[HN Gopher] Man sues Apple for terminating Apple ID with $24K wo...
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       Man sues Apple for terminating Apple ID with $24K worth of content
        
       Author : thekyle
       Score  : 107 points
       Date   : 2021-04-21 14:22 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (appleinsider.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (appleinsider.com)
        
       | danpalmer wrote:
       | I don't have a strong feeling on the banning of the account. I
       | know companies typically can't comment for legal reasons, but
       | there may be good reasons for this, sometimes there may not be.
       | 
       | The problem is that people invest in these accounts. They buy the
       | right to some content and that is taken away from them. In some
       | cases they also invest socially in the account, like an email
       | address.
       | 
       | I don't think companies can have it both ways. They can either
       | not ban accounts like this, or they can ban accounts and refund
       | any purchased licences, and provide the ability to transfer data
       | out and set up redirections as necessary (an auto-responder for
       | email perhaps?).
        
       | sizzle wrote:
       | This is unsettling if you're locked into the Apple ID ecosystem
       | does anyone know if you lose all your iCloud backups and photos
       | if your Apple ID is terminated?
        
         | ValentineC wrote:
         | I guess not.
         | 
         | I rely on iCloud for nightly backups, but have iTunes backups
         | here and there whenever I upgrade.
         | 
         | I think it's high time I looked at a non-Apple backup for my
         | iCloud Photo Library though.
        
         | blue_cadet_3 wrote:
         | You can setup iCloud on a PC to download content to it to keep
         | a physical backup in your possession. I do that and also have
         | it sync to OneDrive so its 3 backups of my photos.
        
       | im3w1l wrote:
       | It's so weird to see them cling to these fuck-the-customer rules.
       | Like it's so shortsighted. They only see the money they save, but
       | completely forget about how many transactions and purchases just
       | don't happen, because people are scared of getting screwed over.
       | 
       | (Edited to add). So I think that Apple could actually benefit
       | here by losing this suit. It needs to be in court. Such a
       | foundation is more solid than a gesture of goodwill that could be
       | go the other way tomorrow.
        
         | solarkraft wrote:
         | > but completely forget about how many transactions and
         | purchases just don't happen, because people are scared of
         | getting screwed over
         | 
         | I'll bet you all my broken iPod Touches that they _absolutely_
         | didn 't, but even did an analysis on how many people are scared
         | by this. The answer was "basically nobody". It's not the
         | companies offering these models who are short sighted, it's the
         | people taking them up.
        
       | veidr wrote:
       | Good. I don't know the details of this case, but they don't even
       | matter.
       | 
       | Whether it's Facebook nuking all your Oculus Quest content
       | because you were at a pro-democracy Hong Kong protest, or Apple
       | remotely deleting all your music and apps because their fuzzy-
       | logic automation incorrectly correlated the pattern of your
       | network traffic with illegal activity, there has to be some
       | recourse -- and in the US, that recourse should obviously be the
       | courts.
        
         | nicbou wrote:
         | I think that many people are now realising the cost of putting
         | all of your eggs in the same basket, particularly when the
         | company that owns the account offers no recourse that involves
         | human intervention.
        
           | mark_l_watson wrote:
           | I split purchases for books, movies, and audiobooks across
           | Apple, Kindle, Audible (also Amazon), and Google Play. This
           | is a nuisance, but I am spreading the risk of loss due to no
           | fault of my own.
        
             | eindiran wrote:
             | The golden age of "I don't bother pirating anything
             | anymore" is rapidly coming to a close, and tech companies
             | have killed it. Ever-worsening DRM, paying creators amounts
             | asymptotically approaching zero, nuking accounts with
             | thousands of dollars invested into the ecosystem (because
             | the algorithmic gods saw a pattern in clouds), balkanizing
             | content until streaming services just become cable,
             | increasing prices while decreasing quality of service,
             | triple-dipping their customers (why just have them pay for
             | your service when you can get them to pay for your service,
             | serve them ads, and sell profiles of their browsing
             | habits!).
        
         | canadianfella wrote:
         | > Whether it's Facebook nuking all your Oculus Quest content
         | because you were at a pro-democracy Hong Kong protest
         | 
         | Did this actually happen?
        
         | Black101 wrote:
         | That is one reason why I don't want to buy an Oculus for my
         | child...
        
           | veidr wrote:
           | Me too. I find the business model disgusting, even if it
           | wasn't Facebook.
           | 
           | But it _is_ Facebook, one of the most profoundly unethical
           | companies of consequence, which has caused harm across the
           | world at immense scale.
           | 
           | I don't like Apple's App Store or Nintendo's region locking
           | or other things like that, but I don't have literal _moral_
           | qualms about buying their devices.
           | 
           | I really do, with Facebook. But the Oculus Quest 2 hardware
           | is so incredibly good -- so far ahead of anything else
           | available -- that I do buy it so my kids (and I) can use it
           | (with my own FB account, which I have specifically for this
           | perfect).
           | 
           | Depriving my kids of the insanely rad tech presents, for me,
           | it's own moral dilemma.
           | 
           | So I strike this uneasy balance. But it does make me feel
           | very uncomfortable.
        
         | ksec wrote:
         | We need to swing back from Cloud Storage and Services hosting
         | our Data as hostage. ( Time Capsule for iOS )
         | 
         | Or may be we could go back to the simplest form. Physical
         | Media. I think there is something to be learn from the Japanese
         | on how they value something physical.
        
           | redwall_hp wrote:
           | Imagine if Time Capsule was brought back more as a NAS: it's
           | your home router, so they can automatically deal with port
           | forwarding and dynamic DNS. iCloud could transparently
           | connect you to your home storage wherever you happen to be,
           | and your files could be stored locally instead of on servers
           | Apple has.
        
             | lamontcg wrote:
             | This is exactly how I wanted federated auth to work.
             | 
             | Everyone would have their own DNS domain (this was in a
             | science fiction reality where DNSSec was very secure).
             | 
             | That DNS domain would be exposed by their firewall, it
             | would serve a single static domain.
             | 
             | Something like MX records would be setup for simple auth
             | services and one-time payment transactions.
             | 
             | So when I needed to login to a site instead of talking to
             | facebook, the site would talk to the root servers which
             | would hook them up with my domain on my router.
             | 
             | The for a credit card transaction I could authz a
             | transaction between the remote website, my router with my
             | information and the credit card payment provider, so that
             | the website never saw any details.
             | 
             | This would be wrapped with a service so that the home user
             | never hand managed their DNS zone similarly to the way NAS
             | appliances often run linux and NFS without people needing
             | to poke into it.
             | 
             | But it needs to not be written by a FAANG company and needs
             | to piggyback on open standards. Maybe DNS isn't the exact
             | right tool, but it needs to look something very much like
             | that with a hierarchy of open registrars.
             | 
             | OpenID is kind of close to the start of that, but I don't
             | like the way it piggybacks on e-mail addresses and I think
             | it needs to be its own thing and simpler to manage.
        
             | ksec wrote:
             | That is _exactly_ what I have been crying for all along
             | close to 10 years. And I am willing to pay. But Apple doesn
             | 't like this because it offers no recurring revenue. ( They
             | could still offer Off Site backup as services which i will
             | also pay. )
        
       | g42gregory wrote:
       | I sincerely hope he wins. I am not even sure how would this be
       | legal.
        
       | orliesaurus wrote:
       | I wonder if anyone else tried to sue a Big Corp. for terminating
       | their account and everything associated with it. I am thinking
       | about other threads here on HN about YouTube terminating
       | someone's channel and then also their associated Gmail account,
       | incl. Google Drive.
       | 
       | It's scary to think that if you do something wrong (willingly or
       | unwillingly) you could lose EVERYTHING tied to that account.
       | 
       | I can't imagine what nightmare it might be to try to reset your
       | other accounts such as bills, banking, gov accounts tied to your
       | Gmail. On top of everything else you might have tied to it, email
       | and file wise.
       | 
       | Backup on cloud, backup on hardware, mirror the backups!
        
       | danlugo92 wrote:
       | This is precisely the reason I never buy DRM-laded content.
        
         | User23 wrote:
         | I believe that you are morally (if not legally) within your
         | rights to acquire DRM free versions of content that you've
         | lawfully purchased, including by downloading unencumbered
         | copies or removing DRM yourself.
        
           | thedanbob wrote:
           | I buy all my movies and TV shows through iTunes because it
           | gives you actual MP4 files. And then I immediately strip the
           | DRM and load them into Plex. The day that stops working is
           | the day I stop buying movies.
        
         | gentleman11 wrote:
         | Where do you like to go for your media?
        
           | jwalton wrote:
           | Baen and Tor publish all their books without DRM, on whatever
           | platform you care to buy them on. Baen has their own ebook
           | shop where you can frequently get good deals on bundles.
           | 
           | Music is easy to buy DRM free.
           | 
           | Movies and TV shows... not so much.
        
           | increscent wrote:
           | I use amazon to buy DRM-free music, and I also buy used CDs
           | on ebay.
        
           | salutis wrote:
           | More DRM-free sources, if anyone is interested:
           | 
           | https://www.springer.com
           | 
           | https://www.informit.com
           | 
           | https://pragprog.com
           | 
           | https://www.manning.com
           | 
           | https://www.elsevier.com/books-and-journals
           | 
           | https://nostarch.com
        
           | m-p-3 wrote:
           | PC Games: gog.com
           | 
           | Music: Bandcamp
           | 
           | For movies the only viable option I haveis the grey area of
           | buying the physical media and strip the DRM for your personal
           | use.
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-21 23:03 UTC)