We need some kind of modern equivalent to the old proposed Digital Media Consumer's Rights Act but which protects people's rights to digital media they buy. These should never be sold and then taken away with no compensation like this. We need a law that forces companies to treat digital files the same as a physical purchase. They can't take it away and have to allow people to resell and loan out as well. And in cases of online games where you can buy something, and then later they can ban you which deprives you of being able to use what you bought, that should come with requirements that the company must provide full compensation of the purchase price. It should also ban EULA's and TOS from defining these things as only licenses even though they are structured as a purchase in a store.
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)
Not sure if you know this, but this is literally the Stop Killing Games movement. Despite the recent apparent setback as reported in the news, the organisers are in talks with EU MPs that are writing sweeping legislation to address this sort of thing across all digital mediums.
You only need legislation like this to hold in one major market to make a big difference.
I think this is going to have unintended consequences if it goes through: funding game development is a very very high risk investment. Adding this type of regulation adds further cost and complication, which makes it an even less attractive investment. Which will result in less monetary and creative risk taken.
Even just open sourcing part of project is expensive. Legal and technical.
The GP comment mentioned Minecraft servers. The full story is that California politicians were discussing Stop Killing Games and and that gamers were willing and capable of running their own servers, and ESA argued against that by saying private servers are illegal, basically.
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.
EU parliament unlike nearly every other parliament can't propose legislation, only amend it. That is because it's a fake parliament and the EU is a fake democracy to give the people the illusion that the EU cares about them.
I’d go with a simple proposal: if you use the word “buy” the seller is required to refund buyers if the seller’s action removes access (unlike, say, losing access to a CD or DVD after the disc is scratched).
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.
I agree, the "buy" on a streamable product implies that as long as the company is solvent and they have the same overall streamable products available, then your "purchase" should always be upheld.
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.
I recall when Google nearly did the same for all the people with Google Workspace legacy free edition accounts. They had no idea how many people they were going to massively upset but they did see sense (which itself is remarkable!)
What's funny is that Sony has done this before![0] I've had a personal boycott against Sony products due to this.
"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."
Yep. I had tons of Sony games across the first three Playstation consoles. I was a grad student with a PS3 at the time and I actually used Yellow Dog Linux on it as a computer to write papers when my laptop broke. Then the update came and I chose to ignore it, but that meant I couldn't play online games. Soon new games required a firmware update (still remember putting in the Dark Souls disc and being stunned I wasn't allowed to play it!).
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.)
I joined the class action lawsuit and got a small check a decade later. My proof that I had OtherOS ended up being timestamped whinging on the ars technica forums. My ps3 stopped working shortly after receiving the check due to bad solder, which was I guess fitting.
Valve is in a funny position now. They lived long enough to see every one of Sony and XBOX's moats dry up by being pro-consumer where possible, but with Steam as the leader of a fungible game distribution market it may no longer make good business sense to continue to act so benevolently.
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.
Steam still has to deal with Epic being willing to throw billions at trying to dethrone Steam, and Gog being alive and well and being in the perfect position to say "we told you all along that you shouldn't have to trust Steam, buy your DRM free games here". Also every big publisher wanting to pull their own games to their own storefront and only being forced to crawl back because gamers refuse to leave Steam
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)
One point in Steam's favor (not to suggest that Valve is above reproach) is that it doesn't impose any DRM. If games have DRM, that's the publisher's decision.
True, but Steam still controls Steam and they can change their terms whenever they want. But for now it's ok, at least. And their hardware is happily open: I've played a bunch of games I got on GOG, DRM-free, on my Steam Deck, for example.
I don't disagree with you, but open hardware DOES make a difference, in the worst case scenario I can turn the hardware into a GOG machine, or into a PC.
Also if they ever lock my library, I am turning to piracy (I have 1000+ games)
Agreed, for sure. Open hardware is the only way forward honestly. As someone who has traditionally played mostly on consoles, it does make me sad, partially because consoles are so much less finicky. But the control is worth it (and work on things like Proton has made playing older games so much smoother).
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.
They're always good until they aren't. They can only be trusted if they don't have a way to be bad. Steam could lock down tomorrow and you couldn't do anything about it.
Imagine if Gabe went the Yvon Chouinard way? (founder of Patagonia refused to IPO, never sold controlling stake, recently left the entire company to an environmental conservation trust - certified LEGEND)
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.
Nintendo outright ships incomplete games on carts sometimes, requiring a day 1 patch to have the game in a non-buggy state (one of the recent pokemon games was like this)
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.
I boycot Sony since they blocked my PSN account, which got hacked due to them! Purchases I made are not available, ... I really took a disliking before when they refused to fix my Vaio laptop, ... this was the last drop!
Good, but only laws will keep them on check.
If I boycotted all companies that have done something wrong, I would boycott all of them. I keep that option for the worst offenders. Laws and regulations is what keeps companies in check.
They make it up as they go along. Their 2005 Audio-CD EULA includes provisions purporting to require the immediate deletion of all copies if a user files for personal bankruptcy
A buddy of mine is pretty insistent on physical media, wherever possible, and honestly, at this point, he's been proven right again and again.
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.
Yeah. Copyright monopolists equate copyright infringement to literal high seas piracy because it's the only way they can make any impact. Nobody would give a fuck otherwise.
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.
Plenty of people purchase digital movie rentals from Apple, Youtube, etcetera because they know they will watch it once, and the lower price in exchange for a temporary license is acceptable to them. I don't think banning this is pro-consumer.
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.
Seems like a bad assumption at this point even if it goes against expectations. We've seen on multiple occasions now from different companies where a digital purchase wasn't forever. This is no way an endorsement of the behavior, but if that's your assumption then the quip "you know what happens when you assume" wins again.
So the default assumption should be that big companies are actively trying to defraud you?
The difference between "rent" and "purchase" has always been very clear: with the former you have to give it back, with the latter you own it forever. It is only very recently that this kind of steal-back has even become possible at all, as it can only be done with digital content delivery to an entirely-closed platform.
"You should assume that words have the opposite meaning and that big companies can steal from you with impunity" is a world I don't think I want to live in.
> Plenty of people purchase digital movie rentals from Apple, Youtube, etcetera because they know they will watch it once, and the lower price in exchange for a temporary license is acceptable to them. I don't think banning this is pro-consumer.
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.
Because they were purchases, not rentals. Under no circumstances would a customer reasonably assume that their purchase would be revoked for reasons completely outside of their control.
They're both to blame. Studio Canal insisted on a licensing agreement that works this way, and Sony agreed to it to sell their 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.
Correct. In theory, Sony should have warranted that they have the rights to sell the thing the way they sold it. If they didn't have the rights to sell a movie perpetually, then that's on them.
I've heard there's a service called PirateBay that offers movies free of DRM. Maybe people considering being Sony customers in the future should give it a try.
The Pirate Bay is considered one of the worst pirate sites now. Of course, if you can find what you want, then you can, but any piracy community will recommend against it due to nonexistent moderation (eg. against viruses), poor navigation, and lack of uploads due to them not issuing new uploader accounts for several years now.
and redefined the terms of "sold" in their contract to mean "rent, with a one-time fee"
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)
Let me just say, I fuckin love piracy, but it's more like a speakeasy that piped booze in from everyone's house into the bar instead of just keeping the bottles above the bar. Booze all the same though
Ever since Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. started offering "free" online storage for photos, ever since streaming started to be popular, I have ALWAYS extolled the virtues of µSD card slots in phones and owning your own media (i.e., purchasing CDs and DVDs). Many people would give me a hard time about this, calling me a Luddite, but I will never lose access to my photos, music, or movies ... unless it is the end of the world as we know it, which I happily have on R.E.M.'s Eponymous album.
Highly recommend setting up your own photo hosting and backup. People love Immich, but ente.io is also great! Much better than trusting your photos to a single microSD card which may die at any moment.
Why would anyone call you a luddite for advocating for MicroSDs? Of course the reason SD were pushed away (at least for Apple) was to offer cloud backup as the only option with no alternatives.
Does anyone actually do this? I’m looking to reduce my reliance on iCloud but I’ve kept my backups there so far as it always seemed onerous to have to plug in and trigger the backup manually. And easy to forget, too.
I just wish it was possible to buy decent ųSD cards. Even really expensive ones sold in reputable stores die all the time. Sure they work just fine if your goal is to write photos into it, never delete anything and get a new one once it fills up, but anything more write heavy typically kills my SD cards within months. SSDs last decades.
It's interesting that (in one regard) Sony is getting a PR win with the "StudioCanal has done this" narrative.
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.
Not the first time and not going to be the last. Unless you can download it to hardware you completely own and can make a backup, it's not really yours. Online purchases I can get on with, like Bandcamp are pretty good. I bought the new Globular album on CD and it took 10 days to get to me from the UK. I also had access to high quality downloads. That works, these other models do not.
Bandcamp rules. I do still subscribe to Apple Music for cheap streaming, but for albums I really like, I'll spend the $8 on bandcamp for the high quality album download. Better support for the artist, and protection against license-pulling BS like this.
Even if you have a back up copy of a DRM file and they have turned off the authenticating services, that digital file is of now use to you until someone comes up with a way of decrypting it. This is what Microsoft did with their music service.
When MS ended Plays fer Sure sales two years after they started, and no DRM-free alternative (well, MS said you could burn to CD at a crap bitrate), that's when I learned to operate sails and a rudder. I tried to play nice, but I could see where this was going.
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.
And with more and more content being distributed digitally, and even Sony announcing that physical disks won't be a thing from 2028 [0], the days of media ownership are gone. The only way to "own" content is it being DRM free (rare) or piracy. And ironically, DRMs justify the existence of piracy.
I try and get around this by purchasing a DVD / Blu-Ray and ripping it down to my media server, but not always successful ripping them. It would be nice if you bought a digital movie, you could click download instead. Then you wouldn't lose it when their licensing agreements change / end.
The honest product description would be: "You are purchasing a revocable license to stream this content at our discretion, for an unspecified period, subject to change without notice."
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 think it’d be helpful as a price anchoring tool: people think rentals are worth less and accept greater restrictions because they’re paying less. I don’t think you’d see nearly as many people paying $40 for a time-limited rental and that downward pressure would be healthy.
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.
A long time ago I worked in the video codec area and was shown then that the most difficult videos to compress (i.e. with the most compressed bytes resulting in the file) were cartoons, because of the sharp edges, etc.
Not sure if it is still the case today with the latest generations of ultra-advanced codecs.
gitflic.ru is the Russian Github that permits speech that the DMCA doesn't.
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.
I am fine with "renting" a streaming movie, as an analogue to analog - going to Blockbuster and renting a movie.
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.
> 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.
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.
It used to be that streaming services were an excellent option even over torrenting because of the ease of access and use.
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"
This might have repercussions in the UK. There are supreme court where T&C have been invalidated due to not being advertised well enough. The more onerous the clause is, the more burden is laid on the seller to make sure the customer understands that.
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.
That's why I pirate content and will continue to pirate content. I'm not hurting artists. I go to shows and premiers and book signings. I'm perfectly fine with stealing from publishing cartels.
Wait, people trusted a corporation and got screwed?!? Why, that's...unheard of!(My wife, bless her, has "purchased" dozens of movies on amazon. I warned her that when the amazon wind changes, she may regret those purchases. I got the look.)
Or when the account gets compromised. I recently lost my amazon account and with it, all of my kindle purchases. Fortunately, I was able to turn on the airplane mode on my kindle just in time and preserve the books which were already downloaded. Guess I have to jail break it some day.
I suppose you could "buy" and also get a copy off of thepiratebay.org - you already paid for the license. It is teeechnically illegal because the "purchase" agreement very likely doesn't allow backups, but come on. (Also, the uploading part of torrenting is usually separately illegal)
They should at least make an effort to let you sync them into MoviesAnywhere which is supposed to solve the "I have this on iTunes, but not Android TV" problem by unlocking it across platforms if you sync your accounts. They should really let you permanently keep movies on defunct platforms as part of your standard MoviesAnywhere movie collection.
Movies Anywhere works by aggregating the active digital access licenses you have participating partner services. The problem here is Sony won't be able to give any active digital access licenses for these movies to users after September 1st, let alone one which allows them to transfer that through Movies Anywhere.
It's typical "you own nothing" logic to the point the companies selling you that also don't even own it.
It's more "streaming/delivery operators which also have some of their own licensed content":
- 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.
The announcement only seems to have been sent to users in the UK and MoviesAnywhere is a US only service. Also StudioCanal are ultimately the rightsholder who would need to join MoviesAnywhere, and they are not members.
(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.)
Class actions are usually not very effective. Each affected individual will receive $0.03 and the company will pay 0.5% of the money it made from this maneuver. What actually works is the opposite, mass small claims lawsuits for refunds, because that way the cost of handling those cases is much higher for the company than for the individual.
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."
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."
I haven't bought a single Sony product since then. I used to have a Sony walkman, clock radio, buy classical Sony CDs (or their sub brands), etc, nearly got an original PlayStation.
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.
Rights management in a physical media world = I have the media in my hand (caveats for some DRM systems)
Rights management for digital media = companies remotely deleting paid content from my account & keeping my money / songs disappearing out of my streaming playlist / etc
Reminds me of 1984, not the book itself, but the time when Amazon deleted it from everyone's Kindle because of some sort of copyright issue. I think that's when most of us first realized that the digital media being purchased doesn't really belong to you.
A friend of mine owned the first Ipod, and diligently ripped all his cd's and cut and pasted them too his device. I asked if he had backups, and he said he had the cd's. I told him too make a copy, just in case the Apple mafia came too delete his stuff. He didn't, and then after a move he lost or scratched many of his CD's. His only backup WAS the ripped MP3's. A few years later Apple deleted all of his music claiming he hadn't purchased them. He didn't even know how to download music. Every single MP3 he had he ripped himself...
No legal disruption is possible - these are the terms content holders insist on. Illegal disruption already happened and you already have access to it, but you're not using it because you don't want to break the law.
I'm surprised movies haven't yet moved to DRM free on purchases the way music did on iTunes back in 2009. With movie files being so large and people having streaming services integrated in their TV's I can't imagine there is all that much incentive for people to share them anyway. The only thing it does is help prevent situations like this.
And for some non-geoblocked music, if you want to actually purchase the song as MP3, there's no way unless you have a Mac or Windows PC to install iTunes (too bad for Linux users).
https://uk.7digital.com/ has a lot of songs available in MP3 format, but not as many as on iTunes.
Piracy is back, and stronger than ever. After all this bullshit happening with services, I will not be buying a movie from any service like sony, amazon, or youtube. Maybe a DVD or Blu-ray here and there, but no digital ownership.