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iTunes Snafu Made 'Thor: Ragnarok' Available Almost a Month Early (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: When you check out the 'Thor: Ragnarok' page on iTunes, it says pre-orders of digital copies are expected to arrive on February 20th. But as TorrentFreak reports, some people got their hands on the Marvel film about a month early due to some sort of snafu with iTunes and Movies Anywhere. According to TorrentFreak, a Reddit user said in a now-deleted post that their legal purchase of the film on Vudu landed them an iTunes copy of it the next day. "I pre-ordered Thor Ragnarok on Vudu yesterday and it links it to my iTunes also. But curiously it showed up in my iTunes library this morning (pre-orders shouldn't). And now I can watch the full movie in HD," they wrote. "I obviously downloaded it right away. I know its supposed to come out February 20th." Others then responded that going that same purchase route made the movie available to them in iTunes as well.
not me
I give zero shits
iTunes is somewhat known for releasing stuff early due to mishap. Their management panel must have some poor UX, as it happens quite often with episodes of less known series.
I was wondering why high quality rips were showing up on usenet and torrent sites before the ETA services said that it was due for release.
I'm sure the studio will measure the damages in the billions. And somehow blame this for their terrible year.
They advertised all albums on sale for $5 each, but inadvertently listed entire artist collections as albums. I scored entire collections at that price .I can't remember the name but Apple bought it and created itunes.
How long until they load them onto your iPod for free without asking you first?
I know it's only a summary, but....
You place blame on consumer with "Illegal purchase"
Consumer did nothing wrong. They pre-ordered the media for viewing after release and got a pleasant surprise.
You aught to place blame on merchant with "Illegal offering" or "illegal sale" as Amazon messed up and made the media available early after collecting the $$.
Is that really illegal to begin with? Or is it just against some TOS somewhere? We are talking about an official distribution channel right?
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Artificial release restrictions shoudn't exist. Release early release often.
but no one cared cuz it sucked.
They paid for these so who cares? It's not like they got the movie free, they just got it a month early.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Never mind iTunes, how about Pirate Bay?
(Checks)
Yep, it's there.
I think this is what Hollywood is trying to do.
If you've ever tried to play a purchased movie, you've probably noticed all the DRM constantly attempting to get everyone to switch to routine piracy, so that purchases become a thing of the past and the companies stop getting any revenue. These "businesses" are wildly, fanatically anti-revenue and few things piss them off more than paying customers. If you pay them, they are angry about it and looking for ways to either inconvenience you or hurt you, so that you'll stop. DRM is helping a lot with that.
But some people, you just can't reach. They'll use whatever hilariously bad and inconvenient tools you make them use, to be compatible with the DRM. So Hollywood's problem is this: How do you get them (people who are ok with DRM) to start pirating?
Illegal sales. And casting illegal sales as illegal purchases is how you start to work on these people. Scare them. Make them think they did something "wrong" or illegal, so that they'll switch to piracy to avoid it. (Without a purchase, you can't have an illegal purchase, and remember that purchases have your identity associated with it, so buying instead of pirating is a legally risky thing to do.)
Some people are averse to inconvenience. Some to poor quality. Some people hate ads. But the customers they're targeting with this move, are ones who are averse to fear. Fear will make them pirate.
Every Hollywood story can be better understood by remembering the context: the purpose of these companies' management is to inflict maximum damage on the stockholders, through outright fraud or malicious practice of fiduciary duties. They will not rest, until every person is a pirate. As long as they have customers, the war on customers is not over.
I'm sure they will want to fix this bug, but I'm definitely going to watch this tomorrow.
So people are going to buy this feeling they are oh so clever when the "Thor: Ragnarök" theme has been beaten to death thousands of years ago. And, like John's Revelation, Ragnarök is not really all that dramatically interesting but just a large catastrophic action scene winddown. I'd rather have Thor dress up as Freya and try his best (which is awfully bad but sufficient) to be a coy Giant bride.