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Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

arstechnica.com

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Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#111

Post by Wowfunhappy »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #105
realusername wrote: post #3

> Apple countered by arguing that “no reasonable consumer would believe” that content purchased through iTunes would be available on the platform indefinitely Remember this sentence to change your mind for the next time you see some movie to buy online.

> Remember this sentence to change your mind for the next time you see some movie to buy online. If you use iTunes, and "add to library," like I do, you'll see how often albums get removed or replaced or remixed. It's unnecessary and unnerving. The labels are constantly faffing about with albums. Every couple of months, I'll go to play an album, and find that it only has, say, 2 songs in it. Sometimes I can go back a…

iTunes music is DRM free if you download it, so this is one case where you really could make the access indefinite if you wanted.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#112

Post by bo1024 »

threatofrain wrote: post #98
Diggsey wrote: post #17

IMO it wouldn't matter if they'd used the word "Rent" or "Licence" instead: it would still be unreasonable. Account termination is entirely at Apple's discretion, meaning the term of your "rental" is not known when you actually pay for the content. For most people the term will be "forever", so that is the expectation. It's simple: if apple want to terminate your account, they need to refund you for any content you l…

Apple can just rent you their entire catalogue similar to Apple Arcade or Music, then nobody would say you own the entire selection, just like it’d be absurd to say you own Netflix forever. In the Netflix case it’s be even more difficult to argue since Netflix doesn’t own the IP and the catalogue is ever shifting. I’m afraid the future is rental at least because the consumer is no longer technically prepared to own a…

I think this is easy to resolve. With Netflix, the terms are that you pay a fixed amount and you get one month's access to stream whatever they choose to offer at the time, repeat. If Netflix terminates your account, well, you lose out on less than a month of access, so they should refund one month.

It's very different if (a) you pay per individual item, (b) there's an explicit or implied agreement that you have access to that item indefinitely. Then if your account is terminated, you should be refunded the value of having access indefinitely, which is the original purchase price.

Now maybe you're saying Apple can go to a subscription service where it rents "access" to the library, but those are very different terms.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#113

Post by interestica »

joshmanders wrote: post #41
cipher_system wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always assumed they would be available as long as Apple or iTunes doesn't go under. Guess i'm not a reasonable consumer but luckily I haven't spent much money on them.

I've spent a lot of money on iTunes content (Nearing 1,000 purchased movies on AppleTV), and my assumption was the same. As long as Apple/iTunes doesn't go under, and given I don't do anything to violate Apple's terms, I will have access to this content. I understand I can lose access, I'm not paying for the content in the idea that I own it forever even if Apple goes under or I get terminated, but I have perpetual a…

> If I had expected to own it forever, I'd probably have bought DVD's, not digital.

This is the opposite of what it should be. DVDs degrade over time, and can last for as little as 10 years. Digital should be mean transportable and convertible indefinitely.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#114

Post by loup-vaillant »

Nice. Now how about the Occulus Quest?

You know, that lovely physical device you supposedly buy and own, but can be denied its use indefinitely if Facebook's algorithms decide to terminate your account for some reason (which tends to be more likely if you opened an account just so you could play).

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#115

Post by Vespasian »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #16
oblio wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should just force all these vendors to relabel those buttons to "Rent" or equivalent.

IMO they should just forbid taking away access. You can't terminate the account. If someone does a chargeback, you can terminate access to what they charged back. You can forbid them to write any additional data in the future. You can decline to sell them anything more. You can sue them for any monies they owe you. But if you're providing property-like digital goods, you must give indefinite read-only access to those…

This is how things should be and I really hope we arrive at this in the future.

I like to call this "ownership light" and it would remove unilateral unaccountable suspension decisions from the equation.

The service provider is not burdened beyond reason and there is still a distinction made between this and "physical ownership" (e.g. no right to inherit / sell the content).

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#116

Post by mhb »

joshmanders wrote: post #48
l-lousy wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Change it to “rent” or give the option to download. You can’t have a contract where the terms change at any time for any reason (apples account termination policy)

They already have a rent option, so Rent (As long as your account is in good standing) and Rent (for a few hours) would be even more confusing.

Why? You can rent a car for a day or lease it for years.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#117

Post by [deleted] »

bo1024 wrote: post #112
threatofrain wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple can just rent you their entire catalogue similar to Apple Arcade or Music, then nobody would say you own the entire selection, just like it’d be absurd to say you own Netflix forever. In the Netflix case it’s be even more difficult to argue since Netflix doesn’t own the IP and the catalogue is ever shifting. I’m afraid the future is rental at least because the consumer is no longer technically prepared to own a…

I think this is easy to resolve. With Netflix, the terms are that you pay a fixed amount and you get one month's access to stream whatever they choose to offer at the time, repeat. If Netflix terminates your account, well, you lose out on less than a month of access, so they should refund one month. It's very different if (a) you pay per individual item, (b) there's an explicit or implied agreement that you have acce…

[deleted]

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#118

Post by xur17 »

infogulch wrote: post #63
strogonoff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transferrable software/media licenses present a challenge that can be either a technical or a social/economical one. There is a high temptation to abuse the system due to the ease of making a copy. On one hand, it can be attacked with a zero-trust outlook from technical angle (DRM). On the other hand, in a society with higher minimum quality of life and satisfaction eliminating required trust may do more harm than go…

Maybe this is the real killer use-case for NFTs?

Honestly, it is a decent use case. Sell NFTs that grant the owner the right to play / use a certain song, movie, ebook, etc. Ideally have some sort of file storage layer that only grants the ability to stream the content if you own the nft - not sure how feasible that is, so the alternative is to establish a few providers that can stream the content, and get paid a small amount for their services by the movie studios.

Reselling rights don't have to be granted, and if they are, they could even include "fees" for reselling to limit a rental market from taking place.

Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos

#119

Post by FridayoLeary »

Even if Apple may be justified, I would expect more professionalism from such a large company. their PR image is certainly worth many multiples of $25000. By issuing their tone deaf statement about "no reasonable person etc" they are alienating many customers. even if the are legally 100% right, that's irrelevant.

Actually, Apple isn't the first to introduce a rather novel interpretation of the word "buy". John Deere did that first saying that buying really means an "implied license" or something. I've got no idea how they can get away with redefining words in the English language.

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