Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by bigyikes » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #204

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.

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

I know literally nothing about accounting, but does it really work that way? I figured you would just be able to count the portion of purchases you expect to be refunded as a liability, rather than all purchases.

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

#222

Post by scrollaway » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

sascha_sl wrote: post #218

colllectorof wrote: post #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 th…

> You're "renting" something that can be effortlessly replicated ad infinitum. This is only slightly less true for books and optical media. You are never paying for the paper or plastic - even on the lowest margins that's at most 10% of it - , you're paying for the privilege of consuming what's on it. > How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators and towards running the actual infrastructure to do…

> You are never paying for the paper or plastic - even on the lowest margins that's at most 10% of it - , you're paying for the privilege of consuming what's on it.

To be honest this is a really great point I've seen brought up very rarely. I think the digital aspect makes it so extremely obvious that it forced the conversation.

That said, there are more costs than the physical medium itself. There's the physical shelf space copies consumes (vs. digital media which can be copied on demand), the costs associated with the creation and shipping of the item, in-store human handling, not to mention all the consumer-level effort and costs of purchasing the physical media (going to the store and carrying it around, having it occupy space at home, taking care of not damaging it…)

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

#223

Post by soperj » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

sascha_sl wrote: post #218

colllectorof wrote: post #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 th…

> You're "renting" something that can be effortlessly replicated ad infinitum. This is only slightly less true for books and optical media. You are never paying for the paper or plastic - even on the lowest margins that's at most 10% of it - , you're paying for the privilege of consuming what's on it. > How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators and towards running the actual infrastructure to do…

>This is only slightly less true for books and optical media. You are never paying for the paper or plastic - even on the lowest margins that's at most 10% of it - , you're paying for the privilege of consuming what's on it.

Except you're not renting books or optical media. You're buying them, and you can resell them or loan them to other people no problem.

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

#224

Post by Qwertious » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #204

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.

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

Well, question: suppose Steam ran out of money tomorrow. Do you think it would be acceptable for Valve to just delete all user accounts and games, if it saved them $100? Or do you think they have an obligation to customers to at least provide a single transfer of each game download to archive.org or someone, and give customers a magnet link for each game they own?

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

#225

Post by fencepost » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

jbay808 wrote: post #204

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.

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

Perhaps, but it's more likely that they'd figure out how to retain a read-only account - one with basic settings for email/password that could be changed, but everything else was static. No purchases, no email, no uploads, etc.

This does not seem like an enormous leap to make.

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

#226

Post by anonymousab » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

josephcsible wrote: post #189

imgabe wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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

I think it's the opposite. There's no chance at all that they'd do that because Apple would only be hurting themselves (and likely directly destroying Apple TV in some way) and the existing industry assumptions about DRM and privacy are entrenched, if not core.

We are a long ways away from when you played ball with iTunes or you didn't play digital music ball at all.

They would also likely have legal and PR pressure to exert against such a move. Regardless of whether Apple is or isn't a monopoly, they definitely don't want a billion dollar industry going after them in that angle right now.

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

#227

Post by Wowfunhappy » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

sascha_sl wrote: post #218

colllectorof wrote: post #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 th…

> You're "renting" something that can be effortlessly replicated ad infinitum. This is only slightly less true for books and optical media. You are never paying for the paper or plastic - even on the lowest margins that's at most 10% of it - , you're paying for the privilege of consuming what's on it. > How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators and towards running the actual infrastructure to do…

But with a book, you have that privilege in perpetuity, and you can loan, transfer, and resell it.

Coincidentally, NFT’s got the “transfer” side of the equation, but forgot about the “privilege” part! The tokens are yours in perpetuity, and can be transferred to others, but it’s not at all clear what privilege they provide.

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

#228

Post by gpm » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

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.

Refunds aren't sufficient, you are owed whatever the replacement cost is.

If the good is no longer available except for at 10x or 100x the price, you are owed that. If the good is no longer available at any price, but the person with the liability is capable of making it available, they should be required to do so (or negotiate a contract with you that buys out your rights, but you should be free to decline that or to set whatever price you want).

This is especially relevant in the digital realm where it's an especially effective tactic to undercharge to try and starve competitors, and then raise prices.

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

#229

Post by sascha_sl » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #222

sascha_sl wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're "renting" something that can be effortlessly replicated ad infinitum. This is only slightly less true for books and optical media. You are never paying for the paper or plastic - even on the lowest margins that's at most 10% of it - , you're paying for the privilege of consuming what's on it. > How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators and towards running the actual infrastructure to do…

> You are never paying for the paper or plastic - even on the lowest margins that's at most 10% of it - , you're paying for the privilege of consuming what's on it. To be honest this is a really great point I've seen brought up very rarely. I think the digital aspect makes it so extremely obvious that it forced the conversation. That said, there are more costs than the physical medium itself. There's the physical she…

These things all still exist in some capacity, though obviously it has become more efficient. Bandwidth isn't free, for instance.

The cost of publishing hasn't changed much. It just shifted from "making it to the limited selection" to "being visible in the essentially limitless selection". In the end you still need to make deals with retailers and invest into advertising (especially when storefronts don't do deals - or at least say they don't, hi spotify).

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

#230

Post by grishka » Sun, Apr 25, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #187

easton wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Rathe…

Also I don't think there ever were physical audio formats with DRM? CD came out way before piracy was anyone's concern, and then it was too late to change anything.

On the other hand, all digital video formats have always had the technical capability for DRM, starting with DVD.