You all remember just a few weeks ago when Sony ripped away a bunch of movies and TV shows people “owned”? This ad is on Amazon. You can’t “own” it on Prime. You can just access it until they lose the license. How can they get away with lying like this?
If they’re saying “own” on their advertisements then they should be required to refund you when they eventually have to take it away. I’m pretty sure “ownership” has a legal definition and it’s probably not too ambiguous.
It should at least be considered false advertising if they can’t guarantee access permanently.Oh, whoops. I read it as them explicitly telling me to pirate it. Yeah of course they aren’t going to let you actually own it. That doesn’t come close to making sense.
That’s the best part
They redefine “own” and “buy” in their TOS
And so do many many other online retailers that sell digital goods
I used to buy movies on Amazon, assuming it worked like Steam does, where if Steam loses the license to sell it, you still have the ability to play it even if Steam isn’t allowed to sell it.
Hell I still have access to the stuff I got back when Steam still sold movies (I honestly miss Steam movies…)
When people started telling me their copies of things they owned were no longer usable once Amazon stopped selling it, I stopped buying.
IF BUYING ISN’T OWNING PIRACY ISN’T STEALING!
I haven’t ran into a situation where any of the digital copies of things I bought have been pulled. So I can’t speak to what happened with your friends. But I will say that if you have any purchased digital copies of movies, you should at least setup Movies Anywhere and link all accounts you have. It isn’t like how Steam will still allow you to download a pulled game. But it does give you copies of things on multiple sources once linked. So if you got something on Amazon, it would also be linked as “purchased” on other services like Vudu, YouTube/Play Movies, Apple, etc… It won’t apply to everything you have got but would likely cover most big name items.
It used to be marked with the old “Ultraviolet” branding, but when that was shutdown the basic underlying service was transferred to Movies Anywhere. Most of the time you can see which things would count because they have the MA logo. Not great for smaller releases and most shows won’t be part of it (atm at least). Though some shows might also show up, as I have seen things from HBO and some other ones.
All that being said. You are very much correct about “buying isn’t owning” these days. And even when there is something like MA, there are still thousands of movies and shows that will only ever get a digital “release” from torrents/P2P. Sad that some cool shit will never get a real HD re-master for Blu-ray (let alone streaming). I very much feel that studios should have at best a 10 year window to make whatever sales before the masters should be copied to public archives. If the studios won’t do it, then there are more than plenty of people out there that would do the job for the love of keeping old media preserved and accessible. Also bullshit when I try to go the “legal” route and find a show on one service in HD but only in SD on others. It is pretty infuriating to see that in some cases I can only get like season 2 of something on say Vudu for example, but season 1 is seemingly exclusive to Amazon. And one is in HD and the other is only SD.
I had an Oculus account. I bought games for Oculus. Facebook forced me to link my Facebook account to it. Facebook removed Oculus accounts so it was all under Facebook accounts. Facebook deleted my account. I no longer owned the games I bought. I deleted the Facebook app.
I thought the facebook account requirement was removed
It may have been, but I wouldn’t know. I’m never going back on that platform again. They stole a couple hundred dollars worth of games from me.
Nobody with enough money has sued… Yet…
Ross Scott of Accursed Farms is planning a lawsuit for something similar https://www.pcgamesn.com/the-crew/servers-shutdown-lawsuit
“I’m getting a lot of multi-page emails about possible legal proceedings and dozens of people claiming they have receipts,” Ross says. “I do want to emphasize that if I don’t get the help I need, then there will be no fundraiser, there will be no lawsuit, and this practice will continue unchallenged, at least in the US.”
Ross needs your help, lawyers!
That sounds more like what class action lawsuit is supposed to be for.
Damn straight. I want my $7.50!
Those are more to punish companies and change their behavior, which I think is what was desired here.
Of course they are a gold mine if you are a lawyer.
This sort of blatant violation of the First Sale Doctrine shouldn’t even require a lawsuit to stop; the FTC should prosecute companies for it proactively. We need to demand our government start doing its goddamn job again.
Because they control the FTC and any other regulatory agencies. It’s called regulatory capture. The only other way they can be held accountable is through the pay to play court system which is biased towards them because they can drag it out until the other party gives up.
This is the answer.
All fed regulatory agencies are captured at this point.
I just do the morally correct thing. Buy it, then pirate it so I really do own it forever. Inconvenient from a data storage perspective but the only simple solution I have on hand.
Wouldn’t call that piracy.
Sometimes I do what I call “time travelling” where I pirate first with the intention to buy later when it’s cheaper.
I do that too but I call it a “forced demo”
Mmm… Sure. I think it’s morally correct for yourself. But the copyright people? They’ll argue all day that you shouldn’t be allowed to pirate it even after ownership. You need to buy the same movie on, VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, purple-ray, AND omni-ray when it comes out. After all, there’s money to be made.
I don’t know about the laws where you live. But here it is legal to make ‘security copies’ of any medium you bought. If you have to crack some kind of protection, that is an inconvenience.
You are just not allowed to distribute any copies without the proper license.
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Won’t someone think of the shareholders!
It’s amazon. They pay actors and writers pennies and funding Amazon is itself completely immoral by any means. Even after the “fix” of the recent agreement.
Don’t get me wrong. I do it because Prime has shit I can’t get elsewhere. So I have to on some levels. But I don’t unless I have to to get what I need to do what I do.
Doesn’t matter. We’re all gonna die in that decade we’re now well into my original prediction of. Baking the planet, inventing viruses bro-/tech-/etc.-, Closed Source AI, etc. etc.
2030: We’re all gonna die.
I don’t agree that it is ‘morally correct’ to pay $20 for a shitty movie that cost over $100 million to make when that money could have gone to fund 5 much smaller, much better movies just so the studio could shovel money into their Scrooge McDuck moneybin with yet another multimedia tie-in.
Are people really out here buying a media that can only be viewed through an app? If it’s not a file that can be downloaded and viewed elsewhere then I’m definitely not going for it… Who am I kidding? The seas have always been the life for me landlubbers!!
The full context of the quote is, while yes, the prospect of the complete elimination of private property is terrifying for some people (even socialists), the idea is that in the future, you won’t need to own anything and your life will be simpler and theoretically more fulfilling if we’re not preoccupied with owning things and keeping up with the Joneses.
but you’ll notice that it doesn’t say “we’ll own nothing and be happy”. they’re not willing to take the medicine they prescribe for you. they’re part of the class that’s destined to own everything.
“I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it further”
Probably intentional so they can change the definition of “own”
“Own it now!”
No thanks!
Not even worth pirating.
Not that I’d actually want to own any DCU movie, but yeah, that’s just patently false.
Own the temporary license.
So it’s basically an NFT.
“Feel like you own it NOW”
How can they get away with lying like this?
The own* the people who decide what they can get away with.
*as in actually own, not their single-instance redefinition of “own” where it means ‘definitely do not own’
You can save up to 77% if you buy now.
you can never save by buying something. I save if I don’t buy.
You’re playing a semantics game though. The assumption is that you ARE going to buy the thing. Society has decided that “save 77%” is a valid shortening of “save 77% compared to buying at full price” because that is the most logical comparison to make. Yes. “Save 77% compared to not buying the item” makes no sense, but that is clearly not what is being implied here. Implying and inferring things is a normal part of human communication, and refusing to accept the implications doesn’t make you clever.
That said, I agree that “pay 77% less to not even actually own the product that we will eventually lose the license to” is dumb.
The assumption is that you ARE going to buy the thing.
Sure, but that’s the assumption created by the advertisement. If you’re debating buying something, and the ad says “You can save up to 77% if you buy now” then suddenly the presupposition is (sneakily!) introduced that you are going to buy it. In that case, identifying and rejecting the presupposition is the smarter thing to do.
Yes. And that is the point of ads. And we can agree that it’s not great to manipulate consumers.
but “you can never save by buying something. I save if I don’t buy” is NOT identifying the presupposition, and therefore not rejecting the presupposition. It’s just stating that the original statement has a logical flaw. Which it doesn’t have any logical flaws if you accept that language has subtext.
“I dislike that the implication is that you can only compare to buying at full price, when there are other options like not buying (which saves 100% vs full price)” identifies the presupposition and rejects it.
Statement 1: “You can save up to 77% if you buy now”
Statement 2: “you can never save by buying something. I save if I don’t buy”
Statement 2a: “save 77% compared to buying at full price”
Statement 2b: “Save 77% compared to not buying the item”
Statement 2’s first use of “save” suggests that of Statement 2a, and Statement 2’s second use of “save” suggests that of Statement 2b. Statement 1’s use of the word “save” corresponds to that of Statement 2a. I don’t think we disagree on the semantics, though we may be phrasing things a little differently.
You’re playing a semantics game though. The assumption is that you ARE going to buy the thing. Society has decided that “save 77%” is a valid shortening of “save 77% compared to buying at full price” because that is the most logical comparison to make. Yes. “Save 77% compared to not buying the item” makes no sense, but that is clearly not what is being implied here. Implying and inferring things is a normal part of human communication, and refusing to accept the implications doesn’t make you clever.
I agree that the original poster was playing a semantics game; indeed, I interpret Statement 2 as follows.
Interpetation A: Statement 2 is a witticism that plays off the contextual use of the word “save”. Specifically, the humorous force of Statement 2 is in its reinterpretation of the word “save”. Statement 2 is saying: “Statement 1’s use of the word ‘save’ is that of Statement 2a, but I choose to reinterpret Statement 1’s use of the word ‘save’ to that of Statement 2b!”
Comment 1: The reinterpretation performed by Statement 2 is mildly subversive in that it rejects Statement 1’s interpretation of ‘save’.
Comment 2: The reinterpretation performed by Statement 2 is mildly empowering in that it performs a reinterpetation of ‘save’ to the benefit of the writer.
You say “refusing to accept the implications doesn’t make you clever”. There’s a bit of an aesthetic judgment to the “doesn’t make you clever” part which we can agree to disagree on. But Interpretation A does not depend on “refusing to accept the implications”. Rather, it accepts the implication, and subverts it to provide the effects described in Comments 1 and 2.
Note: The original post that started this discussion seems to be unavailable apparently because the original poster (I am not the original poster) deleted it. I believe we are just discussing among ourselves.
