Sony's Ultra 4K Streaming Service Launching On April 4; Titles Priced At $30 (variety.com)

Janko Roettgers reports for Variety: Sony is launching its 4K movie streaming service called Ultra next month: Consumers will be able to buy movies from the service, and stream to supported Sony 4K TV sets, starting April 4. The new service will offer 4K HDR movies to stream, including extras that have previously been able only on physical discs. Ultra ties into UltraViolet, the cloud locker service backed by Sony. Consumers will be able to upgrade SD and HD quality movies from their UltraViolet cloud locker for $12 to $15, respectively.

Comments

Re:Buy isn't the correct word

[Kjella]

Well, maybe. If 4K comes under the jurisdiction of UltraViolet, then hopefully the licensing will be pushed up through them. That's as close to a "permanent" cross-entity license as one can get these days. In most cases, you're purchasing a license even when you have a physical copy. That's why you're not allowed to use it to show the movie for profit.

You're wrong off the bat, that's because it's in copyright law under Exclusive rights in copyrighted works:

(5) in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly

There's nothing wrong with plain old copyright law which means we need to substitute a sale for a license.

I'm with you in terms of preferring to own a physical copy so that I can continue to watch it when my internet is down and I don't have to rely on a dozen different entities to still exist when I do, but I thought we were past the point where people thought they had a "right" to a movie on their own terms. If you don't want to agree to the copyright holder's terms for the movie, don't retrieve/store/watch it.

Obviously the consumer shouldn't be able to set their own terms. But I think the liberal idealism that as long as nobody puts a gun to your head it's voluntary and they can put whatever they want in their terms is flawed. We're constantly hit with lengthy boilerplate legalese that nobody reads, nobody understands and if they did they couldn't change them anyway and that nobody takes seriously until they're being fucked over. And sometimes it's just consumer anti-features you're never asked to agree to like that we'll disable the fast forward button when we feel like and not let you play movies from other regions even though they get to shop all over the world for the cheapest labor.

There's a little bit of what I'm asking for with regard to unconscionable contracts, but really consumers should have far more protection than that from big business. Particularly when they're agreeing on "industry terms" that smells like a cartel dictating terms for all the consumers, since it's not unconscionable if it's common knowledge you'll be fucked over. To use a car analogy, just because you sold me a car doesn't mean you should be able to dictate maintenance and repair, parts, after-market alterations, fuel, where I drive and so on. It's necessary to cut those cords, you built it but it's now my car. And it was your movie, but now I bought a copy.

Of course they don't want to cut the cord, they don't ever want to really let go just give you a crippled license to use it on their terms, like if your living room was is the same as going to the cinema. Well sorry, they don't get to collect a per seat royalty or add mark-up to any snacks you might be eating in your own home watching their movie. But they would if they could and even if it was technically possible it shouldn't be legally possible. They should be forced at some point to either not sell it at all or really sell it, not more getting to have your cake and eat it too. But that would involve consumers winning against a lobbying industry, so most people will just give the law the finger instead.