Amazon Instant Video Licensing

Great! Or So It Seems:

First off, let me say the whole idea behind Amazon’s Instant Video is great! And an online library you can keep. However, there is a ridiculous restriction. Just look at this screen capture when I went to buy Red Tails.

So what this is basically saying when you buy the movie, you have to download it and store it before Oct 24th, 2012 or you’ll be out of luck. Also, it will not permanently be in your Online Video Library. That completely defeats the purpose of keeping the Online Video Library. How Amazon or any movie studio thinks this is acceptable is beyond me. When I buy it, it better stay available at all times. How can they possibly combat piracy when they keep doing stupid things like this?

How it should work:

You buy a movie in a specific definition, (SD or HD) and it is added to your Online Movie Library. It is always available in your purchased format forever. Period. It’s okay to deal with licensing devices like they do now. That is fine. But it should always be in your Online Video Library. When a new format comes out, allow the user to upgrade to the newer format for a couple of bucks per title. Say they buy it for $10 in SD, then want to upgrade all their titles to HD and it is $2 more to upgrade it in the future. Say they have 100 movies, mass upgrade all the ones that are allowed to be upgraded for $2 a pop. All they are really doing is upgrading your license and what title it is pointed to. There would be no real long conversion time. This allows us to move away from any disc formats and saves a lot of production costs and resources.

I was going to start just buying from Amazon Instant Videos, but based on these current licensing restrictions I’m just going to have to Amazon to screw off.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try out Amazon Prime. They have a lot of instant videos to watch. A decent selection, not quite the collection Netflix has but it is worth a look. Just try Prime for free for 30 days. I subscribed to Prime because of the 2 day shipping for free, the videos are just an extra perk. More services need to be pay monthly to stream all the content, no more buying movies you will watch once or twice a year. That is how the movie industry will beat piracy!

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