4 ms·

> 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

> 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 6y 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 6y ago
  Fairly certain all music sold through iTunes has been DRM-free since like 2010. Amazon too, I think. (Movies, not so much.)
  - sircastor 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
      The happy accidents of market forces are what make markets great!
- josephcsible 6y ago
  I'd be in favor of the law having a clause like the "No Surrender of Others' Freedom" clause of the GPL. Basically saying "If you provide movies like this, then you must make them available without DRM. If you have other legal or contractual requirements that forbid you from making them available without DRM, then you can't make them available at all."
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Moreover, DRM prevents copyright content from entering the public domain. In my personal opinion, anything that's not available without DRM shouldn't get copyright - otherwise it subverts the deal at the centre of copyright. The way around this would be to have a way to lodge a DRM free copy, which would be released to the public domain when the copyright expires, or on abandonment (so people wouldn't be denied access if the company didn't keep their servers running). Copyright is not a natural right, the balance is totally out of whack. Copyright terms have become abusively long; the deal is not fair anymore.
    - MereInterest 6y ago
      Absolutely agreed. I'm of the opinion that anything under DRM, and any closed-source software, should not be eligible for copyright. When a work enters the public domain, society is allowed to build upon that work. If extant copies of the work are not in a form that allows others to build upon, then that right is infringed.
      - Silhouette 6y ago
        any closed-source software, should not be eligible for copyright This is how you get software companies running almost everything on their own servers, subscription-only, updates-mandatory, so no-one ever gets a copy of the work themselves and copyright is irrelevant. I think it is abundantly clear by now that this is not necessarily a beneficial direction for the industry to be moving, at least not from the point of view of purchaser/user rights and future-proofing.
Silhouette 6y ago
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. As a point of interest, in the EU and UK, they probably would be legally required to do something like that for things like mail and calendars, because the GDPR says, roughly speaking, that they have an obligation to keep the data reasonably safe and an obligation to let the data subject have it in some useful format. I doubt those obligations would extend to other creative works you'd purchased, though, since among other things that would drive a coach and horses through international copyright agreements and several reasonable business models built on the resulting legal framework.

ganoushoreilly 6y 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 6y ago
Fairly certain all music sold through iTunes has been DRM-free since like 2010. Amazon too, I think. (Movies, not so much.)
- sircastor 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
    The happy accidents of market forces are what make markets great!
josephcsible 6y ago
I'd be in favor of the law having a clause like the "No Surrender of Others' Freedom" clause of the GPL. Basically saying "If you provide movies like this, then you must make them available without DRM. If you have other legal or contractual requirements that forbid you from making them available without DRM, then you can't make them available at all."
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Moreover, DRM prevents copyright content from entering the public domain. In my personal opinion, anything that's not available without DRM shouldn't get copyright - otherwise it subverts the deal at the centre of copyright. The way around this would be to have a way to lodge a DRM free copy, which would be released to the public domain when the copyright expires, or on abandonment (so people wouldn't be denied access if the company didn't keep their servers running). Copyright is not a natural right, the balance is totally out of whack. Copyright terms have become abusively long; the deal is not fair anymore.
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    Absolutely agreed. I'm of the opinion that anything under DRM, and any closed-source software, should not be eligible for copyright. When a work enters the public domain, society is allowed to build upon that work. If extant copies of the work are not in a form that allows others to build upon, then that right is infringed.
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      any closed-source software, should not be eligible for copyright This is how you get software companies running almost everything on their own servers, subscription-only, updates-mandatory, so no-one ever gets a copy of the work themselves and copyright is irrelevant. I think it is abundantly clear by now that this is not necessarily a beneficial direction for the industry to be moving, at least not from the point of view of purchaser/user rights and future-proofing.

Silhouette 6y ago

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. As a point of interest, in the EU and UK, they probably would be legally required to do something like that for things like mail and calendars, because the GDPR says, roughly speaking, that they have an obligation to keep the data reasonably safe and an obligation to let the data subject have it in some useful format. I doubt those obligations would extend to other creative works you'd purchased, though, since among other things that would drive a coach and horses through international copyright agreements and several reasonable business models built on the resulting legal framework.