https://www.animeexplained.com/news/funimation-to-shut-down-completely-on-april-2-deleting-purchased-digital-copies-upsets-fans/
Issues such as these, along with increasing prices, further demotivate fans from seeking official sources to watch anime.
We need to prosecute companies (and their executives, personally) who fraudulently misrepresent it as "purchasing."
I'm pretty sure it all goes to Crunchyroll. I don't think you're actually losing anything, just having it moved to a different platform
(edit): Nevermind, I didn't know digitally redeemed blu-rays and stuff were a thing. You'll lose those if you have em but tbh I can't imagine very many people do.
An jus as one piece is kicking off not only it's final saga but more of its successful live action. The Great Pirate Era is really upon us!
Exactly. It’s time to take back your data and OWN YOUR SHIT people. Local Host and Mass Store.
fuck it, pirate everything.
if they lost respect for our money, i dont see why we should respect theirs.
if buying is not owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
Copyright infringement was never stealing to begin with. If I steal your pencil, you are no longer in posession of it. If I copy or download your pencil, we both have a copy, and you are not deprived of your property.
Delusional, how is this upvoted? You're stealing value from the holder. You get something you shouldn't have, and they do not get something they should have. Let's call it what it is even if some don't believe the system is fair.
Buying should be ownership to use for personal use in perpetuity. So in that sense downloading a copy of something you've paid a purchase license for should never be illegal.
I would say this falls apart when it gets to physical copies. Used sales, trading, borrowing, watching/playing together, recap videos or long-form reviews etc all can "deprive" value from seller's immediate perspective (also for some things: DIY, clone recipes, dumpster diving etc). Also I don't expect a company to have even the ability to determine if a downloader has ownership (especially if the only record is a physical receipt) before firing legal scares at people. It is even more pointless when a product is past its original life cycle.
Fresh in the box office and before ROI sure, I can see a point (say for the source of a cam rip). But I could also see reviews or comments, spoilers etc to possibly have a greater effect than the cost of 1 ticket.
Either way I'd say if people have the ability to pay, they will if the product is good and the company/service is respectable. That's the point here, that paying customers are ultimately screwed over (just as I'm sure most employees/creators not at the very top were, because money). Also unsatisfied customers, lack of demos, lack of agreeable purchase methods/terms (also, too much splitting with subscriptions), lack of ability to give more direct support to creators (rather than publishers) etc.
That and I don't think the government should do much to protect the profits of highly successful entertainment companies who have massive budgets on lackluster ideas and underbaked products. The news of being able to trash a nearly-complete movie for a tax writeoff is terrible, for instance.
There needs to be a registry service that allows people to show they have a license for any digital media we purchase.
Almost like a decentralised system with non fungible tokens for licences, that you could even trade between individuals without involvement of the rights owner
The reason that's never going to happen is because it would be the cause of massive profit losses for digital companies.
Capitalism makes the rules.
Another is because for a decentralized ownership service to hold any ground it must be either backed by a (centralized) court of law or hold the full service you're buying. Otherwise what's stopping a hosting platform to remove the service you bought with your nft from their platform?
A black market would arise. Finished with your show? Get your money back. NFTs aren't connected to identity like that.
They could never pull a stunt like what they're doing now and make people rebuy things.
Advertising opportunity would essentially fall to zero. Ever notice how ads play before and after streaming services nowadays?
A subscription model wouldn't work under this system. Subscriptions pull in a higher net than single selling products.
The current system would be overturned in its entirety by something like this, and that's why the people making money and holding the rights aren't going to let it happen.
Funnily enough this is the only legitmate use for this technology, but will never happen because capitalists will never let it.
Given the number of crypto bros sobbing that someone right clicked their monkey, I don't think the copyright holders are going to be down with that.
That's not remotely close to how it would work lol. Those are just links to media, not licences
blockchain is great technology, even if people have used it to scam people with worthless nfts already...
That's the only good thing that came out of that nonsense. Rich people getting scammed. Just wished it wasn't also your dear uncle Sam who now lost his life savings to a fucking nazi ape.
But also as 'just' a technology, it's extremely inefficient, it is prone to fraud and unreliable at best. There is no use case beyond scamming really.
tell me you have no idea how anything works without telling me you have no idea how anything works
Maybe tell blockchain to stop hogging our electricity and water supply and I'll look into how this completely unnecessary thing works. At this point I may as well watch an M night Shyamalan movie. Just as unnecessary and densely stupid.
and the current banking system is environmentally friendly?
once again you know nothing and speak from ignorance
Buying a digital copy of something you cannot download is an oxymoron. It only makes sense if you subscribe to a service.
So steam, basically? Less likely that they'll be shutting down anytime soon, but still.
Edit: people downvoting don't seem to understand how steam works
Not a good comparison. With Steam, you download the games to your computer. If Valve ever went out of business, they could unDRM the games, or you could crack them.
Either way, you download the games onto your computer. That's not the case with Funimation.
Why? You also buy licenses from GOG, despite their and their shills' best efforts to make you believe otherwise.
It's completely DRM free. You download the game and that's it, you can run it from your computer forever
The only difference with Steam is that you have to crack the game files, and Steam DRM is notably easy to bypass. Either way, once you have the files you have it.
They're charging people higher prices and refusing to allow them to keep their digital content? They're basically just handing out the pirate hats and eye patches at this point.
For smart people, piracy is a financial problem.
Why pay more for things you can get for free? It's not like the businesses you're supporting wouldn't rob you blind if they thought they could get away with it.
Even the 'creators' don't get the vast majority of the money you spend; their landlords do. When they make more money, rent goes up.
I wish this generation wasn't full of useful idiots with more money than sense.
Very hard to convince people to buy things "legitimately" and have any trust in any of the "legit" options when they just go away so fucking easily. Stuff like anime has been a real weird example of both how horrible the corps on the Japanese side just squeeze every single fraction of a penny from stuff (fucking like two eps of a show on a modern DVD or even Blu-ray). But also feel zero reason to expand options in the first place. They were so fucking slow to get digital or streaming options. Same goes for the foreign outlets that get rights outside of J-land, but I am sure they were more likely to want to combat piracy via stuff like streaming. Funny thing about anime piracy is that it is literally the reason so many shows and movies were even seen and is the main reason so many people got into all of it. Back in the early 00's when I made friends with people that had cable internet and ready to burn as many eps as they could fit on a CD-R and later DVD-/+R.
It was just so amazing to see all these shows that weren't just completely altered by lazy US companies or ever likely to be translated. No US companies thought that Americans would ever understand or get into this weird Japanese stuff and not put money into it. But they sure started caring when torrents got going and the numbers were growing. One thing that has really pissed me off with legal digital copies of anime comes down to how it is still behind on basic shit. We have had multi-audio/subtitles on pirate copies and even on legitimate physical discs. But the legal versions of digital copies still have to be either bought in sub or dub. It is a slap in the face of fans to have to buy two different copies just to have multi-audio in Japanese and English. I thought that shit would have been left behind with VHS.
All of these companies demand our money and often charge prices that are just too high for their target audiences (especially teens that don't have jobs like so many of us have lived through). And yet they seem to do everything possible to make the options for purchase so much less usable compared to pirate versions. I would take a fansub that might be a bit off but has actual passion for community and accessibility over legit copies every single time. But I am also more than happy to pay for things if I don't keep being treated like I already stole it and should be grateful for being "allowed" to pay for it. I would love to pay for these things and know that the actual workers are able to live, and not just so overworked and not able to afford rent. But the entire media industry treats both the workers and the customers so fucking bad. They are making things worse for themselves by showing how we can't trust our purchases to even be around from one day to another. So why shouldn't we just take it and know that we will have it?
Given how lots of smaller shows and other things will never get re-prints or re-masters on modern media. It is also our jobs to preserve these things that the companies feel aren't worth the money to do so if they aren't. If I ever have kids, I would like to be able to know I can show them my favorites. Looks like I will also need to show them how to sail the digital seas and that "legit" options should always be treated as liars that steal your money AND take away what you paid for.
🏴☠️
No US companies thought that Americans would ever understand or get into this weird Japanese stuff
I miss the subtitled "translator notes" about cultural things. US companies just change the meaning of things if there's no easy equivalent.
Gintama has some of the funnier versions of those notes. Can be annoying if you don't care as they take it to 11 covering most of the screen to explain a reference to a bank scandal in the 90s or other very specific stuff. Cracks me up with the level of care about making sure you are aware of something used in a quick joke that might not really matter. Such a nice way to see and know random info on Japanese slang words and phrases in the context of a moment.
Disclaimer: this absolutely sucks and I'm baffled that they've made this move at all.
That being said, I don't think folks have noticed the very specific situation where this is the case:
Users who redeemed digital copies of a Blu-ray or DVD purchased from Funimation were granted access to the streaming service, where they could store and stream the purchased program or film.
They are very specifically removing the free digital copies that came with buying hard copies via Blu-ray or DVD. It still sucks, but no one is losing a digital product they outright bought.
I see where you're coming from, but I don't think that excuses anything. If you bought a hard copy with the understanding that a digital copy came with the purchase and now they're taking away the digital copy, that's still a Darth Vader "I'm altering the deal" type move.
kinda feels like selling someone a burger and fries, taking away the fries and then going "no one lost a burger". the digital copy is part of what was purchased, and its been taken away from purchasers with no recourse. The digital copy was part of the deal.
Doesn't matter at all, they gave the copies, it's the costumers property now and is being taken away.
Still shitty, but at this point, anyone buying Blu-Rays and DVDs should chuck that stuff on Plex/Jellyfin and be done with it.
I chipped in when my friend bought Paranoia Agent on Blu-ray because he promised me the digital copy, so this does affect me. Granted, after learning the news I "found" some rips online for my NAS, but still. It's not okay.
I literally wouldn't advocate "sailing the high seas" if companies didn't all aggressively accelerate enshittification and run toward consumer-hostile, short-term, endlessly greedy practices. And then there's this, which is on another level. Storage is crazy-cheap these days, people...
How these companies don't realize these incompetent decisions push formerly paying customers into piracy is actually beyond me.
Do every c-level employee in these companies have brain damage?
Not going to lie, i think most consumers will take this lying down and that’s what Sony is betting on. The amount that actually turn to piracy is so small, and the price hike easily makes up for the customers they’d lose. I’d say most people on Lemmy know how to pirate (if not are pirating already) so it’s a bit of an echo chamber here where we assume everybody is just going to pirate so as to stop lining Sony’s pockets.
@KravenTheHunter @trackcharlie plus, it gives them a reason to justify the higher prices because they have to be protected from all those big, bad pirates out there taking food out of their kids mouths by not paying their extortionary rental fees.
They're actually counting on people to pirate stuff to create some weird sense of inflated value for their products.
In my experience the main issue with piracy is the ads.
Nothing better than trying to watch a show with my kid then having an ad pop-up with a girl fucking herself
I’ve been pirating for years and never encountered an ad beyond subtitle ads. Is this anime specific or something?
Nah the anime sites I use either don't have ads or have normal ads.
It's the movie sites I use that have constant explicit pop-ups
You're not using adblocker?
Edit: Just read the other commenter. Where do you watch shows with your kids? TV or Computer? If it's on Desktop or Laptop it's easy af, but Smart TV less so but not impossible.
I've been meaning to look into adblockers but I really only use these sites for shit that's not on streaming services so I don't really think about it until it arises
Firefox + ublock origin would be your best scenario for privacy and security. Privacy because all these ads track your page loads and attempt to generate a unique id for your browser based on your loading time of certain pixels, and security because nearly half of all ads (and more than half of all links on google search and nearly all ads on google search) are viral loads just waiting for an accidental click.
It's 2024 man, tormenting a movie takes about 10 minutes and then you neither have to worry about ads nor connectivity for the rest of the movie
I'm gonna be honest, I've tried torrenting before and maybe I'm just an idiot (most likely), but I've never been good at figuring out which fuckin button is the actual download button and I'm tired of ghosting my pc
If you set up qbittorrent with the built-in search you can torrent stuff without ever opening your browser
Sounds like 90% of your problem is ads then. Or going to shitty sites. Get on a decent tracker - even the good old one - and have an adblocker installed
If your TV is Android based then there's the SmartTube app. YouTube without the ads and tracking.
Look into dns ad blocker, you can avoid a lot of ads on your entire network with this "one simple trick ". No additional hw or sw needed.
They don't care about losing customers to piracy just like fast-food restaurants don't care about losing people to grocery stores.
They've realized it's more profitable to take further advantage of an ever-shrinking pool of customers.
If you can charge 1 customer twice the price of what you could charge 2, then you make more money because you require less overhead.
I definitely agree with you but I'm not sure how far they can take this in an economic situation that is currently devolving into a major recession and has all the macroeconomic factors of an incoming second depression.
Because their best interest is to appease shareholders and not excellent service. The problem which will emerge in 5 years time is a problem for the next CEO.
Subscription is pretty different from buying. Pretty disingenuous to try to talk about them the same way. There's no expectation of keeping access when you end a subscription.
I see patreon subscriptions all the time where you can subscribe, download all the content, and not subscribe again the next month.
I fail to see why just because it's a big corporation that the expectation is different.
Do you really think all of Netflix's catalog is really only worth $15, or whatever the cheapest ad-free plan is?
Made a post out of it in piracy@lemmy.ml, mind if I credit you? People should know, this info can be genuinely helpful
You've mentioned an important thing that has already generated a lot of engagement (28 comments) and likes (270) under the post in a community with average, like, 10 comments and 30 likes, meaning it might be helpful to many here on Lemmy :)
I don't think there's anything on funimation that hasn't already been ripped and posted on nyaa or private trackers.
Unless it's some really old or obscure stuff.
