alt Hacker NewsSony erases digital content from libraries; reminded we don't own what we buy
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Many people are using the words 'buy' and 'bought' here. That in itself shows people regard the interaction they had with the company as a purchase, not just temporary access that can be removed unilaterally on a whim.
IMO If you bought something and someone takes that away, THAT is the actual theft, and you have limited options to alleviate your loss.
Yo ho me hearties...
Related:
"PlayStation Is Deleting 551 Movies from Customers' Accounts" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48691346 26-jun-2026 208 comments
"Studio Canal Movies purchased on PlayStation Store removed without refund" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48718967 29-jun-2026 125 comments
Sony, surely you mean you're going to mail them a physical Blu-ray copy of each one they own, right?
I never subscribe to any music/movie services. If I can find them I buy DVDs and if I can’t I download them.
This, IA and the files not be in my computer makes me defend piracy
That they don't value knowledge as a good in and of itself is exemplified by the fact that the first (and only) e-book which I "purchased" using a $10 store credit offered for browsing on a certain day (it got me a check from the ebook pricing settlement) for my Sony PRS-505 from the Sony store was so riddled with typos I had to check out a copy from the library so as to determine what some text was so as to submit a list of errors for correction.
(That said, I've _never_ bought an e-book since which didn't have at least one typo or mis-formatted bit of text, including _Dune_ which I didn't get until it had been available as an ebook for _years_)
I’ve bought a bunch of movies on appletv, and I think about how angry this would make me, but I’ve never looked into a decent backup solution. I’m not sure if the drm has ever been broken really, but I’d imagine some device could pretend to be an hdmi tv. Anyone ever backup their atv stuff?
This is a weird framing and only furthers that argument. No, if you give money for something, that something is yours. It will violating a bunch of fundamental contract law understanding if the ownership status of what you buy is ever questioned.
Lets use a book, since it illustrate how ridiculous such assertions are. Ask yourself this question: why do you buy a book? For the paper, for the ink or for the information that it contains? Obviously the valuable thing for anyone is the information, the message, the communication of the author with you. Nobody really cares how the information reaches you, but that it reaches you. It is what motivates your purchase. When people buy digital content, they aren't buying the digital zeros and ones, they are buying the content.
And yet the format you supposedly don't care about is exactly what determines whether you keep any rights afterward. Take the same text in a printed book versus an ebook. Same author, same copyrighted content, same money changing hands. Buy the printed copy and you can resell it, lend it, leave it to your kids, no permission asked, because first sale doctrine protects whoever owns a copy. Buy the ebook and the platform's license language quietly reclassifies you as a non-owner, so none of that applies. The format from which the content is transmitted and distributed is irrelevant to why you bought it, but apparently decisive for what you're legally allowed to do with it once you have. The individual would never have started the purchase process if it didn't expect to own a copy of said content.
This is where every "but it's digital, so it is different" fails to address, and I believe deliberately and maliciously, it implies that value only resides in the material plane without considering the abstract.
The real issue here are the terms of the deal that allow Sony to revoke access to content at any time. If Sony only purchases a 5 year license to use a movie, then that expiration date should be communicated to the customer ahead of time.
The idea that companies can take away games, movies, etc that you've paid for with the expectation you would have them forever is toxic for society.
Just in case, the same is eventually coming to Steam. After all, Gabe will not live forever. Just saying. Plan accordingly.
I think they should be legally required to offer some sort of compensation for cases where they remove content you previously "bought". Like removing the DRM and letting people download their content, or offering refunds, or transferring the rights to a similar service (like Amazon Prime). Or when "buying" the content, they would have to notify the user that it will only be guaranteed to be available for some limited timespan x.
The core problem is licensing deals. And it's not just limited to movies, but games. Even the biggest juggernauts can't get out of this, with patches removing soundtracks [1].
A CD or DVD? That will hold the soundtrack for all of eternity (or at least as long as the physical medium survives), but for digitally bought games, it's ridiculous that content I paid for can just get silently patched away.
[1] https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/868277-grand-theft-auto...
I see no reason to pay this shit. When I need bad quality video streaming I just search for it on yandex.
If you pay for this shit you are a fool. I dont even torrent shit sourced from steaming cus its so heavily compressed, not worth watching. People are giving real money to these services and they wont even provide enough bandwidth for decent quality.. Another point in favour of torrents, we get as much bandwidth as we need, no data centres required, just people sharing.
They were never "purchases" and it's more that the terminology has been faulty and misleading, more so than the business model.
The rank-and-file consumer wanted to believe that "purchasing" something was permanent, but the metaphor is leaky. If I purchase a table from Ikea, then I take the kit home, I assemble it, I store the table, I maintain the table, I clean the table, and I can keep the table around for as long as I can pay rent on the apartment or whever it's being housed.
The same goes for a CD or DVD: you can keep playing it as long as YOU store it, YOU clean it, and YOU have a machine that can decode and reproduce the content.
But with digital intangibles in the cloud, none of this holds true. Your "purchase" belongs to Chad and it's in Chad's garage:
So how can you be sore when Chad tires of the sweet deal you cooked up?
The same type of leaky metaphor happens with "piracy-as-theft". You copied some content and stole it! No it's not stolen: stealing is depriving a rightful owner of property. The rightful owner (or copyright holder) can calculate all their lost revenue and try to hold you accountable for that, but with piracy and copying, nobody's deprived of the content itself. Some cultures accept copying and plagiarism as a great honor and compliment to the original authors...
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To the defence of Sony :
I was getting concerned, but if only StudioCanal movies are getting pulled as Sony doesn't need to pay for that, *it's but a loss*
The company was bought by the same tycoon who bought mainstream media to get frequencies, then replaced journalists with conservative anchors who ditch the news and rant about feminists and Muslims all day.
They were recently known for Bac Nord. It is honestly a very good cop movie, but that also outrageously rewrites a case in which dirty drug dealing cops were busted, in case some viewers are not willing to make the diff between reality and a good fiction
They made the headline around the Cannes festival this year, saying they should no longer work with woke movies.
Their case is getting embarrassing in France, as their owner is now the first (but not the only) purveyor of obscurantism for the masses
We have so many of these discussions on HN already. Buy vs Rent. Digital vs Physical Ownership, Privacy etc. Yes we all have an opinion on that.
I am more interested in a physical media that can keep its data for 80+ years, 500GB+, half the size of credit card and cheap to manufacture.
At the moment, and looking at the pipeline of tech. There are none.
I think what upsets me the most isn't that companies do this, it's that no government seems to have any interest in stopping them.
To me, it should be a fairly easy, short, and extremely popular law that if you say you are 'selling' someone something, with a time-frame extremely clearly specified in a simple way, at least the same size as the price (say), you can't take it back later without giving a full refund. If they want to offer a multi-year rent, call it rent.