege facts or articulate a theory on which Sony may be held liable."[3] However, this decision was overturned in a 2014 appellate court decision[4] finding that plaintiffs had indeed made clear and sufficiently substantial claims. Ultimately, in 2016, Sony settled with users who had installed Linux or had purchased a PlayStation 3 based upon the availability of OtherOS."
Yep. I had tons of Sony games across the first three Playstation consoles. I was a grad student with a PS3 at the time and I actually used Yellow Dog Linux on it as a computer to write papers when my laptop broke. Then the update came and I chose to ignore it, but that meant I couldn't play online games. Soon new games required a firmware update (still remember putting in the Dark Souls disc and being stunned I wasn't allowed to play it!).
And with games it's just getting worse (Sony announced they won't make discs starting 2028; the Switch 2 takes carts but very, very few games release on a cart). If you care about control over the games you purchased, if you care about going back and playing older games, then the only choice is to use platforms that are DRM free. (Or, well, non-legal means.)
True, but Steam still controls Steam and they can change their terms whenever they want. But for now it's ok, at least. And their hardware is happily open: I've played a bunch of games I got on GOG, DRM-free, on my Steam Deck, for example.
I don't disagree with you, but open hardware DOES make a difference, in the worst case scenario I can turn the hardware into a GOG machine, or into a PC.
Also if they ever lock my library, I am turning to piracy (I have 1000+ games)
Agreed, for sure. Open hardware is the only way forward honestly. As someone who has traditionally played mostly on consoles, it does make me sad, partially because consoles are so much less finicky. But the control is worth it (and work on things like Proton has made playing older games so much smoother).
Now if the RAM companies make it so you won't ever be able to afford your own hardware and every game company pushes cloud-only gaming... Well, we aren't there yet thankfully, but I fear it'll happen.
I boycot Sony since they blocked my PSN account, which got hacked due to them! Purchases I made are not available, ... I really took a disliking before when they refused to fix my Vaio laptop, ... this was the last drop!
Good, but only laws will keep them on check.
If I boycotted all companies that have done something wrong, I would boycott all of them. I keep that option for the worst offenders. Laws and regulations is what keeps companies in check.
Plenty of people purchase digital movie rentals from Apple, Youtube, etcetera because they know they will watch it once, and the lower price in exchange for a temporary license is acceptable to them. I don't think banning this is pro-consumer.
It should, however, be illegal to tell your customers that they are purchasing/buying media without explicit "Rent" language (which implies a non-expiring license) when you do not yourself have the right to grant non-expiring licenses.
Seems like a bad assumption at this point even if it goes against expectations. We've seen on multiple occasions now from different companies where a digital purchase wasn't forever. This is no way an endorsement of the behavior, but if that's your assumption then the quip "you know what happens when you assume" wins again.
Because they were purchases, not rentals. Under no circumstances would a customer reasonably assume that their purchase would be revoked for reasons completely outside of their control.
Ever since Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. started offering "free" online storage for photos, ever since streaming started to be popular, I have ALWAYS extolled the virtues of µSD card slots in phones and owning your own media (i.e., purchasing CDs and DVDs). Many people would give me a hard time about this, calling me a Luddite, but I will never lose access to my photos, music, or movies ... unless it is the end of the world as we know it, which I happily have on R.E.M.'s Eponymous album.
Why would anyone call you a luddite for advocating for MicroSDs? Of course the reason SD were pushed away (at least for Apple) was to offer cloud backup as the only option with no alternatives.
I've heard there's a service called PirateBay that offers movies free of DRM. Maybe people considering being Sony customers in the future should give it a try.
The Pirate Bay is considered one of the worst pirate sites now. Of course, if you can find what you want, then you can, but any piracy community will recommend against it due to nonexistent moderation (eg. against viruses), poor navigation, and lack of uploads due to them not issuing new uploader accounts for several years now.
and redefined the terms of "sold" in their contract to mean "rent, with a one-time fee"
it is more immoral to sell something you can't legally "sell" (permanently and irrevocably transfer ownership of a product), than to pirate that content (which has no level of expected payment)
The honest product description would be: "You are purchasing a revocable license to stream this content at our discretion, for an unspecified period, subject to change without notice."
Nobody would buy that. So they say "buy" instead, and courts have largely let them get away with it. Until legislation actually forces the word "buy" to mean ownership, this will keep happening.
Not the first time and not going to be the last. Unless you can download it to hardware you completely own and can make a backup, it's not really yours. Online purchases I can get on with, like Bandcamp are pretty good. I bought the new Globular album on CD and it took 10 days to get to me from the UK. I also had access to high quality downloads. That works, these other models do not.
Bandcamp rules. I do still subscribe to Apple Music for cheap streaming, but for albums I really like, I'll spend the $8 on bandcamp for the high quality album download. Better support for the artist, and protection against license-pulling BS like this.
Wait, people trusted a corporation and got screwed?!? Why, that's...unheard of!(My wife, bless her, has "purchased" dozens of movies on amazon. I warned her that when the amazon wind changes, she may regret those purchases. I got the look.)
And with more and more content being distributed digitally, and even Sony announcing that physical disks won't be a thing from 2028 [0], the days of media ownership are gone. The only way to "own" content is it being DRM free (rare) or piracy. And ironically, DRMs justify the existence of piracy.
It used to be that streaming services were an excellent option even over torrenting because of the ease of access and use.
Now we're not even getting to retain what we buy, this is not a streaming service, these were sold to users individually.
We've gone full circle where I honestly believe pirating is a far better offering.
The root of the problem is these ridiculous content licensing agreements, it should be very very obvious to the customer when they're buying that "Hey, you will own this until X date when our content licensing agreement is finished"
I have a similar grief with YouTube movies although in that one, they don't play UHD. Some do like Valerian plays at least in 1080P, most movies are capped to 480P unless you have an "approved device" eg. something probably riddled with ads.
A long time ago I worked in the video codec area and was shown then that the most difficult videos to compress (i.e. with the most compressed bytes resulting in the file) were cartoons, because of the sharp edges, etc.
Not sure if it is still the case today with the latest generations of ultra-advanced codecs.
They should at least make an effort to let you sync them into MoviesAnywhere which is supposed to solve the "I have this on iTunes, but not Android TV" problem by unlocking it across platforms if you sync your accounts. They should really let you permanently keep movies on defunct platforms as part of your standard MoviesAnywhere movie collection.
Movies Anywhere works by aggregating the active digital access licenses you have participating partner services. The problem here is Sony won't be able to give any active digital access licenses for these movies to users after September 1st, let alone one which allows them to transfer that through Movies Anywhere.
It's typical "you own nothing" logic to the point the companies selling you that also don't even own it.
It's more "streaming/delivery operators which also have some of their own licensed content":
- Disney -> Disney+/Hulu
- Universal/NBC -> Peacock
- Warner Bros. -> Max
- Lionsgate -> Lionsgate+
- Sony Pictures -> The Sony services relevant to the article (note: the Sony services sell more than just Sony Pictures content)
They never needed to, but it actually makes them more money because a revenue share model through Movies Anywhere makes sense. StudioCanal does not sell streaming/delivery services directly to consumers, a revenue share model between streaming providers would not make them more money, and Sony would have no influence on StudioCanal doing so anyways.
The announcement only seems to have been sent to users in the UK and MoviesAnywhere is a US only service. Also StudioCanal are ultimately the rightsholder who would need to join MoviesAnywhere, and they are not members.
(I am a bit surprised they didn't bung Google and StudioCanal a bit of money to move them to Google Play to avoid the bad publicity though.)
Class actions are usually not very effective. Each affected individual will receive $0.03 and the company will pay 0.5% of the money it made from this maneuver. What actually works is the opposite, mass small claims lawsuits for refunds, because that way the cost of handling those cases is much higher for the company than for the individual.
That's why I pirate content and will continue to pirate content. I'm not hurting artists. I go to shows and premiers and book signings. I'm perfectly fine with stealing from publishing cartels.
Anyone remotely surprised at their history of utter contempt for the end-user need only remind themselves of SVP Steve Heckler's remarks to conference attendee's in 2000
"The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams ... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what ... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user."
The remarks of Stewart Baker of the DHS admonishing Sony are as relevant today as they were then; namely that "it's your intellectual property - it's not your computer."
I haven't bought a single Sony product since then. I used to have a Sony walkman, clock radio, buy classical Sony CDs (or their sub brands), etc, nearly got an original PlayStation.
I wrote a letter to them after the rootkit fiasco saying they've lost a consumer for life. Didn't get a real response. Wrote to them last anti DRM day. Didn't get a response.
Really, this is the only power one has in capitalism -- don't buy their products.
Reminds me of 1984, not the book itself, but the time when Amazon deleted it from everyone's Kindle because of some sort of copyright issue. I think that's when most of us first realized that the digital media being purchased doesn't really belong to you.
No legal disruption is possible - these are the terms content holders insist on. Illegal disruption already happened and you already have access to it, but you're not using it because you don't want to break the law.
A friend of mine owned the first Ipod, and diligently ripped all his cd's and cut and pasted them too his device. I asked if he had backups, and he said he had the cd's. I told him too make a copy, just in case the Apple mafia came too delete his stuff. He didn't, and then after a move he lost or scratched many of his CD's. His only backup WAS the ripped MP3's. A few years later Apple deleted all of his music claiming he hadn't purchased them. He didn't even know how to download music. Every single MP3 he had he ripped himself...
I'm surprised movies haven't yet moved to DRM free on purchases the way music did on iTunes back in 2009. With movie files being so large and people having streaming services integrated in their TV's I can't imagine there is all that much incentive for people to share them anyway. The only thing it does is help prevent situations like this.
And for some non-geoblocked music, if you want to actually purchase the song as MP3, there's no way unless you have a Mac or Windows PC to install iTunes (too bad for Linux users).
https://uk.7digital.com/ has a lot of songs available in MP3 format, but not as many as on iTunes.
I know it'll never happen with the people we have in government these days, and the anti-consumer organizations, like the ESA, that are out there now claiming things like running private servers for Minecraft is illegal and piracy. (Yes, they really said that. Despite the fact that Minecraft has always provided the server and allowed this for 15+ years)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/12/summary-claims-against...
And with games it's just getting worse (Sony announced they won't make discs starting 2028; the Switch 2 takes carts but very, very few games release on a cart). If you care about control over the games you purchased, if you care about going back and playing older games, then the only choice is to use platforms that are DRM free. (Or, well, non-legal means.)
Still walled garden, but they act way better.
Now if the RAM companies make it so you won't ever be able to afford your own hardware and every game company pushes cloud-only gaming... Well, we aren't there yet thankfully, but I fear it'll happen.
It was a copyright violation. Which, I don't give one fuck about.
It should, however, be illegal to tell your customers that they are purchasing/buying media without explicit "Rent" language (which implies a non-expiring license) when you do not yourself have the right to grant non-expiring licenses.
And Sony made it easy for them too by using this verbiage: “previously purchased content”
it is more immoral to sell something you can't legally "sell" (permanently and irrevocably transfer ownership of a product), than to pirate that content (which has no level of expected payment)
Nobody would buy that. So they say "buy" instead, and courts have largely let them get away with it. Until legislation actually forces the word "buy" to mean ownership, this will keep happening.
What are people to do if they want to stay on the non-pirate/legal side of this but also prevent being royally F-ed?
[0] https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-produc...
Now we're not even getting to retain what we buy, this is not a streaming service, these were sold to users individually.
We've gone full circle where I honestly believe pirating is a far better offering.
The root of the problem is these ridiculous content licensing agreements, it should be very very obvious to the customer when they're buying that "Hey, you will own this until X date when our content licensing agreement is finished"
Not hidden by design in some dense ToS.
> What's the name of that website?
I tell them to use yandex, they will find plenty of such websites...
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48730904
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48691346
I have a similar grief with YouTube movies although in that one, they don't play UHD. Some do like Valerian plays at least in 1080P, most movies are capped to 480P unless you have an "approved device" eg. something probably riddled with ads.
Not sure if it is still the case today with the latest generations of ultra-advanced codecs.
I don't partake in downloading anymore but I do go to streaming sites
It's typical "you own nothing" logic to the point the companies selling you that also don't even own it.
- Disney -> Disney+/Hulu
- Universal/NBC -> Peacock
- Warner Bros. -> Max
- Lionsgate -> Lionsgate+
- Sony Pictures -> The Sony services relevant to the article (note: the Sony services sell more than just Sony Pictures content)
They never needed to, but it actually makes them more money because a revenue share model through Movies Anywhere makes sense. StudioCanal does not sell streaming/delivery services directly to consumers, a revenue share model between streaming providers would not make them more money, and Sony would have no influence on StudioCanal doing so anyways.
(I am a bit surprised they didn't bung Google and StudioCanal a bit of money to move them to Google Play to avoid the bad publicity though.)
I guess residuals are a made up thing.
At some point, being more honest about what artists get paid will probably help the middlemen more than harm them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
Anyone remotely surprised at their history of utter contempt for the end-user need only remind themselves of SVP Steve Heckler's remarks to conference attendee's in 2000
"The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams ... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what ... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user."
https://web.archive.org/web/20090318115847/http://www.nyfair...
The remarks of Stewart Baker of the DHS admonishing Sony are as relevant today as they were then; namely that "it's your intellectual property - it's not your computer."
https://web.archive.org/web/20051229031842/http://www.mp3new...
I wrote a letter to them after the rootkit fiasco saying they've lost a consumer for life. Didn't get a real response. Wrote to them last anti DRM day. Didn't get a response.
Really, this is the only power one has in capitalism -- don't buy their products.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-ki...
You will own nothing.
Simple example: "The Things of Life", a classic French movie from 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Things_of_Life
No way to get it in the US. No physical media, no streaming. It is on Apple TV ... in France.
You can torrent it.
Utterly brokem model.
Music is the same btw, Apple Music and Spotify geoblock music. Workaround is to add to your library when traveling in EU. Insane.
https://uk.7digital.com/ has a lot of songs available in MP3 format, but not as many as on iTunes.