How long is “forever”? When it comes to digital media, forever could be as close as a couple of months away.
Funimation, a Sony-owned streaming service for anime, recently announced that subscribers’ digital libraries on the platform will be unavailable after April 2. For years, Funimation had been telling subscribers that they could keep streaming these digital copies of purchased movies and shows, but qualifying it: “forever, but there are some restrictions.”
Own your shit without anyone’s permission or it will disappear
This really grinds my gears. Every company is always complaining about piracy, just to add invasive DRM and/or crappy measures that only ever hurt the consumer.
Some might not act like this is a big deal because those codes typically come with a physical disc, but when you bought the disc you actually bought TWO copies, the physical disc AND the digital code.
What if you sold your code to someone else? GONE. What if you sold your disc? GONE.
This should be illegal but unfortunately they can update their crappy EULA’s that say something along the lines of “By using our service you agree to–”, and there goes your media that you “own forever”.
What a joke.
if just annoys me so much that they did away with dvds and blurays - which offered infinitely more value to streaming because of the added bonus features and the fact that you owned it - and then raised streaming prices even though they didn’t have to spend as much making the physical media anymore.
Relevant (old) XKCD : https://xkcd.com/488/
This actually IS theft, selling you something and then stealing it back!
But but but you didn’t read page 36 of the ULA where it says they can!
I vaguely remember reading that terms of service that violate basic rights are not going to be upheld in court.
I’m not a FUNimation subscriber but I hope that the people who are take Sony to court
Just like any lifetime guarantee, its guaranteeing access for the lifetime of the service (which could end at any moment) not your lifetime.
services that promise lifetime or forever accessability should be avoided.
Fuck these companies. Seriously, they dont give a shit, they are not competitive and want you to keep paying for shit you bought years ago.
🏴☠️Just remember to seed
Are you able to download your purchases? I feel like the answer is “no,” but if they were serious about your library being “yours” downloading your purchases would have been part of their service plan from the start.
Not to my knowledge.
But also, I would assume the vast majority of library licenses were from buying blu-rays. You buy a movie or a season/collection and get a card to get the digital copy with it. So people, theoretically, already have physical copies.
In large part because… funimation was “the good anime streaming service”. That is similar to “Sony’s network shit is good compared to Nintendo” and “I would rather get shot in the ass than the foot”
Still hot bullshit though considering that there IS another anime service with similar capabilities under the same company (crunchyroll). I understand license hell and all that but… still.
I understand license hell and all that but…
Nah, don’t offer them your understanding. These guys’d root thru your pockets if you were bleeding out
Doesn’t change media licensing being a minefield. Especially with respect to Japan where many of the studios/rightsholders have genuine fears of blu-rays and streaming hurting their market.
Eh I’m not saying you’re wrong or anything. Your explanation was good and thorough. I’m just being grumpy about a point you weren’t making really.
These days there are countless articles explaining the intricacies of why things are shit… I’m tired of the explanations when it boils down to “they’re doing it because they can.” Gets tiring ya know?
Hope i didn’t come off as attacking you, just rantin’
That is the thing though. When you trivialize it to “they’re doing it because they can”, you aren’t approaching with good faith and are starting from an antagonistic stance. Which is a good recipe to guarnatee things get even shittier because if you are going to get the exact same response for being “kind of shitty” and “punting a baby off a roof” then…
Like, the reddit API bullshit is something that basically everyone here is aware of. And it was definitely shitty. But also understand that everyone runs adblockers, advertisements/sponsorships in general are increasingly “weird”, and people were actually spending money to pay for third party apps that blocked ads while using reddit servers/content. It is massively shitty (and part of why I “left”) but it also was a very “real” problem without a good solution.
I think the way reddit made it clear they did not care about users and just cared about having “the content” means they can go fuck themselves. But… how the fuck does it make sense for them to provide a service that other people charge for?
Second time Sony has done this in almost as many months. Fuck Sony.
