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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

#291

Post by sascha_sl »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #284
sascha_sl wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same issue all decentralized systems of ownership/value have, including all cryptocurrencies. Technology itself can't be a trust anchor without enforcement. The dollar has value due to a mixture of trust in its continued value and in the entity enforcing it. Bitcoin has value mostly because people speculate it has value. The extra decentralization loses its value as soon as you add enforcement, because no…

I would say this is more a fundamental problem/feature of human relations than technology. Every transaction, every contract, every treaty and every law has, on its own, little more value than a receipt. Centralization doesn't really solve that issue so much as it pretends to add the weight of government/society/God/{abstract entity of choice} where there is none. What's remained the same since time immemorial is tha…

I'm not sure if you went anywhere with the question of "what use does a smart contract actually have" beyond "justifying vigilante justice" or "anarcho-capitalism" (which, let's be clear, boils down to feudalism in which they'd be little less than a formality).

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

#292

Post by Dracophoenix »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #282
eloisant wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem comes in when unbreakable DRM is introduced, including DRM that depends on an external server to provide access to licensed content. If the copy protection remains uncrackable after the copyright term expires, or if the server it depends on is no longer available, it amounts to theft from the public domain, pure and simple. Content producers should be forced to choose between legal protection for their co…

One doesn't need DRM to shut down a server and keep the assets/ net code from seeing the light of day. Plenty of MMOs have shut down with years of people's lives down the drain. Even if you were right about how companies with DRM shouldn't obtain copyrights, I don't see how uncrackability of DRM would be a significant limiting factor when an off switch and forgotten source code is just as capable in doing the same. It wouldn't solve the fundamental issue of, to quote you, theft from the public domain.

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

#293

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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…

There is also plenty of media that isn't available via legal means.

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

#294

Post by therealdrag0 »

I don’t know much about DRM but seems like they should make it platform independent such that if you buy something from any store your digital rights transfer to any other service (with a small fee).

Typically I’m anti blockchain, but perhaps there’s a use in here for it.

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

#295

Post by jeroenhd »

microtherion wrote: post #279
jeroenhd wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> You could terminate the account and refund the purchases in full So a user could sign up, watch all the movies they wanted for 10 years, and then get all their money back, provided they find a way to behave badly enough? Sounds like a pretty sweet incentive to some people, especially if you could manage to then repeat the cycle with another identity.

Perhaps the refund could not be the original full price, but the current sales price available.

After all, a digital copy of a movie is a perfect copy whose quality shouldn't drop over time.

And if you buy something, it only figures that you'd be able to sell it when you're done with it. Digital media companies take that right away from you in many cases under the guise of digital subscriptions, but with Apple stating that you buy something, that doesn't seem like a big problem to me.

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

#296

Post by heavyset_go »

reaperducer wrote: post #287
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…

How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators FWIW, Apple answered this partly recently. At least as it applies to music. It's not very much, but it's supposed to be a lot more than most other services. I believe the context was refuting accusations in the Spotify dustup. I saw it on a site like macrumors, so some salt may be required.

> FWIW, Apple answered this partly recently. At least as it applies to music. It's not very much, but it's supposed to be a lot more than most other services.

Bandcamp gives artists 85% to 90% of the revenue they collect.

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

#297

Post by vineyardmike »

6510 wrote: post #289
colllectorof wrote: post #253

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. When I pay for a book in a bookstore, part of the money goes towards maintaining the system that produces and distr…

> It will create an entirely different system. Simple as that sounds I didn't think of it before. It seems that if all the old systems can/might/will be replaced by the mega corp we could simply set a modest fixed megacorp-tax of say 1-2% and have the rest go to the creator of the text or video. It was the author who provided the excuse in the old system why we should pay for easily replicated data. The argument that…

> we could simply set a modest fixed megacorp-tax of say 1-2%

Yeah this will surely be more like 30%

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

#298

Post by Tostino »

6510 wrote: post #289
colllectorof wrote: post #253

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. When I pay for a book in a bookstore, part of the money goes towards maintaining the system that produces and distr…

> It will create an entirely different system. Simple as that sounds I didn't think of it before. It seems that if all the old systems can/might/will be replaced by the mega corp we could simply set a modest fixed megacorp-tax of say 1-2% and have the rest go to the creator of the text or video. It was the author who provided the excuse in the old system why we should pay for easily replicated data. The argument that…

Only possible if the power dynamic somehow shifts in a significant way. Maybe it will, but I'm not very optimistic.

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

#299

Post by valdiorn »

zelon88 wrote: post #200
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…

I support this. But I do have questions. Hypothetically; what if Apple were to cease to exist? Or wanted to discontinue their streaming services? Assuming Apple were in such a position, their financial outlook would probably not be good. They would likely be financially unable to reimburse that many subscribers. How would winding down such a service work?

The same way it works when a bankrupt company can't pay an invoice. You can sue a company if it doesn't hold its financial obligations, and get your money, and so can the customer, like in this case.

When a company goes bust, if you are owed money by that company, you put in claims to the estate, and the administrators handle those claims according to a well specified priority list. The customers being reimbursed is part of that process. However, I know that gift cards and store credit tend to be at the bottom of the list, so I wouldn't have high hopes for digital assets being reimbursed either.

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

#300

Post by heavyset_go »

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.

Oh well, they should have thought about that before diving into a market thinking that they shouldn't bear any responsibility for their actions towards consumers.
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