To me, this sets a bad precedence for further piracy in the future. Not on a grand scale or anything, but if more and more consumers get the idea that what they purchase digitally can be permanently taken away its going to drive them elsewhere. Its not hard to find a streaming site that contains all matter of new stuff and old stuff on demand, for free. I think you're still likely safe on platforms like Apple that aren't going away anytime soon, and this whole fiasco is hopefully just a bad negotiation by Sony, however its a pretty big blunder that you would think a media company as old as Sony would easily avoid.
If more and more instances of this happen in the future, its a dark time for everyone. Physical media is slowly disappearing and digital media rights and distribution seem to be in disarray. Nobody wins, except the jolly roger's. I've noticed over the years that a lot of the free streaming options have gotten pretty darn good. They may not have all the quality but the functionality is often better. I used to have MLB TV and quite often their streams were choppy and low quality. And you'd still incur blackouts. Its not a good look when your free competitors are doing it better. The big corps have been taking baby steps for years and its really starting to show. Hell, when Google Play Movies was at its best you started seeing nice 4K Dolby Vision streams, if available. Now, under Youtube, its back to HDR10 if you're lucky. If you're trying to play stuff on your PC through Youtube its only 480p. That's utterly ridiculous in 2023.
As someone who has gone mostly digital at this point, I hope this kind of stuff gets sorted sooner than later and doesn't turn into a nasty shitshow.
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