Sony is erasing digital libraries that were supposed to be accessible “forever”

You know what say: if buying isn’t owning then pirating isn’t stealing.

This is where our lazy lawmakers need to step in and protect consumers. Make it illegal to revoke these types of licenses over greedy, lazy, exploitative business mergers and acquisitions. If corporations want to fight that, then they shouldn't be able to "sell" digital movies or games anymore: Any time you go to "purchase" digital content, it must plainly tell you that you're renting said content for an undetermined amount of time.

Funny how so much recent talk has emerged yet again about how companies like Microsoft want to get rid of disc drives on their next Xbox... It's almost like companies don't actually want you to ever truly own anything. A rent economy is toxic and rotten, and it's infuriating that it's literally becoming our entire economy.

I've been boycotting Sony since the CD rootkit debacle & haven't regretted my decision yet.

Its barely the second month of the year and these companies are nose diving to the fucking bottom.

🏴‍☠️ sharing is caring.

I am altering the deal. Pray that I don’t alter it any further.

How the tables have turned.

Sony won the case against Universal that allowed people to record TV shows with their VCR. I wonder how they'd feel if I pointed OBS at their streams.

If what they're doing isn't theft, then digital "piracy" isn't theft either.

And with the unrelated rumours of Microsoft potentially leaving the console business and going multiplatform, it begs serious questions.

Do you really want Sony to have a monopoly on console gaming when they can't even respect ownership rights for digital goods?

if you can take it from me, I can take it from you. piracy has become a moral imperative to stop valuable art being flushed down the memory hole.

Sony should be fined for each unit they delete.

if they pull this shit with music, i'm gonna have to look for self hosted music streaming apps.

When my plex server does what Sony won’t/ can’t.

This is why we prefer to buy physical media, getting a digital with it is nice, but physical is key.

It wasn't even me was pushing for us to get physical media, it was my spouse. Of course my plex server the house probably helped. But after a few "forever" is only until next month, or shows completely disappearing altogether from any streaming, they started pushing for more physical media.

Digital ownership is a real issue. We need to ensure we own when we buy, or we should not buy

We gonna go after every company that does this because pretty much all of them are.

I’m down to one streaming service left. Just need to… ahem… acquire the rest of what I want to watch there before I no longer pay monthly for services I barely use, where anything can be ripped away from us at any time.

Never again.

Someone is going to be a high seas king after this for sure.

But in addition to offering video streaming, Funimation also dubbed and released anime as physical media, and sometimes those DVDs or Blu-rays would feature a digital code. Subscribers to the Funimation streaming service could add those digital codes to Funimation and then stream the content from the platform.

Okay, I honestly feel bad for anyone not old enough to remember the last few times big media firms pulled this kind of crap. This kind of thing is always a trap, or at best a temporary add-on to the media you purchased. If you buy a DVD or BluRay, anything other than the videos on the medium have a short shelf life. Plus, anything having to do with internet websites are considered disposable by big business*, but doubly so in this kind of scheme.

In the past we've had bolt-on features to media that have aged poorly. 1-800 support numbers for video games. Websites with supplementary media. Executable programs on disk that only work on Windows95 or MacOS 9. Console exclusive content. Extra media on disk in formats like Flash. Heck, there are even old cassettes and LPs that have C64 BASIC programs on them. Downloadable game content through redeemable codes. The end result is less a product value-add and more of a novelty.

Then there's the litany of broken-by-design media, like DivX. And of course, let's not forget about formats that have no modern release and are only viewable on players that haven't been made in a dozen years or more.

Yes, Sony/Funimation should be taken to task for misleading advertising. But we should also be vigilant and look for the warning signs too.

(* - If that makes you uncomfortable about IoT devices, you're paying attention.)

This is nothing new. Buying digital and streaming only versions of media just means you are licensing it. If you care, either break the DRM and reencode, or just pirate it directly.

I feel more and more justified about piracy every article I read about licensing and stuff just getting taken away after having paid good money for stuff

Laughs in 64TB Plex server

In other news, the only thing that has ever axed my library was a stray bolt of lightning

Text Resistbot at 50409 and have it write and send a letter to your representatives. All of them.

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Give it a try and make your voices heard.

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Capitalists make a liar out of the promise of The Internet.

I think we should drag em through the streets four different ways at once over it.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Funimation, a Sony-owned streaming service for anime, recently announced that subscribers' digital libraries on the platform will be unavailable after April 2.

For years, Funimation had been telling subscribers that they could keep streaming these digital copies of purchased movies and shows, but qualifying it: “forever, but there are some restrictions.”

But in addition to offering video streaming, Funimation also dubbed and released anime as physical media, and sometimes those DVDs or Blu-rays would feature a digital code.

For people lacking the space, resources, or interest in maintaining a library of physical media, this was a good way to preserve treasured shows and movies without spending more money.

It also provided a simple way to access purchased media online if you were, for example, away on a trip and had a hankering to watch some anime DVDs you bought.

Regarding refunds, Funimation's announcement directed customers to its support team "to see the available options based on your payment method," but there's no mention of getting money back from a DVD or Blu-ray that you might not have purchased had you known you couldn't stream it "forever."

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