Amazon Prime Video is able to remove a video from your library after purchase.
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
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
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.
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.
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...
Checking one out is fun, too. It feels like an event vs. just watching anything out of boredom
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
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
I'm surprised what is, though. One of the movies I checked out was Knives Out.
I’m about ready to do the same.
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.
"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
Sauce: http://web.archive.org/web/20120307035423/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem
On top of what's already been said about technological literacy and security, I'd like to add that I WANT to support the artists who make things I like but the companies selling their works tend to ruin the experience by trying to squeeze every dime out of you.
For the last decade or so, digital storefronts have provided a pretty good experience, but it's starting to get a lot worse as the old companies go public and become beholden to shareholders, or as new companies enter the arena and split up what was once available all in one place.
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.
let me introduce you to usenet trackers
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
smart move. make sure to back up everything on multiple hard drives.
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.
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.
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.
Or just buy the disk
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.
Same energy as, "I didn't shoot that man, the gun I was holding did!"
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
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.
They should be refunding in cash though, not store credit.
Then they should refund you. Even in the event that's the case, still makes me not want to risk it.
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.
Ditto. I'm Canadian so our media libraries typically have sucked compared to the US. Back 10-12 years or so ago I remember Netflix making comments online about looking into blocking Canadians from using vpn's, DNS services and the like to access American Netflix.
Like..motherfuckers I've been pirating since June 1, 1999 when Napster came out, and several years earlier if we wanna count a wall of VHS recordings as piracy. I cancelled that day, and set up Plex. Now a decade+ and 30TB later I haven't had to worry about it for a second, and neither have over a dozen of my close friends lol.
Yep. I'm 100Tb deep into that rabbit hole.
Can you save your steam games on a hard drive? I'm really interested in this possibility,I would also like to preserve some of my games on MY hardware
Yes you can install steam games on an external drive or seperate partition, but it still requires you to sign into account to access them, and if you try to say play the same game on two different computers at the same time with the same account steam will force you to close one of them. I recommend buying games off GOG when you can since they are truly DRM free you may not get cloud saves or workshop content but you aren't being bossed around by steam either.
You don't really have to be connected to steam because they actually allow DRM-free games iirc. Obviously it depends on the game.
I love my Plex library. I use YouTube Music because I think it's more convenient and fair for the price. It's one service for basically all music. Movies and shows, on the other hand, is an absolute cluster fuck. I'm perfectly happy to pay for good content, but I'm not okay with paying for 10 services where the content keeps shifting and disappearing and being retroactively edited so as not to offend "modern audiences."
Valve turned me from gaming pirate to VERY solid customer. Spotify turned me from music pirate to customer. I am patiently waiting for the visual media industry to pull their heads out of their asses.
If you have enough technical computer knowledge to put commands in a terminal I highly recommend you check out and install Youtube-dlp (yt-dlp) I am an avid hoarder of music on my mp3 player and love being able to download a whole playlist from youtube (and other sites like bandcamp, soundcloud, vimeo, ect) and have it auto convert to music format and optionally number them in playlist order, with one command. It works with windows and most operating systems.
The best part is that theres no illegal activity involved. It uses the same technologies and rules a web browser uses to download and stream stuff normally.
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.
I'd love to watch some movies for the first time again.
It's funny you say that because I have some neurological conditions that give me memory issues and about every 3 years sometimes shows are almost new to me. I might remember some moments, but a lot of it is just gone. I rewatch Stargate SG1, all 10 seasons like it's almost new every three years and it's really the silver lining to a crappy problem.
You can watch them for the first time again on the new streaming app which yanked the movies from the previous streaming app (and your brain) for only $29.99/mo!
From DRM-equipped browsers to DRM-equipped brains. Now, that's progress...
There are quite a few things I'd love to experience for the first time again.
I don't buy digital copies when I have a choice. Easy for movies but Steam kinda fucked that up for games. I was never more disappointed than the time I bought a game box and all it contained was a code to get a digital copy. Haven't had a problem with Steam..... yet. It's only a matter of time though.
Oh to play Outer Wilds for the first time again.
But as good as that sounds in theory, I would rather keep my memories untampered. Brains are really bad at actually remembering things as they were at the time when they were remembered, any tampering might as well go unnoticed. I would rather not experience my favorite media for the first time again and also not risk getting my entire personality rewritten because of a bug or even worse - deliberate action.
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.
"Sorry we fucked you over on your previous purchase, but here, as compensation we're giving you the illustrious privilege of spending money with us again!"
They removed books from your Kindle in the past. Who could have seen this comming?
Literally 1984
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!
Gift cards and store credit are such a kick to the balls. Unless they let you buy shit AT COST then they're literally not out anything.
They gave the guy £10.99 in credit for a £5.99 film, so they're probably taking some sort of loss.
I buy DVDs for this reason now
Dvds won't last years either unless you copy them over
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.
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.
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.
Companies LOVE punishing their customers while the pirates sail on without trouble
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.
I love standard definition video
Dvd is not better. I hate it when I pay for the content and I'm still forced to see ads for something I purchased. You might own the media, but there are other downsides as well. They actually both suck!
You mean like a DVD movie has a trailer on it for the movie itself? Not sure what you're saying here.
Can't have shit in the cloud
You don't own what is in
the cloudanother person's computerThe only thing that surprises me is that anyone is surprised by this. If you buy a physical book from anywhere, you own it. If you "buy" the rigth to play a movie (or read a book) from amazon, you own nothing. Usually they don't show that so clearly but that's the reality.
If companies won't sell you a DRM-free copy of media, just pirate it. It's the only way to actually own it.
Before YouTube Music, I purchased quite a lot of albums on Google Play Music. Paying normal CD prices, no renting.
My Google Play Music library consisted of 60% uploaded and 40% purchased music.
After my Music Library migration to YouTube was done ( this sentence alone, is enough doom and sorrow for any music lover ), my uploaded music was merged with my purchases and both were put under quarantine within the "uploads" tab.
No way to recognize purchases or even the possibility of downloading any of my uploaded or purchased music.
The money I paid for the music?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Edit: i bought 2 - 4 albums every month on average. For a few years. Sometimes more. So, it's not like they only got a few bucks ... At least from my pov. lol
I learned this by accident trying to clean up my 95% full gdrive account. If you request a full dump of all your Google data (search how to do it, the option is buried), then they'll take a few days and then send you a link to download tons of zip files. These contain everything you've put on google, but you can narrow it down before export. One of the things in my data dump? Every piece of music I'd ever uploaded to Google music!
I forgot all about them! Recovered tons of old mp3s! However, huge caveat, they untagged every file and throw them all into a huge mess of numerically named files. I had to use library management tools to look up and retag all the files. Huge pain in the ass, but nice to have my old music back!
Yeah, they made this very clear when they sent all the notifications about shutting down Google Play Music. I went through the same thing ahead of the shutdown.
Fuck YouTube music, Google Play music was amazing and they had no reason to switch. Some of my stuff wasn't even available on ytm so even though I didn't buy a lot of music I'd literally spent like a week at one point uploading over 20,000 songs. It was one of the coolest features. Ytm is so ass
Physical media for the win
Is this a shock? If you want to own your media you need to have the raw video. This can be though getting DRM-free media or buying DVDs and blurays. (Be careful of bluray has they are infected with DRM)
Speaking of, would anyone happen to know where one may buy digital movies/tv shows without DRM? Up to now I've opted to simply buy DVDs/blurays and rip them, but if there's a more straightforward digital option without DRM, I'd be all for that.
Here is a list: https://www.defectivebydesign.org/guide/video
Its not long but its something
Digital goods are just not physical goods, you don't really own them - which also mean you can't really steal them.
Yep that's why I don't understand all those people with Kindles and huge Amazon book collections. They can literally take it all away on a whim. If I want to own a book I'll purchase a physical copy, but ebooks? High seas for me. I feel like a 'free' ePub in my Dropbox is safer than whatever proprietary format in my Amazon account.
Edit - getting mostly replies defending ebooks and stating disadvantages of physical books (also, yeah I know books "aren't for showing of" lol, like that's the only reason for owning a book).
Just want to add I have both and get their pros and cons. I read tons on my ereader too, just not a Kindle because fuck that closed system, it's not for me (for reasons mentioned above).
Some people just want to read books and not collect them. My dad is 73 years old and reads tons of books on his Kindle. It's not like he's going to read them a second time, so why bother with a print copy and huge library space?
He also needs the accessibility features because ilhevis legally blind and cannot read print books.
Previously was an audible subscriber for years. Paused it sometimes when I didn't know what to use credits on. A couple months ago I got an email that my credits would be expiring in a couple months if I didn't use them... Used all 5 that day to buy the rest of a series I was slowly getting through, canceled my sub and figured out how to host it myself on audiobookshelf. Haven't used audible since.
It's convenient, that what most people care about. But yeah, convincing people that making a copy of something you arguably own is a crime - that is some next level gaslighting on societal level.
Well I use the nodrm plugin and Calibre to strip the drm from all my Amazon ebook purchases and back them up both on my own machine and to the cloud storage provider I use. Only reason I buy Amazon's ebooks is because they are normally the easiest to strip of drm, and very few ebook authors don't use drm.
Physical books are certainly nice, but id rather save the space/weight for things I cherish instead of things I merely own so I can consume their content whenever I'd like. Books are for reading, not for showing off.
I always thought the idea of IP laws punishing you for copying a file based on lost revenue, when you never would have bought it in the first place anyway, to be a bit off. You only got it because it was free.
blu-rays are often as cheap or cheaper than "digital copies", and ripping them to my NAS is pretty trivial these days thanks to makemkv.
the best part is, uncle jeff cannot legally break into your house and take back the disc just because of some petty rights issue.
I recently bought a 4k Blu-ray player. My brother asked me if I also bought a fax machine because streaming is "where it's at" . Nah My 4k player cleans up DVDs really nice where streaming has artifacts and banding. Not only is it true ownership but a better quality.
If people suddenly collectively understood they're paying for basically nothing it would probably spur large-scale revolution.
I think people already understand this, they just don't care as long as their devices play the media they want to consume.
The only people I see that care about this issue strongly are people who fully understand how this works and prefer archival-friendly formats such as physical media or DRM-free downloads.
That Amazon refunded nearly 2x the purchase price for the inconvenience seems more than fair, imho. I looked it up, and it covers a purchase of a Blu-Ray of the same movie on Amazon, so you'd have a path to complete resolution here.
I hate plenty of Amazon's practices, but I really don't see any level of controversy here.
Isn't this a tacit acknowledgement that either the consumer may not have understood that their purchase was revocable, or that there is not a true 'complete resolution', since the path to complete resolution is a physical replacement (and not persistent access to a digital distribution)?
People who purchase content through a digital distributor are doing so under the common understanding of "purchase" as an exchange of money for personal ownership. The word for the arrangement described here then isn't purchase, it's lease.
If Amazon or any other digital distributor actually offered purchases of digital copies of content, people would obviously choose it over access to a title that can be revoked at any time. The legality of the practice isn't really what is in question here, it's the suggestion that this is an informed consumer choice that is. And even if the consumer was fully cognizant of the temporary nature of the arrangement, they still do not have a true alternative for digital copies.
I mean yeah, that sucks, but them refunding you is absolutely the right move. I don't think they did that the last times Amazon removed something from their catalogue.
Edit: I missed this wasn't a refund, just store credit
Don't confuse store credit with a refund. You're not getting your cash back. You can only spend it on Amazon which is a dick move, not the right move.
Refunding is like the minimum. Otherwise it is basically theft.
And they didn't even refund in actual money, with which I assume the video was paid with. But instead it is a gift card that can only be used in their store.
The customer was happy with their purchase, so if the seller wanted it back they should bend over backwards to make the customer happy again after taking it.
And people wonder why piracy is on the rise ...
well, at least they paid you back for it. that's actually quite respectable of them. and if they didn't, it would have been a class action lawsuit, so kind of a moot point all around. You got your money back. I recommend using it to obtain several tiers of backup hard drives and make sure you have two physical copies of every piece of media you feel is not replaceable. Because some day, you won't be able to replace it. the corporate dream is nobody owns anything, you just have to jack into their "stream" and consume whatever they feed you. the funniest thing is, people are already getting a head start on that dystopian future. they're doing it to themselves, by actually paying for shitty streaming services. You really shouldn't do that, as it only emboldens them.
They absolutely didn't get their money back. They got a voucher. They got scrip.
Getting money back would be getting money back.
I agree it's still better than walking away empty handed, but let's not pretend that got their money back.
If you need an account to play it, it's just not yours to enjoy it.
Same with games. One day a purchase vanished off my PlayStation library, and I must have deleted the email cause it was an old purchase. I still have the save files but they won't refund or give me back the game cause it vanished off their records
I'm quite happy that at least steam doesn't wipe (as to my knowledge) a game from their servers, yes they can remove it from the store front, but if you bought it you can still download and play it
You know where Amazon (and any other company for that matter) can't pull content from? My Jellyfin instance. Yo-ho-ho!
Welcome to the Pay Per View information economy. Amazon, and others, have been pulling this shit for years.
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.
You're really over complicating the whole piracy thing. There's websites easier to navigate than netflix to stream anything you want, often with better resolution. It takes about twenty minutes of research to find a VPN that would meet your needs. I would recommend anyone on the internet to use one for everything anyways.
put uBlock origin on firefox or your preferred browser (optional but takes you 2 minutes and will make your experience way better)
install qBittorrent
use a good P2P VPN like ProtonVPN (optional, costs money)
go to 1337x.to or TPB
search for your movie or series
get the magnet link (on 1337x click the torrents thing then the last, green, button) and open it on qBittorrent
wait for it to finish downloading
stay seeding at least until you get a >=2 share ratio or for some time (optional but very appreciated)
That's it, that's all you need to pirate a movie or a series, it's so easy a moron could do it blindfolded while juggling balls on one hand and giving a foot job to George W Bush
Pirating is really quite easy these days. With docker containers its literally just running a script or commandline and it does everything for you.
The hardest part about plex, for instance, is actually having a computer to run it.
I would say the second hardest part is actually just going to pirate bay and copying the torrent links to your torrent provider.
I mean yeah you're not wrong, but physical media doesn't last forever either. Vinyl is pretty good, but pretty much every form of digital storage will slowly waste away without some dedicated upkeep effort. Unless you're really willing to put in some serious effort maintaining a personal digital archive it kind of is just better to treat everything as a lease.
The only thing that really worries me are stuff like family photos and videos, and other important digital documents. Yeah I can print some of them, and I should do that more, but on the other hand they're probably safer from destruction with Google than they are in my house. Both would be best though.
If (the royal) you can't figure out Plex et al, then you pay the normie tax and deal with the corporations dictating your media consumption, and pay them out the ass for the privilege.
No such thing as having your cake and eating it too, but if you learn how to bake then you can eat all the cake you want.
Just wanted to mention that torrentgalaxy.to, rutracker.org, 1337x.to and therarbg.com won't ever remove anything from your library.
and setting up a jellyfin server gives you a netflix-like interface. FOSS at its finest
Jellyfin is so good. I'm travelling internationally right now and it makes me smile that I can stream stuff from my home at any time. I'm gonna miss Netflix DVD because I would get Blu-rays and rip them to my media library
How did you set the whole thing up? Do you have a step by step that idiots can follow?
I set it up a while ago but if you search for guides I'm 100% sure you'll find them. I think jellyfin has their own guides. It gets a bit more complicated when you want to access it from outside your network. I use ddns (dynamic DNS) because my ISP doesn't give static addresses to residential customers. This allows me to have a hostname of xxxx.ddns.net. then I had to set up port forwarding on my router so that the jellyfin traffic is allowed through to my desktop that that is running jellyfin and has all my media. Internally on your LAN you'll need to have a static IP for your desktop too.
is that a continuation of the original or a new project?
They have removed a lot of empty disk space from my library :(
Being a pirate is alright to be
It's been well documented that Amazon does this with eBooks all the time. A publisher pulled a copy of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE from Amazon over a contract dispute in the earlier days of the Kindle. So Amazon reached out and delete that copy from all Amazon customers who bought it through the Amazon Store.
Students who were annotating it for class lost all their notes. Amazon refunded the cost of the eBook. But those notes are toast.
It's what prompts me to copy non-DRM'ed files to my Kindle and read them without Amazon having a record of purchase. It won't stop them from logging in remotely and wiping the device, but I have backups and programs to convert them to non-Kindle format for another eReader.
Wait, since when do they give a "refund" for content that is no longer available? A while ago I bought the first season of Fringe (knowing that I don't actually own it), but I got nothing, when it was pulled. Do I need to ask explicitly for that gift card?
Looks like it's a UK user. So likely due to consumer protections there. I'm guessing you are American where there are less?
I hate this but refunding with a little extra seems fair enough. Would be better if you had the option to refund to your card though.
Yeah I somewhat agree, I'm torn though. It's probably outside Amazon's control. Licencing issue or something? But I'd be demand a refund to me account, not a gift card.
While it's shitty that they can take it away like that, at least they seem to have paid back the cost plus an extra gift card. Idk if cost was refunded or added to the account as credit, but either are at least something.
It says it's a gift card balance equivalent to the purchase price that's automatically applied on their next purchase (+an extra £5 to sweeten the deal), so not really the same thing as the cash they originally paid for it.
For extra irony https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703
This is why I continue to buy high quality Blu-ray releases for films I love. Physical media is something you own. I generally rip it and put it on a Plex server for easy access and it reduces wear and tear on my precious criterion discs.
What software do you use to rip the DVDs?
A lot of people use handbrake, or a combo makemkv and handbrake.
I mean you got paid 5 quid to rent a movie. I'd call that a win...
Okay, so go buy a gas station sandwich for that money. You weren't paid anything, you got "store credit in gift cards". Which means you paid them for a movie, they took your money, then later they "gave you back" something that doesn't have any value at all to them - they can "print" store credit anytime they want, and those small amounts won't matter in the long run.
can use it to rent another movie
Infinite movie rental loop
Which isn't "I got paid for renting a movie"
When you buy something from a streaming service you're only buying the right to stream it, nothing more.
You can't compare it to owning physical media because there are ongoing costs involved for Amazon to host it and ever changing contracts with media companies outlining what they are allowed to host.
I really hope it's a surprise to no one. Having full control over the access to any media is the core principle behind any online-only, DRM-based service.
I've always felt uncomfortable about "buying" digital media that stays on a cloud. Vudu (Walmart) offers this as well as Google I believe. Renting digitally bothered me less because the notion that it's temporary is inherent to renting. The above situation solidifies my concerns. I've "bought" some media this way but I will never do so again.
Cancelled Netflix as of last month as well and I won't be keeping up any streaming subscriptions long term. One off month subscriptions will serve in a pinch as I travel but with the games corporations play with blocking use between locations, they've rendered themselves as having no purpose.
Yeah, people need to realize they're not owning the media, simply "renting it".
Are you a fellow janitor?
Because I know a whole bunch of janitors that recently watched that movie.
Upvoted out of curiosity
Lol.
There might be something else going on, because my YouTube feed was recently bombarded with a bunch of clips of Superman 2 Richard donner cut.
I pay for Spotify and YouTube music. If I really like an album I'll still go to Bandcamp if I can and grab the flac files. If it's not there I'll just BitTorrent/Soulseek/yt-dlp it.
If I don't have raw media files, I don't actually own it.
I know I'm an old fart but I still like having mp3s and dvds (or the equivalent files) because I don't trust the streamers to not stop making something available or jerk the rug out from under me. Like you said, once you have the data you own it.
People around me don't understand why I spent 4 hours learning which UHD drive to buy and how to flash it to take back MY media.
So.... Which drive did you buy? Asking for a friend.
Just sail the high seas. If you've bought it already then jesus won't be mad.
I bought this one, but it's easier if you can find an older one that doesn't have encrypted firmware as mentioned in this evil dirty guide I totally don't recommend :) https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=19634
Wow I didn't mind purchasing content before... My pirate hat is now officially glued to my fucking head.
This is why I still rip Blu-rays for my home media server,
I moved from UK to France, and lost access to my movies on Prime.
It's because the licence holder of the movie decided Amazon can't show it anymore. Perhaps they were asking Amazon to pay a high fee and it wants worth it.
As a rule you only own something if you have a physical copy in your hands. Which is why I wish they would still make CD's.
I'd much rather have a physical CD for music because not only can I use it in the car, I can rip a FLAC and have it on all my devices.
Er, you can still buy cds. Discogs, local B&Ms, Bandcamp, the artists own website. Source: I still buy em.
I use bandcamp, not quite a cd, but you get access to a flac or mp3 depending on your choice and apparently they do a decent job looking after their artists. They even have days where all money goes to the artist
I go out of my way to actually purchase music/books if they're offered in a DRM free way. If I can't download whatever I just paid for without needing some crappy App to use it, I don't own it. I don't pay for things I don't own.
While on the topic for people interested in Light Novels J-Novel Club offers DRM free Epub files of their books (username is embedded into the file but that's hardly DRM), plus their subscription/pricing model is very fair imo. Can definitely recommend.
Couldn't you do the reverse and burn the digital music you buy onto blank CDs?
I guess I should be working on breaking the DRM and backing up my audible books on a regular basis...
there is an app for that. it's called free audible or something.
All this kinda bullshit does is justify why piracy isn't the worst option out there, if you ask me. In fact, this kinda bullshit cements why it's a better option in my mind.
I've legitimately lost hundreds of dollars of content without even getting refunded; So consider yourself lucky! To get a gift card instead; ANYWAY I now pirate all my things minus idk I guess my video game consumption but even then I had the luxury to pirate shit I bought on steam just to have it again. In the end of the day though you don't really own anything unless you own it physical and even then its still illegal to use makemkv to dump your blurays and dvds onto your nas and watch them outside of the physical media they were put on. But I guess thats just living in the future for ya!
"effort to compensate" my ass.
I call it fraud.
Hoe is this compensation if you dont get money back? Theyll still make money off you because you can only spend it in amazon
Companies want to make it so you don't own anything just rent the use of it.
It's just a long term licence to watch it
Strictly speaking, so is a DVD or other physical media, per the EULA they flash across the screen for half a second before starting the show and therefore makes it legally binding.
The big difference is that nobody's running around trying to claw back DVDs. Whereas, with Amazon, its trivially easy to just click "Remove License" from the repository and snatch back an arbitrary number of licenses. Purely a question of convenience.
Of course, if you have a... uh... backup copy stored conveniently on a PLEX server, then they can't claw that back either.
You will own nothing and be happy about it!
I mean... yeah? That's one of the main reasons why you want to have your own Plex (or, Jellyfin) library, that way you control what media you have and it can't be taken away from you at any second.
This is the answer. The secondbthey banned episodes of IASIP I spun up an Emby server and downloaded the whole series.
Now I have every episode of every show I love, and tons of movies and music all in one place. It's basically like having a personal Spotify/Netflix combo.
I couldn't imagine paying money to "rent" a video file
This is the way it has been working for quite some time with all digital distribution networks.
The shocking thing here is that you get compensation, Apple e.g. has never done that, in the past they did not even send a notification if they deleted something from your library.
Yes, the whole concept is scummy. But Amazon at least tries as best as they can in the context of licenses from third parties...
Ultra Violet closed down and offered a short window where you could transfer your movies over to another service.
I never got the email and when I tried to sign in, thousands of dollars of media was gone.
After over a decade of giving up on physical media, I'm now back to collecting it primarily because of this major issue with streaming services.
shocked Pikachu face
Did customers really forgot the ebook 1984 event or assume they'd "just" get "better"?
Honestly kind of deserved, don't buy from Amazon! Wondering why? Read Chokepoint capitalism but TLDR their business model is monopoly and monopsony. They're terrible.
Of course they’re able to.
They’re a digital platform. Unless something is DRM free, this shit is likely to happen at some point.
Google is just as bad, trying to do the right thing and support the movies we love, and now Google has locked all my movies so only I can watch them. I can still load them on the telly in the lounge, but I specifically bought them to be shared amongst my kids, who now can't see them. They make it impossible to follow their rules. It's become impossible to buy digital. I'm tempted to go apple and try Apple store, for all my purchases. I just want it all in one place and to actually own what I purchase. They're talking out both sides of their mouth. On one hand they lambast you for taking a copy of something, but if you buy a copy they can take it away at any time and you don't own it. There is no contract where money is traded for a product.
If you want to obtain the video content legally, go bargain bin hunting for DVDs and VHS tapes. If you want it illegally there's a ton of actual children's programming that's officially posted to YouTube now,
yt-dlpto download a copy. I did that in preparation for a multi-day car trip and on nights where the hotel WiFi won't play ball and I just need to zombify the kids for a bit, I have a small selection of shows they can watch.Of course, most digital goods providers are set up this way. You're not buying a copy of a thing, you're buying a limited perpetual license. If you want to actually own a copy of a digital good, pirate it.
you've never purchased anything digitally, from any of these motherfuckers, just rented them for sometimes what turns out to be an extremely long time, and sometimes not. step right up folks, one born ever minute.
Blu-ray FTW
This is why I stopped buying movies on this platform, on anything else, if something gets delisted but I bought it before that happened I get to keep it...
Amazon Prime done fucked up
That's bullshit
What they did to me was:
When I went to watch a movie I had purchased, a message came up saying that it was no longer available on Amazon prime and to watch it I had to download an app and watch it on another service. The app was free and I didn't have to pay anything to watch it but I want to say there was something else wrong with it, like the service was free or it had commercials or something. Not sure.
This is why if they don't let me download it, then I don't pay for it.
download in a non proprietary format
Spotify let's you download, but that doesn't mean shit, because its unplayable without a premium subscription
This is why I don't 'buy' media from online services. You are depending on:
Eff all that stuff ....
As I said(probably) in another post, you own nothing since you sing up and accept the terms. They can change the terms when ever they want, they can remove videos when ever they want or the rights for a movie or series end. If you want to have something, find a provider that sells and lets download files, so you don't lose what you buy.
At least in Germany there are Limits to t&c's. To put it simply, there musn't be any ugly surprises.
The merchant retroactively cancelling your purchases would be an ugly surprise of that nature.
That’s why I stopped using streaming services and started robbing studio executives and using the proceeds to buy physical media from the dude parked in front of the FastTax.
This is why I don't buy digital media (other than games).
I pay the fee to stream but I won't give them more money to "buy" their movies or "rent" them.
How is this a surprise? How is anybody surprised? Why is this news?
Not a surprise, but still disgusting when we actually see it happen.
Another reason physical > digital.
Donner cut is still right there on my shelf. If Amazon wants to take it, they can TRY. Good luck!
Richard Stallman already talked about this Here is the article: https://stallman.org/amazon.html
Welcome to the age where you own nothing! If it's digital and not accessible offline, on your own device, you can lose it on a company's whim. This is one of the major arguments for piracy: it's often the only way you can "own" digital content.
Ianal, but I assume they might get into trouble for the use of words like buy and own, if this is how they treat the purchases.
And they reimburse you that money with a gift card? Is that even legal?
Basically in store credit, and it's totally legal
This is why I use xManager for free Spotify Premium, YouTube Revanced for free YouTube premium, and torrent everything else that I need. I'm so tired of subscriptions for literally everything.
Arrrr maty!
Google video can also remove movies and tv shows from your library. I believe they give you 5 years before they claim its okay to remove them.
They've done this previously with books, music, and other media purchased through them and they aren't alone. Apple and Google have also been on the hook for this. This usually happens when they lose the right to sell some form of media (they make deals with record labels, artists, movie companies, publishers etc to license the right to sell that media for the purpose of streaming). You're buying the right to stream/enjoy that media indefinitely (until they lose the rights to sell it to you and then they have to remove it from their library of streamable media). You can absolutely download that media and keep it somewhere not connected to the internet. But they can absolutely remove it.
The one exception used to be Google Play Music. Their terms were such that you actually owned the music you purchased. I assume that's part of the reason they sunsetted that app and their music selling altogether. The cost was too high vs the number of paid users.
Apple has also done this and it was a big deal because they didn't notify customers at all at the time.
Edit: I'm gonna add that this licensing agreement is similar to the one made when we bought physical media from retail stores. They have the right to sell it until their licensing agreement runs out. When or if it runs out they send back their remaining inventory and proof that they sold everything else. And the only reason a company isn't requesting that media back in this event is because it's cost prohibitive for them.
Further proof why digital goods are bullshit, and are never really yours, despite spending full price on it.
Yarrr, that be some bullshit matey!
"your" library
This has been known for a while now.
At least you got a refund. I lost count of the number of apps and games I purchased from the Google Play store that got unlisted / removed and I didn't get any refunds. Granted it's not Google removing the app but it's the developers unlisting it for whatever reason. A small heads up before said unlisting would have been nice.
Not a refund, a gift credit.
It's Google's store policy that apps cannot be removed from a users library. If you purchase it, and the app later is delisted, head to manage apps. List apps not installed. I have stuff there from when I had a device that ran Android 5. I've never had an app disappear. They just eventually reach "can't be installed on this device."