You and everyone else supporting this crap needs to take a hard look at the terms of service of these service. Rentals are one thing, and I think streaming media is a good idea for this. But for purchasing movies, downloads are a complete and utter nightmare.
In systems such as Amazon Unbox, when you "purchase" a movie YOU DO NOT OWN IT!!!! You are ONLY "purchasing the right" to watching the movie unlimited times. You CANNOT sell your copy, give it to a friend, and your ability to watch the movie can be revoked at any time at the will of the IP holder or Amazon. If you uninstall the Unbox software you will lose any ability to watch purchased media. If you attempt to keep Unbox from constantly calling home to verify security, you will be unable to view any media. YOU HAVE TO AGREE TO ANY SOFTWARE UPDATES no matter what kind of draconian spyware the software update introduces onto your system, or once again you lose access to all "purchased" media. There are so many OUTRAGEOUS conditions that this is truly a DISASTER for consumer rights.
*WARNING* BEFORE YOU CONSIDER USING A DOWNLOAD-TO-OWN MOVIE SERVICE, read the following from the popular BoingBoing.NET blog, entitled "Amazon Unbox to customers - Eat shit and die"
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Sam Winter @ Mar 15th 2008 6:40PM
@Nfinity..
You and everyone else supporting this crap needs to take a hard look at the terms of service of these service. Rentals are one thing, and I think streaming media is a good idea for this.
But for purchasing movies, downloads are a complete and utter nightmare.
In systems such as Amazon Unbox, when you "purchase" a movie YOU DO NOT OWN IT!!!! You are ONLY "purchasing the right" to watching the movie unlimited times. You CANNOT sell your copy, give it to a friend, and your ability to watch the movie can be revoked at any time at the will of the IP holder or Amazon. If you uninstall the Unbox software you will lose any ability to watch purchased media. If you attempt to keep Unbox from constantly calling home to verify security, you will be unable to view any media.
YOU HAVE TO AGREE TO ANY SOFTWARE UPDATES no matter what kind of draconian spyware the software update introduces onto your system, or once again you lose access to all "purchased" media.
There are so many OUTRAGEOUS conditions that this is truly a DISASTER for consumer rights.
*WARNING* BEFORE YOU CONSIDER USING A DOWNLOAD-TO-OWN MOVIE SERVICE, read the following from the popular BoingBoing.NET blog, entitled "Amazon Unbox to customers - Eat shit and die"
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/15/amazon-unbox-to-cust.html