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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

#181

Post by throwaway_kufu »

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…

But schools are not advertising to the public that they are “buying” the class and no reasonable consumer who pays tuition believes a 1 time payment of tuition permits them to attend the class indefinitely.

On the other hand Apple purposefully advertises movies as “rentals” or “purchases” sure more sophisticated individuals know better (usually those in the tech industry savvy to the willful and deceptive marketing of the tech companies) but the average consumer understands they have purchased the ownership rights of the movie.

Continuing with a reasonable standard if you are suspended/expelled you are generally entitled to due process (certainly in public schools), on the other hand if you violate Apple TOS you may not have the same due process, but it is reasonable to assume they will not delete your data And purchases without the opportunity to retrieve the same. Otherwise it’s a license to steal, they could claim the bank accounts you have connected to Apple Pay are forfeited to Apple, they can publish your emails/photos to harass and embarrass you, etc...

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

#182

Post by Dayshine »

Assuming things fall on the side of "indefinite access" that can't be revoked:

What happens if you have someone who is genuinely abusing your systems?

Are you just powerless until it reaches the point of criminal actions? That doesn't seem unreasonable, as I can't actually think of many examples of abuse that wouldn't be criminal..

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

#183

Post by josephcsible »

Vespasian wrote: post #115
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> there is still a distinction made between this and "physical ownership" (e.g. no right to inherit / sell the content).

Are you saying this like it's a good thing?

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

#184

Post by floydnoel »

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.

Because the marginal cost of a digital file is too darn high?

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

#186

Post by techsupporter »

Dayshine wrote: post #182

Assuming things fall on the side of "indefinite access" that can't be revoked: What happens if you have someone who is genuinely abusing your systems? Are you just powerless until it reaches the point of criminal actions? That doesn't seem unreasonable, as I can't actually think of many examples of abuse that wouldn't be criminal..

I doubt your first assumption will be the one that happens, even if this ruling does come out favorably for customers.

There's an easy out for Apple and others: you give the customer the ability to access what they paid for independently of the seller. There's no requirement for Apple to be involved any more once Apple has delivered the file in way that can be opened independent of Apple.

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

#187

Post by dylan604 »

easton wrote: post #155
dylan604 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 di…

The MPAA vs RIAA is sort of an apples vs oranges comparison though. Audio is much easier to compress, and MP3 made it very easy to make files small enough to download via dial-up modems. Video had years to go before quality was good enough at small enough sizes to make them a viable thing on the internet. Because of that, the MPAA got to watch/learn from mistakes that RIAA made in trying to protect its kingdom. Rather than fight the digital inevitablity like RIAA did, MPAA allowed the digital with DRM. This allowed for the "honest" public to have legal viable methods of watching the content. The useless tact RIAA fought caused its own demise in the fight making an entire generation of kids think that music should be free because that's all they knew. Their allowing of DRM free FLAC files was a white flag. MPAA is in a much stronger position to allow that to happen.

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

#188

Post by jeroenhd »

Dayshine wrote: post #182

Assuming things fall on the side of "indefinite access" that can't be revoked: What happens if you have someone who is genuinely abusing your systems? Are you just powerless until it reaches the point of criminal actions? That doesn't seem unreasonable, as I can't actually think of many examples of abuse that wouldn't be criminal..

You could terminate the account and refund the purchases in full, that way you can still get the user removed from your platform. Or, better yet, stop the unification of unrelated accounts and have a user be able to purchase and watch movies without necessarily having access to iCloud and such.

There's plenty of ways to deal with this problem, but most of those cut into sales figures, such as dropping the pretense that the stuff you rent is related to owning things at all (i.e. not using the word "buy" anymore).

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

#189

Post by josephcsible »

imgabe wrote: post #74
xyst wrote: post #43

Apple 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 big enough that if they told the MPAA "unless you let us distribute your movies DRM-free, we're not selling them to consumers", the MPAA would probably budge.

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

#190

Post by Vespasian »

josephcsible wrote: post #183
Vespasian wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> there is still a distinction made between this and "physical ownership" (e.g. no right to inherit / sell the content). Are you saying this like it's a good thing?

Yes, that is what I'm thinking.

I recently changed my mind on this and used to believe that digital goods should be treated identical to physical ones.

Fundamentally the nature of things make them different and we should recognize this when discussing what rights which party should get.

Whether the two facts I stated make sense is certainly up for debate, but I don't believe we can move forward insisting that rules imposed by the physicalness ( is this a word) are the same as rules imposed by human society.

The goal must be to find a set of rules that is fair to all participants and I'm certain this it is possible to do this.

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