[HN Gopher] Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth o...
___________________________________________________________________
Apple sued for terminating account with $25k worth of apps and
videos
Author : imgabe
Score : 545 points
Date : 2021-04-25 12:14 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| fortran77 wrote:
| I remember when I worked for Disney and they had some "lifetime"
| products, like "Leave a Legacy" (i.e., personalize a brick or
| small plaque in Epcot). If you read the fine print, they were
| only obligated to preserve your "legacy" for 20 years.
|
| In fact the plaques were taken down after 20 years, but
| eventually reinstalled somewhere else:
|
| https://www.laughingplace.com/w/news/2021/02/09/leave-a-lega....
|
| The TOS for these media "purchases" would be more honest if they
| had a time limit, e.g.: 10 years. You are "purchasing" a 10 year
| license.
| iamgopal wrote:
| So a service that provide and sync your content, and also allow
| you to buy the content, will work ? ( I.e can Dropbox be
| distributor ? )
| hparadiz wrote:
| This is why I don't buy anything on app stores ever.
| kodah wrote:
| > Apple countered by arguing that "no reasonable consumer would
| believe" that content purchased through iTunes would be available
| on the platform indefinitely
|
| Color me unreasonable
| ok123456 wrote:
| This is why I'll keep pirating content.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I don't understand the idea of terminating entire accounts
| anyways. All this companies need to be able to more finely
| disable access if needed. It's gotten really bad now that your
| personal accounts can end up being tied to business services.
| colllectorof wrote:
| 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 that can be effortlessly
| replicated ad infinitum.
|
| How much of what you pay for "digital rentals" goes to creators
| and towards running the actual infrastructure to download/consume
| media? This is a questions a lot of companies don't want you to
| be thinking about.
|
| More generally, it all comes down to the questions brilliantly
| formulated by Neal Postman:
|
| https://strawdogs.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/neil-postmans-6-q...
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Tidal, I believe, is the streaming service that gives most to
| the creators. This may or may not be related to Jay-Z being
| on the board.
| vasco wrote:
| Don't worry, Silicon Valley has already bought Tidal in the
| meantime.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| 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.
| danielheath wrote:
| It's particularly noticeable on spotify. I actually don't
| mind the rental model (though it's overpriced for how I use
| it), but you cannot remove songs from curated playlists and
| expect me not to notice.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Wouldn't say people are happy. "They accept" is much closer.
| They accept the mediocre, because there's nothing they can do
| about it, and they don't understand how any of it works.
| jordan_curve wrote:
| I'm happy. It's not really a big deal to me if my uploaded
| content is removed and I think the service that Spotify
| provides is worth more than what I pay for it.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| > 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
| download/consume media?
|
| If you look beyond the big players you'll find some people earn
| more (semi-)self-publishing on the internet than they'd have
| ever earned with a publishing deal. On-demand/low volume print
| and having digital as your default channel also made "real"
| publishing deals available to more people.
|
| Being on store shelves was not actually that much better than
| Spotify for musicians accounting for volume, they just had less
| competition because now shelf space is unlimited.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _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._
|
| It's true the physical book manufacturing is only ~10% of the
| price.
|
| But you're forgetting costs of shipping, warehousing,
| stocking, retail, etc. Separate from manufacturing, roughly
| 40% of what you pay for a book goes to the physical
| _retailer_ , and that's actually the largest chunk.
|
| When you add up _all_ the costs of producing and transporting
| and selling the physical book to a customer (and the
| publisher taking back unsold copies), they make up the
| _majority_ of a book 's cost.
|
| The actual "license of content" cost of a physical book is a
| minority of the price you pay.
| scrollaway wrote:
| > _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._
|
| To be honest this is a really great point I've seen brought
| up very rarely. I think the digital aspect makes it so
| extremely obvious that it forced the conversation.
|
| That said, there are more costs than the physical medium
| itself. There's the physical shelf space copies consumes (vs.
| digital media which can be copied on demand), the costs
| associated with the creation and shipping of the item, in-
| store human handling, not to mention all the consumer-level
| effort and costs of purchasing the physical media (going to
| the store and carrying it around, having it occupy space at
| home, taking care of not damaging it...)
| sascha_sl wrote:
| These things all still exist in some capacity, though
| obviously it has become more efficient. Bandwidth isn't
| free, for instance.
|
| The cost of publishing hasn't changed much. It just shifted
| from "making it to the limited selection" to "being visible
| in the essentially limitless selection". In the end you
| still need to make deals with retailers and invest into
| advertising (especially when storefronts don't do deals -
| or at least say they don't, hi spotify).
| soperj wrote:
| >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.
| jonhohle wrote:
| 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?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| But with a book, you have that privilege in perpetuity, and
| you can loan, transfer, and resell it.
|
| Coincidentally, NFT's got the "transfer" side of the
| equation, but forgot about the "privilege" part! The tokens
| are yours in perpetuity, and can be transferred to others,
| but it's not at all clear what privilege they provide.
| MereInterest wrote:
| > Coincidentally, NFT's got the "transfer" side of the
| equation, but forgot about the "privilege" part! The tokens
| are yours in perpetuity, and can be transferred to others,
| but it's not at all clear what privilege they provide.
|
| Exactly! This is the part that I cannot get past whenever
| people talk about NFTs. They are a neat toy, self-
| contained, and having unambiguous ownership of the NFT. But
| there is absolutely nothing in the real world connected to
| it. It's like those pie-in-the-sky physics models that have
| hundreds of free parameters unconstrained by any
| experimental measurement. Sure those models might make some
| interesting predictions, but they have nothing tying them
| to the real world.
|
| I could imagine a system where NFTs are used to establish
| ownership, but that requires there to be some trusted
| source that signs the initial NFT. This could be a land
| surveyor to make a NFT that represents property borders, or
| a patent office to make a NFT that represents a granted
| patent, or a MMO video game company to make a NFT that
| represents a particular asset within the game. But as it
| is, J.K. Rowling could make a NFT representing "Harry
| Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", and I could make one
| as well. There's no indication of which one is a valid link
| from mathematical space to real space.
|
| NFTs _need_ a legal system in order to tie them to anything
| outside of the NFT ecosystem. They _need_ trusted
| authorities who are the only ones that can generate NFTs
| with specific legal authority. And once you have that
| trusted authority, there 's no point in having any of the
| other trustless blockchain architecture whose sole, flimsy
| excuse for existing is in avoiding having a trusted
| authority in the first place.
|
| (Sorry, that turned into a longer rant than I had expected,
| but your phrasing crystallized some ideas that had been
| floating around my head, and I wanted to write them out to
| see where they went.)
| roody15 wrote:
| NFTs need a legal / authority system ensuring they are
| tied to something. I agree and this is why NFTs and block
| chain are simply not needed at all. A simple certificate
| signed by an authority would make more sense .. no
| purpose in a anonymous block chain for this I can see.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| 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 now it is just a really
| complicated dollar.
|
| Similarly, smart contracts do not solve an actual problem
| we can't solve with real contracts much cheaper, and the
| contract itself is unenforceable if any participant stops
| cooperating.
|
| If you have to rely on police and courts to enforce your
| smart contract, why do you need the decentralized smart
| contract to begin with? Can you even model a smart
| contract that satisfies the legal constraints of all
| countries where participating in it is possible? Why
| aren't you just leaving this to lawyers and signatures on
| paper?
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| 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 that every act of trade is done
| voluntarily or under force. What blockchains and bitcoin
| change is by making the receipts self-provable and
| consistent without needing more information than a public
| key and a time of transaction. It doesn't change the need
| to assert one's property rights. That is still the
| purview of law and law enforcement short of a
| breakthrough in jurisprudence.
|
| Your point about the dollar is flawed. The value of the
| dollar may be a floating currency at its most ideal but
| its "true" value, outside of forex, is determined by
| fiat. The Fed just financially engineers it in a very
| complicated manner with veritable pulleys and levers and,
| somewhere along the way, a gun to everyone's private bank
| account in the form of artificial inflation/negative
| interest rates, punitive taxes, and from time to time,
| suing institutions that make US financial theater look
| bad by threat of dubious litigation.
|
| >>If you have to rely on police and courts to enforce
| your smart contract, why do you need the decentralized
| smart contract to begin with?
|
| If police departments have to rely on private citizens to
| be bounty hunters or informants, is there a point to
| having a police force at all? What's the point of a legal
| system that depends on executive enforcement when the
| citizenry is capable of doing so on its own? Why do we
| have to have a mayor/governor/president? Why not a
| government of individual people addressing their own
| affairs as need be and judges/arbitrators as referees?
| The answer to both sets of questions is that they are
| both options to a larger question: "How should one handle
| interpersonal expectations and violations thereof?"
| sascha_sl wrote:
| 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).
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| I addressed it in my first paragraph but, to repeat, a
| smart contract is a self-provable receipt.
|
| In addition, I don't see how you read my statement and
| came away with the idea that I support vigilante justice
| or anarcho-capitalism. My questions were pointed towards
| addressing the unstated assumptions inherent to your
| question and the other questions in your post that I
| didn't quote. Namely, that a centralized authority or
| agreement of centralized authorities is a requirement to
| render any transaction/contract/agreement valid. That's
| an assumption I find to be unproven and easily contested.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| Well, I was hinting at smaller digital storefronts! Many of
| them do offer DRM free digital books.
|
| I can't comment on NFTs beyond "wow, what a wasteful scam".
| megablast wrote:
| > But with a book, you have that privilege in perpetuity,
| and you can loan, transfer, and resell it.
|
| But you don't. Not really. DVDs and books only last, what,
| 30-40 years. Are you entitled to a free replacement after
| that time is up?
| havernator wrote:
| > books only last, what, 30-40 years.
|
| I have little pulp paperbacks that are older than 40
| years, and those are about the least durable books
| around. I expect finer books to last 100 years and as
| many readings... and to go on to do it again. Barring
| environmental damage or my deliberately binning them, I
| expect most books I've already had 20 years to outlive me
| by going another 50+... and I got most of them used to
| begin with, often already 10-80 years old when I got them
| (a few older, but they're outliers). If the next owner
| re-binds them many could survive another lifetime or two.
| colllectorof wrote:
| _> > 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 distributes
| books. The system includes various parties, like printers,
| publishers, distributors, books stores and so on. It's far
| more than 10% and _there is nothing wrong with paying for a
| reasonably working distributed system like that_.
|
| Replacing all of those companies with a single megacorp like
| Amazon or Apple is not going to result in the same system
| running cheaper. It will create an entirely different system.
| Over time that new system will shift to publish entirely
| different type of content, it will have an entirely different
| relationship with consumers and authors and it will have
| completely different effect on the society at large. Given
| what I see already, I seriously doubt those changes will skew
| towards the positive.
| 6510 wrote:
| > 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 should pay to be able to find the data was never a
| thing. It might as well be but it isn't. We can generously
| give this party 1% for the great effort they made finding
| the product I wanted to purchase. (The author should
| probably pay the megacorp for hosting and bandwidth)
|
| After all, the mega corp is our hostage first and we are
| theirs second.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > we could simply set a modest fixed megacorp-tax of say
| 1-2%
|
| Yeah this will surely be more like 30%
| Tostino wrote:
| Only possible if the power dynamic somehow shifts in a
| significant way. Maybe it will, but I'm not very
| optimistic.
| zouhair wrote:
| The MagaCorp will spend less than that 1% "lobbying"
| (hear legally bribing) politicians so that will never
| happen.
| ccsnags wrote:
| I'm still waiting for public domain Mickey Mouse. Disney
| only has a couple more years to get those checks sent
| out.
| smsm42 wrote:
| The concept of renting alone is not bad - I mean, they have
| something you want (e.g. movie), you pay to watch it, then you
| don't need it anymore. Tried and true concept, same as me
| renting a tool from Home Depot - I use it for a day, then I
| don't need it anymore. It doesn't matter how replicable it is -
| when I use it, I don't care much about whether Home Depot has
| more tools like that.
|
| What _is_ ridiculous is that they pretend the other option -
| "buying" - which is usually much more costly - is anything
| close to what people mean by "buying" in a non-digital non-DRM
| world. If I buy a book, the book is mine. I can read it
| forever, I can sell it, I can use it as a doorstopper if I
| like, but whatever I do it's mine. If I "buy" a movie on DRM
| platform, I can watch is only as long as the platform allows me
| to, and yet most people do not realize the profound difference.
| I think it's a good thing there's now a growing awareness that
| his is false pretense and it's time to shine a light on it.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Since I hold the more correct stance that these saas products are
| full of shit and can instantly disappear, I never dared to
| interpret "buy" as buy to own forever. To me "buy" on prime is
| "the other more expensive rent option when the cheaper rent is
| not available".
| sneak wrote:
| All 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 stupid reason. It's entirely non-obvious to
| the layperson.
|
| Courts clarifying the first sale doctrine here would help a lot.
|
| IMO, one should be able to resell or transfer software or media
| licenses they've already paid for. Moving online from physical
| media shouldn't suddenly shaft the consumer and make their media
| purchases evaporate when they die or lose their email address.
| heisenbit wrote:
| Amazon at least here in Germany offers either to rent or to
| buy. Now whatever their ToS say, there is a certain expectation
| to the word "buy" and I'm fairly optimistic that courts here
| would take a dim view on clauses in ToS allowing a one sided
| revocation. Even if it is only a license to stream it is a
| property right. In B2B one may put some twisted clauses into
| contracts but in B2C such attempts are regularly reigned in.
| strogonoff wrote:
| 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 good, as
| really no one would want to go through the trouble of making
| illegal copies.
|
| I strongly agree that "selling" something you do not get to own
| should not even be a valid concept.
| infogulch wrote:
| Maybe this is the real killer use-case for NFTs?
| strogonoff wrote:
| 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.
| xur17 wrote:
| Honestly, it is a decent use case. Sell NFTs that grant the
| owner the right to play / use a certain song, movie, ebook,
| etc. Ideally have some sort of file storage layer that only
| grants the ability to stream the content if you own the nft
| - not sure how feasible that is, so the alternative is to
| establish a few providers that can stream the content, and
| get paid a small amount for their services by the movie
| studios.
|
| Reselling rights don't have to be granted, and if they are,
| they could even include "fees" for reselling to limit a
| rental market from taking place.
| indymike wrote:
| We should require that the person who is having an account
| terminated be compensated by refunding the purchase price, plus
| interest.
| jerjerjer wrote:
| Good. These days when a lot of possessions are not physical, and
| not even bytes on a hard drive, but just some entries in some
| company database allowing you a limited access we need more rules
| than "companies are allowed to do whatever they want".
| realusername wrote:
| > 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.
| ksec wrote:
| >> Apple countered by arguing that "no reasonable consumer
| would believe" that content purchased through iTunes would be
| available on the platform indefinitely.
|
| I guess I will soon start a site about the amount of crap and
| hypocrisy modern Apple are saying. I dont know exactly what
| happened but post Steve Jobs Apple are getting ridiculous with
| their defence.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Do it please !
| Animats wrote:
| 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...
| fsloth wrote:
| To be fair, Apple has _upgraded_ the quality of several movie
| titles I have purchased as HD to to 4k, without a charge.
|
| Personally I treat my Apple purchases as volatile and approach
| the budgeting for them similarly as I would budget for events
| such as movie tickets.
| mxcrossb wrote:
| Conversely, I think a lot of people buy digital movies and
| never watch them because they want to own them. We all
| probably have friends who buy games they never play off of
| steam.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > 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 and re-add it to my library, sometimes, there's a
| new "remastered" copy, and sometimes those songs are just no
| longer available in iTunes. I pay for the subscription, and
| don't buy music. And I'm glad. I don't know why these changes
| wouldn't happen to me even if I had paid for it, but maybe that
| would be exempted? If someone can tell me that this doesn't
| happen if I buy the album, I would snatch up some of my
| favorites right away.
| ksec wrote:
| >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.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Ah, yes. You are right. I forget there's a distinction.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| The same stuff also happened to some albums that I actually
| "bought" long before Apple started a music subscription
| service.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| iTunes music is DRM free if you download it, so this is one
| case where you really could make the access indefinite if you
| wanted.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Really surprised to see Apple taking this approach. You'd think
| they could have come up with something less offensive to their
| users. This is the exact same line Sidney Powell is using in
| her defense against Dominion: "'No Reasonable Person' Thought
| Her Election Fraud Claims Were Fact" [0]. Amused but not
| surprised to see this from her, I am quite aghast to see this
| from Apple.
|
| The fact is, just like any reasonable person would believe that
| claims of election fraud are claims of election fraud, any
| reasonable person would _certainly_ believe that when Apple
| says "buy" they mean to purchase and to own outright in
| perpetuity without the possibility of repossession. I wonder
| what effect this will have on the App Store, where apps are
| "sold" using the same language.
|
| [0] https://www.law.com/nationallawjournal/2021/03/22/facing-
| def...
| baryphonic wrote:
| > This is the exact same line Sidney Powell is using in her
| defense against Dominion: "'No Reasonable Person' Thought Her
| Election Fraud Claims Were Fact" [0]. Amused but not
| surprised to see this from her, I am quite aghast to see this
| from Apple.
|
| The sentence in the filing is true: no reasonable person
| would see her _opinion_ about an event as a fact. Opinions
| are not facts. Powell 's problem is that her "facts" used to
| support her opinion are flaming dumpster-fire ridiculous and
| Loony Toons level crazy. (My opinion, also not a fact, is
| that she had a really bad filter for technical information,
| and so ended up filing complete trash in court.)
|
| Apple is also making an opinion claim here: "buy" in an Apple
| context does not mean "buy" in the colloquial context. I
| think it's a dumb argument mostly unsupported by facts (don't
| know how well supported it is by law), but, again, it's their
| opinion.
|
| Only the judge's opinion really matters, as well as the
| customer's when she decides not to "buy" this crap from
| hostile streaming services.
| dylan604 wrote:
| So if I "buy" an Apple M1 series computer, am I renting it
| or buying it? The only thing Apple can do to hardware is to
| quit supporting it via software updates, but I am still
| free to use it with the last supported software as long as
| it runs. (Depending on make/model/build quality, that may
| actually stop before software support ends like the
| 2016-2017 MBPs.)
| fencepost wrote:
| There's pretty convincing evidence that you own that
| computer. Your ability to use it in some fashion (e.g. as
| a hammer) is not dependent on Apple permitting that use.
| [deleted]
| alisonkisk wrote:
| "no reasonable person" defense is used when the defendant
| knows they were caught in a lie and have no other defense.
| It's the legal version of "just a prank bro" or "I was
| kidding", and just as despicable.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| And, as we've recently discovered, the academic equivalent
| is "I was just testing the security of the code review
| process".
| lettergram wrote:
| Not sure why Sidney Powell was brought up here, but that's
| ongoing litigation and neither side has emerged victorious.
|
| Further, the claims in that article were odd and don't seem
| to match the filing Sydney Powell actually made: https://www.
| courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.225699/...
|
| So I don't think that's necessarily a great source to cite.
|
| EDIT: In either case, these are lawsuits. There's a few
| things that have to occur in the Powell (and Apple) case:
|
| 1. Is it reasonable to believe the people making said
| statements or taking actions believe they are correct / the
| truth
|
| 2. Was there malicious intent (predicated on point 1). Those
| suing have to prove the statements are both (a) convincing to
| a 3rd party and (b) show the defendant was trying to take
| action contrary to their beliefs
|
| Because of the setup, it makes sense to basically say "prove
| a reasonable person believes the claims and prove the
| defended intended to cause harm, using evidence contrary to
| their beliefs"
|
| That's equivalent to saying "prove it." This is standard in a
| motion to dismiss, which is step one in the legal battle.
| kemayo wrote:
| This is a bit of a tangent from the actual article we're
| nominally discussing, of course, but...
|
| > Further, the claims in that article were odd and don't
| seem to match the filing Sydney Powell actually made
|
| So, the bit of the article I can read says "Attorneys for
| Sidney Powell are asking a federal judge to dismiss a
| defamation lawsuit filed against her, claiming that "no
| reasonable person" thought the pro-Trump lawyer's
| statements about the 2020 election results were factual."
|
| This is directly referring to a claim in the document
| Powell's lawyers filed. If you scroll through to page 32 of
| the PDF you linked, you'll find this: "Such
| characterizations of the allegedly defamatory statements
| further support Defendants' position that reasonable people
| would not accept such statements as fact but view them only
| as claims that await testing by the courts through the
| adversary process."
|
| It's literally arguing that "no reasonable person" would
| ever believe that _anything_ anyone says about an upcoming
| court case is meant as a fact. It 's an argument that would
| mean it's absolutely impossible to defame someone who's in
| any way related to a person you're suing, no matter how
| meritless that lawsuit might be. (Particularly, it argues,
| if your lawsuit is related to politics.)
| [deleted]
| mrweasel wrote:
| You're right that's honestly a shitty way for Apple to make a
| counter argument. I suspect that a large number of Apple
| customers would see a purchase of a movie on iTunes as
| equivalent to buying a BluRay or DVD (the price would
| certainly indicate it), and now Apple is calling them
| unreasonable.
|
| Apples legal team also seems forget that their customers
| expect them to behave better than the industry in general. No
| reasonable person would expect Apple to deny a loyal customer
| access to previous purchases.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Apples legal team have obviously lost the forest for the
| trees. In fact, i imagine some high up execs are tearing
| out their hair.
| cipher_system wrote:
| I always assumed they would be available as long as Apple or
| iTunes doesn't go under. Guess i'm not a reasonable consumer
| but luckily I haven't spent much money on them.
| joshmanders wrote:
| I've spent a lot of money on iTunes content (Nearing 1,000
| purchased movies on AppleTV), and my assumption was the same.
| As long as Apple/iTunes doesn't go under, and given I don't
| do anything to violate Apple's terms, I will have access to
| this content.
|
| I understand I can lose access, I'm not paying for the
| content in the idea that I own it forever even if Apple goes
| under or I get terminated, but I have perpetual access to it
| given the circumstances don't change, and I pay for the
| convenience of this.
|
| If I had expected to own it forever, I'd probably have bought
| DVD's, not digital.
| interestica wrote:
| > If I had expected to own it forever, I'd probably have
| bought DVD's, not digital.
|
| This is the opposite of what it should be. DVDs degrade
| over time, and can last for as little as 10 years. Digital
| should be mean transportable and convertible indefinitely.
| joshmanders wrote:
| Sure but who's gonna pay to keep those servers up in
| perpetuity?
|
| I would never buy digital thinking I'll have access
| indefinitely. At least with DVD's I can rip them and burn
| them on new DVD's if I wanted them to be "forever"
| interestica wrote:
| Make DRM free versions available for download? Music has
| had to go that route so that people can 'own' their
| downloads.
|
| Maybe a self-hosted auth server of some kind is possible?
|
| Adobe recently stopped letting you install CS3 even if
| you have the CDs because they took the auth server down.
| Do you think there was a reasonable expectation that when
| someone paid thousands of dollars for those discs, that
| they 'owned' them and had the right to install them
| repeatedly on their own computers?
|
| >https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite.html
|
| >You can no longer reinstall Creative Suite 2, 3 or 4
| even if you have the original installation disks. The
| aging activation servers for those apps had to be
| retired.
|
| Looks like they just added CS4 to the list...which is
| still usable software (and in fact offers features that
| are currently unavailable!)
| scatters wrote:
| The company can use part of your purchase price to buy a
| long term debt instrument (e.g. a 30-year T-bond) and use
| the yield to keep the server running.
|
| Or, more realistically and prosaically, they can and
| should debit the net present liability of keeping the
| server running in perpetuity from their corporate
| accounts at the time of purchase. Accountancy knows how
| to value such things and finance delights in monetizing
| them.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Do printed DVDs last that little? That sounds more like
| the lifespan of burned discs.
| interestica wrote:
| It's mostly dependent on heat, humidity, and light. And
| then of course handling. And the actual player and how
| much it might contact the disc (eg inserting in certain
| slot drives repeatedly can brush dust/dirt on the
| surface).
| heavyset_go wrote:
| From experience, yes, they can. Make backups of the DVDs,
| CDs and Blu-ray discs you care about.
| Vespasian wrote:
| Apple and friends will do their best to avoid a ruling and
| laws which could establish this interpretation because it
| would end their practice to terminate accounts with the
| reason "Computer says no".
|
| When contracting with consumers these companies should be
| forced to be liable and accountable for their algorithmic
| decisions and arbitrary policy enforcement.
|
| That wouldn't be unreasonable at all. "They clicked the
| accept EULA button" is not a valid excuse.
|
| Pretending that consumers are able to negotiate a fair
| contract with Apple is denying reality.
| mguerville wrote:
| Especially because every so often we as consumers get an
| email saying "we made some updates to the EULA / ToS,
| here's the full 50 pages document without any markup as to
| what actually changed, you are now bound by these new terms
| that aren't exactly the ones you initially agreed to"
| number6 wrote:
| Or you can reject and loose all your "bought" Goods.
| sbarre wrote:
| Except in the terms you initially agreed to, you also
| agreed to let them change the terms at their discretion.
|
| (To be clear, I think that's BS, but that's how this
| happens).
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| University libraries all over the world would disagree, their
| archivists make very sure that digital journals are still
| available to their audience even if the subscription has
| expired. Access to digital content is a solved problem, even
| though Apple would have you believe otherwise.
| RyanGoosling wrote:
| Play stupid games, win stupid prizes
| grishka wrote:
| I do. This is the exact reason why I've never bought anything
| digitally. Paying real money just to have some bytes streamed
| to you just doesn't feel right. And, I mean, you can't even
| resell or lend the thing.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I do not think consumers know this at all and very much do
| agree that what they buy will be available to them during their
| lifetime at least. When I told friends that this can (and does)
| happen to books on Kindle that they paid for, they were very
| surprised. I am a reasonable consumer but yes, of course I
| assume that if it does not say 'rent this movie or book for a
| day' but instead uses the word 'buy' (often next to the button
| rent, so they they are making a distinction!), it will not
| dissapear. If it does disappear, I should get a refund, no
| matter the reason for it disappearing.
| Applejinx wrote:
| If it was an object in your house, and they made it disappear
| and left you some money, that would be theft.
|
| Thoughts?
|
| I'm not convinced 'making digital goods disappear' is good. I
| know WHY it's done and totally understand the justification,
| but I continue to dislike and distrust the practice.
|
| Should we normalize the idea that everything we own is
| fungible, at the discretion of a third party, for its
| exchange value? Under what conditions do they get to swap out
| our property for replacements or money?
| wdn wrote:
| They are a monopoly. I hope the Judge on Epic class call this
| Apple's Motion to Dismiss.
|
| Hopefully there will be platform independent store where you
| can buy once and available on all devices.
| easton wrote:
| For media, Amazon is platform-independent for music, books
| and movies.
| weird-eye-issue wrote:
| Seems crazy to me. Sure, all their content won't always be
| available to purchase. But once you've purchased something, how
| can that not always stay in your library? It is just a long
| term rental, not a purchase, if it can disappear and that isn't
| obvious to anybody without looking into it (and how should you
| know to look into it in the first place?)
| [deleted]
| narag wrote:
| >> 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.
|
| I read this as "no reasonable consumer would trust us".
| mc32 wrote:
| 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 convert the format into whatever is popular.
|
| How do they price this? Do they not do CRCs and hashes and let
| your bits rot over time and have you buy a new one? How do you
| approach this commercially? Make music or video very, very
| faddish so even if it lasts forever no one will want to listen
| to or watch something out of style ten yeas hence?
|
| I'm not defending Apple. I'm asking how do you price things
| reasonably if they potentially last forever?
| Retric wrote:
| 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.org/wiki/Laser_turntable
| mc32 wrote:
| 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.
| syshum wrote:
| 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
| Retric wrote:
| No you don't get a license with a CD, you just get an
| object.
|
| It's only copying that's protected not existing physical
| copies. It's the same with a book you get the physical
| book and that's it. If the copyright expired then you can
| do all kinds of stuff with the book that you don't
| otherwise get to do, barring a few exceptions that apply
| universally.
| IX-103 wrote:
| You're forgetting the performance license. With a
| (consumer grade) CD you get the rights for private
| performance of a non-commercial nature.
|
| You don't usually get the rights to play the music for
| large audiences or for commercial use - those cost extra.
|
| If you didn't get those rights then you couldn't even
| play the CD in the privacy of your own home, as that
| constitutes a performance of the work.
|
| (Of course I kind of think there's something
| fundamentally strange with the idea of having to get
| "performance rights" for a recording that you supposedly
| own, but that doesn't change the law right now.)
| mc32 wrote:
| Licenses are not all the same. They have different terms.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It said "Buy" on the buttons on iTunes the last time I
| used it years ago.
| pjc50 wrote:
| How do you price real estate when it lasts forever? (The
| land, not the buildings)
|
| Of course there's an actual answer to this as well, the
| economic concept of a discount rate; things far in the future
| are worth less than they are in the present, by an amount
| depending on interest minus inflation.
| syshum wrote:
| 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
| mc32 wrote:
| That's not in dispute. What I'm saying is for the most part
| these media wore out and often times people had to
| repurchase those media. I've known people who had to
| replace many of their CDs. They didn't get to go to the
| store and "return the defective one" for a warranty
| replacement.
| syshum wrote:
| and I have known many people that lose digital data
| because they did not back it up, they had to then
| repurchase that content, including things like DRM free
| ebooks, or drm free media
|
| This is not a valid line of objection, just because if
| someone destroyed their CD and did not have a backup
| would have to rebuy, same is true if someone did not
| backup their DRM free content.
|
| This HAS NOTHING TO DO with the ability to backup, or the
| fact that physical media may degrade over time. That is a
| non sequitur and a red herring all in one
|
| In reality this is not even about digital media
| copyright, but more about the rights of digital platforms
| to unperson you and seize your legally purchase products
| for any arbitrary reason (or in many cases no reason at
| all)
| mc32 wrote:
| I agree with your point that Apple should not be able to
| yank/revoke access and treat your account differently
| than anyone else's other than by court order. This is
| worrisome.
|
| My initial question was tangential and more thinking out
| loud how they deal with lower sales velocities.
| syshum wrote:
| To the extent there is " lower sales velocities. " of
| which you have presented no evidence to back that claim,
| you would also have to present evidence that the lower
| sales velocities were directly caused by a transition
| from physical to digital sales.
|
| I would find that data to be very interesting, and based
| on what I know about the industry I would also say that
| neither one of those claims can be supported by any data
| I am aware of
| pyrale wrote:
| > I'm asking how do you price things reasonably if they
| potentially last forever?
|
| They can potentially last forever, but humans don't. Since
| Apple's stuff is associated to a personal account, I don't
| see an issue here, vinyls can also last for a life.
|
| On the other hand, consumers have lost the right to lend,
| give or sell the stuff they buy. That's not priced either,
| and we see every possible move be done to make these
| operations user-hostile, if not forbidden.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| I don't know. I have many tapes at home.~15-25 years old. I
| almost never touch them, but when i do they seem to work
| fine. Maybe the quality is bad, but i have nothing to compare
| it to.
| DigitallyFidget wrote:
| 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.
| vbsteven wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| As long as the MPAA exists, this will never happen.
| easton wrote:
| Apple got the RIAA to go along with it, they definitely
| could get the movie studios to if they wanted (the
| pirates already broke Netflix, Amazon, and Disney's
| encryption, it's not helping anyway).
|
| I think the bigger problem now is that people don't buy
| enough movies for anyone to want to chase this down, and
| if you want to own a movie, 99% of the time I can get the
| Blu-Ray+digital version for the same price of the digital
| one, and then the license syncs to like five different
| video services. And if they all ban me, then I still have
| the Blu-Ray.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The MPAA vs RIAA is sort of an apples vs oranges
| comparison though. Audio is much easier to compress, and
| MP3 made it very easy to make files small enough to
| download via dial-up modems. Video had years to go before
| quality was good enough at small enough sizes to make
| them a viable thing on the internet. Because of that, the
| MPAA got to watch/learn from mistakes that RIAA made in
| trying to protect its kingdom. Rather than fight the
| digital inevitablity like RIAA did, MPAA allowed the
| digital with DRM. This allowed for the "honest" public to
| have legal viable methods of watching the content. The
| useless tact RIAA fought caused its own demise in the
| fight making an entire generation of kids think that
| music should be free because that's all they knew. Their
| allowing of DRM free FLAC files was a white flag. MPAA is
| in a much stronger position to allow that to happen.
| grishka wrote:
| Also I don't think there ever were physical audio formats
| with DRM? CD came out way before piracy was anyone's
| concern, and then it was too late to change anything.
|
| On the other hand, all digital video formats have always
| had the technical capability for DRM, starting with DVD.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| > _Also I don 't think there ever were physical audio
| formats with DRM?_
|
| Yes, there certainly were - basically all early digital
| audio media were encumbered with SCMS[0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Copy_Management_
| System
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > Also I don't think there ever were physical audio
| formats with DRM?
|
| MiniDiscs had "copy protection"[0] and this format was
| supported by major record labels[1]. They were first
| released in 1992.
|
| > all digital video formats have always had the technical
| capability for DRM, starting with DVD.
|
| By starting with DVD, you're skipping the DRM-free
| formats of Betamax, VHS, and LaserDisc then? Unless by
| "had the technical capability for" you mean "could be
| later extended to add", in which case there was
| Macrovision[2] for VHS, but also Extended Copy
| Protection[3] for CDs, also known as "the Sony rootkit".
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiniDisc#Copy_protection
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MiniDisc_releases
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_Protection_System
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Copy_Protection
| dylan604 wrote:
| You couldn't copy a Laser Disc though, so the only way to
| obtain one was either physcially steal it or you know,
| pay for it. VHS copies could be made, and were, of the
| Laser Disc. This is what scared the studios of DVD since
| the quality was so much better than VHS dubs. Macrovision
| was a joke to get around. Almost as easy as DeCSS.
| Macrovision bypass just took some extra video gear
| (something with a TBC), so it was slightly harder than
| the free DeCSS library. Betamax didn't last long enough
| for a copied gray market to come along in my area, so I
| don't have first hand experience with difficulties of
| beta dubs.
| freebuju wrote:
| > This is why I pirate shit
|
| I stopped seeing any value in purchasing/renting rights to
| movies and shows from the streaming giants. Want to watch The
| Office, sorry removed, no longer on Netflix. Oh, you are in a
| country that has a funny name, content not available in your
| region. Oh, you are trying to access your Hulu subscription
| from a Linux device? Max video res capped at 480p. It is such
| anti-consumer moves that makes me not feel bad for pirating.
|
| IMO, the most maximum returns on home media consumption is
| gained by acquiring and archiving your own collection of
| media. I don't have to ask anyone for a license to watch my
| favorite movie from 1999 when I have the copy on my plex.
| easton wrote:
| If it makes you feel better, Hulu is capped at 480p outside
| of Edge or Chrome on Windows, and Safari on the Mac.
| 015a wrote:
| I feel its fair to give content providers a few options, but they
| must be forced into it by our government by choosing one of:
|
| 1. Provide an unencumbered, fungible export of the content
| purchased, either at the time of the customer's choosing or once
| upon account termination (for any reason whatsoever).
|
| 2. Provide a full refund of purchased content at the time of
| content-provider initiated account termination (for any reason
| whatsoever).
|
| 3. Replace the language on these types of purchases with the word
| "Rent", with an associated rental timeframe of exactly these
| words: "Indefinitely, until {ContentProvider} permanently revokes
| your access with no warning, reason, or recourse."
|
| "That's a lot of words to fit on a one-click checkout button" ->
| Yeah, that's the problem. These companies have spent years lying
| to their customers about digital content availability, driving
| growth and dominance by hiding the truth and making it easy. All
| of that text needs to be upfront, right where the customer sees
| it; not hidden behind a popup dialog with a cute little question
| mark next to it.
|
| "That text is kinda scary, and doesn't properly represent the
| average consumer's experience" -> Well, that's weird, because
| that's almost exactly how most of these providers word the terms
| of these purchases in their terms of service. You know, those
| documents no one reads.
|
| The fact that content providers can, at a moment's notice, revoke
| anyone's access to potentially thousands of dollars of purchased
| content, for any reason, with no recourse, is absolutely insane.
| Its one of the biggest mockeries of our digital age. It should
| never have been allowed; its a pattern that only gained market
| traction because no average, reasonable, typical customer
| realizes or considers that these service providers _can_ take
| away their content.
|
| To be clear: There is a ton of digital content which needs to be
| classified under this banner; its not just movies.
|
| * Movies & TV (iTunes, Amazon, Google Play).
|
| * Books (iTunes, Amazon, Google Play). Some of these providers
| are nearly compliant, offering decently accessible exports in
| oftentimes DRM-encumbered formats. DRM has to go to be compliant
| with (1); if that's not an option, well, there are other ways.
|
| * Music (iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Bandcamp). Almost everyone
| here is already compliant thanks to MP3/AAC/FLAC/etc exports.
| Awesome!
|
| * App Store Apps & In-App Purchases (Apple, Google). Attaining
| compliance with (1) here is almost impossible (though a point-in-
| time, downloadable and independently installable application
| package may work! the gall to consider offering that!)
|
| * Digital Video Games (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Valve, Epic,
| Google Stadia, Amazon Luna). At least some of these providers are
| so close; just strip the DRM and you can be compliant with (1). I
| mean jeeze, offering a refund would suck wouldn't it; wouldn't it
| just be better to be friendly to your past customers?
|
| * Video Game Digital Content (Epic/Fortnite, EA/Apex Legends,
| Activision/Call of Duty, etc). Many of these games sell in-game
| cosmetic and/or gameplay-altering items; some of them sell in-
| game lottery cards that will give you these items. These games
| are actually the worst offenders of the whole list, because they
| all run anti-cheat systems that are horribly inaccurate in-terms
| of false-negatives _and_ false-positives. People just get banned,
| for literally no reason except "they got reported a lot and were
| running some RGB software for their keyboard" every single day.
| Everyone banned by these systems is marked a dirty cheater;
| they'll ignore your support requests, and sometimes even
| hardware-id your computer and share those hardware-id lists with
| other game companies. Compliance with (1) is impossible. They
| need to offer refunds or be honest about what you're buying; this
| may tangentially add a direct profit incentive to building good,
| accurate anti-cheat, which is something nearly none of them care
| about.
| xyst wrote:
| Apple could have avoided this issue entirely by allowing users to
| download the content without any DRM to a storage provider of
| their choice (ie, Dropbox, or local storage).
| imgabe wrote:
| Unfortunately, I don't think this is Apple's choice. I think
| the rights holders get to dictate whether people can download
| the things or not.
| izacus wrote:
| Apple is strong enough to offer iTunes music without DRM, so
| I'm not sure why you're letting them off the hook here. They
| could do it, they just choose not to.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Apple is big enough that if they told the MPAA "unless you
| let us distribute your movies DRM-free, we're not selling
| them to consumers", the MPAA would probably budge.
| anonymousab wrote:
| > Apple is big enough that if they told the MPAA "unless
| you let us distribute your movies DRM-free, we're not
| selling them to consumers", the MPAA would probably budge
|
| I think it's the opposite. There's no chance at all that
| they'd do that because Apple would only be hurting
| themselves (and likely directly destroying Apple TV in some
| way) and the existing industry assumptions about DRM and
| privacy are entrenched, if not core.
|
| We are a long ways away from when you played ball with
| iTunes or you didn't play digital music ball at all.
|
| They would also likely have legal and PR pressure to exert
| against such a move. Regardless of whether Apple is or
| isn't a monopoly, they definitely don't want a billion
| dollar industry going after them in that angle right now.
| daemoon wrote:
| This is not even an option, since it will just make it easier
| to share files illegally and defeat the whole purpose of having
| an online movie store.
| chii wrote:
| it was already easy to obtain that very song or movie
| illegally.
|
| Allowing a download doesn't _cause_ more piracy - it just
| makes the user have more power and control over their content
| they purchased.
| Oddskar wrote:
| I disagree. Piracy was and still is very much a service
| problem. Just because people would have access to DRM-free
| movies does not mean they would automatically fire up
| bittorrent and start trading torrent files with their
| friends. That's still far too inconvenient.
|
| I have lots of DRM-free games on GOG for instance. So do
| people I know. We've never had a single thought about
| pirating these. We're grown ups, we don't have time for that
| kind of thing.
| dawnerd wrote:
| This line of reasoning is why we have invasive drm that
| doesn't work. It's just another case of drm only hurting
| legitimate customers and not stopping piracy even in the
| slightest.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| I'm as big an Apple fan as they come but they've got some work to
| do in supporting their services.
|
| My wife bought a subscription box with her Apple Card and somehow
| the subscription service assigned someone else's email address to
| her account and won't let her change it. For reasons I can't
| quite understand, that service sent her one box out of a six-box
| subscription so my wife called to dispute the charges with Apple
| Card. For a few months now she's bin in this Groundhog Day like
| cycle of them taking the money off the bill but then, after
| contacting the subscription service I assume, will put the money
| back on her bill until she calls to dispute it again.
|
| Now, I know this is Goldman Sachs she's dealing with and not
| Apple but, it is called the "Apple Card" and I feel like Apple
| needs to step in and make Goldman Sachs do the right thing.
| tartoran wrote:
| I understood this thing long time ago and removed my credit card
| from my account to resist tempation of buying stuff. I briefly
| added it back to purchase an app or two I really couldn't do
| without. As far as media goes I have none on my Iphone.
| charles_f wrote:
| Beyond the legality aspect of using the words "buy" or "purchase"
| is the moral one. Blocking access to content to a customer you
| got money from is immoral. To a certain point it's the exact
| opposite of piracy. If it's legal, it should be made illegal.
|
| Also, these corporations claim their TOS allow them to deny
| access if they choose to, and might even have done it for
| legitimate reasons. But nothing is preventing them to implement
| restrictions on accounts rather than total deactivation.
| read_if_gay_ wrote:
| Weirdly, the "private companies can do what they want" angle
| seems pretty unpopular here.
| Vespasian wrote:
| I suspect I know what you are implying.
|
| However there is a difference forcing a company to do
| additional business in the future or forcing them to not
| unilaterally keep the money for "purchases" made in the past.
|
| Fully refunding customers (+interest) and/or explaining the
| decision to suspend the account in detail (perhaps even
| allowing consumers to correct potential problems) is not
| burdening Apple beyond reason.
|
| No one here seems to argue that they must allow the plaintiff
| to continue shopping in iTunes.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| I hope we start seeing government truly pushing back against big
| tech. They have become larger than countries and now just manage
| the tax evasions schemes that keep them so profitable.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Is this Matthew Prince from CloudFlare?
| Dayshine wrote:
| Assuming things fall on the side of "indefinite access" that
| can't be revoked:
|
| What happens if you have someone who is genuinely abusing your
| systems?
|
| Are you just powerless until it reaches the point of criminal
| actions? That doesn't seem unreasonable, as I can't actually
| think of many examples of abuse that wouldn't be criminal..
| techsupporter wrote:
| I doubt your first assumption will be the one that happens,
| even if this ruling does come out favorably for customers.
|
| There's an easy out for Apple and others: you give the customer
| the ability to access what they paid for independently of the
| seller. There's no requirement for Apple to be involved any
| more once Apple has delivered the file in way that can be
| opened independent of Apple.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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
| that the stuff you rent is related to owning things at all
| (i.e. not using the word "buy" anymore).
| microtherion wrote:
| > 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.
| imgabe wrote:
| What is Apple's rate of return on capital? If you gave them
| $5 10 years ago, they have probably more than doubled it by
| now.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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.
| joshspankit wrote:
| 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.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Does anyone why they terminated his account?
| alisonkisk wrote:
| 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.
| indymike wrote:
| 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.
| neallindsay wrote:
| Not the main point of the case, but I am curious how his account
| was terminated. Apple does that much less often than Google does
| (you're not posting death threats in YouTube comments using your
| Apple account). I'm also curious how he purchased $25k of apps
| and videos in only two years.
|
| Even if this is an extreme case, I hope that Apple (and other
| platforms) are forced to change their language and/or provide
| more guarantees of access.
| simion314 wrote:
| > but I am curious how his account was terminated.
|
| Most of the time the giants do not tell you what you done
| wrong. My son managed to get my Sony account banned for 2
| months(from all online stuff including the PS Plus that I am I
| paid a year subscription), there is no way to appeal and the
| only thing Sony told me in the notification email is that it is
| about violence or sexual stuff , so fuck knows what t could be
| about , I know he shared some screenshots with weapons from a
| game - would be ironic to get flagged by game screenshots or it
| could be just malicious people reporting you (may idiotic kids
| are online playing Fortnite and are threatening each other with
| reports).
|
| In my case i decided I will no longer buy any new product from
| Sony and I will probably jailbreak the console when I think the
| online features are no longer worth it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Wow, $25K and he did not have download access to a single bit.
| That's insane! I hope this goes to trial and sets a precedent.
| The word "buy" is extremely misleading when it comes to cloud
| content. Never buy anything that the manufacturer is allowed to
| later repossess or deny your access to!
| oblio wrote:
| They should just force all these vendors to relabel those
| buttons to "Rent" or equivalent.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| Then that's a positive change, and it will change the
| customers' perception when they "buy" something they don't
| own.
| habibur wrote:
| > They should just force all these vendors to relabel those
| buttons to "Rent" or equivalent.
|
| Yeah. That will be a little less misleading. Also with an
| expiration date "Rent for 5 years". So people know what they
| are exactly paying for.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| IMO they should just forbid taking away access. You can't
| terminate the account. If someone does a chargeback, you can
| terminate access to what they charged back. You can forbid
| them to write any additional data in the future. You can
| decline to sell them anything more. You can sue them for any
| monies they owe you. But if you're providing property-like
| digital goods, you must give indefinite read-only access to
| those goods, even if the account is otherwise banned from
| interacting with your service.
| Vespasian wrote:
| This is how things should be and I really hope we arrive at
| this in the future.
|
| I like to call this "ownership light" and it would remove
| unilateral unaccountable suspension decisions from the
| equation.
|
| The service provider is not burdened beyond reason and
| there is still a distinction made between this and
| "physical ownership" (e.g. no right to inherit / sell the
| content).
| josephcsible wrote:
| > there is still a distinction made between this and
| "physical ownership" (e.g. no right to inherit / sell the
| content).
|
| Are you saying this like it's a good thing?
| Vespasian wrote:
| Yes, that is what I'm thinking.
|
| I recently changed my mind on this and used to believe
| that digital goods should be treated identical to
| physical ones.
|
| Fundamentally the nature of things make them different
| and we should recognize this when discussing what rights
| which party should get.
|
| Whether the two facts I stated make sense is certainly up
| for debate, but I don't believe we can move forward
| insisting that rules imposed by the physicalness ( is
| this a word) are the same as rules imposed by human
| society.
|
| The goal must be to find a set of rules that is fair to
| all participants and I'm certain this it is possible to
| do this.
| josephcsible wrote:
| If I buy a movie on a DVD, should I be allowed to sell it
| when I'm done with it? If so, what's the difference
| between that and selling a digital copy when I'm done
| with it from the copyright owner's perspective?
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Then I expect to pay considerably less though.
| l-lousy wrote:
| 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)
| joshmanders wrote:
| They already have a rent option, so Rent (As long as your
| account is in good standing) and Rent (for a few hours)
| would be even more confusing.
| mhb wrote:
| Why? You can rent a car for a day or lease it for years.
| joshmanders wrote:
| I'm just saying the term rent is already used in the
| system.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| > They already have a rent option, so Rent (As long as
| your account is in good standing) and Rent (for a few
| hours) would be even more confusing.
|
| Perhaps they should make a less confusing service if they
| do not want their customers to be confused.
| schrectacular wrote:
| Even employment contracts work this way in a lot of US
| states. "At Will" employees can be terminated instantly
| without notice.
| nfriedly wrote:
| Yeah, but employment termination only applies going
| forward. The employer can't retroactively take back all
| of your previous pay. Apple here is keeping his money and
| also keeping the things he purchased with it.
| tareqak wrote:
| I 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 not how Apple and Amazon's respective media rental businesses
| would rename themselves to remove the word "store" e.g. App Store
| to App Rental. I do agree that both companies, Google, and others
| mislead potential customers by labeling what is essentially
| conditional, long-term rentals / leases as ownership.
| SuchAnonMuchWow wrote:
| 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.
| fastball wrote:
| 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.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| 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.
| dukoid wrote:
| I think the long term outcome will be some sort of account
| "locking" where the account becomes purely passive
| l-lousy wrote:
| I think the main problem is that because the conditions of the
| rental are not known at the time that you make a purchase
| (accounts can be terminated at any time for any reason) you
| can't call it rental or buying really.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| It seems I was fooled. I'm pretty tech savvy, but I guess I am
| naive, I though my movies--no, I counted on my movies--being
| available to me indefinitely.
| hirundo wrote:
| They are just available to you more indefinitely than you
| thought.
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Nice. Now how about the Occulus Quest?
|
| You know, that lovely _physical_ device you supposedly buy and
| own, but can be denied its use indefinitely if Facebook 's
| algorithms decide to terminate your account for some reason
| (which tends to be more likely if you opened an account just so
| you could play).
| fastball wrote:
| Now I want to buy an Occulus Quest and get banned by Facebook
| just so that I can file that suit.
| danaris wrote:
| Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26912118
| jsnell wrote:
| Not a dupe, I think?
|
| There are two distinct lawsuits. The previous submission is
| just about the case on Apple making content impossible to
| download. But this article also discusses the case where Apple
| terminated an account with $25k of purchases.
| danaris wrote:
| This article references two different suits, and the headline
| is about the second one, but at least at the time I posted
| this comment, the part nearly everyone was commenting on was
| the first suit, with the "no reasonable person" line, which
| is the same suit as in the previous article.
| syshum wrote:
| 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...
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I'm okay if the terms of the rental or subscription are clearly
| defined. For example, I have no problem subscribing to Netflix
| and I expect to lose access to its library if I stop paying.
|
| What is not okay is buying a perpetual license and lose access
| to it because our big tech overlord decided someone shouldn't
| and go away with the money. At least locking the account and
| forbidding access to buying more content would be a fair middle
| ground IMO.
| syshum wrote:
| Netflix/Spotify etc is not really part of a post ownership
| society, not the in the way it is envisioned by people that
| promote such thing
|
| Post Ownership society is an expansion of the Planned
| Obsolescence model, where planned obsolescence still observed
| the right of ownership which most often becomes the issue as
| people inherently believe it is unfair / unethical for a
| company to planned for their product to fail at a certain
| time.
|
| Post Ownership society wants to do away with the very concept
| of ownership, this way planned obsolescence, things like
| requiring a person to rebuy all of the their songs if they
| forget their password, or if the company chooses it it time
| for you to buy them again (i.e a tos violation made up by the
| company) there is not ethical issue as you never owned it
| anyway
| duckfang wrote:
| And folks, this is why I pirate.
|
| Why purchase and download and be on a hope and prayer that I
| retain my stuff? If I download from a pirate source, I'll always
| retain my goods.
|
| And https://xkcd.com/488/ is eminently relevant.
| karlkloss wrote:
| I don't know whether Apple/Google/Facebook-Oculus/Microsoft/Sony,
| etc. already noticed (most likely not), but I already stopped
| buying anything from them, for exactly the reason that they might
| terminate my account without even telling me why, and without a
| possibility to object or even talk to a human being.
|
| In an ideal world, everybody would do so, and the problem would
| go away very quickly.
| Diggsey wrote:
| 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 lose access to as a result of
| that termination.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > It's simple: if apple want to terminate your account, they
| need to refund you for any content you lose access to as a
| result of that termination.
|
| I like that idea a lot. I would add that, at the very, very
| least, they should give you a personal link to download a
| snapshot of all of your data from their cloud at the time of
| termination: email, calendar, contacts, photos/videos, docs,
| et. al.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| The problem is more the licensed content such as movies and
| music. They likely can't provide it to you in a format sans
| DRM. So even having the option to download the file, will
| likely require the media to verify online to _unlock_ at
| playtime.
| josephcsible wrote:
| 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."
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| 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 access if the company didn't keep
| their servers running).
|
| Copyright is not a natural right, the balance is totally
| out of whack. Copyright terms have become abusively long;
| the deal is not fair anymore.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| >>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.
|
| Inasmuch as I am sympathetic to the argument, how would a
| government force DRMless software without attacking
| encryption itself or violating a company's 1st amendment
| rights to sell whatever digital products as it sees fit?
| DRM is protected speech so long as encryption or
| encryption schemes are protected speech (malware a la
| Sony's rootkit notwithstanding).
|
| >>Copyright is not a natural right, the balance is
| totally out of whack. Copyright terms have become
| abusively long; the deal is not fair anymore.
|
| Copyright isn't a natural right but neither is someone
| else's content or products. Without copyright, every
| smart person would keep their inventions as trade secrets
| with limited disclosures/demonstrations that, like Greek
| fire, will eventually be lost to the ages. While
| copyright terms can be abusive and long, that alone does
| not make the concept invalid.
| MereInterest wrote:
| 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.
| eloisant wrote:
| 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.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| 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 copyrights and technical
| protection. They should never have been permitted to
| claim both.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| 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.
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| Fairly certain all music sold through iTunes has been DRM-
| free since like 2010. Amazon too, I think.
|
| (Movies, not so much.)
| sircastor wrote:
| 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.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| The happy accidents of market forces are what make
| markets great!
| eloisant wrote:
| 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.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > It's simple: if apple want to terminate your account, they
| need to refund you for any content you lose access to as a
| result of that termination.
|
| Well, not quite that simple, since a lot of people would de
| facto also lose access to their hardware and all work which
| relies on this software-hardware-combination.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Apple can just rent you their entire catalogue similar to Apple
| Arcade or Music, then nobody would say you own the entire
| selection, just like it'd be absurd to say you own Netflix
| forever.
|
| In the Netflix case it's be even more difficult to argue since
| Netflix doesn't own the IP and the catalogue is ever shifting.
| I'm afraid the future is rental at least because the consumer
| is no longer technically prepared to own and manage their own
| digital catalogue.
| bo1024 wrote:
| I think this is easy to resolve. With Netflix, the terms are
| that you pay a fixed amount and you get one month's access to
| stream whatever they choose to offer at the time, repeat. If
| Netflix terminates your account, well, you lose out on less
| than a month of access, so they should refund one month.
|
| It's very different if (a) you pay per individual item, (b)
| there's an explicit or implied agreement that you have access
| to that item indefinitely. Then if your account is
| terminated, you should be refunded the value of having access
| indefinitely, which is the original purchase price.
|
| Now maybe you're saying Apple can go to a subscription
| service where it rents "access" to the library, but those are
| very different terms.
| [deleted]
| readme wrote:
| >rents "access" to the library
|
| and finally, big tech will have caught on to the business
| model of late 90s early 2000s porn sites
| jjcon wrote:
| Likely all that would do is cause them to stop letting people
| buy content and push everyone over to subscription services -
|
| Beyond that, there are problems there. What's stopping me from
| getting all the latest games on iOS, latest movies as they come
| out then after a few years spend some time purposely breaking
| TOS so I can get it all refunded.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Imagine you bought a bunch of physical books from Barnes and
| Noble, and then later did something to get yourself banned
| from all of their stores for life. (If it matters, assume
| that what you did was bad and that the ban was totally
| justifiable.) Would it be okay if they broke into your house
| and glued together the pages of all the books they ever
| bought, or would you sue them for compensation for doing
| that?
| crazygringo wrote:
| There's no reason Apple has to cut off access to your content
| even if they ban the rest of your account.
|
| They could just set a flag on your account to "consume only"
| or something. Your account would be banned from "interaction"
| or further purchases, but you wouldn't lose your content.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Why is this a problem? If they take access of things you've
| bought, they should have to give you're money back. Any
| breaking of the TOS in the future shouldn't change that
| whether or not you're purposefully trying to break them.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Or at least downgrade your "purchases" to "rental" price.
| sideshowb wrote:
| Sure a rental price determined by what the value of renting
| was according to the customer. Which, seeing as they opted to
| purchase, might reasonably be zero.
| Thaxll wrote:
| "Rent" or "Licence" is def not how they want to describe their
| service, like every platforms they want you to beleive that you
| own the content.
| Decabytes wrote:
| I'd be thrilled if they win and this sets a precedent for other
| markets, I.E Steam as well.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Do we know why his account was terminated? I couldn't find
| anything on that.
| wayneftw wrote:
| I only found this vague statement:
|
| > Price says that Apple terminated his account when the
| company suspected him of breaching its terms and conditions,
| but due to the clause in question Apple did not have to
| confirm a breach occurred or give Price notice or explanation
| before shutting down his Apple ID. [0]
|
| [0] https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-
| pro...
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| We need to revise all consumer protection laws. Way more
| than we did a few years ago.
|
| I would start with, Mandatory Arbitration.
|
| Let consumers take these companies, including credit card
| companies, to court. What is the limit for small
| claims---$25,000? Companies might treat customers
| different? I wouldn't mind doing away with Terms if Service
| all together. If a company can't act within our laws
| without a 10 page TOS, so be it. Or, maybe strict
| protections for small companies, and nill for large
| companies. Companies that can afford to investigate claims
| against them?
|
| All my belly aching here won't do a thing though. These
| companies have bought our representatives.
|
| I'm waiting for a day someone has a successful website,
| like Hacker News, where people could offer suggestions to
| their representatives directly.
|
| I don't think I'll ever see that day because those in
| charge know these matters are above the intellect of most
| Americans, and most Americans would rather escape the
| inequities of real life, especially on line?
|
| I just looked up that 2008 Consumer Protection Act.
|
| This popped up?
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/03/03/811718978/supreme-court-
| casts...
| grishka wrote:
| 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.
| meroes wrote:
| 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, but I've
| already agreed to worse agreements getting through high
| school and college.
| grishka wrote:
| > Maybe this is a different class of "ownership".
|
| Except IMO this class of "ownership" should cost
| substantially less because you get much less value.
| throwaway_kufu wrote:
| But schools are not advertising to the public that they
| are "buying" the class and no reasonable consumer who
| pays tuition believes a 1 time payment of tuition permits
| them to attend the class indefinitely.
|
| On the other hand Apple purposefully advertises movies as
| "rentals" or "purchases" sure more sophisticated
| individuals know better (usually those in the tech
| industry savvy to the willful and deceptive marketing of
| the tech companies) but the average consumer understands
| they have purchased the ownership rights of the movie.
|
| Continuing with a reasonable standard if you are
| suspended/expelled you are generally entitled to due
| process (certainly in public schools), on the other hand
| if you violate Apple TOS you may not have the same due
| process, but it is reasonable to assume they will not
| delete your data And purchases without the opportunity to
| retrieve the same. Otherwise it's a license to steal,
| they could claim the bank accounts you have connected to
| Apple Pay are forfeited to Apple, they can publish your
| emails/photos to harass and embarrass you, etc...
| shard wrote:
| 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.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > I bought a dorm room, yet I lose access.
|
| For assets in the physical world, the provider can have
| legitimate reasons for not refunding you the lost access
| that you originally paid for, on the scale of a month or
| a semester, due to the difficulty of them finding a
| replacement buyer/renter of that asset for the remaining
| duration. Something "seasonal" like school enrolment is a
| perfect example of that.
|
| For digital assets, though, the period that you wouldn't
| expect to be refunded for should be measured in
| nanoseconds.
|
| The other huge difference of course is that people don't
| buy perpetual access to a dorm room, whereas they believe
| they do for digital goods. "Forever minus ten
| nanoseconds" is very similar to "forever", so the refund
| should be close to 100%.
| ldiracdelta wrote:
| 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.
| _jal wrote:
| > a mob or a single unaccountable low-level account
| reviewer may declare someone an "out law"
|
| I take it you prefer that power to be reserved for those
| with high status?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| That's a false dichotomy, but I'll offer this for an
| answer:
|
| "Yes, it should be reserved for those with high status,
| and high status should be reserved for people who are
| chosen by and accountable to the people over whom they
| have power."
| im3w1l wrote:
| The nice thing with high status people is that there are
| so few of them. Makes it easier to hold them accountable.
| _jal wrote:
| > Makes it easier to hold them accountable
|
| Sounds interesting. Let me know when that starts
| happening.
| dalbasal wrote:
| 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.
| Natsu wrote:
| I feel like they should have to put the account in some
| "inactive" state where he can't get any new stuff but keeps
| access to all existing purchases.
| zelon88 wrote:
| 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?
| valdiorn wrote:
| 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.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It would be Apple's (or the bankruptcy court's)
| responsibility to transfer the access to a competitor's
| service, in exchange for payment or liquidation proceeds.
|
| In fact, I'd argue that this ought to be the norm -- that
| content providers be forced to purchase insurance or
| something precisely in case they go out of business, to
| ensure customers will have their content migrated to another
| service, and be refunded for the small proportion of content
| that isn't available anywhere else.
| crazygringo wrote:
| 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.
| pureliquidhw wrote:
| How much should that digital content cost then? Make a DVD
| once, never think about it again. To offer digital copy that
| loses no value over time and must be available forever seems
| like a bad deal from the publisher's side.
|
| To offer a one time download code seems far more tenable.
| CJefferson wrote:
| If the download had no DRM, and I could freely copy it, I
| would have much more sympathy. Usually transfering to
| another machine is hard, or impossible.
| ImprovedSilence wrote:
| Do files from itunes have drm on it these days? I thought
| waaay back in the beginning they did have it, but then at
| some point they went drm free. (At least fir music) At
| what point did they sworch back?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Music does not have DRM (which is great!), but everything
| else you can purchase does--books, audiobooks, movies,
| apps, etc.
| vondur wrote:
| Movies have DRM. Music doesn't.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| There could be other ways to manage it, like specifying how
| long the rental would be valid for (I think iTunes started
| this way with movies), instead of alluding to the idea that
| you are buying it forever as part if a personal library.
| ratww wrote:
| Then make it non-DRM downloadable content that will be
| playable forever at the discretion of the consumer, like
| music bought on iTunes, then. Or at least mention the
| period for when the licensing will be honored during
| "purchase" and stick to it.
|
| Honestly I don't understand anyone having any sympathy for
| publishers or Apple. They were the ones who chose to use
| the current method.
| yarcob wrote:
| Then they should advertise it as a one time download or a
| limited time rental. I don't have an issue with that.
|
| But they shouldn't advertise "store your purchased movies
| in the cloud for free" when they only do that as long as it
| is convenient for them.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| You don't have to keep offering it. You just have to not
| turn of DRM servers or offer the download without DRM in
| the first place.
| floydnoel wrote:
| Because the marginal cost of a digital file is too darn
| high?
| crazygringo wrote:
| There are lots of possible solutions:
|
| - Explicitly advertise that you're buying access to the
| content for x years, not buying it outright
|
| - Allow for non-DRM content download either as standard, or
| as a guaranteed backup option
|
| - If a company goes bankrupt, bankruptcy proceedings ensure
| that users' content licenses are transferred to another
| provider at no charge, funded with liquidation proceeds --
| with priority over contractors, lenders, investors, etc.
|
| There are lots of solutions.
| Jiro wrote:
| Whether it explicitly advertises buying content for X
| years is hardly relevant in this case. The issue is that
| Apple claims the right to shut it down at any time. If
| they promised 5 years and shut down the account after a
| month, the same issue would come up.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I was addressing the parent's comment about making
| content available forever being uneconomical.
|
| My original, root comment was already about the immediate
| issue with Apple.
| Diggsey wrote:
| Right, but then they would only need to refund content
| purchased in the last 5 years.
| anonymousab wrote:
| Having to run DRM servers in perpetuity lest you be
| financially ruined seems like an appropriate tradeoff and
| counterbalance to DRM.
|
| If you really want such a high level of control, then it
| accordingly comes with a high level of responsibility.
| [deleted]
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| Content gets removed from Netflix all the time, especially
| after they pivoted to their own production versus hosting
| content produced by others. How much should I get back?
| alex_g wrote:
| A netflix subscription is access to content, not a purchase
| of content.
| berkes wrote:
| Indeed. And the model makes this very clear too. On
| Netflix there is a button 'watch', while on iTunes and
| many others, the button says 'buy', 'purcase' etc. One
| implies a transaction, the other implies using already
| accessible content.
| sebasvisser wrote:
| Might be the reason for Apple Arcade...because the
| buying-but-not-owning-business model is EOL
| sircastor wrote:
| I'm reminded of a parody report noting Netflix was
| trialing a "browse only" plan, so you and your partner
| can argue endlessly about what to watch, but never have
| to make a choice.
|
| [1] https://www.theonion.com/netflix-introduces-new-
| browse-endle...
| [deleted]
| gpm wrote:
| Refunds aren't sufficient, you are owed whatever the
| replacement cost is.
|
| If the good is no longer available except for at 10x or 100x
| the price, you are owed that. If the good is no longer
| available at any price, but the person with the liability is
| capable of making it available, they should be required to do
| so (or negotiate a contract with you that buys out your
| rights, but you should be free to decline that or to set
| whatever price you want).
|
| This is especially relevant in the digital realm where it's
| an especially effective tactic to undercharge to try and
| starve competitors, and then raise prices.
| crazygringo wrote:
| That's unreasonable, wouldn't be practical, and goes
| against precedent.
|
| The analogy here is if you buy a vacuum cleaner from a
| store and it doesn't work because of a defect. You bring it
| back and get your money back.
|
| The store isn't required to provide you with another
| working vacuum cleaner. If the vacuum cleaner is no longer
| manufactured, they're not required to find one in mint
| condition on eBay that's 10x or 100x the price.
|
| If you got to consume the media you bought for months/years
| _and_ you get a full refund, I 'd say you have nothing to
| complain about.
| gpm wrote:
| > and goes against precedent.
|
| On the contrary, this is with the precedent, damages due
| to breach of contract, theft, destruction of property,
| etc are cost to replace not the original cost. And
| specific performance (i.e. requiring someone perform the
| action to fulfill the contract) is available if monetary
| damages aren't calculable (i.e. there is no replacement
| on the market).
| edrxty wrote:
| The bigger the asset, the more it approaches the parents
| suggestion.
|
| If a rich person buys an expensive asset and it is
| defective, they're often owed for loss of use/revenue
| because they have the power to negotiate purchasing
| contracts that provide this. Us poors do not have this
| capability.
| zouhair wrote:
| Comparing physical objects to digital one is absolutely
| ludicrous. It costs almost nothing to copy a digital
| work.
|
| The store does not lock your access to your vacuum while
| its in your home. This may happen in the future with cars
| for example. Imagine you driving and suddenly your car
| dies because the car company "banned" you and locked your
| car.
| fpoling wrote:
| 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.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| 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.
| jbay808 wrote:
| Unfortunately, this would probably force them to treat
| purchase revenue as a liability on the accounting books.
| elcomet wrote:
| What's the problem with this ? I'm not familiar with
| accounting.
| martin-adams wrote:
| It means that all revenue could at some point trigger a
| refund, for example if they want to exit the media
| distribution business and shutdown the services. That
| would be an expensive thing to do.
|
| I suspect any law would state it has an availability
| period before refunds are not eligible.
| MereInterest wrote:
| That's only if they design the distribution system such
| that it relies on the existence of the servers. If I
| start up Age of Empires 2 (assume in a computer or older
| VM such that compatibility isn't an issue), I can start a
| multiplayer game through LAN without any issue. If I
| start up a game of Overwatch, I cannot play against
| somebody in the same room without connecting through
| Blizzard's servers.
|
| It is perfectly reasonable for a company to be liable for
| refunds if they want to deliberately take products or
| features away from users. In order for a company to avoid
| this liability, they must provide a way for those
| features to still be available to users, even if the
| company no longer supports the product.
|
| This is pretty easy and straightforward to legislate. A
| media company that provides distribution of individual
| works (like Steam or Apple, as opposed to subscription
| services like Netflix), must provide a method for users
| to easily and automatically back up all purchased
| content. A company that runs servers necessary to the use
| of a program (e.g. matchmaking servers for video games)
| must provide the server executable, in a form that can
| run on currently-available commodity hardware, and must
| allow the client to select a privately-owned software.
| Companies that don't meet these requirements would still
| hold full liability for refunds if they remove product
| features later on.
| topynate wrote:
| Only if they decided to retain the technological means to
| revoke access to the items purchased.
| jononor wrote:
| Is that standard practice on physical products which have
| warranties? If not, then I do not see why it would be
| necessary here.
| josephcsible wrote:
| 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.
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| I believe you have to put aside some portion of the cost
| of the item as a liability. So say you sold a $100 item
| that cost $70 and the average cost of providing warranty
| service per item is calculated to be $10. Then you would
| have to set aside $10 of the $100 as a liability.
| bigyikes wrote:
| 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.
| redtexture wrote:
| The 100% return creates a liability to return the revenue
| to the buyer.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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.
| Qwertious wrote:
| 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?
| ajnin wrote:
| I very much doubt Valve has the required licensing to
| release the game they have on their store to any other
| platform (except for their own games). If Valve ever goes
| bankrupt and closes shop, it is likely that the users
| would lose access to their games.
| nexuist wrote:
| 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?
| RandomBK wrote:
| That's why this needs to be a law - to create an
| incentive where one would otherwise not exist.
| fencepost wrote:
| Perhaps, but it's more likely that they'd figure out how to
| retain a read-only account - one with basic settings for
| email/password that could be changed, but everything else
| was static. No purchases, no email, no uploads, etc.
|
| This does not seem like an enormous leap to make.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Only if they use DRM. It's not possible for me to lose
| access to the music I've purchased on iTunes, the games
| I've purchased on GoG, or the audiobooks I've purchased on
| libro.fm. (Except through my own fault, which shouldn't
| apply.)
| narwally wrote:
| iTunes doesn't use DRM anymore? I haven't used it since I
| had a 1st gen ipod mini back in high school, but I
| remember only certain music was available without DRM and
| you used to have to pay extra for it.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| When they dropped DRM, they raised the price a bit. I
| don't remember them ever offering a choice, but I could
| be wrong--regardless, the slightly-more-expensive, DRM-
| Free songs are all that's available today.
|
| If you purchased music before the switch, that does still
| have DRM. (As an aside, you can get rid of it by setting
| up a VM with an old version of iTunes and Requiem.)
| beefield wrote:
| I would imagine this not being the case if they can show
| that the customer downloaded a DRM free copy of the content
| at any point. After that it is the customer's problem to
| keep access to the downloaded copy.
| narwally wrote:
| That's why I uploaded all of my DRM free purchases to
| iCloud, that way I'll have access to it forever. /s
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Even if Apple may be justified, I would expect more
| professionalism from such a large company. their PR image is
| certainly worth many multiples of $25000. By issuing their tone
| deaf statement about "no reasonable person etc" they are
| alienating many customers. even if the are legally 100% right,
| that's irrelevant.
|
| Actually, Apple isn't the first to introduce a rather novel
| interpretation of the word "buy". John Deere did that first
| saying that buying really means an "implied license" or
| something. I've got no idea how they can get away with redefining
| words in the English language.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| 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.
| deegles wrote:
| Apple: No True Scotsman would believe they actually purchased
| content when clicking a button labeled Buy.
| [deleted]
| Pxtl wrote:
| This is the reason why all my music and ebook purchases are on a
| file server in my house, and if a service doesn't offer those
| goods in a DRM-free format, they don't get my money.
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Foolish consumers and their primitive notions of "ownership".
| bityard wrote:
| I hate to be so cynical, but here's exactly how this is going to
| play out, or I'll eat my hat:
|
| 1. Apple and Amazon will add language to their Terms and
| Conditions stating that regardless of the phrasing on their
| websites and apps, access to the media that customers purchase
| will be revoked if their account is terminated. And since it's in
| the agreement, it's binding: in general, you can't sue to get out
| of a contract just because you discover you don't like the terms
| later on. (Whether or not you actually read it before agreeing to
| it.)
|
| 2. Apple and the class action attorneys will settle this out of
| court. Apple will pay the attorney fees and reimburse the lead
| class member for the value of the media he "purchased". Everyone
| else who joined the class action as a member will get a $5 credit
| to their Apple account.
| gambiting wrote:
| In general, contracts can say literally whatever they want, and
| it doesn't mean they will stand up in court. If the court
| agrees that Apple selling $25k worth of stuff and denying
| access to it isn't "fair", then it isn't fair, end of story,
| regardless of what the contract says. The court might of course
| disagree, but you can't be certain until the case happens.
|
| I do however believe that Apple will just settle this out of
| court, specifically to avoid such a ruling.
| klyrs wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean by "end of story," apple can tie
| this up in appeals for years
| [deleted]
| rascul wrote:
| I think the courts are going to look for legality instead of
| fairness.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Both - because there are laws against unfair contracts,
| especially when the unfair portion is only explained to the
| less advantaged party (the customer) in hidden tiny text.
| gpm wrote:
| A reasonably degree of fairness is a requirement to be
| legal, otherwise the contract is deemed "unconscionable"
| and void.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, yes, ultimately, but a contract that's aiming to be
| deceptive or one that imposes extremely punitive measures
| isn't going to be legal. You could write a contract that
| says that you can at any point terminate the contract and
| the other side has to buy you a latest Lamborghini. Like,
| there's nothing illegal about that in itself, but if the
| paragraph about the Lamborghini is just mentioned once on
| page 178 of the contract and not advertised anywhere,
| almost certainly any court will find it null and void,
| because people who have their contracts terminated usually
| _don 't_ have to buy people cars. Not illegal but unfair,
| which makes it deceptive which makes it illegal.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Your example would likely be unenforceable because
| contract terms must provide _consideration_ for both
| parties, or an element of fairness in the real assets
| being exchanged. Requiring one party to purchase a
| Lamborghini at the sole discretion of the other provides
| no consideration for the former.
|
| An example of consideration in a penalty clause like this
| is AT&T's failed acquisition of T-Mobile US, where the
| contract forced AT&T to pay $3 billion and give up
| wireless spectrum when they abandoned the deal. In this
| case, the consideration was T-Mobile's time and money
| spent entering the deal in the first place vs. the
| penalty to AT&T.
|
| It's also worth noting that "unfair" and "deceptive" are
| not synonymous in their legal definitions. An unfair
| practice involves terms that are not beneficial to one
| party and are unreasonable to avoid, while a deceptive
| practice is one that misleads the party into accepting
| unreasonable terms.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| In an ideal world, the FTC and attorneys general around the US
| would hold Apple and Amazon accountable for screwing over
| consumers this blatantly if they did this.
| josteink wrote:
| > And since it's in the agreement, it's binding
|
| Not where I live. You can't sign away rights given to you by
| law.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| You are almost certainly correct. It is not right or fair but
| it is probably legally defensible.
|
| In the US, without legislation we rely on the contracts we
| sign. When we sign contracts with trillion dollar companies we
| don't get to negotiate.
|
| (I think this issue is related to right to repair, which is
| continuing to gain steam and might be a good effort to join
| forces with.)
| alisonkisk wrote:
| That's why we have laws about "contracts of adhesion" that
| limit the one-sided news of contracts. The law has a general
| protection against "unconscionable" contracts, to be decided
| by judge or jury.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Well then Apple will win in the US but not in the EU when they
| get sued there. In the EU you cannot bind someone to have less
| rights by hiding it somewhere in an EULA. If the button says
| Buy then legally you buy no matter what any contract says in
| small letters somewhere.
| syshum wrote:
| Click wrapped Terms of Service like that need to be ruled as
| Unenforceable Unconscionable contracts as they are clearly soo
| one sided they can not be seen by any reasonable person to be
| enforceable
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I'm afraid you might be right about 2, but wrt 1 I think you
| can absolutely sue your way out of a contract if it was made
| after blatantly false advertising, no?
| thathndude wrote:
| That's correct. Am a lawyer, not giving legal advice.
|
| A very common term in contracts is what is called a merger
| clause, and what it says essentially is that the contract
| forms the entire agreement of the parties, and that any oral
| representations not contained in the contract are irrelevant
| and to be completely disregarded. But there are courts that
| hold that a merger clause is not absolute and has its limits.
|
| Make no mistake, contracts and their waivers are powerful.
| However, there are lots of court rulings where the courts
| have held that you can't say X explicitly and have the
| contract say Y. In those situations, the courts will often
| enforce the X promise.
|
| But then you get into a practical issue here. If you were an
| effected individual, you're going to have to hire a lawyer to
| make that argument, and even with $25,000 on the line, that's
| probably not a situation where the math works out.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| That's what class actions are for. The lawyer and the class
| representative get paid for their work to pursue the case.
| bityard wrote:
| Well, that's what the court case is about. I would certainly
| _like_ for the result of the case to be either Apple (Amazon,
| et al) stops using the word "Buy" in their apps, or better
| yet but even more unlikely, for the companies to start
| providing media as DRM-free downloads.
|
| But like I said: the cynic in me says neither is going to
| happen.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| There is zero chance of DRM free downloads. Literally zero.
| nfriedly wrote:
| To be fair, it did happen with music. I think DRM-free
| movies are unlikely to happen, but I wouldn't put the
| odds at zero.
| hokuem wrote:
| You can buy movies on Vimeo 100% DRM free. It's the only
| place I buy them.
| vbsteven wrote:
| In which context? Services like Qobuz and Bandcamp
| support DRM-free downloads for your purchases so it is
| definitely possible.
|
| IMHO chances for DRM-free downloads from Apple are very
| very slim. But not zero.
| plank_time wrote:
| I have about 100 movies I've bought through iTunes so this is a
| very pertinent lawsuit for me. And no, I don't think it's
| unreasonable to believe that I would have access to the movies
| forever.
| dtx1 wrote:
| 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 thats beeing split apart again aswell, they
| don't get it for tv shows and movies either.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| You don't need to pirate it, you can just continue to buy
| physical media. CDs are unencrypted. The encryption on DVDs and
| blu-rays has long been broken. I continue to buy physical
| discs, rip them into my library, and then keep the discs as
| backups. It's the best of all worlds, and is both legal (in
| most places) and moral.
| codegladiator wrote:
| > Suscription Services
|
| I like the term
| smoldesu wrote:
| When the cription Service is sus
| dtx1 wrote:
| just a typo, but now i'm gonna keep it
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| There is also plenty of media that isn't available via legal
| means.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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._
|
| As a reaction to decades of cable TV, the market wanted and
| celebrated Netflix, one place to pay and watch all the shows
| and movies you want.
|
| But with time, what we got is just multiple cable TV packages
| served over the internet, each with their own subscription and
| poorly developed app.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > 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 what the customer wanted at all. Well, I may be wrong
| about it. Maybe the world really doesn't care. In which case, at
| least language will be re-joined with reality in this case.
|
| Edit: and at the risk of starting a fire here, this might also
| call into question some practices by the likes of Tesla and John
| Deere
| 0_gravitas wrote:
| 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.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| 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?
| cycomanic wrote:
| Maybe what people should do is "buy" the movie on itunes, watch
| it and then do a credit card charge-back (possibly for e.g. 90%
| of the amount) with the justification that they read the terms in
| detail and realised that they are just renting not owning the
| media.
|
| Obviously if only a couple of people would do it, there would be
| no effect except them getting their accounts suspended. However,
| it would be very interesting how this would pan out if a very
| large number of people would do it. How would apple react and how
| would the credit card companies react. Maybe someone should start
| a campaign to do just this.
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