Sony is 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.

So, if you bought a DVD licensed by Sony, can they now legally enter your house and take your DVD?

Or can Sony have some sort of DRM that prevents the DVD from playing when Sony loses the license agreement?

I’m just trying to reconcile how digital purchases can be subject to license terms changes, while a DVD apparently can’t be.

  • TauZero
    3·
    7 months ago

    a standalone drive

    Another cool/scary feature of the BluRay spec is offline firmware updates (called BD+). Any disc can contain code that runs automatically and can patch the player firmware or execute arbitrary functions. So if you have an older hacked player and you insert a newer disc into it, the AACS Consortium has the ability to brick it. Or if you “own” an older disc but the Consortium starts to dislike it for some reason (maybe they discovered that the disc was printed by a pirate publisher, or maybe there was a retroactive licensing dispute), they can include code on every newly published disc that blacklists the old disc. Even with a standalone player that you never connect to the internet, the moment you insert any new disc into it, your old “problematic” disc will be unplayable. This has never yet happened with a previously-legal disc AFAIK, but it is possible within the spec. Every player manufacturer must obey the spec and implement the BD+ virtual machine in order to be allowed to read AACS content. And if you hack your player to ignore BD+ code, then the newer disc will not play because its content may be scrambled in a way that only the custom BD+ code included with it can unscramble.