Hundreds of Discovery TV shows will disappear from PlayStation and become unwatchable even if you paid for them. It’s the exact scenario proponents of physical media have worried about – digital content simply vanishing, and sadly it seems many people don’t yet understand how digital rights work.

“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.” says an official post from Sony. It’s currently unclear if this will only affect residents of the US or if it perhaps global.

Discovery tends to produce many low-budget reality shows, so the list of programs being removed is extensive, easily going into the hundreds, including the likes of Bering Sea Gold and Pregnant Behind Bars.

Reddit user skaterm8r asked for advice on the official PlayStation Reddit.  “Is there a way I can save this content?” he said. “I use PS4… But I have bought many seasons of shows such as Dual Survival that I do not wish to lose. I was actually under the impression since I owned it, I wouldnt ever lose it…”

Sadly, skaterm8r is one of the many people who don’t seem to know that when you “purchase” digital content you’re actually only getting a license that lets you view it, but you don’t own it. As a result, that content can be removed at any time or can simply become inaccessible. Technically, the same rule applies to physical media such as videogames, but in their case, you can access the media as long as you have something to run it on. The producer of that media could block access but that can be easily circumvented by staying offline.

This is far from the first time things like this have happened. In 2022 German and Austrian PlayStation users had hundreds of movies removed from their libraries. Films like Paddington 2 and The Hunger Games vanished, becoming inaccessible even though the users paid for them.

Unsurprisingly numerous people have suggested sailing the high seas of digital piracy in order to download any shows you’ve lost access to. After all, goes the reasoning, you already paid to watch it, so if that ability to watch it is taken away you shouldn’t feel bad about donning an eye-patch.

Perhaps the biggest issue this story brings up is that people deserve to be educated on what digital rights actually are in their current form. Moving forward, it’s clear that we need to start thinking about how those rights need to be changed, especially as the likes of Microsoft and PlayStation start stripping out the disc drives from their consoles and physical stores are ceasing to stock physical media. As buying movies, games, music, books and more digitally becomes the norm, consumers deserve stronger rights to help ensure that the content they “buy” doesn’t vanish into the ether.