PlayStation keeps reminding us why digital ownership sucks

theverge.com:

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

In less than a week, Sony has given us two timely reminders of the tenuousness of digital “ownership” — and both reminders involve things on PlayStation.

Last week, Sony said that, because of content licensing “arrangements,” users wouldn’t be able to watch Discovery content they’ve purchased and that the content would be removed from their libraries as of December 31st, 2023. The resulting list of shows that will suddenly disappear because of corporate agreements is very long. Shows disappearing from streaming services is commonplace, but in this case, people are losing access to shows they bought to watch on demand whenever they wanted.

Then, on Monday, many users were unexpectedly banned from their PlayStation Network accounts, meaning that not only were they blocked from playing multiplayer games or using cloud streaming but they were also locked out of games they purchased digitally from Sony’s PlayStation marketplace. Affected users who may have spent years building a robust digital library were suddenly left without access to content they had bought through no fault of their own. It appears that Sony has since restored account access to people who were accidentally banned, but the company hasn’t explained what happened or said how it might prevent similar unexpected bans in the future. (Sony hasn’t replied to our multiple requests for comment.)

The ephemerality of digital “ownership” isn’t a new issue. Even though downloading and accessing digital content is often easier than trudging to a retail store to buy a physical copy of a game, you’re putting