Sony is facing a $7.9 billion lawsuit that could impact over 9 million players. They’ve been accused of deleting purchased movies, TV shows, and games—items customers thought they owned forever.
This lawsuit, filed by consumer advocate Alex Neill, challenges Sony’s alleged abuse of its dominant position, charging high prices and restricting competition on the PlayStation Store.
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yeah, dont buy digital. If its not available as a physical product steal it.
Unskippable ads, required downloaded updates, region restrictions…
Nah, I’m downloading that fucking car, I’m done giving movie studios chances to be reasonable.
They were good for a bit, but they are a slave to stock value and their finance bros will take every opportunity to squeeze you for revenue, ruining every experience.
Fun thing, even a DVD or Blu-ray is technically licensed by them, and they claim they have the right to revoke it whenever they want. In the case of Blu-ray they have tried to do this via “updates” to the Blu-ray players
I remember complaining on Amazon about the price of digital books when they were still relatively new. They wanted me to pay the same price for a digital book as a physical book. Back then, Amazon still had pretty decent customer service and wrote me back saying that the price for the book wasn’t for literal pages but for the work in making the book, etc. etc.
I told them I understood that but I don’t get the same rights with the digital book as I did with the physical, namely the right to sell the book.
Books, board games, etc. any physical media is technically a license, yes. BUT the copyright holder cannot bar you from doing whatever you want with the physical copy, within the limits of copyright law. Those same rights simply do not exist with your digital copies and, in fact, is often codified within your terms of service that you don’t fucking own anything and they can pull your license at any time.
DVD is next to impossible to revoke while Blu-ray is not. But you can’t revoke Blu-ray licenses to specific people but to regions. I haven’t heard of this happening but if it did, you could, in theory, still play your Blu-ray disks on players that aren’t connected to the internet to receive those updates. That said, I’m like 80% sure that Blu-ray keys have been leaked and you can rip them like DVDs today.
I am not saying you can or you can’t, but if you could, and I’m not saying you can, I would have full DRM-free backups of every Blu-ray I own.
I’m not saying they would or they wouldn’t, but if they would, and I’m not saying they would, they would distribute the keys to the Blu-ray players online so other people could use their rightfully purchased discs in any way they pleased on their own hardware.
I’m not saying you you should or shouldn’t, but if you did, I’ve heard it’s possible to access a backup of the original even if you don’t have an original disc.
I am not saying you can or you can’t, but if you could, and I’m not saying you can, download basically any ebook or audiobook you want from “mouse torrent site”. It’s a private tracker, so you do have to apply for membership, but it’s the best place on the net for books.
I grab audiobooks from there, then pipe them straight from qBittorrent into an Audiobookshelf server so me, my family, and my friends can stream them to any device.
Sony owns Blu Ray tech but not DVD. DVD was industry consortium to prevent a repeat of the VHS and betamax war. Only lasted a generation unfortunately.
BRB I have a blu ray player from 2017 I’m disconnecting from the internet
Is it stealing though? Theft, as it is legally defined, requires depriving the original owner of the thing you are stealing. Stealing a car for example, means the owner cannot drive the car since you have it.
If you could take someone else’s car, but they still have access to their car as if it was never taken, is that really stealing?
Well, there’s also the concept of intellectual property though.
There shouldn’t be.
I fully agree with you on that.
Otoh our current law systems don’t.
You speak of copyright infringement. Some people call it IP theft but in reality it has nothing to do with stealing in the traditional sense of the word (such as stealing a bicycle). You can’t actually steal something that’s still there after you “take it.”
I think that’s called conversion. Or unjust enrichment.
Even physical these days means nothing, just look at The Crew.
Thankfully modders have made good progress of coming closer to emulating servers for it so people can play it offline.
Bad part is Ubisoft actually removed The Crew from some people’s Ubisoft account. Steam versions were safe ironically to be able to download the game to make use of it when Crew community made fix is out.
I’d be happy with DRM-free video purchases, but they don’t exist like they do for video games, and even video games aren’t available DRM-free across the board.
It’s not necessarily cheap or convenient, but building a physical collection of Blu-Rays (or DVDs if quality isn’t priority) is something that can’t be taken away.
Add on a compatible Blu-Ray drive to your computer and you can even rip the digital files yourself. It’s taken me a few years, but now I never have to worry if my favorite movie is available when I want to show a friend. It also makes them easy to loan.
I’d very much prefer to not even have them take up shelf space, but it’s the only way that exists to actually own a copy of a movie or TV show. I have ripped a number of them, but if someone made the GOG for movies, I’d move all of my purchases over there.
The marginal cost of information goods is zero. Digital Capitalism is inherently a scam, even moreso than physical products.
PS6 gonna cost us $2k
Those sweet sweet Trump tariffs
Crypto first came for GPUs then AI came for GPUs. And now tariffs are coming after everything. I don’t like these sequels.
Xbox [random number or letter] has entered the chat.
Xbox Series X Plus Digital Pro edition.
I’m still waiting for the PS9. Can’t imagine how much nanospore technology is gonna cost.
Good luck to that lawsuit!
I’ve nothing against Sony, but I want some of these companies to lose some of these cases just to remind them that we should own what we buy.
Nintendo deserves that.
Nintendo deserves a lot worse than that. It’s why I pirate all their games, even though I have a Switch laying around somewhere.
Mario plays better on the Steam Deck anyway.
I’m jealous. I want a steam deck. My switch is a glorified smash And southpark dog emulator. It’s covered in dust…
I can’t overstate how nice it is having a tiny little Linux gaming PC in your backpack. It can run the majority of games I throw at it, from Cyberpunk 2077 to Stardew Valley. I replaced SteamOS with Bazzite, which is a little better IMO. And for the games I can’t get good performance with, it’s seamless to stream them from my Linux gaming rig. It also obviously works great for ROMs, and while some Switch games are glitchy, most run very well. You don’t have to limit yourself to games on Steam either, since it’s pretty easy these days to run any Windows, MacOS, or Android apps or games on Linux, and Heroic gives you 1-click installs for GOG and Epic game stores.
Battery life is around two and a half hours for a game like Cyberpunk 2077, and as much as 7-8 for something like Stardew Valley.
Do you think that Linux mint would fair well on it? I do like my Linux mint lol.
I’m rocking a 1060 in all of my builds and my laptop so im already used to medium Gfx at best.
You could install that, yes. But keep in mind that distros made for the Deck include the game mode for the Deck, as well as Steam Input, which is one of the greatest things Valve has made, allowing you to make complex macros and rebind every part of the Deck, from the buttons to the trackpads or even the gyro, in almost any way you want. Without those things, the Deck is just a PC with a very small screen. Steam Input is what makes many games, even ones that were never meant to be played with a controller, viable on the Deck.
I might be misunderstanding but isn’t that a function of steam itself? Not a custom OS? And game mode is just big picture mode?
Maybe one day enough younger people will be in elected that understand computers aren’t magic. There’s no fundamental difference between selling a DVD and a digital movie, from a legal perspective.
Ironically, from what I can see, the younger generation understands even less about computers. It’s like everything is so simple to use (smartphones, consoles, tablet) that they no longer need to understand the technology behind it.
This is so nicee
This will got to Past too unless all 9mil player files a lawsuit.
I’m all for these lawsuits etc but people need to wake up to the fact they don’t own anything digital, it’s been this way for years now so no excuses.
If it says “buy”, then I should own it. Anything else is a lie and demands justice.
Even if it says “licence” or whatever then I’d still not be fine with it not being permanent. The language isn’t the problem
You did buy something, a digital license that comes with it’s own terms.
I agree with you by the way but it’s been 20 years and people still act surprised about this stuff.
I’m going to keep this short. It takes a long time for society to “catch up” Facebook, twitter, the shitshows of algorithmic social media. It’s like watching a snail race but, that doesn’t make it right is what people are saying. When you go to the store and buy an apple they expect that apple to be theres except this is digital purchases and even in the terms it says that it can be modified by the corporation at any moment. Shit it’s been 112 years and climate change was only recognized as a real problem by the public in the last 30 years.
I know it’s like the people who get mad at me when they get hit with my chainsaw and it’s like “look wrong or right I’ve been out here swinging these chainsaws while wearing a blindfold for 24 years you need to get used to it”
I agree with all the replies I’m getting but people are literally going round in circles with the outrage over digital licenses.
Buy physical, backup your media, download illegally or do what you need to do to show businesses that things need to change.
We’re already past the “spreading awareness” stage. Now it’s time to do something about legally sanctioned robbery.
No no no, OP told us it’s been ages now so we’re in the “dogmatically apathetic” stage, right before “crywank”.
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Do we need to wake up to that? Or do we need to say that’s bullshit? Which one sounds better? Maybe companies need to wake up to the fact that they shouldn’t be able to do anything they want. Why can’t we wake up to that reality?
