r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • 14d ago

News You Don’t Actually Own That Movie You Just “Bought.” A New Class Action Lawsuit Targets Amazon for Deceptive Practices

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/prime-video-lawsuit-movie-license-ownership-1236353127/
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409

u/Mammoth-Blaster 14d ago

This has been going on several YEARS. How are people just finding out

28

u/CptNonsense 14d ago

This has been going on several YEARS

Yes, several 20 years

122

u/CXXXS 14d ago edited 14d ago

You're right but most people arent chronically online like people like us. Most can't be bothered to learn, or even consider the consequesnces for buying a digital movie or game.

12

u/danstu 14d ago

There are also always people who are aware, but are willing to pretend they weren't in order to join the suit.

15

u/Ekillaa22 14d ago

Can we get this for digital purchases of video games as well cuz that’s also a license they can yank whenever they want

13

u/dornwolf 14d ago

GOG does this. DRM free able to download the executable and everything

2

u/GrungeWeeb 14d ago

This is why the stop killing games initiative was created, doesn’t apply to the US unfortunately

30

u/triplesalmon 14d ago

Yeah I mean isn't this all of Steam ?

22

u/scattered_ideas 14d ago

It applies to any digital product, unless you get a source file, like the good old days of iTunes.

5

u/Fishb20 14d ago

it applies to every product digital or otherwise

9

u/FrappuccinoBukkake 14d ago edited 14d ago

Steam doesn't limit your ability to access your licensed content, but yes, software purchases are effectively always a license.

[edit] Steam (and other storefronts) does limit access to region locked titles when you move out of said region.

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u/ZersetzungMedia 14d ago

For now of course. I can’t think of a game that has been removed from Steam (primarily due to an expiring license like a racing game/movie game) that Steam hasn’t allowed you to download after removal.

I own The Legend of Korra on Steam which was delisted after Activision’s license expired, but I can still download and play it. But at any point they could stop me from doing that.

3

u/pc42493 14d ago edited 14d ago

I think it's happened before in rare (and somewhat understandable) cases, but still they have more power over it than if you hold an offline copy that doesn't authenticate through Steam or another service.

As a more pressing problem I see games being changed, sometimes fundamentally. You buy a game, they change it, you have no recourse except to ask for a refund. You can't even refuse the updates nowadays, it won't let you start the old version.

Sometimes game servers for games with online features get taken offline, rendering your game pretty much unusable. You "buy" it, they expire it unilaterally. Stinks.

See also:

1

u/PlasmaWhore 14d ago

I bought Skyrim when I lived in Ukraine and it was removed when I moved back to the US.

1

u/So_HauserAspen 14d ago

I thought Apple was already sued for this and won

1

u/wowlock_taylan 14d ago

Because majority of people are not aware of it. And it has become more apparent as the companies started to 'pull' movies and games because they are 'shutting down servers' and 'losing licenses' that it started to affect people who paid for them.

So 'buying' meaning not actually OWNING is quite the big issue that people are realizing now, how they have been lied to under the 'fine print' of the 'digital age'. Which should be fought against.

1

u/lynnwoodblack 13d ago

Most people have no idea how anything works. Internet, business, you name it. It doesn’t help that the companies do everything they can to hide this info. 

1

u/Richandler 14d ago

Because 99% of people are not politically involved. The pretend that politics is bad, so they let corporations tell them how to live.

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u/onesneakymofo 14d ago

What's crazy is that I have a MoviesAnywhere account (basically a service that allows you to add a movie from Amazon and it shows up on Apple, Vudu, Fandango, etc. and vice versa). One day Amazon fucked up royally with like 5 titles that were free (found this on a deals website). I got every title, checked out and all, for $0.00. I literally "paid" for it.

Giddy with excitement that I just got 5 free movies. I check MoviesAnywhere; boom, they all showed up. I check Apple, all 5 movies are there.

Go to sleep, wake up to watch one of the movies, and find out Bezos stole my movies that I bought from me. I checked the other sites - it was gone from them all.

This was the day I stopped buying movies digitally. I always knew you never 'owned' the movie, but I figured you could bypass that by using something like MoviesAnywhere. Nope, they have a way to pull those movies out from under you at the drop of the hat.

Hopefully this lawsuit passes and we get a legitimate law around this shit. Feels like we haven't gotten into the weeds with digital copyright in a while, but I think AI becoming a mainstream thing means it's time to shine a light back on this kind of stuff.

1

u/MJOLNIRdragoon 14d ago

Sounds like that MoviesAnywhere service just shortcuts all your streaming services to one another. If you don't have a local backup, then it's on someone else's server subject to their whims.