"The feature was controversially removed by Sony since system firmware update 3.21, released on April 1, 2010.[2] A class action lawsuit was filed against Sony on behalf of users, but was dismissed with prejudice in 2011 by a federal judge. The judge stated: "As a legal matter, ... plaintiffs have failed to allege facts or articulate a theory on which Sony may be held liable."[3] However, this decision was overturned in a 2014 appellate court decision[4] finding that plaintiffs had indeed made clear and sufficiently substantial claims. Ultimately, in 2016, Sony settled with users who had installed Linux or had purchased a PlayStation 3 based upon the availability of OtherOS."
And with games it's just getting worse (Sony announced they won't make discs starting 2028; the Switch 2 takes carts but very, very few games release on a cart). If you care about control over the games you purchased, if you care about going back and playing older games, then the only choice is to use platforms that are DRM free. (Or, well, non-legal means.)
Still walled garden, but they act way better.
We've reached a sort of gaming singularity where nearly every video game can be run on any hardware you choose or be streamed over the network to a thin client. PlayStation and XBOX consoles are basically dedicated gaming PCs that can only run Sony or Microsoft's version of Steam. DirectX is losing ground too thanks to Proton and Vulkan, so Microsoft won't have the last laugh there either. If Valve controls the store you purchase games from, the software which runs the games, and the operating system running the software, they are an ODM contract away from becoming Sony's PlayStation division, and look where they are now.
And even if they somehow arrived in a market position where being less benevolent would make more money: Valve isn't publicly traded, nobody is forcing them to make the most profitable move. As long as Gabe and the other owners prefer being benevolent they can continue doing it
(not that they are all around benevolent. "consistent" and "usually choosing the side of the customer over the side of the publisher" is maybe the better framing)
Now if the RAM companies make it so you won't ever be able to afford your own hardware and every game company pushes cloud-only gaming... Well, we aren't there yet thankfully, but I fear it'll happen.
Gabe seems like the kinda guy who is in the Game for the love of games.
It would be a legendary legacy indeed to commit Valve and it's profits to a trust which defends digital rights and freedom.
I believe the switch 2 carts don't contain the actual game, just a license key. The game is downloaded on first run.
And "gamers" refuse to listen to reason and assume physical copy = they can play it for eternity, when in reality, in 5 or 10 years when a server is inevitably shut down, they're forced to pirate. Nintendo does not allow offline patches.
Gosh this is ridiculous
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2005/12/summary-claims-against...
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.
It was a copyright violation. Which, I don't give one fuck about.
And then Anthropic publically bellyaches that "WAHHHH CHINESE ARE STEALING OUR STOLEN DATA WAH". Lemee get that worlds tiniest violin for that sonata!
These days if you're following the rules, you're a rube and a stooge. And you will be taken advantage of again and again and again.
One would think dozens of SWAT officers would rappel down helicopters and storm the mansions of these big tech CEOs. Unpayable trillion dollar fines, actual prison time. Instead the AI companies reached some absurd settlements with publishers that made a mockery out of all the previous copyright enforcement victims.
It should, however, be illegal to tell your customers that they are purchasing/buying media without explicit "Rent" language (which implies a non-expiring license) when you do not yourself have the right to grant non-expiring licenses.
Many of these services offer cheaper rental options. When you go for the more expensive "buy" option, the assumption that you are actually buying it to keep should hold true.
And Sony made it easy for them too by using this verbiage: “previously purchased content”
For Sony, the correct move here would have been to not list Studio Canal titles in the first place, and put out a very public statement saying that they aren't being listed until Studio Canal agrees to make purchased licenses perpetual as they should be.
I'm curious. What are the best sites nowadays? Still torrents, right?
I used to be in the know but switched to legit things a while back so I wouldn't have to explain how dad is getting Bluey episodes.
it is more immoral to sell something you can't legally "sell" (permanently and irrevocably transfer ownership of a product), than to pirate that content (which has no level of expected payment)
Then they did not sell them.
People don't like that though. We should change the laws so that is illegal. We can just make laws we want--we're allowed to do that.
Except that no part of what you claim is true:
https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/back-up-iphone-iph3ec...
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
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.
I still make digital purchases, but at the first sign of friction, at the first indication that I'm gonna get screwed somehow, I leave port and off to the open waters. Fuck 'em, I played by the rules until I discovered that I was the only one doing so.
[0] https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-produc...
Nobody would buy that. So they say "buy" instead, and courts have largely let them get away with it. Until legislation actually forces the word "buy" to mean ownership, this will keep happening.
There's a dangerous path where the companies are required to describe these transactions as "rentals", but that wont actually solve anything. If we require clearer advertising, we're going to end up with a world where everything is very clearly a rental, and there simply is no option to purchase. People will still buy the $40 "rentals" because it's their favorite movie and they want to watch it multiple times, and it's Friday night and they want to watch it right now.
I think people understand the situation when they "purchase" digital media. They know it might not last forever. They do it anyway. They don't like it though. They would prefer genuine ownership, but it's not an option.
We either need to outlaw these long term rentals, or break up monopolies until companies that are actually offering genuine purchases arise. Or we could do both.
We need to regulate more than just the wording on the "purchase" page. This isn't just a problem of wording.
I have a similar grief with YouTube movies although in that one, they don't play UHD. Some do like Valerian plays at least in 1080P, most movies are capped to 480P unless you have an "approved device" eg. something probably riddled with ads.
Not sure if it is still the case today with the latest generations of ultra-advanced codecs.
> What's the name of that website?
I tell them to use yandex, they will find plenty of such websites...
And yes, bypassing DRM is banned speech in the USA, punishable by criminal law. And there's no actual requirement of a company to claim DRM and defeat methods. The law is set up so they can claim basically anything, and its 100% backed by criminal law.
1FA is kinda a joke, cause saying inane shit like "Hitler was a good guy" is perfectly fine, but "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" (HD-DVD private key) is criminally banned speech.
But I not for a single second trusted "buying" digital goods, and I was quickly proved right. The first digital purchases getting yanked story must have been close to 20 years ago at this point.
I still buy CD's and books and game discs when the digital DRM-free equivalent cannot be had.
More like 30 years but your terminology is slightly off: I have music I bought in the 90s which still works fine because they sold it as MP3s without DRM and I was able to make my own backups. There’s nothing wrong with digital goods as a concept but we should be consistent in how we talk about it: if it involves an outside service, it’s a rental no matter how the seller describes it. If you can make your own copy and survive a corporate bankruptcy or merger, then it’s a real purchase.
Now we're not even getting to retain what we buy, this is not a streaming service, these were sold to users individually.
We've gone full circle where I honestly believe pirating is a far better offering.
The root of the problem is these ridiculous content licensing agreements, it should be very very obvious to the customer when they're buying that "Hey, you will own this until X date when our content licensing agreement is finished"
Not hidden by design in some dense ToS.
I doubt most of the people who "bought" the film understood that they weren't buying it and it could be taken away from theme at any time.
I guess residuals are a made up thing.
At some point, being more honest about what artists get paid will probably help the middlemen more than harm them.
What are people to do if they want to stay on the non-pirate/legal side of this but also prevent being royally F-ed?
It's typical "you own nothing" logic to the point the companies selling you that also don't even own it.
- Disney -> Disney+/Hulu
- Universal/NBC -> Peacock
- Warner Bros. -> Max
- Lionsgate -> Lionsgate+
- Sony Pictures -> The Sony services relevant to the article (note: the Sony services sell more than just Sony Pictures content)
They never needed to, but it actually makes them more money because a revenue share model through Movies Anywhere makes sense. StudioCanal does not sell streaming/delivery services directly to consumers, a revenue share model between streaming providers would not make them more money, and Sony would have no influence on StudioCanal doing so anyways.
(I am a bit surprised they didn't bung Google and StudioCanal a bit of money to move them to Google Play to avoid the bad publicity though.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
Anyone remotely surprised at their history of utter contempt for the end-user need only remind themselves of SVP Steve Heckler's remarks to conference attendee's in 2000
"The industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams ... It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what ... Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user."
https://web.archive.org/web/20090318115847/http://www.nyfair...
The remarks of Stewart Baker of the DHS admonishing Sony are as relevant today as they were then; namely that "it's your intellectual property - it's not your computer."
https://web.archive.org/web/20051229031842/http://www.mp3new...
I wrote a letter to them after the rootkit fiasco saying they've lost a consumer for life. Didn't get a real response. Wrote to them last anti DRM day. Didn't get a response.
Really, this is the only power one has in capitalism -- don't buy their products.
You will own nothing.
How is this any different from downloading a file off the internet? Maybe its fun to juggle a bunch of disks?
Right I should also add I'm mostly talking about PC here.
Rights management for digital media = companies remotely deleting paid content from my account & keeping my money / songs disappearing out of my streaming playlist / etc
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-ki...
Simple example: "The Things of Life", a classic French movie from 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Things_of_Life
No way to get it in the US. No physical media, no streaming. It is on Apple TV ... in France.
You can torrent it.
Utterly brokem model.
Music is the same btw, Apple Music and Spotify geoblock music. Workaround is to add to your library when traveling in EU. Insane.
https://uk.7digital.com/ has a lot of songs available in MP3 format, but not as many as on iTunes.
I know it'll never happen with the people we have in government these days, and the anti-consumer organizations, like the ESA, that are out there now claiming things like running private servers for Minecraft is illegal and piracy. (Yes, they really said that. Despite the fact that Minecraft has always provided the server and allowed this for 15+ years)
You only need legislation like this to hold in one major market to make a big difference.
Even just open sourcing part of project is expensive. Legal and technical.
Politicians are taking about it. Anyone who purchases media cares about it. Support for copyright reform is only going to grow, so hopefully we'll see some.
The most likely outcome is that they’d change their storefronts to use the word “rent” but that’s a good outcome (it encourages buyers to accurately understand what they’re paying for) and it would allow other options like releasing an old game without DRM prior to killing servers.
In a an ideal world, if you bought the title then you'd have the ability to download it locally. I understand the licensing is a main driver of taking titles down, but these agreements are completely opaque to the customer at the time of purchase.
We seen what licensing ala Netflix and Spotify means artists.