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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

#171

Post by mrguyorama »

butterfi wrote: post #88

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.

The DVDs I got in my childhood 20 years ago still work just fine, the drives to read them are $20 or less, and ripping them to a format I can use more conveniently and backup however I want is a single button click.

Plastic discs are the optimum data distribution format. They degrade in the same time frame as a paper book, essentially lifetime, you retain legal rights like the first sale doctrine, you can easily format shift for safety and storage, and nobody can take any of that from you ever, and you can use that data however you like, as long as you aren't trying to sell bootlegs.

Books and plastic discs are infinitely better than the digital realm. The consumer rights are so much stronger and better.

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

#172

Post by Laurel1234 »

account42 wrote: post #109
teeray wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A $10m fine for mobile telcos is a rounding error. “Softer quarter due to outstanding legal and regulatory obligations…” The fines need to be a standard percentage of income or the personal assets / freedom of officers needs to be on the line if we want those punishments to change behavior.

It really should be fines plus ALL money gained through the illegal activity. If you steal a car you don't get to pawn the stereo, give back the money gained and then drive off into the sunset.

Jail time (hard jail time, not that country club bullshit) for the entire C-suite and you might see some change.

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

#173

Post by RiverCrochet »

kazinator wrote: post #146
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.

Selling someone a license, and then revoking it is like destruction of property. The injured party is owed a refund in the amount of the present day replacement cost. It's the same as if someone sold you a toaster with a remote self-destruct feature, and then invoked the self-destruct. They owe you a new toaster.

IANAL but I bet that:

- If the license terms include a section on termination, and termination is done in accordance with the license terms, it's fine legally.

- Licenses can be transferable but that doesn't make them non-terminable.

I could be wrong, though.

It's pretty crappy that we got to the point that overly simple actions (like clicking on buttons or breaking stickers on packages) can be considered accepting license terms. Is that really a "meeting of the minds"?

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

#174

Post by DiskoHexyl »

zarzavat wrote: post #64
Hitton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if consoles got replaced by video game streaming. Not the next generation and probably not even the generation after that, but that will be most likely it.

Video game streaming requires a high quality internet connection to a nearby data center. It can work in certain places but there's always going to be places where it doesn't work, and consoles don't have that problem.

Well Sony is actively working on that problem- the plebs in these internet-starved countries won’t be playing anyway, as with no optical drive in the future ps6 users are going to be tied to PSN which isn’t available on half the planet.

Jokes aside I do agree that streaming doesn’t work reliably for all game genres and client geographies, mostly due to latency

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

#175

Post by joshuaissac »

robin_reala wrote: post #4

Obviously media permanence is the best solution, but in the absence of that we just need laws that say that if the purchase isn’t time limited to something a reasonable user would consider a rental (48hrs? a week?) then companies that withdraw access rights need to refund in full the purchase cost.

There are services like Movies Anywhere and UltraViolet (now defunct) that store a licence when the user purchases one from an in-network licensor. Then the user can access the content via any supported platform.

The problem is that these are not legally mandated, so they can shut down (as UltraViolet did). If the ability to move the licence to another platform is mandated by law as a condition of continued copyright protection, this problem would largely disappear.

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

#176

Post by lightedman »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #21
treyd wrote: 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.

The main thing consoles have going for them, imo, is the standardization of hardware. It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world. Some console gamers seem to think PC gaming requires hours of fiddling with setting…

"Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world"

Let me tell you, as someone that repairs a TON of XBox 360s, this comment is very, VERY wrong. The GPU isn't even the same revision between the same batch runs. Did you get Xenos? Zeus? Jupiter? That determined one set of things needed for install/refurbish. Is that a Valhalla motherboard in your hands? That just limited you to a very narrow and specific set of hardware you could utilize.

Oh and performance between all of those models varied WILDLY. Silicon lottery is a fucking JOKE on the XBox 360.

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

#177

Post by pennomi »

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.

It’s not about transfer, it’s about being practically irrevocable.

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

#179

Post by MSFT_Edging »

papyrus9244 wrote: post #166
ikekkdcjkfke wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Laws are great and all. But what we really need is a massive boycott. Stop buying shit manufactured or sold by Sony for a year. That alone will probably force them to backtrack every single anti consumer decision they've made recently.

For the love of god please understand 80% of people are trying to just get on day by day. They don't give a shit about any of this. They probably don't even realize it's happening. Some subset of them might be hit by this but most just don't care.

The point of a government in society is for people who give a shit to guide this kind of thing.

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

#180

Post by bsimpson »

dpoloncsak wrote: post #21
treyd wrote: 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.

The main thing consoles have going for them, imo, is the standardization of hardware. It's very easy to say "Yes this game will run on my console at 60 FPS because its identical to the other consoles where it runs at 60 FPS." Differing builds and drivers are not really a concern in the console world, where-as they are in the PC world. Some console gamers seem to think PC gaming requires hours of fiddling with setting…

This is also why Steam hardware matters.

If something runs on a Steam Deck, you can be sure it will run on your >= Steam Deck-equivalent device.

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