PlayStation is erasing 1,318 seasons of Discovery shows from customer libraries | The change comes as Warner Bros. tries to add subscribers to Max, Discovery+ apps.::The change comes as Warner Bros. tries to add subscribers to Max, Discovery+ apps.

  • RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So they’re taking shows away from people who have already purchased them and moving the shows to other services in order to try to make potential customers subscribe to more services?

    Fuck those guys, especially for ripping off people who already paid for the content.

    Here we go again. Instead of being forced to subscribe to shitty bundles of cable channels in order to get the channel you do want, we’re being forced to subscribe to multiple shitty services to get the shows we want.

    This industry is a one-trick pony. Literally giving the worst service they can to force people to subscribe to more services.

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        I haven’t paid for a movie, show, or song since… like 2005.

        Games get my money, but I usually wait a couple years to make sure they’re good lawl

          • Life_inst_bad@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s probably not about getting the legitimate version rather about supporting the creators. Don’t scrounge a penny for work that you love. Eddit: better support a creator throu a donation instead of buying the song on Itunes or something.

            • samus12345@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Pay for a legitimate copy and also download a DRM-free one. That way you support the creator but don’t have to worry about it being stolen from you.

    • pastaPersona@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Welp time to start mass-buying dvd box sets and ripping the files, screw not owning shit you paid for

      • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        Don’t even waste your time and just go directly to the high seas. You’ll get all the same quality content several orders of magnitude faster.

        • RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Personally I don’t mind paying for content I legit get to keep, so long as the cost is reasonable. Yeah, overpriced old movies or stuff you can’t find, sure. Hoist the flag, my friend.

        • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
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          1 year ago

          I have every season of Stargate SG-1 on DVD, and unfortunately one disc already has an unplayable scene due to scratches, but for the most part it’s in-tact.

          No streaming service has the HD wide-screen versions available for streaming, and their subtitles are very… Summarizing. In sections.

          I have a laptop with a USB connected dvd player, and I’ve been slowly converting the discs to my digital library, but holy shit is this a slow process.

          I literally could have been done with every season and special feature of all three shows and the movies in the time it took me to rip the first season alone.

          Buuuuut I don’t currently have a Very Pontoony Nautical vessel soooooo… I can’t go sailing right now.

          • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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            1 year ago

            Are you ripping and encoding them with Handbrake? You can at least speed it up a bit by just ripping them with MakeMKV and then leaving them in the full quality format to skip the long encode. This will take up more HDD space but save a ton of time comparably.

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Kind of.

      You don’t have yearly contracts and it’s a lot easier to start and stop a particular service at any time.

      It’s weird to see this take when I remember streaming started out that this was what was heralded. You could pick and choose what streaming services you wanted and you could change them easily. You didn’t have to buy the sport package or pay the built in royalties of sports teams if you didn’t watch sports.

      • RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        For now. However, I’m going to pick at something you mentioned about switching when you want - sure, but most services offer a discount for a year’s subscription. I don’t think it’s an insignificant amount of people that might buy in on that. Switching becomes irrelevant when the service already has your money.

        Also, services are separating popular shows, unbundling for lack of a better word, to other platforms to force people to subscribe to more services. Effectively that’s making you pay for shows you don’t want (like your sports reference) to get the shows you do.

    • AMillionMonkeys@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      ripping off people who already paid for the content.

      They didn’t pay for the shows. They paid for access to the shows. That’s all anyone gets these days.

  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Fuck Warner Bros and Sony PlayStation for this.

    But it’s not just them, it’s an entire industry. If you pay for media and you don’t get it physically in full, or the ability to download it in a DRM-free portable format, remember that you don’t own it. Only do it in the knowledge that some day you will not have it anymore.

    There are other options available for you. BluRays, piracy.

    • 𝔼𝕩𝕦𝕤𝕚𝕒@lemmy.world
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      People were so happy MultiVersus happened, failing to realize the sheer acquisitions and monopolistic behaviour it takes to own so many IPs. How, when weaponised, it commands so many big names.

      And now it’s not working for people, because they’re pulling the shows from PS.

    • Alex@feddit.ro
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      1 year ago

      If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.

  • FrankTheHealer@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Fuck this shit.

    If buying isn’t owning. Piracy isn’t stealing.

    This is so anti consumer, I’m surprised the EU hasn’t stepped in to stop it yet

  • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    I’d be a lot less bothered if the UI for services like Sony didn’t use words like “buy” to describe what customers are doing when they pay for content. It would be a lot more honest to describe it as a rental for an indefinite time period. But of course then very few people would choose that option.

    • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I agree, it feels like this is a place where the law or regulation needs to come in and enforce something like - rent vs lease vs buy.

      The average consumer thinks “buy” means forever, and that’s just not the case in these scenarios. It really is more like leasing it.

  • kandoh@reddthat.com
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    1 year ago

    If we break into people’s homes and destroy their property, maybe they’ll have to give us money to replace what was lost?

    Why has no one come up with this business strategy before.

    • Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Loving it myself. Delving into the world of Plex and sailing the high seas. Just trying to figure out the best way to keep it organized and also standardizing subtitles for various video files.

    • Alex@feddit.ro
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      1 year ago

      If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.

  • DontMakeItTim@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Maybe I am underestimating the amount of people buying seasons of TV shows on PlayStation, but this seems like a lot of PR pain for very little potential upside.

    • ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      I think WB is counting on people blaming Sony even though it seems like WB is the one who decided not to play nice.

    • vitamin
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      1 year ago

      It says 1,318 seasons, so that’s like 100 people buying thirteen seasons of Shark Pilots or Junkstore Wars or whatever. So, you’re definitely right it’s bad PR over almost nothing, but I think Discovery should be taking the heat, not Sony. They made the call to cancel those licenses.

      • BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Um, what? You think removing 1,318 seasons of shows only affects 100 users? They’ve been selling these since the PS3 era and it’s hundreds of millions of devices.

        …did you possibly think it meant 1,318 total purchases? 😂

        • vitamin
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          1 year ago

          It says it right there in the title. They sold seasons, that is how many they sold. Do you think Discovery has 1,318 total shows?

          • BreadstickNinja@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            1,318 seasons means 1,318 seasons, not 1,318 total sales. Click on the notice in the article for a list of all the seasons of different shows if you still don’t understand.

            Each season could have been bought by 100 people, or by 1,000 people. Seasons of popular shows like Mythbusters might have been bought by millions of people. We have no idea how many customers are affected since it doesn’t list that information.

            Bro your reading comprehension is something else.

  • Alex@feddit.ro
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    1 year ago

    If buying isn’t owning, then piracy isn’t stealing.

    • Rockyrikoko@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      If this isn’t theft, then the inverse isn’t either. Raise your flags, it’s time once again to sail the high seas

        • chitak166@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          It never was.

          You’re copying, not stealing. When you steal something, it is gone from the person you took it from. When you copy something, both of you have it.

          “Piracy” being stealing is exactly the same as “stealing” someone’s ideas. It’s a lame excuse so people richer than us can be even richer.

  • penquin@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Im still trying to understand why this is legal. Is there more to the story that I’m missing?

    • Gigan@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Technically, when you buy a show or a movie you’re buying a license to watch it. That license can be revoked at any time. This is true for physical and digital copies, it’s just impossible for companies to revoke the license when you have a physical copy.

        • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Unfortunately we don’t all live in civilized places like the EU. Some of us live in “shithole countries,” like the United States.

        • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          This might only affect US customers as these studios typically create separate licensing deals in each country. An example is when the new Star Trek shows began airing, everywhere in the world got to watch it on Netflix while US customers had to subscribe to CBS All Access (now Paramount+).

      • penquin@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Now how is THIS legal? Wtf? So, basically you buy a car, pay it all of and the dealership can just come to your house and take it? This is basically the same. I paid for something to own. It should be mine forever.

  • AWittyUsername@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is Warner Bros being the bad guys, but also Sony for not refunding people. Either way it doesn’t matter consumers lose out, all the more reason to pirate.

    • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I see where you are coming from. The original version of streaming Netflix was the answer to piracy. Good price and had all the content one wanted. Was also easy to use. The streaming wars proved competition isn’t always the answer (I think this is the first time I’ve ever said that). Without that version of Netflix, the answer to piracy is gone…

      • StenSaksTapir@feddit.dk
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        1 year ago

        Netflix was in competition with piracy. They competed mostly on two parameters: price and convenience, but catalog is also a secondary or tertiary parameter.

        Piracy is kinda free unless you pay for newsgroups, seedbox or straight up membership. It’s also inconvenient for most people. The catalog is basically unlimited if you know where to look.

        Paid streaming or digital purchases wins on convenience, but at a greater price and with a limited catalog.

        With older content constantly being bounced around different services, aggressive anti-shsring measures and continually rising prices, paid streaming is becoming less and less attractive, as we’re slowly sliding back to the times of cable TV, albeit video on-demand this time around.

      • User_4272894@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Competition is the answer, though. The problem is companies ended up competing the wrong way. If I could watch “The Office” on any streaming platform, suddenly they’re all in competition to create a better platform (quicker loads, different pricing models, integration with different devices, etc). By limiting shows to only certain platforms, sure, you’re creating an easy way to differentiate between platforms, but you’re letting the competition stagnate as you just create cable TV with extra steps: minimal choice, minimal ease of use, minimal cost upside.

      • chitak166@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Why should we care if corporations find the ‘answer to piracy’?

        What’s better for them is worse for us. Are you invested with them? If not, then you would be a textbook useful idiot to lower your standards so they can have even more.

  • flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Keeping the money and yanking back the content it was used to purchase will surely entice those people to sign up for that Max/Discovery+ subscription.

    Only an out of touch corporate stooge would see a logical through line there.

    • chitak166@lemmy.world
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      surely entice those people to sign up for that Max/Discovery+ subscription.

      That’s the sad part. It will. These people already have more money than sense, or else they wouldn’t be subscribing to streaming services at all.

  • zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    Maybe more people would subscribe to discovery if the content wasn’t so fucking abysmal. There’s like 2 good shows on there, Mythbusters and how it’s made

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      We download torrents, we use VPNs

      Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!

      Copyright law can kiss our rear ends

      Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!