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Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

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Re: Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

#91
post #14

I read recently that PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse, and also Xbox has been gutted by layoffs, and there's a backlash against Nintendo for the switch 2 pricing. Is the age of the console finally coming to an end?

Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs. We have this now, every PC has some kind of graphics hardware, and has for many years. Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands , but the technical justification for their product category hasn't existed for 15+ years now.

The thing with PCs is... they are open. Open means piracy and more importantly it means cheats.

A console is a far easier thing to defend against cheaters than a PC - absent true hardware vulnerabilities (which become more and more expensive, now that stuff like voltage glitching, clock cutting and whatnot is all known and accounted for), you are basically limited to botted input and AI-assistance based on what can be seen on the screen.

Re: Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

#92

IANAL, but is it illegal to have a "Buy" button that is just a disguised "Rent" button? If not, should we change the law?

Unrelated, but that is such an unfortunate acronym.. There's no way the people who perpetuated it didn't know what they were doing

I propose, let's see..

Definitely Isn’t Legal Doctrine, Obviously

or.. Based Only On Basic Speculation

perhaps Consult Official Counsel, Kindly

or more succinct, This Isn’t Trained Solicitor Advice

Re: Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

#93
Well - I actually think the problem is not Sony being malicious here, per se, but the legislation. There has to be a guarantee as if it were a physical copy, as-is. The right to repair movement has the same cause ultimately. You purchase something, you own it, no matter what counter-legalese is tried.

The USA really needs to stop being a corporate-country. Weren't the republicans all about the people at one point in time? Now they are all about the billionaires and family dynasties pillaging what they can, with the forerunner the mad orange king pillaging the most. And starting wars he loses by default, after promising to not start wars.

Re: Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

#94

Its all a bit hand wavy nonsense. Own a physical copy? How long until its unplayable because either the media corrupts or the player isn't available? The only real "ownership" is the IP, everything else is just renting.

All information is ephemeral, but I don't honestly think that argument holds much weight here.

I'm currently listening to a record which was pressed before I was born, and that will outlast me. My CDs were ripped around 2000 to a drive and i've streamed then since. I've still got the CDs though, and the last time I played one it worked fine on my 1989 vintage transport.

I think i'm good.

Re: Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

#96
post #50
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs. We have this now, every PC has some kind of graphics hardware, and has for many years. Consoles have been riding on their momentum of their brands , but the technical justification for their product category hasn't existed for 15+ years now.

> Consoles made sense as a product category where specialized graphics hardware was not generally available for consumer PCs. This has almost never been true. GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64. Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't. Gaming PC sales (and hardware) are at all-time lows, except for GPUs, which should probably be rename…

What PC GPU was in mainstream consumer use before the N64?

Re: Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

#97
post #70
post #28

Isnt there an issue with "Buy" and different countries marketing laws? Ie it implies "Hold" or "TemporaryKeep". Guess it will be an upswing of BlueRay movies. Already happening with LPs and CDs

This anti-consumer stuff also applies to physical Blu-rays: each BD can contain a revocation list of player keys and distributor keys, and official players are required to update their keylists from that. Every time you insert a new disc in your player, you're playing russian roulette with your existing library.

Blu-Ray key revocation does not work that way. Players with revoked keys simply can't play discs that were encrypted to disallow them.

Discs that worked with a player will continue to work, as long as the physical mechanisms are still good.

Technically, maybe, since the player authenticates with the drive, if you updated the firmware on the drive you could lockout the player. I could see windows update potentially helpfully pushing a bd-rom drive firmware update, but it's not happening on a standalone player.

It's not ideal that your existing player might not read new discs, but hopefully you use your discs soon after purchase and you could return them if you can't get a firmware update with a new key. (Of course, I'm guilty of buying discs to watch eventually; will be annoying if my keys were revoked)

Re: Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

#99

IANAL, but is it illegal to have a "Buy" button that is just a disguised "Rent" button? If not, should we change the law?

Pretty sure you could get some action from the ACCC here in Australia if you go through the process to lodge a complaint.

Re: Sony deletes more movies from the accounts of people who ‘bought’ them

#100
post #19

Interesting also that even this article doesn't mention "DRM" anywhere despite the fact that this is exactly the worst case scenario DRM critics have always warned about. (Personally I would consider DRM okay if Sony's behavior here was illegal without a full refund.)

This has happened since the beginning of DRM. I had a roommate who bought hundreds of dollars of music from the Walmart music store because WMAs were like 59¢ instead of 99¢ from iTunes. It seems like not even a year later they shutdown the store and the certificate expired and PlaysForSure stopped playing for sure. That was around 2003.

20 years later will anyone do anything about it? Of course not.

What is going to be the event that gets laws to change? Probably not a few movies viewable only from Sony devices.

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