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I "bought" the first season of The Walking Dead from Amazon.com. I've thoroughly enjoyed the graphic novels, so I wanted to reward the creators by legally watching the television adaptation. Sure, it would have been trivially easy for me to download torrents of each episode, and in many ways it would have been far easier for me to watch the torrents on whatever device I choose. Amazon requires that I either be connected to the Internet to stream the video, or use the Windows-only "Unbox" software to download the videos to a Windows-only PC or limited set of "compatible" portable devices. We have only Macintosh and Linux computers in our house, so the options afforded to us by Amazon are considerably limited.

I understood all of this when I "purchased" the videos, and the platform limitations are not the specific point of complaint in this post. Rather, it's Amazon's claim that I "own" the videos. Answers.com defines "ownership" as "1) The state or fact of being an owner. 2) Legal right to the possession of a thing." The reality, though, is that I do not have a legal right to the videos I purchased from Amazon. Rather, I have a legal right to the viewing of those videos. From Amazon.com's explanation of my "Rights and Requirements":

Purchase Details

When you buy a video, your viewing rights do not expire (except as provided in our Terms of Use). You can watch a video you own online and download it to 2 locations (TiVo DVRs and Windows PCs). You can also transfer a video you own to 2 portable devices. Note: Some new release movies will become unavailable for viewing or downloading for an unspecified period of time due to licensing restrictions. You will be notified about this before we process your order.

It cannot be reasonably claimed that I own the videos. I cannot loan them to a friend. I do not enjoy the principle of the First Sale doctrine, which means I cannot sell the videos when I no longer need them. They will neither appreciate nor depreciate in value over time. I cannot choose how to enjoy viewing the videos. And in the future, there's no guarantee that Amazon will even support these videos as the state of the art of video streaming changes: how long do you think Amazon will support the "legacy" format used by these videos as newer technologies become standard?

I "own" the videos insofar as Amazon permits me to view the videos, and then only on devices not proscribed by Amazon. This is a very different thing than owning the videos themselves.

This subtle shift in language is disingenuous and dangerous. To claim that I "own" the videos is flat-out wrong. I understand that it would be awkward for Amazon to declare on the video detail page that I have legally purchased the right to view these videos in accordance with the limitations defined by Amazon's Video on Demand service; but it seems even worse to me as a consumer to mislead me about the nature of my purchase.

While in Warren, Ohio for a small family reunion at Carina's grandfather's house, I stopped by Best Buy to purchase a Pure Digital Flip camcorder. These little devices are extremely popular, and received a very positive review by David Pogue.

The Warren, OH Best Buy had only a single Flip left, and it had previously been returned. I decided to buy it, reasonably comfortable that I could also return it if it proved defective. I let Tyler record the exhilarating ride back to the house, and then sat down with the device to check it out in earnest. Tyler recorded maybe a few minutes worth of video, so I was dismayed when the device reported that it had only 40 minutes or so of recording capacity left. Maybe this was why the previous owner returned it?

I flipped out the USB plug (thus the product's name) and connected it to my laptop, running Ubuntu. It was immediately detected as a USB drive, and the contents were displayed to me. The recordings, saved as AVI files (XviD video with mono ADPCM audo), were all listed in the DCIM/100VIDEO folder. There were several files named VID00XX.AVI, where X was a number; but to my surprise there were a handful of other files there, with names like "Smoke", "Smoked", "Smokeing" and "Smoke Out". I immediately copied these to my laptop and watched them.

What I saw were two young men, high school or college kids, sitting in someone's room smoking a joint, and then a bong. I'm left wondering what would motivate someone to record themselves smoking a joint. I certainly did a lot of stupid stuff when I was younger, but to the best of my knowledge I never had the desire to document any of it. (That said, there does exist a surprising amount of documentation of some of my shenanigans. Hopefully Elfboy never gets vindictive!)

I assume that these jokers connected the Flip to their computer, enjoyed watching their masterpieces, and gave the videos meaningful names so they'd remember what it was later. However, they renamed the files on the device itself, rather than copying the files to their computer and then renaming the copies. These renamed videos were not seen when using the Flip's controls to view and delete recorded videos. The Flip user interface apparently doesn't look for all video files within the DCIM/100VIDEO directory, but instead only looks for files that match the filenames it creates. As such, "Smoke" and the other renamed videos remained on the device.

It's dumb enough to record yourself using illegal drugs. It's dumber still to rename the filenames of said video on the recorder, and then return the recorder to (presumably) the place of purchase.

For the benefit of all mankind, I've uploaded the videos for your viewing pleasure: Morons part 1, Morons, part 2, Morons, part 3.

As Sean observed, That should be an anti-drug commercial. 'Do you really want to be like these douches?'