One of the oldest questions about streaming is what happens if the store you purchased a show from loses rights to the show or movie.
I often hear from new and old cord cutters alike that they don’t want to buy digital content because they may lose access to it at some future date. I can’t tell you what happens on all services, but I can tell you what happens on Amazon.
Recently “King of the Hill” was pulled from Amazon’s Video Store, meaning you can no longer purchase that show through Amazon’s streaming service; however, what happened to all the owners of “King of the Hill” on Amazon? Nothing. It’s still there to stream if you had purchased it before the show was pulled from Amazon Video.
My family is fan of “King of the Hill,” and we own every season on Amazon Video. We can still watch it on all of our devices and on the Amazon website.
So what happens to services that just shut down? That is a different issue, but there is a good history of customers being made whole. An example of this is when Redbox’s first streaming service shut down. Anyone who purchased a movie or a show on Redbox’s streaming service could—for free—move their content over to what is now known as FandangoNOW. No one lost any content, and everything moved over.
So if you are worried about losing access to your digital movies or TV shows I wouldn’t worry. First, I don’t expect a service such as Amazon or iTunes to go away anytime soon. Next, services such as Amazon have done a great job of making sure the content you paid for is always there.
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