Companies issuing refunds in the form of gift cards is just straight-up insulting
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And it may be illegal in some states to not offer the customer an actual refund.
£5.99 refund. Quite clearly not in the US.
Sssh.. Everyone lives in default country
Default country is best country.
Religious figure bless default country.
Default religious figure bless default country
Death to default country and its default god! Alternative god reigns supreme!
All hail %DEFAULT_NOODLE!!
If you can't save it, its not yours. Sail the seas.
Why is owning sth you might watch once every 10 years so important? I don't care about it, as long as it isn't some niche content or stuff I watch every year.
Because paying actual money for something that can be taken away with the changing of ever shifting IP ownership and steaming rights is a giant waste of money.
I disagree. Like I said, I don't need to 'own' something I rarely use. I'm fine just borrowing it for a couple of days as well.
Remember, streaming only has a business model as long as it has a better user experience than piracy. That's why iTunes took off in the era of Napster. When a streaming service's user experience drops below that of digging up pirate treasure off a shitty ad-ridden torrent site, that service is not long for the world.
I cancelled Netflix and prime and went back to piracy a few months ago, it's been a nice blast from the past
In addition to piracy, I've also been checking out DVDs from my local library. It's kinda fun.
Surprised myself because I half expected I'd miss the convenience of Netflix, but I haven't missed it even a little.
"Was I a good streaming platform?"
"No."
It's easy to scoff at this whole "You will own nothing, and you will be happy" phrase, but it's really gone too far already.
Digital goods are just not physical goods, you don't really own them - which also mean you can't really steal them.
Yep that's why I don't understand all those people with Kindles and huge Amazon book collections. They can literally take it all away on a whim. If I want to own a book I'll purchase a physical copy, but ebooks? High seas for me. I feel like a 'free' ePub in my Dropbox is safer than whatever proprietary format in my Amazon account.
Edit - getting mostly replies defending ebooks and stating disadvantages of physical books (also, yeah I know books "aren't for showing of" lol, like that's the only reason for owning a book).
Just want to add I have both and get their pros and cons. I read tons on my ereader too, just not a Kindle because fuck that closed system, it's not for me (for reasons mentioned above).
Yep that’s why I don’t understand all those people with Kindles and huge Amazon book collections.
It's convenient, that what most people care about. But yeah, convincing people that making a copy of something you arguably own is a crime - that is some next level gaslighting on societal level.
Of course, most digital goods providers are set up this way. You're not buying a copy of a thing, you're buying a limited perpetual license. If you want to actually own a copy of a digital good, pirate it.
As I said(probably) in another post, you own nothing since you sing up and accept the terms. They can change the terms when ever they want, they can remove videos when ever they want or the rights for a movie or series end. If you want to have something, find a provider that sells and lets download files, so you don't lose what you buy.
At least in Germany there are Limits to t&c's. To put it simply, there musn't be any ugly surprises.
The merchant retroactively cancelling your purchases would be an ugly surprise of that nature.
Ianal, but I assume they might get into trouble for the use of words like buy and own, if this is how they treat the purchases.
"effort to compensate" my ass.
I call it fraud.
Hoe is this compensation if you dont get money back? Theyll still make money off you because you can only spend it in amazon
Every day on the internet, a lucky 10,000 get to learn "common knowledge" for the very first time.
Like everyone said 50 times, yar har be pirate, all that.
Or, buy hard copy, which is refusing to completely die because of this shit, right here.
BUT, you have to make sure the data is on the hard copy and that you can access the data (play the songs, watch the movie, etc) WITHOUT internet access, that is you have to make sure the hard copy of the media is really on the damn disc, and it's not just a glorified access key to media that will then be streamed from their servers they control. If it is then do not pay for it.
This is honestly why vinyl is still a thing, once you rip things back out of the digital realm it gets a lot harder for them to pull bullshit, they pretty much have to put the songs on the wax if they want your $40, and they do, oh boy they do they want that money bad.
Piracy is always a bigger pain in the ass than internet techies act like. No, I don't want to buy a Plex server and learn how to use it and learn how to make my own VPN and make sure the VPN doesn't just report my activity to 7 Eyes or whatever that things called and and and and, and results like "my movie got unbought" are also unacceptable.
Yes, we know, there are "special" websites that you can just surf to and it's like a janky Netflix that "just works" so long as you already know the name of the thing you intend to watch, otherwise it's just a blank search bar. Also, you cannot tell other people about the website or the website gets taken down. Nothing is more useful than a website that you absolutely can't tell people about, wow, what a problem solver that is.
"I want to watch a movie" is a very "This activity must offer zero friction, I will only accept push button get movie" kind of activity so, yeah. "Be pirate" is not that useful, it's just the internet's go-to answer, they always speak loudly for the tiny minority in this place.
What we're actually doing is drastically limiting our spending on any of this type of thing, and never, ever pay money to "own" something digital. That era is over. It sucks, but it's yet another shitty thing that would take bullets to change, and since it's not worth bullets it's not changing.
Honestly I doesn't even take bullets but if you're going to build the kind of political movement it would take to create change then all that work would be absolutely wasted on this problem while everyone eyerolls at you like you're stupid and worthless for caring so yeah, it's not changing.
So yeah, do not pay for digital ownership of any kind, ever. It's only ever a lease with one-sided terms, at best. Amazon lost the contractual right to provide that movie, so you lost the right to watch it, and "buying" it meant buying a license to watch it on their terms, the end. Don't pay for it.
People around me don't understand why I spent 4 hours learning which UHD drive to buy and how to flash it to take back MY media.
So.... Which drive did you buy? Asking for a friend.
I bought this one, but it's easier if you can find an older one that doesn't have encrypted firmware as mentioned in this evil dirty guide I totally don't recommend :) https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=19634
This is why I continue to buy high quality Blu-ray releases for films I love. Physical media is something you own. I generally rip it and put it on a Plex server for easy access and it reduces wear and tear on my precious criterion discs.
What software do you use to rip the DVDs?
A lot of people use handbrake, or a combo makemkv and handbrake.
Thank you I will try that.