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Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

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Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#291

Post by steele »

someonebaggy wrote: post #76
steele wrote: post #50

Ending the production of physical discs too. Ripe for disruption.

No legal disruption is possible - these are the terms content holders insist on. Illegal disruption already happened and you already have access to it, but you're not using it because you don't want to break the law.

Vinyl records remain collectible and have increased in demand. Physical media is still desirable, and rotting optical discs are probably not the final physical format for future video game titles. Corporatist regulatory environments have allowed the consumers to be led to subscriptions to thrive. I am confident that there are legal avenues to address consumer demands to own.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#292

Post by Schiendelman »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #266
Schiendelman wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how copyright and patent law both work, yes. That's why we have expiry. And we all know the current expiry system is arbitrary (and capricious).

Copyright and patent law aren't relevant to this discussion. We're talking about goods that are purchased and then later rendered unusable by the seller.

I disagree. We're talking about goods purchased, and separately services without a paid support contract, and this is all about copyright law.

There's nothing illegal about selling a game where the servers only work for a week, if you say the servers are only going to work for a week unless you pay more.

The question is, what's reasonable if you don't say anything at all? Forever? A year? Five years? And that's not a trivial question.

If copyright law lasted two years, there would be nothing stopping someone from reverse engineering the service under one of these games after two years and running it themselves (barring serious cryptographic blockers).

Furthermore, the developer would have planned for that expiry of their IP protection. There's a loss to the game studio if they give away their intellectual property while it is still protected.

The only reason this is difficult at all is because of copyright law, and I suspect patent law as well but I think that's murkier.

If you start looking at this through that structure, I think it will make a lot more sense to you why each entity involved takes the actions they do.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#293

Post by Guvante »

nullsmack wrote: post #45

We need some kind of modern equivalent to the old proposed Digital Media Consumer's Rights Act but which protects people's rights to digital media they buy. These should never be sold and then taken away with no compensation like this. We need a law that forces companies to treat digital files the same as a physical purchase. They can't take it away and have to allow people to resell and loan out as well. And in case…

> These should never be sold and then taken away with no compensation like this.

I don't think it is reasonable to bundle those ideas together.

Companies renegading on their promise of perpetual access is not the same thing as a right to resell at all

Right to resell is just going to warp game prices in a way that is bad for everyone

After all how do new games compete with used games in that setup? Given the way engagement with games works there will basically always be spare copies

Key sales already happen at below new game value at nearly all times and that is unused games

> they can ban you which deprives you of being able to use what you bought

Also not the same thing at all, bad behavior removing access and no refund is normal

> that should come with requirements that the company must provide full compensation of the purchase price

Ah yes cheating in an MMO results in a full refund of all money paid that wouldn't be abused by anyone

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#294

Post by xtracto »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #126
xtracto wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If buying is not owning, piracy is not theft.

A buddy of mine is pretty insistent on physical media, wherever possible, and honestly, at this point, he's been proven right again and again. Sad that most executable code (games, software, etc) these days is digital only and requires drm calls to a license server to install. I will not pirate executable code.

Reminds me of an American guy who I met in the UK around 2005 when I was doing my PhD (he was doing his 2nd PhD!!!). He refused to open a "cloud" email account (Google, Hotmail, etc). At the time when I asked why, he mentioned something that has stuck with me for all these years:

"It's not about what they are doing NOW with the data, but what they could do in the future" . Back then I thought he was a bit paranoid. These days... not so much.

So, regarding owning/buying stuff, im glad I have a collection of CDs and ibe bought most of my games in physical There are some which are actually hard to get in pirate sites.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#295

Post by mikestew »

mort96 wrote: post #265
ChoGGi wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one in my dash cam has been going for a year or two now. I pull video off it fairly regularly. It's the branded rove 4k one.

Maybe that one is specifically made to work for that application. Are you confident that you could go out and buy a replacement SD card in a general electronics store and get something which would be as robust?

The one in my dash cam is a SanDisk you can buy anywhere. It's got a good two years on it, works fine. Same in the Pi-hole, it was so long ago that I don't remember when I put that card in. More than three or four years, I'm pretty sure.

In fact, though I don't use a lot of SD cards, I don't recall having one go bad. I'm sure it's happened, but obviously not often enough for me to remember.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#296

Post by Schiendelman »

hodgehog11 wrote: post #264
Schiendelman wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got my start at a game studio in 2001, after they were bought by Microsoft (and their game went from Mac to Xbox, if you get my drift). They're "big" now, but they regularly lay off large portions of their staff, because game development is boom and bust. I don't think what you say in your first paragraph follows. Are you really, really interested in learning more about why, with an open mind?

Absolutely! Happy to learn from an industry veteran; hard to argue with that pedigree (part of why I like HN). I figured you might have been, but wanted to push back a little because I think it is important. Here is my impression. 2001 feels like it was still within a golden era of game development; "AAA" games of that time would have been made by smaller studios still, and budgets could be very large, but not catast…

First, thank you so much, I so appreciate when somebody cares what someone else has to say!

Second, I think you're right. The games industry is in really bad shape right now. That's part of why I'm so concerned about putting new requirements on studios. If they have to pay someone to package up software to preserve it like this, that's one less person to generate them revenue, and that means someone gets laid off.

Whether their back breaks or not is not binary. It's measured in careers, and time. Most studios aren't profitable at all, or they're very temporarily profitable after each release. That's why publishers buy them, to keep them afloat during the time when they are losing money, and that's an investment with an expected return from those good times.

If you tell a studio they suddenly have to keep something going when it was already a financial failure, there's no way they can plan for that. They did that planning years ago.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#297

Post by ksec »

nullsmack wrote: post #45

We need some kind of modern equivalent to the old proposed Digital Media Consumer's Rights Act but which protects people's rights to digital media they buy. These should never be sold and then taken away with no compensation like this. We need a law that forces companies to treat digital files the same as a physical purchase. They can't take it away and have to allow people to resell and loan out as well. And in case…

I quite like the idea of what Nintendo Switch 2 is doing and hopefully could take on with some guarantee. The new Switch 2 cartridge, I am buying the Key to access the media. Storing and transferring media cost is going down every single year. You can pass the physical media to anyone. And they will still be able to access it. And the copy of that data should be legally yours and be protected by law they can't remove it.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#298

Post by ksec »

NoSalt wrote: post #15

Ever since Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. started offering "free" online storage for photos, ever since streaming started to be popular, I have ALWAYS extolled the virtues of µSD card slots in phones and owning your own media (i.e., purchasing CDs and DVDs). Many people would give me a hard time about this, calling me a Luddite, but I will never lose access to my photos, music, or movies ... unless it is the end of t…

But in reality MicroSD card are easily to lose. And setting up an NAS is still a bag of hurt. Not to mention the lack of ZFS / BTrFS on cheaper model, and no ECC RAM your data will likely be corrupted half way through the decade.

We still don't have an easy solution to this problem.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#299

Post by anigbrowl »

bsammon wrote: post #136
anigbrowl wrote: post #111

2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48718967 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48691346 4 years ago ( so it's not the first time studioCanal has done this): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32010317

It's interesting that (in one regard) Sony is getting a PR win with the "StudioCanal has done this" narrative. Another perspective: In accordance with the licensing system that Sony and their lobbyists helped establish, Sony's licensing agreement with StudioCanal came up for renewal. Sony decided that they didn't want to pay StudioCanal's perfectly reasonable( ) asking price. this is StudioCanal's perspective.

They're not getting a PR win, I am redirecting people's attention to StudioCanal because I think hating on Sony is lazy, and also because having worked in the movie business I think I have some more insight into the licensing end of things.

StudioCanal wants to make as much money, like any publisher, but we don't know how much they wanted for this deal or how that compares to pricing for other IP. Movies are not fungible, really, and StudioCanal has a lot of classics. Like Disney, they keep the price up by rotating out of streaming licensing windows regularly; for example if your copy of terminator II disappeared from your Playstation you might be doubly upset to note it's also vanished from Netflix (or is just about to, I don't remember the exact dates).

Also, I think it's an misrepresentation (though surely unintentional) to talk about Sony's unwillingness to pay in the present tense. These movies were originally licensed/bought years ago, and Sony shut down movie sales on the Playstation store in 2021. I presume this was because they couldn't make the economics work, but it's possible that there was some antitrust angle since Sony produces films and antitrust in the US has historically frowned on film companies controlling both production and distribution. The DOJ repealed the 1948 'Paramount Decrees' in 2020 which might also have been a factor in Sony's decision-making.

Re: Sony Deletes 551 Movies PlayStation Owners Paid For

#300

Post by matheusmoreira »

a96 wrote: post #285
matheusmoreira wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you paid for it, then not a single person in the world can ever accuse you of "stealing" from creators, or of failing to support them. They named the price, and the price was paid. The licensing and rent seeking shenanigans of corporations and their lawyers are utterly irrelevant.

Practically infinite number of persons in law enforcement and blackmail businesses absolutely would accuse you.

I meant normal people, not the enforcers of monopolistic laws that were bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists.
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