PlayStation To Delete A Ton Of TV Shows Users Already Paid For

If you can’t own digital copies since they’re not property, then piracy isn’t theft.
- Easy there on the sound logical arguments buddy, you'll have the lawyers shitting their pants.
  
  You will own nothing, we will bleed you dry, and you will love it.
- It's not theft. It's why they named it piracy instead of theft. Because it's different.
  
  It's weird this needs to be repeated so often. Just goes to show how often media corpos repeated the lie that creating a copy of something and sharing it with someone else is the same thing as stealing physical property from someone.

- The irony is that I feel like I own my pirated content more than any of the digital content I've actually purchased in the past.
  
  Piracy gives you freedom, whereas paying for content just deprives you of your money
  
  Feel? Without question you have ownership in a way legal distributors no longer allow for. Physical media aside of course, but even that has a hassle to it that pirated content circumvents.
  There is simply no downside to having a collection of movies, tv shows and music on your HDD that no one can take away and plays in any modern operating system hassle free.
- Buy Blu-ray's then.
  
  I'm occasionally buying used Blu-rays from eBay, ripping them using MakeMKV, putting the content on my Jellyfin server and sharing it with my friends and family over Tailscale. Works like a dream and no one can do anything about it. https://youtube.com/watch?v=RZ8ijmy3qPo
  
  You're missing the point.
  
  That's where all the good pirated content comes from

They just want us to pirate everything right? Like, that is the only logical response to this.
- The content you bought is available to be streamed on Discovery Plus, for a small subscription fee.
  Just buy your content again, that’s fair right? You wouldn’t expect a perpetual license for the cash you parted with, that would be crazy!
  
  It's the perfect model. People only buy a DVD once, but this way you can keep them paying forever!
- Or, you know, buy media you can store on your own devices.
  
  I don't have a house big enough to store a ton of DVDs, and the Playstation Digital Edition solidified that we don't have to buy physical media anymore. So the only option is piracy.

- Well whoever is taking them away should reimburse the clients if they were not made aware that they didn’t own the show but were just renting it.
  These behaviors are dangerous and shouldn’t be legal. You press « buy », you own the product, not the right to watch it for a few years.
  
  Slowly turning the whole world into pirates…
  
  disingenuously points to the indecipherable ToS
- Thanks for pointing that out, it is Discovery's decision. For their part though, Sony is still at fault as they didn't demand perpetual use rights for content sold on their store, or at least a full refund for the customer.
  
  This. Offer a refund. Discovery caused the problem, but Sony enabled it.
  
  Sony isn't in a position to demand refunds, though. Discovery pulling their content means there's no negotiation happening.
  As for demanding perpetual use rights, yes, that'd have been nice, but that wouldn't have been granted and then that content wouldn't have been in the store at all. No company will ever sign an agreement to license their content in perpetuity like that.
  That's the crux of the issue with digital content. When it was physical media, companies had no choice but to release their media with perpetual licenses because there was no means of revoking it later. They weren't compelled into doing this, they had to because the only other option was not releasing that media at all. Digital content has removed this issue for them, and they have no reason to ever willingly go back to the old method of content distribution.
  This is something that has needed regulation for a very long time. If there's no incentives for companies to do something, it won't happen, unless they're forced to do it.
- The absolute minimum they should be doing here is refunding everyone's money in full.
  
  In full? So the period where the content was accessible is valueless? Pulling the licenses is bullshit, but a full refund is equally asinine.
- This is absolutely Sony's fault. Sony owns the platform, Sony took the money, Sony signed the terms and agreements with Discovery that let them pull the content users paid for.
  
  I blame Discovery too, but you're right that Sony is to blame. They have an army of lawyers to go over the terms of the agreements. The buyers don't. When I push the button that says buy, that should mean I own it. Not that I'm renting it for some unspecified period of time.
- I don't care who's at fault for this massive scam
- At best you could say Sony didn't know you thought you now own the car they were actually lending you. They probably spelt it out this could happen in their legal codex but that doesn't negate the fact they took your money or they made a system wherein they can deny you from using what you paid for. Sony takes part in this degeneration of ownerships.
  
  If it's not something that lets you straight download and keep a native, non-drm video file, then you never owned it.
- Just Max, not HBO Max. They changed the name because they literally planned on making it worse and didn't want it reflecting badly on the HBO brand.
- No, it’s also Sony’s fault for not making a contract that says “bought means bought forever”. Sony isn’t making contracts like that where they can get screwed over later. Just making them that way when it affects you.
- This is what I wrote on the other thread about the same article. The question is, on what possible grounds are they allowed to revoke licenses for completed sales?
  
  Someone in legal on Sony's side fucked up.
  They should issue refunds. Whether they will or not though....

This seems illegal unless Sony reimburses everyone for the removed content.
- It should be. But I would be extremely surprised if everything in the terms of service isn't worded something like "you're buying a license to view this content that can be revoked whenever".
  
  It is, and IIRC you don't even "own" a movie even if you physically have it. You own the physical disc, not the content on it. Granted, it's a lot harder for Sony or Discovery to come kick down your door and take your copy of Ice Road Truckers so you have to rebuy it...
  
  I wouldn’t be surprised if the TOS says “We reserve the right to change this agreement at any time in any way without notice and you agree to be bound by all future versions of this agreement”
- There's a line in the EULA when you purchase digital media that says they can revoke your access to it at any time that they see fit. Look it up for yourself.

If you don't own it when paying for it then you aren't stealing it when pirating it.
- Woah.

this is an ad for piracy, right?
- Aye matey. Yarr! 🦜🏴‍☠️
  
  Ahoy!

I stopped piraring when I graduated college and streaming started to be wonderful. It is now a bleak hellscape that is more expensive than ever. Time to buy 20tb of hard drives and install Jellyfin I guess :(
- Welcome back to the high seas.
  
  Some of us never left ..
- On the bright side, 20TB of hard drives is relatively cheap these days if you buy used. They'll pay for themselves in a year if you kill the streaming services.
  Happy sailing
  
  A new 12tb costs about as much 1 year of netflix premium.
- Heh, I'm about at capacity with my 20 tb of storage. I think I'm getting myself a Synology NAS for Christmas. I'll probably spend a couple grand on the device and the drives, but it's totally worth it to own everything. No regrets.
  
  Amazon gifted me one a loooong time ago. Useful for storage but apps aren't supported on older models really.

Amazon does the same thing. You don't own digital content you pay for, you're renting it.
- You're paying to use their license, piracy or buying the media physically is the only way to own it.
  
  If the button says"buy", ownership is inferred. That's a lie, of course.

"Buying" media with drm is a mistake.
I buy books from audible sometimes, but I immediately rip the drm out. Use Plex to store your movies and TV shows, it does music ok too now.
- Give Jellyfin a try too. I switched to that from Plex after I realised they were trying to charge me money to use hardware transcoding on my own hardware.
  
  Give Jellyfin a try too.
  Unless your main TV client is a Playstation. Client support is Jellyfin's biggest weakness, and why plex is more popular.
  
  Yeah, I've heard of jellyfin, but don't really know anything about it... How is it different?
  I'm likely to stay with Plex though, because I have 3 friends with Plex servers and we're all sharing content. It's pretty fantastic, when I don't have something, usually one of my friends does have it. If jellyfin doesn't support content sharing, it's a huge no-go, but just convincing my friends to switch over would be pretty challenging.
- Can you please link a good guide on ripping the drm out?

People this doesn't affect are pirates. People who get to enjoy their media without worry are pirates. When pirates are getting the better experience and it's customers who are getting affected what incentive is there to not pirate other than personal morals. Because it sure isn't for a better product.
- A lot of people are getting back into pirating because of this. If a show isn't on a streaming service you use, you either pay $2/episode and hope that Amazon doesn't drop it, or you pirate it. I went almost a decade without pirating, and now I just bought a 5tb SSD for my Plex server. I'm tempted to fully convert now that I've already set everything up, too.
  
  I am coming back after I get a server set up.
  It’s seems everything I ever want to watch is either not available or spread across numerous services.
  Just last week I was recommended to watch Knives Out. I find the second one on Netflix which I use a family account and then the first one wasn’t available and I would need Amazon for that. Why would I keep jumping through these hoops when I can just download what I want when I want and watch it whenever I want.
- It bears repeating. Piracy is a service issue first. I've paid for several streaming services for music and video, but they just cannot compete with the convenience and features of self-hosted options. It's not at all unusual for people to pirate stuff they have legitimately paid for just because of the convenience More than once I have bought a an album on the very same day I downloaded a pirate copy, just because it was slightly easier to get it on all my devices that way.
  
  While Gabe's famous line still holds true, I find that repeating it without qualification is increasingly glib, because vendors are making the matter a technology issue instead, thanks to years of investment in DRM techniques. In the long term, either side's ability to enforce its will on the other will come down to availability/control of compute resources, and unit economics.
  Keeping corporate at bay is going to require a combination of maintaining the commons, seeing genuine competition in cultural production, improving consumer legal frameworks, and becoming politically conscious of our entitlement to digital rights.
- Aye!
- Louis agrees with you

NOT OK
- Ah yes daily dose of we own nothing in the modern age other than my pants (as far as I remember I didn't sign a 702 pages ToS agreement that takes away my pants when elon musk feels like it)
  
  CYBERPANTS
- OK UNDER THE LICENSE YOU AGREED TO SO IT'S YOUR OWN FAULT
  -- Sony
  
  It's an abusive relationship - "look what you made me do"

This is why I buy the physical copies of shows/movies I like and just pirate the rest
Dont trust these guys to not screw you over
- Yeah personally I only ever use points or rewards to buy digital media. Rarely do I ever pay actual money.

Looks like enshittification of the internet is really kicking in. Decentralized platforms, and piracy needs to be the new normal
- Not enshittification. Just a corporation following through on the inevitable result of these one sided EULAs everyone "agrees" to.
- It's been "kicked in" for years.
- I remember a long time ago buying the first iPhone model. Eventually, Apple released an update that added an "App Store" that allowed you to download third party apps.
  Google released a preview / trailer for a new app called Google Goggles. It was like something from the future, and I wanted it more than anything. However, months and months later, it still hasn't showed up on the App Store.
  Eventually, Google released a statement saying Apple was blocking them from releasing it because it competed with Apple in some way, or some shitty thing like that.
  It was then that I realized I had paid about $700 for a brand new device which I thought I had owned, but actually did not. I then switched to Android and never purchased an iPhone again.
  This has been happening for a long time.

I’ve pretty much switched to streaming and paying for content. This makes me question that decision. This just makes the pirates look right.
- Piracy has always been the better choice
  
  It's always been a balance between getting the stuff instantly and for a charge or waiting a few minutes and having to look for the item and maybe not being able to find it.
  If you're paying for it and you're still not able to find it then there is no benefit to streaming. All they had to do was make streaming just a little bit better and experience than piracy. It's actually a pretty low bar because they've got all the access and the infrastructure to be able to do this but lacking that, well, like my computer science teacher always used to say " information wants to be free "
  
  Obviously
- I went back to mp3s and flacs for my music a few years ago. And quickly followed that up with my own Plex server. Two of the best decisions I've ever made. If you're remotely tech savvy it takes no time at all and having every tv show, film, music, video that has ever released on all of my devices at any time within seconds is pretty sweet, for near-free
  
  I'm leaving Plex for Jellyfin. It's free, and Plex has been pushing bloat for so long, I can't be bothered with it. It used to be great, just open Plex and there's your media. But now it's full of random streaming channels and shit. It takes multiple non-intuitive clicks to get to what I want. I tried Jellyfin and it's perfect, just like Plex used to be.
- I’ve switched to streaming and don’t “buy” anything. If content isn’t available on those few streaming sites I’ll try a different provider but I will not “buy” (eg rent for more money).
  It’s all a word game though. I think I actually do have one movie on Amazon. Enough people were over and wanted to watch it that we felt the larger rental fee (“buy” option) was worth it.
  ComiXology is an interesting example of this. They have a shitty UI and an odd attempt to emulate the “collector” experience (obviously I think it’s horrible). It’s like a bad drug trip of skeuomorphism. I quickly decided we’d never “buy” anything there either.

This is why we must protect physical media.
- Not necessarily. A torrent is more sustainable. Eventually people with physical copies will die or they get lost/broken a torrent can be spread to many more people, making it less likely to die, and new users can get access to it. Just make sure to seed over 1x at leasy so you can spread it.
  
  You just need to read physical media like stored somewhere you have physical control over, without DRM, and there hardly remains any disagreement.
- They can also revoke the licences on the disks.
  
  What does that mean practically though?

I wonder if the studios understand how much they are going to be shaking confidence in digital purchases by doing this. I know I'm going to think twice before I pay money for another digital copy of a movie or TV show.
- Maybe they are fine with that? As in they prefer the streaming deals / subscriptions, specially if they have their own platform.
  
  That's almost certainly what's really happening. They regret selling media to you permanently so now they're trying to claw it back and make you pay them again.
- Seeing how many scandals the big media companies have been in and literally nobody cares because the world is horrible and all we have left are these artificial dopamine sinks they call franchises which we desperately cling onto despite fully knowing that we are making rich assholes who caused all this even richer, don't hold your breath.
- I am even over Netflix, let alone relying on digital purchases, lol, when BLM happened they pulled 2 episodes of community and as we all know since then, no black people have been brutalized by police in the US, true heroes Netflix are...
  
  I know about the dungeons and dragons episode - which other one did they pull?

Remember, kids: When you pirate a show, you're intentionally abusing the cast and crew by withholding revenue from them! (Even though the majority of them do not make royalties from it and even those that do make peanuts compared to how much money the publisher just pockets.)
But also remember, kids: When the publisher decides to strip you of a show that you paid their explicitly specified "forever price" for, that's 100% their right and they would never do anything without the complete and uncritical backing of the people who made the show. And if you have any negative thoughts about that, you're also intentionally abusing the cast and crew by wanting to watch it when they have clearly spoken through the publisher that they definitely never want you to watch them again, and their only wish is that their media legacy will be randomly erased from people's access at the drop of the corporate hat.
It's all about creators here at our humble multi billion dollar publishing company and digital rights brokerage!

Then shocked pikachu face when everybody goes back to the high seas.
- I named my Emby server Shocked Pikachu.
- You guys left?

At least when Microsoft was pulling the plug on their music streaming service, they gave everyone the ability to just download all of the songs that you owned.
- That's the right thing to do
  
  It should also be the only option for them if our consumer protection laws were even half effective.
  
  Microsoft may not be the best company, but it's moves like this that make me trust them more than just about any other company.

So pirate the shows. Easy peasy.

This is why I only watch my VHS copy of Space Camp. Do you really own your media if you didn’t get Space Camp out of the 99¢ bin following the Challenger crash when movies about launching kids into space were on sale?
- Underrated movie.

Classic sony move. Remember Linux in ps2...
- I think that was the ps3
  
  I don't blame them as much for that one. It's a bad look, but the PS3's architecture was such that they could be used to make a cheap supercomputer and they were being sold at a fairly significant loss.
  The cheapest way to build a supercomputer was to have a bot farm buying a bunch of PS3s, and don't wouldn't be able to recoup the losses through software sales.
  They should have just sold the ability to unlock OtherOS for "X" dollars to offset the loss.
  
  It was both I think lol, except that the ps2 one still works if you can find the gear for it (especially an old IDE HDD, and the original HDD+network adapter for the phat PS2)
  
  It was.

“Is there a way I can save this content?” asked one panicked PlayStation user on Reddit. “I use PS4...But I have bought many seasons of shows such as Dual Survival that I do not wish to lose. I was actually under the impression since I owned it, I wouldn’t ever lose it…”
Lol
- Class action is probably their best bet. Up until now, for the most part, companies have opted to refund digital purchases like this, like when Google ended Stadia and refunded everything. And while it's easy to laugh at people who trusted and believed that they had permanent ownership, I truly hope that there are enough people who stand up and take this to court, because people shouldn't be punished for not being cynical like us. And if a company is going to sell something as a purchase, rather than a rental, they should at least have to continue to provide it to those who did buy it. I have several games on Steam that can no longer be sold due to licensing reasons, but Valve still lets me download and play them, because I purchased a license. Sony and Discovery should either have to refund people, or continue hosting the files for those who purchased these shows.

Oh wow, Sony being shitty to customers.
How fucking expected.
- A bit of harsh truth, people love and adore those corporations that shat on them, it's not the first time and not the last time this happens
  
  Sony has an especially nasty history of giving the middle finger to customers.
  Especially when it comes to stolen accounts and fraud.
  In a world that wasnt filled with people who center their identity around which corporate overlord they worship, Sony's Playstation divison would have died in flames a decade ago.
- Are we sure it's Sony and not just Zaslav again?

Sometimes I feel bad for using vpns and stremio and keeping hundreds of my favorite movies and shows on Plex then this happens and I'm happy I'm prepared for enshittification. I don't lose sleep over piracy one bit. I've written guides and shared libraries with family also. Fuck corporations that can just retract contracts when they feel and take back what you already paid for. No thanks.

🏴‍☠️Ahoy Mateys! Avast and shiver me timbers. Tis a good day upon the high seas
- Why they be cryn they boots, while ye be livin free all those years, lootin and rapin as ye please. There be nuff lootin for all of ye. The seas are vast and there be nuff ships fer everbody!
  Full speed ahead Mr. Coheeeen
  Ram dam dam be dam, ram dam dam be dam