28 ms·

IMO it wouldn't matter if they'd used the word "Rent" or "Licence" instead: it would still be unreasonable. Account termination is entirely at Apple's discretio

• alisonkisk 5y ago
  Or at least downgrade your "purchases" to "rental" price.
  • sideshowb 5y ago
    Sure a rental price determined by what the value of renting was according to the customer. Which, seeing as they opted to purchase, might reasonably be zero.
• 1cvmask 5y ago
  Do we know why his account was terminated? I couldn’t find anything on that.
  • ldiracdelta 5y ago
    People don't own the things they buy. They don't have property rights today. Today, a mob or a single unaccountable low-level account reviewer may declare someone an "out law" and anyone may do anything they like to him as is the old germanic tradition.
    • dalbasal 5y ago
      Orwell believed euphemisation was the key element of said tradition. Food for thought, perhaps. Not everything needs to be turned up to 11 all the time, explicitly or not. Chill.
    • _jal 5y ago
      > a mob or a single unaccountable low-level account reviewer may declare someone an "out law" I take it you prefer that power to be reserved for those with high status?
      • im3w1l 5y ago
        The nice thing with high status people is that there are so few of them. Makes it easier to hold them accountable.
        • _jal 5y ago
          > Makes it easier to hold them accountable Sounds interesting. Let me know when that starts happening.
      • dane-pgp 5y ago
        That's a false dichotomy, but I'll offer this for an answer: "Yes, it should be reserved for those with high status, and high status should be reserved for people who are chosen by and accountable to the people over whom they have power."
        • _jal 5y ago
          See, I strongly disagree. I believe that, whatever my status, I have the right to associate with whomever I please. Which means I can shun whomever I please. I can also talk with whomever I please, including about people I'm avoiding. So you can have a 1st Amendment, or you can have your Designated Excommunicators, but you can't have both.
  • wayneftw 5y ago
    I only found this vague statement: > Price says that Apple terminated his account when the company suspected him of breaching its terms and conditions, but due to the clause in question Apple did not have to confirm a breach occurred or give Price notice or explanation before shutting down his Apple ID. [0] [0] https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-products/mobile-apps/1017309-apple-terminating-id-users-accounts-class-action-lawsuit/ https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/consumer-pro...
    • hellbannedguy 5y ago
      We need to revise all consumer protection laws. Way more than we did a few years ago. I would start with, Mandatory Arbitration. Let consumers take these companies, including credit card companies, to court. What is the limit for small claims---$25,000? Companies might treat customers different? I wouldn't mind doing away with Terms if Service all together. If a company can't act within our laws without a 10 page TOS, so be it. Or, maybe strict protections for small companies, and nill for large companies. Companies that can afford to investigate claims against them? All my belly aching here won't do a thing though. These companies have bought our representatives. I'm waiting for a day someone has a successful website, like Hacker News, where people could offer suggestions to their representatives directly. I don't think I'll ever see that day because those in charge know these matters are above the intellect of most Americans, and most Americans would rather escape the inequities of real life, especially on line? I just looked up that 2008 Consumer Protection Act. This popped up? https://www.npr.org/2020/03/03/811718978/supreme-court-casts-doubt-on-independence-of-consumer-protection-agency https://www.npr.org/2020/03/03/811718978/supreme-court-casts...
  • grishka 5y ago
    It shouldn't matter. If you're banned from going to a particular physical store for whatever reason, wrongly or not, you still get to keep everything you've ever bought there. If a physical store goes out of business, you also get to keep everything you've ever bought there. Point being, IRL stores don't retain any control over anything you buy.
    • meroes 5y ago
      If I buy a semester at a private school, I still have to pay for the entire semester if I'm expelled (sometimes a smaller but still substantial early leave amount). I know neither of our analogies mirror exactly is going on, but that's part of the point. Maybe this is a different class of "ownership". There seems to be many classes already close to what Apple wants. I'm not sure who will win. I hope it's not Apple, but I've already agreed to worse agreements getting through high school and college.
      • grishka 5y ago
        > Maybe this is a different class of "ownership". Except IMO this class of "ownership" should cost substantially less because you get much less value.
      • dane-pgp 5y ago
        > I bought a dorm room, yet I lose access. For assets in the physical world, the provider can have legitimate reasons for not refunding you the lost access that you originally paid for, on the scale of a month or a semester, due to the difficulty of them finding a replacement buyer/renter of that asset for the remaining duration. Something "seasonal" like school enrolment is a perfect example of that. For digital assets, though, the period that you wouldn't expect to be refunded for should be measured in nanoseconds. The other huge difference of course is that people don't buy perpetual access to a dorm room, whereas they believe they do for digital goods. "Forever minus ten nanoseconds" is very similar to "forever", so the refund should be close to 100%.
      • throwaway_kufu 5y ago
        But schools are not advertising to the public that they are “buying” the class and no reasonable consumer who pays tuition believes a 1 time payment of tuition permits them to attend the class indefinitely. On the other hand Apple purposefully advertises movies as “rentals” or “purchases” sure more sophisticated individuals know better (usually those in the tech industry savvy to the willful and deceptive marketing of the tech companies) but the average consumer understands they have purchased the ownership rights of the movie. Continuing with a reasonable standard if you are suspended/expelled you are generally entitled to due process (certainly in public schools), on the other hand if you violate Apple TOS you may not have the same due process, but it is reasonable to assume they will not delete your data And purchases without the opportunity to retrieve the same. Otherwise it’s a license to steal, they could claim the bank accounts you have connected to Apple Pay are forfeited to Apple, they can publish your emails/photos to harass and embarrass you, etc...
• TheRealDunkirk 5y ago
  > It's simple: if apple want to terminate your account, they need to refund you for any content you lose access to as a result of that termination. I like that idea a lot. I would add that, at the very, very least, they should give you a personal link to download a snapshot of all of your data from their cloud at the time of termination: email, calendar, contacts, photos/videos, docs, et. al.
  • ganoushoreilly 5y ago
    The problem is more the licensed content such as movies and music. They likely can't provide it to you in a format sans DRM. So even having the option to download the file, will likely require the media to verify online to unlock at playtime.
    • ryanwhitney 5y ago
      Fairly certain all music sold through iTunes has been DRM-free since like 2010. Amazon too, I think. (Movies, not so much.)
      • sircastor 5y ago
        Yeah, that was a happy accident of market forces. Apple had become the juggernaut of music sales and the industry was desperate to get out from under them. They started letting other licensees go DRM free and Apple negotiated it from them at a markup. I think the reason we never saw a similar model for movies and TV shows is because Hollywood was terrified of what Apple had done to the music industry.
        • eloisant 5y ago
          It's too bad because music proved that DRM doesn't make any difference for piracy. Spotify and competitors are successful despite piracy. Movies piracy is still just as big with DRM.
        • ErikVandeWater 5y ago
• threatofrain 5y ago
  Apple can just rent you their entire catalogue similar to Apple Arcade or Music, then nobody would say you own the entire selection, just like it’d be absurd to say you own Netflix forever. In the Netflix case it’s be even more difficult to argue since Netflix doesn’t own the IP and the catalogue is ever shifting. I’m afraid the future is rental at least because the consumer is no longer technically prepared to own and manage their own digital catalogue.
  • bo1024 5y ago
    I think this is easy to resolve. With Netflix, the terms are that you pay a fixed amount and you get one month's access to stream whatever they choose to offer at the time, repeat. If Netflix terminates your account, well, you lose out on less than a month of access, so they should refund one month. It's very different if (a) you pay per individual item, (b) there's an explicit or implied agreement that you have access to that item indefinitely. Then if your account is terminated, you should be refunded the value of having access indefinitely, which is the original purchase price. Now maybe you're saying Apple can go to a subscription service where it rents "access" to the library, but those are very different terms.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • readme 5y ago
      >rents "access" to the library and finally, big tech will have caught on to the business model of late 90s early 2000s porn sites
  • LocalH 5y ago
    Meanwhile, pirates sit on the sidelines and laugh
• Thaxll 5y ago
  "Rent" or "Licence" is def not how they want to describe their service, like every platforms they want you to beleive that you own the content.
• Decabytes 5y ago
  I’d be thrilled if they win and this sets a precedent for other markets, I.E Steam as well.
• crazygringo 5y ago
  Seriously. It's well past time that Congress passes a law explicitly to that effect -- if you lose access to purchased content, whether because your account was terminated or the content was removed, you get 100% refunded. End of story. Any TOS to the contrary are invalid.
  • pureliquidhw 5y ago
    How much should that digital content cost then? Make a DVD once, never think about it again. To offer digital copy that loses no value over time and must be available forever seems like a bad deal from the publisher's side. To offer a one time download code seems far more tenable.
    • rileymat2 5y ago
      There could be other ways to manage it, like specifying how long the rental would be valid for (I think iTunes started this way with movies), instead of alluding to the idea that you are buying it forever as part if a personal library.
    • ratww 5y ago
      Then make it non-DRM downloadable content that will be playable forever at the discretion of the consumer, like music bought on iTunes, then. Or at least mention the period for when the licensing will be honored during “purchase” and stick to it. Honestly I don’t understand anyone having any sympathy for publishers or Apple. They were the ones who chose to use the current method.
    • yarcob 5y ago
      Then they should advertise it as a one time download or a limited time rental. I don't have an issue with that. But they shouldn't advertise "store your purchased movies in the cloud for free" when they only do that as long as it is convenient for them.
    • tomjen3 5y ago
      You don't have to keep offering it. You just have to not turn of DRM servers or offer the download without DRM in the first place.
• jjcon 5y ago
  Likely all that would do is cause them to stop letting people buy content and push everyone over to subscription services - Beyond that, there are problems there. What’s stopping me from getting all the latest games on iOS, latest movies as they come out then after a few years spend some time purposely breaking TOS so I can get it all refunded.
  • edgyquant 5y ago
    Why is this a problem? If they take access of things you’ve bought, they should have to give you’re money back. Any breaking of the TOS in the future shouldn’t change that whether or not you’re purposefully trying to break them.
    • jjcon 5y ago
      Because the value of those thing depreciate over time and therefore a full refund doesn’t accurately reflect current value. A movie is more valuable directly after release, same is true for games. Additionally a movie/game is more valuable to those who have not yet seen/played them.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    Imagine you bought a bunch of physical books from Barnes and Noble, and then later did something to get yourself banned from all of their stores for life. (If it matters, assume that what you did was bad and that the ban was totally justifiable.) Would it be okay if they broke into your house and glued together the pages of all the books they ever bought, or would you sue them for compensation for doing that?
  • crazygringo 5y ago
    There's no reason Apple has to cut off access to your content even if they ban the rest of your account. They could just set a flag on your account to "consume only" or something. Your account would be banned from "interaction" or further purchases, but you wouldn't lose your content.
    • 5y ago
• jstummbillig 5y ago
  > It's simple: if apple want to terminate your account, they need to refund you for any content you lose access to as a result of that termination. Well, not quite that simple, since a lot of people would de facto also lose access to their hardware and all work which relies on this software-hardware-combination.
  • ungamedplayer 5y ago
    Sounds simple to me. Would suck to be apple though.
• Natsu 5y ago
  I feel like they should have to put the account in some "inactive" state where he can't get any new stuff but keeps access to all existing purchases.
• zelon88 5y ago
  I support this. But I do have questions. Hypothetically; what if Apple were to cease to exist? Or wanted to discontinue their streaming services? Assuming Apple were in such a position, their financial outlook would probably not be good. They would likely be financially unable to reimburse that many subscribers. How would winding down such a service work?
  • crazygringo 5y ago
    It would be Apple's (or the bankruptcy court's) responsibility to transfer the access to a competitor's service, in exchange for payment or liquidation proceeds. In fact, I'd argue that this ought to be the norm -- that content providers be forced to purchase insurance or something precisely in case they go out of business, to ensure customers will have their content migrated to another service, and be refunded for the small proportion of content that isn't available anywhere else.
  • valdiorn 5y ago
    The same way it works when a bankrupt company can't pay an invoice. You can sue a company if it doesn't hold its financial obligations, and get your money, and so can the customer, like in this case. When a company goes bust, if you are owed money by that company, you put in claims to the estate, and the administrators handle those claims according to a well specified priority list. The customers being reimbursed is part of that process. However, I know that gift cards and store credit tend to be at the bottom of the list, so I wouldn't have high hopes for digital assets being reimbursed either.
  • mr_toad 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsecured_creditor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsecured_creditor
• bobbyi_settv 5y ago
  Could this lead to people intentionally violating terms to try to get their account terminated so that they can get money back for every in app purchase, etc, they've ever made?
  • kjjjjjjjjjjjjjj 5y ago
    Yes which is why this won't ever happen. It should just be illegal to wholly terminate an account. If someone is breaking ToS, ban them from doing the ToS breaking thing like posting or commenting. No reason to terminate the entire account.
    • fuzxi 5y ago
      This is, in general, Valve's approach with Steam users. A user cheats on servers using Valve Anti-Cheat? Banned from all of those servers, but not from the games themselves. A user spams heinous garbage in the forums? Banned from posting in the forums. I think one of the only things that will actually get an entire account disabled is charging back a purchase.
  • askvictor 5y ago
    Good point. Though I suspect it would be a pretty small percentage of people doing that.
• eevilspock 5y ago
  I don’t think “forever” is a promise anyone can realistic/honestly make. As others have pointed out, refunds aren’t realistic either, and the path can be abused. A better solution is that you should be able to download your purchases when your account is terminated (or even when it’s active). An active account should not be required to use your downloaded purchases.