What It Means to Own Movies and TV in the Age of Streaming Services
hubie writes:
What rights do you have to the digital movies, TV shows and music you buy online?
That question was on the minds of Telstra TV Box Office customers this month after the company announced it would shut down the service in June. Customers were told that unless they moved over to another service, Fetch, they would no longer be able to access the films and TV shows they had bought.
This isn't simply a case of Netflix removing Friends from the service when a content agreement runs out. These were films and shows people had bought with the expectation they could watch them whenever they wanted - indefinitely.
Vicki Russell posted on X last week saying she was being asked by Telstra to pay $200 for Fetch to retain access to what she said was $2,500-worth of purchases.
"Years and years of purchasing movies and my whole library is just wiped out. What a shitty thing to do," she posted.
[...] A spokesperson for Telstra said it was a rights issue, which meant customers had to move to a similar content service to keep accessing the content. Customers had not been able to make new purchases since the end of September last year, the spokesperson said, with customers being migrated to Fetch since December.
[...] Telstra's announcement led many on X to suggest another avenue: online piracy.
Cohney said there is a strong moral argument - but not a legal one - to explain why people resort to downloading copyright-infringing content via torrent websites.
"This is not to suggest people should go out and do this but it certainly does add a more moral force to the proponents of piracy," he said. "And I think the more media companies engage in this kind of bait and switch, the more piracy and these kinds of preservation efforts will become appealing to people."
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