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PlayStation To Delete A Ton Of TV Shows Users Already Paid For::Sony says Mythbusters and more Discovery TV shows are going away whether you bought them or not
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Amazon does the same thing. You don’t own digital content you pay for, you’re renting it.
You’re paying to use their license, piracy or buying the media physically is the only way to own it.
If the button says"buy", ownership is inferred. That’s a lie, of course.
The problem is that what you’re buying is a license. Of course it has to be a license, because unlike a physical good, anything delivered digitally could be replicated infinitely, and of course you wouldn’t be allowed to do something like open your own storefront to resell copies of it. Nor would you legally be allowed to play it on the radio, as background music in a store, etc.
“Buy” isn’t really that different here than if you bought a ticket to a concert; of course you wouldn’t be able to attend next year with the same ticket, but you still bought something. The problem is that with digital licenses, they can be INCREDIBLY varied, and sellers don’t make even a small attempt to clarify what the terms are.
You use the word ownership, but at least from a legal standpoint, that doesn’t really mean anything intuitive, unless it means you hold all rights to the IP (which, again, you don’t). It would be nice if there was some widespread legal definition and norms about “ownership of a digital copy”, but no such concept exists, and frankly the rights holders are not incentivized to try to create something like this.
“Not incentivized”!
They like using the current word “buy” because people think it means they “own” a digital copy. Since that’s not true what we’re really saying here is that they like lying because that makes them more money.
I think the more honest term is “rent”. A normal rental agreement online is for like 48hrs. This is a rental agreement for a much longer, but unspecified, time period.
You’d think a court case would clear this up. But probably not.
Part of the problem is that court cases don’t materialize from nothing. A judge can only rule on a case before them. So you would need someone to bring out a specific complaint against a specific party. So there needs to be a lot of money on the line for someone who actually feels they can win. A class action against all online media storefronts just isn’t that.
Also, it’s a difficult case because the terms of the legal license that each customer are being asked to read and agree to ARE being upheld properly – so you either have to make the case that asking a customer to agree to terms digitally that they’ve pretty please read isn’t binding (which kills all digital commerce, because it all becomes a liability nightmare!), or, that the website etc is materially misleading / misrepresenting the agreements; we’ve talked about consumers maybe being prone to misunderstanding “buy” here, but I really don’t believe it’s a legal slam dunk.
If anything, the faster path to improve this the way you’re looking for would be legislation.
You own it as long as they have a license to host and stream it.
They should be offering refunds for this at least, but you literally cannot own something that permanently lives on someone else’s device.
If you want to truly on something, you need to control physical access to it. If there is an option to download the media when you buy it, and you can store it on your own device, then you own it. If not, then you only have access as long as you’re paying someone else for access to their storage.
Which is almost impossible now. You can’t even play offline games without internet access because companies force you to use their app to launch it.
I thought I would be able to get around that system with EA by purchasing a hard copy of the game circa 2016, but nope, I just bought a plastic case to throw away. I miss the old days of owning things.
Well, I guess now is as good a time as any to become a pirate. Drink up me hearties, yo-ho!
Set the Jolly Rogers sailing again!
Fuck paying for tv now. Im done. This has been stupid for a long time. Im so done. Back to the pirate life.
NOT OK
OK UNDER THE LICENSE YOU AGREED TO SO IT’S YOUR OWN FAULT
– Sony
It’s an abusive relationship - “look what you made me do”
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CYBERPANTS
I’m hearing those are delayed and will be 30% more expensive while only going to your knees. If you want ankle length pants that costs more.
I’ve pretty much switched to streaming and paying for content. This makes me question that decision. This just makes the pirates look right.
I’ve switched to streaming and don’t “buy” anything. If content isn’t available on those few streaming sites I’ll try a different provider but I will not “buy” (eg rent for more money).
It’s all a word game though. I think I actually do have one movie on Amazon. Enough people were over and wanted to watch it that we felt the larger rental fee (“buy” option) was worth it.
ComiXology is an interesting example of this. They have a shitty UI and an odd attempt to emulate the “collector” experience (obviously I think it’s horrible). It’s like a bad drug trip of skeuomorphism. I quickly decided we’d never “buy” anything there either.
Piracy has always been the better choice
It’s always been a balance between getting the stuff instantly and for a charge or waiting a few minutes and having to look for the item and maybe not being able to find it.
If you’re paying for it and you’re still not able to find it then there is no benefit to streaming. All they had to do was make streaming just a little bit better and experience than piracy. It’s actually a pretty low bar because they’ve got all the access and the infrastructure to be able to do this but lacking that, well, like my computer science teacher always used to say " information wants to be free "
Obviously
I went back to mp3s and flacs for my music a few years ago. And quickly followed that up with my own Plex server. Two of the best decisions I’ve ever made. If you’re remotely tech savvy it takes no time at all and having every tv show, film, music, video that has ever released on all of my devices at any time within seconds is pretty sweet, for near-free
I’m leaving Plex for Jellyfin. It’s free, and Plex has been pushing bloat for so long, I can’t be bothered with it. It used to be great, just open Plex and there’s your media. But now it’s full of random streaming channels and shit. It takes multiple non-intuitive clicks to get to what I want. I tried Jellyfin and it’s perfect, just like Plex used to be.
If you’re using an Android TV device like the nVidia Shield Pro, I recommend also installing Kodi for playback. It has much better codec support meaning less transcoding (and further quality loss), and there’s a few oddities in the Jellyfin Client subtitle support.
Took me about a day of Googling and faffing about to get everything working and it pumping out all the full quality audio formats to my AVR. Seems that by default it likes putting everything in stereo.
Yes I personally use Emby now, but I would recommend Jellyfin these days instead of Plex.
Meh, it’s no extra clicks to get what you want on Plex once you actually configure your home to show what you want. I just pushed all those options down to the bottom of my home list, but you can just as easily remove them entirely. IDGAF about bloat. Those are just features I’m not using. I’m sure I use features somebody else doesn’t care for. Besides, the “bloat” you’re referring to is mostly just free streaming content from various channels collected in one searchable app I already have. I’d never stream any of that shit if it wasn’t on Plex already. Reminding me that a show I pirated is available on a streaming service I actually pay for is actually kinda neat. It means I can go watch it there to support it, while making sure I’ve got it in the format I want and where I want.
I’m all for diversity in our self-host streaming software and fully support Jellyfish, but let’s not pretend that the latest halfbaked option is superior because it has fewer features and is less polished. Plex used to kinda suck, lots of features have gotten better. Saying Jellyfin is just like what Plex used to be is not a compliment.
If you want to complain about Plex at least point to something truly awful, like needing Internet access to access local media because of the way Plex account authentication works or the botched and ill conceived rollout of social media features.
The question I have, because I’m considering self-hosting something like that, is will my non-text have a family be able to understand how to use it? If not then it’s not really going to be worth it right?
Ideally I want something that would seamlessly replace Spotify and all video streaming services as well and, if my dreams can come true, also work with Google Assistant.
If they can’t figure it out then it’s a them problem right?
Not really when you are going to be texted about it. I spent 3 hours trying to get jellyfin to work on my phone. Staying with Plex as they have better apps.
What was the issue? My experience was the opposite… I installed the app (android) and went to my IP, it works. I was surprised how simple and easy it was. Or were you trying to use it outside of your home LAN?
On my lan, get black screen on movies.
You sound like someone that has never supported a production server.
The main reason I pay for content is that I don’t have the time to provide reasonable customer service to my family. If they can’t use it, it is without use; useless.
Also, I do plenty enough care and feeding of complex systems at work. When I get home, it’s nice to stop working.
I have my music on my server and can stream it like Spotify. The frontend user experience of Plex, Jellyfin and Emby is literally just like Netflix, the untrained eye wouldn’t tell the difference.
I haven’t tried audio streaming but the video in Jellyfin works just like netflix or any other video site.
Another case of Physical > Digital
“Buying” media with drm is a mistake.
I buy books from audible sometimes, but I immediately rip the drm out. Use Plex to store your movies and TV shows, it does music ok too now.
Can you please link a good guide on ripping the drm out?
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+1 for Libation. Very easy to use.
Give Jellyfin a try too. I switched to that from Plex after I realised they were trying to charge me money to use hardware transcoding on my own hardware.
Yeah, I’ve heard of jellyfin, but don’t really know anything about it… How is it different?
I’m likely to stay with Plex though, because I have 3 friends with Plex servers and we’re all sharing content. It’s pretty fantastic, when I don’t have something, usually one of my friends does have it. If jellyfin doesn’t support content sharing, it’s a huge no-go, but just convincing my friends to switch over would be pretty challenging.
Give Jellyfin a try too.
Unless your main TV client is a Playstation. Client support is Jellyfin’s biggest weakness, and why plex is more popular.
Im finding a way around this now. Surely there is a way to cast to the PlayStation
Using the web browser, but it’s clunky.
JF works fine on tons of devices, the ps5 just kind of sucks as a media player.
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What about DLNA? It works on my 7 years old LG TV.
“Is there a way I can save this content?” asked one panicked PlayStation user on Reddit. “I use PS4…But I have bought many seasons of shows such as Dual Survival that I do not wish to lose. I was actually under the impression since I owned it, I wouldn’t ever lose it…”
Lol
Class action is probably their best bet. Up until now, for the most part, companies have opted to refund digital purchases like this, like when Google ended Stadia and refunded everything. And while it’s easy to laugh at people who trusted and believed that they had permanent ownership, I truly hope that there are enough people who stand up and take this to court, because people shouldn’t be punished for not being cynical like us. And if a company is going to sell something as a purchase, rather than a rental, they should at least have to continue to provide it to those who did buy it. I have several games on Steam that can no longer be sold due to licensing reasons, but Valve still lets me download and play them, because I purchased a license. Sony and Discovery should either have to refund people, or continue hosting the files for those who purchased these shows.
I wonder if the studios understand how much they are going to be shaking confidence in digital purchases by doing this. I know I’m going to think twice before I pay money for another digital copy of a movie or TV show.
Maybe they are fine with that? As in they prefer the streaming deals / subscriptions, specially if they have their own platform.
That’s almost certainly what’s really happening. They regret selling media to you permanently so now they’re trying to claw it back and make you pay them again.
That is literally always what is going on.
Seeing how many scandals the big media companies have been in and literally nobody cares because the world is horrible and all we have left are these artificial dopamine sinks they call franchises which we desperately cling onto despite fully knowing that we are making rich assholes who caused all this even richer, don’t hold your breath.
This seems illegal unless Sony reimburses everyone for the removed content.
There’s a line in the EULA when you purchase digital media that says they can revoke your access to it at any time that they see fit. Look it up for yourself.
It should be. But I would be extremely surprised if everything in the terms of service isn’t worded something like “you’re buying a license to view this content that can be revoked whenever”.
It is, and IIRC you don’t even “own” a movie even if you physically have it. You own the physical disc, not the content on it. Granted, it’s a lot harder for Sony or Discovery to come kick down your door and take your copy of Ice Road Truckers so you have to rebuy it…
That’s not really a big deal with regards to physical items. If you buy a book you don’t own the rights to the text either.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the TOS says “We reserve the right to change this agreement at any time in any way without notice and you agree to be bound by all future versions of this agreement”
🏴☠️Ahoy Mateys! Avast and shiver me timbers. Tis a good day upon the high seas
Why they be cryn they boots, while ye be livin free all those years, lootin and rapin as ye please. There be nuff lootin for all of ye. The seas are vast and there be nuff ships fer everbody!
Full speed ahead Mr. Coheeeen
Ram dam dam be dam, ram dam dam be dam
If you don’t own it when paying for it then you aren’t stealing it when pirating it.
Oh wow, Sony being shitty to customers.
How fucking expected.
Are we sure it’s Sony and not just Zaslav again?
A bit of harsh truth, people love and adore those corporations that shat on them, it’s not the first time and not the last time this happens
Sony has an especially nasty history of giving the middle finger to customers.
Especially when it comes to stolen accounts and fraud.
In a world that wasnt filled with people who center their identity around which corporate overlord they worship, Sony’s Playstation divison would have died in flames a decade ago.
