Amazon takes away access to purchased Christmas movie during Christmas
boingboing.net
boingboing.net
I hate DRM. My personal rule of thumb is: if you can't resell it, then you didn't really ever own it.
For some reason, content providers became amenable last decade to letting people buy digital music without a leash attached to it, but still have yet to come to the same enlightenment on other media. I don't understand it.
The saddest thing about this whole ordear is that, generally speaking, you can't even genuinely buy digital video - as-in, you can't buy DRM-free downloads. The only way to actually own something is to either buy a physical copy and strip it of DRM or to pirate it, and that's a sad state of being. Digital media could be so much more, yet it's completely stuck under physical media. And you pretty much can't even disrupt this in any realistic manner, because the gatekeepers will never let you.
I've got music on vinyl from my grandfather. Even if copyright goes/stays de facto eternal, I see no reason why I shouldn't pass on all to my grandchildren all the music, books and movies that I ever bought, even if I got them as nonphysical files.
That's why it's cruicial to have proper libre software tools for media decoding. If someone wants to implement defective-by-design features that don't do what the user wishes, then we must have the ability to destroy such features on our computing devices.
Unlike some others, I do blame Amazon for this. Amazon knows what the average person thinks the word "buy" (instead of rent) means, and then acts distinctly counter to that understanding. It's a bad-faith action.
I think it's ridiculous but the 'rent' vs 'buy' discussion is pure semantics.
You wouldn't say that you are "buying a revokable license to live in an apartment" when you sign a lease. You would say that you are renting. Why does it suddenly become buying if it's a digital good?
All truth in advertising laws are about 'pure semantics' if that's how you choose to refer to those kinds of distinctions. That doesn't make truth in advertising any less important.
If you say 'buy a sofa now, free shipping!' and later claim that I got a revocable, time-limited licence to use that sofa, then in consumer protection laws that is perfect legal grounds to either say 'screw you, I bought it and your fine print is null and void', or request all my money back. It should be the same for digital content - permanent and with ability to transfer/resale, just as for books.
The only reason it isn't surprising is that I briefly worked for a company that was creating a digital media service (Technicolor's MGO service, after they acquired the remaining chumby employees), and I remember hearing about how this sort of situation could occur as part of the technical planning and I was just flabbergasted that EULA/TOS or not these media companies would 'sell' a digital movie to a consumer and then ex-post-facto limit their ability to watch it based on various contracts. This example seems especially egregious considering the seasonal aspect of the movie.
While Amazon is certainly complicit here, I think the article is a bit too hard on them as basically the current system is you play by these rules (set by collusion of the media companies) or you get no access to content.
Explaining why Netflix only shows certain shows depending on proxy status (quick colored icons in Chrome), and why sometimes they'll force a show in Spanish or Portuguese and not English, and why other times they force subtitles -- it comes off as insane.
1: My main gripe with Netflix is the lack of parental controls. I'd love to be able to stupid kids show. I'd prefer them watching 16+ rated movies with good plot than some of the junk that's churned out for "kids". That and the fact that rendering quality/control is sub-par.
This means that, at any time, any movie you "purchased" can be removed from your library indefinitely, without credit.
This completely changes how I feel about buying movies at Amazon, and makes me feel justified in switching to torrent. Until now I haven't had a problem paying for content, however if the rights of a purchase have been eroded this much, my mind is changed.
It seems that SAS companies treat their end user as a cannon fodder and enlist them as bystanders who have consigned to suffer through everyone of their whims. What is eroding is trust people in SAS, which can be bad in variety of ways.
But then when you have your data on someone else's server it is not yours to have anymore, nevermind legal rights - which are very expensive and difficult to defend.
my 2c
The deals about the contracts are one thing but the reason they are removed creates demand by exclusives. What kind of demand are you creating for someone that already owns it? Other than a demand for their money back?
Amazon needs to work out a deal with the content industry on this, so owning a movie doesn't apply to streaming false demand creation. Purchasers get to keep streaming when streaming rights aren't owned for a time.
I try to buy DRM-free where possible, but most of my friends don't care or don't know any better.
Despite what the fine print says (which I'm sure explains they're allowed to do this), most people are under the impression that they are buying a product, much like you would in the store.
To someone who believes they have bought/purchased something, it's like discovering that one day Amazon or Disney snuck into your home to steal your DVDs so they can re-sell them to you again next christmas. But then you read the fine print in the contract and realise that clause 14.2 (a) stated that they're allowed to do this.
The fix is for them to state "you will have access to this video for a period of 12 months" or similar.
There is a difference btw "buying" and "renting" and most people know the difference.Renting is usually accompanied with reoccurring payments while buying usually entails a one time payment and i think the fundamental disconnect is here.
These kinds of confusion will go away when people start using proper terms to describe possession of entities they exchange money for,that PS4 you got by exchanging money for,you dont "own" it,you "rented" it from sony and as a renter,you are to use it only as they allow you to.
The fact that you rented it with a one time upfront payment does not mean you bought/purchased it.These tech journalists will do people a favor if they start explaining this distinction to people.
ps: not hating on sony or PS4,just used them as an example,it could be anything especially if its in digital form.
In the UK, we have a situation which appears strange to most people when they first come across it: the vast majority of flats (apartments) are 'sold' on a leasehold basis. An individual or company may own the freehold (the building and the ground below), whilst the 'owners' of the individual flats have 99-year or 150-year leases.
The freeholder collects annual ground rent (maybe 200-300 GBP per year per flat) and is reimbursed for costs of managing the building (e.g. for building insurance, repainting common areas etc.).
I may 'own a flat' but in reality my right to occupy it has an expiry date. (I realise you referred to 'house' rather than 'flat'.)
All content is windowed and when something goes out of window, the video service cannot distribute it, even to customers who previously purchased it. The way around this is to notify the customers when content is going out of window and encourage them to download the content ahead of time. The video service can still serve licenses to unlock the DRM for the content, but cannot distribute the content itself. So if the customer has a digital backup of the file, they can still watch it even if it's DRM'd.
It sucks. It really, really sucks. It's a hold-over of language written when everyone thought digital video meant files not streams and there's not much any online video service can do. Maybe Apple, Amazon or Walmart are big enough to reverse this trend, but any other smaller service will have trouble.
I'll just pirate it on demand if they're going to try to make me jump through hoops trying to give them money.
It's really up to the media companies if they want my money on reasonable terms or they don't.
The only reason why this is happening is because online sales is still a very small portion of their total revenue. Check out slide #31 of this deck [x]. EST = electronic sell-through ("buying" a movie/show), and it's completely dwarfed by the other channels. (FYI: BD=Blu-Ray, VoD/PPV = cable rentals). So rights holders can screw over their tiny, small-revenue user base in exchange to keep the larger ones happy and profitable.
Also, the consumer reaction will be largely inelastic. No matter how bitter Corey Doctorow is bitter at Amazon and Disney, he's going to still going to buy/rent/pirate the content because his kids will want to watch it. This is why Disney is so powerful.
In the next decade or so, as consumers continue to shift their viewing habits, we'll start seeing the options be more consumer-friendly and probably cheaper. Remember it took the music industry 10-15 years from the rise of MP3s to today's DRM-free iTunes, VEVO, and Spotify options. Hulu didn't come around until 2008, so I think we're probably at about year 6.
[x] http://www.slideshare.net/mpalank101/2012-state-of-media-pre...
e. Availability of Purchased Digital Content . Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions and for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming. You may download and store your own copy of Purchased Digital Content on a Compatible Device authorized for such download so that you can view that Purchased Digital Content if it becomes unavailable for further download or streaming from the Service.
f. Downloading and Risk of Loss. If you plan to download Digital Content that you purchase or rent, we encourage you to do so promptly after your purchase or rental. If you are unable to complete a download after having reviewed our online help resources, please contact Amazon customer service. Once you purchase or rent Digital Content and we make the Digital Content available to you, you are responsible for completing the download, if you choose to download, and for all risk of loss of the Digital Content after download.
source: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
Sure, Disney might not have signed on otherwise, but sometimes I wish Amazon, Netflix et al. would put up a tougher fight for pro-consumer rules on their platforms.
There is not as many ways that people watch movies, though.
Still, if this type of revocation becomes a lot more common (the movie studios wouldn't do this for just one movie ever) then the same might eventually happen with movies. Once people feel crippled enough by the DRM, there will be push-back.
I won't buy an e-book unless I know I can somehow get the content DRM-free. If Amazon ever makes it seriously hard to de-DRM its books, they've lost a customer (and I buy a lot of books).
Note that I don't condone piracy, but I understand where these guys are coming from. I used to pirate when I was 14, but now I just buy things on Steam because it's soooooo much easier to just tap the Buy button and have it just work.
So much hassle. So much bullshit.