Sony Removing Purchased Discovery TV Shows ⇥ mjtsai.com
As of 31 December 2023, due to our content licensing arrangements with content providers, you will no longer be able to watch any of your previously purchased Discovery content and the content will be removed from your video library.
The list of shows which users “purchased” is extensive and, because this is digital media, varies by country. The above link is to the Canadian list; the U.S. list is even longer.
Michael Tsai has a good roundup of articles, with most noting this is not an isolated incident and sharing other — often entirely different — examples. It is obviously an intolerable practice. Yet it is increasingly standard for digital purchases to be licensed in a way where access can be changed or revoked without consent.
I spot-checked the PlayStation list and found many of these shows are not officially available in a hard copy format. Sure, nobody is entitled to own them at all, but if you want to ensure you retain access for whatever reason, you often have no legal option. “Okay, well, you know what that means: steal it”.