I don’t understand the idea of terminating entire accounts anyways. All this companies need to be able to more finely disable access if needed. It’s gotten really bad now that your personal accounts can end up being tied to business services.
Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
151–160 of 403 posts
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#152IMO 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…
Likely all that would do is cause them to stop letting people buy content and push everyone over to subscription services -
Beyond that, there are problems there. What’s stopping me from getting all the latest games on iOS, latest movies as they come out then after a few years spend some time purposely breaking TOS so I can get it all refunded.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#153Apple could have avoided this issue entirely by allowing users to download the content without any DRM to a storage provider of their choice (ie, Dropbox, or local storage).
Unfortunately, I don’t think this is Apple’s choice. I think the rights holders get to dictate whether people can download the things or not.
Apple is strong enough to offer iTunes music without DRM, so I'm not sure why you're letting them off the hook here. They could do it, they just choose not to.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#154Since I hold the more correct stance that these saas products are full of shit and can instantly disappear, I never dared to interpret “buy” as buy to own forever. To me “buy” on prime is “the other more expensive rent option when the cheaper rent is not available”.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if we will ever see a model similar to Qobuz/Bandcamp for movies and TV shows. These services allow downloading your purchases as DRM-free flac files.
As long as the MPAA exists, this will never happen.
Apple got the RIAA to go along with it, they definitely could get the movie studios to if they wanted (the pirates already broke Netflix, Amazon, and Disney's encryption, it's not helping anyway).
I think the bigger problem now is that people don't buy enough movies for anyone to want to chase this down, and if you want to own a movie, 99% of the time I can get the Blu-Ray+digital version for the same price of the digital one, and then the license syncs to like five different video services. And if they all ban me, then I still have the Blu-Ray.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#156Apple could have avoided this issue entirely by allowing users to download the content without any DRM to a storage provider of their choice (ie, Dropbox, or local storage).
This is not even an option, since it will just make it easier to share files illegally and defeat the whole purpose of having an online movie store.
This line of reasoning is why we have invasive drm that doesn’t work. It’s just another case of drm only hurting legitimate customers and not stopping piracy even in the slightest.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#157IMO 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…
> It's simple: if apple want to terminate your account, they need to refund you for any content you lose access to as a result of that termination. I like that idea a lot. I would add that, at the very, very least, they should give you a personal link to download a snapshot of all of your data from their cloud at the time of termination: email, calendar, contacts, photos/videos, docs, et. al.
The problem is more the licensed content such as movies and music. They likely can't provide it to you in a format sans DRM. So even having the option to download the file, will likely require the media to verify online to unlock at playtime.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
It shouldn't matter. If you're banned from going to a particular physical store for whatever reason, wrongly or not, you still get to keep everything you've ever bought there. If a physical store goes out of business, you also get to keep everything you've ever bought there. Point being, IRL stores don't retain any control over anything you buy.
If I buy a semester at a private school, I still have to pay for the entire semester if I'm expelled (sometimes a smaller but still substantial early leave amount). I know neither of our analogies mirror exactly is going on, but that's part of the point. Maybe this is a different class of "ownership". There seems to be many classes already close to what Apple wants. I'm not sure who will win. I hope it's not Apple, b…
> Maybe this is a different class of "ownership".
Except IMO this class of "ownership" should cost substantially less because you get much less value.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#159> 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.
They are a monopoly. I hope the Judge on Epic class call this Apple’s Motion to Dismiss. Hopefully there will be platform independent store where you can buy once and available on all devices.
For media, Amazon is platform-independent for music, books and movies.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously. It's well past time that Congress passes a law explicitly to that effect -- if you lose access to purchased content, whether because your account was terminated or the content was removed, you get 100% refunded. End of story. Any TOS to the contrary are invalid.
How much should that digital content cost then? Make a DVD once, never think about it again. To offer digital copy that loses no value over time and must be available forever seems like a bad deal from the publisher's side. To offer a one time download code seems far more tenable.
There could be other ways to manage it, like specifying how long the rental would be valid for (I think iTunes started this way with movies), instead of alluding to the idea that you are buying it forever as part if a personal library.