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thewayneA similar case has been in litigation since 2000. Specifically, everything hinges on the sub-headline: "A suit challenges Prime Video telling people they can "buy" a movie when they're purchasing a license to watch it for a period of time." Licensing. They're using wiggle-words to get you to pay money so you think you're purchasing an intangible when, if Amazon loses the license to supply it, it gets yanked from your library.
In the early days of the Kindle, a high school AP English student was writing a paper on 1984 that he had "purchased", he was going to use as a college submission essay. Amazon lost the license for that particular edition of 1984 and yanked it from all Kindles using their ubiquitous Whispernet. Not only did the book go away, but so did his paper. Impossible to recover. Up until that point, no one really understood in a real fashion that (A) Amazon would yank books like that, and (2) if you had notes, they were irretrievably gone if a book went away. He sued, I have no idea what became of it. I believe Amazon gave him another copy of 1984. YAY JUSTICE!
The article goes on to say "...Consider the $4.99 director’s cut of Alien on Amazon Prime Video. Cheap, right? But if the tech giant loses the rights to that version, the movie can be replaced with a different cut, like the one for theaters. And if Amazon loses the rights to the film altogether, it’ll completely disappear from the viewer’s library.
So should Amazon be able to say a consumer is “buying” that movie? Some people don’t think so, and they’ve turned to court."
The main crux is bait and switch, Amazon contends that the consumer is aware that the term "buy" is understood by the purchaser to be limited to Amazon continuing to own the license.
This is why most of the ebooks that I buy either come with no DRM or are in a format that I can crack, and I don't "buy" online videos, just DVDs/Blu-rays. On occasion I'll rent a streaming video.
And this is also a problem for gamers who buy games from streaming game services like Sony or Epic, where they shut down a particular game or platform.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/prime-video-lawsuit-movie-license-ownership-1236353127/
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/26/0354217/class-action-lawsuit-targets-movie-ownership
In the early days of the Kindle, a high school AP English student was writing a paper on 1984 that he had "purchased", he was going to use as a college submission essay. Amazon lost the license for that particular edition of 1984 and yanked it from all Kindles using their ubiquitous Whispernet. Not only did the book go away, but so did his paper. Impossible to recover. Up until that point, no one really understood in a real fashion that (A) Amazon would yank books like that, and (2) if you had notes, they were irretrievably gone if a book went away. He sued, I have no idea what became of it. I believe Amazon gave him another copy of 1984. YAY JUSTICE!
The article goes on to say "...Consider the $4.99 director’s cut of Alien on Amazon Prime Video. Cheap, right? But if the tech giant loses the rights to that version, the movie can be replaced with a different cut, like the one for theaters. And if Amazon loses the rights to the film altogether, it’ll completely disappear from the viewer’s library.
So should Amazon be able to say a consumer is “buying” that movie? Some people don’t think so, and they’ve turned to court."
The main crux is bait and switch, Amazon contends that the consumer is aware that the term "buy" is understood by the purchaser to be limited to Amazon continuing to own the license.
This is why most of the ebooks that I buy either come with no DRM or are in a format that I can crack, and I don't "buy" online videos, just DVDs/Blu-rays. On occasion I'll rent a streaming video.
And this is also a problem for gamers who buy games from streaming game services like Sony or Epic, where they shut down a particular game or platform.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/prime-video-lawsuit-movie-license-ownership-1236353127/
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/26/0354217/class-action-lawsuit-targets-movie-ownership
no subject
Date: 2025-08-27 04:35 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, what I'm willing to pay for a short term, unpredictable ability to use something is a lot lower than what I'm willing to pay to actually own it.
And I just discount the blatantly false claims of selling ownership the same way I discount all the other Truths (TM) I find in advertising. (My current 'favorite' is the bazillions of "free" items that are often more costly to this potential purchaser than they'd be if I could simply acquire them for $$$, at least if I value my time at even minimum wage, never mind my final salary before retirement.)