Buy a digital movie - you don't own it

[Geffers]

In the old days if you bought a movie on Disk or VHS tape it was yours. You could loan it to someone, take it round to a friend's house, even take it to another country and play it. Appreciate DVDs had regional restrictions but most computers could deal with that OK.

However, buy and digital movie and it is not yours.

Bought a movie from Amazon UK - currently in US and shows as currently not available. Even tried a VPN with a UK location but still not available. maybe I should have tried to download it (didn't actually think of that) but guess I'll have DRM issues. Shall try out of curiosity when I return to UK.

Geffers

 

[Retro]

Yup, hit the nail on the head there.

Almost all the DVD players had unofficial remote control key combinations to get round the region locking, so it wasn't quite the spectre that it was supposed to be.

There have been cases where someone has bought a book on Kindle, or music on these services, only to have it yanked for some lame reason. Yeah, the DRM is bad, very bad.

 

[Tiffany]

I miss the simple times when you bought something and you owned it. Digital does have it's advantage though of not having to find physical storage space, like a shelf for your "stuff".