If I am buying a DVD, I own that copy regardless of the studio and the distributor being in legal trouble or not. If I "buy" or "purchase" something online, I expect the same thing.
I'm not always a fan of the EU over-regulating some things but I feel like they should start fining companies who want to re-define the meaning of the word purchase
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-jame...
It’s less about the money and more about:
1) Having a single place to go for any TV show or movie. I found it very frustrating trying to figure out what service had which show - sometimes none of them have it (a few things are still not streamable at all - e.g. “Sharky and George”)
2) Knowing that my streaming service isn’t downgrading the video quality. Even my lay friends notice the picture quality improvement vs Amazon / Hulu etc.
3) Jellyseer lets my friends request media that gets auto-downloaded. So it’s a curated list of content which helps me discover high quality stuff to watch.
If I am the reason for damaging my purchase then I am fine with that characteristic of the purchase.
Same happens with books, you buy the copy and if you don't take care of it, soon it will become unreadable.
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 complained, I got a boilerplate "tough titties, sometimes we lose licensing" response.
Always keep hard copies people.
This foolishness of trusting someone else to host your stuff for you? Well now you know.
Some warned that everything would work that way eventually anyway, and everybody (including me) blew them off.
Make it work the same as delisted games where you can go into your purchase history and click download.
I stuck to buying hard copies and dwindled off the series as they started to charge just to play multiplayer.
sudo pacman -S transmission-gtk
Are they negotiating that as part of the deal with their vendors? Or is it as simple as "We're not dicks." ?
The licensing deal made by movie studios does not work like that because the studios are intentionally predatory. The distribution agreements are temporary and can involve periodic payments. Literally Netflix rents movies from the studios and rents them back to you. The studios reserve the right to cancel distribution deals at any time.
Steam isn't innocent either. The instance that comes to mind is Order Of War: Challenge (https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/12/30/steam-remov...) but I've also seen people say other games have been removed from their libraries or silently replaced with "remastered" versions that removed things like licensed music. Publishers have also taken games from people's libraries by revoking their keys. Steam says publishers can do this whenever they want. In one case, after the sale they thought a player should have paid them more money (https://old.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/w9jpd5/warning_publi...)
[1] https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Sony%27s_attempted_removal_of_...
https://filmstories.co.uk/news/funimation-streaming-app-to-s...
(For those without the background: In 2020, Sony bought Crunchyroll and in 2024 merged it with Funimation (acquired by Sony subsidiary Aniplex in 2017). Since Crunchyroll had the larger streaming service, this was done by moving the Funimation library to Crunchyroll. However, Funimation also has a business selling digital copies, not just streaming access, which was discontinued including access to purchased media)
If buying isn’t owning, pirating isn’t stealing. Fuck those guys.
It’s been 20 years since I’ve pirated shit, but here we are again…
And people wonder why some people sail the high seas.
I don't mean to disagree with you, and I have basically no expertise in this area, just shocked by the whole thing.
It'll be all the more critical in years to come when we get more and more AI remastered versions of stuff so even stuff pre-2020 is slop.
If you see these films, what sort of person will you become? Is that someone who is undesirable?
Terminator 2, Rambo 1 and Total Recall. We can't have that!
if you sell a game you should have to have bought a license to use the music (and similar) in the game permanently (for given game sold, new sold revision can change what they contain but only if there isn't deceptive advertisement and it's very clearly labeled that it's a different revision/the content changed!).
You can still offer limited-time subscriptions, of course, and you can extend the minimum deadline for your server-dependent software to free as often as you want, just make sure people know what the deal is when they buy your software.
DVDs and other media also aren't yours to buy, they're just licenses and a physical container to use that license. You can buy software the same way you can buy a DVD, and you can rent software the same way you can rent a movie on a digital storefront.
1. Unless you write a damned clear company charter, Gabe, get on that.
I am fine with that characteristic of the purchase, I am not fine when my purchase can be taken away from me abruptly by the decision of random Joe
In fact, for those things, I'd say a private tracker isn't that interesting because of the share requirements.
If that minimum drives customers away, these companies should put more work into ensuring their minimum availability is a good deal.
1. To my knowledge, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.