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PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

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Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#131

Post by paradoxyl »

pico303 wrote: post #130

I found a local store that specializes in used movies on DVD, BluRay, 4K discs and video games from Atari to PS5. I’ve started picking up hard copies of everything so I’m (a) not tracked and (b) can’t have my stuff taken away.

I believe DVDs and Blu-Ray discs and players will increase in value over time, almost like samizdat printing presses -- underground video viewers that let us watch movies without the monolithic globalist corporate police state observing, penalizing, demanding identitification, and trying to extract an ounce of monopolist rentier blood.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#132

Post by WorldMaker »

munk-a wrote: post #63
Retr0id wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"bypassing DRM" is explicitly illegal according to DMCA. Don't conflate "unenforce{d,able}" and "legal".

Gosh, I didn't know the DMCA went that far. I had assumed it was in line with Canada's TPM related laws which do disallow direct circumvention of DRM but do specifically except format shifting if the copy will be used for a legal purpose. I guess be careful and check your local jurisdiction.

The US Library of Congress is given a Special Exemption in the DMCA [1] and so far the Library has been using it to grant a Backup Exemption that format shifting is legal for backups. Due to the nature of this exemption it has to be debated and reviewed every 3 years, so it's in a weird legal status if it "will always" be around.

[1] (a)1(C) here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#133

Post by BloondAndDoom »

Is it just me who thinks that everything went wrong when we accepted the closed model hardware and their ecosystem?

If it was an open ecosystem, we would have alternative options like we have in PC such as GoG for games. I know movie industry is stupid to begin with but it’s reasonable the make DRM free copy of the movies you own or even pirate at this point given how hostile the whole industry is until they move to more open approaches.

Maybe EU should crack down on closed eco systems and make it mandatory to side load things officially on anything that runs external apps.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#134

Post by BloondAndDoom »

jrmg wrote: post #112
naturalmovement wrote: post #70

Not limited to PlayStation. Apple's been doing this for years. I have iTunes music going back to the day the store opened. Some of it is now missing from the iTunes cloud (or Apple Music or whatever it's called this week). It would be gone forever had I not made a local backup. At least Sony's contacting customers. I was looking for songs I knew I had and couldn't find them until I searched a local backup. When I com…

With Apple, you can at least download the media you bought and keep it. Could you do that with these PlayStation store movies?

If I download it on my iPad I’m pretty sure it will delete itself or eventually got deleted on an update. I might be wrong but this is how these systems work.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#135

Post by buzer »

munk-a wrote: post #40
Retr0id wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, you will stop owning that copy the moment the DVD deteriorates to the point of becoming unreadable. Physical media is a good start, but DRM-stripped digital is the ideal.

If you buy a DVD you have the right, in every sane jurisdiction I'm aware of, to rip the movie from the DVD into an iso. You can then discard/recycle the media and retain the digital copy you have the right to view privately in perpetuity. It is a single consumer license though, as is logical, so it's likely illegal for you to continue to watch the ripped iso if you resell the media with the content still on it or re…

In Finland DVD's CSS was ruled to be strong technical copy protection system (tehokas tekninen toimenpide). In that exact case a person had made a program which bypassed it and published it. He was found to be criminally liable though he didn't get any fine/prison time from what I remember.

In Finnish criminal law the threshold is "significant harm", but given that there were already multitude of ways to get around DVD copy protection the "significant harm" clearly isn't very high bar. Also both distribution the method and actually using the method are both criminalized.

Finnish Copyright Act does individual to bypass copy protection to view the content, but it notably does say that you are not allowed to copy the work.

Unfortunately I cannot find the exact page right now, but I found one of the appeal documents from from https://www.yumpu.com/fi/document/view/38482300/1-helsingin-.... It's probably under https://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/nikki/, but it's no longer available and Internet Archive is currently giving 503 when trying to access the old pages.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#136

Post by hananova »

pseudohadamard wrote: post #110
gherkinnn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-jame...

> PlayStation Store users who bought movies "PlayStation Store users who bought a limited license to play a movie on approved devices and approved displays, revocable at any moment with no or minimal notice". There, FTFY.

Which I'm fine with, if and only if the "Buy" button is explicitly labeled "Buy a limited, revocable with no notice, license."

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#137

Post by Karliss »

munk-a wrote: post #54
b112 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, 100%, and that end date should be very clearly listed too.

Oftentimes that end date is not clearly knowable and can't be communicated explicitly, but consumers should still be aware of the fact that their rights are limited. While the Gaben lives valve will store many people's games - when the Gaben dies... well, it's going to suck - but it'll probably take a while to completely suck, we'll probably go through drawn out enshittification first. This outcome seems inevitable[1…

> Oftentimes that end date is not clearly knowable and can't be communicated explicitly

I am pretty sure that whatever contract streaming platform has with publishers has a some kind of date. It might be unpleasantly short (a year or month) making it look like a bad deal, but that's the point.

In current situation the "unknowable" date might be as short as 1 day. It's up to the good will of streaming service to warn ahead of time. Knowing what you get and the quantity of it is the most basic part of fair deal.

If a streaming service has only negotiated a 1 month license they shouldn't be allowed to re-license the content for longer period. If they want to offer longer deal they need to negotiate better license with publisher or take the risk on themselves by being prepared to give refund in the case of failure to deliver promised service. Telling that they guarantee only single year of service to provide doesn't prevent them from providing it longer.

If a travel agency rents a bus for a day, offering a 1 week trip around Europe would be considered a scam.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#138

Post by hunter2_ »

0x0000000 wrote: post #89
gherkinnn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-jame...

Piracy isn't stealing regardless of whether or not buying is owning.

I fully understand you, but then, copying copyrighted data can't be piracy (because literal piracy is stealing).

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#139

Post by 15155 »

jmclnx wrote: post #4

Off to small claims court people should go. Amazon tried something similar and got in trouble because people when after them. And people wonder why some people sail the high seas.

> Off to small claims court people should go

Which in many (not all) states can promptly be followed by a Motion to Transfer/Notice of Removal/whatever local custom to a county/circuit/district court.

Once moved to a higher court, you will lose because you don't know the procedures, deadlines, and customs of that venue. Then, the counterparty will often be awarded fees.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#140

Post by zarzavat »

knodi123 wrote: post #129
nayuki wrote: post #79

> Reminding Us Nothing Digital Is Ever Truly Ours Wrong, Kotaku. Lots of digital things are ours. Digital files on our personally owned HDDs and SSDs. Digital movies on DVD and Blu-Ray discs on our shelves. Digital ISO files on hard drives that are ripped from the aforementioned digital physical DVDs. What you meant to say is, streaming content is not ours - and that is true by definition, because the data is streame…

This is technically true, but not helpful. These online services have buttons that say "rent" and "buy", they don't say "rent for a little while" and "rent for a longer but unknown amount of time". Of course they can go out of business, but the impression they intentionally give to the customer is that if you click "buy", you get access to the movie for as long as the site exists.

If you're the ethical type you can "buy" it on one of these services and then pirate it in order to keep it in perpetuity. If you're the less ethical type you can skip the "buying" step.
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