I know it doesn’t fit the Piracy narrative, but there’s actually more to this story. I’ve never actually heard this story, but at some point, Google gave everyone that same movie (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) for free. Anybody who saw the deal could claim it. I still have it. I’d gift it to this guy if I could, because I’ve since bought the extended edition trilogy in 4K. The Fellowship copy is locked to 1080p, and it’s the theatrical version. I have no reason to ever watch it. But I still have it.
So I don’t know what happened with them losing the rights, but they did kinda try to make it right by offering a giveaway. It would have been awfully nice of them to email everyone who lost their original copy and tell them they could claim it, though. That rarely happens with giveaways. They had a few of them back then. I also got Happy Feet and Big, maybe one or two others.
Make no mistake though. While I do have quite a nice collection of 4K movies in Apple TV (call them rentals if you want, but I won’t pay more than $5 for them, so rental is fair since I paid rental price), I have easily 10-15 times as many on my Plex server (not all 4K though, but still).
I know it doesn’t fit the Piracy narrative, but there’s actually more to this story. I’ve never actually heard this story, but at some point, Google gave everyone that same movie (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) for free. Anybody who saw the deal could claim it. I still have it. I’d gift it to this guy if I could, because I’ve since bought the extended edition trilogy in 4K. The Fellowship copy is locked to 1080p, and it’s the theatrical version. I have no reason to ever watch it. But I still have it.
So I don’t know what happened with them losing the rights, but they did kinda try to make it right by offering a giveaway. It would have been awfully nice of them to email everyone who lost their original copy and tell them they could claim it, though. That rarely happens with giveaways. They had a few of them back then. I also got Happy Feet and Big, maybe one or two others.
Make no mistake though. While I do have quite a nice collection of 4K movies in Apple TV (call them rentals if you want, but I won’t pay more than $5 for them, so rental is fair since I paid rental price), I have easily 10-15 times as many on my Plex server (not all 4K though, but still).
Here is the original story: https://www.techradar.com/streaming/youll-own-nothing-and-youll-like-it-google-pulls-the-lord-of-the-rings-digital-editions-from-one-users-library-our-latest-reminder-that-digital-purchases-arent-always-forever
It seems they paid for it and were not given a refund or replacement.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/1vhh8vg/_/