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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

#151

Post by dathinab »

vman81 wrote: post #24
goldenarm wrote: post #20

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

They'll argue you're "buying" a license that they can revoke when they feel like it. My feelings on the matter have been summed up by someone else more clever than me as: If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.

They will argue that, but this is unlikely to hold up in front of court even in the US.

The problem isn't it being illegal.

But they instead bank on most people not having the means (money/time) or will to sue them over this. Especially given that the actual "damages" you can effectively sue for often relatively small for most users (likely And if there is an exception (someones losing hundreds of movies or class action law suite) settling is likely still cheaper for Sony.

This is the problem with many laws the cost of breaching them is often too small (but only IFF you are a huge company with their own lawyer department etc.).

If management would be personally liable with _mandatory prison sentences_ for the CEO/Company Owners if it seems the law was knowingly breached because penalties are cheaper then benefits (or repeated offenses etc.) things probably would look quite different.

Other approaches to counter this includes things like penalties of base+%of yearly revenue, %yearly Profite etc. The problem here is this approaches are often a mix of unfair (e.g. same revenue with large profit margin is penalized way less) and/or can be fudged/circumvented (e.g. if based on profit, but even if based on revenue it can be partially circumvented in some situations. So I think making executive personally liable might be the only way to fix this.

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

#152

Post by alexchantavy »

trencedamp wrote: post #9

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?

> PlayStation users are moving to PC en masse

PC is even more digital-only than Playstation. No one buys physical games on PC. The only difference is that Valve has been a very good steward over Steam. Theoretically, PC can get as enshittified as PS.

I guess there are other DRM-based purchasing platforms, and there's also DRM free ones like GOG so PC gamers have choice, but those feel niche mostly.

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

#153

Post by nemomarx »

shevy-java wrote: post #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…

when do you recall them being about the people? it's gotta be before Bush so maybe I just didn't grow up with it

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

#154

Post by ssl-3 »

inigyou wrote: post #135
ssl-3 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They compete for finite dollars, too. There was a time when regular families had desktop computers at home. The marketing was intense, the machines were expensive, and the sales numbers were real. The PC was the gateway to all of the spoils of the internet and things were booming. Now families tend to have a collection expensive personal pocket supercomputers, instead. It's hard to justify the cost of a properly-stod…

I suspect people who've gotten any depth into both desktop and mobile gaming don't think they're even remotely substitutes.

Gaming on a phone is definitely not for me. I've been using PCs for several decades; it's possible that mobile gaming will never be my jam.

But I can accept that I'm not everyone.

I suspect that we'll have whole generations of people who manage to grow up and grow old and without ever having, or even seeking, the opportunity to spend quality time gaming on PCs.

I think that's alright. Things are allowed to change.

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

#155

Post by nirvdrum »

inigyou wrote: post #128
nirvdrum wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the appeal is just to the less technically inclined masses. I’m a developer with a MacBook Pro and a Linux workstation. Proton has come a long way, but consoles just work for the most part; I never have to question whether the game will function and perform well on the console (setting aside the random buggy messes we see). Then there’s the convenience. I don’t want to play games where I work. I want to…

> I never have to question whether the game will function and perform well on the console Thanks to recent moves by Sony, this is no longer the case!

Can you please elaborate? The recent moves I’ve seen have been announcing a shift to digital-only and another about clawing back movie purchases. Neither are appealing to me, but also aren’t related to game performance or compatibility.

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

#156

Post by dabinat »

treyd wrote: post #14
trencedamp wrote: post #9

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.

Another appeal of consoles is being able to sit on a couch and play. Most PC chairs are not as comfortable.

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

#157

Post by chuckadams »

pluralmonad wrote: post #6

Hopefully most of these folks that have been scammed know how to sail the high seas.

Which is a bit tricky on a Playstation. Sure you can scrounge up some Jellyfin-ish sort of thing, but most people buy on the console platform because they specifically don't want to jump through hoops.

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

#158

Post by cptroot »

inigyou wrote: post #123
galleywest200 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam/Valve follow the law: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/11/24267864/steam-buy-purch...

So they avoided having a "rent" button by using the technically correct "add to cart", "continue to payment" instead of "buy this game", "buy all games in cart", and just have a separate sentence in small grey text that is confusing to most people. Clearly this law needs to be worded harsher, so the button MUST say "rent" if you are renting.

In my experience it's a pretty clear warning, but I might not be the best person to judge. The thing to remember is "buying" a revocable license is pretty different from "renting" a temporary license, and those words have pretty different connotations.

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

#159

Post by Forgeties79 »

ikekkdcjkfke wrote: post #80
qingcharles wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California Assembly Bill 2426 (AB 2426), effective 1 January, 2025. Expands the state's false advertising laws to explicitly ban companies from using words like "buy," "purchase," "own," or "keep" if what the customer is actually getting is a revocable digital license governed by shady T&Cs.

Remember that the power is always with the people. We can enact any law we want

Unless you’re in, say, Ohio, where the government will simply overrule decisive mandates with years of procedural nonsense https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/03/31/ohio-republican-la...

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

#160

Post by dathinab »

pdpi wrote: post #119
vman81 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll argue you're "buying" a license that they can revoke when they feel like it. My feelings on the matter have been summed up by someone else more clever than me as: If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.

The problem is that we've always been buying licences, it's just that the licence used to be attached to a physical object, so transferring the licence was as easy as transferring ownership of that physical object. It's never been legal to copy a book, film, or music album and sell the copies, for example, because the licence doesn't allow it. Hence freeware, shareware, and copyleft licences.

yes, but it was (is?) in many places legal to copy Filmes and Musik albums as backup, and iff the original is lost you can very much sell the backup alongside with the license you did buy (kinda, it gets messy practically).

It only mattered that if you sell it you lose it, i.e. you can't buy 1 sell (or gift) 10.

Similarly in analog times this where not unilaterally cancelled licenses. Which are effectively nothing more then time limited licenses where you just don't know how long. (1: un

In law areas outside of copyright this kind of license cancellation terms are often seen as predatory, fraudulent and abusive practices. And _sometimes outright illegal no matter how well you communicated what the license/contract does_ before it was acquired (in some countries).

(1: unilateral cancellable without a brach of license/contract from you side and some other special edge cases to be more precise)

Which is the crux of the problem, not that it isn't attached to physical media, but that it can be cancelled in a mostly despotic manner and you (often) can't make (relevant) backups or similar to protect the availability of the medium either.

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