In a newly proposed lawsuit against Amazon [via The Hollywood Reporter]The company has been accused of “bait and switch” (a type of fraudulent activity) on prime video. This means that they are allegedly misleading consumers to believe that they have purchased content when they only get a license to see, which can be revoked at any time if Amazon loses the rights to a title.
The potential trial claims: “Violations of California’s unreasonable competition, false advertising and legislation on consumer law remedies. It seeks unspecified damage, including disgorgement of profits and penalties for allegedly intentionally malicious behavior.” The proposal that Amazon “mistakenly represents the nature of film and TV transactions during the purchase process”.
In the event that it is not clear, let’s take the unknown digital version of Conclave I ‘bought’ on prime video so my parents didn’t miss this year’s Oscar hype as an example. I have a digital copy but if Prime Video’s License Agreements were to be changed so that the version of Conclave I have access to. If Amazon no longer had the rights to the title, my parents would lose the film.
As the complaint points out, “You receive a license for the video and you accept our terms,” which means that what you actually get to divorce your money is written in the small writing. But should Prime Video be allowed to tell subscribers that they have “bought” a movie, and what does that mean to us users in the long run?
Before we move on, let’s not forget that this is not the first trial that this kind of prime video has had against it. By 2020, a separate trial claimed “unreasonable competition and false advertising on practice”. While Amazon has not yet commented on the new class case, it claimed in 2020 that using the word “purchase” that is not misleading for subscribers is already because their purchases are subjective for licensing agreements. Five years later, and I would say that is probably not the case.
Back in 2023, a California legislator brought the problem to the forefront again. Players found that their access to The crew Would be stopped after Ubisoft closed the game’s servers and inspired the ‘Stop Killing Games’ movement, aiming for publishers who destroyed previously purchased consumer titles.
However, changes in California legislator this year are working to our new trial advantage. In essence, a state law has excluded the use of the word ‘buy’ in a transaction unless “it offers unlimited ownership of the product.” Obviously, our Prime Video Small Print doesn’t fit into this, and Amazon can hardly afford to lose such a huge profit share as California (if it was its own separate country, California would be the fourth largest economy in the world).
We do not yet know what any of this means for streamers with a first -class video subscription at a wider level, but for me it is an incredibly sharp reminder that we need to continue investing in physical media as much as possible. Yes, it is more expensive than paying a fixed fee each month for all the content you may want. But it’s like dating: If you become more intentional in what you invest in, the results are lifelong.
If you have physical copies of movies and TV shows that you love, you can never get divorced from them, and that is the only way we can now guarantee the security of what we buy. Maybe it’s time for the best streaming services to return to the good old days of sending us disks in the position to see and return when we’re done with them, just as Netflix did in the late 2000s.
