Facing Lawsuit, Amazon Reminds Prime Video Users That They Don’t Own Any of Their Purchased Content

[Tsing]

Image: Amazon



Amazon’s Prime Video service offers a ton of hit movies and TV shows for purchase, but if you thought that buying a video was equivalent to owning a copy that could be watched indefinitely, think again.



Back in April, April Caudel sued the retail giant for unfair competition and false advertising, alleging that Amazon could terminate the viewing rights to her purchased content at any time.



Anyone who’s familiar with digital distribution and copyright legalities could have predicted what was coming, but in a motion for dismissal filed this week (via The Hollywood Reporter), Amazon made those concepts abundantly clear...

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[Uvilla]

Crap it is easy to forget.. and it just doesn't make sense.
I would understand I lose everything IF the service goes under... But for license issues, then its not a purchase is it? Amazon should lose.

 

[ThreeDee]

I just have 8 words for you ... Plex

 

[SmokeRngs]

There are reasons I stick to physical media for any purchases and back them up digitally on my local server. The only other thing I do is "rent" content via Netflix or Hulu or Prime knowing that I never own any of the content and I will lose access to it when I drop the sub and/or when the content disappears from the service.

 

[magoo]

The horse is dead.

 

[MacLeod]

I agree that since none of the videos she "bought" had been removed she really doesn't have any grounds to sue. That said, when you "buy" a movie or TV episode on Amazon Prime, it says right there plain as day that "you own this video/episode/movie".... I'd be pretty ticked off too if for some reason Amazon wouldn't let me watch them anymore.

 

[Armenius]

Crap it is easy to forget.. and it just doesn't make sense.
I would understand I lose everything IF the service goes under... But for license issues, then its not a purchase is it? Amazon should lose.

Pretty sure that it is illegal in the EU for Amazon to do that. Don't know about the US. There are no video game services that revoke your purchases should a game be removed from sale for any reason.

 

[Riccochet]

Pretty sure that it is illegal in the EU for Amazon to do that. Don't know about the US. There are no video game services that revoke your purchases should a game be removed from sale for any reason.

They don't remove your access to run the game. They simply remove the back end servers making the game useless.

 

[Armenius]

They don't remove your access to run the game. They simply remove the back end servers making the game useless.

I can't name one digital game purchase off the top of my head that I've made where this has happened.

 

[Riccochet]

I can't name one digital game purchase off the top of my head that I've made where this has happened.

Island of Nyne is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.

I own plenty of physical media games that are now dead. All the old Medal of Honor games for one.