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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.

PlayStation is erasing 1,318 seasons of Discovery shows from customer libraries

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/playstation-is-erasing-1318-seasons-of-discovery-shows-from-customer-libraries/

The change comes as Warner Bros. tries to add subscribers to Max, Discovery+ apps.

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.

130 comments

RememberTheApollo

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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.

NOT_RICK

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Oh no, here I go pirating again!

evatronic

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Krombopulos Michael, the early years.

Lettuceeatlettuce

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Games, movies, TV shows, doesn't matter. I just love pirating!

agent_flounder

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That's it. I am heading to the goodwill and picking up some media. And I gotta find our old discs too.

NOT_RICK

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No need, search for movie web and use it on a vpn for all the media you want for free

Rai

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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

ultra

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Life_inst_bad

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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

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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

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

CmdrShepard

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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

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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

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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

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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.

merc

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

If either side cared about good customer service, they'd find a compromise. Either Sony would pay for the purchases and make it available under the new home at whatever the new sales-channel is called. Or, Warner Bros. Discovery would switch the licenses and make it available themselves.

Of the two options, Warner Bros. Discovery doing that would make the most sense. For them, it would have zero cost. They'd lose out on the potential to re-sell the same content to people twice, but they'd keep potential future customers happy by doing that. Especially true for people who had bought a few seasons of a show but hadn't finished it. They'd be incentivized to purchase future seasons using the new store.

The fact that neither side is willing to make these concessions shows just how little they care about their customers. They deserve all the copyright infringement they're about to see.

meat_popsicle

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Agreed. Streaming services always seemed like gilded cages to me. You can only see what they allow you to see - piracy or old-school Netflix DVD delivery gives you all the options. The promise of being able to stream any content at any time, with the producers and people involved being able to get compensated fairly and justly, just isn’t reality with these ghouls running the show.

The model (in the current form, of artificially restricted licensing) seems like less a way to curate a media catalog, but more like a way to curate the subscribers and culture.

kaitco

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piracy or old-school Netflix DVD delivery gives you all the options.

Netflix cancelled their DVD service in September. In an entirely unrelated move, I have recently cancelled my Netflix service…

brygphilomena

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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

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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

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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.

merc

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They didn’t pay for the shows. They paid for access to the shows.

And, if they had made that completely clear, there would be less of an issue. If the "Buy" button was replaced with "Rent, Long Term" then maybe people would be less annoyed that their long-term rentals were now being forcibly returned. But, labelling the button "Buy" makes them more money.

barsoap

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"long term" is still indefinite and therefore unconscionable. "For at least 10 views" or "For at least 5 years" would work.

Another option would be Sony not entering unconscionable contracts with WB. They can because they're gigantic and be laughed out of court if they tried to argue that their legal department didn't spot the issue but their contract should have said that anythnig that gets licensed indeed gets licensed in perpetuity: That is, WB could say "don't sell any new licenses any more", but they couldn't say "all licenses are now invalid, how you fulfil your contracts with your customers maybe buy boxsets".

RememberTheApollo

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Ok, a technicality that still leaves the access removed. Regardless of whether they paid for it or the access to it.

ultra

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owen

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Woah... What a deep and original thought... Oh wow...

TheGrandNagus

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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.

Meowoem

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People need to start paying creators to make stuff for the public domain and refuse to pay to access anything that everyone doesn't have access to.

I've given Wikipedia money, I'll never pay for Netflix.

FlyingSquid

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Considering how much it costs to make the average movie or TV show, a Patreon isn't going to cut it. If you want a guy talking in front of a microphone with a producer and a writing team of two, sure, you can pay the creators for that. It's not something most people will want to watch in replacement of the entertainment they're used to.

Meowoem

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The maths are pretty clear though, we know consumers have the money needed to pay for blockbusters and that they don't mind giving it over to view entertainment because that's where the companies get the money from - in fact we know that there is excess because a large portion goes to shareholders as profit.

Collectively we could combine community creation, open source tooling and creator funding to make things on a far larger scale than any marvel movie, I don't really think we should tbh but funding reasonable ventures, tools and resources is something we absolutely can and should be doing.

Exusia

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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.

ultra

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

flamingarms

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Mate, we've got it; we understand your position. You don't need to keep posting it.

EvilEyedPanda

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Lol I posted the same thing and have now seen it 5 times in this thread. Yo-Ho!

FrankTheHealer

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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

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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

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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.

Touching_Grass

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Looking at you Steam

I have 15 years of rented video games

merc

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We don't fully know what would happen if Steam decided to turn evil. But, so far they've been pretty reluctant to remove people's purchases. Even when something is no longer available for sale on Steam, if it's in your library you get to keep playing it. The bigger issue is when servers for old games go offline. Especially annoying when it's not multiplayer games, but DRM-type servers for single-player games.

barsoap

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Steam already tried to argue before EU courts that they're leasing, not selling, and it's not flying not because any wording but because they sell stuff for fixed rates, not recurring fees.

They're still appealing that "you have to let players sell games" decision, maybe another two or three years until they have to cave. Not sure how much of that is steam wanting to do that vs. steam wanting to look good in the eyes of publishers who of course dislike the 2nd hand market much more than stores, those can earn a buck off it by being a middleman.

merc

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Not sure how much of that is steam wanting to do that vs. steam wanting to look good in the eyes of publishers

Or knowing that it's essentially impossible to do with 99.99% of games currently on Steam. So, it might just be that they want to avoid the massive headache of having to renegotiate deals with thousands of publishers over millions of games.

barsoap

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The publisher wouldn't be able to enforce that stuff, doing that would be illegal for the same reason as Steam not allowing sales. Neither is permitted to keep end user licenses hostage.

Transporter_Room_3

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Still pissed I can't play Mercenaries 2 anymore since I don't have the correct console to play offline, since playing online freezes the game when it attempts to connect to servers.

I tried all the workarounds on the 360, too. None of them worked so I just resigned to disconnecting my Xbox whenever I wanted to play. Which wouldn't be a problem now, but back then it was the worst to have to get up and unplug something and be unable to talk to my friends while I play.

mhague

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RagingRobot

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Also that option is always like 4 times more expensive for no real reason

kandoh

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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.

ililiililiililiilili

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Planned obsolescence is the preferred method (and doesn't require breaking and entering).

brygphilomena

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Pay us protection or we'll smash your business.

Wait a minute, I've heard this before.

NocturnalMorning

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Seems like piracy is going to become fashionable again

Strider

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Props to Sony and all related entities for endorsing it!

Lifecoach5000

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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.

Technoguyfication

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Radarr and Sonarr

merc

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And Jellyfin instead of Plex. Also Prowlarr to manage the indexers for Radarr and Sonarr.

Technoguyfication

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I need to move to Prowlarr. Still using Jackett since I first set my server up years ago.

merc

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Prowlarr is nice because it uses the same interface as Sonarr, Radarr and the rest. But, if Jackett is still working for you, there's no rush.

SeducingCamel

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Is there something you can do to make jellyfin work better with subs? I could have it backwards but when I switched from plex, I couldn't get subtitles to work on my TV for content that had separate sub files, rather than them being embedded

merc

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I don't know. I don't watch much stuff that uses subs, and the little stuff I do watch with subs has worked fine.

rowrowrowyourboat

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Yeah, don't get me started on subtitles. It's the wild west out there to get standardized good subtitles.

It's a hobby in itself just fixing all the crappy subs.

Lifecoach5000

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Well that’s discerning but thanks for the info!

ipkpjersi

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Do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate.

ultra

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

DontMakeItTim

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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.

Corkyskog

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I'm just surprised there are over 1,000 seasons of shows on discovery Channel... once you get past the gold mining, crab fishing, Mythbusting and sending people out into the wilderness naked, what's left?

I_LOVE_VEKOMA_SLC

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Storage wars and trucks on ice.

I_Has_A_Hat

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ryven

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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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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

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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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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

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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.

ultra

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

pozbo

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Oh, so theft?

Rockyrikoko

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

EvilEyedPanda

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If paying for something dosent mean I own it, then piracy isn't stealing!

chitak166

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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

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

Gigan

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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.

jlh

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Not the same in the EU as far as I know. Digital goods have to uphold a certain standard.

TheRealKuni

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

AWittyUsername

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Or the United kingdom. Which had the chance at being civilised, but decided to throw it all away.

PersnickityPenguin

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"Countries" is a debatable term.

CmdrShepard

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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

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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.

merc

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I don't know about cars, but John Deere tractors can be remotely disabled by the company.

They were "bragging" about this in the early days of the Ukraine war, saying that they were locking down tractors that Russians were trying to take out of Ukraine. But, the fact they can do that means that if they don't like some random farmer in Iowa, they can also remotely disable his tractor too.

barsoap

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I'm kinda surprised that there was a single Ukrainian tractor that wasn't rooted and still under the control of John Deere. Trying to restrict a Slav's right to repair is about as impossible as trying to restrict an Italian's right to complain about food.

merc

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Who knows how honest John Deere were being in their claims about the tractors. But, they did claim that they were able to disable the tractors remotely, as if that were a feature.

But, it's true, I've heard that when American farmers want to repair their own John Deere tractors, they tend to use Ukrainian firmware.

penquin

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That's actually very dangerous. They can fuck with our food supplies whenever they want to.

merc

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Yeah, but they have a good thing going, and wouldn't want to risk it by doing something that will get laws changed.

Zozano

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I'm pretty sure Apple has something similar. You don't technically own the device because the software it's packaged with doesn't belong to you.

This means they could brick your phone and you have no right to complain.

restingboredface

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It seems it is legal for cars https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/new-law-will-install-kill-switches-in-all-new-cars/ar-AASt1Th

And it's already in use for some https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-the-repo-man-can-remotely-shut-off-your-car-engine/

Emma_Gold_Man

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You know the first of those links is right wing propaganda, right? https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/infrastructure-bill-track-drivers/

While there is no mention of a “kill switch” that could be accessible by law enforcement in the bill text, the legislation does not define exactly how the technology would limit impaired driving. Rather, the contents of the bill simply define the equipment to be a system that can:

Passively monitor the performance of a driver to accurately identify whether they are impaired.

Prevent or limit operation if impairment is detected.

“Passively” detect whether the BAC of a driver is equal to or higher than the legal limit. In such cases, the system could “prevent or limit motor vehicle operation if an impairment is detected.”

I_Has_A_Hat

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ElBarto

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Streaming services: if we take the shows they purchased away from them, then they HAVE to subscribe to our service! There's nothing they can do if they want to watch their shows, piracy is soooo 2008.

Voroxpete

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Yeah, it's not like the Servarr application suite has made piracy literally easier than using streaming services.

brygphilomena

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The caveat is that it's still mostly just for moderately tech savvy individuals. It's easier for the people who have the knowledge to set it up, have access to decent trackers, a VPN, newsgroups, and hardware to run the suite on.

Piracy isn't hard, but there is a barrier of entry that most people won't overcome.

Grass

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Damn. Maybe we shouldn't have downloaded cars. It's only fair that the capitalist collective should be able to delete our vhs and DVDs etc in return right?

AWittyUsername

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

mightyfoolish

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We were discussing on how Netflix was lowering piracy at one point.

flop_leash_973

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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

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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

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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

lordkuri

•

BattleBots!

executive_chicken

•

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate’s Life for Me 🏴‍☠️

samus12345

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We download torrents, we use VPNs

Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!

Touching_Grass

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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+

2 sentences, 5 names of different entities

merc

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Two companies though, one with multiple business units under various names. Warner Bros. Discovery owns Warner Bros., HBO Max and Discovery.

snekerpimp

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You will own nothing and you will love it.

Lifecoach5000

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They’re gonna start feeding us bugs next!

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

If you purchased any Discovery shows from the PlayStation Store, Sony has some bad news for you to discover.

The company recently announced that all Discovery content purchased on the PlayStation Store will be erased before 2024.

But there were users who had already purchased stuff from the PlayStation Store and, believe it or not, expect to be able to watch it when they want, since they paid money to buy (rather than rent) it.

Shows getting axed from user libraries include Wives With Knives, An Idiot Abroad, Evil Twins, and Body Bizarre.

But there are also plenty of more well-known titles on the list of purchased content being revoked, including American Chopper, Cake Boss, MythBusters, Shark Week, and Say Yes to the Dress.

That means there's a good chance numerous users will be affected by Sony's announcement.

The original article contains 332 words, the summary contains 138 words. Saved 58%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

AgentGrimstone

•

Never buying a TV show or movie I can't download ever again. Never have, but still, never again.

chitak166

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Good. You can stream pretty much anything for free here anyways: https://fmoviesz.to/

Just make sure you have uBlock Origin or Adnauseam installed.