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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

#261

Post by eloisant »

sircastor wrote: post #177
ryanwhitney wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's too bad because music proved that DRM doesn't make any difference for piracy.

Spotify and competitors are successful despite piracy.

Movies piracy is still just as big with DRM.

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

#262

Post by MereInterest »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #256
josephcsible wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Moreover, DRM prevents copyright content from entering the public domain. In my personal opinion, anything that's not available without DRM shouldn't get copyright - otherwise it subverts the deal at the centre of copyright. The way around this would be to have a way to lodge a DRM free copy, which would be released to the public domain when the copyright expires, or on abandonment (so people wouldn't be denied acces…

Absolutely agreed. I'm of the opinion that anything under DRM, and any closed-source software, should not be eligible for copyright. When a work enters the public domain, society is allowed to build upon that work. If extant copies of the work are not in a form that allows others to build upon, then that right is infringed.

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

#263

Post by shard »

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…

If you are expelled from a school, the school is currently unable to rescind access to previous education they've provided you, although the analogy starts to fall apart since education and digital media are not directly comparable.

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

#264

Post by eloisant »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #256
josephcsible wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

Moreover, DRM prevents copyright content from entering the public domain. In my personal opinion, anything that's not available without DRM shouldn't get copyright - otherwise it subverts the deal at the centre of copyright. The way around this would be to have a way to lodge a DRM free copy, which would be released to the public domain when the copyright expires, or on abandonment (so people wouldn't be denied acces…

I don't think DRM changes anything for the legal aspect of going public domain.

I imagine that copies that were illegal with copyright (with DRM stripped) become legal once it gets to public domain.

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

#265

Post by dane-pgp »

0_gravitas wrote: post #104
black_puppydog wrote: post #27

> class-action lawsuits over the meaning of the words “rent” and “buy.” Ohhhhh this is great news! This has been a personal soap box of mine for years and years. I really hope that the outcome will be that going forward at least, these words won't be used lightly anymore for risk of false advertising lawsuits. That should take care of a bunch of the "just rent it" business models that on second thought aren't really…

this is also something that im sure many friends of mine are tired of me talking about. "buy/purchase it now!" buttons are far more effective marketing-wise than "license it now!", which is one of the reasons why these companies are going to hang on with all the claws they've got.

Couldn't companies just put "Licence to watch..." in small print above the name of the movie/item and then still say "Buy now!" on the button, because you are buying the licence?

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

#266

Post by josephcsible »

jononor wrote: post #208
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.

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

Warranties are for things that break on their own. If the manufacturer of a physical product broke into your house and smashed it with a sledgehammer, they'd absolutely be on the hook for what they did, warranty or no warranty.

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

#267

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

ksec wrote: post #129
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember this sentence to change your mind for the next time you see some movie to buy online. If you use iTunes, and "add to library," like I do, you'll see how often albums get removed or replaced or remixed. It's unnecessary and unnerving. The labels are constantly faffing about with albums. Every couple of months, I'll go to play an album, and find that it only has, say, 2 songs in it. Sometimes I can go back a…

>If you use iTunes.... Is this iTunes or Apple Music ? Because it happens all the time on Apple Music which is why I hate streaming services.

Ah, yes. You are right. I forget there’s a distinction.

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

#268

Post by dane-pgp »

fastball wrote: post #136
SuchAnonMuchWow wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, blockbuster rental terms were clearly defined. For example you knew for how long you had the movie. In the case of apple you don't know, because apple might decide to terminate your account before you even had time to watch the movie.

Yeah, that's the hypothetical that should definitely be played up – "buying" a movie and Apple terminating your account 5 minutes later. Makes it exceedingly clear that this certainly isn't "buying" and calling it such is false advertising.

In fact I wouldn't be surprised if a potential race condition exists in their cloud architecture such that you could "buy" a movie after you were banned from watching it.

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

#270

Post by jonhohle »

soperj wrote: post #223
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…

>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.

For collectors or even casual consumers, this secondary market has as much or more value than the primary market. My wife and son borrow an absurd amount of library books. I maintain a library of movies and games, most of which are second hand. And if I don’t like something, it goes back into the market for someone else to enjoy.

There’s depreciation and an ultimate limit to how many times something can be lent, which only exists artificially in the digital world (libraries get so many “lends” of a digital license before they have to buy another). On the other hand, for end users, digital licenses are completely missing lending and selling and in some cases even backup and format shifting.

Has the first sale doctrine ever been applied to these licenses in court?

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