If it was a real sale, then they could not do this remote control/deletion at a distance.
Shit I buy at Walmart can't be physically taken away from me later on. Its legally mine.
This? Its fraudulently sold as a "sale" but is really an indefinite rental with the terms of "fuck you I'll do what I please when I please".
And on top of fraud, I'd also throw in the CFAA as well, a criminal statute. Its established law that if I set a timebomb in software at $company where if I'm fired/laid off, that's criminal access. No boilerplate from some shitty clickwrap can excuse criminal law.
Time to start jailing Sony execs and the like.
Aka, due to their mistake. When Sony originally signed an agreement, they should have insisted on a perpetual license for anything already in the customer's library.
I was initially inclined toward some minimal sympathy for Sony here, but I see no good faith reason why they'd sign a licensing agreement which allows the other party to do this.
I think something similar applies to digital media - you don't truly own anything that's not stored in bits on a hard drive that you can pick up and put in your pocket.
DVDs and Blu-rays I purchased from the same era required a) advance planning and b) care. To the second point, most of the physical media is now destroyed (scratched, stepped on, lost, or just degraded), but I still have access to the copy of Cars I bought almost 20 years ago from Apple.
When iTunes + came out, you had 2 options, you could buy a song for $0.99 or you could be the plus version for more, I don't remember but it was like $1.35 or something. Plus had a higher bit rate and it wasn't encrypted.
Suppose you could buy a movie for $12.00, how much would you pay for the forever version? $30?
Plus, when "renting" a movie costs $3.99, and "buying" it costs $5.99, there's not a particular reason to not click the "purchase" button.
I only buy through Amazon Videos, with the logic being Amazon is going to be around awhile.
If you don't want to pay for streaming own up to it, buy it on physical or steal it (make an illegitimate copy). But don't pretend you would pay for it if it was delivered in a different agreement.
Do you expect to keep driving a rented car forever? Even if the car is only available through rent?
You don't need to ask a hypothetical, the market has an answer.
To the extent your reply is "but that's not exactly what my question is", my point is that the market is already pricing all sorts of situations and the market would have no problem pricing just one more possibility into the already complicated market. Including "piracy", and people like me who are treating the vast majority of DVDs and BluRays as just a delivery mechanism for streams rather than "discs".
I'll pirate it off of Usenet or Torrents.
I get a strictly better experience if I pirate. Whereas I'm treated like a criminal and sold a much worse experience if I pay.
So, fuck paying. I'm not going to pay for abuse.
You answered your own question very efficiently.
Sony will be around a while too, but as you've just seen here, it's not about how healthy the company hosting the video files is.
Why should it be variable, if we talk about digital media? Storage and content streaming is cheaper than embracing a whole logistic (producing DVDs/BlueRays, packaging, shipping).
But here we are again: if you buy something digital, you just pay for a "usage license", you don't own anything at all. After all these years or decades, I am still surprised that people expect to own digital content, forever
You're forgetting there's a slice of people who want to "own" a movie library but don't have the technical acumen to rip and/or (more importantly) host (consider that you'd have to stand up a Jellyfin server and have a good amount of HDD space -- I personally have 50TB).
Again, it's not _that_ hard in general but daunting enough and with high enough startup costs to dissuade a lot of people.
BluRay no, because your player's keys can be revoked when you pop in a new disc.
Streaming is so easy, don't need to find a disk. Load it, watch all the ads and warnings.
Licensing issues like Sony's aside, the studios did MoviesAnywhere right. I can buy the disc (often used) and redeem the code, or buy digitally, and download/stream everywhere that matters to me and my family.
Not necessarily. What if the store didn't have to do that?
Which is the same constraint as pretty much any other physical item one might purchase. "reasonably a forever" is a reasonable description.
"Buying" a streaming movie means that you enter into an agreement with an online service that promises to make your experience the rough equivalent of physical ownership. But to do that they have to solve a pile of problems, and solve those forever for as long as your purchase is valid.
Realistically, Sony will have service outages, they will have contract disputes, they may have data loss, security incidents, etc., all of which can make your "bought" content unavailable either temporarily or permanently. The real question is what type of agreement Sony had with StudioCanal.
None of this would ever affect your DVD. So the word "buying" wrt a streaming movie is easy to understand, but a bit misleading in practice. It's clear what Sony is signing up to provide; it's just hard to see how they can provide that consistently over the time period involved.
As an example why buy games from Steam when I can get them on gog.com DRM free and make them portable (without a setup or installation step on future machines)? So, I run my own Steam Store/Library like experience on a home server using Game Vault.
I use JellyFin for video. It works for music files, but I don't really like it for audio. So, I wrote my own music app that works in the browser/phone securely across the internet from my own server.
This is so much better than paying for subscriptions..
Wait what? How? How is that possibly legal?
In most parts of the world it’s not illegal. That’s a seriously draconian law.
In any other case: use MakeMKV
The RIAA, MPAA, and entire industries were vehemently opposed to digital media (and recording in general) and fought digital distribution every step of the way, tooth and nail, until all the DRM and gatekeeping was in place.
Perhaps we were both on the wrong side of history?
Don't defend theft/fraud based for billion dollar corporations. It's not a good look.
I've spent WAY MORE on my hardware and setup in time, money, and DVDs than I ever would have for streaming services, but I know if it goes down, it's on me.
Why should I pay to be treated as a criminal, when pirating is better in every way and costs nothing?
There is no option of "Pay for digital copy of show that permits format/time shifting and backup for as long as I want, with no DRM". Like GOG. Doesn't exist in the pay realm.
I have a cool 16 DVD/Bluray ripping rig. Even have scripts that convert ripped images into MKV's with all audio and subtitles, art, etc. Uploads into my Jellyfin.
And yes, I do buy VHS, DVDs, and Blurays. I have probably 3000 movies in physical format, and 10000 audio CDs. I also rip old VHS, which you usually cant find any torrents of. Again, I specialize in rare stuff you cant buy retail or find.
There's also illegal show, like the old WKRP in Cincinnati. They licensed for TV only Pink Floyd and other artists, that refuse to license now. Nobody can legally sell them, even if you have the money. Piracy is the only way for the complete show.
If hardware ever cheaper I will also run an instance of Project Nomad: