34
votes
Playstation users will soon no longer be able to watch any Discovery shows they purchased
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- PlayStation Store is removing 1,300 seasons of Discovery TV shows, even if users bought them | VGC
- Authors
- Chris Scullion
- Published
- Dec 4 2023
- Word count
- 294 words
**Obligatory jokes about Discovery's present catalog. **
This seems wild to me, but not at all surprising when one considers the entertainment and media landscape of the last few years. Actual ownership of content is swiftly going by the wayside, and unless you physically purchase a show or game, it can be removed at any time, and in this case Sony isn't even bothering to offer refunds.
Well... If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
You're never buying anything digital. You're licensing it.
I'm never stealing anything digital either. I just find it on the ground.
Its not stealing, I've just come up with my own licencing agreement!
I agree. The language used when purchasing a movie or game is clearly meant to be indicative of one's ownership of a product, and historically, that meant, well, that we own it! At the very least, offer a refund if you're taking something I purchased out of my library.
I guess. It ultimately doesn't matter to the average customer because they don't really care about vising their digital movies decades from now. Especially a movie on a gaming device.
Well... You sort of do own the software you buy.
There's a really good write up about this on the LTT forums.
If you're in the US or EU, technically you do own the software you buy, not just a license.
TFW you buy a physical copy in a store and there's just a piece of paper with a key inside.
I still think it's surprising. My Apple account still has purchases from 2007 on it that I can freely access whenever I want. My Xbox account still has video and game purchases from around that time as well that I've never had any issues accessing. If anyone wants to watch SD-quality episode of Invader Zim and the office, hit me up haha. I also have a season of weekly recaps of the 2007 Miami Dolphins...but nobody wants to watch that.
That being said, fear of stuff like this is why I stopped buying digital copies of stuff and turned to streaming or piracy. At least with streaming there's no pretending that I own what's in my library.
If it was 2008, I'd say I'd watch that for some delightful wildcat action. 2007 though? Not interested
You likely still have those because 15 years ago the contracts were written to allow them to actually be "purchases" not a license to access it for an indeterminate amount of time.
And what is your source that iTunes changed the contract from purchase to license? All digital media is licensed; no company can guarantee that they will always be able to serve content. At the very least, bankruptcy is a real thing. No, the user has access to it still because iTunes is better run than Discovery.
I'm not going to do it. But you can very much track the license from 2007 vs 2023 and see what changed.
Well, discovery isn't hosting their own media. Or they weren't until they bought HBO. It's more that Sony agreed to something that was good in the short term but not so much long term. Which still makes perfect business sense because very few care about long term ownership.
Yes, I'm sure there exists a way for me to check. But since the other person initially stated with confidence (edited later) that the terms changed from purchasing to licensing, they must have had some reason for believing something that I thought to be extraordinary. I didn't believe a company like Apple would have had lawyers that let a concept like that get by for digital media. Extraordinary claims should be sourceable, as the alternative is I read a whole contract to find out that they may not even be correct.
As for the Sony thing, you're right, I was wrong; iTunes is better run than Sony's digital media store.
EDIT: My stumbling block is actually that I can't find the terms from 2007. I can get back to 2013, but can't find anything earlier than that.
That, or hoist the Jolly Roger...
I do wonder if this will trigger some lawsuits in other countries. I thought they compromised woth delisting precisely so they could avoid those legal ramifications of taking away a product you purchased. Guess we'll see how much that ToS agreement holds up.
With 'modern' always-online games, even single player ones, having the physical disk doesn't do that for you either.
cough GTA5
Funny enough, I actually just checked out a book from the library on this very same issue, The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Age by Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schulz (MIT Press, 2016). I've only scratched the introduction, so can't properly offer anything more, but figured I'd throw out the title in case others were also interested in reading.
This'll be a fascinating lawsuit.