Apple Can Delete Purchased Movies From Your Library Without Telling You (theoutline.com) 326
Casey Johnston, writing for The Outline: When you buy a movie on iTunes, it's yours forever, until such a time as when Apple maybe loses the rights to distribute it, and then it will disappear from your library without a trace. This is what happened to Anders G. da Silva, who goes by @drandersgs on Twitter, and who tweeted about losing three movies bought on the iTunes Store.
When da Silva wrote to Apple to complain about the missing movies, Apple wrote back to him that "the content provider has removed these movies from the Canadian Store. Hence, these movies are not available in the Canada iTunes Store at this time." For his trouble in notifying Apple that it had disappeared three of his ostensible belongings for incredibly dubious legal reasons, Apple offered da Silva not even a refund, but two credits for renting a movie on the iTunes Store "priced up to $5.99 USD." After he argued that he was not in the market for rentals and would just like the movies he purchased, please, Apple tried to appease him with two more rental credits.
When da Silva wrote to Apple to complain about the missing movies, Apple wrote back to him that "the content provider has removed these movies from the Canadian Store. Hence, these movies are not available in the Canada iTunes Store at this time." For his trouble in notifying Apple that it had disappeared three of his ostensible belongings for incredibly dubious legal reasons, Apple offered da Silva not even a refund, but two credits for renting a movie on the iTunes Store "priced up to $5.99 USD." After he argued that he was not in the market for rentals and would just like the movies he purchased, please, Apple tried to appease him with two more rental credits.
Never Buy Apple (Score:5, Informative)
Never buy Apple unless you are okay with being a slave to their dictatorial policies. Please support Linux.
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the "victim's" fault for not understanding what he was doing, this was obvious from day one. But people argue how much better and easier it is than old fashioned discs. And they will continue to "buy" into these pay per view streaming services.
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
If however you aim to build a library, physical discs or download-to-own content unencumbered by DRM are the only way to go. Everything else is just paying full price for rentals.
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:4, Informative)
I completely agree, but I also think this summary is being a bit unfair. Apple didn't reach into his hard drive to delete his local copies. They simply pulled the listing from their store, meaning that new downloads and streaming are no longer possible.
It's the same practice they've had across all their services for years. When a developer pulls an app from the app store, the app's users get to keep their local copies, can transfer them to new devices, and can otherwise use them without issue. Same thing for films. My wife had a dozen films she had purchased in iTunes before we got married, and they all still work fine (though these days I have her buying DRM-free so that we can get them into Plex more easily). I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Apple lost the rights to distribute some of her films, but we'd likely never know.
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple didn't reach into his hard drive to delete his local copies. They simply pulled the listing from their store, meaning that new downloads and streaming are no longer possible.
Then they should pull it from the store but leave it available for download for those who've purchased it. Da Silva purchased a license for these three songs from Apple, and Apple payed the licensor their share of the sale. It shouldn't matter if Apple looses their license to distribute the product, da Silva already purchased it and Apple is now a cloud storage location for that particular file. Either that, or the license holder needs to provide a means for legally purchased media to be downloaded by those who, in good faith, purchased it.
Re: Never Buy Apple (Score:3)
If they sell you something, with the tacit understand that you will have access to it whenever you'd like, and then they remove that access, for whatever reason, they can't keep the money.
Even though
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually not true.
Actually, it is. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
While it's true that the kill switch exists, it isn't what happens when Apple loses the license to content or a developer pulls their app under normal conditions, nor is it related in any way to what happened here or what we're talking about. The only times I'm aware of the kill switch being used are for malware apps, and even then, Apple has only ever used it sparingly.
Just to highlight how loathe Apple is to use the kill switch, I once purchased an app that—if the user entered a particular sequence of buttons—turned the phone into a WiFi hotspot without the need for any jailbreaking. This was back in the time when carriers didn't allow iPhones to be used that way. Apple yanked the app from the store within a few hours of the sequence going viral, but you know what they didn't do? Delete it from my devices or prevent me from using it in any way. I used that app for years, and then it went with me to the next phone, and the one after that, until it finally stopped working years and years later after an OS update dropped compatibility for apps that hadn't been updated.
So yes, while they can kill apps (to which I never suggested otherwise), they didn't do that here, so let's stay on topic.
Re: Never Buy Apple (Score:5, Informative)
This is kind of a half-true story though. The movies are yours when you buy them from Apple, and you can download them and have them forever. They will not delete from your devices. What Apple also gives you is the ability to redownload them onto other devices and at a later time, but it has to retain the right to do so. When the movie companies change their contracts on Apple, this is what happens.
I doubt Apple wanted to lose the rights to redistribute purchased content for reasons exactly like this story, they get painted as the bad guy. This was just poor negotiations for perpetual purchases and the guy lost out since he didn't maintain his purchased copy.
What I do fault Apple for is not notifying the gentleman that his movie would be gone from online distribution a week prior to its removal so he could facilitate getting a copy offline for himself. That's what sucks about this, and is a place I think Apple could improve its process pretty easily with a simple push notification
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the "victim's" fault for not understanding what he was doing, this was obvious from day one.
Not at all. This is unequivocally Apple's fault for describing it as a "purchase" instead of as a "rental". If Apple didn't secure a license to the content for effectively "forever" (such as a 99-year license) before "selling" the content to the user, then they made the sale in poor faith. Their activity was in fact fraud.
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That's the model now.
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I've purchased plenty of DVDs and Blu-ray discs from Amazon. I've yet to have an Amazon employee show up at my door to reclaim them.
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Read TFA. Had he downloaded the movies and kept the downloads, he would have been able to watch them.
What he could no longer do was obtain a new copy from the cloud storage.
Effectively, he had a license to use his downloaded copies forever.
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect that if you read the terms of service (you do read that, before you click "OK"buying anything, you are renting it, anybody who doesn't understand that needs a keeper.
Most people can't understand the ToS. They are deliberately written to be difficult to understand, and contain unnecessary verbiage to discourage people from digging into them to begin with. That's part of why we have laws governing contracts. Further, pretending that the meanings of words doesn't matter is bollocks. Apple deliberately confused customers, and the ToS doesn't change that.
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why some countries have legislation against that sort of semi-hidden clauses. Germany for instance.
Besides, if the word "Sale" is displayed prominently and Apple's option to "retract" the content is only somewhere in the small print, the two directly contradict each other. So in court, the judge would have to decide which takes precedence. Common sense might say the "sale" that was written in big letters in the ad.
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"Apple's Legal documents are written in plain English. Maybe it is YOU that needs some tutoring on the subject."
It's still 56 pages worth which is pretty excessive to "buy" a $10 movie.
Especially when I can go to the store and buy a movie, give them $10, and they give me a movie.
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You mean the TOS that they can change whenever they want? That TOS? Also, is everyone a lawyer, now? Because if not, maybe go fuck yourself with your TOS bullllshit.
Re: Never Buy Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
It doesn't matter what the terms say what apples language clearly says purchase, not rent.
It's deceptive marketing.
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Their store calls it "buy" and the price is set at a level far above the rent price: everything suggests you can buy movies. Don't blame the victim for not reading the fine print on what seems like a very ordinary consumer purchase.
It's Not About Buying vs Leasing (Score:5, Informative)
In this case, however, she bought the movies and then deleted them from her system. She was relying on Apple's service to be able to re-download them again.
These are two seperate things.
If she had kept her local copies, Apple would not have removed these items from her computer; they were, however, unable to re-supply her with copies of the movies she'd bought via their service because thye'd lost the licensing rights to distribute said movies.
Imagine a store that you buy a DVD from that also allows you to stream a copy of the same DVD from their servers. If you lose the DVD, or destroy it, you can stream the movie until they lose licensing rights. If you don't lose or destroy the DVD, you don't have to rely on this third party.
The person in the story 'destroyed their DVD' and then their streaming provider lost their distribution rights.
She relied on a third party backup. She thought this was a guaranteed service. She was wrong.
None of this, however, has anything to do with buying vs leasing/licensing/renting and companies telling you you bought something when you merely licensed or rented it (although this remains an issue in digital consumer law in any number of countries). If she'd kept her downloaded copy, she'd still have it.
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Geezuz!!!
I’ll be spending some time making sure EVERYTHING is dowloaded and snapshotted in ZFS. And then backed up.
Re:It's Not About Buying vs Leasing (Score:4, Insightful)
If thats what happened, its still a joke. People rely on the cloud to back up their stuff. Anything can happen to local storage, and the apple ecosystem is so tied to the internet.
Can you even pull an mp4 file out of itunes with this movie to properly back it up? I would guess no.
Its hard to make an analogy, as there is no real life equivalent to repositories of software. But one assumes that purchases are for life and that if they have some licensing problem, they should prevent new downloads but honour downloads for things people have paid for.
Perhaps its like leasing a car, that then gets into an accident, and you go back to the dealer to get a lease replacement only to be told there are no other cars available, but you still have to continue making lease payments for a car you no longer have access to.
Oh well, not my problem personally. As everyone else moves to streaming I maintain my local library which is triple backed up.
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Who hurt you?
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Google Play allows you to download a DRM free copy of any audiobooks you buy. Accept nothing less.
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Bought audio is generally DRM free these days, but in certain cases may put a marker in the file to indicate it was sold to you. Bought video on the other hand is still generally impacted by DRM.
The general lesson here, is anything in the cloud should be treated as volatile, unless you have a clear SLA saying otherwise.
Re:Never Buy Apple (Score:4, Informative)
Google Play is the only major service selling DRM free audiobooks. Audible/Amazon has DRM, iTunes has DRM.
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The general lesson here, is anything in the cloud should be treated as volatile, unless you have a clear SLA saying otherwise.
Yeah, then you should still treat it as volatile, but you may be able to get some money if it goes away.
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The same argument holds for any online delivery service that uses a form of DRM where they can withdraw access. Amazon got caught doing similar things. Steam hasn't been without controversy either.
Obviously these kinds of actions make a mockery of copyright-based economics and the idea that you can buy your own copy of a work to keep, and at some point I suspect consumer protection laws in civilised countries will catch up, but probably not until enough people have been personally affected in a big enough w
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If you don't have it locally then it is volatile. If a cloud provider goes under you can say goodbye to anything they stored. Remember Microsoft once had an audio store and then gave up on it, though it was a step worse because the DRM was tied to them having that service available.
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I was buying Mac's for my daily driver laptops because of the high quality hardware. Well, I had been since 2003. Sadly, while I still have a PowerBook (PPC based) that works fine and one 2011 that sorts works okay my latest laptops have all died.
The last MacBook Pro I had was especially troubling. See, I'm a hardware engineer so I figured I could fix it. Nope. What died? A proprietary power management IC that also does some copy protection crap for Apple. I can't buy it or even get a data sheet on it.
My an
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So you are saying I can buy movies from Linux? This changes everything!
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Never buy Apple unless you are okay with being a slave to their dictatorial policies. Please support Linux.
This is not unique to Apple, Hater.
If you want to be bitchy at someone, then by all means register your displeasure with the COPYRIGHT HOLDERS, which ultimately hold the keys to the kingdom.
tl;dr If you don't have physical media in your hand, it ain't really yours...
Yep (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I buy the Blu-ray and rip it to my NAS; at least on shows I want to still have access to in 20 years. (Yes, I still have VHS tapes and a VCR)
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TPB's retention policy is at least as permissive as a Blu-ray.
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Bling ding ding. The FBI piracy notice, which is required to be displayed when played from physical media, states you are legally allowed to backup the movie. This law has not changed just because the distribution changed without the notice, and so you are still legally allowed to backup any movie you purchase. Therefore, when you purchase a movie, physical or digital, you should happily backup a copy to your NAS to ensure you can still watch it should your copy become lost or otherwise rendered unplayab
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FYI - that FBI notice is not a requirement in any way; it is Hollywood trying to scare people, and that's all. The FBI created an "anti-piracy" logo with some boilerplate text and licensed it for use.
https://www.fbi.gov/investigat... [fbi.gov]
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(Yes, I still have VHS tapes and a VCR)
I let go of my VHS collection (gave it to a millenial, in fact, they are amused by this retro stuff) when my good VCR went tits up and I realized I didn't want to maintain it.
You didn't purchase movies (Score:2, Informative)
You didn't purchase movies. You entered into an agreement which allows you access to content as long as Apple feels like providing it. LOL. Silly users, thinking you "owned" movies.
Re:You didn't purchase movies (Score:5, Funny)
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With media dorks, the movies own YOU.
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Typical at the end of most commercials for movies...
"Own it today on DVD or BluRay."
Sounds to me like ownership of that particular copy that you are paying money for.
Buyer beware, but you're not buying anything? (Score:4, Insightful)
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The second biggest hindrance is of course cost. And the risk of losing the money invested does little to offset the costs. However, is this enough to kill Digital Distribution? Is the risk of losi
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How much longer are physical media formats going to be developed?
For as long as people are willing to buy discs. I suspect we may soon see a resurgence in sales as streaming wars insanity picks up stream. Oh f**k I'm not going to pay x a month for that other service just for y.. I'll just get it on disc.
It seems to me that the biggest hindrance to digital subscription and services is bandwidth.
You can always trade off time for bandwidth. If you want to watch x then plan ahead. It will be x more minutes before you can begin to watch it. Might not be ideal but it is acceptable.
With Google's push into the ISP arena upping the available bandwidth, not quite nationally, the times of distributed physical media may be nearing an end.
Google is a single mid-sized ISP. Their "influence" to be generous is the equival
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On the subject of Google, I was going on the hype of several pieces I've ready recently about Google pulling out of the ISP game because they accomplished what they intended, by creating competition in upgrading infrastru
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If the content is widespread in digital form, then we know that physical media will be available. Go to a poor neighborhood and ask people if they know where the swap meet is. They'll either rob you, or introduce you.
Re: Buyer beware, but you're not buying anything? (Score:4, Interesting)
If its on his own Plex server then the closing of the Plex Cloud Service will have zero impact on him. I purchase everything on DVD/Bluray (and some iplayer downloading as I like in the UK) and the rip it before uploading to the Plex server which lives in my house. The closing of the Plex cloud service impacts me not a bit. In my house if you want to watch a DVD or Bluray it needs putting on Plex first as I don't have a DVD or Bluray player. Also if you want to listen to a CD that will need ripping too.
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The cloud service was running transcodes and required unencrypted media in cloud storage. It never worked well and looks like was never going to be cost effective.
They still have access to the content.
They also did that with music (Score:2)
Why are you surprised?
Why buy? (Score:2)
Just another reason not to "buy" digital media. I mean, damn. Why "buy" a movie for $15 or whatever? You'd have to watch it maybe 4-5 times just to break even. How many times do you want to watch the same thing?
Never understood buying VHS tapes or DVDs...definitely don't understand clicking on "buy" at five times the price of clicking on "rent".
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Office Space? I watch it at least once a year...had the DVD, then bought the BR. Easily paid itself over and over!
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And best of all no one has come into my home and taken them.
What's your address?
Re:Why buy? (Score:5, Informative)
Spoken like someone that doesn't have kids. How many times I've heard that damn crab crone "kiss the girl.?" Thank god I drew the line at a teletubby disk collection.
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How many times I've heard that damn crab crone "kiss the girl.?" Thank god I drew the line at a teletubby disk collection.
Have you considered investing in one of these [cabelas.com]?
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Spoken like someone that doesn't have kids. How many times I've heard that damn crab crone "kiss the girl.?" Thank god I drew the line at a teletubby disk collection.
Spoken by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about.
I have kids just fine, thank you. And I'm not letting them watch Hollywood trash either.
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Oh, and be aware: when I was a teenager, there was a song on the radio that I just HATED. It was horrible. Every time it came on I immediately changed the station.
But of course I had to hear the opening notes, and it look a second or two to reach the station control knob. After a while, it became 3 or 4, and then 5 and 6. Pretty soon I actually liked the ent
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Spoken like someone that doesn't have kids. How many times I've heard that damn crab crone "kiss the girl.?" Thank god I drew the line at a teletubby disk collection.
Oh come now ... you'd have to have a heart of stone not to smile when the frogs start doing the background "la la la"s :)
Which is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
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it's nothing more than pricing based on demand
Actually, it's price based on demand after artificially enlisting most world governments to use their monopoly on violence so as to forcefully restrict offer, which would be infinite otherwose, resulting in baseline prices of $0 plus voluntary patronage. Given all of those as assumptions, then yes, demand.
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I like to call this the Disney Paradox: Disneyland keeps upping their daily price for DisneyLand, and as justification they point at all the things they've added to the park... but a careful observer will notice it is physically impossibly to enjoy EVERYTHING inside the park in one day, let alone stuff like "California Adventure"... it requires multiple days to do it, requiring multiple daily ticket costs to actually enjoy all of it. Rationally, you'd think that Disney wouldn't up the ticket price because
No "digital" (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why we don't buy anything as a download. Physical media only. I'll take the time to rip it myself. If you want to own it, you have to have something physical to maintain control of it.
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Nothing wrong with digital. Just make sure you get a download file that either doesn't have DRM or can be stripped of it, that isn't in a closed, proprietary format so you can access it with software from someone other than the seller.
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I think you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. For example, I buy my classical music from Hyperion and they offer direct MP3 download without DRM/syncing restrictions. I can burn them to CDs or copy them to my phone, and I am pretty confident I have full control over them.
Shock Horror (Score:3)
Nothing new here, please move along.
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Digital purchases do not imply that you own the content. Digital purchases are a contract that you can have access to said content for as long as the distributing company has the right to distribute it.
Companies can hide behind legal masturbation all they want. It does nothing to insulate them from real world consequences.
The moment something I paid for just vanishes for no reason and you try and invoke fine print bullshit to justify it you've lost me as a customer forever.
Re:Shock Horror (Score:4, Insightful)
The words "purchase" and "contract" are not synonyms, though.
If you don't own the content, you did not purchase the content. If you did purchase it, then you do own it. And if somebody takes it away and says otherwise, perhaps they actually stole it? That can be true even if they claim to have authorized themselves.
This is why we need consumer protection (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why we need stronger consumer protection. This isn't a weird, difficult, complex issue. In my mind, there's a very simple solution to this:
Make it illegal for digital media stores to remove access to anything that has been purchased. If, for some reason, they're unable to continue hosting it for streaming, they should be legally required to provide you with a DRM-free download.
Or else, they should be barred from using words like "buy" or "purchase". They can offer "long term rentals" with clear and explicit wording that access may be revoked at any time. Those disclaimers should not be buried in a EULA or terms of service. It should be legally required to be displayed obviously each time the long-term rental is offered.
You could debate some of the details, but the basic gist should be clear: Either provide people with what they "bought", or make it clear that they're not buying it.
Re:This is why we need consumer protection (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why we need stronger consumer protection. This isn't a weird, difficult, complex issue. In my mind, there's a very simple solution to this:
Make it illegal for digital media stores to remove access to anything that has been purchased. If, for some reason, they're unable to continue hosting it for streaming, they should be legally required to provide you with a DRM-free download.
Your post makes some fine points, but let's all remember this happened in Canada. Had it happened in the USA, there may be a legal precedent basically in favor of what you proposed. The actor Bruce Willis got into a case where he wanted to leave his legally purchased song downloads to his children in his will and he had to go to court for the right to do that. He won. The providers of his downloads basically argued that Willis had entered into what was, in effect, a rental agreement for the songs, and as such no rights were transferable upon his death. He won and established the idea that he actually paid for the songs, he owned his copies, and as such they were his property to give away to his heirs in his will if he wished.
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I say we fight fire with fire... The Screen Actors Guild needs to get involved and write it into their contracts that they must be paid for every "work of art" that hollywood destroys when they remove someone's access to a movie... since it clearly is damaging to the actors brand when a user looses access to the artist's work.;)
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This is why we need stronger consumer protection. This isn't a weird, difficult, complex issue. In my mind, there's a very simple solution to this:
Make it illegal for digital media stores to remove access to anything that has been purchased. If, for some reason, they're unable to continue hosting it for streaming, they should be legally required to provide you with a DRM-free download.
Or else, they should be barred from using words like "buy" or "purchase". They can offer "long term rentals" with clear and explicit wording that access may be revoked at any time. Those disclaimers should not be buried in a EULA or terms of service. It should be legally required to be displayed obviously each time the long-term rental is offered.
You could debate some of the details, but the basic gist should be clear: Either provide people with what they "bought", or make it clear that they're not buying it.
What appears to be happening is that:
1) Users buy content, in this case a movie.
2) User deletes content from their device thinking it will be available on iCloud for restoring.
3) Apple loses the distribution rights.
4) User tries to restore content and gets a nasty surprise since Apple cannot restore the movies to the user's device because that would constitute 'an act of distribution' that Apple is no longer entitled to perform without violating the content owner's copyrights and which they'd get sued
From the CLOUD library. (Score:2)
CLOUD.
Not "your" [local] library. The cloud...which in the case of iTunes is not dedicated to you, but is merely keyed against what you have purchased.
If you want to keep it, keep it downloaded. And if you want it in the âoecloudâ, but it in an unmanaged cloud not dedicated to licensed media delivery.
(And yes, Apple should, at a minimum, have offered an immediate full refund.)
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Unfortunately, Apple sells this device called an "AppleTV" that gives you access to the iTunes store, complete with that pesky "buy" button. Of course the AppleTV has no self storage and even though it can stream from your home server system, it can't send purchases there even if you wanted to.
If Apple wants to move in a direction where digital content is only "purchased" permanently if it is stored locally, they need to rethink the AppleTV and its ability to "buy" movies. I think any user of the AppleTV wo
were the downloads deleted? (Score:2)
My understanding was for music at least, when Apple has lost distribution rights, any downloads you had made were retained, you just were no longer able to download it again. Has this changed or is it different for movies?
Or is this something to do with the DRM for movies compared to how Apple does not have DRM on audio files?
Looking in my files, it seems like the only movies I have "purchased" from Apple are ones that were not available as rentals when we wanted to watch them - the purchase price was low e
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If you read the article it states just that. You don't lose your movies that you downloaded, you lost the ability to stream the movies. This is why I have a 12TB drive RAID connected to a MacMini with all my iTunes content on it. Which reminds me I need to update that soon to bigger drives. That's going to be a big old bag of suck.
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If you read the article...
Now why would I do that? :-)
It's not "buying" unless it's physical (Score:2)
The general consumer public seriously needs to wake the fuck up and connect the dots here. They flock en-masse to digital distribution because they're too fucking lazy, then get up in arms when the true cost of that bites them in the ass like this. These same idiots will proudly fly their millennial flag while making snarky comments that "physical is dead' and poo-pooing and insulting those old, backwards neanderthals who still buy physical media, ignoring the warnings those "old" people try to give them ab
Bwahahahaha! (Score:2)
DRM strikes again, and everyone who lost movies deserves it!
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Except it has nothing to do with DRM.
She could've downloaded the movie, and had she done so, she could still watch the movie. Once you have a movie downloaded, Apple (so far) hasn't removed your rights to that content.
The only problem is that she was streaming the content - and Apple lost streaming rights to that content.
It's like every month when Netflix loses content - when Netflix loses the content, you can't stream it from Netflix no matter how
BitTorrent (Score:4, Insightful)
What is ownership? (Score:2)
I looked up ownership up in the dictionary and it said, "the state, relation, or fact of being an owner". This did not help me much so I looked up the definition of 'owner'. It said a "person who owns something". I looked up 'own' and it said "to have as property". I looked up 'property' and it said "something owned".
Well none of this was enlightening so I looked up possession and law and it turns out possession is "nine tenths of the law". Well, I'm sure as hell not reading nine tenths of the law.
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Good start, but consider:
ownership
...
noun
2. legal right of possession; proprietorship.
and also
possession
...
noun
4. Law. actual holding or occupancy, either with or without rights of ownership.
So, if you're the one holding it in your hand, and the law allows you that right, you're the owner. Easy, as long as you go past the first definition of each word. The first definition is likely circular, but that doesn't mean the entire definition is so.
I used to occasionally buy movies/shows from Apple (Score:2)
Back when Requiem was still a thing - I'd purchase the title, then immediately remove the DRM using Requiem and save it to my streaming box (a 2006 MacBook Pro) with a backup.
When Requiem died, I stopped buying online content from them - now I buy the Blu-Ray and rip it.
possession Is 9/10th of The Law (Score:2)
No matter how much money changed hands and what papers were signed... If you aren't in possession of the product it's not yours.
Should be illegal (Score:2)
This should be illegal. Fraud.
Itâ(TM)s similar to games companies that only licence soundtracks for X years, then you load up the game one day and half the soundtrackâ(TM)s missing.
Fraud.
The Great Lie (Score:2)
Think about that next time you choose an Amazon digital book over paper for roughly the same price. Don't be schmuck.
The "cloud" shell game (Score:3)
Did you purchase those movies, or did you temporarily acquire rights to view them. Did you basically pay $19.99 to rent a movie for a few years? When you could have paid $24.99 for that same new release on Blu-Ray. And keep that physical copy for potentially decades (archival life of non-writable blu-ray seems high). In addition your Blu-Ray disc falls under first sale doctrine (17 U.S.C. Sec. 109), so a few years from now you can sell it or gift it legally if you decided you didn't want it. Instead of waiting for Apple to delete it under the ever-shifting sands of distribution rights agreements for streaming.
People really want the convenience of streaming, and are apparently willing to pay a premium for it. But there are still some major drawbacks compared to physical media.
Don't give any money to MPAA (Score:2)
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Ultraviolet (Score:2)
This is why I prefer UV for my movie purchases online. When Flixster went belly up, VUDU took over and my entire UV library that used to exist on Flixster was available on VUDU.
This is why I love my Nas server (Score:2)
Built a 'nas4free' like server while back and just upgrade or add drives as needed. Currently my movie library consists of 429 movies, and a ton of music currently just over 274 gigs of music, my own ebook "library of alexandria" haha. I have a netflix account, but i also download stuff i want, and keep those id rewatch again or think friends or family would like.
LOL!!! (Score:2)
If this guy pirates those movies (Score:2)
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STEAM is next!
Steam has stopped selling a variety of games over the years, but they don't take them away from those who already bought them. OTOH, I have several games I like that I can't play due to the non-Steam DRM on them somehow going bad. GOG is always preferable, when they actually have a game, for just that reason.