28 ms·

Apple is sued for telling you that you're “buying” movies

753 points by paulcarroty 6y ago

pix64 6y ago
If you're going to take away a movie, you must refund the customer
senko 6y ago
I've seen the phrase "Own it in {HD/BluRay/4K}" so many times and always cringe. You're just owning a limited license (extremely limited, in the case of digital goods) to watch. The average HN user can spot the difference and say "of course you don't own it, and in case of streaming, you only have access for as long as the service is around", but that's not what the average consumer sees. "Buy" and "own" have very strong meanings and repurposing those for marketing purposes to mean "limited lease" is bending the truth to the point of breaking. But of course, "lease it for a limited time, to watch on a limited set of devices, in a geographically limited region" doesn't sound so valuable as "buy and own it".
- onion2k 6y ago
  I've seen the phrase "Own it in {HD/BluRay/4K}" so many times and always cringe. You're just owning a limited license (extremely limited, in the case of digital goods) to watch. That's technically correct, but revoking the license for a specific DVD is effectively impossible. If you have the plastic disc you will be able to play it until the disc wears out. The same should be true for digital purchases, or the limitations should be made clearer.
  - senko 6y ago
    DVD regions limit where you can watch something. Performance rights limit to who you can show it. Copyright limits how you can distribute it. These kinds of things were happening before and are something we're accustomed to, but I agree DRM and the possibility to rescind access makes it much worse. That's why I'm a happy streaming subscriber. No lies there.
    - Brian_K_White 6y ago
      This is nothing at all like DVD region coding except in the intent of the perpetrators. Region coding does not prevent me from buying and playing a disc from any region, in any region. It's just a technical hurdle which works well enough for the publishers business model, in that the inconvenience has the desired effect on 99.9% of consumers. But once I own the disc, I own the disc. Same for the player. It's entirely and fundamentally different from anything delivered only as a service or worse as services masquerading as products, like software and devices that don't actually function without a service to allow it. And the encryption is so pointless I forgot it even existed until just now.
  - retSava 6y ago
    What's it like for blu-ray? I seem to recall that there's a master key or the like involved, which may require updating the br-player to successfully decode new discs if they change the key later on (which I also seem to recall...). Not FUDing, just not recalling completely, so can be completely off..
  - grishka 6y ago
    Even if, and it's a big if, whatever online store you "bought" your digital content from is around forever and never arbitrarily bans your account with no way to appeal, you still get less value out of your purchase. You could lend a physical medium to a friend or resell it. Can't do any of that with a digital purchase. Yet, somehow, digital purchases still often cost as much as the real thing.
- hyperman1 6y ago
  This 'of course you dont own it' is false. Compare with a book, which you can own. The law makes sure you stil can't distribute limitless copies, even if you own it. But you can inherit a book, lend it out, be sure it stays around after the vendor would rather take it back, even swatting flies as a purposes it wasn't ment for. Licensing, and specifically the EULA, was popularized by Microsoft, to make sure you didn't get the rights on their software you have on a book. Would you tolerate a book with any of these: Disclaimer of warranty or fitness for purpose; Automatic revocation; Forbidding critique; Monitoring. Presumably you could license books instead of sell them, and add all anti-rights.
  - timc3 6y ago
    It is not false, just books never had such a problem and so the license wasn't deemed necessary to put anywhere. You own the paper that it's printed on, but you don't own the pictures or the words in the order they are written down. The protection that a book has against being copied is that the format makes it more difficult to copy it quickly/cost-effectively for most people. You can do what you are saying with a DVD such as inherit it, though it's terrible for killing flies. But the fact is that you are not allowed distribute a "copy you made" at all of a book without agreement from the copyright holders/owners or to the extent the law dictates.
    - Retric 6y ago
      The difference is you don’t need to make a copy of a book to use it. That’s what gives EULA’s their power. A copy of Windows on a DVD that you can’t copy to a HDD is at best decorative rather than useful. A book on the other hand could be read by thousands of people in it’s lifetime.
      - ghaff 6y ago
        >The difference is you don’t need to make a copy of a book to use it. That’s what gives EULA’s their power. While often assumed to be the case, that's probably not true. Copyright law generally allows for incidental copying necessary to use a product. And, in fact, (US at least) law has been amended over time to explicitly allow certain types of copying needed for functional purposes. So licensing is probably not, in fact, necessary. Rather licensing came in at a time when it wasn't clear that software could be copyrighted.
- curt15 6y ago
  I always make a point to refer to subscription-based software like Adobe CC as software rentals, not purchases.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- paulcarroty 6y ago
  Apple plays with "owning" and "leasing" here. Sure "owning" sells better.
- nokya 6y ago
  Fully agree with you. I also sense there is an increasing acceptance by consumers, that it is normal to not be allowed anymore to own a legal copy of a digital work (e.g. picture, movie, music, software, etc.) for personal use. Most of these companies now treat their consumers defensively and as potential copyright infringers who will exploit the first occasion to get rich. I don't accept that. So I try to organize my digital consumption on an assumption that I will neither have internet access nor a "subscriber account" at time of consuming (e.g. software, video game, e-book, movie, etc.). Products like "Spotify", "Netflix" or "Steam", and those "modern" video game consoles that treat you like a cheater if you try to log off and refuse to be constantly transmitting telemetry about you don't have a place in my wallet. I'd prefer Sadly, I know I am losing the battle, all my friends gladly pay their monthly fees to not own anything anymore. I guess it's just a question of when I will get tired. EDIT: forgot to mention, the thing I don't mind paying for a "limited access" is going to the cinema/theater and newspapers. Those two activities get quite a lot of attention from my wallet :)
- loudtieblahblah 6y ago
  Movies are a mixed bag. But once you own the disk - you, for all intents and purposes, own the movie. I can resell the disc. I can rip and backup the disc and thus have endless copies for myself, preventing me from having to re-purchase that disc. (ripping DVD is much easier than Bluray, I'll admit). IMHO, if i can control a piece of property (or a copy of it) for an indefinite amount of time, if i can copy/backup, watch it as i please, when i please, how i please, on what i please - no i don't "own" the movie per se, but the license granted to me by that physical purchase means the contents of that purchase are mine to do with what i feel like, short of showing it to 100 people in a theater or offering it up on a pirate network. As a side note: I "own" my media. I have 500+ books, 400+ vinyl records, 1000+ CDs, hundreds of movies on DVD and bluray (80% ripped to a dual Plex/Jellyfin media server.) Things don't "disappear" from Spotify for me. Amazon can't take my copy of 1984 off my Kindle. Microsoft can't shut off my access to e-books. Apple can't take back the movies I've purchased. The reality is, i - the consumer - have control. The future everyone is contributing to, IMHO sounds like the Great Reset conspiracy: "you'll own nothing and be happy". Happy paying rent in pepertuity to megacorps for access to things youd have, for cheaper, if you owned it outright.
  - Ruthalas 6y ago
    Do you prefer Jellyfin over Emby? I'm evaluating which to set up right now.
    - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
      Emby is duplicating all the "sins" of Plex, IMHO. Jellyfin isn't as nice as Plex and it's Roku app could use a UI rework, also having to put in IP/User/Pass on every client is a PITA. But overall i prefer it. It shows promise and i feel over the long haul it'll be the most consumer friendly option.
- jollybean 6y ago
  I don't think this is the interpretation of people's expectations. "Own it on BluRay" I think is very well understood by the vast majority of the commons and probably even those on HN. They own that BluRay and their 'rights' are confined but within expectation. I don't think people have the expectation to "Start Broadcasting and Putting Ads in Brad Pitt's New Film". They can however, spin up their BluRay in 30 years and watch the movie, which is fair. I suggest the case against Apple has a kind of merit as well, if people 'own it' they should be able to watch it whenever they want, even 10 years from now, which is not a very long time.
- gentleman11 6y ago
  It’s a rejection of the whole concept of private property, where people own nothing and have no rights. Imagine if these practices had been applied for centuries to groceries and tools - you had to sign a contract specifying your rights etc for every single thing in your life for century after century. It would be perverse
bajsejohannes 6y ago
Somewhat related, I'm confused every time iOS says "Processing Payment" when I download a free app.
- this_was_posted 6y ago
  My suspicion is that they explicitly call this a payment for legal reasons.
  - hyperman1 6y ago
    Maybe they just want to normalize the fact that you should give them money.
- danielheath 6y ago
  It does seem particularly odd, especially given the attention to detail they are famous for. I can’t imagine someone really sat down and decided the messaging made sense for free apps.
  - simondotau 6y ago
    It's the sort of thing that gets fixed quickly when a Steve Jobs-type character sees it and has the clout to get it fixed without debate. When Jobs says it's a problem, you have to be pretty damn sure if you want to disagree. The problem with Apple today is that there's no singular vision like that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- throws23577 6y ago
  Is it possible to download free apps from the App Store without ever giving payment details to Apple? For example, if I don't set up card details during phone set up, can I still download free apps?
  - NavinF 6y ago
onion2k 6y ago
Well, because of the way Apple licenses films from studios, you never really own them. Presumably when Apple adds a film to iTunes for customers to buy they know how long they'll be keeping it on their servers for people to access it. It'll be part of the license. Unless Apple can guarantee that the film will be available after that time (eg Apple negotiated a non-revokable extension that they'll legally bound to take) then it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that they should have to communicate the time limit to the user. Eg add some fine print that says "This film will be available in your Apple account until 2031, and may be available after that date" or something.
- thevagrant 6y ago
  If the customer purchased/bought the movie then Apple should offer a way to download the movie (in the case that Apple removes it from their catalogue). This would ensure customer has the ability to keep their purchase. When I buy something whether ebooks, movies, music then I do not expect it to be removed from access at a later date unless an option for me to store the item is offered.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    Apple has the ability to delete media and apps from Apple devices. Offering a download would only work if it's not non-DRM (so not revokable), not tied to a specific device (you should be able to play your film on any device you own), and ideally not even tied to an account (you shouldn't lose your purchases if Apple close your account). Really it would need to be in an open format that works on non-Apple devices too.
  - biot 6y ago
    From 2018: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/09/17/apple-responds-to-disappearing-itunes-movie-purchases-issue https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/09/17/apple-res... tl;dr: once downloaded to a device you have it until you delete it. It’s not ideal and I do wish they would retain the right to keep an archived copy on their servers for all customers who have bought it so they could re-download or stream at any time without having to deal with backup and restore.
simondotau 6y ago
you never really own them Controversial take, but does "buying" explicitly mean owning? You never really "own" a movie you buy on blu-ray either—you own the atoms, but not the content which is merely licensed to you as it is with a legal download. The difference between downloads and physical media is actually less characterised by ownership and more by perpetuity of access. The key benefit of blu-ray is that perpetual, legal access is limited only by your preparedness to maintain functioning equipment. A legally downloaded, encrypted movie file also relies on your preparedness to maintain functioning equipment—but that equipment can also betray you.
- Mordisquitos 6y ago
  But maintaining functioning equipment is within your power if you have sufficient technical ability—maintaining a functional streaming site is not, regardless of your ability.
  - simondotau 6y ago
    If you purchase a movie from Apple, you can download it to your computer and play it offline so long as your copy of iTunes is authorised. I can't find any evidence of Apple placing an expiry date on authorisations.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Actually that you gor pointing out that you cannot repair apple eqipment because they actively prevent you from getting access to soare parts, making sure your machine will break, and you will loose your movie. They also refuse to repair old machines or recover user data. On the contrary, you can buy a replacement bluray player.
- rtsil 6y ago
  The question here isn't ownership, it's possession. > "Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely," writes [U.S. District Court Judge] Mendez. "But in common usage, the term 'buy' means to acquire possession over something. It seems plausible, at least at the motion to dismiss stage, that reasonable consumers would expect their access couldn’t be revoked." https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/apple-must-face-lawsuit-for-telling-consumers-they-can-buy-movies-tv-shows https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/apple-must-face-la...
brainzap 6y ago
"How many people here bought digital media? You are all wrong, none of you have, you only rented it. If you lose the account it is all gone" Rob Pike, unspin
- sam_lowry_ 6y ago
  What about NFTs?
hyperman1 6y ago
This seams the core of Apple's defence: Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely which is a flagrant difference between ownership of physical items and non-cloud items vs cloud items. This strikes at the root of our society's definition of ownership. Clarification should not depend on Apple, or even a court. This should be enshrined by an explicit law. Using the word 'license' or 'rent' instead of 'buy' for something you can't own seems the minimum a consumer should demand.
- gwd 6y ago
  My understanding WRT buying a movie on iTunes was: 1. If you download the movie, you will always have the ability to play the movie you downloaded. 2. As long as Apple has the rights to distribute the movie, you will be able to re-download it again 3. If Apple loses the rights, and you don't have your own backed up copy, it's lost. It's the same for Audible books; which is why I always d/l and backup any movie or book I buy electronically. Buying a physical DVD is only #1. If you buy a physical DVD at Walmart or whatever, and then lose it, you can't go back to Walmart and ask for a second DVD; that's a perk of buying an electronic copy. Compare this to buying a piece of software off a website for $30. You download the installer, install it, and use it. Six months later, the company goes out of business and the website does down. You can still use the software as long as you still have the installed version and/or the installer; but if you lose the installer, you lose access. I guess the difference is that Apple is purposely blurring the line between "storing stuff in the cloud" and "redownloading" movies. What should really happen is that three months before Apple loses the distribution rights, they should send an email to everyone who's bought the move, telling them to either 1) Download it to their own local hard drive 2) Buy an iCloud subscription and click this button, and Apple will automatically "download" it from iTunes to your iCloud folder on your behalf. (EDIT: Which due to [1], will probably require actually shipping bits over some internal network for each individual user.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.com,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....
  - ctdonath 6y ago
sfgweilr4f 6y ago
The old discussions around digital assets resurface again. My perspective is really simple: If I buy something then its mine. If I lease something then its temporary. Buying a lease is actually just leasing. Digital assets are more often just fancy lease agreements. At best you get to keep access to what you paid for when you stop paying. At worst its literally just a lease. The real kicker is you often can't simply format shift without consequences, because it was just a lease only on that platform and the terms are: Pay for access; Stop paying and you're out. Want it somewhere else? No can do. I wonder if I could bequeath my Apple Music collection? Probably not. That's the big reveal right there. Its not actually ever yours. Never was. Apple Music is somewhat better than a long term lease. Last time I looked you could write the MP3s to a CD. Not sure if that's still true. Contrast this with Spotify: pure subscription. Good luck looking for a "Write to CD" option. That's completely out of scope. And no one is surprised. At least its clearly spelt out. But still a lease. You're only buying access.
- the_other 6y ago
  I have come to think of Spotify only as a discovery/introduction service. It finds me music I like, and I go buy physical media or MP3 from shops that give me downloads in my browser (Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat...). I use it the way I used to use radio and record shops. I’m in my 40s so I grew up at a time where this was common. Record shops were on the high streets in most towns in the UK through the 80s and 90s. In my teens I started to dig deeper, into niche, side street record shops for off-mainstream music. These days, it seems all record shops are on side streets.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > Last time I looked you could write the MP3s to a CD. Format shifting isn't always legal. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-quashes-regulations-copy-cds-musicians https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-q...
  - sfgweilr4f 5y ago
    Apple seems to think its OK according to this: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/itunes/itns2957/windows https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/itunes/itns2957/window... There's probably a bunch of caveats why even this isn't allowed for whatever "reasons".
timwaagh 6y ago
This is long overdue. Renting just isn't the same. I know the companies want to only do rent to make more money, but this should at least be represented accurately.
throws23577 6y ago
Here is how some Apple user found out they own nothing (2019). Also it seems Apple nuked even things they actually owned: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803
makach 6y ago
Yes. Hopefully they will do something about it. I have "bought" many movies on iTunes, you may argue that I am part of the problem, but I do because it is so very convenient. I perfectly understand the implicit meaning of "buying" and what I get is a non-transferable license to access the movie from my account. The same problem exists with video-games. It is much closer to a rental than ownership. I believe that all these licenses should become transferable instead of locked to a specific account. I could somewhat agree to paying a small fee to achieve this, even though I believe it should be free. The technology to achieve this also exist (blockchain), so the only thing stopping big-media from doing this is greed.
- underwater 6y ago
  Neither the media nor tech companies would want to do that. Media companies get you to buy things multiple times. Tech companies get you locked into their platform.
- ClumsyPilot 6y ago
  Vudeo games are a bit less infuriating because a 20-year old game may not even run, if multioplyer, it needs online servers and services, etc.
dhruvrrp 6y ago
It's not just Apple, almost all online services charge an extra to buy movies/tv shows compared to renting, even when it's impossible to get that movie out of the online service. So now there is a whole variety of movies/shows you just can't buy ( unless they have a physical release). This is especially problematic for older shows, which don't have physical copies at all. For example, I've recently been trying to purchase Yes Minister (a BBC show from the 80s) and it's only available in locked down online streaming places like Youtube and Apple TV
- AyrtonB 6y ago
  You can get a physical copy here - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Yes-Minister-Prime-DVD/dp/B018HB1PUC/ref=asc_df_B018HB1PUC/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310847701815&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1568305576351346008&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045895&hvtargid=pla-419159619547&psc=1&th=1&psc=1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Yes-Minister-Prime-DVD/dp/...
- Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 6y ago
  I've bought it on DVD years back, and still re-watch it somewhat regularly. Love that series... both of them (Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister). That said, and as many echo again and again... for the technically skilled: piracy is an option. It's sad, but once you've exhausted a "reasonable" amount of effort to watch something legally, it's up to you how "bad" you feel for reverting to other means. Pretty sure any film enthusiast is faced with that conundrum on a regular basis. side-note: I'm so happy to have found a reason to talk about the series. So many scenes are stuck in my head and come to mind when reminded about world affairs constantly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4 this one for example with Russia and Crimea (just an example off the top of my head)
newbie578 6y ago
Full support, of course Apple and other similar companies are using all the tools to their advantage. If I do not "own" the digital goods are paid for, then make them change from "Buy" to "Rent for 10 years", and let's seem them then explain that to elderly parents. That would be interesting to watch.
baybal2 6y ago
In other news: Man Sues Apple For Terminating Apple ID With $24K Worth of Content http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/4QFg_7qSgss/man-sues-apple-for-terminating-apple-id-with-24k-worth-of-content http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/4QFg_7qSgss/...
- ShinTakuya 6y ago
  As he should. I can understand restricting an account if he was doing something dodgy with it, but you shouldn't lose access to purchased content, especially if accessing the content does no harm to others (e.g. banning from online games can also make sense situationally).
lrvick 6y ago
Physical media lets you have privacy without logging when you watch media, what media you consume, how many times you consume it, or how long you consume it. You can enjoy it offline, and in 20 years long after the studio that licensed it is gone. You can give it to a friend or loan it out. Or sell it. It is yours. Meanwhile DRM media we pay full price for, or if the content is only available via streaming we pay for it indefinitely. In neither case are we assured access a decade from now on different devices and we certainly don't get any privacy as studios track every second we consume. Worse, when big companies decide it is not profitable enough to keep "purchased" data around anymore, they just cut it loose. Try opening a book from the Microsoft eBook store. It will fail because they closed down the DRM servers. The books stopped working. PlayStation 3 store? Wii store? Same story. You can no longer access your purchases. Literally the only way to get the same freedoms with modern digital media we had with physical media, is piracy. We got scammed.
- teachingassist 6y ago
  > Wii store? Same story. You can no longer access your purchases. Not really. You can still play games purchased at the Wii Shop, you just can't re-download them. [Edited to note: Apparently you can re-download or transfer to a Wii U] That's not meaningfully different from having one physical copy: you can use the physical copy until the point that it's worn out.
  - SCHiM 6y ago
    The difference between the time it takes physical copies to wear out is much much longer than the time it takes $company to decide that it's time to force everyone to buy the next latest-and-greatest. I've got NES cartridges from the 80s or 90s still working.
    - teachingassist 6y ago
      > I've got NES cartridges from the 80s or 90s still working. And I've got Switch cartridges that are dependent on Nintendo's continued online support. My point was that a physical Wii still works and is still a physical object, so it serves the same functional purpose here as individual NES cartridges.
ksec 6y ago
>When you buy a movie through iTunes, you don't actually own it. And that's a problem. When you buy an iPhone through Apple, you don't actually own it. And that's a problem. You can pretty much replace iPhone and Apple with any other modern tech with software though. Increasingly I am having an uneasy relationship with these modern tech. I want old tech that just shut up and work.
beefield 6y ago
There should be some consumer protection regulation around using words buy, sell, purchase etc. Can you sell what you bought to someone else? If not, you did not buy it. Do yo have root on your device and all it's components? If not, you did not buy it. And so forth. That might make people a bit more aware on the stuff they think buying.
trwhite 6y ago
There was a similar story last year about Amazon Prime: https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/you-dont-own-the-movies-you-buy-on-amazon-prime-video/ https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/you-dont-own-the-movies-you-bu...
fxtentacle 6y ago
I fully agree with this lawsuit. I felt OK with "purchasing" movies from Apple at the Blu-Ray retail price, because I was under the impression that my files remain mine so that if I backup them correctly, I can watch the movie later. By now, I know that this isn't the case. If I had known earlier, I wouldn't have paid full price for a limited digital copy. Instead, I would have purchased the Blu-Ray which - if you treat it well - will last far longer than my digital movies did, despite backups and stuff.
- thought_alarm 6y ago
  If you purchase and download a movie you can copy it, back it up, and watch it whenever you want as many times as you want. The lawsuit is about repeated downloads and streaming after the copyright owner has removed the movie for sale.
  - Cyph0n 6y ago
    But can you copy a movie out of iTunes onto, say, an external HD? I thought Apple used DRM for purchased media.
    - thought_alarm 6y ago
      They use DRM, but movies and TV shows are downloaded as regular movie files. You can move and copy them to wherever you want. Downloaded movie files can be played using either iTunes or the QuickTime Player, copied to an iOS device, or streamed to an Apple TV box.
      - brailsafe 6y ago
        Can you play them without first-party Apple software? Would you say they're acting as a true vendor in this sense?
- csours 6y ago
  If I put money in a bank, it is fungible; I can move it to another bank, another account, another person. If I buy a license to play a video game on Steam, I only own that license on Steam with one account (with some exceptions and provisions for gifting etc). If I buy a license to for a movie on iTunes, I only own that license on iTunes tied to one account. Will consumers band together and demand that their media licenses be fungible? In other words, how many things are 'accidental banks'
yrgulation 6y ago
Thats why i buy movies, series, music and games in a physical format where possible. If you only rely on a “digital cloud” copy you simply dont own them, you just rent them for an undetermined period of time.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
Awesome. The copyright industry actively misleads customers with these words. People think they're buying something but the truth is they own absolutely nothing and have effectively no rights.
daodedickinson 6y ago
Since the patriot act when I was a kid, and now beyond, it's felt worse and worse. Feeling violated every time I remember a particular law is having me inspected.
ThomW 6y ago
Screw that web site. Nags you to turn off your content blocker, and as soon as you do a giant full-phone height banner ad is the first thing you see, then a few seconds later a full-screen modal pop up appears. GTFO.
dorfsmay 6y ago
Oh good! I've been wondering about Google's practices too: Google: • sells movies • do not allow transfer of movie ownership to a different email account • expires accounts after 2 years of inactivity https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1335262751992602630 https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1335262751992602630 You could also argue that if Apple/Google actually bought the right from the studio on your behalf, you should be able to stream movies you already own, because you bought the DVDs years ago, for a much smaller fee.
jbverschoor 6y ago
Same as before on the App Store when they changed "BUY" into "GET"
mark_l_watson 6y ago
As a content creator, I use DRM free leanpub.com to produce books under a Creatuve Commons license. I also give away the same books for free on my web site. To be clear, the vast majority of my income is being paid for work, so it is easy to be a little generous. I am not a corporation who has to maximize profit to shareholders. As a consumer of content, I like purchasing books that are (sometimes watermarked) PDFs or ePub. When that is not possible, I do buy DRM books, but split my purchases between Apple, Amazon, and Google. My wife and I have no network TV but we are happy to support content creation by paying subscriptions to Netflix, HBO, Prime, and Hulu. I could care less about owning “forever copies” of entertainment. I do want to support the industry financially. For music, streaming services like YouTube Music and Apple Music are great for discovery, but when I find a song that I really love, I don’t mind spending $1 per song if I can get it DRM free on Amazon.
tyingq 6y ago
I ran into this when Frontier bought Verizon FIOS in my area. I suppose due to differing rights between the two companies, quite a few movies I had "bought" just disappeared from the "my purchases" page after the transition. I never did get it resolved, just ended up eating the loss and moved to a cable/docsis type provider. All I can do now is just treat movie purchases as something less than that. Long-term rentals with some chance that it gets revoked.
comeonseriously 6y ago
Companies try to skirt around this by saying you're not buying the media, you're buying a license (subject to 37 pages of legalese that nobody wants to read right before they watch a movie on movie night). I really hope companies are forced to stop using the word "buy" for this type of transaction.
rchaud 6y ago
> "Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely," Weasel-worded legal arguments like this is why I don't use Apple Music, Spotify, Youtube Premium or anything where the final product is not a DRM-free file sitting on my hard drive. As much as Blockbuster is considered a dinosaur, you could buy and sell used games and movies there. If you bought something, it was yours. There was no retroactive disappearance because Blockbuster no longer had the rights for that movie or TV show.
- judge2020 6y ago
  If it helps, YouTube doesn’t do DRM on music and you can use YouTube-dl to download as many songs as you’d like for personal use.
- ianbicking 6y ago
  Does this criticism apply to pay-for-access services like Spotify? Spotify is what it is, and has the content it has, and you aren't paying for any future content or access, only for what's there this moment. This seems pretty transparent.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  But the products you're listing are streaming services. You never buy anything, you subscribe per month. So not really sure why you're conflating this story with those? Or why you think files for a subscription service shouldn't be DRM'ed? I mean, if you keep the files after your subscription ends, that's obviously not a subscription anymore.
ubermonkey 6y ago
It's weird to realize that there's a huge difference in how people who read HN understood "digital buying" and how the rest of the world did. I have bought many movies and TV shows from the iTunes store. I did so knowing that it was not a true purchase in the sense of buying a DVD, or a videotape, or a book, or even in the sense of buying music from the iTunes store (which has been DRM-free since 2009). But I did it anyway, because the transaction still offered a net positive value for me: - Very long term (but clearly not perpetual) rights to watch the thing; - Very high convenience (easily available on my Apple devices without dealing with files or sync); - Very much easier/simpler than resorting to, shall we say, nontraditional means of media procurement. But, again, we knew what was happening. Apple could turn heel and invalidate these purchases on their whim, or the whim of the rightsholder. I still made the deal, and still feel fine about it, because I knew that going in. Normal humans tend not to understand this. (We also have a very minimal cable package. We did the math and realized that it was cheaper to, say, buy season passes of the mid-tier cable shows we wanted to see than it was to pay for the channels in question. If you watch a LOT of those shows, this math doesn't work, but for us and things like Mad Men, it definitely did. Our cable bill is $50 a month lower than it would be if we had those channels, so we could absolutely justify "buying" the show on iTunes -- even if we had no plans to watch it more than once.)
sterlinm 6y ago
This was the first thing I ever felt compelled to write to the government about. I'm sure Chris Christie, then Governor of New Jersey, recalls my strongly worded letter objecting to Amazon saying you were "buying" Kindle books.
dinondiman 6y ago
I backup all my iTunes movies on a drive to take with me so I can watch movies with no internet connection. All work fine. What am I missing?
jackdrb 6y ago
Its nice of Apple to put this so succinctly: 'Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely' The world has definitely shifted from buying individual movies, songs/albums, video games and owning them in a more direct sense of having an actual physical object i.e. a disc. There are definitely still some limitations to this, its still a limited license, but compared to purchasing DRM-filled digital access, we've definitely gone even further into more restrictive access. That is why I think that supporting DRM-free stores (e.g. GOG, Bandcamp) is important as well as buying physical media still (I still personally buy music CDs and Vinyl from time-to-time, however try to buy a game physically and all you will get is a plastic disc with a Steam code on it), and sometimes there is no way legitimate way to purchase some media, with piracy being essentially the only option. Unfortunately Steam has become quite ubiqitous and like most have fallen into the licensing game rabbithole (One the games I bought many years ago required installing Steam to 'function'), but with video games there's not much else to pick from, apart from whatever GOG has or some other companies crappier version of Steam (e.g. Origin, Epic Games Store). I'd like this to change but I don't think it will anytime soon. I would be fine purchasing digital copies of content knowing the limited-time aspect, given the pricing would be (significantly) cheaper. But it isn't, and that's a problem.
jurassic 6y ago
After discovering a favorite album of mine got dropped from the Spotify catalog, I feel a strong impulse to return to physical media. But first I have to decide on which audio components to get. Thinking back, I think I had a much stronger emotional response to albums I specifically chose and invested in than the ones the algorithm chose and automatically played for me. Lately with streaming I listen more and enjoy it less.
rootusrootus 6y ago
The terminology probably should be clarified so laypeople do not misunderstand. My own policy is I don't buy anything digitally, I only rent it or subscribe to the service for as long as I want it. That way I won't be sad when I lose access to 'purchased' content because I never had any expectation of indefinite access to it.
shmerl 6y ago
DRM-free video is yet to emerge.
t0mmel 6y ago
This whole streaming idea has also got me thinking about how we are not leaving behind a legacy. There is nothing to discover once you are gone. Your subscription just... ends. I’m not sure that’s how I want to live. I mean, it’s convenient having access. But now that I have had access, it’s clear that I actually still have to shop around on the services, and so I might maybe just as well buy what I want instead of buying all of something for a period, and lose any trace of it after. I think I prefer buying.
- interlocutor2 6y ago
  Your legacy is the content you've purchased and not the things you've built?
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    Previously, yes. You'd leave your kids a library of books.
jason_zig 6y ago
Wait until they hear about NFT's
user3939382 6y ago
Let’s say you buy 5 movies from Apple and then the CC on file expires before they billed you for a $0.99 app you bought, so you owe Apple $0.99. They will now block you from ALL access to anything you have already “purchased” until you pay them.
Crontab 6y ago
I have never liked the term 'buy' on anything with DRM. This isn't really an Apple problem so much as an industry problem. I think 'license' would be a better term. When it comes to Apple specifically, they really need to let iOS users know that they need to back up DRMed movies, shows, and books. I know some iOS-only users who are under the impression that they will forever be able to redownload these items. In reality, there is no of guarantee of that, as Apple may might not hold distribution rights at some point in the future.
8bitsrule 6y ago
I physically own about 1000 commercial disks (stored in Logic cases) I'll never part with. Ripped to HD, instantly available, no network needed. Result is quite different from a 'license' to 'stream' since 1984. Solar flare, no worries. House fire, HD backup. Big Tech dies, network gone, meh. Got my tunes.
andrewzah 6y ago
Digital stores need to update their terminology to reflect that you don't actually -own- what you buy. So many people are confused by this as it's counterintuitive. And this is why piracy is, and will, always continue. I legally buy movies and then have to deal with DRM and other nasty, annoying things that only affect paying customers! People who pirate have no such limitations to deal with.
AdamJacobMuller 6y ago
Buying a DVD is also only buying a limited license (you can't, for example, legally make copies of that DVD or use it for public performances). Buying a blu-ray is even more of a gray area with the key schemes being fundamentally more complex and internet-updatable. It's possible the blu-ray you bought and watched last year may not work on your player anymore. I agree that it's wrong to say you're "buying" movies from iTunes/et al, but, I'm not sure what the correct term is. Renting is wrong as it implies a definite intentional time-limited period, license seems wrong as it's too legal/contractual. What's the better word?
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I could be wrong but I think you can legally make copies of a DVD you own so long as it’s only for personal use and not for distribution.
  - baliex 6y ago
    This law has a tendency to flip-flop every now and again, and is per-jurisdiction in any case
Mikho 6y ago
It's not so much about nature of DRM streaming vs having a movie on your disk. The whole debate is really about Apple misleading users into overpaying for a mere rent of a movie. When you buy something and have a complete ownershio you treat this expense differently than renting expense. You dont pay full price of a thing just to rent it.
- turtleofdeath 6y ago
  What’s not misleading about offering a “Buy” option and a lower-priced “Rent” option?
tut-urut-utut 6y ago
I would like to see the same happening to Amazon, which also "sells" Films, instead of clearly noting they are just renting it for as long as you have an account with them.
bsimpson 6y ago
The double-facedness pisses me off: When it's digital, you're only buying the right to watch something, not to own your copy. When it's physical, you're only buying your copy, not the right to watch it indefinitely. The odds are always slanted to favor Hollywood: they get to make you pay to watch the same title every time the viewing technology changes (VHS -> DVD -> digital), but also use the specter of piracy to curtail your rights with what you did buy.
T3RMINATED 6y ago
Try opening a book from the Microsoft eBook store. It will fail because they closed down the DRM servers. The books stopped working. PlayStation 3 store? Wii store? Same story. You can no longer access your purchases.
nemo44x 6y ago
It won’t be long before your account is debited when a memory of a movie you watched zips through your mind and the implant recognizes the synaptic signature of it that had been copyrighted.
jrm4 6y ago
You don't own it unless you can hold it in your hand and play it on demand. You don't own it unless you can hold it in your hand and play it on demand. You don't own it unless you can hold it in your hand and play it on demand.
tdhz77 6y ago
Do my kids inherit my movie/tv shows that I bought or does the license die with me? Seems a rather safe bet Apple will be here after I die. I was fooled to buy drm media, but I don’t see the harm, yet.
cronix 6y ago
On a PC you can use a Legato capture card and record anything that makes it through the HDMI, DRM free, up to 4k/60 and up to HDR10 and it has a pass-thru so you can watch on a monitor/tv as you record. They're mainly used in game broadcasting, like on Twitch. There are also numerous audio recording apps that will record audio that is being played from a DRM source, actually any source. I actually purchase physical books as I can't stand reading on a lit screen for hours on end. As a wise investor once told me, if you don't physically hold it, you don't actually own it. I have copies of everything I've purchased digitally that is worth keeping, and I have no moral qualms about doing so. I paid for the content. They got their money.
- KingMachiavelli 6y ago
  As far as I am aware that capture card won't capture HDCP content? So anything that uses Widevine or similar DRM will not work. There are options for capture cards designed to bypass HDCP but it's a bit more involved. Are you saying you haven't had any issues with HDCP?
  - cronix 6y ago
    There are many cheap HDMI splitters out there (~$20USD) that do not pass on HDCP :) The hardest part is wading through the comments to see if the device will bypass HDCP. This is also a very good way to watch HDCP content on older HDTV's that don't have HDCP implemented. https://www.amazon.com/hdmi-splitter-hdcp-bypass/s?k=hdmi+splitter+hdcp+bypass https://www.amazon.com/hdmi-splitter-hdcp-bypass/s?k=hdmi+sp... There are even more on aliexpress.
david-cako 6y ago
There's a lot of lines you can draw like this. Do you own your money, or do you own an obligation made by the fed to all participants in the US economy? Okay, so maybe the US dollar is so pervasive that it's "inert" for all intents and purposes as a store of wealth. The less tangible a good is, the more difficult it is to tell who owns it. People do like streaming services, but Apple has to keep the service running, right? There is a non-zero cost to Apple continuing to service relationships with studios and with customers, and they can't really say "this thing in your Apple account will, necessarily, live forever". I think Apple is the most likely company to make good on this sort of promise; in spite of the way they deprecate APIs (which I actually appreciate), they have an immaculate track record of supporting their services and devices. If you buy a DRM-free movie or rip a physical copy, you're getting closer to owning the bits and bytes themselves, but still, really, you own the right to watch the movie in a non-commercial setting, and you now have to figure out how to make it available on your devices. How long am I obligated to continue supporting software I've "let go" to the folks that contracted me? When will my car stop receiving kernel updates? To me, this is a more difficult issue than whether you have to re-purchase (or pirate) games and movies that you already bought.
actionowl 6y ago
This is true for iTunes and Google Play too, I've had albums disappear from my Library with no explanation (I suspect some licensing change or label shuffle behind the scenes). I've totally abandoned streaming services since I've been bitten twice by this. Bandcamp handles this exceptionally well, you can download anything you buy (even as Flac!) and for anything else, it's back to buying/checking-out CDs and ripping them old-school style.
luxuryballs 6y ago
Aren’t you allowed to download offline copies as backups of any movie you purchase anyways? You just don’t gain the right to distribute copies. I’d be shocked if anyone would get in trouble for torrenting a copy of something they purchased just for the purpose of having a backup, because even having a DVD copy doesn’t mean you own anything other than the right to watch it. Likewise if you sold the DVD you’d have to destroy your digital backup.
- banana_giraffe 6y ago
  Regardless of the legal status of torrenting a movie you already own, to the companies monitoring swarms, someone downloading and sharing a movie that they own looks no different than someone that doesn't own the movie. You'll still need to respond to their notice if they send it, and possibly defend yourself in court. Even if you succeed, it can be a big burden.
michaelmrose 6y ago
So what about games on the play store, apple store, and steam.
xbar 6y ago
I don't own them?
4AoZqrH2fsk5UB 6y ago
I've started torrenting again (did it a lot in the early 00s, but stopped like most others as streaming showed up in a big way). Honestly, once set up the experience is lovely. - The catalog is enormous, you can almost always find what you want. - There is robust software that can pull down the latest episode of the tv shows you want. - There is similar software that can pull down movies based on public lists (e.g. IMDB top 100), so discovery is pretty great. - All the above can be done on public trackers. Private trackers are even better. - Many have a community of people who are into the content, and curate their own lists. - There is software for a home media server so you can flip through all your content. Its also just one interface... no flipping through hulu/netflix/amazon/apple/google. - That same home media server software can host all videos, so downloads from youtube, family videos, etc... all in one place as you see fit. - I get to know that know one out there knows what I'm watching or when I'm watching it. - Backup is easy, with offsite services running ~$0.005/gb/month, so pennies per movie per month. This way I know I'll always have it regardless of what happens with streaming services. Getting it up and running takes some customization but it is _really_ great. I would gladly pay for such a service, even the typical ~$20/movie price.
hsivonen 6y ago
“And that they do this on regular occasions.” This is news to me. I thought the main advantage of iTunes compared to other services was that purchases would last as long as the iTunes service is operational and that iTunes has outlived “purchase with DRM” services so far. Are there concrete examples?
ycombigator 6y ago
Shady AF.
xyst 6y ago
my strategy around buying films now is to only buy blu-ray + digital copy. iTunes is hands down one of the better places to watch digital films (free 4K upgrade, when available), but the behind the scenes of how they handle "ownership" is dubious at best. If programming has taught me anything, it's to always have a backup (in this case a blu-ray copy).
CosmicShadow 6y ago
...and this is why we torrent.
jskrn 6y ago
Property. When you buy something it’s yours and you can give it to who you want. Want to gift a movie ten years from now to a friend or heir? Good luck.
brailsafe 6y ago
Google Play Movies does this too. I can "buy" a movie for $20 and I'm blessed with the ability to "download" it only through the app on up to 5 whole devices as long as it's in their catalogue. Incredible! It's only a slightly shadier practice than Spotify, but with Spotify there's no implication of owning anything, just accessing it and caching it, but Spotify (and Netflix) are great examples of how your favourite movies can go missing on a weekly basis.
- kderbyma 6y ago
  it's official.. we need to cut out all middle men.
jedc 6y ago
I'm surprised to see nothing on this thread about Movies Anywhere. You can use it to meld the IRL DVD purchase with the online ease of access - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movies_Anywhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movies_Anywhere If you buy the DVD, you get a little code to enter in the Movies Anywhere site/app. Once you do that (and connect your account to Apple, Google, etc.) then you can access the movie you purchased anywhere. I've done this a few times - I buy the DVD but never actually watch it. Instead I have it registered with Google Play and watch it that way because it's just more convenient with my TV. KEY - NOT ALL CONTENT is available this way. But enough is to make it a pretty nice experience. (Movies Anywhere is owned by Disney)

753 points by paulcarroty 6y ago

If you're going to take away a movie, you must refund the customer

I've seen the phrase "Own it in {HD/BluRay/4K}" so many times and always cringe. You're just owning a limited license (extremely limited, in the case of digital goods) to watch. The average HN user can spot the difference and say "of course you don't own it, and in case of streaming, you only have access for as long as the service is around", but that's not what the average consumer sees. "Buy" and "own" have very strong meanings and repurposing those for marketing purposes to mean "limited lease" is bending the truth to the point of breaking. But of course, "lease it for a limited time, to watch on a limited set of devices, in a geographically limited region" doesn't sound so valuable as "buy and own it".

onion2k 6y ago
I've seen the phrase "Own it in {HD/BluRay/4K}" so many times and always cringe. You're just owning a limited license (extremely limited, in the case of digital goods) to watch. That's technically correct, but revoking the license for a specific DVD is effectively impossible. If you have the plastic disc you will be able to play it until the disc wears out. The same should be true for digital purchases, or the limitations should be made clearer.
- senko 6y ago
  DVD regions limit where you can watch something. Performance rights limit to who you can show it. Copyright limits how you can distribute it. These kinds of things were happening before and are something we're accustomed to, but I agree DRM and the possibility to rescind access makes it much worse. That's why I'm a happy streaming subscriber. No lies there.
  - Brian_K_White 6y ago
    This is nothing at all like DVD region coding except in the intent of the perpetrators. Region coding does not prevent me from buying and playing a disc from any region, in any region. It's just a technical hurdle which works well enough for the publishers business model, in that the inconvenience has the desired effect on 99.9% of consumers. But once I own the disc, I own the disc. Same for the player. It's entirely and fundamentally different from anything delivered only as a service or worse as services masquerading as products, like software and devices that don't actually function without a service to allow it. And the encryption is so pointless I forgot it even existed until just now.
- retSava 6y ago
  What's it like for blu-ray? I seem to recall that there's a master key or the like involved, which may require updating the br-player to successfully decode new discs if they change the key later on (which I also seem to recall...). Not FUDing, just not recalling completely, so can be completely off..
- grishka 6y ago
  Even if, and it's a big if, whatever online store you "bought" your digital content from is around forever and never arbitrarily bans your account with no way to appeal, you still get less value out of your purchase. You could lend a physical medium to a friend or resell it. Can't do any of that with a digital purchase. Yet, somehow, digital purchases still often cost as much as the real thing.
hyperman1 6y ago
This 'of course you dont own it' is false. Compare with a book, which you can own. The law makes sure you stil can't distribute limitless copies, even if you own it. But you can inherit a book, lend it out, be sure it stays around after the vendor would rather take it back, even swatting flies as a purposes it wasn't ment for. Licensing, and specifically the EULA, was popularized by Microsoft, to make sure you didn't get the rights on their software you have on a book. Would you tolerate a book with any of these: Disclaimer of warranty or fitness for purpose; Automatic revocation; Forbidding critique; Monitoring. Presumably you could license books instead of sell them, and add all anti-rights.
- timc3 6y ago
  It is not false, just books never had such a problem and so the license wasn't deemed necessary to put anywhere. You own the paper that it's printed on, but you don't own the pictures or the words in the order they are written down. The protection that a book has against being copied is that the format makes it more difficult to copy it quickly/cost-effectively for most people. You can do what you are saying with a DVD such as inherit it, though it's terrible for killing flies. But the fact is that you are not allowed distribute a "copy you made" at all of a book without agreement from the copyright holders/owners or to the extent the law dictates.
  - Retric 6y ago
    The difference is you don’t need to make a copy of a book to use it. That’s what gives EULA’s their power. A copy of Windows on a DVD that you can’t copy to a HDD is at best decorative rather than useful. A book on the other hand could be read by thousands of people in it’s lifetime.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      >The difference is you don’t need to make a copy of a book to use it. That’s what gives EULA’s their power. While often assumed to be the case, that's probably not true. Copyright law generally allows for incidental copying necessary to use a product. And, in fact, (US at least) law has been amended over time to explicitly allow certain types of copying needed for functional purposes. So licensing is probably not, in fact, necessary. Rather licensing came in at a time when it wasn't clear that software could be copyrighted.
curt15 6y ago
I always make a point to refer to subscription-based software like Adobe CC as software rentals, not purchases.
deleted 6y ago
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paulcarroty 6y ago
Apple plays with "owning" and "leasing" here. Sure "owning" sells better.
nokya 6y ago
Fully agree with you. I also sense there is an increasing acceptance by consumers, that it is normal to not be allowed anymore to own a legal copy of a digital work (e.g. picture, movie, music, software, etc.) for personal use. Most of these companies now treat their consumers defensively and as potential copyright infringers who will exploit the first occasion to get rich. I don't accept that. So I try to organize my digital consumption on an assumption that I will neither have internet access nor a "subscriber account" at time of consuming (e.g. software, video game, e-book, movie, etc.). Products like "Spotify", "Netflix" or "Steam", and those "modern" video game consoles that treat you like a cheater if you try to log off and refuse to be constantly transmitting telemetry about you don't have a place in my wallet. I'd prefer Sadly, I know I am losing the battle, all my friends gladly pay their monthly fees to not own anything anymore. I guess it's just a question of when I will get tired. EDIT: forgot to mention, the thing I don't mind paying for a "limited access" is going to the cinema/theater and newspapers. Those two activities get quite a lot of attention from my wallet :)
loudtieblahblah 6y ago
Movies are a mixed bag. But once you own the disk - you, for all intents and purposes, own the movie. I can resell the disc. I can rip and backup the disc and thus have endless copies for myself, preventing me from having to re-purchase that disc. (ripping DVD is much easier than Bluray, I'll admit). IMHO, if i can control a piece of property (or a copy of it) for an indefinite amount of time, if i can copy/backup, watch it as i please, when i please, how i please, on what i please - no i don't "own" the movie per se, but the license granted to me by that physical purchase means the contents of that purchase are mine to do with what i feel like, short of showing it to 100 people in a theater or offering it up on a pirate network. As a side note: I "own" my media. I have 500+ books, 400+ vinyl records, 1000+ CDs, hundreds of movies on DVD and bluray (80% ripped to a dual Plex/Jellyfin media server.) Things don't "disappear" from Spotify for me. Amazon can't take my copy of 1984 off my Kindle. Microsoft can't shut off my access to e-books. Apple can't take back the movies I've purchased. The reality is, i - the consumer - have control. The future everyone is contributing to, IMHO sounds like the Great Reset conspiracy: "you'll own nothing and be happy". Happy paying rent in pepertuity to megacorps for access to things youd have, for cheaper, if you owned it outright.
- Ruthalas 6y ago
  Do you prefer Jellyfin over Emby? I'm evaluating which to set up right now.
  - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
    Emby is duplicating all the "sins" of Plex, IMHO. Jellyfin isn't as nice as Plex and it's Roku app could use a UI rework, also having to put in IP/User/Pass on every client is a PITA. But overall i prefer it. It shows promise and i feel over the long haul it'll be the most consumer friendly option.
jollybean 6y ago
I don't think this is the interpretation of people's expectations. "Own it on BluRay" I think is very well understood by the vast majority of the commons and probably even those on HN. They own that BluRay and their 'rights' are confined but within expectation. I don't think people have the expectation to "Start Broadcasting and Putting Ads in Brad Pitt's New Film". They can however, spin up their BluRay in 30 years and watch the movie, which is fair. I suggest the case against Apple has a kind of merit as well, if people 'own it' they should be able to watch it whenever they want, even 10 years from now, which is not a very long time.
gentleman11 6y ago
It’s a rejection of the whole concept of private property, where people own nothing and have no rights. Imagine if these practices had been applied for centuries to groceries and tools - you had to sign a contract specifying your rights etc for every single thing in your life for century after century. It would be perverse

bajsejohannes 6y ago

Somewhat related, I'm confused every time iOS says "Processing Payment" when I download a free app.

this_was_posted 6y ago
My suspicion is that they explicitly call this a payment for legal reasons.
- hyperman1 6y ago
  Maybe they just want to normalize the fact that you should give them money.
danielheath 6y ago
It does seem particularly odd, especially given the attention to detail they are famous for. I can’t imagine someone really sat down and decided the messaging made sense for free apps.
- simondotau 6y ago
  It's the sort of thing that gets fixed quickly when a Steve Jobs-type character sees it and has the clout to get it fixed without debate. When Jobs says it's a problem, you have to be pretty damn sure if you want to disagree. The problem with Apple today is that there's no singular vision like that.
deleted 6y ago
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throws23577 6y ago
Is it possible to download free apps from the App Store without ever giving payment details to Apple? For example, if I don't set up card details during phone set up, can I still download free apps?
- NavinF 6y ago

onion2k 6y ago

Well, because of the way Apple licenses films from studios, you never really own them. Presumably when Apple adds a film to iTunes for customers to buy they know how long they'll be keeping it on their servers for people to access it. It'll be part of the license. Unless Apple can guarantee that the film will be available after that time (eg Apple negotiated a non-revokable extension that they'll legally bound to take) then it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that they should have to communicate the time limit to the user. Eg add some fine print that says "This film will be available in your Apple account until 2031, and may be available after that date" or something.

thevagrant 6y ago
If the customer purchased/bought the movie then Apple should offer a way to download the movie (in the case that Apple removes it from their catalogue). This would ensure customer has the ability to keep their purchase. When I buy something whether ebooks, movies, music then I do not expect it to be removed from access at a later date unless an option for me to store the item is offered.
- onion2k 6y ago
  Apple has the ability to delete media and apps from Apple devices. Offering a download would only work if it's not non-DRM (so not revokable), not tied to a specific device (you should be able to play your film on any device you own), and ideally not even tied to an account (you shouldn't lose your purchases if Apple close your account). Really it would need to be in an open format that works on non-Apple devices too.
- biot 6y ago
  From 2018: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/09/17/apple-responds-to-disappearing-itunes-movie-purchases-issue https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/09/17/apple-res... tl;dr: once downloaded to a device you have it until you delete it. It’s not ideal and I do wish they would retain the right to keep an archived copy on their servers for all customers who have bought it so they could re-download or stream at any time without having to deal with backup and restore.

simondotau 6y ago

you never really own them Controversial take, but does "buying" explicitly mean owning? You never really "own" a movie you buy on blu-ray either—you own the atoms, but not the content which is merely licensed to you as it is with a legal download. The difference between downloads and physical media is actually less characterised by ownership and more by perpetuity of access. The key benefit of blu-ray is that perpetual, legal access is limited only by your preparedness to maintain functioning equipment. A legally downloaded, encrypted movie file also relies on your preparedness to maintain functioning equipment—but that equipment can also betray you.

Mordisquitos 6y ago
But maintaining functioning equipment is within your power if you have sufficient technical ability—maintaining a functional streaming site is not, regardless of your ability.
- simondotau 6y ago
  If you purchase a movie from Apple, you can download it to your computer and play it offline so long as your copy of iTunes is authorised. I can't find any evidence of Apple placing an expiry date on authorisations.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Actually that you gor pointing out that you cannot repair apple eqipment because they actively prevent you from getting access to soare parts, making sure your machine will break, and you will loose your movie. They also refuse to repair old machines or recover user data. On the contrary, you can buy a replacement bluray player.
rtsil 6y ago
The question here isn't ownership, it's possession. > "Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely," writes [U.S. District Court Judge] Mendez. "But in common usage, the term 'buy' means to acquire possession over something. It seems plausible, at least at the motion to dismiss stage, that reasonable consumers would expect their access couldn’t be revoked." https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/apple-must-face-lawsuit-for-telling-consumers-they-can-buy-movies-tv-shows https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/apple-must-face-la...

brainzap 6y ago

"How many people here bought digital media? You are all wrong, none of you have, you only rented it. If you lose the account it is all gone" Rob Pike, unspin

sam_lowry_ 6y ago
What about NFTs?

hyperman1 6y ago

This seams the core of Apple's defence: Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely which is a flagrant difference between ownership of physical items and non-cloud items vs cloud items. This strikes at the root of our society's definition of ownership. Clarification should not depend on Apple, or even a court. This should be enshrined by an explicit law. Using the word 'license' or 'rent' instead of 'buy' for something you can't own seems the minimum a consumer should demand.

gwd 6y ago
My understanding WRT buying a movie on iTunes was: 1. If you download the movie, you will always have the ability to play the movie you downloaded. 2. As long as Apple has the rights to distribute the movie, you will be able to re-download it again 3. If Apple loses the rights, and you don't have your own backed up copy, it's lost. It's the same for Audible books; which is why I always d/l and backup any movie or book I buy electronically. Buying a physical DVD is only #1. If you buy a physical DVD at Walmart or whatever, and then lose it, you can't go back to Walmart and ask for a second DVD; that's a perk of buying an electronic copy. Compare this to buying a piece of software off a website for $30. You download the installer, install it, and use it. Six months later, the company goes out of business and the website does down. You can still use the software as long as you still have the installed version and/or the installer; but if you lose the installer, you lose access. I guess the difference is that Apple is purposely blurring the line between "storing stuff in the cloud" and "redownloading" movies. What should really happen is that three months before Apple loses the distribution rights, they should send an email to everyone who's bought the move, telling them to either 1) Download it to their own local hard drive 2) Buy an iCloud subscription and click this button, and Apple will automatically "download" it from iTunes to your iCloud folder on your behalf. (EDIT: Which due to [1], will probably require actually shipping bits over some internal network for each individual user.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.com,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....
- ctdonath 6y ago

sfgweilr4f 6y ago

The old discussions around digital assets resurface again. My perspective is really simple: If I buy something then its mine. If I lease something then its temporary. Buying a lease is actually just leasing. Digital assets are more often just fancy lease agreements. At best you get to keep access to what you paid for when you stop paying. At worst its literally just a lease. The real kicker is you often can't simply format shift without consequences, because it was just a lease only on that platform and the terms are: Pay for access; Stop paying and you're out. Want it somewhere else? No can do. I wonder if I could bequeath my Apple Music collection? Probably not. That's the big reveal right there. Its not actually ever yours. Never was. Apple Music is somewhat better than a long term lease. Last time I looked you could write the MP3s to a CD. Not sure if that's still true. Contrast this with Spotify: pure subscription. Good luck looking for a "Write to CD" option. That's completely out of scope. And no one is surprised. At least its clearly spelt out. But still a lease. You're only buying access.

the_other 6y ago
I have come to think of Spotify only as a discovery/introduction service. It finds me music I like, and I go buy physical media or MP3 from shops that give me downloads in my browser (Bandcamp, Bleep, Boomkat...). I use it the way I used to use radio and record shops. I’m in my 40s so I grew up at a time where this was common. Record shops were on the high streets in most towns in the UK through the 80s and 90s. In my teens I started to dig deeper, into niche, side street record shops for off-mainstream music. These days, it seems all record shops are on side streets.
DanBC 6y ago
> Last time I looked you could write the MP3s to a CD. Format shifting isn't always legal. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-quashes-regulations-copy-cds-musicians https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-q...
- sfgweilr4f 5y ago
  Apple seems to think its OK according to this: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/itunes/itns2957/windows https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/itunes/itns2957/window... There's probably a bunch of caveats why even this isn't allowed for whatever "reasons".

timwaagh 6y ago

This is long overdue. Renting just isn't the same. I know the companies want to only do rent to make more money, but this should at least be represented accurately.

throws23577 6y ago

Here is how some Apple user found out they own nothing (2019). Also it seems Apple nuked even things they actually owned: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250315803

makach 6y ago

Yes. Hopefully they will do something about it. I have "bought" many movies on iTunes, you may argue that I am part of the problem, but I do because it is so very convenient. I perfectly understand the implicit meaning of "buying" and what I get is a non-transferable license to access the movie from my account. The same problem exists with video-games. It is much closer to a rental than ownership. I believe that all these licenses should become transferable instead of locked to a specific account. I could somewhat agree to paying a small fee to achieve this, even though I believe it should be free. The technology to achieve this also exist (blockchain), so the only thing stopping big-media from doing this is greed.

underwater 6y ago
Neither the media nor tech companies would want to do that. Media companies get you to buy things multiple times. Tech companies get you locked into their platform.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
Vudeo games are a bit less infuriating because a 20-year old game may not even run, if multioplyer, it needs online servers and services, etc.

dhruvrrp 6y ago

It's not just Apple, almost all online services charge an extra to buy movies/tv shows compared to renting, even when it's impossible to get that movie out of the online service. So now there is a whole variety of movies/shows you just can't buy ( unless they have a physical release). This is especially problematic for older shows, which don't have physical copies at all. For example, I've recently been trying to purchase Yes Minister (a BBC show from the 80s) and it's only available in locked down online streaming places like Youtube and Apple TV

AyrtonB 6y ago
You can get a physical copy here - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Yes-Minister-Prime-DVD/dp/B018HB1PUC/ref=asc_df_B018HB1PUC/?tag=googshopuk-21&linkCode=df0&hvadid=310847701815&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1568305576351346008&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9045895&hvtargid=pla-419159619547&psc=1&th=1&psc=1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Yes-Minister-Prime-DVD/dp/...
Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL 6y ago
I've bought it on DVD years back, and still re-watch it somewhat regularly. Love that series... both of them (Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister). That said, and as many echo again and again... for the technically skilled: piracy is an option. It's sad, but once you've exhausted a "reasonable" amount of effort to watch something legally, it's up to you how "bad" you feel for reverting to other means. Pretty sure any film enthusiast is faced with that conundrum on a regular basis. side-note: I'm so happy to have found a reason to talk about the series. So many scenes are stuck in my head and come to mind when reminded about world affairs constantly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4 this one for example with Russia and Crimea (just an example off the top of my head)

newbie578 6y ago

Full support, of course Apple and other similar companies are using all the tools to their advantage. If I do not "own" the digital goods are paid for, then make them change from "Buy" to "Rent for 10 years", and let's seem them then explain that to elderly parents. That would be interesting to watch.

baybal2 6y ago

In other news: Man Sues Apple For Terminating Apple ID With $24K Worth of Content http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/4QFg_7qSgss/man-sues-apple-for-terminating-apple-id-with-24k-worth-of-content http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/4QFg_7qSgss/...

ShinTakuya 6y ago
As he should. I can understand restricting an account if he was doing something dodgy with it, but you shouldn't lose access to purchased content, especially if accessing the content does no harm to others (e.g. banning from online games can also make sense situationally).

lrvick 6y ago

Physical media lets you have privacy without logging when you watch media, what media you consume, how many times you consume it, or how long you consume it. You can enjoy it offline, and in 20 years long after the studio that licensed it is gone. You can give it to a friend or loan it out. Or sell it. It is yours. Meanwhile DRM media we pay full price for, or if the content is only available via streaming we pay for it indefinitely. In neither case are we assured access a decade from now on different devices and we certainly don't get any privacy as studios track every second we consume. Worse, when big companies decide it is not profitable enough to keep "purchased" data around anymore, they just cut it loose. Try opening a book from the Microsoft eBook store. It will fail because they closed down the DRM servers. The books stopped working. PlayStation 3 store? Wii store? Same story. You can no longer access your purchases. Literally the only way to get the same freedoms with modern digital media we had with physical media, is piracy. We got scammed.

teachingassist 6y ago
> Wii store? Same story. You can no longer access your purchases. Not really. You can still play games purchased at the Wii Shop, you just can't re-download them. [Edited to note: Apparently you can re-download or transfer to a Wii U] That's not meaningfully different from having one physical copy: you can use the physical copy until the point that it's worn out.
- SCHiM 6y ago
  The difference between the time it takes physical copies to wear out is much much longer than the time it takes $company to decide that it's time to force everyone to buy the next latest-and-greatest. I've got NES cartridges from the 80s or 90s still working.
  - teachingassist 6y ago
    > I've got NES cartridges from the 80s or 90s still working. And I've got Switch cartridges that are dependent on Nintendo's continued online support. My point was that a physical Wii still works and is still a physical object, so it serves the same functional purpose here as individual NES cartridges.

ksec 6y ago

>When you buy a movie through iTunes, you don't actually own it. And that's a problem. When you buy an iPhone through Apple, you don't actually own it. And that's a problem. You can pretty much replace iPhone and Apple with any other modern tech with software though. Increasingly I am having an uneasy relationship with these modern tech. I want old tech that just shut up and work.

beefield 6y ago

There should be some consumer protection regulation around using words buy, sell, purchase etc. Can you sell what you bought to someone else? If not, you did not buy it. Do yo have root on your device and all it's components? If not, you did not buy it. And so forth. That might make people a bit more aware on the stuff they think buying.

trwhite 6y ago

There was a similar story last year about Amazon Prime: https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/you-dont-own-the-movies-you-buy-on-amazon-prime-video/ https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/you-dont-own-the-movies-you-bu...

fxtentacle 6y ago

I fully agree with this lawsuit. I felt OK with "purchasing" movies from Apple at the Blu-Ray retail price, because I was under the impression that my files remain mine so that if I backup them correctly, I can watch the movie later. By now, I know that this isn't the case. If I had known earlier, I wouldn't have paid full price for a limited digital copy. Instead, I would have purchased the Blu-Ray which - if you treat it well - will last far longer than my digital movies did, despite backups and stuff.

thought_alarm 6y ago
If you purchase and download a movie you can copy it, back it up, and watch it whenever you want as many times as you want. The lawsuit is about repeated downloads and streaming after the copyright owner has removed the movie for sale.
- Cyph0n 6y ago
  But can you copy a movie out of iTunes onto, say, an external HD? I thought Apple used DRM for purchased media.
  - thought_alarm 6y ago
    They use DRM, but movies and TV shows are downloaded as regular movie files. You can move and copy them to wherever you want. Downloaded movie files can be played using either iTunes or the QuickTime Player, copied to an iOS device, or streamed to an Apple TV box.
    - brailsafe 6y ago
      Can you play them without first-party Apple software? Would you say they're acting as a true vendor in this sense?
csours 6y ago
If I put money in a bank, it is fungible; I can move it to another bank, another account, another person. If I buy a license to play a video game on Steam, I only own that license on Steam with one account (with some exceptions and provisions for gifting etc). If I buy a license to for a movie on iTunes, I only own that license on iTunes tied to one account. Will consumers band together and demand that their media licenses be fungible? In other words, how many things are 'accidental banks'

yrgulation 6y ago

Thats why i buy movies, series, music and games in a physical format where possible. If you only rely on a “digital cloud” copy you simply dont own them, you just rent them for an undetermined period of time.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

Awesome. The copyright industry actively misleads customers with these words. People think they're buying something but the truth is they own absolutely nothing and have effectively no rights.

daodedickinson 6y ago

Since the patriot act when I was a kid, and now beyond, it's felt worse and worse. Feeling violated every time I remember a particular law is having me inspected.

ThomW 6y ago

Screw that web site. Nags you to turn off your content blocker, and as soon as you do a giant full-phone height banner ad is the first thing you see, then a few seconds later a full-screen modal pop up appears. GTFO.

dorfsmay 6y ago

Oh good! I've been wondering about Google's practices too: Google: • sells movies • do not allow transfer of movie ownership to a different email account • expires accounts after 2 years of inactivity https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1335262751992602630 https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1335262751992602630 You could also argue that if Apple/Google actually bought the right from the studio on your behalf, you should be able to stream movies you already own, because you bought the DVDs years ago, for a much smaller fee.

jbverschoor 6y ago

Same as before on the App Store when they changed "BUY" into "GET"

mark_l_watson 6y ago

As a content creator, I use DRM free leanpub.com to produce books under a Creatuve Commons license. I also give away the same books for free on my web site. To be clear, the vast majority of my income is being paid for work, so it is easy to be a little generous. I am not a corporation who has to maximize profit to shareholders. As a consumer of content, I like purchasing books that are (sometimes watermarked) PDFs or ePub. When that is not possible, I do buy DRM books, but split my purchases between Apple, Amazon, and Google. My wife and I have no network TV but we are happy to support content creation by paying subscriptions to Netflix, HBO, Prime, and Hulu. I could care less about owning “forever copies” of entertainment. I do want to support the industry financially. For music, streaming services like YouTube Music and Apple Music are great for discovery, but when I find a song that I really love, I don’t mind spending $1 per song if I can get it DRM free on Amazon.

tyingq 6y ago

I ran into this when Frontier bought Verizon FIOS in my area. I suppose due to differing rights between the two companies, quite a few movies I had "bought" just disappeared from the "my purchases" page after the transition. I never did get it resolved, just ended up eating the loss and moved to a cable/docsis type provider. All I can do now is just treat movie purchases as something less than that. Long-term rentals with some chance that it gets revoked.

comeonseriously 6y ago

Companies try to skirt around this by saying you're not buying the media, you're buying a license (subject to 37 pages of legalese that nobody wants to read right before they watch a movie on movie night). I really hope companies are forced to stop using the word "buy" for this type of transaction.

rchaud 6y ago

> "Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely," Weasel-worded legal arguments like this is why I don't use Apple Music, Spotify, Youtube Premium or anything where the final product is not a DRM-free file sitting on my hard drive. As much as Blockbuster is considered a dinosaur, you could buy and sell used games and movies there. If you bought something, it was yours. There was no retroactive disappearance because Blockbuster no longer had the rights for that movie or TV show.

judge2020 6y ago
If it helps, YouTube doesn’t do DRM on music and you can use YouTube-dl to download as many songs as you’d like for personal use.
ianbicking 6y ago
Does this criticism apply to pay-for-access services like Spotify? Spotify is what it is, and has the content it has, and you aren't paying for any future content or access, only for what's there this moment. This seems pretty transparent.
crazygringo 6y ago
But the products you're listing are streaming services. You never buy anything, you subscribe per month. So not really sure why you're conflating this story with those? Or why you think files for a subscription service shouldn't be DRM'ed? I mean, if you keep the files after your subscription ends, that's obviously not a subscription anymore.

ubermonkey 6y ago

It's weird to realize that there's a huge difference in how people who read HN understood "digital buying" and how the rest of the world did. I have bought many movies and TV shows from the iTunes store. I did so knowing that it was not a true purchase in the sense of buying a DVD, or a videotape, or a book, or even in the sense of buying music from the iTunes store (which has been DRM-free since 2009). But I did it anyway, because the transaction still offered a net positive value for me: - Very long term (but clearly not perpetual) rights to watch the thing; - Very high convenience (easily available on my Apple devices without dealing with files or sync); - Very much easier/simpler than resorting to, shall we say, nontraditional means of media procurement. But, again, we knew what was happening. Apple could turn heel and invalidate these purchases on their whim, or the whim of the rightsholder. I still made the deal, and still feel fine about it, because I knew that going in. Normal humans tend not to understand this. (We also have a very minimal cable package. We did the math and realized that it was cheaper to, say, buy season passes of the mid-tier cable shows we wanted to see than it was to pay for the channels in question. If you watch a LOT of those shows, this math doesn't work, but for us and things like Mad Men, it definitely did. Our cable bill is $50 a month lower than it would be if we had those channels, so we could absolutely justify "buying" the show on iTunes -- even if we had no plans to watch it more than once.)

sterlinm 6y ago

This was the first thing I ever felt compelled to write to the government about. I'm sure Chris Christie, then Governor of New Jersey, recalls my strongly worded letter objecting to Amazon saying you were "buying" Kindle books.

dinondiman 6y ago

I backup all my iTunes movies on a drive to take with me so I can watch movies with no internet connection. All work fine. What am I missing?

jackdrb 6y ago

Its nice of Apple to put this so succinctly: 'Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely' The world has definitely shifted from buying individual movies, songs/albums, video games and owning them in a more direct sense of having an actual physical object i.e. a disc. There are definitely still some limitations to this, its still a limited license, but compared to purchasing DRM-filled digital access, we've definitely gone even further into more restrictive access. That is why I think that supporting DRM-free stores (e.g. GOG, Bandcamp) is important as well as buying physical media still (I still personally buy music CDs and Vinyl from time-to-time, however try to buy a game physically and all you will get is a plastic disc with a Steam code on it), and sometimes there is no way legitimate way to purchase some media, with piracy being essentially the only option. Unfortunately Steam has become quite ubiqitous and like most have fallen into the licensing game rabbithole (One the games I bought many years ago required installing Steam to 'function'), but with video games there's not much else to pick from, apart from whatever GOG has or some other companies crappier version of Steam (e.g. Origin, Epic Games Store). I'd like this to change but I don't think it will anytime soon. I would be fine purchasing digital copies of content knowing the limited-time aspect, given the pricing would be (significantly) cheaper. But it isn't, and that's a problem.

jurassic 6y ago

After discovering a favorite album of mine got dropped from the Spotify catalog, I feel a strong impulse to return to physical media. But first I have to decide on which audio components to get. Thinking back, I think I had a much stronger emotional response to albums I specifically chose and invested in than the ones the algorithm chose and automatically played for me. Lately with streaming I listen more and enjoy it less.

rootusrootus 6y ago

The terminology probably should be clarified so laypeople do not misunderstand. My own policy is I don't buy anything digitally, I only rent it or subscribe to the service for as long as I want it. That way I won't be sad when I lose access to 'purchased' content because I never had any expectation of indefinite access to it.

shmerl 6y ago

DRM-free video is yet to emerge.

t0mmel 6y ago

This whole streaming idea has also got me thinking about how we are not leaving behind a legacy. There is nothing to discover once you are gone. Your subscription just... ends. I’m not sure that’s how I want to live. I mean, it’s convenient having access. But now that I have had access, it’s clear that I actually still have to shop around on the services, and so I might maybe just as well buy what I want instead of buying all of something for a period, and lose any trace of it after. I think I prefer buying.

interlocutor2 6y ago
Your legacy is the content you've purchased and not the things you've built?
- lostmsu 6y ago
  Previously, yes. You'd leave your kids a library of books.

jason_zig 6y ago

Wait until they hear about NFT's

user3939382 6y ago

Let’s say you buy 5 movies from Apple and then the CC on file expires before they billed you for a $0.99 app you bought, so you owe Apple $0.99. They will now block you from ALL access to anything you have already “purchased” until you pay them.

Crontab 6y ago

I have never liked the term 'buy' on anything with DRM. This isn't really an Apple problem so much as an industry problem. I think 'license' would be a better term. When it comes to Apple specifically, they really need to let iOS users know that they need to back up DRMed movies, shows, and books. I know some iOS-only users who are under the impression that they will forever be able to redownload these items. In reality, there is no of guarantee of that, as Apple may might not hold distribution rights at some point in the future.

8bitsrule 6y ago

I physically own about 1000 commercial disks (stored in Logic cases) I'll never part with. Ripped to HD, instantly available, no network needed. Result is quite different from a 'license' to 'stream' since 1984. Solar flare, no worries. House fire, HD backup. Big Tech dies, network gone, meh. Got my tunes.

andrewzah 6y ago

Digital stores need to update their terminology to reflect that you don't actually -own- what you buy. So many people are confused by this as it's counterintuitive. And this is why piracy is, and will, always continue. I legally buy movies and then have to deal with DRM and other nasty, annoying things that only affect paying customers! People who pirate have no such limitations to deal with.

AdamJacobMuller 6y ago

Buying a DVD is also only buying a limited license (you can't, for example, legally make copies of that DVD or use it for public performances). Buying a blu-ray is even more of a gray area with the key schemes being fundamentally more complex and internet-updatable. It's possible the blu-ray you bought and watched last year may not work on your player anymore. I agree that it's wrong to say you're "buying" movies from iTunes/et al, but, I'm not sure what the correct term is. Renting is wrong as it implies a definite intentional time-limited period, license seems wrong as it's too legal/contractual. What's the better word?

elliekelly 6y ago
I could be wrong but I think you can legally make copies of a DVD you own so long as it’s only for personal use and not for distribution.
- baliex 6y ago
  This law has a tendency to flip-flop every now and again, and is per-jurisdiction in any case

Mikho 6y ago

It's not so much about nature of DRM streaming vs having a movie on your disk. The whole debate is really about Apple misleading users into overpaying for a mere rent of a movie. When you buy something and have a complete ownershio you treat this expense differently than renting expense. You dont pay full price of a thing just to rent it.

turtleofdeath 6y ago
What’s not misleading about offering a “Buy” option and a lower-priced “Rent” option?

tut-urut-utut 6y ago

I would like to see the same happening to Amazon, which also "sells" Films, instead of clearly noting they are just renting it for as long as you have an account with them.

bsimpson 6y ago

The double-facedness pisses me off: When it's digital, you're only buying the right to watch something, not to own your copy. When it's physical, you're only buying your copy, not the right to watch it indefinitely. The odds are always slanted to favor Hollywood: they get to make you pay to watch the same title every time the viewing technology changes (VHS -> DVD -> digital), but also use the specter of piracy to curtail your rights with what you did buy.

T3RMINATED 6y ago

Try opening a book from the Microsoft eBook store. It will fail because they closed down the DRM servers. The books stopped working. PlayStation 3 store? Wii store? Same story. You can no longer access your purchases.

nemo44x 6y ago

It won’t be long before your account is debited when a memory of a movie you watched zips through your mind and the implant recognizes the synaptic signature of it that had been copyrighted.

jrm4 6y ago

You don't own it unless you can hold it in your hand and play it on demand. You don't own it unless you can hold it in your hand and play it on demand. You don't own it unless you can hold it in your hand and play it on demand.

tdhz77 6y ago

Do my kids inherit my movie/tv shows that I bought or does the license die with me? Seems a rather safe bet Apple will be here after I die. I was fooled to buy drm media, but I don’t see the harm, yet.

cronix 6y ago

On a PC you can use a Legato capture card and record anything that makes it through the HDMI, DRM free, up to 4k/60 and up to HDR10 and it has a pass-thru so you can watch on a monitor/tv as you record. They're mainly used in game broadcasting, like on Twitch. There are also numerous audio recording apps that will record audio that is being played from a DRM source, actually any source. I actually purchase physical books as I can't stand reading on a lit screen for hours on end. As a wise investor once told me, if you don't physically hold it, you don't actually own it. I have copies of everything I've purchased digitally that is worth keeping, and I have no moral qualms about doing so. I paid for the content. They got their money.

KingMachiavelli 6y ago
As far as I am aware that capture card won't capture HDCP content? So anything that uses Widevine or similar DRM will not work. There are options for capture cards designed to bypass HDCP but it's a bit more involved. Are you saying you haven't had any issues with HDCP?
- cronix 6y ago
  There are many cheap HDMI splitters out there (~$20USD) that do not pass on HDCP :) The hardest part is wading through the comments to see if the device will bypass HDCP. This is also a very good way to watch HDCP content on older HDTV's that don't have HDCP implemented. https://www.amazon.com/hdmi-splitter-hdcp-bypass/s?k=hdmi+splitter+hdcp+bypass https://www.amazon.com/hdmi-splitter-hdcp-bypass/s?k=hdmi+sp... There are even more on aliexpress.

david-cako 6y ago

There's a lot of lines you can draw like this. Do you own your money, or do you own an obligation made by the fed to all participants in the US economy? Okay, so maybe the US dollar is so pervasive that it's "inert" for all intents and purposes as a store of wealth. The less tangible a good is, the more difficult it is to tell who owns it. People do like streaming services, but Apple has to keep the service running, right? There is a non-zero cost to Apple continuing to service relationships with studios and with customers, and they can't really say "this thing in your Apple account will, necessarily, live forever". I think Apple is the most likely company to make good on this sort of promise; in spite of the way they deprecate APIs (which I actually appreciate), they have an immaculate track record of supporting their services and devices. If you buy a DRM-free movie or rip a physical copy, you're getting closer to owning the bits and bytes themselves, but still, really, you own the right to watch the movie in a non-commercial setting, and you now have to figure out how to make it available on your devices. How long am I obligated to continue supporting software I've "let go" to the folks that contracted me? When will my car stop receiving kernel updates? To me, this is a more difficult issue than whether you have to re-purchase (or pirate) games and movies that you already bought.

actionowl 6y ago

This is true for iTunes and Google Play too, I've had albums disappear from my Library with no explanation (I suspect some licensing change or label shuffle behind the scenes). I've totally abandoned streaming services since I've been bitten twice by this. Bandcamp handles this exceptionally well, you can download anything you buy (even as Flac!) and for anything else, it's back to buying/checking-out CDs and ripping them old-school style.

luxuryballs 6y ago

Aren’t you allowed to download offline copies as backups of any movie you purchase anyways? You just don’t gain the right to distribute copies. I’d be shocked if anyone would get in trouble for torrenting a copy of something they purchased just for the purpose of having a backup, because even having a DVD copy doesn’t mean you own anything other than the right to watch it. Likewise if you sold the DVD you’d have to destroy your digital backup.

banana_giraffe 6y ago
Regardless of the legal status of torrenting a movie you already own, to the companies monitoring swarms, someone downloading and sharing a movie that they own looks no different than someone that doesn't own the movie. You'll still need to respond to their notice if they send it, and possibly defend yourself in court. Even if you succeed, it can be a big burden.

michaelmrose 6y ago

So what about games on the play store, apple store, and steam.

xbar 6y ago

I don't own them?

4AoZqrH2fsk5UB 6y ago

I've started torrenting again (did it a lot in the early 00s, but stopped like most others as streaming showed up in a big way). Honestly, once set up the experience is lovely. - The catalog is enormous, you can almost always find what you want. - There is robust software that can pull down the latest episode of the tv shows you want. - There is similar software that can pull down movies based on public lists (e.g. IMDB top 100), so discovery is pretty great. - All the above can be done on public trackers. Private trackers are even better. - Many have a community of people who are into the content, and curate their own lists. - There is software for a home media server so you can flip through all your content. Its also just one interface... no flipping through hulu/netflix/amazon/apple/google. - That same home media server software can host all videos, so downloads from youtube, family videos, etc... all in one place as you see fit. - I get to know that know one out there knows what I'm watching or when I'm watching it. - Backup is easy, with offsite services running ~$0.005/gb/month, so pennies per movie per month. This way I know I'll always have it regardless of what happens with streaming services. Getting it up and running takes some customization but it is _really_ great. I would gladly pay for such a service, even the typical ~$20/movie price.

hsivonen 6y ago

“And that they do this on regular occasions.” This is news to me. I thought the main advantage of iTunes compared to other services was that purchases would last as long as the iTunes service is operational and that iTunes has outlived “purchase with DRM” services so far. Are there concrete examples?

ycombigator 6y ago

Shady AF.

xyst 6y ago

my strategy around buying films now is to only buy blu-ray + digital copy. iTunes is hands down one of the better places to watch digital films (free 4K upgrade, when available), but the behind the scenes of how they handle "ownership" is dubious at best. If programming has taught me anything, it's to always have a backup (in this case a blu-ray copy).

CosmicShadow 6y ago

...and this is why we torrent.

jskrn 6y ago

Property. When you buy something it’s yours and you can give it to who you want. Want to gift a movie ten years from now to a friend or heir? Good luck.

brailsafe 6y ago

Google Play Movies does this too. I can "buy" a movie for $20 and I'm blessed with the ability to "download" it only through the app on up to 5 whole devices as long as it's in their catalogue. Incredible! It's only a slightly shadier practice than Spotify, but with Spotify there's no implication of owning anything, just accessing it and caching it, but Spotify (and Netflix) are great examples of how your favourite movies can go missing on a weekly basis.

kderbyma 6y ago
it's official.. we need to cut out all middle men.

jedc 6y ago

I'm surprised to see nothing on this thread about Movies Anywhere. You can use it to meld the IRL DVD purchase with the online ease of access - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movies_Anywhere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movies_Anywhere If you buy the DVD, you get a little code to enter in the Movies Anywhere site/app. Once you do that (and connect your account to Apple, Google, etc.) then you can access the movie you purchased anywhere. I've done this a few times - I buy the DVD but never actually watch it. Instead I have it registered with Google Play and watch it that way because it's just more convenient with my TV. KEY - NOT ALL CONTENT is available this way. But enough is to make it a pretty nice experience. (Movies Anywhere is owned by Disney)