And here’s a little cautionary tale of the digital downloading age: Amazon may have recently pulled access to select Disney holiday titles from their Amazon Instant Video streaming service – at Disney’s request – even to customers who had purchased “ownership” of the titles. One of the titles in question was Prep & Landing 2: Naughty vs. Nice. Customers who experienced lack of access to this title were initially told by Amazon customer service reps that their access was pulled because Disney wanted to make the titles exclusive to their own channels for a limited time during the holidays. But then Amazon hastily changed their tune in e-mail replies, saying instead:
“The problem you experienced was a temporary issue with some of our catalog data and it has been fixed. If you still have problems, please let us know. Customers should never lose access to their Amazon Instant Video purchases. If they have any issues accessing purchased videos, they should contact customer service.”
Still, the Amazon Instant Video terms of use do say:
“Purchased Digital Content will generally continue to be available to you for download or streaming from the Service, as applicable, but may become unavailable due to potential content provider licensing restrictions and for other reasons, and Amazon will not be liable to you if Purchased Digital Content becomes unavailable for further download or streaming.”
Bottom line: When you “buy” digital content, you’re not really buying anything concrete and your access can be denied at any time, for any number of reasons. This kind of thing has been a problem before and it will absolutely be a problem again.
I will continue to buy my movies on a disc so I can watch them anytime or anywhere I please.
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