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

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

#201
post #171
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Might be the reason for Apple Arcade...because the buying-but-not-owning-business model is EOL

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

#202

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…

You’re right that’s honestly a shitty way for Apple to make a counter argument. I suspect that a large number of Apple customers would see a purchase of a movie on iTunes as equivalent to buying a BluRay or DVD (the price would certainly indicate it), and now Apple is calling them unreasonable. Apples legal team also seems forget that their customers expect them to behave better than the industry in general. No reaso…

Apples legal team have obviously lost the forest for the trees. In fact, i imagine some high up execs are tearing out their hair.

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

#203
Hot Take: Just pirate everything and be done with it.

Between 5 Suscription Services it would take to get the few TV Shows& Movies I care about, Privacy concerns and unethical behaviour like this i just can't be bothered to look for "legal" sources anymore when any decent private tracker has everything i need in one place anyway.

The content mafia didn't get it with music, until perhaps spotify for a while and now thats beeing split apart again aswell, they don't get it for tv shows and movies either.

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

#204
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.

Unfortunately, this would probably force them to treat purchase revenue as a liability on the accounting books.

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

#205
The reality is that most big tech companies want to get all the benefits of "going digital", while shifting all the costs or downsides of that move to the consumers. This is not accidental. This is a long-term strategy backed by an elaborate PR campaign. The campaign was so successful that most people aren't even aware of how bizarre the whole idea of "renting" digital content really is. You're "renting" something that can be effortlessly replicated ad infinitum.

How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators and towards running the actual infrastructure to download/consume media? This is a questions a lot of companies don't want you to be thinking about.

More generally, it all comes down to the questions brilliantly formulated by Neal Postman:

https://strawdogs.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/neil-postmans-6-q...

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

#206

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.

Unfortunately, this would probably force them to treat purchase revenue as a liability on the accounting books.

What's the problem with this ? I'm not familiar with accounting.

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

#207
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…

Or at least downgrade your "purchases" to "rental" price.

Sure a rental price determined by what the value of renting was according to the customer. Which, seeing as they opted to purchase, might reasonably be zero.

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

#208

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.

Unfortunately, this would probably force them to treat purchase revenue as a liability on the accounting books.

Is that standard practice on physical products which have warranties? If not, then I do not see why it would be necessary here.

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

#209
post #2

All these "stores" have the same wording in their TOS: "this content is licensed, not sold", et c. They all use the terms "buy", "sale", "purchases", "owned", and other similar words in the UI. There's a clear contradiction here, and they shouldn't get it both ways. It's very obvious (to those who know how FAANG walled gardens work) that it's a rental and contingent upon them not evaporating your account for some stu…

Amazon at least here in Germany offers either to rent or to buy. Now whatever their ToS say, there is a certain expectation to the word "buy" and I'm fairly optimistic that courts here would take a dim view on clauses in ToS allowing a one sided revocation. Even if it is only a license to stream it is a property right. In B2B one may put some twisted clauses into contracts but in B2C such attempts are regularly reigned in.

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

#210
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the courts are going to look for legality instead of fairness.

I mean, yes, ultimately, but a contract that's aiming to be deceptive or one that imposes extremely punitive measures isn't going to be legal. You could write a contract that says that you can at any point terminate the contract and the other side has to buy you a latest Lamborghini. Like, there's nothing illegal about that in itself, but if the paragraph about the Lamborghini is just mentioned once on page 178 of th…

Your example would likely be unenforceable because contract terms must provide _consideration_ for both parties, or an element of fairness in the real assets being exchanged. Requiring one party to purchase a Lamborghini at the sole discretion of the other provides no consideration for the former.

An example of consideration in a penalty clause like this is AT&T's failed acquisition of T-Mobile US, where the contract forced AT&T to pay $3 billion and give up wireless spectrum when they abandoned the deal. In this case, the consideration was T-Mobile's time and money spent entering the deal in the first place vs. the penalty to AT&T.

It's also worth noting that "unfair" and "deceptive" are not synonymous in their legal definitions. An unfair practice involves terms that are not beneficial to one party and are unreasonable to avoid, while a deceptive practice is one that misleads the party into accepting unreasonable terms.

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