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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

#441

Post by danaris »

close04 wrote: post #433
danaris wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have either misunderstood my point (a), or you have a misguided idea of how important small luxuries are to people, especially people who do not have the means to procure larger luxuries on a regular basis. I mean, sure; it's much more painful to boycott the only ISP around, or the only grocery store within a 30 mile radius, but just because there are things that could be worse doesn't mean that this can'…

I get the need for small luxuries but you failed to make the point that the Sony store is the place for this. I don’t mind if you clarify for me how not buying movies from Sony and buying instead from Amazon or a local store for example is such a loss for quality of life. Why is Sony so special? Do those people find special meaning in Sony’s store above all others? Or do they need to buy the “small luxury” from every…

There's nothing special about Sony's store—the point is that, just for instance, many people own a Playstation of some sort, and want to watch movies through it. For some (nontrivial!) percentage of those people, the Playstation is the only thing hooked up to their television, and thus the only way they can—or know how to—watch a movie on their biggest screen.

Furthermore, Sony is the exclusive source for movies distributed by Sony. If someone wants to watch one of their movies—I don't know which those are offhand—they will need to buy it from Sony (or, at the very best, buy it from some other store and their money still goes to Sony).

In either of these cases, yes, they could choose not to do that. But if you've just gotten home from a hectic shift at your second job, microwaved a ready-meal for yourself and your kid, gotten them to bed, and finally have an hour or two to relax before you have to go to sleep yourself...are you really going to be willing to go out of your way to find some other way to watch the movie you want to watch? And more and more people are finding themselves in these sorts of situations in recent years.

Most broadly, my point is that for any given (major) store, there are people for whom their preferred "small luxuries" come from there, and asking them to give that up in order to try to make a difference that probably won't happen (due to my point (b) above) is likely to be a very hard sell.

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

#442

Post by WorldMaker »

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.

I think the laws we aren't worried enough about needing yet are digital estate laws, too. If I build a massive library in the real world there's no question it's a part of my estate plan for a will and is inheritable by family (or other persons I choose). I've got a massive Steam library. What happens when I pass? Steam's EULA implies that there are not necessarily survivorship rights, the account is mine personally and may shut down or disappear when I pass away. Almost every digital service EULA has and must have logic of that sort to protect itself/simplify account ownership as a concept.

We've got pragmatic answers of password sharing and Steam is one of the better example in the current moment because among other things it has some Family Sharing support. But I can't go to my lawyer and ask for a list of passwords (and device PINs and passkey details etc) to be attached to my will with the explicit idea of divvying up parts of my digital library to different relatives. Lawyers don't really want to discuss detailed digital estate planning today because it isn't allowed by these service EULAs and because they don't want to have to fine tooth comb every single possible service EULA. It's a catch-22 that probably needs real legislation or very expensive very public court cases or both to help push it to the forefront of people's minds (and make it enough of a priority that service EULAs have to adapt).

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

#443

Post by CrimsonCape »

robertlagrant wrote: post #428
Tsiklon wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It seems like their strategy will be to just raise hardware and media prices. Just keep doing the same at a higher cost. If it's a loss leader today, it will stay a loss leader tomorrow, just at higher cost. The question is whether the customers keep showing up at the higher prices.

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

#444

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Retric wrote: post #280
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> value. All billionaires could be instantly broke if the general public decided they were broke. Are we taking about abolishing the fiat currency system or bringing back the guillotines ?

Any of the above, the world could just decide arbitrarily everyone with 1+B is suddenly broke. That’s not likely but it doesn’t break the laws of physics or anything.

Nice to meet a fellow appreciated of the French revolution. There aren’t many of us these days.

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

#445

Post by trencedamp »

ColdStream wrote: post #383
nirvdrum wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Okay PS3 might have been pushing it. But the PS4 is just fine

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

#446

Post by trencedamp »

Narishma wrote: post #424
trencedamp wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but you don't have to use Windows 11. You can install win10, 8 or XP, or Linux freely on your PC, you can't do that on a PlayStation and even if you could, the games would stop working

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

#447

Post by ghusto »

There are a lot of well thought out good solutions being posted here, but you have to bear in mind that these companies don't see a problem to be solved in the first place. It's like telling a mafia boss the solution to the cops being after him is to quit doing criminal things.

The solution is piracy.

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

#450

Post by mrguyorama »

inigyou wrote: post #181
RiverCrochet wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

It could be either way. Companies love putting legally invalid terms into license agreements.

They have no incentive not to, because we have purposely built our contract law to encourage you to purposely put completely illegal and unenforceable terms in your contract, and it doesn't invalidate the contract, rather it only invalidates the things you already couldn't do!
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