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Glad I’m not the only one. I was already semi-boycotting Sony even prior to the rootkit thing because of their insistence on using proprietary memory stick format for all their devices long after everyone else had adopted a standard… I think it was MMC at the time. But when they did the rootkit it has been a complete boycott for me. I have not given Sony a single cent of my money since then other than watching a few of the Spider-Man movies. Even then I felt dirty afterwards.
Me too. I have not knowingly given money to Sony (by purchasing their stuff) since the Rootkit scandal.
Some years (decades) ago, I sat next to someone on a flight who sold broadcast TV equipment for Sony. I was shocked that he had never heard of the rootkit fiasco. He had no idea.
Honestly for a lot of these large companies there is not some monolithic structure. Sony Broadcast is a prestige business with decades of users and products that are behind a lot of media to this day. The people working there will likely never run across the people working on earbuds and stereo equipment and those people will never run across the music and production group.
Ive installed a lot of digital signage, a lot of those displays were made by Samsung. When I asked my rep about a project that needed
Me too, since almost a decade, although the trigger was not the root kit episod. The final straw for me was that after a firmware update for a TV (that was needed to solve an issue during the startup phase) I could no longer watch HD DVB-C channels. Downgrading was not possible as they stated ‘We don’t support downgrades as we want the customers to have the best experience’….. Funny though that I find HD channels a better experience. And no newer firmware would ever be released as they were not selling th
For me, it was the sony camcorders and still cameras dying due to the CCD malfunctioning years after purchase without any means of fixing them. Apparently how the heatsink on the back of the CCD is glued is the culprit, but fixing it is nigh impossible.
For that reason, I stopped buying Sony camera equipment. I also avoided buying any more Sony game consoles.
For me, it was the sony camcorders and still cameras dying due to the CCD malfunctioning years after purchase without any means of fixing them.
For me, it was the sony camcorders and still cameras dying due to the CCD malfunctioning years after purchase without any means of fixing them.
For me, it was them wanting a couple hundred dollars to replace a camcorder’s power switch and start button. Not for parts and labor, just for the part — that plus a pattern I saw where their TV and music division keeps limiting what their hardware folks can build in ways that harm consumers.
I’ve been a no-Sony household since somewhere around 2003 or so.
Oh for Pete’s sake, can lawyers ever STFU? The museum is not eating into your sales. If anything it helps sales by advertising old shows FOR FREE. Geddalife!
Not defending lawyers, but they’re just doing what their clients want and are paying them to do
Not defending lawyers, but they’re just doing what their clients want and are paying them to do
Not defending lawyers, but they’re just doing what their clients want and are paying them to do
If lawyers were paid by their clients to jump off the rooftops of very tall buildings, by your logic THEY WOULD DO IT cuz the client paid for it.
Geez
at BEST, it comes down to “merely” wanting to protect their copyrights because of the whole, “if we don’t protect the property, it will become public domain” stuff.
That’s trademark law, not copyright law. Someone can lose trademark exclusivity by allowing a mark to become generic, but they keep copyrights even if the copyrighted work is widely pirated.
Making copyright last permanently was not a smart idea. It will be extended again in a few years, just as soon as the Disney copyrights become close to expiration, as it has every time before.
#1 US copyright law
While it can be kind of confusing [copyright.gov] regarding works released prior to 1978, you can generally assume that if it’s something newer than Steamboat Willie (which will enter public domain next year), it’s still under copyright protection.
#2 YouTube
If you’re going to disregard #1, YouTube isn’t the right platform for it. Google makes most of their money from original content creators and licensed IP, so they’re more than happy to kick your “yeah, it’s technically piracy but it’s not really bothering anyone” channel to the curb once a rightsholder (or their lawyers) makes a stink over it. If you want to fight the good fight, run a seedbox and host torrents.
#3
You can’t leave a violation up after you know it. Sony is trying to book the YouTube revenues from these programs, but if they are found to be consenting then, and complaining now, that results in lowering the damages.
copyright law needs to be abolished. Or, at the very least, limited to just a few years.
Youtube is fully capable of issuing claims on material that’s copyrighted and diverting the funds to the rights-holder. I didn’t realize they didn’t do it with video content, but they do it with music all the time. The uploader simply loses the ability to monetize it, and the music label gets the ad revenue from that point on. Why on earth can’t they do that with a couple episodes of whatever? I am guessing it’s possible shows like bewitched have exclusive streaming agreements somewhere?
I think they can do that with video but it’s up to the rights holder. If they just want it removed it will get removed.
Where you can only claim copyright if its possible to purchase said content.
If it’s not purchasable at all, then it should not be illegal to archive/store it.
This will force all these companies (ok, sony to be exact) to either pull their head in, or make it purchasable again.
Just reduce the copyright term back down to 28 years and be done with it. The purpose of copyright is to encourage content creation. The shorter the term, the more it does that, because people can’t coast on their laurels and perpetually earn revenue from things they created decades earlier. Therefore, every copyright extension ever passed has progressively undermined the law’s ability to serve its original purpose.
Not to mention that despite all of the claims of “theft” by rightsholders, extended copyright terms represent REAL theft from society, as in “taking something that the rightful owner can no longer make use of”.
Where you can only claim copyright if its possible to purchase said content.
In this case, it is possible to purchase said content. Bewitched has been released on DVD a few times now, most recently in 2015.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B012… [amazon.com]
It’s technically out of print at the moment, I believe. But there are more than enough copies in circulation right now that they’re cheap and easy to find.
And if streaming is your thing, all of the usual transactional VOD operators are offering all 8 seasons.
https://www.ama [amazon.com]
This is just one example of why piracy still thrives and will continue to do so in the unforeseeable future. If one really wanted to one could download all the episodes of Bewitched right now.
And such downloading would affect almost no one that had any personal association with the show. So far as I know, Erin Murphy is the only living person regularly involved with the show that still receives royalties, but is pretty much retired from acting and did well enough with other ventures that those checks don’t do anything to “promote the progress of science and useful arts” in any articulable manner.
As Gabe of Valve Software famously said:
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem,”
Sony is clueless about the long-tail. People pirate shit because there is NO LEGAL OPTION TO BUY old products such as TV shows.
If Sony think there is zero value for shows that are 20+ years old then they should lose access to copyright holding culture hostage and the shows should revert to the public domain.
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