When you buy a movie on iTunes, it’s yours forever, until such a time as when Apple maybe loses the rights to distribute it, and then it will disappear from your library without a trace. This is what happened to Anders G. da Silva, who goes by @drandersgs on Twitter, and who tweeted about losing three movies bought on the iTunes Store …
Update 9/17/2018 2:50PM: By way of explanation, an Apple PR representative sent me this link, which explains that the reason da Silva can’t access the movies he paid real dollars for is that they are stuck on a different region of the iTunes Store (Canada vs. Australia); to access the movies, he simply needs to relinquish his Australian iTunes Store subscriptions and credits, obtain a Canadian billing address and a Canadian credit card, switch back over to the store, hope the movies are still available, redownload them in a secure location and locally store them when Apple claims you don’t need to do this, and then undo all of the settings so he can go back to his new native iTunes Store of Australia. Apple, appearing to have finally realized some elements of this are absolutely ridiculous, is “promising to send him a workaround.”
I care about the music I love far too much to entrust a tech company to maintain my ability to listen to it in perpetuity. Maybe you do, too.