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.
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.