Funimation To Shut Down Completely On April 2; Deleting Purchased Digital Copies

We need to stop calling it "purchasing"
- Long term rental or at-will ownership for US people.
- We need to prosecute companies (and their executives, personally) who fraudulently misrepresent it as "purchasing."
- I think in legal terms it’s even called licensing.
- If paying for digital content isn't ownership, then downloading it for free isn't piracy.

- I'm pretty sure it all goes to Crunchyroll. I don't think you're actually losing anything, just having it moved to a different platform
  (edit): Nevermind, I didn't know digitally redeemed blu-rays and stuff were a thing. You'll lose those if you have em but tbh I can't imagine very many people do.

An jus as one piece is kicking off not only it's final saga but more of its successful live action. The Great Pirate Era is really upon us!
- Exactly. It’s time to take back your data and OWN YOUR SHIT people. Local Host and Mass Store.
  
  Also backup

fuck it, pirate everything.
if they lost respect for our money, i dont see why we should respect theirs.
if buying is not owning, then piracy isn't stealing.
- Copyright infringement was never stealing to begin with. If I steal your pencil, you are no longer in posession of it. If I copy or download your pencil, we both have a copy, and you are not deprived of your property.
  
  Delusional, how is this upvoted? You're stealing value from the holder. You get something you shouldn't have, and they do not get something they should have. Let's call it what it is even if some don't believe the system is fair.
  Buying should be ownership to use for personal use in perpetuity. So in that sense downloading a copy of something you've paid a purchase license for should never be illegal.
- Do what you want cause a pirate is free, you are a pirate!

There needs to be a registry service that allows people to show they have a license for any digital media we purchase.
- Sooooo.... Ultraviolet?
- Almost like a decentralised system with non fungible tokens for licences, that you could even trade between individuals without involvement of the rights owner
  
  Sounds great. Maybe we could even scam the users for even more money.
  
  The reason that's never going to happen is because it would be the cause of massive profit losses for digital companies.
  Capitalism makes the rules.
  
  Funnily enough this is the only legitmate use for this technology, but will never happen because capitalists will never let it.
  
  Given the number of crypto bros sobbing that someone right clicked their monkey, I don't think the copyright holders are going to be down with that.
  
  Blockchain? Lmfao.

Buying a digital copy of something you cannot download is an oxymoron. It only makes sense if you subscribe to a service.
- So steam, basically? Less likely that they'll be shutting down anytime soon, but still.
  Edit: people downvoting don't seem to understand how steam works
  
  Not a good comparison. With Steam, you download the games to your computer. If Valve ever went out of business, they could unDRM the games, or you could crack them.
  Either way, you download the games onto your computer. That's not the case with Funimation.
  
  Whether its "allowed" or not, I assume you I own every file from my steam library.

For smart people, piracy is a financial problem.
Why pay more for things you can get for free? It's not like the businesses you're supporting wouldn't rob you blind if they thought they could get away with it.
Even the 'creators' don't get the vast majority of the money you spend; their landlords do. When they make more money, rent goes up.
I wish this generation wasn't full of useful idiots with more money than sense.

They're charging people higher prices and refusing to allow them to keep their digital content? They're basically just handing out the pirate hats and eye patches at this point.

Very hard to convince people to buy things "legitimately" and have any trust in any of the "legit" options when they just go away so fucking easily. Stuff like anime has been a real weird example of both how horrible the corps on the Japanese side just squeeze every single fraction of a penny from stuff (fucking like two eps of a show on a modern DVD or even Blu-ray). But also feel zero reason to expand options in the first place. They were so fucking slow to get digital or streaming options. Same goes for the foreign outlets that get rights outside of J-land, but I am sure they were more likely to want to combat piracy via stuff like streaming. Funny thing about anime piracy is that it is literally the reason so many shows and movies were even seen and is the main reason so many people got into all of it. Back in the early 00's when I made friends with people that had cable internet and ready to burn as many eps as they could fit on a CD-R and later DVD-/+R.
It was just so amazing to see all these shows that weren't just completely altered by lazy US companies or ever likely to be translated. No US companies thought that Americans would ever understand or get into this weird Japanese stuff and not put money into it. But they sure started caring when torrents got going and the numbers were growing. One thing that has really pissed me off with legal digital copies of anime comes down to how it is still behind on basic shit. We have had multi-audio/subtitles on pirate copies and even on legitimate physical discs. But the legal versions of digital copies still have to be either bought in sub or dub. It is a slap in the face of fans to have to buy two different copies just to have multi-audio in Japanese and English. I thought that shit would have been left behind with VHS.
All of these companies demand our money and often charge prices that are just too high for their target audiences (especially teens that don't have jobs like so many of us have lived through). And yet they seem to do everything possible to make the options for purchase so much less usable compared to pirate versions. I would take a fansub that might be a bit off but has actual passion for community and accessibility over legit copies every single time. But I am also more than happy to pay for things if I don't keep being treated like I already stole it and should be grateful for being "allowed" to pay for it. I would love to pay for these things and know that the actual workers are able to live, and not just so overworked and not able to afford rent. But the entire media industry treats both the workers and the customers so fucking bad. They are making things worse for themselves by showing how we can't trust our purchases to even be around from one day to another. So why shouldn't we just take it and know that we will have it?
Given how lots of smaller shows and other things will never get re-prints or re-masters on modern media. It is also our jobs to preserve these things that the companies feel aren't worth the money to do so if they aren't. If I ever have kids, I would like to be able to know I can show them my favorites. Looks like I will also need to show them how to sail the digital seas and that "legit" options should always be treated as liars that steal your money AND take away what you paid for.
🏴‍☠️
- No US companies thought that Americans would ever understand or get into this weird Japanese stuff
  I miss the subtitled "translator notes" about cultural things. US companies just change the meaning of things if there's no easy equivalent.
  
  Gintama has some of the funnier versions of those notes. Can be annoying if you don't care as they take it to 11 covering most of the screen to explain a reference to a bank scandal in the 90s or other very specific stuff. Cracks me up with the level of care about making sure you are aware of something used in a quick joke that might not really matter. Such a nice way to see and know random info on Japanese slang words and phrases in the context of a moment.
- Buttplug for your thoughts ～(つˆ0ˆ)つ｡☆

Disclaimer: this absolutely sucks and I'm baffled that they've made this move at all.
That being said, I don't think folks have noticed the very specific situation where this is the case:
Users who redeemed digital copies of a Blu-ray or DVD purchased from Funimation were granted access to the streaming service, where they could store and stream the purchased program or film.
They are very specifically removing the free digital copies that came with buying hard copies via Blu-ray or DVD. It still sucks, but no one is losing a digital product they outright bought.
- I see where you're coming from, but I don't think that excuses anything. If you bought a hard copy with the understanding that a digital copy came with the purchase and now they're taking away the digital copy, that's still a Darth Vader "I'm altering the deal" type move.
- kinda feels like selling someone a burger and fries, taking away the fries and then going "no one lost a burger". the digital copy is part of what was purchased, and its been taken away from purchasers with no recourse. The digital copy was part of the deal.
- Doesn't matter at all, they gave the copies, it's the costumers property now and is being taken away.
- I chipped in when my friend bought Paranoia Agent on Blu-ray because he promised me the digital copy, so this does affect me. Granted, after learning the news I "found" some rips online for my NAS, but still. It's not okay.
- Still shitty, but at this point, anyone buying Blu-Rays and DVDs should chuck that stuff on Plex/Jellyfin and be done with it.

I literally wouldn't advocate "sailing the high seas" if companies didn't all aggressively accelerate enshittification and run toward consumer-hostile, short-term, endlessly greedy practices. And then there's this, which is on another level. Storage is crazy-cheap these days, people...

How these companies don't realize these incompetent decisions push formerly paying customers into piracy is actually beyond me.
Do every c-level employee in these companies have brain damage?
- Not going to lie, i think most consumers will take this lying down and that’s what Sony is betting on. The amount that actually turn to piracy is so small, and the price hike easily makes up for the customers they’d lose. I’d say most people on Lemmy know how to pirate (if not are pirating already) so it’s a bit of an echo chamber here where we assume everybody is just going to pirate so as to stop lining Sony’s pockets.
  
  @KravenTheHunter @trackcharlie plus, it gives them a reason to justify the higher prices because they have to be protected from all those big, bad pirates out there taking food out of their kids mouths by not paying their extortionary rental fees.
  They're actually counting on people to pirate stuff to create some weird sense of inflated value for their products.
  
  In my experience the main issue with piracy is the ads.
  Nothing better than trying to watch a show with my kid then having an ad pop-up with a girl fucking herself
- They don't care about losing customers to piracy just like fast-food restaurants don't care about losing people to grocery stores.
  They've realized it's more profitable to take further advantage of an ever-shrinking pool of customers.
  If you can charge 1 customer twice the price of what you could charge 2, then you make more money because you require less overhead.
  
  I definitely agree with you but I'm not sure how far they can take this in an economic situation that is currently devolving into a major recession and has all the macroeconomic factors of an incoming second depression.
- Because their best interest is to appease shareholders and not excellent service. The problem which will emerge in 5 years time is a problem for the next CEO.
- @trackcharlie @alphacyberranger Yes.

You'll own nothing and be happy
funny, i dont feel too happy

This is why I never bought a subscription to these services.
- i got suckered once on a different site that got shut down. never again.
- Subscription is pretty different from buying. Pretty disingenuous to try to talk about them the same way. There's no expectation of keeping access when you end a subscription.
  
  I see patreon subscriptions all the time where you can subscribe, download all the content, and not subscribe again the next month.
  I fail to see why just because it's a big corporation that the expectation is different.

If anyone has this stuff it would be good to add them to i2p too.

What the hell is that thumbnail?
- Laughing? More like yelling.

Sony deleting purchased items from a person's library?
Shocker.

Any tools to rip stuff from Funimation?
Maybe this way folks will preserve it.
- Apparently yt-dlp has code to work with Funimation, that might work (i can't check if it does)
  
  Made a post out of it in piracy@lemmy.ml, mind if I credit you? People should know, this info can be genuinely helpful
- I don't think there's anything on funimation that hasn't already been ripped and posted on nyaa or private trackers.
  Unless it's some really old or obscure stuff.
- Just download it from nyaa like a normal person.

Trust but verify folks, if you bought it and don't have a copy you fully control you're renting at best.
- Even renters have rights. If you're buying something like this you likely have no rights in the matter and the license you agreed to made sure of it.

I forgot Funimation even existed tbh. I've been torrenting for ages now and I have no use for Funimation or Crunchyroll. Yo the seven seas guys!

Class action lawsuit for contract violations
- There's pretty much zero percent chance there isn't a class-action waiver in the old license agreement. Maybe an arbitration clause too, but that could actually be good, since Sony would probably have to pay the arbiters win or lose, so if enough people actually pursue it it could cost them a boatload.
- Pretty much guaranteed "buying" those eps was done under a user agreement that said something like, "You don't own this and we can revoke your license whenever we want for whatever reason we want."

just use Aniyomi with the Yomiroll or Aniwave plugin
- Aniyomi also supports jellyfin)

A simple solution is to stop consuming the work entirely. "Okay, you want to make it expensive and difficult to access your content, we're going to stop liking your content. The market for your product has now completely ceased to exist."