Reversing an earlier announcement, Sony will no longer remove Discovery TV shows purchased by its consoles’ owners.
Fans of Cake Boss, Deadliest Catch (pictured) and Outrageous Acts Of Science rejoice: Sony has reversed a previous announcement that it was to delete a huge list of Discovery TV shows from PlayStation consoles.
In early December, Sony announced that “content licencing arrangements” meant that some 1,300 reality TV shows, dramas and documentaries were going to be deleted, irrespective of whether they were paid for by users.
Sony now says – as reported by GI.biz – that it has an “updated licencing agreement” with Warner Bros (which owns Discovery), meaning those shows will still be available to users for at least the next couple of years or so.
“Similar to other services, we do not own the licensing rights to TV/movie content that was previously available for purchase on PlayStation Store,” a statement from PlayStation reads. “However, we’ve worked with Warner Bros to update our licensing agreements, ensuring that consumers will be able to access their previously purchased content for at least the next 30 months.”
Discovery’s shows were originally due to vanish at the end of December 2023. Over on PlayStation’s website, an update to a legal notice reads, “Due to updated licensing arrangements, the Discovery content removal planned for December 31, 2023 is no longer occurring. We appreciate your ongoing support and feedback.”
By ‘ongoing support and feedback’, PlayStation may be making an oblique reference to the understandably furious response from some users in the wake of that earlier announcement.
Let’s face it, if you’ve purchased something and downloaded it to a piece of hardware you own, it should arguably stay there, in much the same way that a DVD you purchased in 2011 should remain on your shelf gathering dust. A representative from Warner Bros can’t very well march into your house and confiscate a disc just because one of its licencing agreements expired, so shouldn’t the same hold true for a video file you’ve bought?
We’ll get off our soap box now.
