Sad day for movies purchased on iTunes :o(

[snowatom]

I have 500+ movies bought on iTunes, and this has never happened before. But now it did.

The movie (Stand-up show) "Tom Wilson: Bigger Than You" has been removed.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/tom-wilson-bigger-than-you/id1551101668

I could maybe understand a movie no longer being able for purchase, but why remove from peoples purchased movie library.

I have heard of this before, but never experienced it myself, as many reasons for people losing movies are often caused by:

1. Hidden the movie by mistake
2. Moved Apple ID to another country, where movies isn't available
3. Didn't really purchase the movie on iTunes, but Vudu or moviesanywere linked to iTunes.

But in my case, the movie was bought on the Danish iTunes Store, but it's gone from every country store on iTunes.

Sad sad sad..

 

[pmiles]

You don't actually own the movie unless you download it to your hard drive and keep it there. Everything that it kept in the cloud is subject to removal. So in a nutshell, you're only renting the right to watch the movie while it is still available on the cloud.

If you don't want this to happen again, I'd download every movie to a very large hard drive (you'll need it).

Apple must maintain the license to rent/sell the movie in order for it to remain in the cloud. They can and will drop movies to make room for new titles and when the distributor no longer wants them to distribute the movie. Please note that is true for any movie that you purchase from any site in the world that you don't physically download a copy of... not just Apple.

You want an actual movie archive, you need to store the content yourself at your expense, not rely on a third party.

 

[satcomer]

I've noticed over the years that movie companies pull their movies from Apple to get better money on contracts! This has happened throughout western Countries, butt hurt is everywhere today and now it seems main stream! This is danger for anyone trusting he Cloud even if it's Apple service!

 

[TiggrToo]

I've noticed over the years that movie companies pull their movies from Apple to get better money on contracts! This has happened throughout western Countries, butt hurt is everywhere today and now it seems main stream! This is danger for anyone trusting he Cloud even if it's Apple service!

This has NOTHING to do with Apple and EVERYTHING to do with how media is licensed.

It doesn’t matter where you source your digital content from - unless you have a copy sitting locally, it’s always at risk of vanishing.

It’s why I personally have rarely ever purchased anything digital and still rely on physical items or de-DRM’d digital copies.

 

[jwolf6589]

I have 500+ movies bought on iTunes, and this has never happened before. But now it did.

The movie (Stand-up show) "Tom Wilson: Bigger Than You" has been removed.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/tom-wilson-bigger-than-you/id1551101668

I could maybe understand a movie no longer being able for purchase, but why remove from peoples purchased movie library.

I have heard of this before, but never experienced it myself, as many reasons for people losing movies are often caused by:

1. Hidden the movie by mistake
2. Moved Apple ID to another country, where movies isn't available
3. Didn't really purchase the movie on iTunes, but Vudu or moviesanywere linked to iTunes.

But in my case, the movie was bought on the Danish iTunes Store, but it's gone from every country store on iTunes.

Sad sad sad..

One reason why I also have a blue Ray player and a DVD player for my Mac. I also have DVD backups of certain important to me films that I want to watch if apple one day decided to remove them from my AppleTV.

 

[snowatom]

I don't want physical DVD's or Blu-Rays taking up space in my house. I know many love it, but I just don't. So I want it digitally. Sadly in Denmark, it's illegal to rip your own purchased movies, as you need to bypass encryption, which is a no-go. If it weren't, I would purchase physical, rip them, and then store the physical media in boxes.

So the only choice I have, is to purchase digitally.

 

[Mr.Blacky]

I have 500+ movies bought on iTunes, and this has never happened before. But now it did.

The movie (Stand-up show) "Tom Wilson: Bigger Than You" has been removed.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/tom-wilson-bigger-than-you/id1551101668

I could maybe understand a movie no longer being able for purchase, but why remove from peoples purchased movie library.

I have heard of this before, but never experienced it myself, as many reasons for people losing movies are often caused by:

1. Hidden the movie by mistake
2. Moved Apple ID to another country, where movies isn't available
3. Didn't really purchase the movie on iTunes, but Vudu or moviesanywere linked to iTunes.

But in my case, the movie was bought on the Danish iTunes Store, but it's gone from every country store on iTunes.

Sad sad sad..

You double-checked, the movie really isn't hidden?

 

[w5jck]

Every country has it own unique laws concerning digital media. In the USA some, but not all, DVD and Blu-Ray titles come with the legal rights to store and use the digital version of the movie that is on the disc you purchased. In the USA you cannot give or sell that digital copy to someone else though. Software tends to be illegal to resell here too, depending on the company that sells it to us. Once upon a time we could buy version 2 of a software title then sell version 1 to another user. But that is typically illegal now. With digital, you never really own it. You only own the rights to view it under the sellers specified rules.

It sucks, but it is still way better of a system than when I was a kid growing up in the 1960s with only one TV channel to watch. In those days there was no cable/satellite/streaming, so you could only get broadcast TV over the air via antenna. And there was no way to record it either, so you watched what was on when it was on, or you didn't watch it. That sucked, although at the time we didn't know how much it sucked compared to today! Today it still sucks with all the legal regulations designed to protect the owners/producers of the media we watch, but it is way better than it was half a century ago. Unless they invent a very secure way to allow us to actually own digital media without sharing it with others, we will continue to be limited in our rights thereof. At any rate, Apple has no control over this except when it comes to the media they actually own, and they don't own that much of it.

 

[jwolf6589]

I don't want physical DVD's or Blu-Rays taking up space in my house. I know many love it, but I just don't. So I want it digitally. Sadly in Denmark, it's illegal to rip your own purchased movies, as you need to bypass encryption, which is a no-go. If it weren't, I would purchase physical, rip them, and then store the physical media in boxes.

So the only choice I have, is to purchase digitally.

Buy the content on DVD as well as own digital copies.

 

[jwolf6589]

Every country has it own unique laws concerning digital media. In the USA some, but not all, DVD and Blu-Ray titles come with the legal rights to store and use the digital version of the movie that is on the disc you purchased. In the USA you cannot give or sell that digital copy to someone else though. Software tends to be illegal to resell here too, depending on the company that sells it to us. Once upon a time we could buy version 2 of a software title then sell version 1 to another user. But that is typically illegal now. With digital, you never really own it. You only own the rights to view it under the sellers specified rules.

It sucks, but it is still way better of a system than when I was a kid growing up in the 1960s with only one TV channel to watch. In those days there was no cable/satellite/streaming, so you could only get broadcast TV over the air via antenna. And there was no way to record it either, so you watched what was on when it was on, or you didn't watch it. That sucked, although at the time we didn't know how much it sucked compared to today! Today it still sucks with all the legal regulations designed to protect the owners/producers of the media we watch, but it is way better than it was half a century ago. Unless they invent a very secure way to allow us to actually own digital media without sharing it with others, we will continue to be limited in our rights thereof. At any rate, Apple has no control over this except when it comes to the media they actually own, and they don't own that much of it.

When I was growing up in the 80’s and 90’s we had VHS players that could record broadcast TV.

 

[tothemoonsands]

That links appears to work? (I didn't follow it all the way though) As an owner of 500+ iTunes movies, I would be concerned, if not for the fact that this appears to be a relatively obscure title. It would be much more shocking/egregious if large distributors start pulling their titles from iTunes.

 

[-Gonzo-]

I have 500+ movies bought on iTunes, and this has never happened before. But now it did.

The movie (Stand-up show) "Tom Wilson: Bigger Than You" has been removed.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/tom-wilson-bigger-than-you/id1551101668

I could maybe understand a movie no longer being able for purchase, but why remove from peoples purchased movie library.

I have heard of this before, but never experienced it myself, as many reasons for people losing movies are often caused by:

1. Hidden the movie by mistake
2. Moved Apple ID to another country, where movies isn't available
3. Didn't really purchase the movie on iTunes, but Vudu or moviesanywere linked to iTunes.

But in my case, the movie was bought on the Danish iTunes Store, but it's gone from every country store on iTunes.

Sad sad sad..

You say it’s gone from every country iTunes Store but I can see it in both the US & UK stores, I’ve even searched different countries including Denmark via Cheap Charts and it’s still showing as being available.
Have you tried doing a search for Bigger Than You via the ATV app?

The other thing I’ve noticed is that the Store ID is the same in all countries, this is the Denmark store link but as it shares the same store ID it will still bring up Bigger Than You no matter what country store you’re logged into.
https://itunes.apple.com/dk/movie/tom-wilson-bigger-than-you/id1551101668

 

[snowatom]

Yes, when you search on Cheap Charts, Justwatch, even on Comedy Dynamics (which is the copyright owner) it shows as available on the iTunes Store. That's unfortunately caused by lack of updating through their API's.

If you search for the movie manually in the store, you'll see that it is no longer existing.

EDIT: Well, lucky me, it seems to be only on the Danish iTunes Store it has been removed. And that's even though ex. Cheap Charts, showing it as availible, but when clicking on it, you'll get this error (translated to, no longer available).

 

[Boyd01]

See this thread which covers pretty much the same thing (with some of the same participants)

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/disappearing-movies.2311757/

 

[-Gonzo-]

Yes, when you search on Cheap Charts, Justwatch, even on Comedy Dynamics (which is the copyright owner) it shows as available on the iTunes Store. That's unfortunately caused by lack of updating through their API's.

If you search for the movie manually in the store, you'll see that it is no longer existing.

EDIT: Well, lucky me, it seems to be only on the Danish iTunes Store it has been removed. And that's even though ex. Cheap Charts, showing it as availible, but when clicking on it, you'll get this error (translated to, no longer available).

If I were a betting man I’d say it’s only temporary, it looks to be a fairly new iTunes title which only appeared in the UK & US stores today according to CheapCharts.
End of March for Denmark?

You could always try sending Comedy Dynamics a message and see what they have to say

Contact - Comedy Dynamics

For Sales inquiries please email sales@nacellecompany.com. For Acquisitions inquiries please email acquisitions@nacellecompany.com

www.comedydynamics.com

 

[snowatom]

You could always send Comedy Dynamics a message and see what they have to say

Contact - Comedy Dynamics

For Sales inquiries please email sales@nacellecompany.com. For Acquisitions inquiries please email acquisitions@nacellecompany.com

www.comedydynamics.com

I have, but haven't heard back from them yet. But one little insignificant danish person, is properly not their priority.

 

[-Gonzo-]

I have, but haven't heard back from them yet. But one little insignificant danish person, is properly not their priority.

Well now they’ve received two 😉

 

[snowatom]

Well now they’ve received two ?

Is it also gone in your store, or are you Danish also?

 

[-Gonzo-]

Is it also gone in your store, or are you Danish also?

Neither, just thought it might help that’s all.

 

[OnawaAfrica]

I have 500+ movies bought on iTunes, and this has never happened before. But now it did.

The movie (Stand-up show) "Tom Wilson: Bigger Than You" has been removed.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/tom-wilson-bigger-than-you/id1551101668

I could maybe understand a movie no longer being able for purchase, but why remove from peoples purchased movie library.

I have heard of this before, but never experienced it myself, as many reasons for people losing movies are often caused by:

1. Hidden the movie by mistake
2. Moved Apple ID to another country, where movies isn't available
3. Didn't really purchase the movie on iTunes, but Vudu or moviesanywere linked to iTunes.

But in my case, the movie was bought on the Danish iTunes Store, but it's gone from every country store on iTunes.

Sad sad sad..

well here in Kenya its still visible and playable

 

[now i see it]

So the only choice I have, is to purchase digitally.

If you’re not watching every movie you purchase 4 times, it’s cheaper to rent from iTunes Store than to buy.
(and none of us really should be watching the same movie 4 times anyway)

 

[GrumpyCoder]

I don't want physical DVD's or Blu-Rays taking up space in my house. I know many love it, but I just don't. So I want it digitally. Sadly in Denmark, it's illegal to rip your own purchased movies, as you need to bypass encryption, which is a no-go. If it weren't, I would purchase physical, rip them, and then store the physical media in boxes.

So the only choice I have, is to purchase digitally.

Here you go: https://www.kaleidescape.com/

You purchase the movies and download them to local storage (they're encrypted), so they're there to stay and you can watch them whenever you want. These are usually 1:1 copies of Blu Rays when it comes to quality, so better than any of the streaming services. They have contracts with the studios and sometimes get their own copy from a master which can be even better than physical disc quality. Of course the download size is much, much larger too. It comes with an initial investment for the player and some storage which goes up to 72TB on the Terra Movie Server. Of course you can use multiple if 72TB is not enough. Keep in mind these usually go into full blown home theater systems, so for someone just watching on a normal TV, the initial cost might be a little too much. But if you're a movie lover, it might be a worthwhile investment. Be sure to check what you want to watch, not every movie is available. They do have over 14000 movies though.

 

[Boyd01]

(and none of us really should be watching the same movie 4 times anyway)

I'll agree that some movies probably shouldn't even be watched once... but I "really shouldn't watch" Citizen Kane, 2001, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, Vertigo and many others more than four times? There are quite a few movies I've watched dozens of times, maybe more.

 

[nastysailboat]

You don't actually own the movie unless you download it to your hard drive and keep it there. Everything that it kept in the cloud is subject to removal. So in a nutshell, you're only renting the right to watch the movie while it is still available on the cloud.

If you don't want this to happen again, I'd download every movie to a very large hard drive (you'll need it).

Apple must maintain the license to rent/sell the movie in order for it to remain in the cloud. They can and will drop movies to make room for new titles and when the distributor no longer wants them to distribute the movie. Please note that is true for any movie that you purchase from any site in the world that you don't physically download a copy of... not just Apple.

You want an actual movie archive, you need to store the content yourself at your expense, not rely on a third party.

Its a real bummer you cant download stuff in 4K. Its also pretty lame that if you buy it you don't just keep it forever in iCloud.

 

[acorntoy]

I usually acquire all my purchases other ways (before converting to HEVC for space savings which Apple doesn’t do years after they started supporting it), For this reason.