If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't theft.
PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
221–230 of 235 posts
Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
#222Not limited to PlayStation. Apple's been doing this for years. I have iTunes music going back to the day the store opened. Some of it is now missing from the iTunes cloud (or Apple Music or whatever it's called this week). It would be gone forever had I not made a local backup. At least Sony's contacting customers. I was looking for songs I knew I had and couldn't find them until I searched a local backup. When I com…
Sony and Apple aren’t the only offenders. Google Play Music did something similar 12 years ago or so. It’s been a bit but I recall permanently losing access to a lot of music I owned at the time.
I don't remember that happening. What I do remember is that Alphabet decided to axe Google Play Music, but they announced that months in advance and made it fairly easy to download my entire collection. Which is why I now have a couple hundred gigabytes of music backed up on several devices.
Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it ethical to give $29.98 to a forcefully inserted middleman and $0.01 to a creator? If you're ethical, pirate and then donate.
Okay, but who do you donate to in the case of a movie or show? Because for authors and musicians I agree with your take. I wish more musicians were on Bandcamp, and more authors sold e-books directly from their website.
Even with musicians it can be tricky. Imagine an album with various classical pieces performed by different orchestras. Not only are there the conductors and the musicians of the orchestras, but the album also wouldn't have existed without the sound engineers and recording crews and the composers...
Even authors are dependent on their editors, so the idea of 'giving money to the people who create the things we like' is more complex than it may seem at first glance.
Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
#224They should absolutely be forced to provide either a refund or a downloadable copy, this is absurd. It sounds like they didn't actually have the license necessary to be able to sell these movies in any reasonable way.
Not to worry, eventually somebody will file a class action lawsuit, and after mere 12 years of litigation everybody affected will get $2.17 in store credits (in another 5 years).
Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
#225I expected better from Sony's lawyers. How did they not get the right agreement to keep purchases in perpetuity?
Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
>What does an "analog virtual thing" look like? The image of an apple, stored as an analog signal on a magnetic tape. >A "digital physical thing" is just a physical thing (disc) with digital things encoded on it. Correct, a digital physical thing stores digital virtual things, and an analog physical thing stores analog virtual things.
> image of an apple, stored as an analog signal on a magnetic tape If I am following along... analog virtual: representation of apple on photographic film digital physical: disc with film.mkv Given the two remaining combinations: analog physical: unexposed photographic film? digital virtual: binary-encoded data (film.mkv)? Anything beyond this and it becomes a philosophical or metaphysical discussion though.
Another example of Analog Virtual is Hokusai's The Great Wave (and similar prints). I recently watched David Bull's videos about his recreation of it [0] and it was fascinating to hear him tell about how even the "original" prints were made from slightly different woodblocks made in the same workshop.
[0] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK-Wicsj5rAasS2g7e-Z9eFUd...
Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
#227it should not be legal for the product page to say “purchase” or “buy” when in reality you’re only renting it with a to be determined end date
That's a big can of worms, since it applies to approximately 100% of all software. You only ever buy a license that allows you to use software, almost never actually buy software.
What's the can of worms? Either actually sell a copy, or if you're merely selling a license then say so explicitly.
Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that existing customers don't "have" anything. They stream the movie on demand from Sony's servers. And Sony can't keep the movie on their server anymore. The entire delivery model is broken.
It's just a matter of negotiating sensible licensing deals. But that would require the distributors to actually care a little bit about not screwing over their customers. Look how it works over at Steam. If a license expires, even if the publisher goes out of business, Steam removes a game from its storefront, but the files are still on their servers and they keep them available for anyone who purchased a license. I…
Both parties are incentivized for this abuse of consumer ownership. When this deal was arranged, there was plenty of precedent. Sony probably got a better price from Studio Canal by including the provision to mandate removing the films from customer accounts when the contract ended. The studio would be ok with the discount because it would improve leverage with the next customer, to whom it could pitch that their market is larger. No one (or at least no PlayStation customers) currently own their product.
Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
#229Not limited to PlayStation. Apple's been doing this for years. I have iTunes music going back to the day the store opened. Some of it is now missing from the iTunes cloud (or Apple Music or whatever it's called this week). It would be gone forever had I not made a local backup. At least Sony's contacting customers. I was looking for songs I knew I had and couldn't find them until I searched a local backup. When I com…
I wonder why their license affects your local copy of a purchased product. Imagine a supermarket losing the contract to sell Nescafé, so Nestlé comes into your house to take their coffee. Okay, Nestlé would totally do this anyway, but it’s bizarre.
As described, the Apple version is that they won't remove local copies you already have? They just can't facilitate copying a new instance to your device.
I still think this is crazy, mind.
Re: PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for mentioning Emby. I've been using it for years. It's rarely ever mentioned in the Plex/Jellyfin conversation.
Of course! It's fantastic. I went from Plex --> Emby --> Jellyfin and honestly if I could have afforded it I would have purchased the 100 USD lifetime license. They work really hard and deserve the money.
They've been getting $5 a month from me for who knows how long. I'm definitely happy to contribute.