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If buying isn't ownership then pirating isn't stealing

A clarification that really only makes this worse: Crunchyroll did not acquire Funimation. Funimation acquired Crunchyroll, and decided to use the Crunchyroll name instead. They have had every opportunity since the merger to support people's purchases, but have chosen not to.

This announcement is full of weasely language.

"We understand that you may have concerns about your digital copies from Funimation."

The problem is your concerns. We are being understanding about your problem.

"Please note that Crunchyroll does not currently support Funimation Digital copies, which means that access to previously available digital copies will not be supported."

Crunchyroll does not support this, which means that it will not be supported. Your role here is to note this.

"We appreciate your understanding..."

We are being appreciative. Your are being understanding. That's the way it is, got it?

I still feel like it should be illegal for the button to say "Buy" or "Purchase" when you're actually leasing the item.

There should be a nice, big, summarized disclaimer right above the button explaining what exactly you are purchasing. I'm sure the 100 page EULA explains but nobody has time to read through the whole thing every time they make a digital purchase.

if you can take something I own from me without compensating me, I can take something you own from you without compensating you. piracy is a moral imperative in order to preserve art.

Feel bad for Abe. I had a same conversation with Garmin; it turns out when you buy lifetime maps it means for the duration we decide to support the product, which can have the lifetime of a mayfly and there is nothing they will do, and nothing you can do except not buy another Garmin product.

They should be liable to refund the license if they can't maintain access.

Bunch of thieves.

How is it legal that you can purchase a company, without also acquiring their liabilities and obligations?

Remember kids, piracy is not only moral, but a moral obligation in this capitalist hellscape! (and not theft by definition, and should not be illegal) Torrents are one of the few effective weapons against corporations

Why tf are we paying full price for long term rentals??

"Why is piracy on the increase?!"

-media corporations

Honestly kind of bold of them, given that anime watchers tend to be extremely familiar with piracy and it was only the efforts of Crunchyroll and other easy to use services that finally managed to make legal anime a reasonable option. They aren't so entrenched that people won't go right back to pirating again.

Serious question. Has there ever been a lawsuit, like individual or tort, that has gone after companies for this behavior? If so, what countries?

This is why you pirate, not why you buy physical media.

Excuse me while I continue to enjoy the salty sea air, practice my vocal projection for shanties, and peruse then collection of different national flags aboard to make sure they are convincing and not in need of mending.

Hilarious how CrunchyRoll actually did the 'live long enough to become the villain' thing.

This is simply false. The "quote" here fully omits a sentence without using a bracketed ellipsis, so you can't tell you're being deceived. The omitted sentence makes it clear that the claim made in the post about purchased digital copies is false; the thing we are discussing is not purchased digital copies. Full post from Crunchyroll; I will add emphasis to the sentence omitted by Mr. Goldfarb.

We understand that you may have concerns about your digital copies from Funimation. These Digital copies available on Funimation were a digital access to the content available on the DVDs or Blu-rays purchased.

Please note that Crunchyroll does not currently support Funimation Digital copies, which means that access to previously available digital copies will not be supported. However, we are continuously working to enhance our content offerings and provide you with an exceptional anime streaming experience. We appreciate your understanding and encourage you to explore the extensive anime library available on Crunchyroll.

There's a bit of misunderstanding here. You didn't buy digital content on Funimation. You purchased the physical copies (DVD/BluRay) and also got access to it digitally on your account, sort of like a bonus. I do understand the frustration since Funimation said you'll have access to it forever online. I don't know what to say if people bought it solely for the digital convenience. But you still have access to the physical media.

Sounds like a lawsuit to me.

I literally save a copy of digital content I "buy", cause "buying" obviously means "you can have the product for a bit, if we feel like it"

It's always ethical to pirate from big corporations and situations like this just prove this point.

I don't hate physical nor digital media. I don't hate streaming or services which provide access to streamed content.

I hate shitty business people. Those who think that paying once for something isn't good enough.

This is exactly that. You paid for the media. You should continue to have uninterrupted access to that content.

The whole idea of ownership is getting muddied by all this "pay for access" and "pay for license" nonsense. It's one thing of you're paying to use a service and that service licenses things. Sure. Like Netflix licensing access to a show. End users of Netflix don't need to buy the show again from Netflix, they are paying for access to the platform and can use the Netflix license to watch the show. You're paying for a service, that service has content that's licensed, you're not paying for the content.

My problem is that licenses are not ownership of the thing that they license. They're not supposed to be. Even back in the days of DVD, movies had a small section of the package that was a "proof of purchase" (usually a small tearaway section inside the case) which physically represented the license for that copy of that media. You had a physical copy and a license all in one. You can have a license and no copy of the licensed content, and you can have licensed content without a license, most notably in the case of downloading a program or something and having that program but needing to activate it with a license before it works.

In the past licenses were often included with or implied by ownership of a thing. You bought a record, and having the record itself implied that you had a license to own that copy of the content on that record. Over time, especially with digital content, the concept of license ownership and licensed content have been decoupled. Having a copy of... Say, Windows, does not and should not imply you have a license to use the windows operating system. This is the same idea as applied to online media. All of those people have a license to the content, but no access to the licensed content now. Get fucked I guess.

I think it's foolish to buy a license for a thing, and not keep a copy of that thing. While I think that's foolish, it's exactly what I do all the time with games in my steam library. The only reason I trust steam with it is because of their long history and track record. I have licenses to a bunch of games, they have the games on their servers and I can download those games and license them through steam in an entirely seamless process. It's not the smartest choice but it's a decision I made long ago that I've stuck to. Bluntly, I won't buy games on other platforms because I don't want to risk losing access to the content that I paid for the license to use. So I avoid epic Games and other online games libraries for that reason (though, shout out to gog, mainly for giving me the ability to transfer my license to steam when I buy something).

The biggest issue I see is that media doesn't have a universal license authorization method. With software and games, there are license keys. You get a set of seemingly random numbers (and sometimes letters too) which are a valid license for that content. It's transferrable. With media, no such system exists, and licenses granted by a company usually are not transferable in part due to having no system to validate the license with the new service. You bought it, you have a license with x company for it, but y company doesn't even know what you're talking about, and won't accept or otherwise recognise the license from company x for the media, and grant you the access you paid for to that media.

Because of this, I've been extremely hesitant to buy any digital media. I'll get services from a streaming service like Apple music, YouTube music, Spotify, etc for my listening, or YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, HBO+, etc for access to their licensed content that they have licenses for, but I hesitate to buy any non-physical media otherwise. If I'm relying on an online service to maintain my license and deliver the licensed content to me, I'm pretty much not going to do it unless I'm very desperate to access that content (which is rare, of its ever happened at all).

Until we can get a valid license transfer system from the media conglomerates, I'm just going to stick to physical media, or get it in a way that I don't have to worry about licensing. I have a source online for buying and downloading music. An online music store, if you will. What it does is allow me to buy albums and download them. No streaming, no muss, no fuss. Pick your format, download, transaction complete. Enjoy. I chose this because they offered the content in flac, frequently better than CD quality (I'm usually looking for studio quality, 16/24 bit, 48khz or better). Once I have the files and my receipt, everything is done. I legally have the content and the receipt is archived in my email as my proof that I purchased it and hold a license to have the media.

I'm not aware of anything similar for video media, and I stopped looking for one. I will buy the physical media for now.

There's no way I'm going to hand over my money to any company for any licensed content that I can't have a copy of.

All that being said, these corporate types are dicks. They've taken people's trust in them to maintain their license and access to the licensed content, and wiped their ass with it. They don't deserve your money, and they certainly don't deserve your trust. Boycott them until a crunchyroll competitor emerges.

I bought the fallout 4dlc when it was new. I went back to try and play recently and my dlc is gone and says I need to purchase it. My save files don't work cause they need the dlc so clearly I had it.

But it was years ago, I lost or deleted the email. I called up psn support and since all records of me having bought the dlc are gone on their end, they won't refund or give me the dlc back.

They literally swiped my purchase away and are asking me for a receipt to prove I bought it, 8 fucking years ago. At least with physical media, the studio doesn't walk into my apartment and steal my hard copies

Soooo… does anyone have a torrent of a complete and unabridged copy of that library?

Would be interested in lending my assistance in seeding.

This is not about digital vs physical. CD's, DVD's and BluRay's are also a digital medium at the end of the day.

It was just a lie, there were no digital copies for purchase, they were only selling "lifetime" (as long as the service exists) rights to rent from them.

Buy physical or digital copies, whatever. Just be sure you are actually buying a copy.

I learned this back when iTunes purged all my purchases over a decade ago. Either stream or buy physical.