Friday, March 29

More and more streaming platforms allow you to buy movies. There are reasons not to


Finish a hard day at work. You have dinner and sit on the couch to watch a movie. Let’s say you want to watch ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’ and you go to Amazon Prime Video because hey, you’re subscribed and you can watch it there right now with no problem. Suddenly you see that in addition to seeing it you can buy the film. And hey, you like it so much that you decide it’s not a bad idea to buy it in 4K for 8.99 euros. So you can have it for yourself forever even if you unsubscribe from the service, right? Well no.

When you don’t want to stream. Content streaming platforms dominate everything, but even if you are not subscribed to them, there are some that, in addition to this model, allow you to access the “old” way of consuming content, renting or buying movies or series.

Buy without being subscribed. Thus, even if you are not a Prime Video customer, you can rent or buy content there, and the same goes for other alternatives such as Apple TV +, Rakuten TV, or a somewhat different service such as the Microsoft store. Anyone would say it’s great, but wait, you might not see it as great when you know how they work.

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Purchases that may not be forever. When you buy a movie in physical format, you can enjoy it for a lifetime -or at least as long as the DVD or Blu-ray doesn’t get damaged-, but with these movies bought in digital format things change, and maybe that movie you you have bought happily stop playing suddenly and without notice.

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Watch out for the fine print. Matthew Morgan, a user of Prime Video, said that although one can buy a movie there, doing so does not guarantee that you will be able to watch it whenever you want throughout your life. The Amazon Prime Video terms of use specify in point 4 (“Digital Content”), section “i” (“Availability of Purchased Digital Content”) the following:

Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may no longer be available due to possible content provider license limitations, or for other reasons, and Amazon will not will be liable to you if the Digital Content becomes unavailable for further downloading or streaming.

That paragraph makes it clear that the movie you paid money for may become unavailable and Amazon is not responsible. Here the company washes its hands, but it is not the only one.

Apple recommends that you make backup copies. The same terms can be found on Apple, where they also state that “Although unlikely, after your purchase, content may be removed from the Services (for example, because it has been removed by your provider) and may no longer be available to you. its download or access from Apple”. Of course, they recommend that to avoid this problem the user “downloads all the content purchased on a device that he has in his possession and makes a backup copy of it.”

Microsoft, more of the same. Microsoft’s “Digital Goods Usage Rules” first reveals how “All Digital Goods are licensed, not sold”, which contrasts with the fact that they give the option to “Buy” (with buttons clearly visible) movies in your content store.

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A little later they specify that access to those licenses can be lost if “we no longer have the rights to continue to distribute the Digital Goods to you or to distribute them to you in the same way.” Same case as Apple or Amazon, and here the curiosity is how they warn that they can not “transfer or resell any license of Digital Goods” and then add that “We can use technologies to verify that it complies with these Rules”.

Life is three years for Rakuten. In Rakuten TV the terms of use are even more striking, and in the “Contents for purchase” they indicate on the one hand that “the User is granted a perpetual license” to view the purchased content in streaming mode “for a period of 3 years” .

Somewhat further along in the document they recommend that “If the User is going to download the Content that they have bought or rented, they should do so without delay”, and although they point out that it will continue to be available from the service, “but it may become unavailable due to possible content provider licensing restrictions and for other reasons.” And once again, they then make it clear that the platform “will not be responsible to the User”.

Long live the physical format. Those terms of use seem to make it clear that if you want to buy a movie or a series, it may not be ideal to do so on these platforms. For Morgan, this was another example of how “Big Tech has been allowed to crush the rights of the ordinary user.”

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Certainly those terms of use are surprising, so if after a hard day’s work you feel like buying a movie to always have it for yourself, it’s probably best to go for the good old physical formats. That they may take a little longer to get home, but they will be yours forever, no matter what.

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