Amazon Prime Video is able to remove a video from your library after purchase.

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.
- 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."
- I’m about ready to do the same.
- Netflix will also be raising prices soon. Again.
- I’m just always spooked by viruses and shit.
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.
- If you have the local MP3 file you can do just about anything you want with it. Use it in just about any device. Transfer it anywhere. And never lose it.
  
  I have Mp3s that are over 20-30 years old and have never needed to get them again.
  
  And yes I go to piracy almost immediately if I can't get a local file. Just because of how many different ways i've used them over the years.
shitty ad-ridden torrent site

let me introduce you to usenet trackers
- That was my first thought too. A seedbox, Sonarr & Radarr and a Usenet site and I've got everything I need for $15/month.
Meanwhile *arr got off (user experience) and Netflix & co. are ad-ridden too.
I don't even have to torrent, I have like 3 sites I can just go to, search for content on, and stream video from like a shittier netflix. Adblock keeps them relatively sane, and I sometimes have to try different server sources, but otherwise it works fine.

If you can't save it, its not yours. Sail the seas.

Or buy it on physical media. More and more studios are pulling their disks and it is getting harder to find. If you have a disk, it can never be recalled.
- Ever since Disney announced they are also going to ban account sharing, I've been going to thrift stores and grabbing any DVDs my children like or might like. I've gotten quite a few classics so far for less than the cost of one month of Disney+. I almost bought a VCR because the VHS collection at thrift stores here is huge and they are so cheap, but rewinding sucks.
- I haven't looked into it, but doesn blu ray need some kind of connectivity to manage its cryptography?
- technically you dont own the disks either bro have you never read the back of a DvD box
- But it can just stop playing... I have a handful of discs, still in cases, look pristine, no scratches, and yet can't be read by either my computer or DVD player. No recourse. It's a separate problem of course, but similar.
This is a non-story.

"Who knew $EvilCo would fuck me over for a sub-$10 profit?!"

I never stopped stealing media, and I never will.
- You can't steal media unless you steal the medium.
  
  Copyright infringement is a crime you might commit but by its draconian length, most cases are the public taking back what's rightfully ours.
  
  Superman II (any version) should be in the public domain.
- you can't steal media, it's still there but just copied over.
Kinda crazy that pirates have more ownership over media than people buying it 😂
- "Piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem."
  
  Gabe Newell, 2011
Sucks for online games though...
Or just buy the disk
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.
Amazon's Music service, while it takes some hoops to jump through, actually does let you download music. Though I don't know if that's a general policy or on a per music/per artist basis.
- I get the feeling they're trying to get rid of that feature, whenever I try to download something there I have to jump through an increasing number of hoops to get the download option to appear.
- and save outside of their app as a non DRM'ed file because otherwise its extra hoops for the same problem
- Everything should allow you to download what you purchased. The fact that the music industry has pushed streaming so goddamn hard is because they're mad that people can still download MP3s.
  
  And above all of this, let's not forget that a major negotiating point of the Hollywood strike was getting residuals per stream, something that never existed when people actually had their own media. It's greed on every single side in that corrupt, hell town and I'm at the point where I don't even watch TV or movies any more, not only because it all sucks, but because of this bullshit. The greed and the corruption needs to be punished.
Why is owning sth you might watch once every 10 years so important? I don't care about it, as long as it isn't some niche content or stuff I watch every year.
- Because paying actual money for something that can be taken away with the changing of ever shifting IP ownership and steaming rights is a giant waste of money.

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.
- 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.
  
  This! It really should be illegal to present something with the phrasing "buy" unless it is provided to you via a license that prevent it from being withdrawn. To "sell" cloud hosted media without having the licensing paperwork in place for it to be a sale is fraud.
- Yeah, I understand that hearing the same simple explanation of "you don't own it..." gets to be annoying. Especially in places like this where most people are pretty well aware of the situation.
  
  The primary issue seems to be that enough people support this type of service willingly for the sake of convenience and are generally ignorant to the potential long-term issues. It feels pretty exploitative as a consumer.
  
  But I don't see how making the distinction between ownership of the content vs the license is providing legwork for those services. In my mind, that distinction is key for understanding that the service is not for me. And I may just be looking at this too optimistically, but I would hope the same would be true for users who don't read the fine print, or happen to have not understood the issue until something like this post is presented.
- If people are aware, why do they keep buying movies they won't own?
This sounds worse than communism. At least communism said "everyone will own everything".
- Not the collective ownership of everything, just the collective ownership (and eventual abolition) of private property, which differs from personal property in that they are assets which are used for the purpose of capital accumulation (e.g factories, real estate, farms, supermarkets, etc.)
We've been screaming about it for 20+ years now and no one seems to be listening.

I'm hoping that someone will tie digital ownership rights to a block chain sooner or later and offer me movies, music, games and books that I can actually own resale rights to - but as publishers are already drinking from the rent-seeking model teat where every single license is a new sale I'm not terribly optimistic about that particular future.
- block chain
  
  No. Never. Stop asking. Crypto is not a currency and blockchain is a solution in search of a problem.
- Adding blockchain into the mix changes nothing. Whether your digital ownership is stored in their centralized database or a distributed database, they still have control over everything because they're the ones streaming it to you. They can just as well block your access & block resale.
  
  The only way to actually digitally own something is to have a full DRM-free copy of it (ianal though this still might not be enough to allow resale).
- Keep it in your hard drive and carry it with you, this was not a hard problem 20 years ago, but we're being conditioned to regression in expectations and functionality. Better than yet another blockchain overkill and works offline.
  
  PS: just like the creeptobros say: "not in your disk, not your file." or something like that.
I think it makes sense in some areas. For example private ownership of cars is completely unsustainable in the literal sense of the word.

But when it comes to digital goods, clearly it's all for the profit of the media cartels. There's no justification.

You don’t own the video file. You own access to their video file, which they also don’t own, they only own the right to distribute it. If their distribution contract ends and doesn’t gets renewed, then they can’t let you access the file. At least they refunded you. This system is one of the issues with the ongoing writers and actors strikes. Amazon can decide to stop making a video available, which cuts all dividends revenues to actors and writers. So having a video available for you to watch costs money to Amazon (or Netflix or Max…) but not enough content makes users unsubscribe, so they ride that thin line for maximized revenue. This means that older movies that aren’t blockbusters get dropped in favor of new content. Now new content doesn’t means good content, remember, it needs to be as cheap as possible. Aaand this is why steaming companies are spiraling down and everything is going to shit. Filmmaking is an art form turned into an industry. But art isn’t about maximized profit, it’s about art first. But you can’t make that art without millions of dollars and that requires the art to take a step back to maximize profit, but not too far back. It’s a really big issue in the film and entertainment industry.

— I’m an IATSE local 600 camera operator.

We've taken away this thing you've bought, here's a gift card so you can give us that money back again later.

strictly speaking it's

here’s a gift card so ~~you can give us that money back again~~ we can keep your money but give you something for free later.
Gift cards and store credit = "we keep your money."

The reality is that they didn't give the customer back anything. It's the usual corporate sales speak.

"50% off" and "Save $10" aren't actually real either. $10 doesn't appear in customer's bank accounts after a purchase and customers often have no concept of what the item originally cost before it was marked up and brought to market by the the corporation. It's sales and marketing psychological games that many people can't see through. $9.99/$59.99 is cheaper than $10.00/$60.00 true and people somehow feel better buying the former versus the latter as though that penny isn't only a penny and they didn't give the corporation the 99.99% of the money they wanted.
- Explain this to my wife please... "I saved so much money today!" Plunks down several bags of crap that will end up being thrown away eventually...
That's fine. Always need to purchase more storage devices.
It’s more like: we took it away and gave you a ~100% ROI by adding a $5 gift card to your “refund”. Still sucks though.
- After they clawed back the royalties they paid on the original content, I assume (based on their practices around ebooks and audiobook).

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.

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...
- NeuraLink in 20 years
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.
- Steam came to my mind with this situation as well. I assume the outcry would be loud if this happened there. But it gives another good reason to shift habits.
I actually look forward to parties where people delete their memory of certain media, in order to enjoy it for the first time, maybe it's not even delete but suppress the memory so that people can compare their first first time to their second first time.

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.

I saw this coming a mile away a decade ago.

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.
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.

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
jellyfin+cloudstream for when I don't have the mood to click a couple buttons on radarr/sonarr is the perfect solution
They generally credit the original payment method. It could be likely that he paid for the movie using an Amazon giftcard balance.
You're saying you can't buy to own anything... at Amazon?
- Not in their cloud, no.

Every day on the internet, a lucky 10,000 get to learn "common knowledge" for the very first time.

Like everyone said 50 times, yar har be pirate, all that.

Or, buy hard copy, which is refusing to completely die because of this shit, right here.

BUT, you have to make sure the data is on the hard copy and that you can access the data (play the songs, watch the movie, etc) WITHOUT internet access, that is you have to make sure the hard copy of the media is really on the damn disc, and it's not just a glorified access key to media that will then be streamed from their servers they control. If it is then do not pay for it.

This is honestly why vinyl is still a thing, once you rip things back out of the digital realm it gets a lot harder for them to pull bullshit, they pretty much have to put the songs on the wax if they want your $40, and they do, oh boy they do they want that money bad.

Piracy is always a bigger pain in the ass than internet techies act like. No, I don't want to buy a Plex server and learn how to use it and learn how to make my own VPN and make sure the VPN doesn't just report my activity to 7 Eyes or whatever that things called and and and and, and results like "my movie got unbought" are also unacceptable.

Yes, we know, there are "special" websites that you can just surf to and it's like a janky Netflix that "just works" so long as you already know the name of the thing you intend to watch, otherwise it's just a blank search bar. Also, you cannot tell other people about the website or the website gets taken down. Nothing is more useful than a website that you absolutely can't tell people about, wow, what a problem solver that is.

"I want to watch a movie" is a very "This activity must offer zero friction, I will only accept push button get movie" kind of activity so, yeah. "Be pirate" is not that useful, it's just the internet's go-to answer, they always speak loudly for the tiny minority in this place.

What we're actually doing is drastically limiting our spending on any of this type of thing, and never, ever pay money to "own" something digital. That era is over. It sucks, but it's yet another shitty thing that would take bullets to change, and since it's not worth bullets it's not changing.

Honestly I doesn't even take bullets but if you're going to build the kind of political movement it would take to create change then all that work would be absolutely wasted on this problem while everyone eyerolls at you like you're stupid and worthless for caring so yeah, it's not changing.

So yeah, do not pay for digital ownership of any kind, ever. It's only ever a lease with one-sided terms, at best. Amazon lost the contractual right to provide that movie, so you lost the right to watch it, and "buying" it meant buying a license to watch it on their terms, the end. Don't pay for it.

Yeah that'll happen for anything streamed and licensed.

If you want to own something, you need to own it physically. Buy an actual disk. People won't and I'll be surprised if they are still making blurays at all in ten years but that's the only way you can actually buy media now.

I'm actually still kinda surprised about this. My understanding is that the licenses from rights holders to streaming platforms generally included an indefinite right to stream to people who'd purchased content, even if they may not offer it for continued purchase or as part of the general included streaming library.
- That's definitely how it works with games on Steam or GOG.
- 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.
If you want to own something, you need to own it physically.

Minor sticking point: it's still a "limited license." You don't really "own" anything and if that physical copy is damaged or destroyed you're just SOL.

Streaming, digital, physical, everything has a drawback! Backups are your friend.
- Yes, you don't own the copyright. You do own the physical disk, and you also have a right to backup a personal copy.
  
  It's not a sticking point, it's a feature. Take care of your shit just like all your other shit. No one says it's a sticking point to say that a kettle you buy could break, that's just normal part of ownership of a thing.

Companies LOVE punishing their customers while the pirates sail on without trouble

Punishing them by giving them £5? The bastards.
- Is he not paying a monthly subscription on top of all this? They're getting their money back pretty quickly.
- Are you fine with me taking anything from your home as long as I pay you the purchase price + £5? Some of us assign a greater value to some of the things we own than the purchase price.

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.

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.
- I'm still forced to see ads
  
  Never heard of it.
  
  but there are other downsides as well. They actually both suck!
  
  You can dd entire disk to your HDD.
This is why owning DVDs is better.

I love standard definition video
- Meanwhile 1080p easily can be written on dvd. And with good codecs(like AV1) such videos can be very long.
Digital is the way to go - who knows how long DVD will be a viable format. Hard media formats come and go.
- It still comes down to choosing convenience over not being taken advantage of. Building a computer, for example, has many benefits over buying one. It's a matter of what a person places value on.
  
  Why follow corporations' timelines for obsolescence? I'm sure if they could erase the technology of media players from people's minds, corporations would. Best to keep people completely hooked up and dependent on their "services" so they can be milked of their money continuously.
  
  As long as the method and means to play the media is available, physical is my preference. Vinyl, CDs, DVDs. Cassettes and VHS quality over time leaves much to be desired and is the only reason why I wouldn't add them to the list.
  
  These aren't dependent on a network, internet, cloud. Own forever, build and repair.
- DVD is digital, lol. And nothing stops you from dumping entire DVD.
He got his money back and a 5dollar gift code. Shit happens
- So you're saying it's relatively cheap for the privilege of being in an abusive relationship?
- I did miss the refund? It's just an in-store credit

Can't have shit in the cloud

You don't own what is in ~~the cloud~~ another person's computer

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

Digital goods are just not physical goods, you don't really own them - which also mean you can't really steal them.

The 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.

If people suddenly collectively understood they're paying for basically nothing it would probably spur large-scale revolution.

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
get an MakeMKV compatible BluRay drive and you're golden, no need to worry about any crap BluRay DRM with it (at least to my knowledge)
- Well you are just passing the responsibility to makemkv. If only I could figure out how to buy a license
- Can confirm, just bought & copied Loki UHD 4k. Disney can cry all the way to the bank.
FYI: Blurays get their decoding key off the internet. This is why all bluray players were bundled with Netflix and the like to entice you to hookup the player to the internet.

Don't believe me? Get a new bluray player, don't connect it to the internet and try to play your discs.
- This just simply isn't accurate. There are often extra features that require an internet connection. And there are also some blu-ray movies that might require some form of internet connection to watch but the vast majority of consumer blu ray movies require no internet connection to watch them.
- The first blue ray player I ever had didn't even have wifi or an ethernet port...
- I have a bluray player with no internet capability what are you on and can I have some
- I've never owned a dedicated Blu-ray player but I've been watching them on my Xbox for years and this got me curious so I disconnected it from the Internet and grabbed a few discs to test.
  
  American History X, Mad Max Fury Road, and John Wick 3 with Blu-ray package release dates of 2009, 2015, and 2020, respectively. All three Blu-rays play just fine with no Internet connection. Unfortunately I don't have anything newer to see if this is a more recent change.
- My blu-ray player has never been connected to the internet and works just fine.
- I've never hooked a bluray player to the internet. The last time I had a bluray player bluray was new and the player only supported a physical connection. I had to connect it to the internet to update it before it would play media.
  
  Now I just use the bluray reader in my server/computer to rip the media to jellyfin
- A few people have brought up their ability to play newer discs - what are the odds that some Blu-Rays may contain updates bundled in?

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.

You know where Amazon (and any other company for that matter) can't pull content from? My Jellyfin instance. Yo-ho-ho!

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.
- Still a good move. Its not like amazon is an obscure small store where you wont find anything you actually need or want. You can actually use the store credit
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.
- I agree it’s still better than walking away empty handed, but let’s not pretend that got their money back.
  
  In the rare case the person has just stopped spending money at Amazon, I guess. For anyone that's spending $10/month, it's effectively the same as cash. (Also, you probably can transfer the credit to a bank account if you really want to.)
- That's $5.99 in their Amazon account.
- It’s as good as cash. It’s an IOU

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

Welcome to the Pay Per View information economy. Amazon, and others, have been pulling this shit for years.

Oh, are we acting surprised because we forgot all the people that got screwed exactly like this on Kindle books in 2009?

Welcome to digital media. If you can’t play it without some company’s say do, you don’t own it.

Being a pirate is alright to be

Of course - it's 2023, we don't actually own anything

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.

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.

Companies want to make it so you don't own anything just rent the use of it.

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?

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.
- That's true. It's in Amazon's best interest to avoid a situation like this since it makes customers unhappy. When you buy something digitally, it's expected that you get to keep the purchase forever (or at least until the digital store you bought it at goes under). Undoing a purchase like this (assuming it wasn't one of those "too good to be true" purchases where the thing was accidentally discounted or something) would break trust and run the risk of souring the customer's relationship with Amazon. Stores typically only do this (undo a purchase and issue "apology money") if they absolutely need to.

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".

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.
- dd on linux
- The cassettes? Just a regular double deck player and recorder.
  
  Edit: people didn't catch on the joke that we started with bluerays, then dvds, and finally cassettes. Oh well.

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.

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'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!

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.

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.

I wonder what french anti-monopoly agency will do if you file that Amazon does this.
- But he "brought" it on UK so I don't think a French agency has anything with that
Can you still access them with VPN?
- Amazon actively blocks VPNs when using their Video or Music services. They also do a DNS check. It's a game of whack-a-mole. Your VPN provider has an IP that works, 24 hours later Amazon have it on the VPN blacklist.
- Didn't try, but I imagine it could work. But more effort than I'm ready to put in to watch movies I paid for. I now stopped buying digital movies completely. Not worth it.
Wow really? This sucks! They should refund you if they don't offer the films in your region, that's hardly your fault...

Wow I didn't mind purchasing content before... My pirate hat is now officially glued to my fucking head.

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.

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

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.
- Depends where you live. I'm not in the US so we don't get many CD's
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.
- Bandcamp Fridays! I buy music through bandcamp too. Some music is available as WAV but I usually go for flac. I love having my music collection on my own hardware again after years of using a streaming subscription. Somehow it feels closer to my heart, where it belongs.
- If you don't live in the US, many of these streaming services are not available
Couldn't you do the reverse and burn the digital music you buy onto blank CDs?
- I've found it quite difficult to find PCM/lossless audio lately. You can go from CD to MP3, but not the other way.
- If properly ripped, yes, you can, and you will have an exact copy of the audio CD.
Aren't physical 4k Blu-rays still DRMd? When every part of the chain is digital your physical disc is still only as good as the will of Sony or whoever really owns it.
- Yes but there are ways around it I'm sure. Au least they aren't going to come take it from you like they can with digital media
- Not with appropriate softwarre...
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.

I get that this is what the license holder wants. But, why can't we just put into law that a license is not needed for a company to host, retransmit and play copyrighted media on behalf of a user once the license holder has been compensated as agreed for a sale?

I guess I should be working on breaking the DRM and backing up my audible books on a regular basis...

"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
People losing media this way should sue, with the argument that it was presented to end users as a "sale", and it is not sufficient to merely compensate someone with the purchase price to undo a sale. Companies "selling" digital products should be forced to write agreements that allow them to redistribute content indefinitely.

It's just a long term licence to watch it

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.

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.

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.

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.

Richard Stallman already talked about this Here is the article: https://stallman.org/amazon.html

You will own nothing and be happy about it!

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.

That's bullshit

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.

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.

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.

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.

How is this a surprise? How is anybody surprised? Why is this news?

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.

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.

Blu-ray FTW

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 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

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

And they reimburse you that money with a gift card? Is that even legal?

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.

Another reason physical > digital.

Donner cut is still right there on my shelf. If Amazon wants to take it, they can TRY. Good luck!

This is why I don't 'buy' media from online services. You are depending on:

The service continuing to have the rights to the item
You continuing to be a member of the service
The service continuing to exist
You having the software or sometimes the hardware to access the service

Eff all that stuff ....

I have to be able to download it, and it has to be in an open format.

Amazon has made I harder and harder to download the raw audio files of music purchases, at this point I have to download it on my PC only to get the files on my disk, if I have a phone they have even managed to identify when you are using desktop mode on your browser and still tells you to download Amazon music.

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.

Arrrr maty!

This is just absurd. Often times we are paying just as much as a physical copy and now Amazon can just randomly decide to remove that content? Sounds like theft to me

Further proof why digital goods are bullshit, and are never really yours, despite spending full price on it.

Yarrr, that be some bullshit matey!

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.

"your" library

This isn't about games, but Ross Scotts video about games as a service and how companies are able to pull your access from your paid products and my man has even been looking into ways to make it illegal

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Ross Scotts video

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

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.
- Right, a gift credit. My bad. It's almost as good as a refund, still better than being out of pocket.
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."
- It may be store policy but it unfortunately does not prevent it from happening. Two examples i can remember are "Gentle Alarm" and "Manhatten Project". Both I purchased and no longer available. Also not in my "not installed" list unfortunately.
  
  I may have used the wrong terminology in my earlier reply. There is "unlisted" where the developer leaves the app in the store but removes it from the search. "Carcassonne" by Exocet comes to mind. It is still available for me to install but searching for it only shows the version by Asmodee.
  
  Then there is the complete removal of the app. Gentle Alarm and Manhatten Project are 2 examples. :(

This has been known for a while now.

Duh

You expect them to keep playing you videos they can no longer legally license to you? I'm not saying that the state of things where this can happen are fine though.

Just like with DVDs 🙄

Piracy is always the answer

I use Amazon kindle to have my books synced across everything but I only use a burner Amazon and make sure I have my epubs backed up on a calibre server just in case they kill that account. Never buy digital shit from Amazon especially. They always pull this kind of thing.

There are exceptions to this. You can download MP3s of the music you buy from Amazon, last time I checked. Although it's been awhile, so they might've gotten rid of that and gone to 100% streaming like so many others have.
- I think it's currently an on/off switch. Some music you can download and some is streaming only

download files and store elsewhere. music mp3s anyway. never tried their vids. mostly crap

🏴‍☠️

"Refunding" is theft.

In Soviet Russia, Amazon Prime video removes you!

actually that seems fair. they gave you an extra 5

if steam refunded all my games i would be so happy

god this is so Lemmy Rage bait

can't u just purchase it again with the 5.99£ + 5£, what's the issue here