Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techdirt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 472 posts

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

#421

Post by vitally3643 »

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.

Incorrect. A lawsuit would have to prove Sony didn't abide by law, or that their actions are harmful or egregious enough to justify a new law.

T&C are not laws, and aren't even legally binding in most situations. They exist purely as an ass-covering maneuver and self-justification for customer abuse.

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

#422

Post by vitally3643 »

rlpb wrote: post #362
Nevermark wrote: post #307

Revocation should come with full refunds. That would: 1. Balance the revocation economically, for both parties, while leaving the decision to the "seller". 2. The trade becomes the time-value of money vs. the time value of access. Inherently fair. The seller nets interest, and the inflation drop on the original price. What an accountant would come up with, yet automatic. 3. Provide users the remunerative recourse for…

> Revocation should come with full refunds. That's not enough. If I purchase something, I expect to rely on being able to keep it. Its value to me could well be much higher than just the purchase price. Revocation should come with consequential damages together with the cost of recovering them.

It should be refunded with interest.

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

#423

Post by WhyNotHugo »

afavour wrote: post #59
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.

That doesn't really make sense. Consoles have always occupied a different space to PCs, not least because they plug into living room TVs. Very few people are going to trade that for a (considerably more expensive) PC. Gaming PCs also require specialized knowledge, more maintenance, etc etc. Consoles are pick up and go. I very much doubt they're dead yet.

> Gaming PCs also require specialized knowledge, more maintenance, etc etc.

If you want to build it yourself: sure. But less technically inclined folks can just buy one pre-assembled from a computer shop.

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

#424

Post by Narishma »

trencedamp wrote: post #316
Narishma wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PC is worse in this regard since everyone's hardware is different. There's rarely much optimization going into PC games compared to consoles.

I don't think you really understood my point then, maybe I didn't make it clearly. What I meant was we abandon perfectly good console hardware, not because it's outdated or obsolete, not because games demand the cutting edge, but because profit margins demand the consumer spend 500+ on new hardware every 5 years or whatever. It's nothing to do with the software and everything to do with shareholders. The PC is the ex…

> It's true the AAA devs don't optimize much but my point is that Microsoft don't decide that you have to buy a new PC every five years and there are a bunch of new games coming out for it that are literally unavailable on your old one.

It's the game developers who will decide for you on PC, but even Microsoft does so on occasion, like recently with Windows 11's arbitrary CPU requirements.

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

#425

Post by semiquaver »

vitally3643 wrote: post #421
apparent wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Incorrect. A lawsuit would have to prove Sony didn't abide by law , or that their actions are harmful or egregious enough to justify a new law. T&C are not laws, and aren't even legally binding in most situations. They exist purely as an ass-covering maneuver and self-justification for customer abuse.

Terms and Conditions are contracts and have repeatedly been affirmed as such by the courts.

True, illegal contract provisions are not enforceable but there’s not actually an allegation that anything illegal has taken place.

It sounds like you are describing the world as you with it existed rather than as it actually does.

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

#428

Post by robertlagrant »

Tsiklon wrote: post #76
robertlagrant wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's one thing. The other is price. Consoles can be sold at a loss, particularly early in their 10-year cycle, when early on the loss is high, but close to the end of the cycle the loss is minimal, and so they appear much cheaper.

This cycle is different. Prices have increased for both Sony and Microsoft’s consoles and no higher efficiency versions have been released (ala the PS3, X360).

True. I think there are two new issues this cycle:

1. They are testing what the market will bear. Ubisoft's silly "quadruple-A game" rhetoric and executives saying "people will have to get used to $100 games" is them testing the water. This should pull back, as most people don't want games that cost that much, unless they're really amazing. They aren't (currently). I imagine this same thinking is going on in hardware-land.

2. Current RAM/GFx card prices are driving up prices all round. It should still be true that for the same spec, console components should get cheaper over time, but I can imagine it's less of an effect at the moment with all the AI data centres hoovering up manufacturing capacity.

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

#429

Post by soraminazuki »

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.

Those T&Cs contain clauses that allow companies to 1. arbitrarily change its terms whenever they want and 2. forbid consumers from suing them. They make a complete mockery of justice, and they might as well just write "haha, screw you" to save all of us time.

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

#430

Post by mindslight »

jjav wrote: post #414
Nevermark wrote: post #307

Revocation should come with full refunds. That would: 1. Balance the revocation economically, for both parties, while leaving the decision to the "seller". 2. The trade becomes the time-value of money vs. the time value of access. Inherently fair. The seller nets interest, and the inflation drop on the original price. What an accountant would come up with, yet automatic. 3. Provide users the remunerative recourse for…

> Revocation should come with full refunds. If I buy, say, a shovel and the hardware store sends someone to break into my house and steal the shovel back, hopefully they'd get arrested for the crime. We should not be treating digital purchases any different. If I bought it, I bought it. It's mine forever. But the oligarchs will never let that happen. So, in practice, always buy either the physical media or at least a…

Or just pirate. There is no need to buy into the corpos' model, especially for this topic. Do you know what doesn't just spontaneously disappear? An .mp4 sitting on zfs.

The only reason these parasites survive is that there is very little advertising money behind user-empowering software, so setting something up for yourself looks daunting. Meanwhile the proprietary solutions market themselves as being straightforward, easy, and ultimately trustable. But as this action and countless similar ones demonstrate, this is far from the truth.

Post reply on HN