Sony Steals Customers' Purchased Content - Piracy is COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4GZUCwVRLs
If the content is not stored locally and DRM free, then you don't own it. Don't pay for content that you can't own. 🏴☠️
Is there any platform or medium where I can buy locally stored and DRM-free software? Even if I buy a game on disc I am fucked, cause most games need updates. I can only name GOG.
Given the recent controversy, it calls into question the definition of the word 'buy.'
GOG is the only one that I know of too.
itch.io is fantastic. Mostly indie stuff with some bigger name stuff, but it's by far the best out there for devs.
Buy the disc, put it on a shelf and download a clean copy.
Is there any platform or medium where I can buy locally stored and DRM-free software?
Steam, but you'll have to manually search around the forums to see which games does it and which doesn't. It's not exactly a well advertised feature, but integration of Steamworks copy protection is optional. Most of the games that are DRM-free on GOG are DRM-free on Steam too.
I bought DRM-free TV episodes from Google Play (IIRC). Everything was great until codecs got updated a couple of years later and the videos were suddenly jerky to the point of unwatchability.
Even when I own it, there's no guarantee I get to keep it.
Uh, that's practically all software and games these days.
In this case Sony is taking away TV shows that people purchased. They can be purchased on physical media that will be playable as long as you have the disc. The DRM on DVD and Bluray discs can be easily removed to make backups that will play on anything forever.
As for games, everything on GOG is DRM free. They have downloads for the installers so you can keep a backup copy to install decades from now even if GOG is long gone by then.
If the content is not stored locally and DRM free, then you don’t own it.
Have fun managing tens of TB of backups. I have given up on that quite a while ago, DRM-free is just not a practical for the amount of digital content you collect over the years. It's a nice to have thing that comes in really handy sometimes (e.g. watching movies on unsupported device like VR headsets), but it's not a solution for digital ownership. In some ways it's actually worse, as you can't practically resell DRM-free copies, as you don't have a proof of ownership. You'll also miss out on updates for new technologies (codecs, OS versions, etc.).
This needs a legislative solution or some NFT-like thing that gives you a certificate like "You own this, feel free to pirate if we go out of business"(digital signed by company).
Sony understands only one language... MONEY. I stopped buying their products since they installed a root kit decades ago in my computer to prevent it from ripping my legally bought CDs to my computer. I had to reinstall windows to get rid of that virus. Never again! And all my electronics were Sony back then
A) which CD did you buy that had the Sony rootkit? B) decades ago? No. It's only been 18 years.
Sarah McLachlan, Surfacing. Shout out to Mark Russinovich for exposing it.
What I love about this whole thing is that it's not just Sony's fault but they're getting all the blame because WB would pull all their future content if Sony bad-mouthed them.
It's not the responsability of Customers to make sure what Sony's chosen contractual relationships elsewhere are - Sony can engage in whatever contractual relationships it wants in whichever way it wants (and thus maximize their profits), but if it breaks their side of contract it has to pay the penalties for it, quite independently of why.
This is how Contract Law is designed exactly because otherwised it would make it impossible to Trade: if a purchaser had to track all contractual relationships of each supplier, then as those too were linked to the contracts of their own suppliers, of the supplier of the supplier and so on. So Contract Law neatly isolates each Contract relationship from all the rest and legal responsability starts and stops at that Contract (including the implied Contract in a Retail Sale) and only betwee the parties of that Contract unless very explicitly stated otherwise in the Contract.
So, have customers in this case entered into a Contractual Relationship where Sony gets to pull the plug whenever it feels like for any reason (which are probably invalid contractual conditions for retails customers in plenty of countries, though probably not the US which has near-zero consumer protections) in which case the problem is of the customers, or have they not in which case Sony is the one with the responsability (probably of refunding their customers) and it's up to Sony to exercise whatever contract clauses they had with WB and claim compensation from them for their own breach of contract, if Sony had such clauses in their contract (if not, it was their own choice, so tough luck)?
I'm just shocked how many commenters here somehow seem to think that Sony can choose for their own profit to engage in contracts with mismatched responsabilities - i.e. a short-term contract with WB right next to a much longer term responsability towards retail customer - and not be financially responsible towards their retail customers at one end for the losses that arose from the termination of the very Contract Sony chose to sign at the opposite end.
Imagine if you hire somebody to build you a garden shed and they paid some fly-by-night company for the wood because they were cheaper and that company just to took off with the money. You think they could just legally turn to you, their customer, and say "sorry, we chose some fishy guys for the wood for your shed and they took the money and didnt gave us the wood, so now we'll keep your money and you're not going to get your shed. Bye bye!".
Contract Law isolates Contractual responsabilities in any one contract (including the implied contract of a Retail Sale) to the parties in that contract alone exactly because long term contractual commitments would be de facto impossible in a world were every purchaser also ran risks on every one of their supplier's own contracts as purchasers, in turn having the risks of their suppliers' suppliers' and so on as deep as the chain went.
I think most rational people hate the game rather than Sony directly. We don't care if that's the rules Sony or anyone else has to play by. It's time for the industry to evolve or die.
In-fact I reckon if we see digital retailers reject "selling" digital content because it's not profitable due to end customers rejecting the terms, the studios licensing the content would evolve overnight.
I've been boycotting Sony since the late 90s exactly because they not only played the game in the most anti-consumer way possible, but they very activelly lobbyied for the kind of legislation like the DMCA.
This is maybe one of the companies who spent the most money to make "the game" the incredibly rigged mess it is today.
Your naive "blame the game" reaction is exactly what companies like Sony want: blame the puppets not the puppeteers.
Ever since their Media Production Division took over the management of the company in the 90s (before it was mostly the Engineering side that led it, hence why they were once famous for the exceptional quality of their eletronics) they've very much been reliably acting in the most corrupt, abusive, evil ways possible.
Reminder that the largest brands regularly and shamelessly steal from small independent artists to sell for profit, knowing that the artists don't have the resources to do anything about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20230726050616/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/01/arts/design/digital-art-copyright-marvel-panini-wizards.html
And these are the companies trying to convince you that pirating big name media for your own personal use is theft.
Artistes must be between a rock and a hard place when even "legal" Spotify openly admits to screwing on royalties.
It's an open secret that musicians get totally screwed by record labels.
They've done this to me. When it first came out,I bought the fallout 4 DLCs. I cleared my email one time and deleted all those old purchase receipts.
One day last year, I pop in fallout 4 and go to my file, and it says that I don't have the dlc that corresponds to this save file. I know I bought them, so I go to the psn to redownload, but it's asking me to pay. Long story short, I call Sony, my dlc purchase vanished at some point, and since I deleted the receipt, Sony refused to give me the content or money. They say I can't prove I owned it, even though my files say so.
Anecdotal, I had the same with EA. When Origin first launched, the two games I had in my EA account disappeared. Do amount of battling with their support got me anywhere, even though I had the retail copies and the serial keys.
Got to the point where I gave up. Rather play games I actually wanted to play, to than Spore and The Sims 3.
No credit card receipt? It might help.
Banks will charge for record searched, FYI.
Kinda slightly sensationalist title but yep...
We are having a good discussion about this in AskLemmy: https://lemmy.nz/post/3983363
"What is the legal difference between owning digital and physical media?"
As a side note, how are we going with instance agnostic post IDs? I can only post a link that uses my home instance, but obviously most of you won't be on lemmy.nz and will have to do some fuckery to open that in your home instance if you want to be able to comment.
Fortunately Sync just redirects to a link on my home instance. I know I saw a GH issue on what you mentioned but I haven't checked it in a couple of months.
Edit: found it. Still in discussion phase. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2987
Ah thanks, we're still waiting.
Reminds me I should check in on the merged communities process. Federation at the community level instead of/also at the instance level would be awesome.
As a side note, how are we going with instance agnostic post IDs
Tapping it works fine on my app, redirected to the post on my instance 👌 although I believe the situation is still pretty awkward for desktop frontends, they need to put the link into the Search box to open it on their instance AFAIK
There are two proposals (https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2987), one for a syntax specific to comments which would make your link the following:
#3983363@lemmy.nz (it might already work in some frontends, but it most likely won't yet)
and the second is using standard web technologies to register handlers for lemmy and then linking to posts like so (using my instance as an example):
js
navigator.registerProtocolHandler("web+lemmy", "https://lemmy.escapebigtech.info/search?q=%s", "Lemmy cross-instance link handler")
which would take you to the search page where your instance will show you the post on your own instance.
I personally think the best way is something in between, or rather implementing both
I prefer the simplicity of the first option but it's good to see progress
Thank you for contributing to the discourse.
The majority of comments in this community are at the level of a 12-year-old, offering no insight whatsoever, with snarky remarks like, "doesn't affect me, arr," "just sail the high seas," with even the title appending "piracy is justified." That's terrific for all those commenters, but I had hoped that the comment section here in a technology community on Lemmy would be more sophisticated than my high school class.
Sony is one of the vilest corporations out there.
Fuckers literally installed rootkits on customers' computers (across the board, you listen to a CD on your computer- bam) to police DRM.
Check "Sony Rootkit Scandal", they got caught and were sued... yet here we are. Again.
Just feel like I should at least add two more things here:
This is why I don't personally buy Sony hardware.
I keep forgetting just how many scandals they've been involved with, and the serious negative influence they've had on how business is done with regards to digital as well as physical goods.
Don't forget: Selling the PS3 with Linux support so that they could pay taxes as if it was a PC as well as to justify the high price to consumers. Then removing Linux later through a mandatory update.
Ooof, this one was new to me. My surprise level still hovers stably at 0%.
Since we're sharing YouTube videos around, I suggest this video by Jeff Geerling about how to legally own and stream media (Piped link)
In the US, he is still breaking the law ripping discs. It is against the DMCA to circumvent the DRM on the discs. So he is really just pirating by a different means as far as the industry is concerned.
He is far less likely to get caught doing it that way though.
"People's store-bought DVD collections are always copy-protected or DRM-ed. In 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which made it illegal to circumvent DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection on DVDs. This means that it's illegal to create a software program that can bypass DVD DRM protection. Another way of saying it is, the moment you crack DRM to rip the DVD, you've violated the DMCA.
However, the DMCA contains an exception for "fair use." This means that you can legally rip a DVD for personal use, as long as you don't violate any of the other copyright laws. What does this mean in practice? You can rip a DVD for your own personal use, but you can't distribute the ripped file to others. You also can't make a copy of the ripped file for someone else.
So, in a nutshell, if you rip DVD's and restrict the copies to your own personal use, you're probably safe."
https://www.videoconverterfactory.com/tips/is-it-legal-to-rip-dvd.html
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing.
If buying is not owning, then piracy is not stealing.
It's its own, separate thing.
I’m not saying this isn’t wrong, because I believe it is, but the fact is that if you digitally own anything from video games to music to movies you should understand that it can be taken from you without a moment’s notice. Is it right? Hell no! Will it continue to happen? Hell yes!
They should refund it though, no?
There are services where you pay per view/limited time access. If I pay for permanent access and unlimited viewings then I should be refunded when this changes.
If Sony can't guarantee unlimited access they they should sell "one year", "five year" or "whatever they can guarantee" access and charge accordingly. If they don't refund it's a classic bait and switch.
One thing I've not seen discussed, is this actually Sony's fault or are they not behest to the companies that hold the content rights to do this?
I've not looked into it much beyond comments so I don't have the answer myself.
I don't know if it makes any sense to assign blame here to another party than Sony. As a customer who bought a license to watch these shows, that's the company that you have an arrangement with. It seems that their licensing arrangements with Warner Brothers were limited time, and either WB isn't inclined to renew them or is asking more than Sony is willing to cough up.
Probably a combination of both if I had to guess. WB is seeking to maximise the value of their own HBO Max streaming platform, so they want the content to be exclusive and not license it out to others. At the same time Sony is probably not excited to keep spending cash every few years just to keep content available to customers, they're not making any additional money from that.
So the end result is the current situation. Obviously customers agreed to whatever terms Sony put in their EULA at the time so I'm sure it's legally covered and whatever, but it seems pretty scummy and misleading nonetheless. Like, if they were honest on the purchase screen and said "you can pay $20 for the right to watch this season of mythbusters, but any time we like we can take it away from you again and there's nothing you can do," how many people would have bought that? But effectively that is what people bought, they just weren't aware.
Yes, it's Sony's fault.
Shout out to Streamio + real-debrid + torrentio! 🖤🏴☠️
Yaaarrr, matey!
That's why streaming is the new cable TV.
I think streaming is fine - if a show is removed or the service dies you haven't lost content because you never owned any in the first place and never expected to.
I really don't know why anyone buys from the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Sony etc. People don't own the content, they own a license which lasts as long as the service or the rights to the content and then it's gone.
The problem here is people didn't buy content. They've bought a license to view content and somewhere in the smallprint is Sony's right to revoke the right whenever they like for whatever reason. Other services have done likewise, either withdrawing content or just failing altogether.
So first off, as a consumer stop buying DRM'd shit because it won't end well under any circumstances. Second, lobby for digital property to have rights akin to physical property so the right to destroy, lend, sell, or donate it is inherent to a purchase. e.g. maybe a purchase gives you a token and a signed / watermarked file in a playable format. And incentivize providers to sell digital property by taxing services that impose DRM to create a favourable price disparity.
No, what you describe is called "Rent" or "Lease". People who press a "Buy" button and buy something, expect to own it. Words have a meaning, and trying to wiggle around this with fine print should be considered fraudulent.
No, he’s right. You are buying something, but what you’re missing is that you’re not buying the content itself. You’re buying the right to access the content for an indeterminate amount of time. You’re not renting in the same way that buying a movie ticket isn’t renting. The thing you’re buying is just inherently temporary, and that’s the problem.
I remember when Apple was obligated to replace a text on app download button from "free" to "get", because many apps are free of price to download but make money by in-app purchaces.
Maybe we could do something like that for streaming services.
We really need to add textbooks into that. It's absolutely a crime to charge hundreds of dollars for a book that cannot be resold.
IMO textbooks, at least in schools should just be given away in electronic form. I live in Ireland where parents have to buy physical copies from a retailer and it's just stupid duplication of effort and a waste of money.
Ok then, I'm gonna start stealing Spiderman 2 and sell it to people for, like, $20, and not take it back.
Can't everyone just get a refund on everything they're taking down?
The credit card company might agree to a chargeback, but then Sony will ban you and block access to the rest of the content you bought.
They can't agree to do a charge back unless you bought it really recently (within 120 days of purchase), and then only if you can prove you didn't receive the item in question which you did.