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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

#171

Post by berkes »

alex_g wrote: post #167
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed. And the model makes this very clear too. On Netflix there is a button 'watch', while on iTunes and many others, the button says 'buy', 'purcase' etc. One implies a transaction, the other implies using already accessible content.

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

#172

Post by edgyquant »

jjcon wrote: post #152
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…

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.

Why is this a problem? If they take access of things you’ve bought, they should have to give you’re money back. Any breaking of the TOS in the future shouldn’t change that whether or not you’re purposefully trying to break them.

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

#173

Post by sircastor »

alex_g wrote: post #167
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m reminded of a parody report noting Netflix was trialing a “browse only” plan, so you and your partner can argue endlessly about what to watch, but never have to make a choice.

[1] https://www.theonion.com/netflix-introduces-new-browse-endle...

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

#174

Post by jstummbillig »

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…

> 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.

Well, not quite that simple, since a lot of people would de facto also lose access to their hardware and all work which relies on this software-hardware-combination.

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

#176

Post by josephcsible »

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.

I'd be in favor of the law having a clause like the "No Surrender of Others' Freedom" clause of the GPL. Basically saying "If you provide movies like this, then you must make them available without DRM. If you have other legal or contractual requirements that forbid you from making them available without DRM, then you can't make them available at all."

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

#177

Post by sircastor »

ryanwhitney wrote: post #170
ganoushoreilly wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Yeah, that was a happy accident of market forces. Apple had become the juggernaut of music sales and the industry was desperate to get out from under them. They started letting other licensees go DRM free and Apple negotiated it from them at a markup.

I think the reason we never saw a similar model for movies and TV shows is because Hollywood was terrified of what Apple had done to the music industry.

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

#178

Post by kemayo »

lettergram wrote: post #13
dmitryminkovsky wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really surprised to see Apple taking this approach. You'd think they could have come up with something less offensive to their users. This is the exact same line Sidney Powell is using in her defense against Dominion: "'No Reasonable Person' Thought Her Election Fraud Claims Were Fact" [0]. Amused but not surprised to see this from her, I am quite aghast to see this from Apple. The fact is, just like any reasonable p…

Not sure why Sidney Powell was brought up here, but that’s ongoing litigation and neither side has emerged victorious. Further, the claims in that article were odd and don’t seem to match the filing Sydney Powell actually made: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.225699/... So I don’t think that’s necessarily a great source to cite. EDIT: In either case, these are lawsuits. There’s a few things that…

This is a bit of a tangent from the actual article we're nominally discussing, of course, but...

> Further, the claims in that article were odd and don’t seem to match the filing Sydney Powell actually made

So, the bit of the article I can read says "Attorneys for Sidney Powell are asking a federal judge to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed against her, claiming that “no reasonable person” thought the pro-Trump lawyer’s statements about the 2020 election results were factual."

This is directly referring to a claim in the document Powell's lawyers filed. If you scroll through to page 32 of the PDF you linked, you'll find this: "Such characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements further support Defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact but view them only as claims that await testing by the courts through the adversary process."

It's literally arguing that "no reasonable person" would ever believe that anything anyone says about an upcoming court case is meant as a fact. It's an argument that would mean it's absolutely impossible to defame someone who's in any way related to a person you're suing, no matter how meritless that lawsuit might be. (Particularly, it argues, if your lawsuit is related to politics.)

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

#179

Post by josephcsible »

jjcon wrote: post #152
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…

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.

Imagine you bought a bunch of physical books from Barnes and Noble, and then later did something to get yourself banned from all of their stores for life. (If it matters, assume that what you did was bad and that the ban was totally justifiable.) Would it be okay if they broke into your house and glued together the pages of all the books they ever bought, or would you sue them for compensation for doing that?

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

#180

Post by _f1dq »

I'm as big an Apple fan as they come but they've got some work to do in supporting their services.

My wife bought a subscription box with her Apple Card and somehow the subscription service assigned someone else's email address to her account and won't let her change it. For reasons I can't quite understand, that service sent her one box out of a six-box subscription so my wife called to dispute the charges with Apple Card. For a few months now she's bin in this Groundhog Day like cycle of them taking the money off the bill but then, after contacting the subscription service I assume, will put the money back on her bill until she calls to dispute it again.

Now, I know this is Goldman Sachs she's dealing with and not Apple but, it is called the "Apple Card" and I feel like Apple needs to step in and make Goldman Sachs do the right thing.

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