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Disney Pulls a Reverse Santa, Takes Back Christmas Shows From Amazon Customers
Sockatume writes "Since 2011, Amazon Instant Video has sold a series of Christmas shorts from Disney called 'Prep and Landing'. Unfortunately this holiday season, Disney has had a change of heart and has decided to make the shorts exclusive to its own channels. The company went so far as to retroactively withdrawn the shows from Amazon, so that customers who have already paid for them no longer have access. Apparently this reverse-Santa ability is a feature Amazon provides all publishers, and customers have little recourse but to go cap-in-hand to a Disney outlet and pay for the shows again."
Why not just call this a Grinch move and be done with it?
how this isn't theft?
The best arguments for piracy come from the studios/MPAA/RIAA/media outlets themselves. Even after you pay for content, it's only their whim that lets you keep it.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I'm very comfortable with technology, but in one sense I remain a Luddite: When it comes to video that we're going to shell out money for, I only buy it on DVD. If it's not available on DVD, we don't pony up the coin. I'll often rip the DVD and put it on my kid's iPods, but we still have the physical media. I accept that in a decade or so DVDs will go the way of the Dodo Bird and I'll have to make a change then, but for now it's plastic discs for me.
The article says that Amazon called it "accidental," and that access has already been restored for those who already bought it.
The most likely explanation is that Disney wanted to stop selling it through Amazon, and nobody really considered the fact that that customers should retain access to what they've already bought.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Disney has been fighting to extend copyright forever so they can keep every second of anything to themselves, so why not pull more shit like this? Clearly Disney only cares about how to make a quick buck and shaft the fans and viewing public whenever they can, but this act really only undermines digital media as a whole as you can not tell when someone will just pull their shit for some arbitrary reason leaving you having paid for nothing.So yeah the pirates right now are glad that they don't have this crap to deal with and if one site goes down, they find it someplace else for free and maybe better quality as well.
The summary is complete FUD according to the article. The show was removed from customers that paid for it by a mistake, which was corrected shortly thereafter. It seems that anyone that bought it can still watch it just fine.
You're not buying the goods, you're renting them. You're always at the whim of the copyright owner with regards to your continued access to the work you paid for.
Mark my words, when physical media is gone, they'll stop selling media to you indefinitely, but charge you for the same content on a recurring basis. Not like Netflix where you're paying for access to stream any number of works, but you'll pay per month (or per access) for a single work.
Plus, with everything so locked down and controlled by the copyright owners, much more media will be lost to time due to the inability to move it between systems freely. Almost 30 years later, you can still acquire and play the original Super Mario Bros on an authentic NES, without getting the okay from Nintendo to do so. When digital downloads are the only method to acquire media, then you can forget about buying used copies 30, 40, 50 years later. By the time copyright actually lapses and you can legally do something about it, it'll be too late as all the original hardware will likely be either destroyed or non-functional.
FC Closer
The article says that Amazon called it "accidental," and that access has already been restored for those who already bought it.
Accidental my shiney hiney. It was only "accidental" until either the PR or legal department found out about it. In any case this is EXACTLY why I do not own a Kindle. This isn't the first time this happened and the fact that they even have the ability to do this makes me pretty uncomfortable.
From TFA:
Amazon blamed the removal on "a temporary issue with some of our catalog data" which it says has been fixed, adding that "customers should never lose access to their Amazon Instant Video purchases."
One person claimed on another blog that Disney was retroactively removing this on purpose, So of course we'll sensationalize that as the Headline here....
We're all full up on Crazy here...
Is not your library if the vendor can take it from you. You didn't buy, just got a limited permission to play it while the real owner is in good mood, and in their own terms.
Is not your library if the vendor can take it from you. You didn't buy, just got a limited permission to play it while the real owner is in good mood, and in their own terms.
This.
Let it stand as a lesson to all: You don't buy digital media from the likes of Amazon, you rent it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
anyone remembered the Amazon Kindle's 1984 affair?
Class actions are gone, there is a binding arbitration clause in every single sales contract since the supreme court ruled they aren't unconscionable.
This doesn't stop Amazon from just cancelling your account anytime they feel like it.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-customers-kindle-deletes-account
Or maybe just dropping their video biz.
Not to mention you can't transfer ownership, will it to your kids etc.
Sorry DRM is stupid all day. Give me the physical media every time.
No, you don't rent it either.
When I rent a movie from the local rental place (yeah, we actually still have one), they can't come to my house and take it back whenever they damn-well please, much less within the specified rental period.
Disney et al, on the other hand, can revoke any privileges you've already paid for because of the one-sided, bullshit clickwrap "agreements" that you "accepted" when you signed up for the service.
This is not a rental, this is ... shit.
> The company went so far as to retroactively withdrawn the shows from Amazon, so that customers who have already paid for them no longer have access.
So now how do you feel about keeping your content "in the cloud"?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And yet you see many slashdotters practically bending over backwards trying to get DRM integrated into html nowadays... The stuff in this story is exactly what it will get you.