Sony is erasing digital libraries that were supposed to be accessible “forever”
Sony is erasing digital libraries that were supposed to be accessible “forever”
Casualties afoot as Sony merges Funimation with 2021-acquired Crunchyroll.
How long is “forever”? When it comes to digital media, forever could be as close as a couple of months away.
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.”
Own your shit without anyone's permission or it will disappear
89This really grinds my gears. Every company is always complaining about piracy, just to add invasive DRM and/or crappy measures that only ever hurt the consumer.
Some might not act like this is a big deal because those codes typically come with a physical disc, but when you bought the disc you actually bought TWO copies, the physical disc AND the digital code.
What if you sold your code to someone else? GONE. What if you sold your disc? GONE.
This should be illegal but unfortunately they can update their crappy EULA's that say something along the lines of "By using our service you agree to--", and there goes your media that you "own forever".
What a joke.
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67if just annoys me so much that they did away with dvds and blurays - which offered infinitely more value to streaming because of the added bonus features and the fact that you owned it - and then raised streaming prices even though they didn't have to spend as much making the physical media anymore.
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This actually IS theft, selling you something and then stealing it back!
65But but but you didn’t read page 36 of the ULA where it says they can!
35I vaguely remember reading that terms of service that violate basic rights are not going to be upheld in court.
I'm not a FUNimation subscriber but I hope that the people who are take Sony to court
21
Relevant (old) XKCD : https://xkcd.com/488/
63That is exactly the XKCD I pictured.
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Fuck these companies. Seriously, they dont give a shit, they are not competitive and want you to keep paying for shit you bought years ago.
🏴☠️Just remember to seed
52Are you able to download your purchases? I feel like the answer is "no," but if they were serious about your library being "yours" downloading your purchases would have been part of their service plan from the start.
40Not to my knowledge.
But also, I would assume the vast majority of library licenses were from buying blu-rays. You buy a movie or a season/collection and get a card to get the digital copy with it. So people, theoretically, already have physical copies.
In large part because... funimation was "the good anime streaming service". That is similar to "Sony's network shit is good compared to Nintendo" and "I would rather get shot in the ass than the foot"
Still hot bullshit though considering that there IS another anime service with similar capabilities under the same company (crunchyroll). I understand license hell and all that but... still.
10This is how my library was with Funimation. Entirely from physical copies. I still canceled my Crunchyroll account and listed this move as my reason. Probably won't matter one bit since most people will go right on subscribing even after the price hike.
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yt-dlp can be used.
I only have one purchase on Funimation, and it’s a digital version of a physical purchase.
I’m trying to figure out the exact best options at the moment. If there’s not one yet by the time I’m ready, I’ll make a thread with my command and why I chose each option.
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Second time Sony has done this in almost as many months. Fuck Sony.
26Just like any lifetime guarantee, its guaranteeing access for the lifetime of the service (which could end at any moment) not your lifetime.
services that promise lifetime or forever accessability should be avoided.
21it's* guaranteeing access
4Good bot!
3
It's wild that I just got my Robotech collectors edition box set, which was a pre-order, a few weeks ago, and it had a Funimation code in it. This was either a sudden decision or very poorly communicated in-house.
16Physical media FTW once again.
That said, I still feel bad for the people who got fucked over here. There are a lot of options Sony could have pursued in order to do right by their customers, but instead Sony chose to be shit bags about it.
14forever like when harry potter's mum said she'd always be there for him
11This 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."
The original article contains 420 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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