Technology

Oh, are we acting surprised because we forgot all the people that got screwed exactly like this on Kindle books in 2009?

Welcome to digital media. If you can’t play it without some company’s say do, you don’t own it.

Welcome to the Pay Per View information economy. Amazon, and others, have been pulling this shit for years.

Being a pirate is alright to be

Just wanted to mention that torrentgalaxy.to, rutracker.org, 1337x.to and therarbg.com won't ever remove anything from your library.

Of course - it's 2023, we don't actually own anything

It's been well documented that Amazon does this with eBooks all the time. A publisher pulled a copy of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE from Amazon over a contract dispute in the earlier days of the Kindle. So Amazon reached out and delete that copy from all Amazon customers who bought it through the Amazon Store.

Students who were annotating it for class lost all their notes. Amazon refunded the cost of the eBook. But those notes are toast.

It's what prompts me to copy non-DRM'ed files to my Kindle and read them without Amazon having a record of purchase. It won't stop them from logging in remotely and wiping the device, but I have backups and programs to convert them to non-Kindle format for another eReader.

All this kinda bullshit does is justify why piracy isn't the worst option out there, if you ask me. In fact, this kinda bullshit cements why it's a better option in my mind.

Companies want to make it so you don't own anything just rent the use of it.

Wait, since when do they give a "refund" for content that is no longer available? A while ago I bought the first season of Fringe (knowing that I don't actually own it), but I got nothing, when it was pulled. Do I need to ask explicitly for that gift card?

I hate this but refunding with a little extra seems fair enough. Would be better if you had the option to refund to your card though.

I really hope it's a surprise to no one. Having full control over the access to any media is the core principle behind any online-only, DRM-based service.

For extra irony https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703

While it's shitty that they can take it away like that, at least they seem to have paid back the cost plus an extra gift card. Idk if cost was refunded or added to the account as credit, but either are at least something.

This is why I continue to buy high quality Blu-ray releases for films I love. Physical media is something you own. I generally rip it and put it on a Plex server for easy access and it reduces wear and tear on my precious criterion discs.

I mean you got paid 5 quid to rent a movie. I'd call that a win...

When you buy something from a streaming service you're only buying the right to stream it, nothing more.

You can't compare it to owning physical media because there are ongoing costs involved for Amazon to host it and ever changing contracts with media companies outlining what they are allowed to host.

I've legitimately lost hundreds of dollars of content without even getting refunded; So consider yourself lucky! To get a gift card instead; ANYWAY I now pirate all my things minus idk I guess my video game consumption but even then I had the luxury to pirate shit I bought on steam just to have it again. In the end of the day though you don't really own anything unless you own it physical and even then its still illegal to use makemkv to dump your blurays and dvds onto your nas and watch them outside of the physical media they were put on. But I guess thats just living in the future for ya!

This is why I still rip Blu-rays for my home media server,

Are you a fellow janitor?

Because I know a whole bunch of janitors that recently watched that movie.

I pay for Spotify and YouTube music. If I really like an album I'll still go to Bandcamp if I can and grab the flac files. If it's not there I'll just BitTorrent/Soulseek/yt-dlp it.

If I don't have raw media files, I don't actually own it.

I moved from UK to France, and lost access to my movies on Prime.

People around me don't understand why I spent 4 hours learning which UHD drive to buy and how to flash it to take back MY media.

Wow I didn't mind purchasing content before... My pirate hat is now officially glued to my fucking head.

It's because the licence holder of the movie decided Amazon can't show it anymore. Perhaps they were asking Amazon to pay a high fee and it wants worth it.

As a rule you only own something if you have a physical copy in your hands. Which is why I wish they would still make CD's.

I'd much rather have a physical CD for music because not only can I use it in the car, I can rip a FLAC and have it on all my devices.

I guess I should be working on breaking the DRM and backing up my audible books on a regular basis...