Sony claims to offer subs “appropriate value” for deleting digital libraries
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
As someone with a huge library of physical movies, I generally agree. But it doesn't completely negate the need to pay for movies again, especially if you don't know how to rip movies or if you want improved versions.
Most of my movies on VHS and LD are now unwatchable, either because of media rot or because they look like crap on my 56" OLED. The backup copies I made with a capture card eliminate the media failures, but not their limitations.
I finally replaced my copy of The Dark Crystal on Laserdisc with a Blu-ray 4K copy I found on sale. So it took 'em 30 years, but they finally got a second swipe at my wallet.
Upvote
9
(9
/
0)
Typically the blockchain doesn't hold the actual NFT image due to size restrictions. Bitcoin added Ordinals which allow larger sizes, but a 4MB ordinal caused controversy last year.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leeors...unities-for-crypto-investors/?sh=5e349a797d77https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-re...t-causes-unease-among-small-block-supporters/
The NFT could act as a token of ownership, with the video hosted elsewhere, using the NFT as authentication, but then you run into the issue of making sure the service hosting the video accepts the NFT as proof of ownership, and the service sticks around.
We already have a somewhat platform-agnostic ownership authentication service for movies with MoviesAnywhere, but it doesn't work with TV shows.
Upvote
6
(7
/
-1)
Bluray. Rip. Jellyfin.
I was burned ONCE making an online digital purchase only to have it disappear from my library without even a word. Never again.
I was burned ONCE making an online digital purchase only to have it disappear from my library without even a word. Never again.
Upvote
10
(10
/
0)
There is such a way. And it doesn't even involve spending money. Since spending money clearly doesn't work, maybe that's an alternative worth considering?
Totally unrelated: One Piece is a very good anime, about pirates.
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
Sony owns both Funimation and Crunchyroll, any licensing that allows them to do this on Funimation will allow them to do it on Crunchyroll simply because the same company has the license and owns both.
Even if there's some weird stipulation that it has to be on a Funimation site, they could simply port that part of Funimation to Crunchyroll's site and keep it named Funimation. This is not a licensing issue, it's Sony being a dick.
Nope, Sony owns both Funimation and Crunchyroll, the license is now with them, not another company.
Upvote
6
(9
/
-3)
Don't forget the insanity that's common law system. There's a reason why every other jurisdiction except UK and the US has much better customer protection laws.
Upvote
5
(7
/
-2)
“you wouldn’t steal a movie”
…but Sony would, right from their customers accounts
Remember, kids, if buying is really renting, they piracy is not theft
…but Sony would, right from their customers accounts
Remember, kids, if buying is really renting, they piracy is not theft
Upvote
17
(17
/
0)
There should be a law requiring companies to provide DRM-free downloads to owners for 5 years after a title is pulled from distribution like this.
I get why content sometimes has to be pulled, because licensing rights and residuals are complicated, but no consumer should ever be stuck in a situation where they can't watch a film or TV show they already paid for.
I get why content sometimes has to be pulled, because licensing rights and residuals are complicated, but no consumer should ever be stuck in a situation where they can't watch a film or TV show they already paid for.
Upvote
7
(8
/
-1)
Physical media is vulnerable to loss, damage, theft, hardware obsolescence, and a variety of other factors.
If you want to keep something around forever, it needs to be DRM free, and you need multiple backups (including off-site backups).
It doesn't matter whether the original file was delivered on a shiny disc or over an internet connection: what matters is that you can back it up in multiple places and actually have a working backup. A DRM-encrusted disc might have different failure modes than a DRM-encrusted streaming video "store", but both can fail in ways that aren't under your control. In general, I find a DRM-free digital download is quicker and easier to back up than trying to rip data from a physical disc.
Physical media can potentially also include a remote DRM check that depends on servers somewhere to work. This is currently much more common in games & software physical media than in video content, but there's no technical reason why it couldn't be applied to video discs too, and knowing the mindset of the content industry, I'm sure the idea gets considered.
Edit - Also, for games and software, physical media only gives you the original released version, not the subsequent patches (unless you wait for a re-released "game of the year" edition or whatever, with a bunch of patches and expansions). If you're relying on a lot of post-release patches to fix critical bugs, and the patch servers are shut down, the physical disc might not be much use.
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
That's technically illegal in the US, thanks to the DMCA. Format shifting is generally considered "fair use", but because the contents of DVDs and Blu-Ray discs are technically encrypted (even if the encryption is laughably easy to break), the DMCA bans any attempt to circumvent that encryption even if it's being done for a fair use reason.
Upvote
11
(11
/
0)
I'd say the DIVX debacle has shown the industry why that's a terrible idea, but that was long enough ago that I could see them taking another crack at it.
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
I’m pretty sure that Loki and Wanda will be available in Disney+ during the few weeks/months that would take him to watch them. Probably much, much longer.
Funny thing is that, by now, he could have been watching these two series (which he put as an example, not me) since long ago instead of worrying when they would be available for sale. He is not watching them in case they are brought down in a distant future, but he could have easily watched them as they were released.
That’s like saying you are not going to order a dish at a restaurant lest they remove it some day from the menu. Buddy, just try it while you have the chance!
Last edited:
Upvote
-3
(1
/
-4)
Yeah, having an always-on internet connection to your entertainment center was far less universal back when they tried DIVX. Now that everyone has smart TVs, set top boxes, dongles, and internet connected game consoles, I can definitely see them giving it another try at some point.
Upvote
8
(9
/
-1)
Rip your discs. You're going to get a better copy from that than Sony was offering you anyway.
This is exactly why I buy physical media. Best possible quality, least amount of friction.
Upvote
8
(9
/
-1)
“I visited late-stage capitalism and all I got was this lousy t-shirt (subscription)”
Upvote
11
(11
/
0)
IncorrigibleTroll
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
I was burned by Amazon's digital storage locker. Upload all your music to our service, access from anywhere, forever! Oh, and then we're going to suddenly shut off downloading with no advance warning. Hope you didn't bin all those CDs you ripped. Screw services. I'll take my un-DRM'd file download at purchase time, or I won't purchase at all, thank you very much.
Upvote
12
(12
/
0)
Upvote
0
(2
/
-2)
If you know who I am (and I'm not telling you) and you know how to search the documents from the Sony hack, you will find in there a long email debate between me and an executive as I tried - and failed - to tell them that the whole "UltraViolet" (remember that) scheme was going to lead nowhere, and they should NEVER use the word "buy" for media that is not physical.
But that was a long time ago...
But that was a long time ago...
Upvote
7
(7
/
0)
At this point Sony is closer to a con man than a regular company that sells things that stick around. They've played so many poor fools with this same scam time and time again. I'm torn between sympathizing with their victims, and laughing because the victims who got scammed were enabling Sony to prey on them in the first place (by trusting Sony).
Sony isn't just someone enabled by the RIAA/MPAA they are a member.
Sony isn't just someone enabled by the RIAA/MPAA they are a member.
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)
Also goes to show why it's not wise to commit to a yearly subscription of anything.
Upvote
0
(0
/
0)
I just put on my tricorn hat, grab the rum, hoist the colors, shout "Yargh! Weigh anchor ye scurvy dogs!" grab the wheel of the galleon MakeMKV and rip the fucker to my video folder on my NAS. If the file is ridiculously huge, I take Handbreak and cut it down to size without noticeably reducing the image quality.
I've bought DVD's with a "digital download code", but none of them ever worked in the past. That made me think it was just a promotion to con people into buying the disc. So I'd expect that they have VERY FEW, if vocal, users of that kind of service.
I always intend to rip a movie/series to my network video folder anyhow. If I want to watch movies, I load them into my phone, or onto a USB stick to plug into a laptop.
To me, it's a better way to "download" a video, retain the quality of the disc and not worry about what a company may, or may not, do in the future.
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
I think the root cause of all these problems is that the copyright laws have been corrupted over the past couple centuries. The original concept of copyright was to be a relatively limited duration (similar to a patent) to allow an author to have an exclusive monopoly for some time to monetize the work and make a living, and then the work went into the public domain.
When the copyright term was 14 years, plus one optional 14 year extension, and there was no such thing as DRM, it seemed like a pretty fair bargain. The authors got exclusive rights during the time when a work would typically be making the vast majority of its profit, then the public got to benefit from it and use it as they wished.
Over the centuries, it has morphed in a practically perpetual corporate-controlled lock-down of culture, where in many cases (particularly in works like movies/shows and games that are produced by huge teams of people) the actual creators of the content aren't the ones who hold the copyright.
This was never the original intent of copyright, at least in the US. The US Constitution gives Congress the power "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.".
The whole term "intellectual property" is actually very disingenuous in my opinion. The actual subjects referred to by this term would be much more accurately described as "intellectual monopolies", because they are a temporary government-granted right of exclusivity over a type of action ("copying this work" or "copying this invention").
With a true property right, the government is acknowledging and protecting a particular person's right to control a particular finite resource (this particular car, or this particular shovel, etc). The exclusivity is inherent in the physical nature of the resource: if I'm using this shovel, no one else can use it at the same time.
If the government suddenly ceased to exist, the shovel could still only be used by one person at a time, but I just wouldn't have the government to protect me from someone bashing me on the head and taking the shovel. The concept of property would still exist without the government because it's inherent in the finite nature of physical objects, but it wouldn't have legal protection. Without the government, possession of something is essentially ownership of that thing, but ownership as a concept still makes sense and can be understood.
With a monopoly right (like copyright) the government is creating an artificial limit out of thin air, where there is no actual physical limit. If the government ceased to exist, all copyrights and patents would vanish with it, because they don't actually exist except by government fiat. They are not actually "things that exist", but rather "restrictions that are imposed", and thus they cannot exist without the authority that imposes them.
International treaties unfortunately make it very hard for any country to actually fix the horribly broken copyright laws we have now.
Ideally, I think a few changes to copyright law should be made:
1) Shorten the duration. The original US copyright law of 14 years + one 14 year extension seems pretty reasonable to me. Whatever profits may or may not be earned by a work after 28 years are almost certainly not the deciding factor on any creator's decision of "should I create this work or not" (and that goes for individual authors as well as big movie & game production companies). Any profits that do end up being made on older works likely played very little role in actually incentivizing the production of that work, since most works make the vast majority of their profits in the first few years. Promoting the creation of works is (in the US anyway) the actual power granted to Congress by the US Constitution. The exclusivity right granted to authors is merely the means by which that power is to be exercised.
2) Require DRM-free copies to be provided to the copyright office in order to register a copyright, and for software require source code. The concept of copyright is supposed to be a compromise: the authors get their temporary exclusivity, and in exchange, their works become part of the public domain when that exclusivity expires. If the works are so old that they're mostly irrelevant before they enter the public domain, that compromise is fundamentally broken. If the computers necessary to run the software are no longer available by the time the work enters the public domain, the compromise is fundamentally broken.
Having the source code archived by the copyright office would mean that once it is released to the public domain, it could be adapted to modern systems, and used and remixed freely, as is the intent of the public domain.
3) Copyrights should be voided if abused. It's a government created right created out of thin air and granted to authors. If the government made it by fiat, the government can also unmake it by fiat. If someone is sold a copy of a work (and by "sold", I mean any transaction that substantially resembles a sale, regardless of fine print or EULA, so if the web site was structured as a store with buttons that said "Buy" or "Purchase", or some equivalent, it should be considered a sale), that sale should be considered irrevocable.
In any situation where the seller abuses this by effectively revoking the sale, as Sony is doing here, any affected customer should be able to file a complaint with the copyright office, and request a DRM-free copy directly from the copyright office. If the copyright holder and/or their authorized representative/distributor want to contest this, they would have the opportunity to do so, and the copyright office would make a judgment on whether the buyer was being denied access to a work they had legitimately purchased. If the copyright holder contests too many customer claims that end up being ruled in the customer's favor, they would risk having their copyright voided, and the work immediately released into the public domain, and freely downloadable DRM-free directly from the copyright office.
Upvote
11
(11
/
0)
If it’s digital and you don’t have a physical disk you don’t own anything. Even having a copy on your computer is just an unreliable workaround for having your access removed.
Upvote
-3
(0
/
-3)
That's one of the nice things about hard drives getting so large. When you can buy a 20TB volume for ~$300, setting up a mirrored pair will give you both redundancy and a lot of space.
That's still expensive, but compared to the cost of acquiring media in the first place, it may not look as terrible. If you assume ~25G per title (which is probably high, as many forms of media compress better than that, particularly anime), that's room for about 800. At $15 per, that's $12,000 worth.
If your library was mostly anime, you could put a lot more onto a 20TB RAID, many thousands of episodes.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
How fitting it is to use a picture of a Pirate for this One Piece. 
Seriously though, the moves these streaming corps are making will get people looking for alternative places to watch their shows. These corporate fogies, mbawingnuts, and their bean counting peons are speeding up the reversal of years of progress. But hey, I've got no problems with them losing customers to 
, so keep burning them bridges and cooking those golden geese while you can. Parrots are cooler anyways, right Peedy mah BonziBuddy! 
Seriously though, the moves these streaming corps are making will get people looking for alternative places to watch their shows. These corporate fogies, mbawingnuts, and their bean counting peons are speeding up the reversal of years of progress. But hey, I've got no problems with them losing customers to , so keep burning them bridges and cooking those golden geese while you can. Parrots are cooler anyways, right Peedy mah BonziBuddy!
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
The whole point of the digital copy is how convenient it is. No matter where you, you can watch it with a couple finger presses.
Ripping the DVD requires you to then run your own server
Upvote
4
(4
/
0)
Maybe a safe bet with a blockbuster franchise. But it doesn't apply to other properties, which have been absolutely memory-holed by streaming platforms.
https://www.npr.org/2023/07/24/1189...res-how-thats-hurting-actors-writers-and-fans
Upvote
5
(5
/
0)
I just looked it up, and episode 1095 is 1.4G. 1095 * 1.4G is a little over 1.5 terabytes, so you'd have tons more room.
Upvote
6
(6
/
0)
That sounds a lot like Purini just gave consumers ammunition for a lawsuit to invalidate all terms of service that aren't readily understandable by the average consumer, indicating corporations knowingly use language and density intended to make it difficult for users to understand and therefore encouraging them to skip over it.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
The only digital movies I've paid money for have been on Apple iTunes - which lets you download them. I have a Mac mini set up with downloaded copies of all of my iTunes purchases. I can unplug it from the internet, turn it off, and two years later turn it on and watch the movies on it still with no internet. And share them over my local network - the latest AppleTV boxes still support streaming these over local network.
That said, I haven't bought movies this way in years. Physical media for any movie I want to keep for all but a very few. The "free digital copies" that often come with physical media, though… If they give me the choice of providers, I pick iTunes/Apple TV. Specifically because I can download them and keep them offline.
I'm just annoyed my old first-gen AppleTV box died, and Apple no longer supports syncing to it. It was my camper media box. It would sync when parked at my house (connected to "shore power" and WiFi,) then have all my content available even when away from any internet service. Since you can't sync to the first-get boxes any more, I didn't bother getting a replacement. (You can still sync non-iTunes-purchased content using older copies of iTunes; but iTunes purchased content can't be synced to them any more, as that sync process to the AppleTV does require internet authorization. I just use a newer AppleTV and link to my laptop now.)
That said, I haven't bought movies this way in years. Physical media for any movie I want to keep for all but a very few. The "free digital copies" that often come with physical media, though… If they give me the choice of providers, I pick iTunes/Apple TV. Specifically because I can download them and keep them offline.
I'm just annoyed my old first-gen AppleTV box died, and Apple no longer supports syncing to it. It was my camper media box. It would sync when parked at my house (connected to "shore power" and WiFi,) then have all my content available even when away from any internet service. Since you can't sync to the first-get boxes any more, I didn't bother getting a replacement. (You can still sync non-iTunes-purchased content using older copies of iTunes; but iTunes purchased content can't be synced to them any more, as that sync process to the AppleTV does require internet authorization. I just use a newer AppleTV and link to my laptop now.)
Upvote
1
(1
/
0)
I have an interest in both DRM and cryptography, so I have to ask: How does this work? If I extract a key from a device, won't this allow me to decrypt to all discs released on store shelves up to that point? So, all I have to do is not disclose the vulnerability I used to extract the key, upload the key on pastebin, and just keep extracting keys from that device as the firmware updates come (and they replace the old revoked key with a new one but don't patch the vulnerability). I guess this shows the futility of DRM. And it's the reason tools that bypass AACS exist.
However, DRM is still a thing for the following reason:
This, again. As long some kind of DRM exists, no matter how weak, mainstream hardware manufacturers and OS/software vendors cannot add functionality in their product to copy the DRMed disc, because if they do so they'll run afoul of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provision. It's the reason Windows will happily rip commercial audio CDs (at least the ones that don't have weird copy-protection like Sony XCP), but can't rip commercial DVDs (not the vast majority of them which are encrypted with CSS).
It's worth noting though that DVD copy protection is not entirely trivial to circumvent, since CSS is usually accompanied with structure protection (RipGuard or ARccOS) and fake TOC. There are no open-source tools that can by pass these additional protections, and there is exactly one freeware tool from a company headquartered in China that can bypass them, and some users may not want to install a closed-source tool from an unknown company (it's safe, but they may not know that).
tl;dr It's not about stopping release groups, it's about depriving you about your right to format shift
Last edited:
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
I've always been suspicious of buying digital movies so I always avoided it. This situation isn't giving me any reason to change my stance.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
If all you are doing is DVD's, MakeMKV is your friend. It's free and I have yet to run into a non-damaged DVD that it would not work on. Same quality as the DVD and looks fine on my big screen 4K HDR TV. If you want to step up to Blu-ray, you get quite a few conversions before they ask you to pay for the product. UHD are doable but take a modified firmware Blu-ray drive.
So using MPAA math Sony is going to owe a hojillion dollars because of this, right?
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
That's the whole point of filing a class-action lawsuit against Sony -- use the MPAA math on their asses.
Either we own what we buy, or pirating isn't stealing.
Upvote
3
(3
/
0)
Yep. I rip my blu-rays into Plex to create my own digital versions, but it's a PITA with lengthy TV shows to go through copying each disk, label it appropriately, etc. Plus I'm not sure the average person even has a PC with a blu-ray disk in it, since Windows 10 dropped support for playing DVDs, IIRC. I think that's about the time we stopped seeing disc drives in laptops.
Upvote
2
(2
/
0)
I am not discussing the fact that movies and series get buried or pulled from platforms.
What I am saying is that it doesn’t make sense not to watch them while they are online just because they may get taken down in the future. All the more reason to enjoy them now.
BTW Crater is currently in Amazon Video and Apple TV
Upvote
0
(1
/
-1)