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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

#381

Post by apparent »

cogman10 wrote: post #379
apparent wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer protection laws can prevail over terms and conditions, it's true. Are there any consumer protection laws that disallow terms and conditions like the ones Sony used?

I believe the FTC could probably do something about it if they cared. This seems to be something that the "Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices" charter of the FTC could address. The three prongs of when it applies are - Causes or is likely to cause substantial injury to consumers - Cannot be reasonably avoided by consumers - Is not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition It seems like s…

Generally agree, if Sony is deleting things from user-owned devices. If they're simply not making them available for later download, it's trickier. The case against Sony would be stronger if customers could not move downloaded content from their current devices.

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

#382

Post by ColdStream »

Braxton1980 wrote: post #378
aeturnum wrote: post #327

Sony is obviously the villain here (and pretty much always) but I think this points to an unsolved problem with our model of digital ownership: it's based on the media company providing a service...forever? People in this thread are saying customers should get refunds and I disagree - customers should get video files! We need a model of digital ownership that does not involve the media owner forever delivering that m…

Perhaps we could get the video files and burn them to a disc like disc that can be played back in a special machine

Almost like a Digital Video Disc, no idea what we would call it however?

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

#383

Post by ColdStream »

nirvdrum wrote: post #350
trencedamp wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of what I've always hated about consoles is the inevitable push toward an entirely new generation of hardware when the current hardware is more than capable. The best games I've played in the last year would run on a PS4 and probably even a PS3 with a little optimization, yet we're already at the "end" of the PS5. It's so disingenuous. We should be squeezing everything we can out of the wonderful hardware we hav…

Microsoft already switched its release support to the "series" model. There are still big games coming out on PS4. With the PS6 expected to be very expensive, we may very well see games simultaneously released on the 4, 5, and 6. We may be moving away from discrete console generations. Older consoles still have a massive library you can cycle through as well. Yeah, the console companies want to be profitable, but con…

The only parts that really feel OLD on previous Sony machines is the load times. Ps4, is fine but you are waiting a little while. Ps3 is painful! You are waiting on a lot of stuff just to swap on and off the HDD or worse pulling from the sluggish Bluray drive.

Once the things is going in a straight direct it is great but it can be tough getting there.

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

#384

Post by ColdStream »

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.

The last generation where there really felt to be a big advantage to consoles was with the Xbox 360. Having Xbox live integrated at an OS level for cross game chat, messaging and music control was something that felt genuinely unique at the time and something that could only come from top down strategy. But Steam caught up with all of that and consoles didn't really innovate forwards from that either.

The last big thing on consoles would have been the standard high speed SSD's and even then it hasn't been exploited as much as one would have liked. Ratchet and Clank : Rift apart did, but it feels like an exception, even then it works pretty well on the PC version even without the custom compression hardware.

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

#385

Post by Silhouette »

inigyou wrote: post #318
Silhouette wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has a right to have an economic value for what they sell. This is true. (It's true in every other industry as well.) But the opposite side of that coin is that if you want people to spend the considerable amounts of time and money required to create new works that are actually any good then you need to have some viable model for compensating them that makes it worthwhile for them to do that. Whatever else you…

Copyright has generally been extremely effective at giving money to trillion-dollar companies while giving artists almost nothing. This incentivises companies to hire artists and churn out slop. It doesn't incentivise artists to make art. For that, something other than copyright is needed.

This is demonstrably untrue. Today we have more access to far more works in more media on more subjects both entertainment and educational than ever in the history of the world. And almost all of them were ultimately built on the back of copyright and the economic models it supports.

It's true that copyright makes a few people very rich. Some of those people certainly are artists. The "almost nothing" that Beyoncé has made from her music career reportedly paid for the private jet she bought Jay-Z as a gift a few years ago for example. Taylor Swift is reportedly now a multibillionaire. There's a reasonable argument that big name musicians have often worked on very successful concert tours and so not all of their income has necessarily required copyright. That argument doesn't really work when you look at bestselling authors or A-list TV and movie stars whose copyright-backed residuals and royalties keep them very well funded though.

Of course many of the other parties who make a lot of money from copyright are intermediaries like book publishers and record labels. The value of their contributions is increasingly questionable in the modern world and the measures they have taken to protect their revenue streams have sometimes been similarly questionable. I won't be sympathetic if copyright reforms render their business models obsolete and shift power back into the hands of the people doing the actual creative work with those providing services like distribution and advertising becoming subservient rather than the other way around as has often been the case historically.

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

#387

Post by ColdStream »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #105
mvkel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> GPUs existed, and were being used, before the N64. Video cards existed, but 3D accelerators didn't really catch on until the 3dfx Voodoo, which came out about the same time as the N64. Even Quake II which came out a year later still offered software rendering. > Your comment also begs the question that the console consumer has transitioned to a gaming pc. They haven't. I'm only a single point of data, but I was a c…

Not only that, I remember when it was announced that Quake 3 would require a GPU - no software fallback. That was in 1998/99-ish. It wasn't a huge ask but it did signal the future very clearly.

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

#388

Post by dawidpotocki »

smelendez wrote: post #331
aeturnum wrote: post #327

Sony is obviously the villain here (and pretty much always) but I think this points to an unsolved problem with our model of digital ownership: it's based on the media company providing a service...forever? People in this thread are saying customers should get refunds and I disagree - customers should get video files! We need a model of digital ownership that does not involve the media owner forever delivering that m…

This is how it now works with music, I believe. Apple, Amazon, Bandcamp, etc. all sell you access to DRM-free files along with the ability to download or stream them in perpetuity.

Qobuz always shows me the following message after purchasing (downloads are DRM-free FLACs):

> Certain works may be withdrawn from the service for legal reasons, such as a revocation of rights. The titles purchased will then no longer be available for re-download. Download your purchases quickly.

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

#389

Post by ColdStream »

trencedamp wrote: post #234
mvkel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But back then you had to have a PC and experience with it to install drivers, install games, mess with configs etc. The draw of consoles was the ease of use. N64 problem solving was just off/on

Yeah, Windows 98 wasn't exactly a road solid experience. It wasn't until Win 2000/XP that the whole thing started to feel much more solid thank to the NT Core.

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

#390

Post by scoofy »

apparent wrote: post #361
Reason077 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ”Revocation should come with full refunds.” Of course it should. If Sony are not doing that then it sounds like grounds for a class action? I remember when Google shut down Stadia. To their credit, they automatically refunded everything I’d ever purchased on the platform. Nice little windfall.

The lawsuit would have to prove that Sony didn't abide by it's T&Cs, which it seems like they may well have. The issue then is whether it's OK to have T&Cs that seemingly conflict with the "buy" characterization that customers are presented with.

It's very obviously false advertising. You can't say "free flight to europe" and then in the fine print say "no free flight to europe." It's just blatant false advertising to have a "rent" next to a "buy" button you click to acquire what is effectively a long term rental.
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