Download of software without license/approval (so illegal download) is prohibited.
I think it seems immoral but the more I think about it, it's not.
A corporation (like a studio) and capitalist system (like hollywood movie making) doesn't operate with morality. It seeks to gain the largest profit without regard to morality.
If these movie companies reached a fair profit point and made the movie free afterwards you could make the point they acted with balance. If they shared profits with society morality could be an issue.
But they try to make as much profit as the market will allow. They act without morality. Therefore you cannot assigned a morality value to your interactions with such entities.
It is not immoral to pirate (even if it is illegal in some places).
It isn't definitive that piracy actually causes any significant or definitive harm to large organisations. It fact in many circumstances the effect can be reversed - those who pirate films are also more likely to watch them and to encourage others to watch them.
Without a definitive answer to the harm question, you can't definitively assess the morality side of the question.
I only had this happen a long time ago with a iTunes code-provided copy of Shrek. Every other movie I’ve purchased has worked across generations of devices and stuff since the first iPad. I’m curious if I’m just lucky?
Ah, isn't DRM beautiful. I'm reminded of a time when a man sitting next to me on a flight couldn't play any downloaded content on his tablet he was not in his home region. Gee, people fly to places outside their home, what a surprise!
Yes it does. We bought a lot of kids movies on iTunes, and then I couldn't play them back because a device was not authorized (I bought it on my iPhone, so it doesn't work on my girlfriends iPad), or because the internet didn't work, or because iTunes was broken after upgrading to a new OS, ... it's so frustrating when you have a collection of video files on a USB stick that you paid for and you can't watch them.