How DRM Lets Sony/Discovery Delete Your Purchases! But GOG and DRM-free music offer a path forward
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- Опубликовано: 22 май 2024
- See the prior video : • Discovery Channel Purc... - In a follow up to my video Saturday regarding the Sony / Discovery channel content deletion issue, many other digital platforms have EULA clauses that allow content deletion without cause. But there are a number of examples the TV and Movie studios could follow to make things better for consumers and save their industry. See more like this: • Lon.TV Commentary & An... and subscribe! lon.tv/s
VIDEO INDEX:
00:00 - Intro
00:29 - How Sony & Discovery got away with it & legal ramifications
02:37 - DRM is the Problem
03:46 - Other EULAs: Steam
06:06 - DRM Free Examples: GOG
10:27 - DRM-Free Music
12:09 - iTunes Match will remove DRM from old iTunes purchase
14:24 - HDtracks & others for high quality lossless audio
15:06 - The RIAA thrives without DRM
17:19 - Call to Action - Email Tim Cook!
18:21 - Conclusion
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Here's the email I sent to Tim Cook:
Dear Mr. Cook,
Apple revolutionized the music industry by offering the first viable digital music store, followed by leading the industry to remove restrictive DRM from purchases. These innovations were not only consumer-friendly but also demonstrated Apple's ability to lead and influence the market positively. The RIAA, who once thought DRM-free media would destroy their industry, is now thriving.
Today, I wish to propose Apple offer DRM free purchase options for movies and TV shows. While the studios will likely not agree to this currently, Apple is uniquely positioned to set the example by offering Apple Studios productions for purchase without DRM.
By providing DRM-free purchasing options for Apple's original content, you could once again position Apple as a trailblazer, advocating for consumer rights and leading by example. This move would not only offer unmatched flexibility and freedom for users but also potentially encourage other content providers to reconsider their stance on anti-consumer DRM restrictions.
Just this week consumers who purchased content on Sony Playstations from the Discovery channel learned that their purchases are going to be removed from their digital libraries with no refund offered. This is largely due to DRM being tied to only the Sony platform.
Your leadership can make the difference for both consumers and the industry. Apple is really the only company that can do it!
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Lon Seidman
--
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ERRATA: I incorrectly stated in the video that GOG was acquired by CD Projekt Red. They are in fact the founders of the platform.
Closer but not quite. GOG was founded by CD Projekt S.A. CD Projekt Red was also founded by CD Projekt S.A. CD Projekt S.A. is the parent holding company and software publisher. CD Projekt Red is a game development studio, GOG is a sibling company that is a digital storefront. All very confusingly named, and I am sorry for being so pedantic, but someone was going to be. 😅
16:58 - A new update: As of today, Killers Of The Flower Moon is the first Apple Original Movie to be offered for sale on iTunes.
@@ArguingMeadows It's funny I was scouring iTunes to see if I could find something of theirs for sale yesterday before I shot the video.
@@LonSeidman It is inconvenient timing, but hey, it’s the first one of their films or shows to make it outside the AppleTV+ subscription.
I don't have an issue with purchasing a limited license for access to media. The problem is that the companies always use the term "buy". When you put a movie or song or game into your digital cart and pay for it, they don't use the terminology of purchasing a limited license, they say that you're "buying" the digital media. Any company that has ever used a "Buy" or "Buy Now" button should automatically have to refund all money if they ever take that media away.
agreed
They should change their wording to RENTING...thus misinformation from these greedy bastards.
@@RAM_845 - Possibly "Leasing", since it's a long-term rental with unlimited access and usage during that period, but acknowledging that you don't "own" it and you won't have access to it forever.
Yes agree, it is deceptive practice particularly as they know they can take it away at a whim....no doubt if they rephrased 'buy' to 'long term rental', people would not hand over an amount equating to a full retail price....thus they will continue to be deceptive to rake in the $$$$
Exactly. Blockbuster was quite clear that their media was rented. It should be the same language, regardless of the distribution method.@@RAM_845
This is exactly what I have been warning people about for years, but people would just dismiss me as old fashioned for wanting physical media and offline activation for software. I'm glad GOG and others are pushing the idea of DRM free media.
Personally I don't see how offline activation for software is a bad thing.
@@jbktpl1245 I have one problem with it. Take Spore for example. It was only able to be activated on a limited number of computers. I forget the actual number, but it would depend on the game whether you had a limit or not. DRM has always been a scourge to lawful purchasers. There's plenty of times that DRM screed something up for someone.
Hell there was even a time that Linus from LTT hit the install limit on Crysis... Through steam. The EA DRM was still active and unmodified.
This is the reason why I have over 1400 games on GoG now and I still stick to that store. Maybe I'm old fashioned too but this is my way to go :)
This is precisely why I prefer to purchase content from GOG. I hope more vendors will adopt or endorse their business model. It will save everyone from so much grief on these issues.
Same but tons of games are unfortunately not on the store 😢
Facts, I have over 1000 games and counting from my GOG library. I have downloaded every single game to my local hard drive. It takes up about 7 TB of Hard Drive Space. Once a year I go thru the library and redownload the games that got updated by the developer. Every game can be copied to a jump drive, installed on any computer, and it will launch without internet, some games will still need the internet for the installation process because of DirectX or Visual C++ Libraries or Net Framework or something like that because a fresh install of Windows doesnt have everything insalled that u need to play any and every video game.
Backup every purchase you make immediately or you just may find it replaced and your purchase history retconned one day, with no access to the installer files for what you actually bought.
Gog will never compete with Steam, for better or worse. Valve just offers the only good platform on PC.
@@SnowyRVulpix Valve offers the only popular platform on PC, not the only good platform on PC. Steam frankly sucks as a platform. And it's only gotten worse for desktop users as they focus solely on Steam Deck. I can't even use the in-game overlay anymore because it's way too small to read on PC. Valve doesn't care to fix it, it looks fine on their own hardware.
GOG offers the only good platform on PC, but it'll never compete because big companies insist on DRM and so you'll never find the newest games on GOG.
I'd love to see forced binding arbitration outlawed. It's too one sided since they pick the arbiter.
And the best part is that the company can sidestep their own forced binding arbitration and take it to court anyway, but you can't.
That would be a regulation. In America we only want to regulate people, and even then only the ones who aren’t white male heterosexual right-wing christians.
They also make you fly at the opposite and of the planet if you want to sue them. Where the "Judge" is beholden SOLELY to the local voters(the LOCAL employees and LOCAL employees), you on other hand don't vote for that "Judge". Even though your purchase happened here and NOT there.
it is in most of the world. America is just trash lmfao
@@robsemail 🤡 Your anti-white bigotry is baseless and unnecessary.
This is to all those who threw out your physical media, thinking streaming is the future. Streaming would be cheap & saves you space in the house. All these companies will all do the same. Delete stuff you bought through streaming, regardless of how much money you spent. Great thing about Discs, you keep them forever. Gaming companies will do the same to games.
Yup, discs, hard drives, books, magazines, fotos. You need a home and stability. And stock up 😊
The problem with games is some of them such as starfield are multiple gigabytes large and wont fit onto discs. I bought Fallout 4 on disc and I had to download it through steam. The game files weren't on the actual disc just a link and or permission to download/authorized to use. Steam key.
🙂yup, im very well versed in these problems of 'Capacity', so what I did was setup a budget and plan and slowly purchased multiple 20TB NAS Hard Drives and setup a home server, on GOG i have purchased pretty much the entire Bethesda library offering, all of it has been dowloaded to my home server, its really nice and convenient to have the ability to copy a game to a usb jump drive and share it with a friend or family member, my newphew is a diehard fortnite player so her doesnt really care for anything in my library yet LOL@@coondogtheman
I agree. But some Blu-ray discs can hold up to 100 GB. Pretty sure if tech companies cared, they could make discs that could hold even more.@@coondogtheman
There are some physical disc-based media that are capable of suddenly ceasing to work. All it takes is it needing internet to function. Adobe likes doing this: Many of their older programs cannot be installed anymore, even if you own the physical CD.
Fantastic work and I completely agree. This isn’t physical vs digital/cloud. This is DRM vs non-DRM. My GOG installers exist on multiple hard drives that don’t need to be formatted a special way and they exist on my own servers as backup.
😏👍 Nice, a fellow traveler, I got 1000 games so far, all downloaded, takes about 7TB of hard drive space, and thats the games compressed which means u cant play the game yet. You will need alot more space to uncompress and install everything if you actually want to play the games. So we are talking about several hundreds of dollars in NAS Size Hard Drives. Stock Up.
Good job! I got all my 1400+ GoG games on my NAS and also backed up on external HDDs. I'm on almost 8 TB of installers :)
The problem is that these ridiculous companies use deceptive wording in their stores. When I see BUY NOW, I think I have access to the content FOREVER. I am BUYING IT. They know that if they put "long term lease" or similar wording, a ton of people would stop paying. Why? Because they charge full price. FULL PRICE. Why would I pay full price for something I know will and can be taken from me at any time? Sick of this push for digital content.
TBH, I love GOG and all but Steam doesn't pull this crap too often so it's not like it's a big deal there. Now Movie streaming is another story
@@jakubrogacz6829 The problem is Steam only doesn't do it often is because its privately owned the moment Gabe dies all hell could break lose based on what the wants of the next owner(s) are.
@@jakubrogacz6829 Well, Steam COULD do all this. If I have a GoG installer, nobody can take those away from me :)
@HumorousLOL I completely agree with you
@@jakubrogacz6829 The problem isn't whether a company doesn't do it often, it's the fact that they have the ability to. With a physical copy, no company can just walk into my place and take my content. With digital, this can happen at any time, legally, and there is nothing you can do about it. You pay full price for something and it doesn't mean you own it. That is a huge problem.
This is why I love 90's tech. I collect and use it. If you just have one device, then you can't get much use out of it, but if you maintain an entire era-appropriate ecosystem, then you end up living in the 90's, when quality was alright, longevity was superb, and no cloud activation on anything. All media you own entirely. Can run it from now until the end of time. Videos, games, anything. I spend money once and never again, unless it's for hardware maintenance. Because of that, I'm in love with the past. Anything pre-internet. All I care, is that my experiences and memories can last me the rest of my life. To be able to enjoy things I like, forever. Like a family can opener, that's been passed through generations now. It's still as good as the day it was made. Full metal. Completely indestructible. Old, but as useful as ever. I want all of my things to be like that. I want to know, that I get to choose when to retire them, and not the firm that sold them.
@enilenis Agreed 👍🏻 I wish we could travel back to the good ol’ days where we never had to worry about greedy corporations and publishers and DRM protection or any of the other crap that we have to deal with today
When a person downloads it free it's theft. When a company just takes away products that have been purchased by said person it's legal because the content isn't considered property. Okay but if it's not considered property then how can downloading it be considered theft? Companies just don't want to have digital purchases classed as property because it would mean that making it unavailable would amount to theft. If I were to own a restaurant and tell customers they need to sign a long waiver which includes the line "food here may contain food poisoning" would I still be liable for them becoming ill? Yes. I couldn't say the customers should have read all of the terms listed in the agreement and get off so why are media companies getting off?
Well the official reason is because if you pirated it do you infringe on the owners copyright and "steal" there intellectual property.
But when they do it is it legal because they never sold you the copyright to the intellectual property just a license to be allowed to use it for as long as they see fit.
Or to try to bring this digital example into physical property.
Its theft if you steal a car because you don't own it.
But its legal to return this car if you just rented it from the company and there rent contract said that they can terminate it when ever they want.
Don't take this as me agree with this logic I just wanted to present it.
Corporate robbery. I'm sick of these companies.
🙂 Guys, please keep in mind that just because its drm free that doesn't mean anything. It is still your responsiblity to download all your content to a local hard drive, make multiple backups, and keep it all somewhere safe in your home for the rest of your life. Just to give you an idea a 20TB 3.5inch NAS Hard Drive will run you around 300 dollars. And you will need multiple drives. So we are talking about several thousands of dollars in drives. Plus you will need to store plastic CDs and DVDs that have drm on it and can't be easily copied yet. Plus older devices such as consoles and computers. Make a budget and start buying everything you need little by little and keep an eye out for Black Friday Sales and Holidays sales. Lets Go People.
My dad lost all of his digital movies and books he purchased on amazon. They deleted his account on him, removing everything.
The media/games need to be next to free if they’re going to pull it whenever they want since you don’t own it. Laws will need to change.
This is why I only buy physical copies of games, movies, music, books, etc. It's also why other people illeaglly download copies.
There are some physical disc-based media that are capable of suddenly ceasing to work. All it takes is it needing internet to function. Adobe likes doing this: Many of their older programs cannot be installed anymore, even if you own the physical CD.
@@entra0 Of course, nothing is perfect. A lot of the new video games for consoles only have like 10% of the game on them and the rest has to be downloaded.
However, I believe that it has been ruled legal to make digital copies of your owned physical media for your own use... which would probably cover you if you somehow "acquired" the digital online later on.
Amazon is doing the same thing with video content being removed that a customer purchases via Prime Video. I am buying the same content on Blu-ray or DVD if it is available in those formats.
I LOVE this video! I was actually planning on making a similar video in the future. I'm in that 3% of people who buy digital downloads, and I don't pay for any music subscription services. I can't tell you how many times I had music taken out of my streaming library, and I had enough. Purchasing music gives more money to the artist anyway, and I end up spending about the same per year on purchased music as a subscription would cost, and I actually OWN the songs. Something that you didn't mention is that music videos are also available to purchase from Apple, and they are also DRM free. I think it would be great if Apple allowed for DRM free downloads of movies and TV, but it's probably the studios that want DRM. Keep in mind, Apple is the only online digital movie and TV seller that actually allows you to download movies and TV shows you bought to begin with (albeit, with DRM). At least Apple gives you the opportunity to keep the files you bought, in the event they got taken away. I've connected all of my other services with Movies Anywhere and have downloaded everything I possibly could through Apple. At least I can play back the DRM files without an internet connection on an Apple device.
Same here. I actually prefer to get my music in a physical format if I can, but sometimes that is not always possible, especially with the lack of decent record stores in my area. I've have bought many an album off of Bandcamp in FLAC and immediately download it to my own music server. It is rare, but there have been times when albums have been taken off of Bandcamp. Case in point - "Veil of Imagination" by Wilderun, a progressive metal band. Their record label forced them to stop selling it on Bandcamp, but since I bought it before that happened, I still have my DRM-free FLAC copy that I can listen to anytime I want.
It’s sinister crap like this that makes piracy completely justified.
Piracy is necessary, most stuff will never ever be drm free. So set sail but keep it low profile. Also sharing is caring so help out a friend or a family member with a few games on a jump drive.
@@MrSamadolfo I hope they all go out of business and there is nothing left to pirate. Read a book.
Yes that might happen if we ever have some sort of Apocalypse @@mikeg2491
I agree. But even the books are digital now. All the more reasons why the whole digital state is a regime, and the pirates will win the war. Yes, though I may be a virtual cop, I support the pirates, and God bless them too!
Piracy is never justified
Lon thank you for letting me know about GOG. I love ole DOS games and I found an old game "Age of Rifles" that I have missed playing for years. It works great on Win 11 (once I dropped the display resolution) and I have the download saved on a backup disc. You always teach me something new every week.
This is why you always want to buy PHYSICAL copies of any media you choose to purchase. If you want a movie, song or a game buy it on CD, SACD, DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K Blu-ray. Problem SOLVED!
There are some physical disc-based media that are capable of suddenly ceasing to work. All it takes is it needing internet to function. Adobe likes doing this: Many of their older programs cannot be installed anymore, even if you own the physical CD.
100%
Thanks for another great video Lon. Always very simple to follow but right on the button. I regret buying all my online videos etc. When I click on the "buy" button I did genuinely expect to own the film/tv show.
Its techincally a LEASE, if u need it offline then I suggest you Sail the High Seas ⛵💀
The way I remember it, Apple didn’t go DRM free willingly. The first step they took towards it was that they graciously allowed you to re-purchase individual tracks that you wanted to have without DRM, but another service was selling their music DRM-free from the get-go, so Apple had to follow suit.
So initially they had a lump sum upgrade fee (per track) for the entire library but later allowed users to upgrade for 30 cents ala carte. Before the DRM removal tracks were 99 cents but the DRM removal resulted in a higher cost per track at $1.29.
So no recourse nice. And I have the right to actually purchase my media that i can keep elsewhere.
@@LonSeidman Looks like eMusic did it first in 2006, and iTunes announced its iTunes Plus upsell in 2007 for music published by EMI, but then dropped it entirely after Amazon announced a month later that they would sell music DRM-free for .99/track.
My point was that you paint a verrrrrry skewed picture of what actually happened, making it sound like Apple was the trailblazer and that they did away with DRM out of love for the consumer. Other companies did it first, and they never would have walked away from that revenue stream if competition from a similarly huge company like Amazon hadn't forced them to. It's kinda reminiscent of 2019's Godzilla: King of the Monsters, really, with megacorps as the kaiju slugging it out for dominance and us consumers as the wee humans trying not to get flattened.
In May 2007, Amazon started offering DRM-free versions of songs for the same price that Apple was selling DRM songs, which started taking market share away from iTunes, and that put pressure on Apple to start offering DRM-free versions of songs at a normal price. As a side note, Apple had started offering DRM-free version of songs a month earlier (April 2007) from a very limited number of publishers, but they were at a premium price so didn't sell as well. (edit - just saw further down in the thread that you already covered these points).
@@LonSeidman I guess people forgot that Steve Jobs actually wrote an open letter against DRM in 2007. Apple made the most of it's money on hardware not selling music. The music industry is the one that forced Apple to implement the DRM on music purchases in the first place.
Step 1. Pirate it
Step 2. Back it up on a 2nd HDD.
That's your path forward!
The hard part as deaf individual, the search of captioning file is the worst. I just wish it would come with video automatically.
invest in a home server and several 20TB NAS Hard Drives, lets go people! 😒👍
I always thought software and content as a service was a bad idea for consumers. With many of these services removing content and the potential of losing everything if they shut down, I no longer purchase anything unless it comes on physical media or I can store a copy and means to play it locally.
As if price gouging wasnt enough, with many companies playing dirty pool and anti-consumer practices, I believe we are on the precipice of another huge wave of piracy.
🙂 maybe not too huge because you be surprised how lazy people are nowadays, that requires a pc and a NAS Hard Drive, you also have to find the downloads link and slowly download the game, scan and test if the download works, see what additional patches are needed to launch, make notes, etc. And thats just one game, it can get very time consuming and frustrating if something doesnt work and u have to solve the puzzle. But yeah it can be fun and rewarding if ur into that kind of stuff.
People love the convenience of digital media but didn’t think about the risk of paying for and loosing access to that media.
That’s why I’m a fan of physical media.
GOG hasn't been acquired by CDPR, it was founded by them.
FACTS
Great video, I am glad I found people like you that talks about this important topic. gog is my main place for games but when I talk about this people dont listen, they dont care about this. Great video looking forward for new content from this channel.
For Steam games, if something ever happens in the future where Valve is no longer in business and the servers are shutdown, as long as there was no other DRM and you still have your game files, you can just use a Steam Emulator to run your games.
Goldberg!
I purchased Cyberpunk 2077 and Life is Strange: True Colors on physical media for my Xbox. Due to critically needed patches to play Cyberpunk, my disc is worthless without those updates. True Colors arrived with essentially an installation disc that required a download for the rest of the game. In both instances, despite buying physical copies, I am still beholden to the whims of digital content. Day 1 patches for games are unfortunately expected. While my example is software and not video, where owning a disc is more future proof, my point is that even physical media is not truly ownership.
Exactly. Even Nintendo has failed in physical media as there's a lot of titles like thatr Life is Strange you mentioned. It's hilarious to see "physical" media games and at worst you get jewel case and effin' activation code to download title. Makes no sense at all.
Sorry for your loss broh, I have both of those games in my GOG Library, I have them downloaded to my Home Server, if your in the Chicago area you can come by over, bring me a usb jump drive and i'll hook you up, and if u need a gaming pc I can build you one as well, we can go to Microcenter where u can purchase the parts u like the most. 😇
🙂 unfortunately everybody wants to go discless now, that even includes money where they want to take away paper bills and coins, its a brave new world @@jothain
Not to mention ever since the last generation (PS4/XB1), those all install digitally to the hard disk anyways. Still have to worry about storage space like if it was digital whereas before you just popped the disc in and it immediately played without any waiting or compromise. Didn’t need to pick or choose what games I still play once passing a certain threshold
*Solution* Advocate for DRM-free digital under the banner of *ownership*
GoG is well known for DRM-free games and is the selling point.
Also, this helps with media preservation.
I only buy PC games from GOG just for DRM reasons
But, doesn't that mean you have to download the game immediately and it's not stored in the cloud so it could be re-downloaded later? Or, am I wrong about how GOG works?
@@Eeveewashere you don't have to download anything until you wish to play it, if you have access to a Linux machine and a large enough external hard drive, lgogdownloader can back up your entire library to it, and you never have to download it again.
@@Eeveewashere I have the installers for my GOG library downloaded and stored locally too.
I support GOG, but I buy PC games from lots of services. My Steam account is 20 years old. Recently crossed 1,000 games on there.
I think that when this practice becomes more and more prevalent people will become more hesitant to buy digital movies which overtime will see a diminishing revenue stream to studios and other providers - so they may change their tune if it hits them hard in the back pocket. With regard to gaming, with platforms like Game Pass offering gaming via subscription, you know that you paying for (essentially rental rather than ownership)...so if gaming platforms start to take away your puchased ditigal content, platforms like Game Pass will become more attractive - currently I buy physical games, and will not buy full priced digital content....it has to be dirt cheap before I will hand over my cash
Their preference is a streaming service model for all media, you will own nothing and be happy. They would much rather get monthly money instead of a one time fee.
Well todays physical games is a joke by the most. Even if you get media, you still have download like tens of gigs of stuff to get title in proper playable state. Heck even Nintendo has now failed on that media.
correct, technically everything online should be considered a LEASE, and even if u pirate a game or movie that is technically not ownership either, its kinda crazy
@@MrSamadolfo Technically everything online should be considered open source because it is copied so much we really only make distinction around the intention of user. Much less considering that all great art until 1900s was open source ( although to be fair authors got paid more due to how art worked)
F that! Am downloading and watching everything online. I lost 300 + dollars for being a “good customer”. I will pirate every single thing, even if it’s free.
Your just earned my sub. Your video is a professional response about this subject and what Sony did.
Hi Lon! Thanks for information!
The arbitration thing is usually in there to protect the company from the odd legal action.
The companies usually fold when presented with the threat of the cost of literally tens of thousands individual arbitration actions.
One of the reasons to own the Hard copy CD's , DVD's, Books. and game cartridges. I keep all my hard copies for this reason. I knew something like this was coming. Maybe hard copies will come back into popularity because of this. You know this is only going to become more prevalent.
There are some physical disc-based media that are capable of suddenly ceasing to work. All it takes is it needing internet to function. Adobe likes doing this: Many of their older programs cannot be installed anymore, even if you own the physical CD.
@@entra0 This is good to know. I have not run across that with music and movies yet, or my games so far. argg ! I come from a mindset if you buy it it is yours.
Or at least a reason to backup, rip,or copy stuff to another format.
Books are even worse, people without license actively try to rewrite them to make them more woke. That stuff goes against both the customer and copyrights interests as you essentially put words into author mouth he didn't say nor authorize
@@jakubrogacz6829 agree they killed Dr Suess for no reason and replaced it with books that include adults having sex with kids, the word is truely broken.
I’ve been using Music Match for years to keep my audio portable. I only occasionally buy music digitally. Sometimes only because I have a credit in iTunes or on Amazon Music. Sure I don’t buy tons of modern stuff, but I already have hundreds and hundreds of albums from when CDs were the only option. Thus I still buy and RIP to my library. And with iTunes Match those tracks get synced to my phone, etc. I end up with a physical CD, a high quality RIP on my desktop computer, and cloud files accessible on mobile devices, etc.
Only issue lately is my Desktop (Windows) randomly likes to not see the drive. So copying the disc can be a chore.
There needs to be a law about how concise and easy to understand the terms and conditions are. At this point they may as well write whatever they want and hold it against you later on. Which is what they are doing. If you can’t keep the terms and condition within 3 paragraphs or something, maybe you have too many terms and conditions to make the document legal.
I have been educating lately my children about this problem that could happen that app can be discontinued and close. Or something you pay online like Sony can be close and discontinued. Meaning for example that Fortnite can be close and discontinued and all players will lose all their money spent on costumes or other things that they purchased. That a real problem and frustrating situation when it is happening but the first thing people can do is to not pay any real money towards apps and consoles.
I'd change that statement a bit. "...Fortnite can close..." to "...Fortnite WILL eventually close and people WILL lose all their bought content". This has already happened almost 10 years ago when Sony stopped their "Playstation Home" for instance.
Good reporting Lon. This is one of the reasons I still get physical media (4k movies , games for Xbox ps5, etc)
The publisher and movie company can disable your disc if they want to. Owing a physical disc gives you no protection in this day and age.
I'm curious in how they can do that?
@@geofreypejsa54 They can send a signal to any device you own to not play the content anymore. We probably gave them access at one point or another by connecting our devices to the internet. Is not something I see happening, but they could they have the means to. Any disc you own tells you upon booting it. You're buying the license to use it not own it. This only applies to newer things. If you're talking stuff from the generations ago this isn't a problem.
@@epicmike3915 Sounds like some tin foil hat talk here.
depends on the physical media, because like a video game console its locked to a certain device, now maybee down the line if u can copy the disc to a hard drive and strip the drm and then be able to play it on any pc that would be sweet. But in the meantime if drm discs are ur only option then stock up on the older devices and make a place in your home to store everything, also be aware that plastic and discs may deteriorate over time.
I have never purchased any digital content and this is one of many reasons why I never will. If I want to own a show or a movie, I purchase DVDs, Blu-rays, and/or 4K Blu-rays. Besides, physical media has higher bitrate video & audio than streaming services. I can watch my physical media whenever the heck I want to. What Sony/Discovery is doing to their customers amounts to theft.
Keep up the good work, Lon. 👍🏾
There are some physical disc-based media that are capable of suddenly ceasing to work. All it takes is it needing internet to function. Adobe likes doing this: Many of their older programs cannot be installed anymore, even if you own the physical CD.
I collect physical media just for this very reason. If you don't hold it, you don't own it!
There are similar EULAs on discs as well. The same thing.
@@TheFaustianMan So you're telling me that someone from the RIAA/MPAA is going to break into my house and take back my DVDs, Blu-Rays, Music CDs, VHS tapes, etc.? What part of physical media do you not understand? Screw their EULAs 🤣🤣🤣
@@mllarson I think games on discs might be a risk. If the box you play it on ever needs internet to re-sync a key. DVD and Blu-Ray movies/TV, AFAIK, don't require a player connected to the internet to work. Just try to - acquire - a HD/SSD backup of your favorite movies.
@mllarson no but they can update your players to prevent playback. Same EULA, same DRM. It's going to happen, just wait. Disc's run a DRM check every time you insert them. If it fails to verify because your players manufacturer lost rights to run the disc you lose rights to use it, and playing it on a player that fails to check the DRM becomes a crime, and then they can bust down your door and take everything... for watching batman. Read the forced agreements, you have no property or rights to the disc you own.
@@cjc363636 I understand today's games (PS5, XBOX One, etc.) are essentially tied to day-one patches and other online shenanigans.
What I am referring to is older stuff that never needed online activation or phoning home. My DVDs and old-school console games are safe from that. There are tools that exist that lets you make backups of your DVDs and Blu-rays and stuff if you wanted to. We could argue the legalities of these tools, but in my mind, if I own the physical media, then I am in my rights to use these tools.
I don't mind getting DRM-free things like games from GOG or music from sites like BandCamp or HDTracks, as I can burn these to a M-Disc. The point I was trying to make is that it is much more difficult for corporations to pull your media when it is physically archived in your own home.
"Voting with your wallet" might not make a major difference, but it is one less customer to screw over times however many fed-up customers there are.
I’ve recently started to rip my physical media. I get media for quite cheap at Half Price Books, except for the 4K discs.
👍👍
😄👍 Invest in 20TB Nas Hard Drives
I got burned by DRM servers going down-and-out in the late 1990's. I do not think I've purchased any DRM content since.
It might not even be about Sony not wanting to spend the money, but Discovery just wanting to remove that content from the store. And that's with every store, stuff has been removed from Sony's stores and it is still available for download. For Steam is exactly the same as you said, it depends on the publisher. One thing is the store listing, other is the download, if the publishers wants to remove both options, they can.
And this is why I only purchase new videogame releases on GOG ONLY, since it's DRM FREE and the onus is on me to make a backup. Rest of my purchases on other platforms like Origin or Steam were significantly discounted (50% or more) with the understanding that I own nothing on those platforms. Of course there's the occasional exception where a free game is included with another purchase ie: free Starfield with a purchase of AMD hardware.
😏👍 i just picked up Playstation Uncharted and Days Gone on GOG, both are already downloaded and installed, I still got to find time to actually sit down and launch them tho 😄
@@MrSamadolfo I know the feelz
You mentioned the subject line of the email and email address in the video, but it should be in the description also for easy copy / paste.
Limited liability, and ultimate power to terminate for any reason is one of the most horrendous aspects of modern contract law. However, Digital Media Rights (DRM) is something that is something that ought to benefit artists and creators, but often is abused by corporations, who often hold the rights over the artists and creators.
I already support GOG and Amazon because they let you download the product and have it offline.
😇 yay me too!
I can’t download an DRM free export of ebooks I bought unless I do hackery on a Kindle
Yo! ho! ho! and a bottle of rum! Time to sail the seas..
Companies need to learn it is the customers that determine the fate of their business, and sometimes they need to be reminded..
If companies have a problem with people pirating their stuff, then they should treat their customers better..
As long as customers control the wallet then people will have a say..
The term "Vote with your wallet" means something..
What a great video you have answer my questions
The potential Apocalypse for the movie/TV industry, maybe games as well, is that the streaming distributors are noticing that for "purchased licence" content, serving up new views to the same consumers generates no new income, but does generate new costs, for the storage and processing and bandwidth. And, according to their own lawyers, they are not really obligated to keep serving up that content. Or even keep re-validating previously downloaded copies. When the people who actually thought they owned copies of the content find out they don't, they lose interest in buying that stuff, and suddenly there is less money to be made from content, and the content creation industry crashes. The music industry, which still has problems around finding agreement as to what's a fair payment for music creators, has at least figured out that by offering a range of legal options for consumers, at reasonable prices, they can reduce the number who find it worthwhile to figure out how to get away with "piracy" to negligible.
Yes, running Servers 24/7 has a yearly cost, Who's going to pay for it?
very rarely do i screenshot a comment
thank you Lon ❤
I've had my game deleted when I canceled an update and had to re-download the whole game again. And we need to come together as a group and stand up to these people saying we will not have to agree to any terms when we buy a game we own the game and they can't delete it or anything to use we paid it's ours
I don't know what he's talking about by buying music because you just stream it You don't get like a file for the song that you want to buy You pay for a service and then you just get whatever songs are on the service and they have their algorithm to pick what song plays next.
Same with movies. If there's a way to download a movie or a song I've never heard of it.
I'm old enough to remember when mp3s existed but that was like a million years ago and every platform that I bought mp3s on is gone so I wouldn't know where to purchase them if you still can. Groove music was the best.
Can you make a dosbox tutorial, its kind of hard to find a beginners guide for someone that is younger than dos. For example I'm not sure how to fix screen tearing on magic DOS box.
Theres some tutorials on youtube and across the internet. But yeah I know what u mean, theres a slight learning curve to patch old games.
I had some TV shows that I downloaded on my psp from the playstation store and I too got an email from them saying I'd lose access to my content but that's ok I didn't pay anything for the episodes. It was just two episodes and I can't even play them anyway. I still have then kicking around somewhere, hopefully someone out there has reverse engineered the DRM in the files and has released a nifty little tool for people to unwrap their content from DRM.
Never trust the movie industry with the all digital future.
What's next. Microsoft saying you don't own your computer running windows?
It's getting there.
The will eventually break into your home and confiscate everything 😄
Didn't Amazon lose a court case when they removed purchased Kindle books for user's devices? That was at least 5 years ago, maybe a lot more.
I do recall that, but I don't think it was due to losing a court case. The ironic thing was that it was copies of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm". This was back in 2009. There was a student that did sue Amazon over his loss of his copy of "1984" plus all the notes that he put into his copy. Don't recall what became of that case, though.
Thank You so much for the GOG information never even heard of it before! But I do agree to make Games last forever….
I predict that in the near future that digital purchases will have their "buy" button replaced with a "lease" button. Kind of like how free games on the app store says "Get" instead of "Free" now.
I love the idea of GOG, but as a Linux user(yes we are growing as shown by the STEAM hardware survey), they don't have very good support compared to STEAM, so soon as GOG releases an official GOG Galaxy client for Linux is when I'll start buying games from them again.
Is gog galaxy really that important to you that you would rather bend the knee to Steam? At least on GOG you know your games will never be taken away from you, and Linux has the best downloader in the business, I use Win11 and I still say "no" to gog galaxy.
Why would you want to use bs like Galaxy when you don't have to? It's had major security issues in the past, I would not recommend it. If you need a game launcher, there are better/safer 3rd party solutions
🙂 what I have done is just buy both versions, preferable when they are on sale, such as the summer sale and christmas sale. But yeah I know what you mean. I run linux on some of my computers because its not worth buying and activating Windows on every single PC that I have, especially if I use a particular PC mostly only for Firefox Browser and opening up RUclips website and Netflix website. But all the gaming pcs that I use on a daily basis does make sense to purchase and activate a windows key.
I still buy films and TV series on physical media disc, DVD in my case. I have a large collection and several DVD players, two of which I bought this year 2023. The main issue is this not that the discs may rot, and become unusable. Rather that at some point in the future the DVD players, will eventually stop working. And by that point DVD players won't even be manufactured anymore.
As for video games I don't buy physical media discs anymore, just digital downloads. As many video games on physical media disc, still require you to download updates and patches. I am also a disabled video games player, a bilateral below knees amputee. So for me travelling to a shop, isn't as easily done as an able bodied person. I would prefer to go to the shops, and see a video game running and play it if possible. But that just isn't practical for me anymore. Also with films and TV series I don't need to bother about how it will perform on my DVD players. This isn't the case for video games, things like frame rate, bugs and controller layout.All makes a difference to how they play and perform.
As for Sony been decades since I bought anything from . Haven't bought anything they sell since the very early 2000s. I haven't missed them at all.
i have a home server stacked with several 20TB Hard Drives, it can be done but its not going to be cheap 😊
I have supported Amazon music downloads because they don't DRM their music downloads.
The agreement has language about class action waiver. That's really the whole reason companies generally have arbitration agreements in the first place, just to include with them a class action waiver. So, why does lon say that class actions are exempt from the arbitration agreement and class action waiver?
Many years ago I tried to burn to DVD some video off of cable. This was and is completely legal for my own use. The old DVD burner took a dump. The new one would record a few seconds, just enough to ruin the disk, then stop with a message about not having permission. I did not legally need permission, but it seems that there was a no-copy flag broadcast in the digital signal that the new DVD was programed to look for. Not every program had it, but most of those were older shows. It was in fact improper for that flag to have been set at the time, but the owners of the show would certainly do nothing about it, the owners of the channel had no incentive to do anything about it (and were likely contractually obligated to do it), and the FCC, in charge of it, also had no reason to respond to complaints about it. Some channels never set it, some channels always set it.
The whole reason for DRM is to prevent people from pirating content. But the pirates already have it, so why not release DRM free content, and make some money out of it? Keep streaming services as they are, but if I could download and keep some content, I wouldn't mind paying for that. There would essentially be two models: stream or license content with a subscription and be beholden to their licenses, or purchase individual files without a subscription.
It works for music! Would most definitely work for movies and tv too.
France and the EU are pushing consumer protection and consumer portiblity rights, which includes digital content purchased stays in the hands of the end user. These rights override any DRM or EULA. This is why production companies hate France and are warning them to loosen their rules. All countries should follow what France is doing. For all the hate people have of Ubisoft, they are based in France and the company follows those rules, so their users will always have access to the core games and DLC minus online only content and cosmetic add-ons even though the titles have DRM at launch, later removed after a couple yrs.
Most of these end user licences are not legally binding, and hence why you eventually see class action cases eventually filed. You can’t contract out of law, so don’t believe you have signed your rights away just because the licence agreement states it.
Nvidia also has a gaming service via Nvidia shield. and they have the choice to also pay a fixed monthly fee. And then you get to play several different games and the game with titles you recognize from other game consoles and also PC
It’s just being streamed by one of their servers, it’s like Stadia where you don’t necessarily own the games but just the access to them. It’s even worse than if you had just bought it digitally on a dedicated games console
My only question in regard to video games: would you STILL be able to play your games on your ps4/ps5/xbox one /xbox x or s if you had the physical discs, given many of those games these days are so large that they often require an additional download just to install fully. (Not even including the fact many games REQUIRE updates to be installed before playing in any capacity).
What happens if the servers go down or you somehow get banned? What if you need to reinstall a game after the servers are down? Are you just SOL? I keep hearing more and more that even replacing console parts is a joke because they have some version of DRM / coding on them that will prevent you from swapping in replacement parts (i.e., disc drives, hard drives, etc)
There are some physical disc-based media that are capable of suddenly ceasing to work. All it takes is it needing internet to function. Adobe likes doing this: Many of their older programs cannot be installed anymore, even if you own the physical CD.
TOS/EULAs often relies on legalese that isn't valid in many countries.
I would have just assumed it when you purchased the stuff it becomes a file on your hard drive and as long as you have the hard drive and the PlayStation you should be able to play it.
You know like an MP3 except you can't move it off the PlayStation.
This is why we need too sue these services for putting such bs in their eula and tos that prevents them from being sued. It makes it nearly impossible too have justice served for money being stolen by these companies.
No company should have the right too remove a license for a product with out the consumer having a legal option too fight back.
If I .. "bought" content from them, but then an action on their end took it away from me, did they .... "steal" from me? 🙃
If I "bought" something from them digitally, and they go and yank it out of my library, then I should have every right to "pirate" it back, as I did pay full price for it under the impression that I "bought" it to keep. Of course, these companies will hide behind their dense EULA/ToS and claim they have the right to remove access to content, just as shown in the video.
Yes, since you actually lost money and have no product to show for it. And pirating from them isn't stealing, because you didn't take anything from them (assuming you aren't reselling it). They wouldn't even know unless you told them or some third party was sniffing around. I'd encourage purchasing content you like as long as it is DRM-free but that's hardly a thing for movies and shows.
@@kunka592”some third party was sniffing around”, yeah had that happen in recent years when torrenting. Used to ignore those big banners flashing my IP and saying to get a VPN when visiting trackers, thought it was just fear monger
I agree with everything you said except when you said we couldn't sue if we lost our Steam content for being kicked of the service for breaking their rules. I'm sure if you could prove they removed you for invalid reasons that they would probably have to give you your game content back. As for the pulling content from you for whatever they determine is within there rights under normal circumstances, maybe the law should make them change the wording from purchase to some other term denoting the temporary use of the license of the game up front and center to make you very aware of the who actually owns the content.
It’s not a matter of agreement, the TOS is clear: arbitration only
@@LonSeidman The question than becomes is the arbitration legal tho? TOS do not stand over the law and if all of these illegal "warranty void if removed" stickers on all kinds of hardware have shown anything than that companies love to put lies in there TOS.
I shared the previous and I will share this to on my Facebook page, I also sent the letter. Thank you.
It’s OK Lon. That just means they want us to come aboard the mighty ship of Ms. Bootleg out in the open seas matey! Aarrr! 🏴☠️
I love the 30 day opt-out clause, by letter.
I am guessing we should start reading EULA's. Haha, sure.
I'm surprised they didn't specify "by fax," but registered mail is about as obnoxious.
I guess they counted that it's 30 days average for people to read their EULA's jargon and begin to actually understand its contents from like 500 pages.
30 day is a joke
Sony deleting purchased content already started on PS3. If a PS3 broke, Sony refused to transfer Singstar purchases to a new PS3. Purchases lost.
Facts, this is really old news, but people have very short memories
@@MrSamadolfo Yeah. Singstar purchases were hard locked to the serial number of one console instead of account. Sony were always known for shutting down servers too early, so i wonder why people still pay Sony for something they will lose.
🙂I think most people are out of touch and don't understand that its costly to run a server room 24/7 every year, more companies need to better explain exactly what your paying for and for how long, that way nobody will be getting mad @@V3ntilator
this is why piracy exists...
To be fair, when you buy a physical copy you are also just buying a license. Obviously it’s just very difficult, if not impossible, to revoke that license.
Remember all those warnings on VHS & DVDs that explained that the license doesn’t allow for public viewing, monetizing the content, and so on. It’s just a license that you’ve purchased. You can’t “own” a movie/album/game.
These issues are why I buy my video's uhd 4k movies..As Peter Frampton sings.."They cant take that....away!"..
"by using this product you agree not to sue us" cannot ever be legally binding
if they remove content from paying customers, they have to refund the money.
If steam deletes a game i own, they have to refund the money as well.
Even the likes of Analogue productions/acoustic sounds and MofI do not sell regular CDs or produce regular CDs, but SACDs and vinyl records. Acoustic sound also sells albums on real to real tape. perhaps this says something about the regular CD. Then some say that the record industry has ruined the sound on the CD with the loudness war
Imo it should be made mandatory that if you buy title X for one platform, you'll automatically get license to use in any platform you wish to use. That would essentially force places like Sony to keep supplying copy to user to prevent getting bad reputation if it's still on competitors platforms. That in minimum or preferably you actually get DRM free title to keep.
The physical disk having digital codes.
if it is a matter of they wanting to turn off the server infrastructure say to re purpose the drm server to say a login or a forum server then why not give us the keys and then shut down the server.
i am not sure how enforceable the eulas are because it is like the legal disclaimer that pirates would use on warez sites where "if you are a law enforcement then leave now as you are violating the computer fraud and abuse act" or something like that.
if you put all the media in order of least valuable to most valuable music would be least valuable so maybe itunes has little to nothing to lose selling drm free music especially if it gets pirated.
I have used Spotify for many years. Now and then some of my playlists disappear.
Well, not the playlist itself, but the songs in them. They are not available anymore.
Spotify say it has to do with licensing.
People say optical media is obsolete. I would say nay nay.
I have looked into buying more games and music on DVD and CD for a while now.
Not just for the collecting value, but for actual use.
I can rip them to my PC (music) and save them on a NAS
There needs to be CONTROL LAWS against these scam. I've started to DEVALUE the content to 10% of the based value (i.e. $24.99 become $2.49) with NO EXCEPTIONS! I want harsh stock penalties against these companies.
Geat job!
Games I enjoy that I've bought on Steam, I've been buying again on GOG like Fallout 4, Fallout NV, Fallout 3, all the Dishonored games, and many more because I like being able to download the games and have them on hand for installations, saves bandwidth. Steam is doing great for Linux platforms like mine, but using Lutris, a frontend for Wine, for GOG games and others, is great. I have many different versions and types of Wine I can use as well as adding in things that are specific, but needed for a game. GOG has a great refund policy also, I bought Cyberpunk 2077 for $29 when it was on sale, downloaded it and installed it, didn't like it and uninstalled it, and they refunded my money right away, I chose to have them put it in my wallet so I could buy something else.
Thanks!
Thank you for your support!
Companies are entitled to write the terms they want but law itself when the times comes must check that this terms are illegal, and not only that but after you buyyyyyyy the game if you don't accept the terms you still can't play or reproduce the thing you kind of buy
18:03 great idea!
How do you get GOG games to run on Steam Deck?
I use the Heroic Games Launcher - heroicgameslauncher.com/
Digital is rented not owned is my rule of thumb having lost stuff when the bbc and google stoped some of their services in the past.
Someone can correct if I am wrong, songs purchased from iTunes are DRM free, but are encoded with an ID that can be traced back to the original purchase.
Yeah it's in the id3 tag though so you can edit the files and scrub that data
Having DRM is truly the issue everywhere.
my problem is too much media, and not enough NAS Hard Drives 😄
""Owners" of the removed PS library should be able to use a capture card and a splitter and record their purchased content@@MrSamadolfo
DRM has seem to weasel its way into almost every aspect of modern life everything from media like movies and video games to power generation and home infrastructure all the way down to coffee pods
I installed a generac natural gas fired automatic standby generator a few months ago for a customer and had a hell of a time going through the activation steps because of the way the customers router was configured, all new generac standby generators have basically what similar to an immobilizer circuit on them that has to be activated over the internet by the electrician or the installer. Meaning in order for the generator to turn on at all it has to be connected to the internet at least once and probably has to connect every so often after. Why should a $10,000 or more fixed appliance that is not going to be easily moved from that house need DRM on an engine that otherwise hasn't changed from the 1970s
DRM has been way missed in the last 10 or 15 years, it went from a piece of code that sat mostly silently in the background to prevent piracy and morphed into a piece of code almost as big as windows itself that now controls every aspect of your life and takes it away and gives it to the devices manufacturer so they can do whatever you want with a device that you purchased and possibly paid thousands of dollars for
Services that sell digital content need to be forced to escrow a certain percentage of their sales so those funds can be used to pay another service to “transfer” the rights to those purchases to another service that is willing to accept it.