[See correction below]

Streaming is how things are done these days. Netflix would rather stream you a movie than send you a DVD. Apple lets you buy a movie or show and stream it without having to download. Wave of the future! Save yourself some drive space! Implement a Japanese-style just-in-time inventory for your media!

Maybe I’m old, maybe I’m paranoid, but I don’t trust things. I don’t trust my WiFi to be consistent, I don’t trust my cable provider to always be up and always provide good bandwidth and I certainly don’t trust the content companies. And with good reason.

Case in point: The Legend of Korra.

This is Nickelodeon’s follow-up show to Avatar: The Last Airbender. It’s pretty good and my son has watched almost all of it. And, well, so have I. Recently Nickelodeon decided to stop airing the show and to distribute the episodes online. I guess as part of this, they decided to pull all the episodes from selling on iTunes (although it is still available for purchase on Amazon Instant Video for some reason). If you bought it and wanted to stream it, too bad. It’s gone. [Note: you can still download the episodes (h/t to Brian Wiggins).]

I download everything so I have the show. But if you didn’t and you email Apple about it, they’ll tell you to contact Viacom, which owns Nickelodeon. Well, no, I bought the show from you. Make a fuss and they might refund your purchase, but that’s not the way this should work.

To quote Nick Fury from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, “See, it’s stuff like this that gives me trust issues.”

ADDED: Speaking of The Winter Soldier, I purchased that from iTunes and it comes with Extras (a gag reel, deleted scenes and some behind-the-scenes videos). The movie gets downloaded, but the Extras do not. They’re streaming-only. So if Apple ever loses that contract, I’ll be out those and there’s nothing to be done about it.

CORRECTION: It turns out that while you can no longer stream the episodes, they are still available for download if you already purchased them from the Purchased link on the iTunes Store front page. Or, at least, they may be. One reader who says he purchased them says he does not see them available for download.