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

  • RememberTheApollo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    197·
    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.comEnglish
        74·
        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.worldEnglish
            3·
            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.worldEnglish
              2·
              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.worldEnglish
      221·
      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.oneEnglish
        331·
        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.worldEnglish
          191·
          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.websiteEnglish
          2·
          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.oneEnglish
            2·
            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.

    • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      12·
      1 year ago

      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@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      10·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      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.worldEnglish
        1·
        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.worldEnglish
      1216·
      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.

      • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        15·
        1 year ago

        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@lemm.eeEnglish
          61·
          1 year ago

          “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”.