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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 The company went so far as to retroactively withdrawn the shows from Amazon, so that customers who have already paid for them no longer have access.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?
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.
More likely fraud than theft...
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?
Because they didn't buy a show, they bought a license to stream it. That license they purchased was not irrevocable, it was revocable. This is the reason that I will never "purchase" a show or movie unless I have the right to make a personal hard-copy of it for backup purposes.
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.
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.
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.
Because you didn't RTFA!
This week, though, the company temporarily removed access to both episodes of Prep & Landing, not only preventing new customers buying or renting the show, but also preventing those who had already paid – under the promise that they could "re-watch it as often" as they like – from doing so.
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."
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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
The "temporary issue" was a lack of publicity.
Amazon deleting copies of 1984 should've been enough to persuade you that you shouldn't do business with them. This is what happens when you deal with proprietary garbage or things that are out of your control.
It only became temporary when they got caught.
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.
I am of the opinion that these people did not buy a license. The seller advertised the sale of the movie. The customer believed they were buying the movie. Everybody involved with the transaction referred to it as purchasing the movie. The situation where you pay for a temporary license to view a movie is called a rental, and Amazon has that as a separate transaction type.
The TorrentFreak "article" you referenced is just quoting the BoingBoing article, so that's the same source. And NEITHER of them actually asked Amazon about it, they just took the word of a user, who took the word of a random customer care person. It's amazing how many people seem to think customer care (usually low paid outsourced phone support people working from a script) somehow are "what a company tells the customer" like it's somehow the official and unerring policy statement of a $100B business.
The Guardian, on the other hand, actually asked Amazon. So did AllThingsD and Ars Technica who both confirmed it was a mistake (and according to AllThingsD has already been fixed).
That's the difference between journalism and blogging. Some journalists actually do some research instead of reposting 2nd hand rumors without confirmation. Sort of like your post vs. mine, in fact ;)