Companies want people to be happy in a post-ownership society, Apple and Amazon are part of that
I hope more people start resisting this narrative that all or our property and in essences our lives should be leased / rented...
Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
61–70 of 403 posts
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#62> 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.
Historically media has had a limited play-life. 78s, 45s and 33 warped, broke or got scratched, etc., tapes wore out, broke, got tangled etc., CDs scratched or deteriorated after some time. There are exceptional specimens for all the above, but a good number don’t survive long unless owned by an aficionado who took care of their media. With digital you can have backups and in theory they could last forever as you con…
Has has been perfectly legal for decades for a person to make backups of their physical media
So this line of thought is completely incorrect, digital distribution did not invent the ability to have backups of media you purchased
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#63All 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…
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?
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
They should just force all these vendors to relabel those buttons to "Rent" or equivalent.
Change it to “rent” or give the option to download. You can’t have a contract where the terms change at any time for any reason (apples account termination policy)
Even employment contracts work this way in a lot of US states. "At Will" employees can be terminated instantly without notice.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
For CD’s it’s legal to make backup copies in the US which are digital and thus don’t degrade. Many of the oldest recordings still work, and can be played indefinitely with an optical needle. The time value of money means the possible purchase by a small fraction of buyers 20+ years out isn’t worth much at the time of sale. It’s only moving forward in time that makes anyone care about these sales. https://en.wikipedia…
I’m curious are iTunes and similar stores licensing the music to you? I’m guessing it is a license and not ownership. In either case I can see them addressing this problem of lower velocity with subscription only licensing where you license tunes for X amount of time. Obviously not in the interest of consumers but I can see why sellers would go this route.
All Copyright is a license, you buy a physical CD you are also buying a copyright license. You are attempting to make a distinction when none is present or valid
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#66> 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.
Amazon argues the same exact thing if you buy a movie digitally from them. It's only available to you for as long as they host it on their servers. This is why I pirate shit that I can't find on Netflix or Prime Video. Buying digital content is merely "long term rental" and really needs to be better advertised as that.
I wonder if we will ever see a model similar to Qobuz/Bandcamp for movies and TV shows. These services allow downloading your purchases as DRM-free flac files.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#67Does anyone why they terminated his account?
Generally speaking, the corporation can terminate your count for secret reasons, including violating any term of any service they offer, such as storing something that looks like offensive content.
I think the right remedy is returning the money for "owned" items should they terminate. The problem here is the decision to terminate the contract resulted in direct loss of property (or utility if you really believe buy should mean rent) without any compensation.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#68I think Apple and Amazon (an Amazon lawsuit is linked inside the article) will argue that they are similar to video rental stores like Blockbuster back when it was in business. However, Blockbuster did have physical copies of movies available to purchase in the form of VHS, and DVDs so I would argue that Blockbuster calling itself a store was still alright even though it might have done more business in rentals. I’m…
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.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we know why his account was terminated? I couldn’t find anything on that.
People don't own the things they buy. They don't have property rights today. Today, a mob or a single unaccountable low-level account reviewer may declare someone an "out law" and anyone may do anything they like to him as is the old germanic tradition.
Orwell believed euphemisation was the key element of said tradition. Food for thought, perhaps. Not everything needs to be turned up to 11 all the time, explicitly or not. Chill.
Re: Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and videos
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m curious are iTunes and similar stores licensing the music to you? I’m guessing it is a license and not ownership. In either case I can see them addressing this problem of lower velocity with subscription only licensing where you license tunes for X amount of time. Obviously not in the interest of consumers but I can see why sellers would go this route.
All Copyright is a license, you buy a physical CD you are also buying a copyright license. You are attempting to make a distinction when none is present or valid
Licenses are not all the same. They have different terms.