No

while purchases are intended for lifetime streaming without an expiry date

Oh my sweet summer child…

Is this an ad? Like how is this even a question? Amazon doesn’t need any more fucking money, especially not for digital goods that can be easily copied and acquired elsewhere.

Do not “buy” from these places. They don’t even own the content they are selling. Your access to the show is contingent upon Amazon Prime Video continuing to have license agreements with the owner of the content. As soon as their (separate) deal with the company that owns the content expires (and it will eventually), you will lose access to that content.

From here: https://www.primevideo.com/help?nodeId=G4HUP5EWXFZDHGFC

On the title’s product page, you’re shown available purchase options. Note: Buying a title adds it to My Stuff and will generally be available to you for download or streaming, but may become unavailable due to licensing restrictions or for other limited reasons; renting a title will add it there for a limited period. Rented titles stay in your video library for 30-days from the date of the rental. However, once you press play on the rented title, you have at minimum 48-hours to finish watching it. Some titles have longer viewing periods.

I haven’t knowingly bought anything from Amazon in nearly 10 years.

If it can be taken away, it’s not ownership.

I’ve rented a movie for $2.99, knowing it was an ephemeral purchase. I look at it like going to the movies but for a lot less.

If I were to “buy” a season, it would be so I could rip the stream and save it.

I do have a couple subscriptions through Amazon, as distasteful as it is. But I’m also building my own video collection and get my own copies of stuff as much as I can.

My local libraries have an astounding array of fairly new stuff and classics, in addition to good media from The Great Courses, and books on CD. So I check them out and rip them, converting video to much smaller MKV files since what’s on DVD isn’t high resolution anyway.

I also download stuff from YouTube that I find interesting (Technology Connections, Animagrafs) and financially support those creators.

I’ve never rented or bought any show or movie digitally. Always seemed too expensive and ephemeral. I’m old enough to remember video rentals* so I refuse to pay more than 1€ for anything I can watch in one evening but not keep. 3.99 for a B-movie from 1969 that I can’t even keep? lolno. Gladly pay 3.99 for a DVD though.

* … like, the buildings. Is “video rentals” the English term? Everybody’s always only talking about Blockbuster (which wasn’t even a thing here), never the general category of, uh, libraries for video. Hashtag English As A Second Language

Yes