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um yeah, that’s not hard to prove, you can check my torrent history
you still own them more than a psn store enjoyer owns their games
does anyone know why Sony is so intent on ensuring that I never become a console gamer and give them money?
like how does this benefit them?
I worked for the major streaming company when the service was launched in Japan. Sony (among others) said that streaming would never take off in Japan because Japanese consumers are too tied to physical media. This was probably 2014. It’s probably been the slowest place in the world to change, but it has changed. Sony understands the consumer preference for digital media as well as anyone. They just know that resistance and opposition will fade over time.
They are a fairly adaptable company (as Japanese tech companies go), and if they get it wrong, they will pivot, but there is nothing pro-consumer about the company. They didn’t put Blu-ray players in PS3s because it was good for consumers, they did it because it was good for Sony’s entertainment business. And people often forget that part of the Blu-ray spec was mandatory internet connectivity so that the content licensor could revoke content licenses. We haven’t “owned” physical media since DVDs.
This is the company that brought you Memory Stick after all. They’ve been anti-consumer ever since the Walkman was a huge success. It benefits Sony by making people buy more copies of the same thing. You might not buy any, but if the optimization is right, enough people will.
You are just a guy. There are millions more that will not care and won’t even know any of this ever took place. There were leaked conversations where Sony talked about their fanbase as brainless cattle, too.
I’m purely pulling this firmly out of my ass. While I genuinely doubt they have any intention or plans at this point, I assume being able to tell investors “oh we can pull the plug and walk away from these legacy costs at any time” is a plus in someone’s column somewhere. Of course the issue is that what is possible to save money often becomes reality.
Going to court to prove they’re arseholes. Nice.
If you want to stop it, write to your representatives. EULAs do not override local laws.
Well it says BUY in the store
Don’t go there, I see a “buy license” button in our future. Right now, nothing but the string of text has to change. They have been changing what really matters, the crazy infrastructure behind that prevents downloading, and allows erasing, the content we have bought.
i hope theyre ready to give a ton of refunds for digital “purchases”
If I don’t own, I won’t buy. Good luck.
Already lost my PS4 collection for not logging in 3 years.
We’re going to need the full story here. What the heck man?? They just delete you if you’re offline for a couple years?
Already lost my PS4 collection for not logging in 3 years.
Wait, seriously?! Damn, that sucks. What kept you off PSN for three years?
The fact you even have to ask that is fucking wild. It shouldn’t matter in the first fucking place.
I think they’re just curious, not implying it makes a difference
How? I didn’t use it for years and it’s fine.
if buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.
Piracy isn’t stealing either way. It’s just copyright infringement.
Sadly, catchy slogans don’t hold up in court. Better to buy from distributors who don’t try to make that claim, like GOG - even if they won’t put Nine Sols on the store to avoid offending many gamers.
Sadly, catchy slogans don’t hold up in court.
Idk, OJ floated by on his.
No crime where’s no judge.
I’ve heard the argument that if you aren’t pirating via torrent but simply downloading a file (no seeding), there really aren’t any damages that can be claimed aside from the price of the thing you’ve pirated, hence completely not worth any action. The danger is if you’re uploading stuff you can be on the hook based on the number of downloads of that file.
No idea if that’s true, though it sounds reasonable. Thankfully, I’m in a country that could not give less of a shit about piracy… one of the few upsides here lol.
There’s a technical aspect to it too. Downloading over HTTPS covers your butt in a way that you need a good VPN for if torrenting.
I think that’s largely true in the US, at least.
we don’t need to resolt to piracy just to have our digital ownership
no, but it’s morally acceptable to pirate things released by hostile corporations
With how shitty the owning and freedom situation on consoles is already, this really doesn’t change much. People who are still using consoles just don’t give any fucks. They happily swallowed the PSN subscription. They will happily swallow the next toad too.
granted limited access to software that can be revoked at any moment.
If it is that, then it may not be called a purchase. Simple.
Rent. It’s rent.
Turns out I was granting limited access to my money that can be revoked at any moment.
It should be called renting (or something similar). But then, that would likely mean an expectation of a lower price tag and they wouldn’t want that. Who would rent a game for $80? Even if the rental is a decade or longer. Probably people out there that would and currently do this.
But then, that would likely mean an expectation of a lower price tag and they wouldn’t want that.
In other words, they want to commit fraud with impunity. Because that’s what lying about the difference between a sale and a rental is: fraud on Sony’s part.
I would agree, but most leases have stipulations that restrict voiding the contract “at any moment”. You have to do something to violate the lease agreement most times so this is even worse than renting.
It should just be called License. Put that there instead of the buy button. And clearly visible the minimum expiration date for the license. Reserve the buy button for actual perpetual licenses where not having access to the licensed good is a breach of contract good for money back.
Licenses are a copyright concept, but this isn’t a copyright issue. You’re buying a copy of a game, and you should own the copy after the purchase (which of course, means the company who sold it to you shouldn’t be able to revoke your access at will). That’s the part that sony is apparently not willing to do. But copyright-wise, it would be a license either way, so I don’t think it’s a good idea to confuse people with only tangentially related concepts here.
copyright(n.) c. 1729, “the exclusive right to make and sell copies of an intellectual production,”
license(v.) c. 1400, “grant formal authorization to do what would be illegal to do without it,”
Yeah… I don’t think you are right about that…
I don’t really see what that has to do with what I said? Unless you are saying that licenses exist for other things than copyright (in response to “licenses are a copyright concept”). That’s definitely true, I oversimplified to make my point, but I’m also pretty sure that copyright licenses are the only kind of license that are relevant here in the first place.
Copyrights are a type of license not the other way around.
Copyrights are rights. A license grants others (parts of) that right. A copyright isn’t a license.
licenses are a very IT central idea.
I have to buy licenses of Windows, Acrobat, etc… It lines up with what Sony is trying to say too
licenses are a very IT central idea.
No, that’s just the implementation you’re most familiar with. Licenses are a copyright idea that IT adopted and made digital. Every physical movie and game you own also comes with a license that authorizes your retail use of it, but forbids your commercial use of it. You can’t rent your copy of Shrek out to people, nor can you charge admission to people to watch Shrek at your house, nor are you allowed to make copies of your Shrek DVD and sell them, for example.
Care to back that up? You wouldn’t need a license to do something that copyright laws already allow you to do on their own. For example, making additional copies for your own personal use is perfectly legal, if allowed depends on your local fair use or private copying exemption law (provided you do it without circumventing DRM, e.g. via the analog hole), even though of course the movie studio wouldn’t give you a license for that.
Of course, DRM is the real issue here, as due to anti-circumvention the movie industry controls who can legally make players for movies on DVD/Blu-Ray (unlike on VHS and CD).
You can’t rent your copy of Shrek out to people
That’s literally how Netflix got started.
Physical media also comes with a license.
🎶🎶oh, the pirate’s life’s for me🎶🎶
Like when you purchase books for 2 weeks at the library. Simple!
right, just before going digital only. it’s a bold move cotton…
I don’t need to read the article to know that they’re making the same argument as Amazon and Apple. When you “buy” a show on one of the streaming platforms, you aren’t actually buying anything except an extended rental.
Then the button should say “rent” and not “buy”
Consumer protections are for the weak. /s
Digital music for purchase as well.
Not quite true anymore, publishers have pretty much given up on DRM for purchased music :)
Neither Apple’s iTunes store nor amazon’s store (although to be fair, I haven’t used amazon, so I’m not 100 % sure about them) use DRM on purchased music, so you can just take the music files and use them in any way you want. In my personal opinion though, rather than use the iTunes store or amazon, I’d recommend you to try the qobuz store, which is DRM-free and is the only one I know of (ignoring bandcamp, which doesn’t get music from regular distributors) that provides lossless audio.
This led to a lot of good discussion around various places to buy digital music. My comment wasn’t so much drm focused as it was about licenses being removed. I’ve encountered that on Qobuz actually. Not many, but a few items are no longer available to be downloaded. I have already downloaded the files when I purchased the music, so that’s certainly something different than a movie or game that can’t be downloaded and used as such. That’s all, just the fact that the license can still be removed.
HDtracs also sells some stuff losslessly. Though one thing I’ve noticed I’ve noticed on both Qobuz and HDtracs is tha, in addition to only having some stuff losslessly, the availability of lossless varies by region. The same album might be sold lossless in one region and only lossy in another region.
Didn’t know about them before, thanks for sharing!
The same album might be sold lossless in one region and only lossy in another region.
That’s weird, since as far as I can tell, qobuz doesn’t offer lossy downloads at all (I’ve heard they used to, but stopped. Maybe there are some regions where they’re still offering it?)
Hmm, maybe I was misremembering. On second thought I think it was actually 7digital I was thinking of that did the regional lossless, I forgot about that one. For example, the same album on Swedish and American stores:
Bandcamp lets you download .mp3 which are DRM free. They probably are tagged in the info but its just a text field
MP3 is a horrible non-free (well, not anymore, because the patents expired; but still), outdated format. bandcamp also lets you download as FLAC, which is none of that and lossless.
edit: it feels this comment came off a bit aggressively, so I just wanted to say that wasn’t my intention 😅
FLAC does not work with alot of devices
AAC-LC though works just about anywhere, and AFAIK is also patent free by now.
Then transcode it to whatever other format you need yourself. Point is, the thing being sold ought to be the highest quality possible.
Ah I see Playstation seems out of its wild teenage years and is now so overconfident it’s poke the bear time!
This should be fun.
You know what? Let them. Normalise the idea and watch how the market speaks (yo ho ho).
The market will answer with pathetic mumbling, as always :)
But that might help small studios that don’t use DRMs anyway.
I appreciate the spirit, but the average person will keep giving their money to these shitty companies.
