Deep Thought on Piracy

PlayStation announced that individuals who purchased Discovery content through their platform will have their purchased content removed December 31st, 2023

This is why internet piracy is alive and well. pic.twitter.com/87bcqZwHWR

— vx-underground (@vxunderground) December 2, 2023

Isn't that special


So long as the paid experience is worse than the unpaid experience, this will continue.

At the beginning of the month, Sony announced that it would be deleting content from the Discovery Channel that users had purchased. (They backtracked on this after securing a last minute licensing deal)

Note that this was purchased content, it was supposed to be like a DVD, or a physical book, but because our digital economy is based on the idea of continuing and increasing rents, you own nothing.

Sony announced on Monday that it would remove all Discovery content, including shows like “MythBusters” and “Deadliest Catch,” from user libraries, even if they had been purchased on the PlayStation Store.

The company, which owns and operates PlayStation game consoles, said in a brief statement that the Discovery shows would be deleted on Dec. 31, attributing the decision to “our content licensing arrangements with content providers.”

………

Some PlayStation console users expressed frustration with Sony for taking away content that already had been purchased. One user posted on social media that they were expecting a full refund for products bought on the PlayStation. Another wrote that the message from Sony to customers was essentially, “If you ‘purchased’ any of these titles via PlayStation, they are going to disappear soon and too bad for you.”

………

The erasure of Discovery content has raised questions about what it means to “own” digital products and highlighted how customers are increasingly at the mercy of licensing arrangements between media companies and online stores.

Gee, ya think?

Quoting Tyler James Hill by way of Cory Doctorow,  "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing."

It never was stealing.  At its worst, it was a violation of a license for exclusivity.

Lobby your Congressmen, and get them to pull out of WIPO and roll back the increasingly draconian IP restrictions that have been implemented over the past 60 years.