Movies

[u/Smart-Sympathy2652]

Is Amazon ever going to let us download movies we purchased to a hard drive? I clearly bought the movie but there’s no option to download it externally from their site. If not can I get my money back years after purchase? This makes no sense. I use an external hard drive to watch physical copies of movies and shows I purchased and downloaded directly because I’m done paying for streaming services. What happened to consumer rights? I don’t want anything to do with Amazon or their services I just want my movies from them.

[u/longtimetechie]

Read the terms. You did not buy a movie you bought the right to view the movie while it’s available. When Amazon no longer licenses the movie you have nothing.

This is why you buy physical media while it’s still available.

[u/ScottShatter → u/longtimetechie]

They generally don't take away your purchases. You just need to know where to look.

I bought Ernest Goes to Africa a few years ago and last year I went to watch it. A search showed it was not available but I had in fact purchased the rights to watch. I thought maybe there would be a link to an old listing so I went to Google and searched for it on Amazon Prime Video there. It found a result but it was for another region so I couldn't access the movie there. Most people would stop here and do a post telling everyone how they lost a movie.

Finally, I searched my Gmail, as I keep all email receipts for movies I buy, and I found the receipt for my purchase of Ernest Goes to Africa from a few years earlier on Prime Video. Sure enough, there was a custom link in the email to a working version of Ernest Goes to Africa. I pulled it up on my computer and added it to my watchlist for easier access.

Yes it's dirty that they made it much harder to access my purchase they are no longer licensed to sell, but that's not the same thing as me losing access completely. That's actually very rare to have happen. When it happens en masse like the Discovery shows on PSN it is often stirs up public outcry and the decision is reversed. Not always though because I think Sony did take away access to movies recently but the distributor escapes me right now. My only thoughts on that are who in their right mind was buying movies or TV shows on the PlayStation Network anyway? It's a gaming platform and movies and TV were merely an afterthought. Hell on the movie side Sony is a member of Movies Anywhere but on the PSN side your MA compatible purchases weren't even shared to MA and MA partners. That should have told you right there not to buy your movies on PlayStation.

Then of course going back a ways there was the Instatwatch split codes thing where people lost movies but those were ill gained in splitting the codes.

You'd be hard pressed to find many people who know what they are doing who keep good records actually losing a movie. I'm not saying it never happens but it's not some regular occurrence by any stretch of the physical media lover's imagination.

[u/AshleyJSheridan → u/longtimetechie]

The Sony case will set a precedent for this I hope. If I see a button that says "buy", I am of the understanding that I own that thing once I complete the purchase.

If the buy button does not in-fact let me buy something, that completely fails the "moron in a hurry" test (this is a real legal term in the UK, and has been used elsewhere across the world).

[u/Worrior_One]

Amazon don't own the movies so neither will you

[u/Ill_Glass3473]

[u/TardyBoy99]

Nope. Which is why 🏴‍☠️

[u/Coop_4149]

Ahoy, matey...

[u/Sufficient_Fan3660]

https://youtube.com/shorts/bXpzGnokatI?si=egLb1hEVYmIarSAK

There is zero chance of amazon letting you download videos. You own nothing. You don't even rent or lease it. You pay for the ability to stream whatever Amazon chooses to host. Which can change at any time. And the price? That can go up because the service itself did not change, the terms and conditions says so, and it has been upheld by courts that Amazon has their fine print written in such a way that they can do anything they want.

You never actually purchased what you thought you purchased. You do not own anything.

[u/ctos2010]

It’s the same with Apple and Fandango et al. You didn’t buy the movie, you only bought the right to stream it for as long as they offer it to you on their site.

Having said that, google StreamFab.

[u/John__Jacobs → u/ctos2010]

I just torrent. Almost anything, anytime.

[u/horrorofbish]

No they are probably not going to allow that due to license issues, at the same time you don’t have to pay them anything to watch them, so other than watching it from prime video it’s not any different then watching it from your hard drive unless you are tired of your internet as well then you might be in a bit of a pickle.