What a great year for challenging the status quo with digital purchases, after the "Stop Killing Games" initiative game marketplaces had to more clearly remind consumers their purchases can be taken away at any time, now the TV/movie marketplaces are getting a taste of it. Doesn't seem like there's much argument to be made in defense of the current practices, all such digital marketplaces should make it clear you have zero rights to your purchases.
> But if the tech giant loses the rights to that version, the movie can be replaced with a different cut, like the one for theaters. And if Amazon loses the rights to the film altogether, it’ll completely disappear from the viewer’s library.
dv_dt•5mo ago
This kind of temporary rights for "buy" approach is terrible beyond the labeling issue - which I agree is an issue. Making only temporary digital copies strongly kills sales from collectors. Maybe those sales were dead already for digital copies, but I recall some former colleagues back in the day who would obsessively buy DVDs to add to their collections of movies. And it's not like it was format specific, for audio, I knew collectors of lossless digital format audio. I think a lot of them gave up the purchase for collection habit over time as it got more difficult to acquire the media in an archive worthy format/licensing terms.
I think media companies devalue their own product by doing this, and kill a lot of purchase for collector value, and encourage bootlegging to add to it. I think it even really devalues subscription stickyness, if its all pointedly ephemeral anyway, why value being able to sit down a watch a favorite show, why value any access to given media content. More people will cancel the sub most of the time and binge once a year - after all it's just ephemeral candy.
benoau•5mo ago
> But if the tech giant loses the rights to that version, the movie can be replaced with a different cut, like the one for theaters. And if Amazon loses the rights to the film altogether, it’ll completely disappear from the viewer’s library.
dv_dt•5mo ago
I think media companies devalue their own product by doing this, and kill a lot of purchase for collector value, and encourage bootlegging to add to it. I think it even really devalues subscription stickyness, if its all pointedly ephemeral anyway, why value being able to sit down a watch a favorite show, why value any access to given media content. More people will cancel the sub most of the time and binge once a year - after all it's just ephemeral candy.