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Discussion (60 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
To me, it should be a fairly easy, short, and extremely popular law that if you say you are 'selling' someone something, with a time-frame extremely clearly specified in a simple way, at least the same size as the price (say), you can't take it back later without giving a full refund. If they want to offer a multi-year rent, call it rent.
So long as lobbying by the Disney Corporation and others is allowed, the concept of the Public Domain is vilified to the point of felony; whereas the likes of Eldred v Ashcroft call it out for what it is - corporate welfare at the expense of public utility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft
IMO If you bought something and someone takes that away, THAT is the actual theft, and you have limited options to alleviate your loss.
Yo ho me hearties...
and of course an end user believes it's a purchase when the companies explicitly say things like "Rent for £2.99 or Buy for £9.99".
If Sony want to market this as buying rather than renting a film, then I think that they need to either -
- negotiate a contract that "grandfathers in" availability for as long as the platform exists, even if they lose rights to sell to new customers - refund what it'd now cost to buy outright elsewhere if they're pulling the title (if they want, maybe pro rate that. e.g. count a purchase as 100 years of access to it. If I lose rights after 10 years, I get a 90% refund)
"PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48691346 26-jun-2026 208 comments
"Studio Canal Movies purchased on PlayStation Store removed without refund" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48718967 29-jun-2026 125 comments
Now though all blu rays are inorganic and should last about 100 years. Some can last closer to 1000 years.
The disc goes into a big case logic cd case, and the digital file gets backed up to two other places so there's almost an infinitesimally small chance I lose access to the content.
I let the Deezer bot surprise me OPM and I absolutely loved it
I also use it to listen to the Chinese rap, which would be a pain to get otherwise
Otherwise their human curated playlists are real good
But I agree with you, it's not how you "own" media. You only get the service to access media
FanKa is breaking a bone while singing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vx0A7ph_2w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_WYTk3bC2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMaS3a7W5us
While Skai isyourgod is living the dream https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD6ASbQtKxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFkgMiQBpoI
(That said, I've _never_ bought an e-book since which didn't have at least one typo or mis-formatted bit of text, including _Dune_ which I didn't get until it had been available as an ebook for _years_)
Obviously Sony has neither the right nor the competence to take a book it receives from a publisher and alter it to improve its quality. Your annoyance of someone “not valuing knowledge” should be directed at the publisher.
Bear in mind that you would likely be infringing on the rights of Apple since US law only permits backups for physical media.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/121877
Lets use a book, since it illustrate how ridiculous such assertions are. Ask yourself this question: why do you buy a book? For the paper, for the ink or for the information that it contains? Obviously the valuable thing for anyone is the information, the message, the communication of the author with you. Nobody really cares how the information reaches you, but that it reaches you. It is what motivates your purchase. When people buy digital content, they aren't buying the digital zeros and ones, they are buying the content.
And yet the format you supposedly don't care about is exactly what determines whether you keep any rights afterward. Take the same text in a printed book versus an ebook. Same author, same copyrighted content, same money changing hands. Buy the printed copy and you can resell it, lend it, leave it to your kids, no permission asked, because first sale doctrine protects whoever owns a copy. Buy the ebook and the platform's license language quietly reclassifies you as a non-owner, so none of that applies. The format from which the content is transmitted and distributed is irrelevant to why you bought it, but apparently decisive for what you're legally allowed to do with it once you have. The individual would never have started the purchase process if it didn't expect to own a copy of said content.
This is where every "but it's digital, so it is different" fails to address, and I believe deliberately and maliciously, it implies that value only resides in the material plane without considering the abstract.
The idea that companies can take away games, movies, etc that you've paid for with the expectation you would have them forever is toxic for society.
A CD or DVD? That will hold the soundtrack for all of eternity (or at least as long as the physical medium survives), but for digitally bought games, it's ridiculous that content I paid for can just get silently patched away.
[1] https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/868277-grand-theft-auto...
I am often pirating myself due to convenience and access to broader content or in case of games no bootloader crap on my PC, but see this as an issue of license owners rather than providers (in this case studio canal).
The rank-and-file consumer wanted to believe that "purchasing" something was permanent, but the metaphor is leaky. If I purchase a table from Ikea, then I take the kit home, I assemble it, I store the table, I maintain the table, I clean the table, and I can keep the table around for as long as I can pay rent on the apartment or whever it's being housed.
The same goes for a CD or DVD: you can keep playing it as long as YOU store it, YOU clean it, and YOU have a machine that can decode and reproduce the content.
But with digital intangibles in the cloud, none of this holds true. Your "purchase" belongs to Chad and it's in Chad's garage:
https://m.xkcd.com/1150/
So how can you be sore when Chad tires of the sweet deal you cooked up?
The same type of leaky metaphor happens with "piracy-as-theft". You copied some content and stole it! No it's not stolen: stealing is depriving a rightful owner of property. The rightful owner (or copyright holder) can calculate all their lost revenue and try to hold you accountable for that, but with piracy and copying, nobody's deprived of the content itself. Some cultures accept copying and plagiarism as a great honor and compliment to the original authors...
They know that using terms like "rent" or "lease indefinitely" would reduce their revenue, so they squirrel away legal gotchas that no one ever reads to cover their arse. It shouldn't be allowed.
Just because something is legal doesn't make it ethical. Sometimes the ethical thing to do is ignore the legalities, which is why people are fine with advocating for piracy in cases like these.
They were advertised as purchases. That they were not in actuality has a name: fraud.
> https://m.xkcd.com/1150/
> So how can you be sore when Chad tires of the sweet deal you cooked up?
Except in the cartoon Chad wasn't paid, whereas in the real life example Sony was. So a more true analogy would be that Chad sold you a fishing rod; you thought it was a purchase and you owned it, and then one day he took it back off you and pointed to the small print you didn't read that stated he could do this.
I was getting concerned, but if only StudioCanal movies are getting pulled as Sony doesn't need to pay for that, *it's but a loss*
The company was bought by the same tycoon who bought mainstream media to get frequencies, then replaced journalists with conservative anchors who ditch the news and rant about feminists and Muslims all day.
They were recently known for Bac Nord. It is honestly a very good cop movie, but that also outrageously rewrites a case in which dirty drug dealing cops were busted, in case some viewers are not willing to make the diff between reality and a good fiction
They made the headline around the Cannes festival this year, saying they should no longer work with woke movies.
Their case is getting embarrassing in France, as their owner is now the first (but not the only) purveyor of obscurantism for the masses
The person you're replying to made a case that a person with outsized influence is creating media to stir resentment for attention and your conclusion is "political reasons".
The word "political" always ends up meaning "don't talk about reactionaries throwing rocks"
But him being a "far-right actor" or whatever that means doesn't excuse Sony's anti-consumer actions in the slightest, that's completely missing the point, and turning things political for no reason. And also a logical falacy.
On their TV offering, in 2018 and 2022, they did pull the rug themselves by stopping to broadcast the free to air outlet which has #1 audience on the market, TF1, and this commercial dispute went to courts
Long story short, it's big business (not just inde studio does politics) and they're notoriously anything but victims at it
Also, on previous commercial disputes, these french studios and media outlets held an all or nothing stance, often asking to be completely removed from the offering of ISPs if they can't get the money they want.
That's their way of getting what they want ; and as the ones who support this kind of move put it (so pretty much THEM) : you have the right to contract and do what you want with what you own
It's embarrassing enough for Sony or ISPs, it's highly visible to consumers, so they will not accept a middle point like you describe.
I am more interested in a physical media that can keep its data for 80+ years, 500GB+, half the size of credit card and cheap to manufacture.
At the moment, and looking at the pipeline of tech. There are none.
Because he's not looking for a solution. He's looking for someone to argue with.