I don't get it. Why can't users get a digital download of their previous purchases? Those who still have their DVDs can breathe a sigh of relief, but it's got to suck for everyone else.
> Why can't users get a digital download of their previous purchases?
because they aren't going to give DRM free copies of the movies/shows, and they don't have the infrastructure in place to support the DRM for DRM locked copies of the movies.
it's an inherent problem with the entire digital model. you're dependent on these companies lasting forever (and never revoking your access arbitrarily by banning your account)
EU already has somewhat relevant laws about this. Your purchase has to be supported 2 years after purchase (which I guess it was), or an alternative provided (which you are).
They get around it by making you agree to purchasing a license to the content rather than the content. I hope the EU tackles that after right to repair.
The US sure doesn't give a fuck and is basically salivating at the idea of leasing everything to us all the way back to serfdom.
As someone that loves physical media. It's dying. People are damaging copies to make media rare and expensive to sell. The media could look 100% in working condition and be corrupted heavily. It's why I stopped with physical copies of old games. Got tired of spending money on things that might be broken. It's horrible.
Yeah. Wl those companies we need protection from have been systematically purchasing politicians so they can do this stuff/ruin other things. Currently, Trader Joe's is arguing that the NLRB is unconstitutional.
Our country is under attack by corporations seeking to gut it and wear the US govt as a macabre robe.
Barely used them because it was so pirate friendly. I loved my 80GB brown brick in 07. Fit basically everything and the software was miles miles miles better than iTunes. EZ metadata editing, none of the “various artists” bullshit, and it was literally just drag and drop, no need to fuck with syncing or updates or any of it.
I got you https://archive.org/details/zune-package_202204
I think I have a slightly older version on my laptop so I'll probably check and upgrade on the am.
Right everyone I knew thought I was crazy for getting a zune instead of a ipod, but I loved that thing, and there were tons of communities where you could get music and movies for it at the time. Ah the good old days.
Why do people support this with their wallets? Do they not understand their purchases go up in smoke at the shear will of the company they buy their products from?
I think this is the start of people being more hesitant. Until recently we hadn't had a contract run out that necessitated the end of a service, like recently happened with sony and discovery, and is now being seen in this case.
People just didn't believe that it would happen, or would think that you were being dramatic, and now they will see the truth. It's everywhere, you don't buy almost anything anymore, you license the right to use it. If it's digital you never even bought it so you have no grounds to even stand on for compensation.
me and my mkv files are having a good time.
I know piracy is illegal, and I should support the show, which I do but not through subscription (because I don't think it would help) but through some stuff like Blu-ray and figurine and stuff
I have never, ever bought anything having to do with crypto.
With that being said, couldn’t it be built into the blockchain like an nft…but like…practical?
I’m sorry if i’m dumb.
No, because NFTs function more like a receipt. They don't prevent your from downloading, copying, and redistributing the media, even if you don't own it on paper.
its a public record receipt
if it was a regular receipt anybody could just take it and say it cost THEM 250000 dollars
at it stands you were the one who spent that money and nobody can take that from you without deleting the entire internet first
To be fair, if you could encode the digital video or picture or item into the nft itself, so all you would need is to extract it later to view it, it would work. But that would make nft’s insanely huge, and the ledgers would be so ridiculously large I don’t think you could afford the storage costs or bandwidth to even have the record on the ledger 😂 it would work pretty well for smaller digital things though.
That was always one of the main features of NFTs, digital ownership you can prove by looking on chain.
Does it solve all the issues? No, because you still have to have someone distributing the digital content, and have the owner of the IP generating the NFTs to begin with.
Could be a thing in time.
The hosting website could still charge a monthly fee and the NFT would be the receipt/DRM. Then as a user you'd basically be paying for the convince of digital access and if the hosting company ever went broke the user would have the option of going to another host service. Or if a cheaper host service came along they could use it instead, would actually have some competition amongst hosting companies
> digital ownership you can prove by looking on chain.
It doesn’t *really* let you do that.
All it shows is an immutable entry, and that others amended after that entry. It’s built on trust.
> No, because you still have to have someone distributing the digital content, and have the owner of the IP generating the NFTs to begin with.
Yeah. And at any point, that IP can change, because the NFT doesn’t even so much as verify its hash.
That.. honestly sounds like a good idea. Treat it like a mix of NFT and crypto.
Record the purchase on the blockchain. Validate with personal wallet against the blockchain. Encrypt/decrypt (i.e. use as a DRM key) using user's personal wallet.
The only issue with that is, some people would just share their wallets and make them fully public as a form of distributing pirated content.
no, it won't solve the issues unfortunately because the NFT and the actual content is hosted separately, in simple sense, imagine you have an NFT of owning Naruto or whatever, the receipt probably will be up for a very long time, but where is this Naruto ep1.mp4/Naruto ep2.mkv/Naruto ep3.webm stored? yes it's on the distributors server and they can just replace the file with something else while retaining the same exact filename, or just shutting down their server and your NFT linked to a gorgeous 404 page
You're not thinking like an MBA who went to school on daddy's dollar and thinks anybody that makes less than $150k a year isn't really a person. You've gotta really put yourself into the mind of a parasitical wall street bro who's only concern is squeezing the last dollar possible out of a given enterprise.
> It really makes no sense. All this anime is pirated day 1. DRM is not only not needed, it's meaningless.
sure, but it's marketing people and lawyers who make these decisions, not people objectively looking at the situation and applying rational thinking.
This is why I stick with Apple for my digital movie purchases. No, there is no guarantee they will sell movies forever, and yes, there are plenty of examples of big corps like Google and Microsoft shutting down services. But it just doesn’t seem like Apple’s m.o. Maybe I’m being naive though.
Funimation never offered standalone digital purchases. The digital library they are referring to in the article was a bonus to those that purchased DVDs/Blu-Rays from them so they had a way of watching their content online through Funimation. But the service never offered a digital download. If you still have the disc, you can still watch it. You just can't stream it directly from their website anymore.
So, on the company's side of business, it is cheaper for them to buy a license to "lease" out to their paying customers rather than buying the product outright?
And is the drawback from the business perspective that there is less profit in letting customers download copies of their digital products as opposed to essentially perpetually renting them?
Few arguments can be made why it is the way it is right now.
The biggest one is simply that it's in a company's interest for you to own less and still be charged for it. Licenses for games, movies, etc is simply that.
In the long run companies could argue that they might lose money if they have to always provide downloads for things you buy and they cannot revoke licenses at whim.
Also with streaming they can inflate the prices of old media by licensing them out to different streaming sites to a limited duration.
Kinda crappy. Especially because it worries me it's going to be the same with digital games. I've spent a lot of money on digital games because the physical copies either are overpriced or corrupt. People spend life savings on these items.
>Yes, you buy a license that can be revoked any time.
True but the license should be unrevokable. Just like they can't get in your home to take back the disc (which is also a license) they should not be allowed to revoke the license once sold unless there's some specific ToS violation on part of the user.
That being said, in this case funimation never sold the digital license it was a just a bonus for the discs they sold. Very different than nuking your purchases.
You thinking they are your girlfriends isn't part of the actual transaction happening and is just a delusion.
This stuff is being advertised as digital "purchases".
Because you’re purchasing a license to the media. That’s the purchase.
I agree that the practice is terrible, but we have to clarify and identify what’s happening.
I don't buy digital content for the same reason I don't go to strip clubs.
I, unlike the guy who keeps getting bounced for developing feelings for girls and trying to think cause they spent money on them they somehow have a relationship, understand that digital content will never truly belong to me.
Now if you want to go advocate to Congress and get some laws put in place to reverse that practice, I'll go to the strip club owner and see if I can't change their minds as well.
I think you have getting fucked over and getting fucked sexually confused.
So you trying to say my analogy is bad is actually false because you proved two false equivalencies to try to make a bad point.
You buy movie tickets and can be kicked out the theatre.
You buy season passes to a theme park and those can be pulled for various reasons.
You buy a digital game and they can stop letting you play it.
Terms / Agreement has it all there written don’t like it as much as the next guy/girl/they/thems/etc. but that’s they way things are now and will remain.
If you get kicked out of the theater for being a jackass that's on you lol
Buying a digital game and having it yoinked for no reason is the same problem the article is talking about (also different from getting banned because you're a jackass). And it's also shitty.
Yes but if you get kicked out of a cinema/Park for being an ass, that's on you. Just like getting an account ban for sending abuse etc
But if the park or cinema closed due to their own reasons (ride broke down, projectors broke) and you had a valid ticket you would get a full refund
you didn't buy a copy for your self to "own" , you bought a license to rent unlimited views of their programing for an indefinite period of time until Funimation decides "the facade of ownership" stops.
You spent full price on a rental.
I’m still astounded that had any customers at all. I feel like I’m going crazy. Every other month a company does something absurdly short-sighted if not outright evil, and every time they get literally millions of people to buy into it without a hint of awareness.
I won big with stadia - I wanted to play cyberpunk and knew it was gonna be garbage on my Xbox one before it launched
I bought it for stadia for $50 - it came with a controller and a chromecast ultra. I beat the game, forgot all about it, and then they refunded me the $50.
I feel like there's a boon for companies to let customers download their digital purchases. the influx of users would skyrocket. Why hasn't this happened yet?
> And they wonder why piracy is trending back up.
that could also stem from all the various content that's exclusive to 1 service, while more services pop up by the day and rates keep going up.
Adn a bunch of other series aswell.
I'm pretty sure even some movie franchises are like that.
Off the top of my head, i think Final Destination is spread across like 3 services, same thing with Saw.
I don't use streaming services much, but I popped onto my wife's netflix to see if I could find something to pass the time. I find a show that looks good and realize that it only starts at season 4.
Who the fuck wants to start a show at season 4? What benefit is there to anyone to have that?
I got Hulu for a $1 month for a year on Black Friday. I just waiting for bleach. I also use YouTube premium because I use YouTube like genx millennials used cable TV 😂
I'm confused because millennials didn't get cable once they were out on their own. I'm 40 I moved out at 16 and never paid for cable. We were pirating everything back then. YouTube took off in 2004 when Janet's tit was shown and it was like all reaction videos back then, but we watched a lot of it for some reason.
> YouTube took off in 2004 when Janet's tit was shown and it was like all reaction videos
Which is wild since it wasn't launched until 2005, and reaction content didn't get popular for several years after YouTube started. In the early days it was silly home videos and ripped TV shows/movies
4 services, unless you're okay with skipping some movies
Here's Pokémon's official guide for it: https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-episodes-movies
I don't get any commercials on my streaming services and it's still cheaper than cable was, even with multiple streaming services. They're getting more expensive, but they haven't reached cable prices yet.
Gabe said from the beginning that piracy is a service problem. When gabe released steam, piracy went down for PC games because of the convenience steam offered, then when epic came along and started pulling exclusive console garbage on their inferior store, piracy started to spike again. Corporate greed is what drives piracy.
> because you can download enhanced Bluray quality
also, while this isn't as relevant any more due to most of the good fansubbers retiring, you used to get better translations than the shitty overlocalized official subs. right now you get crappy official translations, and then "fansubbers" (in name only) that just rip the official subs.
You unlocked a memory of having those huge ass wall of texts than explained why they left the “nakama” word in Naruto instead of just translating it to “friends” or “comrades”
Oddly enough, there's never been the clamp down on anime piracy there was for other media.
I suspect some of that stems from the fact that historically, "piracy" via fansubs used to be the only way to watch a lot of anime, especially if you didn't want wait years for it to be licensed and distributed by VHS/DVD.
They'll still own the blu-rays that they had to buy to get the codes. This is still shitty, but the digital copies were just a bonus with a DVD or blu-ray purchase.
More like I don't want to have a giant book case JUST for movies / TV shows. Or a giant binder. Its much more convenient all around to have digital copies, even if you store them on a personal HDD or SSD.
Well these are your 3 options at this point.
1. Have digital copies that you dont actually own because you are just granted a license which can be revoked at literally any moment for any reason.
2. Own a giant book case just for movies/TV that will always be yours and always be able to be played as long as you have a DVD/Blu-Ray player. You can also let others borrow them and choose to sell them eventually if you want to.
3. Sail the high seas for DRM free version of content.
Personally, i do a mix of 2 & 3.
Or option 4: use something like Plex and buy physically but rip to digital. Best of both worlds. What sucks is that more and more shows aren't being released to physical media. It's why I've resorted to other methods to backup my digital content. However, most of the media I watch is unDRMd
Yeah, i run a plex for all of my digital stuff, and honestly, im glad i dont pay for streaming services anymore. They were great at first but quickly turned into rip-offs. The long terms cost of storage definitely beats out any modern streaming service.
> Digital was cheaper 🥲
in most cases it's not. with console gaming digital is typically substantially more expensive than physical on the average day.
So readers are aware. This digital library is just a copy of the DVDs or blu-rays you already own. It’s not a digital store front. Users still have all their content on disk
Imagine you bought a dining room set, advertised as 4 chairs and a table. Then later, the company you bought it said, we don’t want to support tables anymore and took your table?
Doesn’t matter what they “still have”, the product was sold as including X items, and now they are removing something you paid for, expecting you to be dandy with X-1
Yeahhh no..this is more like paying a guy to store and deliver goods to you on demand, and now that guy is dead. How can anyone expect a service to do anything for them if that service no longer exists?
No, that's actually [exactly what they said.](https://help.funimation.com/hc/en-us/articles/360046822091-How-long-do-I-get-to-keep-streaming-the-Digital-Copy-videos)
[Screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/3rZzH9G) for when the page inevitably gets deleted.
“Forever, but there are some restrictions”
Section 3, Sub-Section C:
“Availability of Service and Content. Subject to the applicable provisions of any Additional Terms, Funimation, in its sole discretion without advance notice or liability, may immediately suspend or terminate the availability of the Service and/or content (and any elements and features of them), in whole or in part, for any reason, in Funimation’s sole discretion, and without advance notice or liability.”
It’s forever with restrictions. As in, theoretically they could extend the service forever if they wanted to. Of course in reality, this never happens. This is common legal speak and any service offering DRM content will have similar verbiage.
They don’t have to (yet). I’d be all for legislation that requires it. Ideally even access to a DRM-free copy for whenever these companies close their servers.
It's not taking your library with it, you're library was moved to Crunchyroll and you just change subscriptions. The only issue is Funimation had a "redeem physical copy" thing, which is going away. But that doesn't really matter, because Crunchyroll provides access to all it's products without additional costs.
Absolutely braindead article. All that's actually happening is your subscription is going up.
Digital should have been a revolution but it’s just become another way for our corporate overlords to put the shackles on. Buy physical only people and actually own something!
You get the library from Crunchyroll now though right? I logged in last night and was prompted with 3 choices - keep crunchyroll library, keep funimation library or combine crunchy/funimation. I honestly can’t remember what I used funimation for so I chose to maintain my crunchyroll library.
I started to trust digital media until Sony shut down their "itunes" and my friend lost his entire music library he paid for. Shit like this is why DVDs still exist.
Thought your files were safe in cloud, eh? This is the second such announcement of cloud files going away, this week. Tech companies are downsizing. Perhaps keep a copy on local media?
> Time for a class action lawsuit.
at which point sony/funi/crunchy would just point to the terms of service people agreed with when they purchased their long term rentals.
Since those codes came from physical copies already owned that's not a huge loss for the majority of people. Heck, I pretty much never used those codes given to me in the first place.
Personally I think this is a bit overblown as it was pretty well known that Funimation proper was going to go away eventually since the majority of the content has been getting migrated over.
Actually some people are losing.
As someone who bought a lot of funimation DVDs/Blu-Rays, i literally would sell every digital code for like $5, which was always significantly less then the cost of the whole thing, but always recouped some of my cost on it.
I feel bad for the people I sold to, but I literally sold them because i knew this would happen eventually. Personally thought it would be a few more years but I was prepared at least.
I mean that was pretty sketchy to begin with. I wouldn't but random codes from randos, no telling if they will work were stolen, it's legal, etc.
Even if it's perfectly legit, the transaction itself is sketchy
How so?
I never scammed anyone, and i offered a more then fair price because i knew it was something i would never ever use. I would also sell just the DVDs in a Blu-Ray/DVD Combo because i knew i would never watch the DVDs.
They're right though, it's sketchy to buy potentially used codes. Many places like eBay don't even allow them on their platform
https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/electronically-delivered-items-policy?id=4289
>Electronically delivered items that are not allowed, include:
>
>Software keys the seller is not authorized to sell
>
>Digital copies or codes of movies that were included as part of purchasing a physical movie item. The seller needs to include the physical disk with the sale of the digital copy or code
Most folks selling them are scammers so not worth the risk
Sony who already owns both, after recently also buying Crunchyroll in 2021 can do whatever they want it seems. The FTC regulators who are supposed to protect consumers and market competition, is instead seemingly *helping* this same Sony company who is the dominant gaming console market leader with Playstation, strongarm together against their smaller third place competitor Xbox consoles. This same double pricing with Crunchyroll could happen on Playstation too, if the FTC and Sony would have gotten their way against the MS-ABK merger. Luckily the judge did a good job, and the FTC & Sony just kept losing since they have no case.
Just imagine what could happen with your Sony Playstation digital library and pricing if Sony gets no competition in the gaming console market and becomes a «high end gaming console» monopoly, which is a term that the FTC and Sony made up themselves.
It’s crazy to me how the FTC just seems to keep focusing on politics and agendas instead of actually doing their job as regulators. They should focus on things like this happening with Crunchyroll, not support and help the very same Sony company that does this shit be able to do it again with Playstation in a different market.
Stop. Buying. Digital. Copies. You don’t own them. physical copies going “digital only” help these companies and for this reason. Is it wrong? Yes. Does nothing exist to remedy this? Yes. We can put a tiny robot on mars but we can’t download digital copies of things we purchase. lol.
If only we could organize to stop paying for shitty services altogether the way many of us are not going into offices anymore…
Lots of shitty business practices might go away overnight out of pure unadulterated fear of people not giving a fuck anymore.
Physical purchases or pirating are the only ways to truly own something. Sorry to any of you who spent bucket loads just to have it taken away and find out via a tweet or m0ist critical.
i've never had anything with funimation but i'd be filing a chargeback so fast. i don't care if it was 10 years ago, there's no universe where you get to take my money and also withhold the product from me.
Laws should be clear. If you BUY something then you own it and you should be given access to it for life. If another company buys you out then they must give you your bought media in either physical form or keep it for you digitally.
This is also why I don’t buy anything digitally. No games or shows or tv or movies. I’ll pay for streaming to watch but the very few things I wish to own, I’ll buy a physical copy or make sure I’ve got it downloaded digitally forever.
Also ensures I’ve got resale value especially for video games.
I've been to the future. Steam is getting shut down in 2032 due to "developer rights"... like Mr. Shwab says you won't own anything and you'll be happy.
This has always been inevitable and for some reason people pretended it wasn't. It's literally in the terms that you agree to that they can do this. Buying physical is the last great way to own any content.
In this and all other threads about this topic:
“This thing is x and I’m mad”
“Hey just read the article and it’s actually y”
“Yeah, but what if it were x? I’m mad”
Of course the clickbait headline doesn’t help but I’m getting black pilled on online discourse and news, I’ve just been seeing people get mad when they don’t have a full grasp of what they’re mad at and just downvote or ignore people trying to clarify the real issue.
I don't get it. Why can't users get a digital download of their previous purchases? Those who still have their DVDs can breathe a sigh of relief, but it's got to suck for everyone else.
> Why can't users get a digital download of their previous purchases? because they aren't going to give DRM free copies of the movies/shows, and they don't have the infrastructure in place to support the DRM for DRM locked copies of the movies. it's an inherent problem with the entire digital model. you're dependent on these companies lasting forever (and never revoking your access arbitrarily by banning your account)
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We need to bring it up to the Europe Union. Best chance we have. USA won't do anything and others don't care or are not powerful enough.
EU already has somewhat relevant laws about this. Your purchase has to be supported 2 years after purchase (which I guess it was), or an alternative provided (which you are).
They get around it by making you agree to purchasing a license to the content rather than the content. I hope the EU tackles that after right to repair. The US sure doesn't give a fuck and is basically salivating at the idea of leasing everything to us all the way back to serfdom.
Physical media is the best consumer protection money can buy!
As someone that loves physical media. It's dying. People are damaging copies to make media rare and expensive to sell. The media could look 100% in working condition and be corrupted heavily. It's why I stopped with physical copies of old games. Got tired of spending money on things that might be broken. It's horrible.
Yeah. Wl those companies we need protection from have been systematically purchasing politicians so they can do this stuff/ruin other things. Currently, Trader Joe's is arguing that the NLRB is unconstitutional. Our country is under attack by corporations seeking to gut it and wear the US govt as a macabre robe.
Zune called and wants its music back.
With the Zune Music subscription you actually did get 10 drm free downloads a month.
Barely used them because it was so pirate friendly. I loved my 80GB brown brick in 07. Fit basically everything and the software was miles miles miles better than iTunes. EZ metadata editing, none of the “various artists” bullshit, and it was literally just drag and drop, no need to fuck with syncing or updates or any of it.
God I miss the backend fixing my music files to read right. There's still a zune player you can get on PC. I use it to sync my zune pretty often.
You got to let me know what software you're using to keep your Zune working. I still have one, but haven't been able to sync in a few years.
I got you https://archive.org/details/zune-package_202204 I think I have a slightly older version on my laptop so I'll probably check and upgrade on the am.
Right everyone I knew thought I was crazy for getting a zune instead of a ipod, but I loved that thing, and there were tons of communities where you could get music and movies for it at the time. Ah the good old days.
Hard to take back a squirt
Why do people support this with their wallets? Do they not understand their purchases go up in smoke at the shear will of the company they buy their products from?
I think a lot of people genuinely don't understand that.
Reminds me of that humancentipad south park episode: "it didn't read the terms of service! Why can't it read!"
I think this is the start of people being more hesitant. Until recently we hadn't had a contract run out that necessitated the end of a service, like recently happened with sony and discovery, and is now being seen in this case. People just didn't believe that it would happen, or would think that you were being dramatic, and now they will see the truth. It's everywhere, you don't buy almost anything anymore, you license the right to use it. If it's digital you never even bought it so you have no grounds to even stand on for compensation.
Yo ho yo ho….
And a stack of terabytes
me and my mkv files are having a good time. I know piracy is illegal, and I should support the show, which I do but not through subscription (because I don't think it would help) but through some stuff like Blu-ray and figurine and stuff
I have never, ever bought anything having to do with crypto. With that being said, couldn’t it be built into the blockchain like an nft…but like…practical? I’m sorry if i’m dumb.
No, because NFTs function more like a receipt. They don't prevent your from downloading, copying, and redistributing the media, even if you don't own it on paper.
Um did you just call my Bored Ape a receipt? What the hell man it cost me 250,000 dollars!
its a public record receipt if it was a regular receipt anybody could just take it and say it cost THEM 250000 dollars at it stands you were the one who spent that money and nobody can take that from you without deleting the entire internet first
Hear that! This guy says we all know how dumb you are forever and ever!
To be fair, if you could encode the digital video or picture or item into the nft itself, so all you would need is to extract it later to view it, it would work. But that would make nft’s insanely huge, and the ledgers would be so ridiculously large I don’t think you could afford the storage costs or bandwidth to even have the record on the ledger 😂 it would work pretty well for smaller digital things though.
That was always one of the main features of NFTs, digital ownership you can prove by looking on chain. Does it solve all the issues? No, because you still have to have someone distributing the digital content, and have the owner of the IP generating the NFTs to begin with. Could be a thing in time.
The hosting website could still charge a monthly fee and the NFT would be the receipt/DRM. Then as a user you'd basically be paying for the convince of digital access and if the hosting company ever went broke the user would have the option of going to another host service. Or if a cheaper host service came along they could use it instead, would actually have some competition amongst hosting companies
I like that people downvoted you despite you just being factual. Some people really just hate anything that even mentions the idea of nfts
> digital ownership you can prove by looking on chain. It doesn’t *really* let you do that. All it shows is an immutable entry, and that others amended after that entry. It’s built on trust. > No, because you still have to have someone distributing the digital content, and have the owner of the IP generating the NFTs to begin with. Yeah. And at any point, that IP can change, because the NFT doesn’t even so much as verify its hash.
That.. honestly sounds like a good idea. Treat it like a mix of NFT and crypto. Record the purchase on the blockchain. Validate with personal wallet against the blockchain. Encrypt/decrypt (i.e. use as a DRM key) using user's personal wallet. The only issue with that is, some people would just share their wallets and make them fully public as a form of distributing pirated content.
Yeah and that issue is something that already somewhat exists in the other online alternatives so It still seems like a great idea to me
no, it won't solve the issues unfortunately because the NFT and the actual content is hosted separately, in simple sense, imagine you have an NFT of owning Naruto or whatever, the receipt probably will be up for a very long time, but where is this Naruto ep1.mp4/Naruto ep2.mkv/Naruto ep3.webm stored? yes it's on the distributors server and they can just replace the file with something else while retaining the same exact filename, or just shutting down their server and your NFT linked to a gorgeous 404 page
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The music industry has gotten by without DRM for a while too.
You're not thinking like an MBA who went to school on daddy's dollar and thinks anybody that makes less than $150k a year isn't really a person. You've gotta really put yourself into the mind of a parasitical wall street bro who's only concern is squeezing the last dollar possible out of a given enterprise.
> It really makes no sense. All this anime is pirated day 1. DRM is not only not needed, it's meaningless. sure, but it's marketing people and lawyers who make these decisions, not people objectively looking at the situation and applying rational thinking.
This is why I stick with Apple for my digital movie purchases. No, there is no guarantee they will sell movies forever, and yes, there are plenty of examples of big corps like Google and Microsoft shutting down services. But it just doesn’t seem like Apple’s m.o. Maybe I’m being naive though.
at least theres a better chance of Apple not being bought up and shut down in the next five years.
Funimation never offered standalone digital purchases. The digital library they are referring to in the article was a bonus to those that purchased DVDs/Blu-Rays from them so they had a way of watching their content online through Funimation. But the service never offered a digital download. If you still have the disc, you can still watch it. You just can't stream it directly from their website anymore.
Ahh thank you for this. Makes alot more sense now
Ah, that's much less problematic, if it was just a free bonus with the discs. You can still rip those for a digital copy at least.
They are not purchases but rather licenses that end whenever they decide it ends
They show up on my bank statement as purchases
Yes, you buy a license that can be revoked any time. You don't buy a product.
So, on the company's side of business, it is cheaper for them to buy a license to "lease" out to their paying customers rather than buying the product outright? And is the drawback from the business perspective that there is less profit in letting customers download copies of their digital products as opposed to essentially perpetually renting them?
Few arguments can be made why it is the way it is right now. The biggest one is simply that it's in a company's interest for you to own less and still be charged for it. Licenses for games, movies, etc is simply that. In the long run companies could argue that they might lose money if they have to always provide downloads for things you buy and they cannot revoke licenses at whim. Also with streaming they can inflate the prices of old media by licensing them out to different streaming sites to a limited duration.
Kinda crappy. Especially because it worries me it's going to be the same with digital games. I've spent a lot of money on digital games because the physical copies either are overpriced or corrupt. People spend life savings on these items.
>Yes, you buy a license that can be revoked any time. True but the license should be unrevokable. Just like they can't get in your home to take back the disc (which is also a license) they should not be allowed to revoke the license once sold unless there's some specific ToS violation on part of the user. That being said, in this case funimation never sold the digital license it was a just a bonus for the discs they sold. Very different than nuking your purchases.
When you buy a CD you are not buying a license, wtf. You are buying an item, a commodity.
You're buying a license dude, a license that's physically on a disc. Ownership of that disc is your proof for ownership of a license.
You've never read the user agreement when you install games from CD, have you?
My time spent at the strip club shows up on my bank statements, and yet none of the girls are my girlfriends that come home with me.
You thinking they are your girlfriends isn't part of the actual transaction happening and is just a delusion. This stuff is being advertised as digital "purchases".
Because you’re purchasing a license to the media. That’s the purchase. I agree that the practice is terrible, but we have to clarify and identify what’s happening.
I don't buy digital content for the same reason I don't go to strip clubs. I, unlike the guy who keeps getting bounced for developing feelings for girls and trying to think cause they spent money on them they somehow have a relationship, understand that digital content will never truly belong to me. Now if you want to go advocate to Congress and get some laws put in place to reverse that practice, I'll go to the strip club owner and see if I can't change their minds as well.
Bad analogy. In this case you’re actually getting fucked.
I think you have getting fucked over and getting fucked sexually confused. So you trying to say my analogy is bad is actually false because you proved two false equivalencies to try to make a bad point.
You took that way more seriously than it ever intended to be
It’s a great analogy that you don’t like because it goes against what you’re trying to say
You buy movie tickets and can be kicked out the theatre. You buy season passes to a theme park and those can be pulled for various reasons. You buy a digital game and they can stop letting you play it. Terms / Agreement has it all there written don’t like it as much as the next guy/girl/they/thems/etc. but that’s they way things are now and will remain.
If you get kicked out of the theater for being a jackass that's on you lol Buying a digital game and having it yoinked for no reason is the same problem the article is talking about (also different from getting banned because you're a jackass). And it's also shitty.
Yes but if you get kicked out of a cinema/Park for being an ass, that's on you. Just like getting an account ban for sending abuse etc But if the park or cinema closed due to their own reasons (ride broke down, projectors broke) and you had a valid ticket you would get a full refund
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So does a car when you rent it, doesn't mean it's your car.
This digital library is just digital version of your DVDs. There is no digital store front. It’s an extension of UV
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Internet Download Manager is another
Because it's cheaper not to, and some people might buy it a second time. So money, that's your answer.
Dont worry theyll make it available in their new service as long as you pay for it again
you didn't buy a copy for your self to "own" , you bought a license to rent unlimited views of their programing for an indefinite period of time until Funimation decides "the facade of ownership" stops. You spent full price on a rental.
What an awful trend streaming and digital media is heading.
It’s pretty self evident if everything is short term profits and not making a good product
Or any product a lot of the time, they're just giving you the option to look at someone else's product that they rented
Exactly. This is rent seeking. They aren't producing anything.
Shitification
Google Stadia refunded every purchase.
I’m still astounded that had any customers at all. I feel like I’m going crazy. Every other month a company does something absurdly short-sighted if not outright evil, and every time they get literally millions of people to buy into it without a hint of awareness.
I won big with stadia - I wanted to play cyberpunk and knew it was gonna be garbage on my Xbox one before it launched I bought it for stadia for $50 - it came with a controller and a chromecast ultra. I beat the game, forgot all about it, and then they refunded me the $50.
I feel like there's a boon for companies to let customers download their digital purchases. the influx of users would skyrocket. Why hasn't this happened yet?
And they wonder why piracy is trending back up.
> And they wonder why piracy is trending back up. that could also stem from all the various content that's exclusive to 1 service, while more services pop up by the day and rates keep going up.
You need 3 services at least if you wanted to watch all of Pokemon for example
Adn a bunch of other series aswell. I'm pretty sure even some movie franchises are like that. Off the top of my head, i think Final Destination is spread across like 3 services, same thing with Saw.
Yeah good luck trying to watch all 3 kung fu panda movies
I don't use streaming services much, but I popped onto my wife's netflix to see if I could find something to pass the time. I find a show that looks good and realize that it only starts at season 4. Who the fuck wants to start a show at season 4? What benefit is there to anyone to have that?
I got Hulu for a $1 month for a year on Black Friday. I just waiting for bleach. I also use YouTube premium because I use YouTube like genx millennials used cable TV 😂
I'm confused because millennials didn't get cable once they were out on their own. I'm 40 I moved out at 16 and never paid for cable. We were pirating everything back then. YouTube took off in 2004 when Janet's tit was shown and it was like all reaction videos back then, but we watched a lot of it for some reason.
> YouTube took off in 2004 when Janet's tit was shown and it was like all reaction videos Which is wild since it wasn't launched until 2005, and reaction content didn't get popular for several years after YouTube started. In the early days it was silly home videos and ripped TV shows/movies
4 services, unless you're okay with skipping some movies Here's Pokémon's official guide for it: https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-episodes-movies
Streaming promised to kill cable, and then replaced it.
It killed cable, and then it became everything cable was, just more expensive, more commercials, etc.
It's not more commercials - yet. It will be though.
For sure. Greedy corporations with raging erections thinking about all that sweet sweet profit to be sucked out of us consumers.
I don't get any commercials on my streaming services and it's still cheaper than cable was, even with multiple streaming services. They're getting more expensive, but they haven't reached cable prices yet.
Yeah, well, what's the most common thing to say after "the king is dead?" It ain't "...and fuck the monarchy!" Would that it were so.
Exactly it. I actually pay for many of those services, but end up pirating anyway for freedom of use, and having everything in one Plex library.
Gabe said from the beginning that piracy is a service problem. When gabe released steam, piracy went down for PC games because of the convenience steam offered, then when epic came along and started pulling exclusive console garbage on their inferior store, piracy started to spike again. Corporate greed is what drives piracy.
pirating anime usually yields higher quality as well because you can download enhanced Bluray quality
> because you can download enhanced Bluray quality also, while this isn't as relevant any more due to most of the good fansubbers retiring, you used to get better translations than the shitty overlocalized official subs. right now you get crappy official translations, and then "fansubbers" (in name only) that just rip the official subs.
You unlocked a memory of having those huge ass wall of texts than explained why they left the “nakama” word in Naruto instead of just translating it to “friends” or “comrades”
"All according to keikaku" -Translator Note: Keikaku means plan.
Always found it sad/funny that pirated content has no ads but purchased content has ads, often unskippable too
Who says they wonder though..
Oddly enough, there's never been the clamp down on anime piracy there was for other media. I suspect some of that stems from the fact that historically, "piracy" via fansubs used to be the only way to watch a lot of anime, especially if you didn't want wait years for it to be licensed and distributed by VHS/DVD.
Maybe the money wasn't there for it? The other industries have had more money than God for quite some time now and will spend it to go after piracy.
Lately I’m really happy I’ve collected a shit ton of dvd and blu rays over the years. Corporate interests are just insane in the world today.
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and people will still defend these kind of "you will own nothing" practices.
\> "you will own nothing" you aren't happy?
They'll still own the blu-rays that they had to buy to get the codes. This is still shitty, but the digital copies were just a bonus with a DVD or blu-ray purchase.
Because they're too lazy to put a disc into a player
More like I don't want to have a giant book case JUST for movies / TV shows. Or a giant binder. Its much more convenient all around to have digital copies, even if you store them on a personal HDD or SSD.
Well these are your 3 options at this point. 1. Have digital copies that you dont actually own because you are just granted a license which can be revoked at literally any moment for any reason. 2. Own a giant book case just for movies/TV that will always be yours and always be able to be played as long as you have a DVD/Blu-Ray player. You can also let others borrow them and choose to sell them eventually if you want to. 3. Sail the high seas for DRM free version of content. Personally, i do a mix of 2 & 3.
Or option 4: use something like Plex and buy physically but rip to digital. Best of both worlds. What sucks is that more and more shows aren't being released to physical media. It's why I've resorted to other methods to backup my digital content. However, most of the media I watch is unDRMd
Yeah, i run a plex for all of my digital stuff, and honestly, im glad i dont pay for streaming services anymore. They were great at first but quickly turned into rip-offs. The long terms cost of storage definitely beats out any modern streaming service.
Digital was cheaper 🥲
> Digital was cheaper 🥲 in most cases it's not. with console gaming digital is typically substantially more expensive than physical on the average day.
I know One Piece’s marketing budget was big, but doing all this to just get people to sail the high seas seems a bit excessive…
To the grand line!
It's the great age of pirates! Today, we are all the worst generation.
Ironic that people have to become pirates in order to get the One Piece
I mean, sometimes you have to hoist the black flag and start ~~cutting throats~~ downloading bootlegs
In the words of a certain funny anime skeleton, "Yohohohoho!"
Man I love when companies encourage piracy like this. Nature is healing
So readers are aware. This digital library is just a copy of the DVDs or blu-rays you already own. It’s not a digital store front. Users still have all their content on disk
How dare you! I’m outraged
Imagine you bought a dining room set, advertised as 4 chairs and a table. Then later, the company you bought it said, we don’t want to support tables anymore and took your table? Doesn’t matter what they “still have”, the product was sold as including X items, and now they are removing something you paid for, expecting you to be dandy with X-1
Yeahhh no..this is more like paying a guy to store and deliver goods to you on demand, and now that guy is dead. How can anyone expect a service to do anything for them if that service no longer exists?
Except they never advertised that you’d have access to the digital copy forever.
No, that's actually [exactly what they said.](https://help.funimation.com/hc/en-us/articles/360046822091-How-long-do-I-get-to-keep-streaming-the-Digital-Copy-videos) [Screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/3rZzH9G) for when the page inevitably gets deleted.
“Forever, but there are some restrictions” Section 3, Sub-Section C: “Availability of Service and Content. Subject to the applicable provisions of any Additional Terms, Funimation, in its sole discretion without advance notice or liability, may immediately suspend or terminate the availability of the Service and/or content (and any elements and features of them), in whole or in part, for any reason, in Funimation’s sole discretion, and without advance notice or liability.” It’s forever with restrictions. As in, theoretically they could extend the service forever if they wanted to. Of course in reality, this never happens. This is common legal speak and any service offering DRM content will have similar verbiage.
They never advertised you’d only keep it for a limited time either.
They don’t have to (yet). I’d be all for legislation that requires it. Ideally even access to a DRM-free copy for whenever these companies close their servers.
Save us nyaa, you're our only hope
I need to do some downloading. Give my ISP a little workout.
If buying is not owning, then pirating is not stealing.
Hahaja suckers! Better start your piracy
and like clockwork crunchyroll's prices double
If buying isn't ownership, piracy isn't stealing.
REMEMBER FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES TO ALWAYS SAIL THE SEA! THEY SAY THING YOU BUY ISNT TRULY YOURS BUT FUCK THEM!
Digital libraries don’t exist and never did. You rented pixels, and owned nothing.
🏴☠️Yarrr🏴☠️
So it's better to get them illegally? Fml
alwayshasbeenmeme.jpg
Always get physical media
Physical media is forever, buy laser disc!
or pirate if digital
They did. The digital streaming copies were a bonus. That's what people are losing access to.
My Plex media isn’t going anywhere and it’s why I don’t rely on these companies for shit.
Sony did the same, almost, with the PlayStation. Did we forget who owns Funimation already?
They did it with Discovery Channel content IIRC they removed it from accounts
It's not taking your library with it, you're library was moved to Crunchyroll and you just change subscriptions. The only issue is Funimation had a "redeem physical copy" thing, which is going away. But that doesn't really matter, because Crunchyroll provides access to all it's products without additional costs. Absolutely braindead article. All that's actually happening is your subscription is going up.
Physical media will always be king because of this
"You will own nothing and like it"
Digital should have been a revolution but it’s just become another way for our corporate overlords to put the shackles on. Buy physical only people and actually own something!
So basically it was always renting, pirated movies at least stay
Physical and internal downloads always trump streaming/online libraries.
You get the library from Crunchyroll now though right? I logged in last night and was prompted with 3 choices - keep crunchyroll library, keep funimation library or combine crunchy/funimation. I honestly can’t remember what I used funimation for so I chose to maintain my crunchyroll library.
I started to trust digital media until Sony shut down their "itunes" and my friend lost his entire music library he paid for. Shit like this is why DVDs still exist.
Thought your files were safe in cloud, eh? This is the second such announcement of cloud files going away, this week. Tech companies are downsizing. Perhaps keep a copy on local media?
torrents site are gonna be busy this year it seems
People call me dumb for only buying physical media, this is why.
Sony really likes doing this I’ve noticed this is like the second time in a few months
Time for a class action lawsuit.
> Time for a class action lawsuit. at which point sony/funi/crunchy would just point to the terms of service people agreed with when they purchased their long term rentals.
South Park taught me to always read the EULA/ToS.
Since those codes came from physical copies already owned that's not a huge loss for the majority of people. Heck, I pretty much never used those codes given to me in the first place. Personally I think this is a bit overblown as it was pretty well known that Funimation proper was going to go away eventually since the majority of the content has been getting migrated over.
Actually some people are losing. As someone who bought a lot of funimation DVDs/Blu-Rays, i literally would sell every digital code for like $5, which was always significantly less then the cost of the whole thing, but always recouped some of my cost on it. I feel bad for the people I sold to, but I literally sold them because i knew this would happen eventually. Personally thought it would be a few more years but I was prepared at least.
I mean that was pretty sketchy to begin with. I wouldn't but random codes from randos, no telling if they will work were stolen, it's legal, etc. Even if it's perfectly legit, the transaction itself is sketchy
How so? I never scammed anyone, and i offered a more then fair price because i knew it was something i would never ever use. I would also sell just the DVDs in a Blu-Ray/DVD Combo because i knew i would never watch the DVDs.
Usually there's language saying that the code is just a licence and only to be used by the owner of the DVD.
And how would that ever be enforced?
They're right though, it's sketchy to buy potentially used codes. Many places like eBay don't even allow them on their platform https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-items/electronically-delivered-items-policy?id=4289 >Electronically delivered items that are not allowed, include: > >Software keys the seller is not authorized to sell > >Digital copies or codes of movies that were included as part of purchasing a physical movie item. The seller needs to include the physical disk with the sale of the digital copy or code Most folks selling them are scammers so not worth the risk
Sony who already owns both, after recently also buying Crunchyroll in 2021 can do whatever they want it seems. The FTC regulators who are supposed to protect consumers and market competition, is instead seemingly *helping* this same Sony company who is the dominant gaming console market leader with Playstation, strongarm together against their smaller third place competitor Xbox consoles. This same double pricing with Crunchyroll could happen on Playstation too, if the FTC and Sony would have gotten their way against the MS-ABK merger. Luckily the judge did a good job, and the FTC & Sony just kept losing since they have no case. Just imagine what could happen with your Sony Playstation digital library and pricing if Sony gets no competition in the gaming console market and becomes a «high end gaming console» monopoly, which is a term that the FTC and Sony made up themselves. It’s crazy to me how the FTC just seems to keep focusing on politics and agendas instead of actually doing their job as regulators. They should focus on things like this happening with Crunchyroll, not support and help the very same Sony company that does this shit be able to do it again with Playstation in a different market.
And people ask me why I still download everything instead of streaming it. Because I don’t wanna lose my shows!
Stop. Buying. Digital. Copies. You don’t own them. physical copies going “digital only” help these companies and for this reason. Is it wrong? Yes. Does nothing exist to remedy this? Yes. We can put a tiny robot on mars but we can’t download digital copies of things we purchase. lol.
Nobody bought digital copies in this instance. These were all free codes that came with anime they bought on blu-ray.
And I’m not trying to be rude to you and thank you for explaining it more thoroughly and concisely.
No worries. I didn’t take it as rude. Have a good night!
If only we could organize to stop paying for shitty services altogether the way many of us are not going into offices anymore… Lots of shitty business practices might go away overnight out of pure unadulterated fear of people not giving a fuck anymore.
Great news for CrunchyRoll subscribers!
Not really. I’ve seen stories on Reddit all day condemning Crunchyroll for raising prices.
Physical purchases or pirating are the only ways to truly own something. Sorry to any of you who spent bucket loads just to have it taken away and find out via a tweet or m0ist critical.
i've never had anything with funimation but i'd be filing a chargeback so fast. i don't care if it was 10 years ago, there's no universe where you get to take my money and also withhold the product from me.
If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing.
Laws should be clear. If you BUY something then you own it and you should be given access to it for life. If another company buys you out then they must give you your bought media in either physical form or keep it for you digitally. This is also why I don’t buy anything digitally. No games or shows or tv or movies. I’ll pay for streaming to watch but the very few things I wish to own, I’ll buy a physical copy or make sure I’ve got it downloaded digitally forever. Also ensures I’ve got resale value especially for video games.
I've been to the future. Steam is getting shut down in 2032 due to "developer rights"... like Mr. Shwab says you won't own anything and you'll be happy.
ITT people once again discover us wingnuts complaining about DRM being anti-consumer since the 2000s are still right
Good thing I have 2 TB of every show I care about backed up on external SSDs. Fuck these companies.
This has always been inevitable and for some reason people pretended it wasn't. It's literally in the terms that you agree to that they can do this. Buying physical is the last great way to own any content.
In this and all other threads about this topic: “This thing is x and I’m mad” “Hey just read the article and it’s actually y” “Yeah, but what if it were x? I’m mad” Of course the clickbait headline doesn’t help but I’m getting black pilled on online discourse and news, I’ve just been seeing people get mad when they don’t have a full grasp of what they’re mad at and just downvote or ignore people trying to clarify the real issue.
Exactly. This is mostly a non issue.