SONY, FUCKING SONY!
-Floss
I truly feel sorry for everyone affected but it’s also important to draw firm conclusions from this happening to oneself.
I’ve had this happen to me once, bought myself an Album on Amazon Music, back then the Amazon Music App was rather unusable so I just downloaded the MP3, years later I wanted to redownload some of the “worse” songs from this album I had deleted/lost over the years. Gone, the entire thing gone. Still there in my purchase history, unavailable anywhere else. Best part: the album itself was still on Amazon so I could have bought it again.
I drew my conclusion: Never buy with DRM. Always download the files, even if I don’t need them.
never support amazon
As far as I can tell, the headline is misleading, it’s streaming of movies bought on Studiocanal that isn’t available.
I assume streaming is still possible through other sources, but I can’t really say, the service isn’t available in my country.
The company operates primarily in France, Germany and UK, so if the headline was really true, I bet it would result in a shitstorm from EU regulators.It’s not misleading. Sony is the one who took the money and hides somewhere 23 pages inside their terms of service that the terms “buy”, “purchase”, “own” and so on don’t mean what they commonly do. Your contract regarding these movies is with Sony - the underlying structure should not matter to you. This is not the first time Sony pulled this shit. Go watch Louis Rossmanns video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYxmRaRRdc0
hides somewhere 23 pages inside their terms of service that the terms “buy”, “purchase”, “own” and so on don’t mean what they commonly do.
Doesn’t matter in regard to consumer protection laws, you can’t press a button, and legally lose your legally defined consumer protections.
Also no license is allowed to put consumers in a worse position than required by law. Attempts to do so can actually make the license illegal! Voiding any protection the issuer seeks from the license.That’s probably why they pulled back the last time they tried to pull this shit in 2023. 3 years later, and they test their limits again.
The last Time i ‘owned’ something from sony, back on my ps vita, when they pulled the same stunt the regulator didnt give a fuck. So i would assume neither do they now.
I learned my lesson back then and never again spend money on ps store.
That’s a very vague story. If people have bought access to watch a movie without a time limit, they can’t legally just remove that access. Unless that service is available through other easily accessible services, like for instance an internet service.
You also don’t mention if you were in EU at the time.It seems like this may be a 3rd party service delivered on the PlayStation, so it may be the responsibility of Studiocanal and not Sony.
If they had to write “lifetime means 2 years (or whenever we feel like it)” in big letters above the works “buy” or “purchase” it may affect their “sales”. They can write whatever they want in small print, they shouldn’t have told customers it was buying.
they want in small print,
Nope, not in EU they can’t. And pressing a button that says yes is not legally binding in EU, we do have actual legal precedence for that.
Also the laws that protect consumers CANNOT ever never be put aside by any license agreement!! Any such license is ILLEGAL, and by being illegal all claims to protect the issuer of the license are illegal. While those granting consumers protections may still stand.Actually putting things in “small print” are more likely to void any claims than actually uphold them in a court of law.
Remember these are also EU countries, and EU countries have actual consumer protection, it’s not like the wild west of countries like USA.Are the EU protection laws against forced arbitration?
They can and they do, it’s called selling a license to watch. If the platform loses their license to redistribute you may still hold that license to watch with them but since they now are not allowed to show it to you anymore that license is worth nothing anymore. Now if what you “bought” ever enters their platform again your license should still be valid, however often they weasel around this by licensing a “remaster” or other slightly modified version so they can argue it’s a different work.
That would make sense if the movie becomes available on their store again you didn’t have to repurchase it. But you do. The licence is very fragile and “breaks” if there’s ever any licensing issues.
It was Eu, Germany and they removed the abillity to redownload bought series/movies,but graciusly allowed us to keep the already downloaded stuff.
As the files where drm protected and not copy able, that was not a long time solution, espacially with the price gouging of psvita memory cards.
Im so vague, because its probably over 10 years since then.
While that obviously sucks, there was a way to keep accessing all the content you wanted to keep.
While that is a scumbag move, I can understand how regulation wasn’t designed to handle a situation like that.
I’m not even sure it is today.
Where did you get that information from?
Why would they buy it on Studio Canal and then stream it from Sony?
Because as is obvious Studiocanal is a 3rd party made available by Sony .
What’s also obvious is that it’s sold by Sony…
deleted by creator
Never owned anything Sony since they pulled Linux from the PS3.
They lost my trust and I won’t buy anything from them again.
Same here, ever since this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootkit_scandal
Jesus fucking Christ, what a read. It really was the wild west days back then, huh? Sony was out there just putting straight up malware on audio CDs.
And thought nobody would catch them. And thought they could BS their way out of it when they were caught.
Yep.
lol yeah I was gonna say I think it was the time they put a fucking virus on my computer
… and so do I.
Sony pulled Linux from the PS3.
which was there so Sony could sell their console with a lower tax rate in some countries because it qualified as a “Personal Computer” due to Linux being available, whereas without they would have needed to sell it as “Entertainment Media”
Buy Blu-ray’s and DVD’s.
And just to be sure make a digital copy of those so you have at least 2 versions available should either version degrade.
In some jurisdiction bypassing the DRM for strictly personal use is even legal, in those where it’s not: if you don’t share your private copy can anyone even prove you bypassed it?
Maybe able to get away with it if your not using a PC with AI snitch
I thought disc rot wasn’t a thing anymore with Blu-ray?
All physical objects degrade with time. Factory-pressed commercial discs like movies have an expected lifespan of 10-20 years assuming they’re stored properly at all times.
I just want to say I have 30 year old DVDs that still read just fine, and I’ve had other DVDs that stopped reading after 10 years with no visible damage. Shits a crapshoot.
I am not an optical disc expert, but I recall with CDs/DVDs, factory pressed are more resilient whereas burned discs can rot more easily. I believe this still holds true with BR. Furthermore, there are carbon-based BR discs that profess to not exhibit data rot for 1000 years.
Depends how you store them.
That and the quality of the disc. There used to be a manufacturer grade rating for the CD/DVDs. Don’t know if BR got rated as well.
or don’t bother with making copies and just pirate a copy later if there’s an issue with the disc.
Runs you the risk of getting caught plus is more work if you need a specific version rather than just a version.
Yeah, this is why I don’t buy digital movies.
No DRM Free download option.
FWIW, I buy digital music all the time, because I can download it, back it up, etc.
… From Goodwill or checking them out from the library right?
If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing
Piracy is copyright infringement. That’s different from larceny.
In no world is piracy ever stealing.
Til Sony had a movie store.
No they didn’t. You just need to download an app called qbittorrent, click the search tab, type the movie name then double click the one at the top with the highest number of ‘seeders’. Shortly thereafter the movie will be safely on your computer.
do i need to use a VPN or anything?
It’s safer technically, depending on west county
Personally I wouldn’t feel guilty about it though, you can prove you already paid for the movie.
That’s all I want to do
If I paid for it either on disc or something like Amazon I would like to DL a copy I can keep
I’m not trying to download the summer blockbuster currently at the movies or anything. I’m not trying to just download a million movies and have a massive collection I never watch. I just want backups of the films I already paid for
Which is a small handful of films I bought so I could one day watch them with my kid when they’re a bit older
Depends on the country. If the USA, most definitely. If Australia, probably not.
They came to Australia in the 00s and tried their bullshit suing for millions for one or two songs, and the high court told them to fuck off and that they could only sue for the cost of a movie ticket or album. So they just gave up. But with the “left wing” govt in power, that may change
I’m so old I remember when sony was a decent brand
So like, pre 1997?
yep, 5 disc cd player
Curious: what exactly happened in 1997 regarding Sony?
I was loosely guessing the year based on memory. But I think it was around then that they tried some music DRM shit that installed a root kit on your PC if you put the disc in it, and it screwed up a ton of computers. Caused major vulnerabilities and backdoors for other virus’ and exploits and they got sued and government basically put a stop to their DRM tactics.
Well as I wrote this, I decided to look up exactly when this happened, and I was pretty far off. Time all runs together the older I get. It didn’t happen until 2005.
Hey, thanks.
I didn’t remember the exact year of the rootkit incident but I knew it was around the mid-2000s because that’s when I coincidentally started to try Linux (and fully switched to it in a year or two) and I would pay attention to this kind of news (I guess they played a role in my commitment to Linux).
Well, so there might not be something special about 1997 regarding Sony after all… but I agree about Sony being at their peak in the 90s.
back in the early days of walkmans, you could call 'em up toll-free, say you lost the battery cover or the headphone cable is broke, and they’d send you a replacement. no worries about ‘warranty’, no cost to you…
Not surprised. They did this with their other movie app a few years ago, the one that allowed you to download a free digital version of DVDs when you bought the DVD back when streaming was new.
If i buy digitial i should reserve the right to download and retain that item in a digital format
Rrrr matey. Thats why all my digital purchases are accompanied by me grabbing a copy I can keep when the Enshitification hits the fan.
Thanks to Sony for showing us why digital piracy is necessary and justified.
