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PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

kotaku.com

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Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#211

Post by anigbrowl »

zmgsabst wrote: post #120
anigbrowl wrote: post #118

I find it a bit sad that everyone is dumping on Sony here, considering it's StudioCanal that is presumably demanding the movies be made inaccessible to customers, but presumably is not offering to refund the royalties they collected. I't's natural for people to direct their ire at the reailer to whom they gave their money, but in my view its the rightsholder who is generally the abd guy in these situations.

No — both the person who pulls the trigger and the person who gives the order are criminals. Sony created a contract where this was possible, is who sold the product to customers, and is physically carrying out the act. They deserve every bit of blame.

'Criminals'? Get a grip.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#212

Post by JohnTHaller »

port11 wrote: post #205
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…

I wonder why their license affects your local copy of a purchased product. Imagine a supermarket losing the contract to sell Nescafé, so Nestlé comes into your house to take their coffee. Okay, Nestlé would totally do this anyway, but it’s bizarre.

Because it's not a purchased product. It's a sub-license of Apple's license for you to temporarily play a work.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#213

Post by Telaneo »

Manuel_D wrote: post #208
Telaneo wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But recording that broadcast would be. Is this seriously true in the US? I doubt this is the case in any European jurisdiction. Recording radio and TV is legal in any other case (the relevant companies didn't want that to be the case either, but we hadn't yet fallen far enough down the hole yet for that possibility to disappear). To make another comparison: You record House on your Tivo = Legal (you now have a file…

Bear in mind that "illegal broadcast" is important here. A pirate radio station does not have a license to play the music it's playing. If recording pirate broadcast is legal, then effectively all copyright laws are moot so long as the copyrighted material is transmitted over radio. Tivo is legal because cable providers are legally transmitting their cable programming. Things get different on Netflix because recordin…

> If recording pirate broadcast is legal, then effectively all copyright laws are moot so long as the copyrighted material is transmitted over radio.

My understanding is that this is in fact the case, since the relevant laws don't even touch the listening side of radio/TV (modulo jurisdiction).

It's like buying a pirated DVD from a random shop. It's illegal to run a shop selling pirated films, but is it illegal to buy their DVDs? If there is a law for that, there's probably a 'knowingly' in there too.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#214

Post by LoganDark »

tremon wrote: post #207
LoganDark wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. You can either be purchasing a license to a movie, or purchasing the movie itself. You have never been purchasing the movie itself from these services, because you're not entitled to it even after you purchase (i.e. there is DRM, etc. preventing you from ever getting it, you don't get it in any alternative forms, etc). If you want to own something, you buy on iTunes, where they let you download DRM-free copies…

Citizens don't need a license to read and/or watch stuff in their own private homes, that's a basic right guaranteed by the First Amendment (in the US; similar laws apply in the rest of the civilized world). Whatever you want to claim that people are purchasing it can not be a "viewing license" because that would violate the Constitution.

I never said you need a license to watch something you own. I said when you purchase a license to stream online, you're purchasing the license and not the movie itself. You don't own the movie then, even though you did make a purchase (of the license).

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#215

Post by Anamon »

makeitdouble wrote: post #180
pessimizer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever bought a ticket to a concert ? what did you actually own ? A ticket that would allow you entrance into a particular concert. Is this some sort of rhetorical question? I can't decipher what it's attempting to illustrate.

The original post was about the use of verbs. > it should not be legal for the product page to say “purchase” or “buy” when [...] The use of "buy" and "purchase" were never restricted to ownership or unlimited rights, we buy licenses, usage rights, priority tokens, all sorts of lottery tickets and weirder abstractions every day. GP probably wants digital movies to have a specific purchase model, but the discussion ha…

I think it's perfectly clear? If you buy a ticket, it's clear you own that ticket. But the usefulness of the ticket is that it can be exchanged for a service (admission to the concert), which is also clear. Nobody would expect the ticket to grant them admission to every future concert by the artist, or at the venue. The date and start/end times are on the ticket you buy, otherwise it would say "lifetime pass" or something.

The same is true with movie downloads, except that Sony very strongly, probably deceptively and maliciously, implies the "lifetime pass" part while they full well know they're only selling you a ticket for access during a limited timeframe.

We wouldn't have this article or discussion if Sony had been truthful and had their store pages not say "purchase movie", but "purchase temporary ticket".

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#216

Post by Anamon »

LoganDark wrote: post #214
tremon wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizens don't need a license to read and/or watch stuff in their own private homes, that's a basic right guaranteed by the First Amendment (in the US; similar laws apply in the rest of the civilized world). Whatever you want to claim that people are purchasing it can not be a "viewing license" because that would violate the Constitution.

I never said you need a license to watch something you own. I said when you purchase a license to stream online, you're purchasing the license and not the movie itself. You don't own the movie then, even though you did make a purchase (of the license).

I think we're all agreed on that. What people are upset about is that Sony (and many others) clearly imply in their wording that you're buying a copy when in fact you're buying a streaming license. Same as in the case of Ubisoft's The Crew, which is about people feeling misled about what they were actually purchasing.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#217

Post by Anamon »

10729287 wrote: post #175
Retr0id wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DVDs degrade naturally. Good care will extend the lifespan but not indefinitely.

I’m still playing CDs from 1985 without any issue. And they often sound way nicer than overcompressed remasters I can find on Spotify. Would it be different with DVDs for a reason I ignore ?

They may be more susceptible due to the finer grooves alone, I guess? Although so far I've also never had any DVD or Blu-ray go bad.

Recordable discs are another matter, though. Much more sensitive because the pits are "burned" instead of "pressed" (not sure about the correct terminology). And some of those materials were so bad that back in the day, I often had blank discs that went bad before I even had a chance to burn them. Nowadays I'm using M-Discs and hope they'll hold up their promise. They should outlive me, anyway.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#218

Post by Anamon »

paxys wrote: post #77
kelvinjps10 wrote: post #46

I feel these license agreements have to be set up in such a way people that already bought their movies get to keep them, like okay Sony lost the licences and they shouldn't sell it to new customers but existing customers should get to keep their movies. Since companies don't care the government needs to force their hand and put it into law

The problem is that existing customers don't "have" anything. They stream the movie on demand from Sony's servers. And Sony can't keep the movie on their server anymore. The entire delivery model is broken.

It's just a matter of negotiating sensible licensing deals. But that would require the distributors to actually care a little bit about not screwing over their customers.

Look how it works over at Steam. If a license expires, even if the publisher goes out of business, Steam removes a game from its storefront, but the files are still on their servers and they keep them available for anyone who purchased a license. I think the only cases where they actually removed files from their servers and blocked redownloads were when there was an actual legal or liability issue forbidding them from continuing to offer the files (for example if they contain malware).

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#219

Post by Anamon »

This remains my favourite quote from any user agreement I've ever seen, from the PlayStation Terms of Use:

> Use of the terms "own," "ownership", "purchase," "sale," "sold," "sell," "rent" or "buy" in this Agreement or in connection with the Content does not mean or imply any transfer of ownership of any content

I mean, this is chef's kiss level of deceit. No parody could top that.

Any jurisdiction where a company can just put "when we say you'll own it, it doesn't mean you'll own anything" in their contracts and get away with it, is broken.

Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts

#220

Post by mahkeiro »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #212
port11 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why their license affects your local copy of a purchased product. Imagine a supermarket losing the contract to sell Nescafé, so Nestlé comes into your house to take their coffee. Okay, Nestlé would totally do this anyway, but it’s bizarre.

Because it's not a purchased product. It's a sub-license of Apple's license for you to temporarily play a work.

Yes but this is not how it’s marketed. The button says purchase not license/Rent for a random period of time.
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