We need a class action lawsuit to ban ads in all media consumed as part of premium services. The free TV channels back in the day had ads and premium TV channels like HBO had no ads. This is somehow the worst of both worlds. You pay a premium for the Prime subscription and get Prime video ads even after paying.
Cable TV didn't have ads when it started, and then started adding advertisements once they realized they could get away with it. That's when you ended up with HBO, which was an additional cost above standard cable TV. Corporations are never "content", but always require more and more income.
Cable TV in the US from day one had ads, as it was literally just the broadcast networks which had ads repeated on a wire. So no, cable had ads from the beginning.
Then, decades later, the first cable only stations started appearing. Some had ads from the start, some didn't. Some charged extra fees (premium channels), some didn't. Many of the early cable-only channels had ads on day one, some added ads later.
In the US at least, there was practically never a time where there were no ad-supported TV channels on cable. There were always at least some channels that were ad-supported.
Making the removal of ads a feature of a paid product is (or was) a common pattern but it's not any sort of law.
You can still get cable channels with no commercials, I have a handful of them despite not paying for the HBO tier. And DVRs make commercials on other channels skippable. Streaming tech was always destined to take away control of the video stream so that commercials would become unskippable. That's what's at the root of it. Predictable, but not illegal.
weirdly, this was the last bit of "value" my family and i had received from subscribing to amazon prime. based on how this all shakes out, it's likely the last year of the subscription for me. i purchased it for man in the high castle back in 2015 and have used renewal as a birthday present idea. the new video content has been OK but the years-long delay between seasons of things like wheel of time lead to me losing interest in it. there are enough shipping hacks out there now, and prime shipping is no longer what it used to be, that it's just not a compelling subscription anymore.
Bundling should be regulated in general. It's similar to Microsoft 365 jacking up the prices by claiming they're adding more "value" with products / features no one asked for.
I use almost nothing else from Amazon besides free shipping (they used to have Amazon Music which was pretty good, but now they limited the number of skips); I watch The Boys but I'm sure it'd be cheaper to buy seasons / episodes a-la-carte.
For me that subscription comes with all of Microsoft Office, 1 TB storage, and ad free email for less than $6/month. I would never pay that little if those were delivered as three different services. I think Amazon Prime is a ripoff, but Microsoft 365 seems like a bad example of bundling gone wrong.
I was mostly talking about the Enterprise subscriptions (E3/E5) that CTOs really love getting for their employees. Glad to hear the home subscription provides good value to you.
I can’t see this one going Amazon’s way but IANAL. Given it’s such a short term problem for them, chances are they’ll just pay off the claimants to make it go away.
> In addition to being “unfair,” the suit alleges that Amazon illegally benefited by advertising Prime Video as “commercial-free” for years prior to launching its ad-supported tier, which “harms both consumers and honest competition,” according to the complaint.
I.e. dumping.
It's anti-competitive to offer something at unsustainable prices to drive out competition (and these events suggest it was unsustainable).
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 51.9 ms ] threadCable TV in the US from day one had ads, as it was literally just the broadcast networks which had ads repeated on a wire. So no, cable had ads from the beginning.
Then, decades later, the first cable only stations started appearing. Some had ads from the start, some didn't. Some charged extra fees (premium channels), some didn't. Many of the early cable-only channels had ads on day one, some added ads later.
In the US at least, there was practically never a time where there were no ad-supported TV channels on cable. There were always at least some channels that were ad-supported.
You can still get cable channels with no commercials, I have a handful of them despite not paying for the HBO tier. And DVRs make commercials on other channels skippable. Streaming tech was always destined to take away control of the video stream so that commercials would become unskippable. That's what's at the root of it. Predictable, but not illegal.
I use almost nothing else from Amazon besides free shipping (they used to have Amazon Music which was pretty good, but now they limited the number of skips); I watch The Boys but I'm sure it'd be cheaper to buy seasons / episodes a-la-carte.
I.e. dumping.
It's anti-competitive to offer something at unsustainable prices to drive out competition (and these events suggest it was unsustainable).
This is nonsense - what they offer is constantly changing.