You may have paid for them, but you don't own them. From Kotaku: PlayStation To Delete A Ton Of TV Shows Users Already Paid For.
The promise of digital media is that it can last forever, pristine and undisturbed by the forces of entropy constantly buffeting the material world. Unfortunately, a mess of online DRM and license agreements means that we mostly don’t own the digital stuff we buy, as most recently evidenced by the fact that Sony is about to delete Mythbusters, Naked and Afraid, and tons of other Discovery shows from PlayStation users’ libraries even if they already “purchased” them.
Why? Because they can. Because they already have your money, and you didn't bother to read the fine print, you only clicked "OK" or "I agree" because that is what most people do, and you have better things to do with your time. Or something.
The latest pothole in the road to an all-digital future was discovered via a warning Sony recently sent out to PlayStation users who purchased TV shows made by Discovery, the reality TV network that recently merged with Warner Bros. in one of the most brutal and idiotic corporate maneuvers of our time. “Due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library,” read a copy of the email that was shared with Kotaku.
Refunds? Yeah, right. That wasn't part of that agreement. The agreement that you didn't read.
And if you think this is only a risk for PlayStation users, and nothing like this could ever happen to Amazon, VUDU, or wherever you buy media, well, you probably also believe that you can buy bridges in NYC.
And this doesn't even consider that they can declare your favorite movie from the '80s to be "Problematic." That will be right before they edit out a few scenes which cause "modern audiences" to be triggered on social media, even though those modern audiences will never watch the movie post edits.
Hat tip to Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony. Daily News Stuff 2 December 2023: Bacon Pancakes Edition
Did you buy any Discovery Channel content on the PlayStation Network? Because it turns out you didn't. (Kotaku)
You just rented it. At full purchase price.
And now it's gone.
Surprise!
Theft like this is why I own the physical media. And while that is technically "licensed" for particular uses, but at least I own the discs. No one can stealth edit them (Lucas I'm looking at you) or fix "bad words" or delete cigarette use. No one can decline to re-release them because they contain "problematic content."
ReplyDeleteI've been buying DVD and bluray, and CDs too at goodwill and estate sales for years. I've got over 1000 discs ripped to my movie server, and thousands of CDs ripped to my music server. I still have the physical media in storage too. And I'm not done ripping the stuff I already have.
I stream it across my local network to a roku at the tv at home, or I take the hard drive to my remote getaway location, where DSL isn't even available and no one has bandwidth to stream, and watch it there. It's more than I could watch or listen to for the rest of my days, which has the added benefit of not supporting the current woke crapsters by buying new movies.
I feel the same about books too. I've got physical copies of the stuff I really love, even with digital and kindle for reading it on the fly.
And shelves of reference books...as well as a pretty complete library of the great works of western civ.
I understand that I could lose it to a fire or flood, but I've taken precautions for that, and believe the risk is small compared to the stuff being edited, or memory-holed.
Own your media.
nick