Imagine this: you pay $19.99 for a movie on Amazon Prime Video. The receipt says you “bought” it. You relax, knowing it’s yours forever.
Then one day, it’s gone. Vanished. Not because you deleted it, but because Amazon no longer has the rights to stream it.
Welcome to the unsettling reality of digital ownership, or rather, the lack of it.
This week, Amazon is facing a new class-action lawsuit in Washington federal court for allegedly misleading Prime Video users into believing they own the movies and shows they “buy.”
In truth, what they’re purchasing is nothing more than a license. A temporary pass that can be revoked at any time.
Let’s put it plainly: clicking “Buy” on Prime Video doesn’t mean you own a movie the way you own a DVD. What you actually get is the right to stream it, as long as Amazon has the rights to show it. If that deal expires, so does your access.
Plaintiff Lisa Reingold, who filed the lawsuit, says she paid $20.79 for a season of Bella and the Bulldogs only to see it disappear from her library. She isn’t alone. Countless users have woken up to find movies they “owned” suddenly unavailable.
Amazon does disclose this, but in the kind of buried fine print lawyers drafted and consumers never read. Or to better capture it, these “terms and conditions” are buried at the bottom of the screen in small print where most customers won’t take the trouble of reading through.
A single line on the confirmation page says: “You receive a license to the video and you agree to our terms.”
The lawsuit argues this amounts to deception. After all, “buy” in everyday language means permanent ownership, not “revocable license subject to corporate mood swings.”
California legislators agree: a new law now bans companies from advertising something as a purchase unless ownership is unrestricted.
If the suit succeeds, Amazon could be forced to overhaul the way it sells digital content, and potentially pay damages to affected customers.
