We are contacting you regarding a past Prime Video purchase(s). The below content is no longer playable on Prime Video.
In an effort to compensate you for the inconvenience, we have applied a £5.99 Amazon Gift Card to your account. The Gift Card amount is equal to the amount you paid for the Prime Video purchase(s). To apologize for the inconvenience, we’ve also added an Amazon Gift Certificate of £5 to your account. Your Gift Card balance will be automatically applied to your next eligible order. You can view your balance and usage history in Your Account here:
Companies issuing refunds in the form of gift cards is just straight-up insulting
And it may be illegal in some states to not offer the customer an actual refund.
£5.99 refund. Quite clearly not in the US.
Sssh… Everyone lives in default country
Default country is best country.
Take me down to %DEFAULT_CITY where the grass is %DEFAULT_COLOR and the girls are %DESCRIPTIVE_ADJECTIVE
TAKE… ME… %DEFAULT_LOCATION
Sweet home %DEFAULT_CITY, where the skies are so %DEFAULT_COLOUR
Take me down to null island where the grass is black and the girls are null
Religious figure bless default country.
Default religious figure bless default country
Death to default country and its default god! Alternative god reigns supreme!
I know they probably actually meant the States of the US, but…
They did say states with a lowercase s. ‘States’ = regions within a country, ‘states’ = can mean countries. Technically they aren’t defaulting to the US.
£ is from a country that does not have states
Like the person you’re replying to said, some people use state and country as synonyms sometimes
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Yup the term state to refer to a nation or sovereign territory is an American thing, for sure dude.
By suggesting that English is only spoken widely in the US, you yourself are engaging in US-Defaultism! Checkmate, citizen of !
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country = states != States
Technically no. Greenland is a country but not a state. It has a sovereign government but is not represented directly internationally. It is part of the Kingdom of Denmark which is a state but not a country. Then there is Denmark proper which is also a country but not a state.
I had no idea about any of this, thanks! Never thought a thread about prime video would teach me world geography lol
Amazon is from a country that does.
But it IS a state. Sorry if you’re not a native English speaker but just because your vocabulary is lacking doesn’t mean they are wrong.
A gift card is not a refund.
TBH I would expect stronger consumer protections in the UK…but I definitely don’t know about this type of refund specifically.
The UK, for all its problems, does typically have some of the best consumer protections in the world. I can see Amazon being forced to overturn this if there’s enough uproar (which there might not be tbf, seeing as they gave extra credit as compo).
Many countries other than the US are comprised of a federation of states. And also those that aren’t are generally considered nation states or sovereign states, which are still definitively states. The United States of America do not have an exclusive right on statehood.
Plus even though it may be implied that the original replier intended the context to mean the United States of America… it is a valid response with further implication that one should check their local jurisdiction’s laws if they were so inclined to do so.
Wait a minute, the US doesn’t have a blanket consumer law federally?
This sounds like a pain.
Federally this is against Australian Consumer Law. Didn’t offer the service you paid for? Better believe that’s a refund.
Our government is trash, you see.
And is that amount of money enough to replace the item that’s been taken away? Like if the DVD were widely available at the same price at the time of the digital purchase, but you got the Amazon “purchase” instead (for convenience?) then what are the odds that you can still get the DVD for that price today?
Remember, streaming only has a business model as long as it has a better user experience than piracy. That’s why iTunes took off in the era of Napster. When a streaming service’s user experience drops below that of digging up pirate treasure off a shitty ad-ridden torrent site, that service is not long for the world.
I cancelled Netflix and prime and went back to piracy a few months ago, it’s been a nice blast from the past
In addition to piracy, I’ve also been checking out DVDs from my local library. It’s kinda fun.
Surprised myself because I half expected I’d miss the convenience of Netflix, but I haven’t missed it even a little.
“Was I a good streaming platform?”
“No.”
The benefit of the library DVD is it takes away the “What will we watch tonight?” conversation. You’re going to watch the DVD.
It just switches the question to the library: “What will we borrow tonight?”
Source: experience from my Blockbuster days.
We used to rent movies every weekend when I was a kid, and we supported our local video rental store instead of Blockbuster. It was so much fun to decide what to rent! The staff there always knew so much about movies too, and we’d follow their recs often. We watched a bunch of classics and silent films that there’s no way would get visibility on streaming libraries today. I wish I’d kept a journal of all the movies we watched, I remember almost no titles now.
lol I remember those days. Standing there trying to decide what movie to rent. Good times…
Yes but you have that discussion somewhere else. By the time your ready to be watching something you have made that choice
Checking one out is fun, too. It feels like an event vs. just watching anything out of boredom
Shows are harder to come by though
That depends on your library
You can also buy used DVDs. Just got a stack of studio Gibili movies for a fraction of the price they cost when they were new. Still haven’t watched all of them, but some I have watched more than once.
It was nice when you could actually watch almost everything on it. Once everyone else started taking peices of the pie it just feels like cable with more hoops now
Every time I open a streaming service now, the things I want to watch are locked into an extra subscription. I generally end up just walking away rather than watching anything, and when I do dig around and find some thing else that is available on “my tier,” it absolutely wasn’t worth it.
Forget even piracy, I’m just not watching anything anymore. When streaming makes my chore list look more attractive, they’ve definitely fucked up.
The only reason I keep Netflix is kids.
We don’t really watch it otherwise.
Even my in-laws are now pirates using hacked amazon fire sticks that are being hawked around their retirement community.
My mother in law is like “I get every streaming service and channel for 1 dollar a day, isn’t that great”.
I’m all “if it’s simple and works for you yeah, absolutely. “
We’re about to cancel Netflix despite my kids’ protests and start rotating. My husband just wanted to watch the new Castlevania and then we’re cutting and running — for a while at least. It’ll end up on the rotation again at some point.
If streaming services ever make us sign up for more than a month at a time, we’ll be hard-pressed to keep doing it the “right” way.
This is a great time to teach your kids Internet piracy and internet safety at the same time! Don’t click the pictures of the nice lady and you get to watch your show lol
“These hot babes are most certainly NOT in your area.”
I think this is an excellent notion and allows you to better shape their foray into the subject matter. They will be the cool kids, but you’d have to instill the “no talking about Usenet” type of rule. No boasting.
I have a mini PC running Linux that connects to my TV via hdmi so we can watch anything!
I have a mini-pc running a plex vm. And all the TVs are Rokus. So can watch anything, including live broadcast tv. And the roku is so simple kids can operate it, and do.
I have a Roku too, which I mainly use for work trips.
What I did at home was get one of those cheap rechargeable wireless keyboards with trackpad for like $10 so that we can browse for what we want to watch from the sofa.
I would change that to:
“Was I a good streaming platform?”
“Yes, during your first year. Then all companies went greedy monkey savage and ruined it”
The thing that sucks is that a lot of new stuff isn’t on physical media at all.
It can be:
Step #1: download it (🏴☠️)
Step #2: burn it
Step #3: enjoy owning a more lasting copy for almost free
Well, yeah, but we were talking about going to the library.
I’m surprised what is, though. One of the movies I checked out was Knives Out.
I’m about ready to do the same.
I bought a raspberry pi, a SATA SSD and usb adaptor, and installed Plex now I’m the new netflix for my family, they send me movies and shows they want to watch and I put them on there, then they connect to my server and watch
It’s been really good
Netflix will also be raising prices soon. Again.
Netflix recently stopped shipping discs, that was all I kept them around for anymore…
I’m just always spooked by viruses and shit.
Use yts.mx, if you use any other site, try checking comments first if they have them, if not you can use torrent file viewer to check the download is actually a video file before downloading
Lastly you could try anti virus, but don’t rely on it to do your job for you, they can catch most but not always all viruses
You can’t get a virus from a video or music file. Viruses have to be executable.
Paying 0.99 per song was how a better user experience? Music piracy was pretty big till Spotify. No service was even close before.
Being able to easily purchase a single song from a reputable source in the comfort of your home instead of going out to physically buy an entire album and then rip it to your computer was a better user experience, yes. Most users are technologically illiterate, and trying to pirate stuff just lead to them getting viruses.
Because you were guaranteed that what you were downloading was what it said it was, and was high quality, and would have the correct tagging and album art and all of that.
It’s been shown repeatedly that a large part of piracy isn’t about cost, it’s about convenience. It was easier to pay $0.99 and get what you wanted when you wanted it, than download 8 files off of Napster and hope that one of them was actually a decent bitrate and was the song the title said it was.
Back when eMule was a thing, it was super common to spend an entire day downloading a 700MB video file at 5kb/s, only for it to be Fight Club instead of whatever you thought you were downloading. It’s the same thing with music.
It’s been shown repeatedly that a large part of piracy isn’t about cost, it’s about convenience. It was easier to pay $0.99 and get what you wanted when you wanted it, than download 8 files off of Napster and hope that one of them was actually a decent bitrate and was the song the title said it was.
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
-Gabe Newell
Music piracy was big till spotify apprared. iTunes had a limited selection, music remixes, small band stuff were not available. iTunes only had what Sony and some other music distributors supplied. I understand what you are saying but still, piracy was there and iTunes was not primary source. Spotify came and now music piracy is basically limited to high quality audio albums which is a niche market.
Or, with Napster, the person you’re downloading from signs off when you’re 40% done with the download.
Kazaa/Gnutella era: it says porn on the filename, but there’s no previews and it turns out to be CSAM. Thanks for the trauma, now I’m gonna run
shred…
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If you have the local MP3 file you can do just about anything you want with it. Use it in just about any device. Transfer it anywhere. And never lose it.
I have Mp3s that are over 20-30 years old and have never needed to get them again.
And yes I go to piracy almost immediately if I can’t get a local file. Just because of how many different ways i’ve used them over the years.
shitty ad-ridden torrent site
let me introduce you to usenet trackers
That was my first thought too. A seedbox, Sonarr & Radarr and a Usenet site and I’ve got everything I need for $15/month.
What is seedbix, sonarr &radarr?
A seedbox is access to a server that someone else runs, and they typically have a policy of not asking too many questions, not keeping too many logs, and offer assistance in keeping things secure. It can be used for any number of things. I use mine to host bit torrent files and to run applications such as Sonarr & Radarr. These are open source apps that manage TV shows and movies.
Meanwhile *arr got off (user experience) and Netflix & co. are ad-ridden too.
I don’t even have to torrent, I have like 3 sites I can just go to, search for content on, and stream video from like a shittier netflix. Adblock keeps them relatively sane, and I sometimes have to try different server sources, but otherwise it works fine.
If you can’t save it, its not yours. Sail the seas.
Or buy it on physical media. More and more studios are pulling their disks and it is getting harder to find. If you have a disk, it can never be recalled.
Ever since Disney announced they are also going to ban account sharing, I’ve been going to thrift stores and grabbing any DVDs my children like or might like. I’ve gotten quite a few classics so far for less than the cost of one month of Disney+. I almost bought a VCR because the VHS collection at thrift stores here is huge and they are so cheap, but rewinding sucks.
I don’t think you realize how unwatchably blurry VHS is. I can’t believe we ever watched those things now.
DVD is still a bit of a nuisance because of aspect ratios and they’re a little blurry because SD, but VHS is just garbage.
VHS can look as good as DVD (or better in cases where the DVD was poorly mastered), but there aren’t many good VCRs out there anymore. A well maintained VHS tape and VCR can give you a great capture. https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-restore/1567-vcr-buying-guide.html
I still have my CRT and old game consoles and use them sometimes. The blurriness with the games doesn’t bother me, but maybe a movie would be worse. I am constantly forgetting my glasses though so I’m kind of used to blurry. I still might grab a VCR if I see one, though, just to show my children what it was like when I was a kid. Could be fun.
^^eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
The ability to hear this comment is dependent on the reader’s age in a rather interesting way.
Nothing better than a 15625hz sawtooth tone.
smart move. make sure to back up everything on multiple hard drives.
I’m the worst at backups…
Maybe look into the cost of transferring those vhs to dvds/memory sticks. It might be worth the cost if you buy enough VHS tapes.
I haven’t looked into it, but doesn blu ray need some kind of connectivity to manage its cryptography?
The encryption keys are stored on the disk I believe. I use MakeMKV and load the files into my media center software (Jellyfin). That works for DVDs, Blu-rays and 4K disks just fine. Every once in a while if I get a 4K early, the keys haven’t been updated yet and I have to give it a day (usually less) before it rips.
technically you dont own the disks either bro have you never read the back of a DvD box
I mean, yeah, but so what? We are talking about an article where Amazon pulled a video someone purchased down so they can never watch it again. I have never heard of a company recalling physical media and demanding it’s return.
But it can just stop playing… I have a handful of discs, still in cases, look pristine, no scratches, and yet can’t be read by either my computer or DVD player. No recourse. It’s a separate problem of course, but similar.
Disks can degrade or be manufactured badly. If they never play you can usually get a warranty replacement. Old disks can degrade, but I have many 20+ year old DVDs that play fine.
This is a non-story.
“Who knew $EvilCo would fuck me over for a sub-$10 profit?!”
I never stopped stealing media, and I never will.
You can’t steal media unless you steal the medium.
Copyright infringement is a crime you might commit but by its draconian length, most cases are the public taking back what’s rightfully ours.
Superman II (any version) should be in the public domain.
you can’t steal media, it’s still there but just copied over.
Kinda crazy that pirates have more ownership over media than people buying it 😂
“Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem.”
Gabe Newell, 2011
Sucks for online games though…
Unless you can physically hold an offline device containing everything you need to replay it you don’t own it.
According to my local (Dutch) laws, I don’t need to own a physical copy. A YouTube purchase is sufficient for me to legally download a copy over p2p, I’m just not allowed to upload it.
We’re still being charged “thuiskopie” taxes on storage devices, so I’m still allowed to make copies for personal use, either via the app I bought it on, or as an MKV found on torrent sites.
This is banking on someone else providing the data you want when you want it. Things on torrent sites do disappear especially if they are more niche media.
Yeah, but I usually buy it somewhere and then torrent it. Except for YouTube, most UIs aren’t all that dashing (or just slow, like Prime).
Or just buy the disk
Amazon’s Music service, while it takes some hoops to jump through, actually does let you download music. Though I don’t know if that’s a general policy or on a per music/per artist basis.
I get the feeling they’re trying to get rid of that feature, whenever I try to download something there I have to jump through an increasing number of hoops to get the download option to appear.
I’m fairly certain it’s been the same number of hoops to get there. Same with actually trying to buy it specifically.
But yeah, its so sequestered away that honestly, I’d probably just outright pirate it if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s readily available on release and I’m familiar with the methodology of it.
and save outside of their app as a non DRM’ed file because otherwise its extra hoops for the same problem
Everything should allow you to download what you purchased. The fact that the music industry has pushed streaming so goddamn hard is because they’re mad that people can still download MP3s.
And above all of this, let’s not forget that a major negotiating point of the Hollywood strike was getting residuals per stream, something that never existed when people actually had their own media. It’s greed on every single side in that corrupt, hell town and I’m at the point where I don’t even watch TV or movies any more, not only because it all sucks, but because of this bullshit. The greed and the corruption needs to be punished.
Why is owning sth you might watch once every 10 years so important? I don’t care about it, as long as it isn’t some niche content or stuff I watch every year.
Because paying actual money for something that can be taken away with the changing of ever shifting IP ownership and steaming rights is a giant waste of money.
I disagree. Like I said, I don’t need to ‘own’ something I rarely use. I’m fine just borrowing it for a couple of days as well.
It’s easy to scoff at this whole “You will own nothing, and you will be happy” phrase, but it’s really gone too far already.
I’m really tired of hearing “you don’t own it you own a license to it” like it’s some revelation for people complaining. We’re aware that the system has been constructed to benefit media companies at the expense of consumers.
To be honest; I never really bought the argument anyway. From a legal standpoint I don’t give half a shit. From a layman’s standpoint it’s bullshit. Nowhere do they use terms like “rent” or “lease”. They explicitly use terms like “buy” and it’s not until the fine print that the term license even comes up.
They know they’re pissing on you and telling you it’s raining and the goobers doing their legwork by repeating the sentence like they just came up with it annoy me to no end.
This sounds worse than communism. At least communism said “everyone will own everything”.
We’ve been screaming about it for 20+ years now and no one seems to be listening.
I’m hoping that someone will tie digital ownership rights to a block chain sooner or later and offer me movies, music, games and books that I can actually own resale rights to - but as publishers are already drinking from the rent-seeking model teat where every single license is a new sale I’m not terribly optimistic about that particular future.
I think it makes sense in some areas. For example private ownership of cars is completely unsustainable in the literal sense of the word.
But when it comes to digital goods, clearly it’s all for the profit of the media cartels. There’s no justification.
You don’t own the video file. You own access to their video file, which they also don’t own, they only own the right to distribute it. If their distribution contract ends and doesn’t gets renewed, then they can’t let you access the file. At least they refunded you. This system is one of the issues with the ongoing writers and actors strikes. Amazon can decide to stop making a video available, which cuts all dividends revenues to actors and writers. So having a video available for you to watch costs money to Amazon (or Netflix or Max…) but not enough content makes users unsubscribe, so they ride that thin line for maximized revenue. This means that older movies that aren’t blockbusters get dropped in favor of new content. Now new content doesn’t means good content, remember, it needs to be as cheap as possible. Aaand this is why steaming companies are spiraling down and everything is going to shit. Filmmaking is an art form turned into an industry. But art isn’t about maximized profit, it’s about art first. But you can’t make that art without millions of dollars and that requires the art to take a step back to maximize profit, but not too far back. It’s a really big issue in the film and entertainment industry.
— I’m an IATSE local 600 camera operator.
We’ve taken away this thing you’ve bought, here’s a gift card so you can give us that money back again later.
strictly speaking it’s
here’s a gift card so
you can give us that money back againwe can keep your money but give you something for free later.Gift cards and store credit = “we keep your money.”
The reality is that they didn’t give the customer back anything. It’s the usual corporate sales speak.
“50% off” and “Save $10” aren’t actually real either. $10 doesn’t appear in customer’s bank accounts after a purchase and customers often have no concept of what the item originally cost before it was marked up and brought to market by the the corporation. It’s sales and marketing psychological games that many people can’t see through. $9.99/$59.99 is cheaper than $10.00/$60.00 true and people somehow feel better buying the former versus the latter as though that penny isn’t only a penny and they didn’t give the corporation the 99.99% of the money they wanted.
Explain this to my wife please… “I saved so much money today!” Plunks down several bags of crap that will end up being thrown away eventually…
I didn’t understand this for a long time myself. And I can’t rightly remember when I first learned about this sort of thing. But once I did, information just seemed to flow to me from multiple directions. Maybe look up classic tactics around sales and marketing, then deceptive, yet typical, psychological sales and marketing practices. There’s a book on credit cards I enjoyed years ago “How to Take Advantage of the People Who Are Trying to Take Advantage of You: 50 Ways to Capitalize on the System” by JSB Morse (Though long story short, avoid debt and credit cards). One video on YouTube turned me off of buying ink cartridges once I found out what they truly cost versus the exorbitant amount they sell them for. Capital rip offs.
That’s fine. Always need to purchase more storage devices.
It’s more like: we took it away and gave you a ~100% ROI by adding a $5 gift card to your “refund”. Still sucks though.
Not really. The subjective monetary value of whatever you might spend that money on is most likely going to be less than the store’s listed price. To give a more obvious (extreme) example, imagine if you got a $30 gift card to a store that sells individual grapes for $2 each. You can buy $30 worth of grapes from them, but 15 grapes are not worth $30 to any sane person. Hell, maybe you don’t even like grapes and they’re completely worthless!
It’s Amazon, dude. You may not like their business practices but it’s a fair bet they’re going to have something you want at a decent price.
It’s true that this exchange in this particular instance is a net gain for like 99.9% of the victims. Hell, most people were probably never even gonna watch the movie again anyway. However, using that to justify this practice opens the door for abuse down the line. Store credit is not an acceptable form of compensation. Imagine if you totaled someone’s car and then offered them $10k credit at a junkyard you own. It would be unacceptable! Why give large corporations an exception?
In your example you wreck someone’s car which they didn’t buy at your junkyard. It’d be to think of it like this: you own a car dealership. You wreck your clients car worth 10K. You tell them to pick any car worth 20K off of your lot. Sure, the 20K includes your profit margins, but your client still gets $10K worth of car for free.
Cars all serve the same purpose. They get you where you want to go. Some are worse than others, but they’re all kind of the same thing. Movies are all individual and unique. You can’t just take one, drop in a replacement, and call it a day. Movies are a form of artwork. I think a better analogy would be if you trashed some art that someone bought and then offered them some other art from different artist(s).
Idunno what’s going on here but I’ve got a burning curiosity as to whether this grape store has any lemonade.
I’m sad that someone down voted you because they didn’t get the reference.
Joke’s on them, I don’t even see it :D Here, have an upvote!
Unless you brought glue, in which case I’d best waddle away…
Yeah, just like with the original purchase. They made money on that too, but returned the full amount, including their margin. Amazon loses money on this compensation. They don’t sell stuff with a 10x margin.
Step 1: OP bought a video for $5.99 Step 2: he gets a refund + $5 gift card Step 3: OP can buy a video for $10.99 or whatever else he wants for $10.99
Ultimately, OP wins a $5 gift card and saw a free movie.
I get what you’re saying and I already said that 99% of people would be happy with it, but my other comment details how that form of compensation fails to cover everyone.
After they clawed back the royalties they paid on the original content, I assume (based on their practices around ebooks and audiobook).
This is news to me (but not surprising), what do you mean?
Gift card. GIFT CARD! Those bastards “refund” with gift card instead of actual money! I hope EU will haunt their asses. Big corpro hunting season is open.
Sometimes I think I made the right decision to just get a huge harddrive and download all my favorite entertainment in drm free format. Movies, music, games, books. I saw this coming a mile away a decade ago. The only thing that will really hurt me is if/when Steam inevitably goes full corporate cucks and starts going hard on the DRM locking down my library.
When brain-computer interface finally became reality, right holders and streaming companies will require you to hook in and let them wipe the memory of you watching the movie whenever they cancel your “purchase” like this.
They removed books from your Kindle in the past. Who could have seen this comming?
facepalm
Yeah seriously. The day news of this broke, I switched my book library over to Calibre+DeDRM and put my device in airplane mode.
Check out Libby by overdrive. E-book convenience and supports your local library.
Came to make this exact point.
Mofos
Return me ALL my money for that, fuck your girftcard coupon shit! That is the least you can do and still doesn’t change the fact that I can’t buy to own anything there, so why the fuck would I?
Jellyfin and torrents for the win!
Every day on the internet, a lucky 10,000 get to learn “common knowledge” for the very first time.
Like everyone said 50 times, yar har be pirate, all that.
Or, buy hard copy, which is refusing to completely die because of this shit, right here.
BUT, you have to make sure the data is on the hard copy and that you can access the data (play the songs, watch the movie, etc) WITHOUT internet access, that is you have to make sure the hard copy of the media is really on the damn disc, and it’s not just a glorified access key to media that will then be streamed from their servers they control. If it is then do not pay for it.
This is honestly why vinyl is still a thing, once you rip things back out of the digital realm it gets a lot harder for them to pull bullshit, they pretty much have to put the songs on the wax if they want your $40, and they do, oh boy they do they want that money bad.
Piracy is always a bigger pain in the ass than internet techies act like. No, I don’t want to buy a Plex server and learn how to use it and learn how to make my own VPN and make sure the VPN doesn’t just report my activity to 7 Eyes or whatever that things called and and and and, and results like “my movie got unbought” are also unacceptable.
Yes, we know, there are “special” websites that you can just surf to and it’s like a janky Netflix that “just works” so long as you already know the name of the thing you intend to watch, otherwise it’s just a blank search bar. Also, you cannot tell other people about the website or the website gets taken down. Nothing is more useful than a website that you absolutely can’t tell people about, wow, what a problem solver that is.
“I want to watch a movie” is a very “This activity must offer zero friction, I will only accept push button get movie” kind of activity so, yeah. “Be pirate” is not that useful, it’s just the internet’s go-to answer, they always speak loudly for the tiny minority in this place.
What we’re actually doing is drastically limiting our spending on any of this type of thing, and never, ever pay money to “own” something digital. That era is over. It sucks, but it’s yet another shitty thing that would take bullets to change, and since it’s not worth bullets it’s not changing.
Honestly I doesn’t even take bullets but if you’re going to build the kind of political movement it would take to create change then all that work would be absolutely wasted on this problem while everyone eyerolls at you like you’re stupid and worthless for caring so yeah, it’s not changing.
So yeah, do not pay for digital ownership of any kind, ever. It’s only ever a lease with one-sided terms, at best. Amazon lost the contractual right to provide that movie, so you lost the right to watch it, and “buying” it meant buying a license to watch it on their terms, the end. Don’t pay for it.
Yeah that’ll happen for anything streamed and licensed.
If you want to own something, you need to own it physically. Buy an actual disk. People won’t and I’ll be surprised if they are still making blurays at all in ten years but that’s the only way you can actually buy media now.
I’m actually still kinda surprised about this. My understanding is that the licenses from rights holders to streaming platforms generally included an indefinite right to stream to people who’d purchased content, even if they may not offer it for continued purchase or as part of the general included streaming library.
That’s definitely how it works with games on Steam or GOG.
Unless you bought after-market keys like on G2A and it turned out to be stolen/keygen’d. Valve will remove your game if your key is found to be stolen (whether you knew it or not). I imagine you know this but just felt it bore mentioning.
Good point, yes, that’s an exception. A justified one if you’d ask me but I guess YMMV.
You can read the subscriber agreement here but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case with Steam.
I have dozens of games in my library that are no longer available to purchase. Often these are games with expired music copyright, though some just removed the music in an update instead. I don’t remember a single withdrawn game that would get removed from my library.
My point was it’s likely within Steam’s rights and terms and conditions. If they needed to or wanted to they likely could remove a game from someone’s library but they likely know the overwhelming backlash that they would face.
For example games like Rimworld and Disco Elysium were, at a time, banned in Australia. I don’t believe they were removed from online storefronts but if there was ever enough legal pressure maybe something could have happened. There is a Steam Support page for regional restrictions but it doesn’t mention anything in regards to accessing games that have become banned in your country, contained malicious code, or somehow were infringing on copyrighted materials.
I think Codename: Gordon and Order of War were removed. I could be mistaken though.
On a sidenote I imagine removing Steam’s DRM using a Steam emulator is in some ways against their terms and conditions. Even though there are some DRM free games on Steam like the original Fallout if I am remembering correctly.
Edit: In regards to my last point I think this is the section from the subscriber agreement that may involve Steam emulators
“… host or provide matchmaking services for the Content and Services or emulate or redirect the communication protocols used by Valve in any network feature of the Content and Services, through protocol emulation, tunneling, modifying or adding components to the Content and Services …”
Yes, I believe you’re correct in terms of them being within their rights to do so. I’m just not aware of them ever actually pulling this trigger, but they technically can.
Yeah. Reminds of when they changes the user agreement to prevent class action lawsuits.
Unless there’s a major shift at Valve I couldn’t see it happening anytime soon. My fear would be once it happens once that it would become more common.
iTunes as well. There are a few things I can still stream that are no longer sold.
Streaming isn’t the same as downloading. It has different rights and with movies it’s especially complicated. The rights to a movie can literally be so complicated that no one knows who owns it.
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If you want to own something, you need to own it physically.
Minor sticking point: it’s still a “limited license.” You don’t really “own” anything and if that physical copy is damaged or destroyed you’re just SOL.
Streaming, digital, physical, everything has a drawback! Backups are your friend.
Yes, you don’t own the copyright. You do own the physical disk, and you also have a right to backup a personal copy.
It’s not a sticking point, it’s a feature. Take care of your shit just like all your other shit. No one says it’s a sticking point to say that a kettle you buy could break, that’s just normal part of ownership of a thing.
Feature, sticking point, call it what you want. I’m just saying there’s nuance to it.
Wow. This is why owning DVDs is better. And if you can’t buy, download via torrents. Imagine these bastards rolling up to your home and reclaiming a movie you physically purchased. We gave them too much power. Time to withdraw it. Convenience is not worth this shit. Get uncomfortable and get your entertainment away from these streamers who don’t give customers what they paid for.
DVD rental stores could surely make a comeback given these new developments. Libraries still loan movies as well. Remember, Barnes & Noble didn’t run all independent bookstores out of business. And after Amazon savaged Barnes & Noble, Amazon Books suddenly came into existence (2015 - 2022). Greed driven corporations aren’t the answer.
Companies LOVE punishing their customers while the pirates sail on without trouble
