Bill sez, Last “December I bought some favorite Christmas specials for my kids with the idea they could watch them every year. Went tonight to watch one (‘Disney Prep and Landing 2‘ if you’re curious) and it was gone from our library and couldn’t be found on the site at all.
Amazon has explained to me that Disney can pull their content at any time and ‘at this time they’ve pulled that show for exclusivity on their own channel.’
In other words, Amazon sold me a Christmas special my kids can’t watch during the run up to Christmas. It’ll be available in July though!”
To be fair, the Amazon rep gave me a very generous credit to watch something else, recognizing that this is a suck policy.
But at a minimum, beware, somewhere buried in the legalese is the right for Amazon and partners to pull content away from you, even content you specifically paid for, anytime they want.
Maybe this is standard in the new digital world and not limited to Amazon. If so, screw the new digital world and give me a physical copy.
Yes, Disney is stupid and evil for doing this. But when Amazon decided that it would offer studios the right to revoke access to purchased videos, they set the stage for this. They stuck the gun on the mantelpiece in Act One, and they don’t get to act all surprised now that it went off in Act Three. Anyone who didn’t see this coming failed to do so because it was their job not to see it coming.
This is what was set in motion in the 1970s, when we started using the term “intellectual property” instead of “copyright” or “author’s monopoly.” If the movie is Disney’s “property” for ever and ever, it follows that it is never your property, no matter that you “buy” it. And since “IP” is embedded in everything from blenders to cars to yoga studios, there is nothing that you can ever own — you can only be a tenant in someone else’s fields, an ambulatory wallet for a rentier looking for “passive income” while suckers like you work for a living and pay rent on everything in your life, only to have it yanked away from you at the landlord’s pleasure.