alt Hacker NewsThey'll argue you're "buying" a license that they can revoke when they feel like it. My feelings on the matter have been summed up by someone else more clever than me as:
If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
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Selling someone a license, and then revoking it is like destruction of property. The injured party is owed a refund in the amount of the present day replacement cost.
It's the same as if someone sold you a toaster with a remote self-destruct feature, and then invoked the self-destruct. They owe you a new toaster.
They will argue that, but this is unlikely to hold up in front of court even in the US.
The problem isn't it being illegal.
But they instead bank on most people not having the means (money/time) or will to sue them over this. Especially given that the actual "damages" you can effectively sue for often relatively small for most users (likely <15€ per movie, so for most account <100€ per person "per situation where you could sue").
And if there is an exception (someones losing hundreds of movies or class action law suite) settling is likely still cheaper for Sony.
This is the problem with many laws the cost of breaching them is often too small (but only IFF you are a huge company with their own lawyer department etc.).
If management would be personally liable with _mandatory prison sentences_ for the CEO/Company Owners if it seems the law was knowingly breached because penalties are cheaper then benefits (or repeated offenses etc.) things probably would look quite different.
Other approaches to counter this includes things like penalties of base+%of yearly revenue, %yearly Profite etc. The problem here is this approaches are often a mix of unfair (e.g. same revenue with large profit margin is penalized way less) and/or can be fudged/circumvented (e.g. if based on profit, but even if based on revenue it can be partially circumvented in some situations. So I think making executive personally liable might be the only way to fix this.
The problem is that we've always been buying licences, it's just that the licence used to be attached to a physical object, so transferring the licence was as easy as transferring ownership of that physical object.
It's never been legal to copy a book, film, or music album and sell the copies, for example, because the licence doesn't allow it. Hence freeware, shareware, and copyleft licences.
"Stealing" in basically all common law jurisdictions requires intent to deprive the rightful owner of the property.
Copying something isn't stealing by any legal definition. It's copyright infringement.
Piracy isn’t stealing because copies don’t destroy the original
Then the button should say "Buy Revocable License."
Inevitably people will ask what that means. That will lead to a FAQ on the company's site somewhere, and various videos on the social media explaining it periodically with lots of comments. That will be a good thing.
Corporate marketing teams will eventually settle on something better sounding but technically legal, something like "Premier Anytime Access" for specific movies (versus "Bronze 24-hr Access"), or similar.