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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

#161

Post by ratww »

pureliquidhw wrote: post #149
crazygringo wrote: post #146

Earlier 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.

Then make it non-DRM downloadable content that will be playable forever at the discretion of the consumer, like music bought on iTunes, then. Or at least mention the period for when the licensing will be honored during “purchase” and stick to it.

Honestly I don’t understand anyone having any sympathy for publishers or Apple. They were the ones who chose to use the current method.

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

#162

Post by charles_f »

Beyond the legality aspect of using the words "buy" or "purchase" is the moral one. Blocking access to content to a customer you got money from is immoral. To a certain point it's the exact opposite of piracy. If it's legal, it should be made illegal.

Also, these corporations claim their TOS allow them to deny access if they choose to, and might even have done it for legitimate reasons. But nothing is preventing them to implement restrictions on accounts rather than total deactivation.

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

#163

Post by yarcob »

pureliquidhw wrote: post #149
crazygringo wrote: post #146

Earlier 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.

Then they should advertise it as a one time download or a limited time rental. I don't have an issue with that.

But they shouldn't advertise "store your purchased movies in the cloud for free" when they only do that as long as it is convenient for them.

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

#164

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

crazygringo wrote: post #146
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…

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.

Content gets removed from Netflix all the time, especially after they pivoted to their own production versus hosting content produced by others. How much should I get back?

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

#165

Post by tomjen3 »

pureliquidhw wrote: post #149
crazygringo wrote: post #146

Earlier 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.

You don't have to keep offering it. You just have to not turn of DRM servers or offer the download without DRM in the first place.

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

#166

Post by dane-pgp »

meroes wrote: post #148
grishka wrote: post #135

Earlier 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…

> I bought a dorm room, yet I lose access.

For assets in the physical world, the provider can have legitimate reasons for not refunding you the lost access that you originally paid for, on the scale of a month or a semester, due to the difficulty of them finding a replacement buyer/renter of that asset for the remaining duration. Something "seasonal" like school enrolment is a perfect example of that.

For digital assets, though, the period that you wouldn't expect to be refunded for should be measured in nanoseconds.

The other huge difference of course is that people don't buy perpetual access to a dorm room, whereas they believe they do for digital goods. "Forever minus ten nanoseconds" is very similar to "forever", so the refund should be close to 100%.

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

#167

Post by alex_g »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #164
crazygringo wrote: post #146

Earlier 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.

Content gets removed from Netflix all the time, especially after they pivoted to their own production versus hosting content produced by others. How much should I get back?

A netflix subscription is access to content, not a purchase of content.

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

#168

Post by [deleted] »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #164
crazygringo wrote: post #146

Earlier 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.

Content gets removed from Netflix all the time, especially after they pivoted to their own production versus hosting content produced by others. How much should I get back?

[deleted]

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

#169

Post by dane-pgp »

_jal wrote: post #126
ldiracdelta wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't own the things they buy. They don't have property rights today. Today, a mob or a single unaccountable low-level account reviewer may declare someone an "out law" and anyone may do anything they like to him as is the old germanic tradition.

> a mob or a single unaccountable low-level account reviewer may declare someone an "out law" I take it you prefer that power to be reserved for those with high status?

That's a false dichotomy, but I'll offer this for an answer:

"Yes, it should be reserved for those with high status, and high status should be reserved for people who are chosen by and accountable to the people over whom they have power."

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

#170

Post by ryanwhitney »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #157
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Fairly certain all music sold through iTunes has been DRM-free since like 2010. Amazon too, I think.

(Movies, not so much.)

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