Amazon Argues Users Don't Actually Own Purchased Prime Video Content -

derpherp2

kiwifarms.net
Maybe I should have used a different example.
It's like getting a gym membership - you can go there anytime you want and use all the equipment but you don't own anything and they can change things however they want whenever they want.
Not quite, the equivalent would be buying a gym membership that amounts to the price of buying ALL the equipment in the first place.

Remember that they still want you to "purchase" the video, not "rent" them.
 
Not reading the contract doesn't make it deceptive. It just makes you an idiot.
No one said the contract is deceptive. The argument is that party who drafted it is misrepresenting what the contract says.

The web page where the user makes a purchase says the user can click a button to "buy movie." Most people understand something that is bought to be their property to use in whatever lawful way they like. I bought a movie on VHS in 1997 and I can watch it every day until the tape breaks, and no one can take it away from me because I bought it and it's mine. Even in the purely digital domain, no one can take away that copy of Windows I bought; even if MS stops supporting it, my copy is mine forever. People aren't idiots for thinking this is what it means to "buy" something.

But in fine print Amazon provides a link to their terms, which includes the caveat, "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 or for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming." That means the purchaser's property, whether you define it as a movie or the right to watch a movie or whatever, can be taken away at any time for any reason without compensation (from Amazon anyway). People are gonna get riled up about that.
 

moocow

Moo.
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
This is why I haven't purchased a single piece of media in over 20 years. I stopped when the RIAA started getting aggressive about suing individual downloaders of albums or even just singles. I just walked away from it and started using torrents. Fuck them all. I don't go to movie theaters, I don't subscribe to any streaming services, and I use adblock everywhere so I don't see ads on Twitch or Youtube. And if I find a video on Youtube I like, I use youtube-dl to grab and keep it just in case it ever gets taken down.

Today piracy is simply the ideal option for watching movies and television shows, listening to music and reading books. Same with pornography (lol at people who still pay for it). I know ISPs (including mine) will act on content cartel complaints, so I use an overseas seedbox ($12 per month for 1TB of storage and gigabit speeds in/out) for torrents in a country that giggles when the cartel complains. I transfer the results via SFTP to my NAS (144TB capacity).

Since SFTP is encrypted, the ISP can't see what's being transferred, so they can't narc me out. Since the seedbox isn't hosted from my home, when the cartel gets clever by joining public torrents and grabbing the IPs of every peer, they don't get my IP, so they can't just go crying to the ISP to warn me off and they can't identify or locate me to threaten (or sue) me directly. When they complain to the seedbox provider, they just get a giggle back because they're overseas and don't give a shit.

Easy, fast, no risk, low cost. Except for the NAS. A 12-bay unit and 12 14TB enterprise disks (never use consumer disks in NAS devices, trust me; especially never use disks "shucked" from external enclosures) cost me about $5k. FML. Thankfully I do use it for other purposes, so it's not like it was a total splurge just for media. And I know that if the internet falls over tomorrow I've already got enough shit stored locally to keep me entertained for thirty years and it'll be safe & sound even if two disks go tits up.

For playback, I don't bother with transcoding. I just throw media at the player and let it sort it out. Ironically the cheapest/best device for use on TVs are the Amazon Fire TV 4K sticks or cheap 4K TVs with Fire TV built in. Not even kidding. Sideloading is easy and Kodi runs beautifully on them. They've played every format I've ever thrown at them without difficulty, up to 4K 60FPS h.265 10-bit encoding, which (to my knowledge) is the most CPU/GPU-intensive format to decode among the codecs available to the plebs like us. If the thought of giving Amazon money sickens you, next best bet is a bitty-board PC like a Raspberry Pi or ODROID. Still pretty easy to set up.

"Media consumption" becomes so much easier when you just don't bother with all their bullshit and just download what you want for free. Fuck 'em.
 

albert chan

I write computer programs for a living
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
Digital streaming is not the same as physical media. Many of these streaming companies have been on record editing, censoring and offering “disclaimers” for old media that is being used to destroy the original version of the creators’ vision. It won’t help anyone but the corporation itself.
 

heathercho

Original Election - DO NOT STEAL
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
Come on, goy! Subscribe to our streaming services and use our cloud! Physical media is obsolete!

View attachment 1693741
When the whole virus charade started and lockdowns were commencing, a bunch of WEF and IMF adjacents were rubbing their hands together with glee over how the economic destruction of lockdowns would allow companies to fail into the arms of Chinese buyers- because China isn't as/dependent on the stock market/gold etc.

One commenter opined that destruction of small/medium size business isn't such a bad thing - because a) it removes the inequality of SOME people flourishing with capitalism and b) it would force people to work for/buy from massive companies (like Amazon) who can better control employees and consumers and enforce new "better" social values and "ensure equity".

So this whole push to own nothing and be at the mercy of big companies, is 100% being lead in, in small ways like this.
 

AnOminous

each malted milk ball might be their last
True & Honest Fan
Retired Staff
kiwifarms.net
Not reading the contract doesn't make it deceptive. It just makes you an idiot.
Not really. Virtually nobody reads these things. Do you really spend a couple hours reading 50 pages of fine print before you buy a $2 piece of shit item? Still while it doesn't make you an idiot it does make you bound by the terms of the contract so long as the proper formalities are adhered to, i.e. popping it up on the screen or otherwise making it available and having a clickbox where you lie and claim you read it and then click "agree." Or something serving the same general purposes, i.e. notifying you there is a contract, that you agree you've read it, and that you agree to be bound by its terms. And you also almost invariably agree to an arbitration clause so you don't get to argue about little things like "unconscionability" or "contract of adhesion" in court anyway. Instead you get to argue in front of an "arbitrator" who is virtually guaranteed to side with the company.
 

Belvedere

The under appreciated classic.
kiwifarms.net
If you are unable to download a DRM-Free copy of the digital content you paid for, then the corporation will be the one holding you by the balls the entire time. Not only can they revoke and delete whatever content from your "collection" whenever they want, they can also change the content for altered or censored versions if they see it fit which is even worse.

Rather ironic that piracy is going to be the most reliable and faithful way to preserve the original version of films, songs and books before these get memory-holed for being "problematic".
 

ColtWalker1847

kiwifarms.net
It's pretty unreasonable to expect Amazon to make available your purchase to you in that format in perpetuity, tbh.

Formats change. Contracts change. Ownership changes. They couldn't keep that up forever. The TOS reflects that.

Most folks understand when they buy media it's only going to last for 10-15 years then it will become obsolete and unusable in the format you purchased it. Or does UMG make available to you CCR's "Bayou Country" digitally because you bought on 8-track in 1970?
 

ADHD

セックスキッテン
Local Moderator
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
Most folks understand when they buy media it's only going to last for 10-15 years then it will become obsolete and unusable in the format you purchased it. Or does UMG make available to you CCR's "Bayou Country" digitally because you bought on 8-track in 1970?
Is that the same thing, though? If you still have the 8-track copy and an 8-track player, you should be able to listen to it. The same is true for anything on VHS/DVD/BluRay. If I bought a digital copy of some audio/video in the year 2000, I should still be able to watch it in 2020. No one (that I'm aware of) is suggesting that buying the VHS copy of some movie in the 80s entitles them to a digital copy of it today, but if they still have the VHS tape, and a VCR, they should be able to watch it.
 

AnOminous

each malted milk ball might be their last
True & Honest Fan
Retired Staff
kiwifarms.net
Is that the same thing, though? If you still have the 8-track copy and an 8-track player, you should be able to listen to it. The same is true for anything on VHS/DVD/BluRay. If I bought a digital copy of some audio/video in the year 2000, I should still be able to watch it in 2020. No one (that I'm aware of) is suggesting that buying the VHS copy of some movie in the 80s entitles them to a digital copy of it today, but if they still have the VHS tape, and a VCR, they should be able to watch it.
I don't see why it's in the least unreasonable that you couldn't copy the VHS tape to your hard drive for personal use, either, but that's against the law. Not that anyone gives a flying fuck, they just do it anyway. I don't see why format shifting to use it in your car, or at home, or stream from your home server, is or should be any more illegal than time shifting by recording it on a Betamax tape, a la Sony v. Betamax.
 

Pentex

You're Ridin' With Biden...STRAIGHT TO HELL!
kiwifarms.net
I love a well-drafted piece of contractual skulduggery as much as the next person, but Amazon is attempting to circumvent the plain meaning of the word 'buy' which they plaster across almost all of their Amazon Prime movies, distinct from 'rent', which is closer to what they are attempting to tell the court 'buy' means.

They're both rental agreements, only the termination clauses are different (fixed duration vs. whenever we feel like cutting you off).
 
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