
Disney Pulls a Reverse Santa, Takes Back Christmas Shows From Amazon Customers - ableal
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/12/16/1733257/disney-pulls-a-reverse-santa-takes-back-christmas-shows-from-amazon-customers
======
VLM
Good lord, a link to slashdot, which links to theguardian, which links to
boingboing... Doesn't anyone believe in primary sources anymore? I miss the
good old days when a 20 line "story" would be spread across 20 pages not 20
sites.

I looked at the movie on Amazon and its still up for sale, although the "Most
Helpful customer reviews" is less than glowing with christmas cheer. Its
glowing like a heavily used nuclear test site.

This is weird and disturbing... so I can buy and pay for something today that
was removed from sale yesterday, or just what is going on here?

This has never happened to me with books / stuff in general at Amazon but the
half life of subscribe and save groceries must be about 6 months because
seemingly every month something else gets discontinued. I can't complain too
much, often its about half the price of the local grocery stores, but its
still annoying. More like "subscribe for a couple months and save" at best.

~~~
primelens
The boingboing article has already been posted on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911944)

~~~
ableal
I missed that one.

The top comment on that HN discussion, by RexRollman, is right on target:
_companies shouldn 't be allowed to use the word "buy" for this kind of thing_

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runarb
Well according to the source article 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."
It says the database error was unrelated to Disney's request.

Think we should wait a bit before we jump to conclusions here. May all have
been a software bug.

~~~
yardie
The exact same problem happened a month ago with iTunes purchases and also
Disney. Coincidence? I think they just were caught red-handed, twice.

Amazon's policy allows them to withdraw purchased items [1]. It could be a
bug, it could be policy, it could be a bug that exposed an existing policy.
There PR has been, unsuprisingly, silent on this front. This is why I have no
faith in digital ditribution; the music industry finally got it, the movie and
game industry still don't get it.

[1] _Availability of Purchased Digital Content. 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. You may download and store your own copy of Purchased
Digital Content on a Compatible Device authorized for such download so that
you can view that Purchased Digital Content if it becomes unavailable for
further download or streaming from the Service._

------
ck2
DRM clawback. It's all fun and games until your new car won't start some
morning because someone typed in the wrong account number and deactivated your
software.

We need consumer protection laws but that would require politicians to care
about people and not corporations, so never going to happen.

~~~
dublinben
Forget consumer protection laws, just don't use DRM. This kind of anti-
consumer behavior cannot happen without DRM in your content and on your
devices.

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taylodl
The fact this _can_ happen is the problem. Technology enabling such widespread
censorship must not be so eagerly adopted.

~~~
jeffl8n
If you have ever worked on or run an ecommerce site with digital goods, you
might understand more easily how this could happen by accident.

~~~
Karunamon
The fact that it _can_ happen, at all, ever, means something is very, very
wrong.

~~~
freehunter
That "something very very wrong" is the only way digital streaming purchases
can ever be. If you're streaming content from someone else's servers, you're
always just one mistake away from having everything disappear. There are ways
around that which aren't as convenient as streaming, so if you're worried
about it, use the alternatives. There's literally no way to have content
streaming from Amazon and _not_ be at their mercy to not fuck up. The only
thing you can hope for is that the fix is quick and everything is restored in
the end.

For many people, though, it's a tradeoff they're willing to make. Netflix, for
example, is just too damn cheap and convenient for me to get upset about the
restrictions (except why I can't play it on Linux when I can play it on
Android and Roku...)

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x3ro
Good thing this is illegal in Germany, and Amazon would have to reimburse
their customers (those who are so bold to ask for reimbursement, of course..
:D). On the other hand, the difficult legislation that prohibits such
agreements is probably part of the reason why many such services are still not
available in Germany..

~~~
Shivetya
Disney should be forced to reimburse customers. If they permitted a retailer
to sell and item, collected their part of the sale, then invalidating the sale
at a later date should be illegal or done with a penalty.

As it stands now, no item you buy from any source is safe.

~~~
jeffl8n
Disney didn't pull the product from existing customers. That was caused by an
Amazon issue which has already been fixed.

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pmelendez
The original article is more clear. They removed the show retroactively by
mistake.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/16/amazon-
dis...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/16/amazon-disney-
christmas-tv-special-prep-and-landing)

~~~
bollockitis
> They removed the show retroactively by mistake.

That's only slightly less frightening. A simple error can potentially wipe out
all of my "purchases."

Just imagine that telephone conversation with customer support: "Yes, I have
rebooted my machine. I need tier two suppo-- No, I don't need to update my
software. Can I talk to-- No, it's not a connection problem. My ISP won't be
able to help me."

