Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 403 posts

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

#241

Post by nexuist »

Qwertious wrote: post #224
jbay808 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Which employee is going to be responsible for doing all that, considering they just ran out of money and most definitely will not be getting a paycheck for executing this plan?

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

#242

Post by dtx1 »

codegladiator wrote: post #240
dtx1 wrote: post #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 th…

> Suscription Services I like the term

just a typo, but now i'm gonna keep it

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

#243

Post by _0w8t »

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.

As other already pointed out, this should only apply to DRM media. DRM-free should imply that the customer is responsible for it once the transfer is done.

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

#244

Post by redtexture »

bigyikes wrote: post #221
jbay808 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The 100% return creates a liability to return the revenue to the buyer.

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

#245

Post by RandomBK »

nexuist wrote: post #241
Qwertious wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Which employee is going to be responsible for doing all that, considering they just ran out of money and most definitely will not be getting a paycheck for executing this plan?

That's why this needs to be a law - to create an incentive where one would otherwise not exist.

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

#246

Post by alpaca128 »

_0w8t wrote: post #243
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.

As other already pointed out, this should only apply to DRM media. DRM-free should imply that the customer is responsible for it once the transfer is done.

I'd love for this to happen, not just for the amusement of seeing all the giant corporations suddenly jumping to DRM free distribution to save tons of money, and Tim Cook explaining for 5 minutes how innovative Apple was with reinventing their content distribution model.

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

#247

Post by strogonoff »

infogulch wrote: post #63
strogonoff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transferrable software/media licenses present a challenge that can be either a technical or a social/economical one. There is a high temptation to abuse the system due to the ease of making a copy. On one hand, it can be attacked with a zero-trust outlook from technical angle (DRM). On the other hand, in a society with higher minimum quality of life and satisfaction eliminating required trust may do more harm than go…

Maybe this is the real killer use-case for NFTs?

I don’t like the approaches involving NFT (and blockchain in general) because no matter how you spin it, it’s ultimately following the zero interpersonal trust route.

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

#248

Post by Animats »

realusername wrote: post #3

> Apple countered by arguing that “no reasonable consumer would believe” that content purchased through iTunes would be available on the platform indefinitely Remember this sentence to change your mind for the next time you see some movie to buy online.

That's the "Tucker Carlson defense".[1] "The Court concludes that the statements are rhetorical hyperbole and opinion commentary intended to frame a political debate, and, as such, are not actionable as defamation."

That worked in a defamation case, but the First Amendment defense probably won't work in a false advertising case.

[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7216968/9-24-20-M...

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

#249

Post by crossroadsguy »

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…

People are so happy that they are fine with not finding their liked/fav songs regularly on Spotify even after they notice it has gone missing.

And they also kinda accept the mediocre recommendation (often laden with ads and "place in front" for pay content) which just feels like habit after a while.

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

#250

Post by joshspankit »

This might be the escape hatch from the ever-lowering spiked ceiling that is licensing instead of purchasing.

If those “buy” and “purchase” buttons had to be replaced with “license”, then companies might start moving back towards actual purchases.

Post reply on HN