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?
I feel like an outsider on these debates. I totally agree we should be able to own forever.
In my case I find there is so much new TV and movies I rarely go back to re-watch shows or movies so owning them isn’t on my radar. It’s a challenge just to watch a whole series I find.
I’m wondering how often do people beyond kids re-watch movies and TV shows? Kids seem to be able to rewatch the same movies several times a day…
For me it’s preparing for future nostalgia, I want to be able to just "have it’ to look back on. It may sound strange to some people I guess but I can’t properly get “invested” in a show/movie/game without the knowledge that I’ll be able to rewatch it again, maybe at some point when I’m in my 80s and feel nostalgic about it. It’s a major barrier to my enjoyment in the present. It’s like why people take photos of things. 99% of what I would torrent are things I have access to now, that I would happily pay through the nose for if I could just own it in a DRM-free format.
I rewatch movies ALL THE TIME, especially during Christmas and Halloween. There are a couple of other films that I put on consistently as a comfort watch (The Guest, Dread, etc.). I have watched entirely though all 3 Stargate Series at least 3 times each. My wife and I often rewatch Psych and The office. I have watched through all of the Star Trek series at least 4 times each. I am on my 5th or 6th time through Futurama. I have watched Fringe twice at least. Twice through X-Files. I don’t know how many times I have watched Firefly. My wife has been through Friends at least 5 times. And she has watched Murder She Wrote (the entire series) probably 30 times. I have watched Columbo in its entirely no less than 3 times.
While I am the same way with games, there should be a clear distinction between owning something and access to something with clearly defined limitations.
Some shows I watch once, but I am rewatching Futurama for probably the 20th time or so. Sometimes it is nice to revisit familiar things.
I’m wondering how often do people beyond kids re-watch movies and TV shows?
You should become acquainted with The Office fandom. Some of them have it on permanent repeat.
Wait, you mean I don’t actually own Jason Momoa now? What about my kingdom, do I still own that? (It’s hard to tell, since it’s lost.)
You merely own a license that allows you to access Jason Momoa.
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
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.
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.
Anything holds in court when you have more money than several small nations combined.
Or “watch”. That way they don’t have to make it obvious that their customers won’t own it but still don’t straight up lie.
The people who can afford to fight this kind of court case have no interest in doing so.
We should start a gofundme then to get the funds needed to afford such a fight. Id throw in 100$. Might take a few thousands of me, and a lot of time, but it should start somewhere.
Or join the EFF which already does great work in this area. They don’t always succeed, but I doubt a GoFundMe could do better.
Don’t you have customer protection NGOs in the USA?
I can’t believe you were able to ask that with a straight face
to give an actual answer instead of jaded teenage bullshit:
Don’t expect any actual info from people around here. something tells me the comment section isn’t up for a fair analysis at where these things have failed us. it’ll be all soapbox, zero fact. I’m pretty baffled at how many people just told you No
Of that list, BBB is apparently more of a business extortion scene. But consumer reports seems cool, I’ve used their site a few times.
The rest, I’ve never heard of
We have corporate protections in the USA.
I don’t even know what that stands for
NGO is non government organization
The consumer isn’t the last rung on the ladder. We’re on the fuckin ground. With footprints on our faces and medical bills to prove it.
removed by mod
try google
Why would they endanger the ability to sell the same movie dozens of times over?
Who tf is going to buy Aquaman 2 dozens of times? What’s wrong with them?😭
ok that makes me sick
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”)
Which is exactly like physical media. You never owned it you bought a license to view it on that particular disk. But it also had limitations put on it.
It’s not “exactly like” physical media. The license portion is a similar concept. But the difference is that the variables that determine whether I can keep watching the content whenever I want, in perpetuity, lie solely with me as the person who physically possesses the media. The corporation from which I purchased the license can’t unilaterally decide to revoke my access to the content.
If license ownership rights with digital custodians were as good as they are with discs, there would be no conversation happening right now. The difference now is that custodians will occasionally snap a finger and disappear your stuff, and you have no recourse.
deleted by creator
“rent a license for 15 years”
Oh, whoops. I read it as them explicitly telling me to pirate it. Yeah of course they aren’t going to let you actually own it. That doesn’t come close to making sense.
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 🤓
Refunding the sale price is still theft.
What did you lose in this theft?
You got back everything you paid and you still got to enjoy the movie.
The way I see it you benefited from this transaction.
A dollar today is worth more than a dollar in 1 year
Yes but the movie will have lost its value over time so you could probably find it for much cheaper.
But you’ve already spent your dollar… That only proves my point. Both the dollar and the media both decrease in value, for separate reasons.
It’s called the Discounted Value Of Money in Finance.
As in, the future money returned by an investment is converted to today’s money by using a risk free investment - say US Treasuries - as baseline to convert that future money to today’s money.
Maybe an example helps: if I have a $1000 investment I can make today that returns $1050 in 2 years time, the way to check if it’s worth it and by how much is by comparing it with how much would $1000 put today in, for example, US Treasuries return in 2 years time and if it’s more than $1050 then that investment isn’t worth it because I could make more from those $1000 in 2 years with no risk.
You could say that the baseline, no-risk, future value of today’s money is how much it will turn into by that future time if I kept it in a risk free investment from today until then, and you can also do the operation in reverse, Discounting the Value Of Money in the Future to a Present Day value.
PS: There is also another concept which applies here which is to do with having your money lock-into something called Opportunity Cost. Simply it’s trying to have a value for the investment opportunities you might miss if you money is already lock-in for a certain time frame in something. Back in the example above, if those $1000 are put in our example investment for 2 years, they can’t be used if a better opportunity appear in the meanwhile.
This actually applies to regular people all the time: for example, if you don’t have time to play a game, why buy it now if you can instead buy it later when you do have time to play it, it might be cheaper and you even have the option to change your mind in the meanwhile and get something else you enjoy more with that game. Mind you, this is maybe an example more suitable for the Patient Gamers forum than for the Piracy one ;)
deleted by creator
You lost the ability to enjoy it forever, and that’s what the language at time of sale said you’d have.
You buy it again then?
It’s probably much cheaper by the time it’s deleted anyways.
You’ve gone from asking what was lost to insisting that they took it in order to give us a discount.
No, I just think that everyone here is over reacting like always
So you moved the goalposts?
Refunding the sale price is still theft.
What did you lose in this theft?
Is there really nothing in your home right now you would be sad if someone took and just gave you the money you paid for it?
Even a digital copy of a movie may not be so easy to replace on the services I have access to.
Stores are not allowed to go home to people and take back the stuff they sold, even if they refund the price. Neither should a company that advertise “pay this price and own this movie” rather than “pay this price and rent it for an indeterminate time”.
Is there really nothing in your home right now you would be sad if someone took and just gave you the money you paid for it?
Well of course, but I wouldn’t care much about movies or media. Especially if the media is readily available elsewhere which is always the case for movies you “bought” digitally.
Especially if the media is readily available elsewhere which is always the case for movies you “bought” digitally.
Except when they aren’t. Especially if located outside the US, it is far from obvious that a given movie is available through another service.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAWHAHAHAHAHQHAHAHAHAHAHQHQHhahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahah………………
“Feel like you own it NOW”
“…for NOW”
They didn’t cut Amber out, I won’t be watching it at any price including free.
They didn’t cut her out, but her role is greatly diminished compared to the first movie. It’s really a buddy comedy between Aquaman and Orm where one is almost literally a fish out of water
Still has her in it though. After what Hollywood did to Johnny based on hearsay and seeing them barely do half that when it was demonstrated that she’s a crazy liar, nope.
You can save up to 77% if you buy now.
you can never save by buying something. I save if I don’t buy.
You’re playing a semantics game though. The assumption is that you ARE going to buy the thing. Society has decided that “save 77%” is a valid shortening of “save 77% compared to buying at full price” because that is the most logical comparison to make. Yes. “Save 77% compared to not buying the item” makes no sense, but that is clearly not what is being implied here. Implying and inferring things is a normal part of human communication, and refusing to accept the implications doesn’t make you clever.
That said, I agree that “pay 77% less to not even actually own the product that we will eventually lose the license to” is dumb.
That is what they pretend it is, but sales like that are intended to be FOMO to convince people who were reluctant to buy ‘just in case because it is so cheap’. Like not even someone who balks at the price, just someone doesn’t want to risk changing their mind later.
That is how companies entice people to buy things they were not even interested in before the sale.
For sure. An implied sense of false urgency is the point of sales in general. There’s all sorts of psychology around manipulating people into buying things.
I just think that acting as if there is some sort of grammatical error or gap in logic is missing the fact that in language, people imply things. And an ad implying “you’re going to buy this, so you better do it while costs less” isn’t too hard to follow.
The assumption is that you ARE going to buy the thing.
Sure, but that’s the assumption created by the advertisement. If you’re debating buying something, and the ad says “You can save up to 77% if you buy now” then suddenly the presupposition is (sneakily!) introduced that you are going to buy it. In that case, identifying and rejecting the presupposition is the smarter thing to do.
It’s smarter, but only if you don’t really care about getting the thing since not buying means you don’t get the thing
Yes. And that is the point of ads. And we can agree that it’s not great to manipulate consumers.
but “you can never save by buying something. I save if I don’t buy” is NOT identifying the presupposition, and therefore not rejecting the presupposition. It’s just stating that the original statement has a logical flaw. Which it doesn’t have any logical flaws if you accept that language has subtext.
“I dislike that the implication is that you can only compare to buying at full price, when there are other options like not buying (which saves 100% vs full price)” identifies the presupposition and rejects it.
Statement 1: “You can save up to 77% if you buy now”
Statement 2: “you can never save by buying something. I save if I don’t buy”
Statement 2a: “save 77% compared to buying at full price”
Statement 2b: “Save 77% compared to not buying the item”
Statement 2’s first use of “save” suggests that of Statement 2a, and Statement 2’s second use of “save” suggests that of Statement 2b. Statement 1’s use of the word “save” corresponds to that of Statement 2a. I don’t think we disagree on the semantics, though we may be phrasing things a little differently.
You’re playing a semantics game though. The assumption is that you ARE going to buy the thing. Society has decided that “save 77%” is a valid shortening of “save 77% compared to buying at full price” because that is the most logical comparison to make. Yes. “Save 77% compared to not buying the item” makes no sense, but that is clearly not what is being implied here. Implying and inferring things is a normal part of human communication, and refusing to accept the implications doesn’t make you clever.
I agree that the original poster was playing a semantics game; indeed, I interpret Statement 2 as follows.
Interpetation A: Statement 2 is a witticism that plays off the contextual use of the word “save”. Specifically, the humorous force of Statement 2 is in its reinterpretation of the word “save”. Statement 2 is saying: “Statement 1’s use of the word ‘save’ is that of Statement 2a, but I choose to reinterpret Statement 1’s use of the word ‘save’ to that of Statement 2b!”
Comment 1: The reinterpretation performed by Statement 2 is mildly subversive in that it rejects Statement 1’s interpretation of ‘save’.
Comment 2: The reinterpretation performed by Statement 2 is mildly empowering in that it performs a reinterpetation of ‘save’ to the benefit of the writer.
You say “refusing to accept the implications doesn’t make you clever”. There’s a bit of an aesthetic judgment to the “doesn’t make you clever” part which we can agree to disagree on. But Interpretation A does not depend on “refusing to accept the implications”. Rather, it accepts the implication, and subverts it to provide the effects described in Comments 1 and 2.
Note: The original post that started this discussion seems to be unavailable apparently because the original poster (I am not the original poster) deleted it. I believe we are just discussing among ourselves.
It should be noted that Amazon was among the first to prove that buying isn’t owning a few years ago when a book that many people had legally bought was automatically scrubbed feom devices. The title had been removed from the catalog, and any kindle which held it automatically removed it without the users concent, and they were given amazon store credit in return.
This would be illegal in most EU countries.
This SHOULD be illegal in EVERY country.
The full context of the quote is, while yes, the prospect of the complete elimination of private property is terrifying for some people (even socialists), the idea is that in the future, you won’t need to own anything and your life will be simpler and theoretically more fulfilling if we’re not preoccupied with owning things and keeping up with the Joneses.
but you’ll notice that it doesn’t say “we’ll own nothing and be happy”. they’re not willing to take the medicine they prescribe for you. they’re part of the class that’s destined to own everything.
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 had an Oculus account. I bought games for Oculus. Facebook forced me to link my Facebook account to it. Facebook removed Oculus accounts so it was all under Facebook accounts. Facebook deleted my account. I no longer owned the games I bought. I deleted the Facebook app.
I thought the facebook account requirement was removed
It may have been, but I wouldn’t know. I’m never going back on that platform again. They stole a couple hundred dollars worth of games from me.
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 looked at Movies Anywhere and
- US only
- Movies bought only (no series, does not support rentals)
- sounds like they offer a unified interface to multiple providers - but you’re saying it unlocks the bought movies on the other platforms? - if it’s only a frontend it’d not help in keeping access
I did fail to mention it is US only (my bad in that). Though it could get expanded if it is popular enough and it can be pointed to as “reducing piracy.” But international laws being complicated from nation to nation is also an issue, or at least something they might say. I haven’t been out of the country since setting it up, so I am curious if I would need a VPN to access my licensed stuff. Maybe would work for folks that have made accounts in the past with VPN? Idk.
It does work with some very limited sets of shows. But like I said, they aren’t really about that and the shows tend to be from studios like HBO. But not helpful for most anything other than movies.
It is a unified interface, but if I buy a MA labeled movie from say Vudu. It will also show-up in my iTunes, Microsoft, YouTube/Google Movies, Amazon, and of course MA. They have some additional connected services via Direct TV and Verizon, but I don’t use those. But the point is that if I get it on one of the services I connected, they become available on all of them. Even when the UltraViolet service went down, I didn’t lose the things I had bought. Though I think that Disney must have bought their connections and the UV stuff was migrated. Though I am not sure of those details. Either way it didn’t lead to me losing anything.
It also does require that you periodically sign back into their site to re-connect each provider similar to how you have to sign back into other sites. But again, I at no point have lost access to what was in my account if I haven’t signed in to re-verify. It isn’t as cut and dry as having the physical discs or a torrented copy on a NAS. But it is still worth knowing about if you have “legit” copies. I really wish that there were a way to link my Plex account and be able to watch them in the same front-end as my local stuff though. But no way that is going to happen unless Plex completely stops supporting the Plex Server and works out deals to use APIs of stuff like Vudu, Amazon, iTunes, etc…
🥸 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.
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
Even if you don’t pay for it?
Depends on the country
They said buy, which means paying.
In Switzerland it technically is legal. Only hosting for others is illegal.
If only they allowed you to do it easily…
Well it is easy.
It’s just they don’t allow it.
One out of two ain’t bad.
Laughs in screen record
In some countries making a private copy isn’t legal if copy protections are in place. Even if those copy protections are useless.
When you click “buy” or “purchase” on a video on Amazon Prime, you’re not actually coming into ownership of that movie of TV show. Instead, you’re merely paying for a limited license for “on-demand viewing over an indefinite period of time", as warned in the very small print on the company’s website.
they can get away apparently because of this very small print.
yarr-har-fiddle-dee-dee/ if you love to sail the seeries of tubes
plenty of room on that ad to replace ‘own it now’ with ‘rent it until the studio deletes it or we quit paying for its rights’
yes. kinda sucks.
I believe there was a couple of attempts that tried to complain but got dismissed because the defense mentioned the complainant didn’t read the TOS.
Own the temporary license.
So it’s basically an NFT.
Don’t NFTs have more protections? If I sell you an NFT, I can’t unilaterally revoke it.
Ok you’re right. This is worse than NFTs.
Worse than an NFT because you’ll always have access to NFTs as long as you have access to your wallet, whether it’s worth anything or not.
“I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it further”
