This is actual theft. If they want to go on about piracy being theft, justify this first.
I just discovered people pay series and shows on Playstation
The people who do this aren’t technologically “literate”. I don’t like using that phrase because it sounds judgy. I work with people like this. Their main computing device is their smartphone.
If this sounds foolish, it’s not really. These people struggle to make rent due to low wages in the area, so a laptop is “nice to have” but not a necessity. They’re also too time-poor to grab a used laptop or something and figure out the best way to hook it up to their tv and get the content they want. Why bother, their play station/xbox/smart tv already has Netflix or whatever.
I tried showing someone NewPipe for their android phone and I thought they were going to call me a witch or something. They didn’t trust me, and installing fdroid seemed sketchy to them so they didn’t do it. I can’t say I blamed them honestly.
Sony is awful, people should be able to use things they pay for.
I’ve worked in IT for over 26 years, have my own Plex server in my home (that’s also connected directly to the TV in my living room via HDMI), and own and use several laptops.
Still, I’ve “bought” a number of movies from Microsoft largely thanks to the fact that I can sync them to multiple services using Movies Anywhere and because they were basically “free” to me because Microsoft kept giving me $5 gift cards randomly for a while there and I couldn’t think of anything better to use them on at the time.
I’d still be upset if they suddenly decided to yank those titles out of my library even though I don’t really rely on them as my only option to watch those films.
I wouldn’t say tech illiterate so much as ignorant or they truly don’t care.
Unlimited plans and monthly financing means even a homeless person can get a really decent phone with great service. I’m surprised when I see anyone with more than a phone or tablet.
ISPs won’t even upgrade services is low income areas because no one buys internet service. They just don’t need it.
This is as good of a time as any to tell you guys that future Oscar winning movie, Barbie, is now also available on Blu-Ray and DVD, physical copies that you’ll always have if you want to watch it again.
Blu-Ray discs can carry mandatory software updates that change the functionality of playback devices, add “protections” against “piracy”, and could potentially revoke licenses of content on other discs.
Media companies are prepared to screw you over regardless of wether or not you but content from them. I do believe in paying for content, but I don’t trust any modern distribution to last, so I have a couple backups of all the media I’ve ever purchased. And for formats that make it difficult to back up, I sail the seven seas.
Hard disk drives will last even less. The lubrication will dry up and the disk will seize way before the 25 year mark.
Bluray is a fine back up media, I use them for stuff on my NAS that I cannot lose like precious pictures of family and friends. Not all of us live on am abandoned salt mine with perfect temperature and humidity for long term tape storage.
Hard disk drives will last even less. The lubrication will dry up and the disk will seize way before the 25 year mark.
That’s what you have redundancies and backups
Or… you could buy multiple copies of the Blu-Ray so that if one copy fails, you’ll always have backup Barbies at the ready.
The physical discs degrade overtime. Getting 10 copies now won’t stop that, even if one might outlast another for a bit.
This is the unfortunate reality of current intellectual property. Anytime you don’t have a copy of something directly in your possession, either as a physical object like a BluRay, or digital file(s) on digital storage only you control, you don’t really own it. You’re just borrowing it, or more strictly speaking, you’re purchasing the right to access it until the agreement between the creator company (i.e., WarnerDiscovery) and the hosting company (i.e., Sony) expires.
When issues like this come up, there are right ways and wrong ways to handle it. This is an example of a wrong way. Google’s handling of the Stadia shutdown was an example of the right way. Any game you purchased on Stadia was refunded to the original payment method, not store credit, at the price you paid giving you the ability to reacquire the game on another platform and/or in another medium. They even refunded in-game purchases of things like premium currency (e.g. silver in Destiny 2, or crowns in Elder Scrolls Online) which was a great bonus because you got that whether you had spent the in-game currency or not so it was essentially free.
Personally, I’d like protection like what Google offered to be legally mandated for the purchase of streaming content. Sony has little choice in the matter if WarnerDiscovery won’t renew the streaming license. Legally, they must revoke access to the content, but currently they can choose to not compensate users who lose access to the content through these legal machinations and that’s what I have a problem with.
So they’re promoting piracy, because that’s how you promote piracy.
