Did you "buy" that copy of "Mythbusters?"
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Well, no. You didn't.
https://kotaku.com/sony-ps4-ps5-discovery-mythbusters-tv-1851066164
The promise of digital media is that it can last forever, pristine and undisturbed by the forces of entropy constantly buffeting the material world. Unfortunately, a mess of online DRM and license agreements means that we mostly don’t own the digital stuff we buy, as most recently evidenced by the fact that Sony is about to delete Mythbusters, Naked and Afraid, and tons of other Discovery shows from PlayStation users’ libraries even if they already “purchased” them.
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.
“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…”
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@George-K said in Did you "buy" that copy of "Mythbusters?":
They include, but are not limited to, hits such as: Say Yes to the Dress, Shark Week, Cake Boss, Long Island Medium, Deadly Women,
Imagine actually buying any of those shows.
My God.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Did you "buy" that copy of "Mythbusters?":
Imagine actually buying any of those shows.
My God.
That was my first thought as well.
But, @jolly's comment is spot-on.
This is video...what happens when you "buy" a "book."?
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@George-K said in Did you "buy" that copy of "Mythbusters?":
This is video...what happens when you "buy" a "book."?
Yes, it's definitely a worry. Maybe the price we pay for having an infinite amount of mostly useless information at our fingertips is that it's not permanent.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Did you "buy" that copy of "Mythbusters?":
it's not permanent
Got any 8mm home movies? Betamax movies? How's your "mix tape" cassette collection holding up?
I had a bunch of Hi-8 home video transferred to DVD. I transferred all of them to a hard drive - and the cloud.
In 20 years, it'll all be obsolete, as will I.
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I laughed when our cable company started selling video on demand movies that you could buy. You own them… Just so long as you don’t switch providers….
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@Jolly said in Did you "buy" that copy of "Mythbusters?":
We still read letters and documents written in the 1700's. Many of us have old photographs which date back to the American Civil War.
Will people have anything similar in two or three generations?