These services should be forbidden from using the phrase "Buy it now" if they do not mean it. The phrase should be "License it now" or "Get a license" so people know what they are getting into.
They should be forced to commit to a specific time period that the rental is available and failing to do so is considered fraud. Failing to list the time period is considered equivalent to perpetuity and they should be forced to provide the content in perpetuity, regardless of their circumstances.
Oh, and if it seems unfair to do so and they don't like it, they're perfectly free to not sell that content at all. It's a free country right?
Agree. Given their license agreements, it should even specify something like "rent for at least x years", x being a number of years compatible with their own license agreement. If they have a 1 year agreement with the copyright holders, x can’t be greater than 1.
Transparency is the only way to make sure there’s no bullshit for the customer. Also maybe they would need to adjust prices, as they’re no way I’m gonna pay full price for a 1 year license (which is effectively what I’m paying for).
> Also maybe they would need to adjust prices, as they’re no way I’m gonna pay full price for a 1 year license (which is effectively what I’m paying for).
This is a large part of my gripe with the way things are now. I cannot make an informed purchase decision if I do not know what exactly it is I am purchasing; And when the goods that I 'purchased' can be arbitrarily taken away, it is impossible for me to have ever made an informed decision about the purchase.
For example, say that in this case, you bought one of these Blu-Rays with the digital code for Christmas last year, just two months ago, because your friend who bought it five years ago recommended it. They got to use their digital copy for five years, you only got two months, despite having agreed to purchase the _same exact product_. If the package said "free digital copy until March 2024" then there's not that much problem, you got exactly what you paid for, and you were fully aware of what it was that you were buying. But if the package said "free digital copy" then you might rightfully assume that you'll get the same amount of use from the digital copy that your friend did.
As it stands right now though, you have no guarantee whatsoever for how long the digital copy will remain accessible, so you're in effect paying for some nebulous vision of a digital copy in the hope that it materializes for long enough to make use of.
It seems to me that this kind of situation would plausibly be a straightforward case for Revocation of Acceptance, but there's not really any mechanism for doing so. I guess you'd have to send them a letter via registered mail demanding your money back and then take it to small claims court? I'm quite sure that not many people would bother, which is why they do things like this in the first place.
I agree that they shouldn't be allowed to say that they're selling you a good or that you're buying it when what you're actually paying for is a revocable license to use/access it at their discretion. But it's not quite as clear when the purchase includes a physical good that is purchased and also a revocably licensed digital good. That's still (at least partially) a purchase. I think the more relevant issue here is the extent to which a company's assets can be separated from its contractual obligations during an acquisition.
We need to use simple language that everyone understands. "Rent" is the right word for this transaction. Sellers hate it because no one like rent at buy prices.
You’re still generating a loss of income to someone somewhere. I completely agree there are some ethical arguments in favor of piracy, but don’t be a fool, of course piracy is a form of theft. Nothing is black or white. I still do it when the legal offer fails me, but I’m honest with myself.
In the same way, going to an half empty theater to watch the show without paying would not be stealing according to your definition (you’re not taking the place of a paying customer anyway), yet it is a form of stealing too.
>You’re still generating a loss of income to someone somewhere.
No you're not. A pirated copy is not a lost sale. Many people wouldn't interact with some media/software at all if they hadn't pirated it. Linux on the desktop would probably be more popular too.
And the person stealing a seat in the theater would not have bought it so it’s not a lost sale either according to you. Maybe lost sale is not the correct term, but it’s still a form of theft: you took something even though its owner didn’t allow you to take it.
Someone sneaking into a movie theater is consuming a limited resource (a specific seat at a specific showing) and causing some presumably small amount of wear on the seats. They're actually taking something even if its value is probably significantly less than the notional lost sale. But someone who downloads a movie has taken nothing. They just have something someone didn't want them to have.
> These services should be forbidden from using the phrase "Buy it now" if they do not mean it. The phrase should be "License it now" or "Get a license" so people know what they are getting into. Words have power.
Web browser userscript/extension to change the terminology on purchase pages of major vendors?
Except that the customers did buy it - they bought physical DVDs! They could have kept those, probably did, and if so, can still watch them!
What Sony is doing here is shitty, but it's a long way from removing access to digital content which people have paid for, which is what the title suggests.
The customers thought they had bought a DVD and an access code. Just because there was also a physical product in the bundle does not absolve Sony of any blame.
Tell you what, I'll sell you my house for 100$ but at any time I can take back all but the doormat. You still have access to some part of what you bought so we are all good right? As for 'buying the physical dvd', that is just bad plastic because they can't actually use the data on it in any modern way. By law they can't rip it and view it with modern devices so they clearly never 'owned' anything.
This would only be true if Sony offered a physical or downloadable version of the content that the users could keep using after they removed online access.
Fire, theft, misplaced/lost, water damage, tiny kid damages the disc, so on and so forth. Keeping something sometimes is out of our control.
>... but it's a long way from removing access to digital content which people have paid for, which is what the title suggests.
They're literally pulling content they paid for. They bought this knowing they would get a physical copy and streaming access. They paid for both, and now part of that "both" is being taken away.
They should be forced to commit to a specific time period that the rental is available and failing to do so is considered fraud. Failing to list the time period is considered equivalent to perpetuity and they should be forced to provide the content in perpetuity, regardless of their circumstances.
Oh, and if it seems unfair to do so and they don't like it, they're perfectly free to not sell that content at all. It's a free country right?