from the you-bought-the-right-to-be-disappointed dept
Thank you for joining us for your latest lesson in how you don’t actually own the things you buy when you buy them digitally. Over a year ago, we discussed a story out of Germany and Austria where a deal expired between Sony and movie distributor StudioCanal, which resulted in 100s of movies being delisted and deleted, both from the PlayStation Store and from the PlayStations of those who bought them. Yup! People bought a thing, got a thing, and then had that thing clawed back from them once the licensing agreement wasn’t renewed. You can guess for yourself whether members of the public who “bought” these movies had any idea that them disappearing long after purchase was even a possibility, but don’t overthink it, you know the answer.
But maybe you thought, “Sucks for Germany, but that wouldn’t happen here in America.” Well, turns out it sucks for some of us, too, as the exact same thing happened here, only with shows and content produced by Discovery and purchased through the PlayStation Store.
The latest pothole in the road to an all-digital future was discovered via a warning Sony recently sent out to PlayStation users who purchased TV shows made by Discovery, the reality TV network that recently merged with Warner Bros. in one of the most brutal and idiotic corporate maneuvers of our time. “Due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library,” read a copy of the email that was shared with Kotaku.
It linked to a page on the PlayStation website listing all of the shows impacted. As you might imagine, given Discovery’s penchant for pumping out seasons of relatively cheap to produce but popular reality TV and documentary-based shows, there are a lot of them. They include, but are not limited to, hits such as: Say Yes to the Dress, Shark Week, Cake Boss, Long Island Medium, Deadly Women, and many, many more.
And MythBusters, too, which feels like that show missed an opportunity to bust the myth that you own what you bought when you purchase something digitally. The reality is that there is no good way to actually retain these shows in cases like this. Some that “bought” Discovery content are freaking out, understandably.
“Is there a way I can save this content?” asked one panicked PlayStation user on Reddit. “I use PS4…But I have bought many seasons of shows such as Dual Survival that I do not wish to lose. I was actually under the impression since I owned it, I wouldn’t ever lose it…”
Whatever else is true, it’s obvious that platforms aren’t doing nearly enough to actually inform customers of what they’re buying, leasing, renting, whatever. It would be one thing if this content was ripped away and everyone on all sides realized that was a possibility. That just isn’t the case.
And just as in the Germany instance, there’s no chance that any of this comes with any refunds or givebacks. Well-meaning customers who paid money for this content simply don’t have it anymore. And it just isn’t like having a Netflix account or something like that, where the product catalogue is constantly in flux. It’s people who are buying a show, or the season of a show. But they’re really not. They’re renting it until some combination of Sony and the licensee decides they’re not.
And that just isn’t a tenable future.
Filed Under: culture, licensing, ownership, playstation, tv shows
Companies: sony, warner bros. discovery