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You all remember just a few weeks ago when Sony ripped away a bunch of movies and TV shows people “owned”? This ad is on Amazon. You can’t “own” it on Prime. You can just access it until they lose the license. How can they get away with lying like this?
If they're saying "own" on their advertisements then they should be required to refund you when they eventually have to take it away. I'm pretty sure "ownership" has a legal definition and it's probably not too ambiguous.
It should at least be considered false advertising if they can't guarantee access permanently.
That's the best part
They redefine "own" and "buy" in their TOS
And so do many many other online retailers that sell digital goods
I wonder if that would hold in court. They could simply use "rent" or "lease" in their ads, but they purposely are trying to mislead to imply permanence.
The people who can afford to fight this kind of court case have no interest in doing so.
Don't you have customer protection NGOs in the USA?
We have corporate protections in the USA.
I can't believe you were able to ask that with a straight face
Anything holds in court when you have more money than several small nations combined.
Then it's not binding and they're just waiting for the class action. Which will win, but they'll still be richer in the end.
This is modern alchemy trying to turn lead into gold. Just change the meaning of the magic words et voilá you make gold while the other party is robbed blind and can't do anything about it after the fact.
And of course, it's totally legal and totally cool.
They actually never mention the idea of you owning content in their tos https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=202095490&view-type=content-only
It's "purchased digital content"
(iii) purchase Digital Content for on-demand viewing over an indefinite period of time ("Purchased Digital Content")
Refunding the sale price is still theft. If it was only worth that much to me (zero surplus), then I wouldn't have bothered with the trade in the first place. The only things worth buying are worth more to you than the sale price.
Oh I had never thought of this or come across this concept! That's a really elegant concept. Of course, in a transaction you're putting in more effort than the money. The time it takes you to go through the purchase, the research, the cost of opportunity of that money... meaning those have to be covered in the cost of the transaction, and therefore the goods must be cheaper than the perceived value by those amounts.
You've sent me down a rabbit hole and I thank you for that. Now I'm off to read about economics 🤓
I used to buy movies on Amazon, assuming it worked like Steam does, where if Steam loses the license to sell it, you still have the ability to play it even if Steam isn't allowed to sell it.
Hell I still have access to the stuff I got back when Steam still sold movies (I honestly miss Steam movies...)
When people started telling me their copies of things they owned were no longer usable once Amazon stopped selling it, I stopped buying.
IF BUYING ISN'T OWNING PIRACY ISN'T STEALING!
I haven't ran into a situation where any of the digital copies of things I bought have been pulled. So I can't speak to what happened with your friends. But I will say that if you have any purchased digital copies of movies, you should at least setup Movies Anywhere and link all accounts you have. It isn't like how Steam will still allow you to download a pulled game. But it does give you copies of things on multiple sources once linked. So if you got something on Amazon, it would also be linked as "purchased" on other services like Vudu, YouTube/Play Movies, Apple, etc.. It won't apply to everything you have got but would likely cover most big name items.
It used to be marked with the old "Ultraviolet" branding, but when that was shutdown the basic underlying service was transferred to Movies Anywhere. Most of the time you can see which things would count because they have the MA logo. Not great for smaller releases and most shows won't be part of it (atm at least). Though some shows might also show up, as I have seen things from HBO and some other ones.
All that being said. You are very much correct about "buying isn't owning" these days. And even when there is something like MA, there are still thousands of movies and shows that will only ever get a digital "release" from torrents/P2P. Sad that some cool shit will never get a real HD re-master for Blu-ray (let alone streaming). I very much feel that studios should have at best a 10 year window to make whatever sales before the masters should be copied to public archives. If the studios won't do it, then there are more than plenty of people out there that would do the job for the love of keeping old media preserved and accessible. Also bullshit when I try to go the "legal" route and find a show on one service in HD but only in SD on others. It is pretty infuriating to see that in some cases I can only get like season 2 of something on say Vudu for example, but season 1 is seemingly exclusive to Amazon. And one is in HD and the other is only SD.
I am on the belief that once I buy something, let's say Spiderman No Way Home, on streaming services, I am entitled to download it offline from anywhere for my own Jellyfin.
No one, or even biggest corp, can change my view.
Downloading stuff like this for personal use is in fact perfectly legal in many countries
Nobody with enough money has sued... Yet...
I mean, you can "buy" stuff in Amazon Prime Video off service. Unlike Netflix or other platforms, they will let you "buy or rent" streaming movies, which is the same as finding the movie on the Amazon storefront and buying the digital copy instead of a physical copy.
Now, does that mean they won't yank it? Not really. A digital license is a license, not a purchase. Is the word "buy" or "own" inaccurate? I'm hoping not, because like the Sony thing showed, platforms are desperate to not have the courts improvise what rights they owe the buyers on digital purchases.
I'm still buying my movies in 4K BluRay, though. And working on ripping all of them for streaming at home, now that I finally have the space.
A digital license is a license, not a purchase.
Stop repeating copyright cartel propaganda.
That sounds more like what class action lawsuit is supposed to be for.
Ross Scott of Accursed Farms is planning a lawsuit for something similar https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-crew/servers-shutdown-lawsuit
I just do the morally correct thing. Buy it, then pirate it so I really do own it forever. Inconvenient from a data storage perspective but the only simple solution I have on hand.
Or don't buy it, then pirate it.
Depends on what it is. I'll freeboot full priced games by well known companies that I don't want to support but smaller games from studios trying their heart out? I'm a sucker for chucking money at them.
Wouldn't call that piracy.
100%. That's a backup.
Sometimes I do what I call "time travelling" where I pirate first with the intention to buy later when it's cheaper.
I do that too but I call it a "forced demo"
Because they control the FTC and any other regulatory agencies. It's called regulatory capture. The only other way they can be held accountable is through the pay to play court system which is biased towards them because they can drag it out until the other party gives up.
This is the answer.
All fed regulatory agencies are captured at this point.
You just can't see the microscopic "for" in "OWN IT ^for NOW"
this is why i still buy cds and dvds
Yep. I still like owning Blu-ray’s for this reason. When I tell people I have a Blu-ray collection they make fun of me.
I definitely do not value having lifetime access to 99.999% of the media I consume enough to have to deal with hoarding physical copies.
So you refund me if you take it away?
"I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it further"
Not that I'd actually want to own any DCU movie, but yeah, that's just patently false.
🥸 well you see, you own a digital license to watch the movie so long as we have it available, have you read our terms of agreement--
Agreed that this is scummy marketing, though. The only real way to own media (legally) anymore is through physical copies, and even then maybe there's some provision that makes a DVD illegal due to license shenanigans... but no cop's gonna bust down your door for owning an illegal DVD of Aquaman.
