Technology

Companies issuing refunds in the form of gift cards is just straight-up insulting

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.

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.

If you can't save it, its not yours. Sail the seas.

You don’t own the video file. You own access to their video file, which they also don’t own, they only own the right to distribute it. If their distribution contract ends and doesn’t gets renewed, then they can’t let you access the file. At least they refunded you. This system is one of the issues with the ongoing writers and actors strikes. Amazon can decide to stop making a video available, which cuts all dividends revenues to actors and writers. So having a video available for you to watch costs money to Amazon (or Netflix or Max…) but not enough content makes users unsubscribe, so they ride that thin line for maximized revenue. This means that older movies that aren’t blockbusters get dropped in favor of new content. Now new content doesn’t means good content, remember, it needs to be as cheap as possible. Aaand this is why steaming companies are spiraling down and everything is going to shit. Filmmaking is an art form turned into an industry. But art isn’t about maximized profit, it’s about art first. But you can’t make that art without millions of dollars and that requires the art to take a step back to maximize profit, but not too far back. It’s a really big issue in the film and entertainment industry.

— I’m an IATSE local 600 camera operator.

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.

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.

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.

Digital goods are just not physical goods, you don't really own them - which also mean you can't really steal them.

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.

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.

It's just a long term licence to watch it

You know where Amazon (and any other company for that matter) can't pull content from? My Jellyfin instance. Yo-ho-ho!

The only thing that surprises me is that anyone is surprised by this. If you buy a physical book from anywhere, you own it. If you "buy" the rigth to play a movie (or read a book) from amazon, you own nothing. Usually they don't show that so clearly but that's the reality.

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.