Disney Pulls a Reverse Santa, Takes Back Christmas Shows From Amazon Customers 418
Sockatume writes "Since 2011, Amazon Instant Video has sold a series of Christmas shorts from Disney called 'Prep and Landing'. Unfortunately this holiday season, Disney has had a change of heart and has decided to make the shorts exclusive to its own channels. The company went so far as to retroactively withdrawn the shows from Amazon, so that customers who have already paid for them no longer have access. Apparently this reverse-Santa ability is a feature Amazon provides all publishers, and customers have little recourse but to go cap-in-hand to a Disney outlet and pay for the shows again."
Love it (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
The article says that Amazon called it "accidental," and that access has already been restored for those who already bought it.
The most likely explanation is that Disney wanted to stop selling it through Amazon, and nobody really considered the fact that that customers should retain access to what they've already bought.
Re:Can someone explain (Score:5, Informative)
Would you expect anything else? (Score:5, Informative)
Disney has been fighting to extend copyright forever so they can keep every second of anything to themselves, so why not pull more shit like this? Clearly Disney only cares about how to make a quick buck and shaft the fans and viewing public whenever they can, but this act really only undermines digital media as a whole as you can not tell when someone will just pull their shit for some arbitrary reason leaving you having paid for nothing.So yeah the pirates right now are glad that they don't have this crap to deal with and if one site goes down, they find it someplace else for free and maybe better quality as well.
Did Fox News buy Slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
The summary is complete FUD according to the article. The show was removed from customers that paid for it by a mistake, which was corrected shortly thereafter. It seems that anyone that bought it can still watch it just fine.
Read the article? (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA:
Amazon blamed the removal on "a temporary issue with some of our catalog data" which it says has been fixed, adding that "customers should never lose access to their Amazon Instant Video purchases."
One person claimed on another blog that Disney was retroactively removing this on purpose, So of course we'll sensationalize that as the Headline here....
Re:Can someone explain (Score:5, Informative)
Because you didn't RTFA!
This week, though, the company temporarily removed access to both episodes of Prep & Landing, not only preventing new customers buying or renting the show, but also preventing those who had already paid – under the promise that they could "re-watch it as often" as they like – from doing so.
Amazon blamed the removal on "a temporary issue with some of our catalog data" which it says has been fixed, adding that "customers should never lose access to their Amazon Instant Video purchases."
Re:my library (Score:5, Informative)
Is not your library if the vendor can take it from you. You didn't buy, just got a limited permission to play it while the real owner is in good mood, and in their own terms.
This.
Let it stand as a lesson to all: You don't buy digital media from the likes of Amazon, you rent it.
Re:Cue lawsuit in 3-2-1... (Score:5, Informative)
Class actions are gone, there is a binding arbitration clause in every single sales contract since the supreme court ruled they aren't unconscionable.
Re:Nothing to see here (Score:5, Informative)
This doesn't stop Amazon from just cancelling your account anytime they feel like it.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-customers-kindle-deletes-account [theguardian.com]
Or maybe just dropping their video biz.
Not to mention you can't transfer ownership, will it to your kids etc.
Sorry DRM is stupid all day. Give me the physical media every time.
Re:Love it (Score:5, Informative)
What's funny is, I used to hear that if you DLd from pirates, you risked viruses. Then came Sony.
Re:Can someone explain (Score:5, Informative)
The TorrentFreak "article" you referenced is just quoting the BoingBoing article, so that's the same source. And NEITHER of them actually asked Amazon about it, they just took the word of a user, who took the word of a random customer care person. It's amazing how many people seem to think customer care (usually low paid outsourced phone support people working from a script) somehow are "what a company tells the customer" like it's somehow the official and unerring policy statement of a $100B business.
The Guardian, on the other hand, actually asked Amazon. So did AllThingsD [allthingsd.com] and Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] who both confirmed it was a mistake (and according to AllThingsD has already been fixed).
That's the difference between journalism and blogging. Some journalists actually do some research instead of reposting 2nd hand rumors without confirmation. Sort of like your post vs. mine, in fact ;)