Sony Removes Your Purchases From Libraries, A Reminder That You Don’t Own Your Purchases

Sony was recently notified his PlayStation customers in United Kingdom that they can no longer watch videos and movies that have already been purchased from the production and distribution company StudioCanal. As of September 1, affected customers will no longer be able to download 551 titles from the PlayStation Store.

In a legal notice first seen by sports news PlayStation LifeStyleSony said affected customers will lose access to streaming titles Fury: Way of the Yakuza, Paddington, Paddington 2, Pan’s Labyrinth, Rambo 3, Terminator 2: Judgment Dayand A Boy in Striped Clothes “because of our licensing agreements.”

By September, Sony will remove any affected titles that UK users have purchased from their PlayStation library, according to the notice.

It is possible that Sony will continue to work with StudioCanal until September 1, or later, which will allow users to view their purchases. This happened in 2023, when Sony said it should pulling in 1,318 seasons of Discovery shows from client libraries. A few weeks after its announcement, Sony said it would not pull the content because it had exchanged licenses with Discovery.

However, concerned customers should not get their hopes up too high. Sony has already released 314 StudioCanal titles from German and Austrian libraries in 2022. Recently, Sony has removed Funimation’s public digital libraries when it decided to merge its anime streaming service with Crunchyroll. Sony has also scaled back its digital store and stopped selling movies and shows for rent and purchase in August 2021. Even if StudioCanal were willing to make a deal with Sony, it is possible that Sony is less interested in keeping digital titles than before.

Regardless, this event is a reminder that we do not own what we buy on the computer. Instead, digital rentals and purchases are long-term licenses that are valid as long as the streaming service has the right to distribute said content. In most cases, that is enough time.

However, Sony’s announcement has disappointed some, including those who believe Sony should give returns or those who think of digital stores he must stop using words like “buying” a long-term rental.

This article appeared first Ars Technica.