It's frustrating that the word 'purchase' is used for this kind of transaction. Like 'unlimited', it's use is fundamentally dishonest and vendors get away with it because everyone knows they lie.
If I buy a paperback book or a drm free ebook, that's a purchase.
If I pay for a drm movie or kindle book, that's a long-term rental.
If I buy a game from Steam then contractually that is a rental, but it behaves like a purchase. I can install it anywhere I like, I can back it up to a physical disk, and most importantly I can redownload it in perpetuity; even if the same item is no longer for sale on Steam.
The only risk in comparison to a physical copy is that Valve fundamentally changes or goes bankrupt. Both seem unlikely. This makes any purchase on Steam basically as safe as a physical purchase, resulting in Steam basically replacing physical game purchases on the PC.
It's not a long term rental, it's an limited rental, and the rental period is determined by the "landlord", solely at their discretion. We've all become digital serfs, digiserf, if you will.
"Purchase" doesn't really mean anything, because being property isn't a quality of an object that can be analyzed. What being property means is dictated by anyone with the means to enforce their preferred meaning.
The definition of owning a book doesn't include the right to read it out loud, for example. I may own a small piece of land in the city, but I'm told that I must build a single-family home or grassy field on it rather than a parking lot, skyscraper, or open sewer.
The problem is that property rights are defined by people with the most property in a way that expands their control over that property.
For software it has never worked that well in the first place. I have a couple of game purchases (on disc, prior to the Steam era) that simply don't work anymore. You have to rely on the publisher to support newer OS versions, drivers etc.
For the best games, I usually rebuy them anyway as digital downloads on gog.com or similar.
I disagree. Vendors "get away with it" because "purchase" is, in practice, a more accurate description of the transaction than "rental." Everyone knows what a movie rental is--it is where you have access to a movie for some fixed, usually short (a few days) period of time. A "purchase" on iTunes does not fit into the mold of what people think of as a rental. The fact that there are some conditions attached doesn't change that result.
Note that this also comports with what "purchase" means as a legal matter. You can "purchase" land and get an interest short of a fee simple absolute. E.g. your interest might be preempted by the occurrence of some event. Such an interest is still an ownership interest, as opposed to a leasehold (rental) interest.
If you buy a paperback book you're purchasing the physical materials in the book (i.e. the paper and ink), and a license to the copy of the material in the book. You can't do whatever you want with the content - e.g. you can't copy it and sell it on.
It's only now that the materials and the content can be explictly and easily separated that we see this logic actually apply in more meaningful ways. This is going to apply to more and more things in the future (e.g. cars, phones, etc.) so we better get used to it, unfortunately.
It's not clearly stated in the original tweets, but I'm glad this article covered it. The Movie was not "physically" deleted from their library.
They didn't have a downloaded copy of it, and the ability to re-download (or stream) a new copy from iTunes no longer exists.
This is an understandable frustration since the workflows for iCloud, Apple Music, etc are pushing the cloud downloadability to be a first class feature and you would expect your purchases to stay there. That's sadly not always the case.
It's the same with Apple store apps - I've bought Rayman 2 and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 on my iPod touch years ago, and while these games are in my purchase history, there is no way to download them - there is no download button. So I've paid money for something that I can't get anymore. However, if I still had that iPod I'm sure they would still work.
It does seem obvious that short of having your own copy of something purchased (in this case, a movie), this will happen. Purchasing the right to see a movie, listen to a song, on a service, will never be the same as holding a physical copy. I wonder if it's even legal for Apple to maintain a copy of the movie in iTunes for customers who've already purchased it once they have lost the right to host it. Clearly, most of us don't appreciate the difference between what it meant to purchase something, and what it means today in the digital, subscription world.
So, if you really want to own a movie or a song, buy a physical incarnation of it, or make a digital copy of it.
Consumers understand the distinction between buying a car and leasing a car. Nobody says in common conversation, "I bought Spotify," they say, "I subscribed to Spotify."
It's no accident that companies like Apple lean on terminology like "purchase" instead of "license." Apple knows that the iTunes buy button would be less attractive if it used language that was more transparent. So instead they are capitalizing on that confusion - they want the customer to feel like this is a permanent transaction. They want a movie license to feel the same as the experience of buying a DVD.
If most consumers don't understand the difference, then businesses should use less confusing language within marketing and store interfaces. If they're OK with consumer confusion or if that consumer confusion is actually the point, then they should also be OK with the blowback they get when customers eventually feel misled or betrayed. They have to take the bad with the good.
> Purchasing the right to see a movie, listen to a song, on a service, will never be the same as holding a physical copy.
Yeah, that's a no-go, chief.
Even if it's somehow baked into the terms of service, I don't think it's reasonable for the average person to assume the content they are purchasing (not leasing, not renting, not subscribing to, but purchasing) might someday disappear, outside of the service shutting down forever.
As a technical person, I understand that may happen, but in this case, it's surprising. This is more evidence that we are not doing enough to police marketing and legalese.
Someone once told me that with bad contracts, two people can come away with different understandings as to what was greed upon. Good contracts can only be interpreted one way. The same should be true for almost every part of our economy - leases, sales contracts, mortgages, investments, employment agreements, terms of service, etc.
Personally, I believe we need to reign in the "unlimited" data claims, "adjustable" APRs, non-compete agreements, and privacy policies.
> Purchasing the right to see a movie, listen to a song, on a service, will never be the same as holding a physical copy.
I'm pretty sure you could design a SaaS offering in two parts: one that sells you a digital copy of a thing as a product (rather than a license), for delivery to a digital storage locker; and then, the other, a digital storage locker.
Oddly enough, Apple already has a digital storage locker, called iCloud Music Library. It's where your uploaded songs go when you use iTunes Match and the song doesn't actually match any entry in the Apple Music library.
If iCloud Music Library were properly designed (it's not), your purchased, matched, and uploaded songs would all be available permanently through iCloud Music Library in its capacity as a digital storage locker, whether or not they're still available through Apple Music. The licence-holders wouldn't be able to do anything about this: this isn't Apple broadcasting a song, this is Apple acting as the moral equivalent of bank, offering a safe-deposit box service, where you hold a box into which you've put a USB stick containing the song you bought from them.
Sadly, the synergy between Apple Music and iCloud Music Library is actually exactly the opposite of what anyone would want: when an artist's license agreement with Apple Music expires and their tracks are purged from the system, Apple will actually delete not just your purchased licenses from your iCloud Music Library; and not just the licenses of Apple Music tracks that fingerprint-matched local copies you had; but even your uploaded (!) copies of songs by a given artist that didn't match any Apple Music license, but just happened to have ID3 information corresponding to the artist whose rights were expiring. (In that case, the tracks still appear as entries in the iCloud Music Library list, but they're under a permanent "waiting" status, because their backing storage has been removed. There are many support threads about this issue, none with answers—well, that's what's going on.)
I wonder if it's even legal for Apple to maintain a copy of the movie in iTunes for customers who've already purchased it once they have lost the right to host it.
Actually, I'd put this on Apple legal: the contracts should specify that customer purchases can continue be hosted, and served to those customers in perpetuity. It's possible that Apple didn't have the leverage or foresight to negotiate these terms, but the "fix" here is straightforward because it's an issue of contractual terms, not some notion of "legality".
> It does seem obvious that short of having your own copy of something purchased (in this case, a movie), this will happen.
Even if you have your own copy, Apple will still delete your stuff. E.g. iTunes no longer makes an actual backup of the contents of your phone when it tells you it has done so, so when you get a new phone you need to redownload all of your apps from the cloud. Assuming they are still there, which often they are not.
I don't know why anyone is surprised by this. Apple has a long history of getting touchy-feely with our computers.
I can't count the number of times Apple has burned me. Going back over a decade, with the iTunes 4.01 "upgrade" that only removed the ability to stream my music collection over the internet.
And the countless shenanigans with the app store, like silently deleting old versions of apps. Several times I had regressions introduced and no way to go back. And that is really just the tip of the iceberg.
In particular, Apple completely ruined my iPad 4[1]
I can no longer read it in bed because I can't change the light filter. My favorite apps no longer work. And I did NOT want it, but they did it to me anyway.
I really think that we should have a threat model for manufacturer updates. I now have to research exactly what an update does before I install it, because it could very well rob me of functionality that I enjoyed. And the theme of dishonesty by manufacturers is more than enough reason not to trust them.
Apparently you haven't been following the battle between Redbox and Disney - not even a physical copy can side-step strong DRM via access codes. From what I can see thus far Disney is winning the battle in court.
So, even if you buy a physical incarnation of a copy, you might not actually own the content on the medium. Thanks a lot, Mickey Mouse /s
Yep. Nothing is immune from this principle. You buy a book on Amazon, they can take it away. You buy a movie on Apple, they can take it away. Now everybody gets to experience the thrill of a visit from the repo man!
Even Steam isnt immune. With some games they will maintain two copies for past and future customers reflecting a change in license but Rockstar removed a significant portion of the soundtrack to GTA4 for all customers a few months ago.
> Purchasing the right to see a movie, [...] will never be the same as holding a physical copy.
If I buy a game on Steam, I can download it in perpetuity. Even if the game is later taken off Steam, I can still download my copy. Technically the contract only gives me a revocable license, but in practise it behaves in every way like a purchase of a physical copy. It reliably does what people expect, and in return everyone uses Steam instead of physical media.
If the media industry doesn't allow this model, I am not sure how they expect digital purchases and streaming to replace physical media and piracy.
And do so in a computer you control, not in one controlled by someone else. I'm not talking only about having physical possession of the hardware, but also controlling what instructions that hardware executes. i.e. run free software.
The Amazon 1984[0] case comes to mind, where not running free software meant losing your data.
> So, if you really want to own a movie or a song, buy a physical incarnation of it, or make a digital copy of it.
Highly recommended. I buy disc copies of all my movies and rip them directly to my NAS with no additional transcoding, then serve them up via Plex. All the advantages of digital distribution, none of the drawbacks (the biggest one being "oops, we don't have the rights to that movie anymore").
Can't wait getting some classics removed from my movie library automatically when the algorithmic Zeitgeist decides they violate some new sensitivity. Funny this was predicted in detail 10 years ago (how to build such a system starting with secure boot loader) and we just go full steam ahead. "Masters" now have a perfect tool to rewrite history; all contradicting documents can disappear from devices at will. Seems like mindless hedonistic consumption bruising quiet virtuous parts of population without loud voice will be the only thing allowed; everything else would be polarizing and suppressed.
I'm honestly amazed at how well digital purchases have held up, and the fact that this is an expectation is evidence of the quality of service that's become standard. When I first started purchasing digital media, the expectation was always that you had to back it up yourself. I never expected to be able to download music I purchased on iTunes in 2003 15 years later for free!
Everyone was saying to buy physical media if you want to keep it around for a long time, but almost all the CDs I owned in 2003 are lost or destroyed forever, while music I purchased on iTunes or eMusic remains available to download or stream anywhere in Earth for free, and eMusic has changed ownership multiple times since then. Credit to Amazon for providing downloads of physical CDs purchased from them too. It's so much more than I expected.
Suppression of unwanted voices is not new, the only thing changing is the medium, there has been and always will, oppressors and rebels. There are tools to remove DRM and ways to jailbreak your device.
The same thing happens if you owe them any money, however small. Right now I owe Apple $0.99 because I’m waiting on a new card to come and one of my recent previous purchases failed.
Their response is to hold my entire library of “purchased” music and movies hostage until they get their $0.99. I can’t play or access anything.
Clearly, I own nothing in their eyes. This is the same as if Blockbuster would hold all your DVDs hostage you bought from them if you owed them any money. If you don’t own the unrestricted physical medium, you own nothing.
I guess there’s a reason Apple is dominant: aggression and brutality always win out in humanity. We are all just passive & submissive subordinates, Apple is our one true master and dark lord.
> "... aggression and brutality always win out in humanity. We are all just passive & submissive subordinates, Apple is our one true master and dark lord"
> I guess there’s a reason Apple is dominant: aggression and brutality always win out in humanity
How does that follow? Google, Facebook, Microsoft... are all equally heavy handed so I don't see how that makes Apple any more "dominant" than the other players in the field.
I was absolutely pissed when trying to re-install a rather expensive game (The Secret of Monkey Island) only to discover that I can't, because Disney yanked it from the AppStore after purchasing LucasArts. I paid for the damn thing, I used it then and I need it now. Talking to Apple is like talking to a f#cking wall. Absolutely pointless. Apparently I should've been making versioned backups of my iThing in order to preserve the binary. That was their actual reply. Ain't it something?
I view any digital distribution platform where your content is tied to the platform itself as renting rather than buying. Makes things much simpler.
That's why it was so disheartening to buy the x-com remake and find nothing but a steam activation code inside the box. I don't feel like I own that game because it's tied to an online account.
I know that you can just keep a local copy of it, but it's still tied to the platform and if you wanted to go to a different platform, you couldn't take it with you.
With iOS it's even worse, because you end up tied to a specific version of the platform.
For example: I bought the Monkey Island remake for iOS when it came out. It's no longer playable, because a 64-bit binary was never produced, and 32-bit apps don't work on iOS 11.
Similar things happened with computer operating systems, but holding on to an older version is so much easier to do on computers. I guess a 7 year usable life is decent for how much I paid for the game, but still, annoying.
Scrolling through the comments, the focus seems to be mostly on Apple, but this isn't about Apple. This is about the entertainment companies, copyright law, and the fact that these industries are so large and protected by regulatory capture that they can dictate to companies the size of APPLE how they should enforce their will on customers. The same caveats apply to Steam or Comcast or anyone else who is "selling" you something they can yank back away from you
(And, for the purposes of my comment, I make no distinction between removing the ability to re-download, or reach into your hard drive and delete.)
Isn't it rathwr unlikely they dictated anything to Apple, as Apple isn't, and wasn't exactly at the brink of bankruptcy. They could have chosen a different path.
It is probably more likely, looking at the history of a couple of different online movie/music services, that Apple simply decided to play ball with the media companies to get better deals, and earn more money. Simultaneosly getting a foot in the door to stop the "rebel" companies entering the scene, crashing the media industries party, and Apples too.
While Apple with their positioning obviously has a lot to win on being the #1 choice of the media giants, I believe they went there quite willingly.
The article frustratingly doesn't make clear what happens if you had downloaded the movie.
If you download the movie, and it's removed from Apple's library, and you try to play it, are you able? Or does it say, "Sorry, you are not authorized"?
This would make a big difference for me because I've downloaded every Apple purchase for years onto my Drobo. If Apple prevents playback in these cases, then I may as well delete them all and save terabytes of disk space.
How much of this is Apple's fault and how much of it is the RIAA and MPAA's fault for enforcing this region based DRM structure where every possible use of media is split up and locked from each other. Oh, I was only able to purchase the rights to allow my users to download this movie in the USA until 01/20, English Canada until 6/19, Quebec until 1/19, UK until 1/22.
Then, if the movie is still popular, the renewal rights for this movie will be bundled with 100s of other movies my users hate, all with different time periods and locations. If it isn't popular, it gets thrown into a bundle that will be forced upon content providers so net out a few extra $ on movies no one wants to see.
This is why I strip the DRM and backup anything I purchase locally, and don't use services that don't have any method to acquire a raw copy (like the google play store). It's a strong selling point if it's provided by the vendor (e.g. GOG for video games), but sadly hollywood is an industry that hates the concept.
My landlord can put a lock for which I don't have a key on my apartment door without telling me too. The question is not whether he can or can't lock my door. The question is whether or not the terms of our agreement allow him to block my access or not. The fact that people often don't understand the terms of there agreements is definitely a problem, but that's not what the headline implies unfortunately.
It gets weirder, our public library was asked to destroy their copy of "Eyes on the Prize", which they had either bought or been donated (it was a commercial product at the time), by the Martin Luther King family because of a dispute over rights. That dispute was settled (with the injection of money apparently) and it became available again but the library has not (the last time I checked) re-acquired it for their collection.
This story that Apple does this too reminds of how insane IP law can be. Next up, when you travel to a different region (based on GPS) your iDevice stops being able to play media you've got on the local flash drive.
I've noticed a lot of my older purchased music on Amazon Music is now unplayable without any notice to me. Usually the complete album is gone but sometimes it leaves me with just a few of the songs still playable from the album.
Good customer service lesson here: Apple should've offered either a refund or to mail him the Blu-rays of the movies. I imagine this is a rare enough scenario they can easily afford for that to be their default response to such a support ticket, and the customer would most likely either tweet positively about the experience or not at all. (There still might be the odd unreasonable one who complains "I wanted to watch it now!" but that can't be avoided).
> Apple wrote back to him that “the content provider has removed these movies from the Canadian Store. Hence, these movies are not available in the Canada iTunes Store at this time.”
So, if the person in the article used a VPN to pretend to be in the U.S., would he have been able to redownload his movies? Or is the account itself tethered to the Canada iTunes Store?
I'm not sure how the country attribution for iTunes accounts works.
It’s not just deletion; items are replaced based on “someone’s” judgment that the new item is equivalent. The later version is sometimes obviously different and often worse.
For instance, a “remastered” version can change content. A song might be completely rerecorded and sound different than the version I bought/liked.
If Star Wars teaches us anything, you can’t just rerelease something and assume it’s an improvement.
I thought you never owned a movie, you only had a license to view it. Even on BR, you only have a license to view it for as long as the physical disk is playable (or some such nonsense).
[+] [-] afandian|7 years ago|reply
If I buy a paperback book or a drm free ebook, that's a purchase.
If I pay for a drm movie or kindle book, that's a long-term rental.
[+] [-] wongarsu|7 years ago|reply
The only risk in comparison to a physical copy is that Valve fundamentally changes or goes bankrupt. Both seem unlikely. This makes any purchase on Steam basically as safe as a physical purchase, resulting in Steam basically replacing physical game purchases on the PC.
[+] [-] watertom|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimizer|7 years ago|reply
The definition of owning a book doesn't include the right to read it out loud, for example. I may own a small piece of land in the city, but I'm told that I must build a single-family home or grassy field on it rather than a parking lot, skyscraper, or open sewer.
The problem is that property rights are defined by people with the most property in a way that expands their control over that property.
[+] [-] trumped|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fandango|7 years ago|reply
For the best games, I usually rebuy them anyway as digital downloads on gog.com or similar.
[+] [-] rayiner|7 years ago|reply
Note that this also comports with what "purchase" means as a legal matter. You can "purchase" land and get an interest short of a fee simple absolute. E.g. your interest might be preempted by the occurrence of some event. Such an interest is still an ownership interest, as opposed to a leasehold (rental) interest.
[+] [-] crispyporkbites|7 years ago|reply
It's only now that the materials and the content can be explictly and easily separated that we see this logic actually apply in more meaningful ways. This is going to apply to more and more things in the future (e.g. cars, phones, etc.) so we better get used to it, unfortunately.
[+] [-] taobility|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lathiat|7 years ago|reply
They didn't have a downloaded copy of it, and the ability to re-download (or stream) a new copy from iTunes no longer exists.
This is an understandable frustration since the workflows for iCloud, Apple Music, etc are pushing the cloud downloadability to be a first class feature and you would expect your purchases to stay there. That's sadly not always the case.
But I think this is an important distinction
[+] [-] gambiting|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mehrdadn|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Crontab|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rajat|7 years ago|reply
So, if you really want to own a movie or a song, buy a physical incarnation of it, or make a digital copy of it.
[+] [-] danShumway|7 years ago|reply
Consumers understand the distinction between buying a car and leasing a car. Nobody says in common conversation, "I bought Spotify," they say, "I subscribed to Spotify."
It's no accident that companies like Apple lean on terminology like "purchase" instead of "license." Apple knows that the iTunes buy button would be less attractive if it used language that was more transparent. So instead they are capitalizing on that confusion - they want the customer to feel like this is a permanent transaction. They want a movie license to feel the same as the experience of buying a DVD.
If most consumers don't understand the difference, then businesses should use less confusing language within marketing and store interfaces. If they're OK with consumer confusion or if that consumer confusion is actually the point, then they should also be OK with the blowback they get when customers eventually feel misled or betrayed. They have to take the bad with the good.
[+] [-] dvdhnt|7 years ago|reply
Yeah, that's a no-go, chief.
Even if it's somehow baked into the terms of service, I don't think it's reasonable for the average person to assume the content they are purchasing (not leasing, not renting, not subscribing to, but purchasing) might someday disappear, outside of the service shutting down forever.
As a technical person, I understand that may happen, but in this case, it's surprising. This is more evidence that we are not doing enough to police marketing and legalese.
Someone once told me that with bad contracts, two people can come away with different understandings as to what was greed upon. Good contracts can only be interpreted one way. The same should be true for almost every part of our economy - leases, sales contracts, mortgages, investments, employment agreements, terms of service, etc.
Personally, I believe we need to reign in the "unlimited" data claims, "adjustable" APRs, non-compete agreements, and privacy policies.
[+] [-] derefr|7 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure you could design a SaaS offering in two parts: one that sells you a digital copy of a thing as a product (rather than a license), for delivery to a digital storage locker; and then, the other, a digital storage locker.
Oddly enough, Apple already has a digital storage locker, called iCloud Music Library. It's where your uploaded songs go when you use iTunes Match and the song doesn't actually match any entry in the Apple Music library.
If iCloud Music Library were properly designed (it's not), your purchased, matched, and uploaded songs would all be available permanently through iCloud Music Library in its capacity as a digital storage locker, whether or not they're still available through Apple Music. The licence-holders wouldn't be able to do anything about this: this isn't Apple broadcasting a song, this is Apple acting as the moral equivalent of bank, offering a safe-deposit box service, where you hold a box into which you've put a USB stick containing the song you bought from them.
Sadly, the synergy between Apple Music and iCloud Music Library is actually exactly the opposite of what anyone would want: when an artist's license agreement with Apple Music expires and their tracks are purged from the system, Apple will actually delete not just your purchased licenses from your iCloud Music Library; and not just the licenses of Apple Music tracks that fingerprint-matched local copies you had; but even your uploaded (!) copies of songs by a given artist that didn't match any Apple Music license, but just happened to have ID3 information corresponding to the artist whose rights were expiring. (In that case, the tracks still appear as entries in the iCloud Music Library list, but they're under a permanent "waiting" status, because their backing storage has been removed. There are many support threads about this issue, none with answers—well, that's what's going on.)
[+] [-] saidajigumi|7 years ago|reply
Actually, I'd put this on Apple legal: the contracts should specify that customer purchases can continue be hosted, and served to those customers in perpetuity. It's possible that Apple didn't have the leverage or foresight to negotiate these terms, but the "fix" here is straightforward because it's an issue of contractual terms, not some notion of "legality".
[+] [-] Alex3917|7 years ago|reply
Even if you have your own copy, Apple will still delete your stuff. E.g. iTunes no longer makes an actual backup of the contents of your phone when it tells you it has done so, so when you get a new phone you need to redownload all of your apps from the cloud. Assuming they are still there, which often they are not.
[+] [-] apostacy|7 years ago|reply
I can't count the number of times Apple has burned me. Going back over a decade, with the iTunes 4.01 "upgrade" that only removed the ability to stream my music collection over the internet.
And the countless shenanigans with the app store, like silently deleting old versions of apps. Several times I had regressions introduced and no way to go back. And that is really just the tip of the iceberg.
In particular, Apple completely ruined my iPad 4[1] I can no longer read it in bed because I can't change the light filter. My favorite apps no longer work. And I did NOT want it, but they did it to me anyway.
I really think that we should have a threat model for manufacturer updates. I now have to research exactly what an update does before I install it, because it could very well rob me of functionality that I enjoyed. And the theme of dishonesty by manufacturers is more than enough reason not to trust them.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11986500
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|7 years ago|reply
So, even if you buy a physical incarnation of a copy, you might not actually own the content on the medium. Thanks a lot, Mickey Mouse /s
[+] [-] jstarfish|7 years ago|reply
Even Steam isnt immune. With some games they will maintain two copies for past and future customers reflecting a change in license but Rockstar removed a significant portion of the soundtrack to GTA4 for all customers a few months ago.
[+] [-] wongarsu|7 years ago|reply
If I buy a game on Steam, I can download it in perpetuity. Even if the game is later taken off Steam, I can still download my copy. Technically the contract only gives me a revocable license, but in practise it behaves in every way like a purchase of a physical copy. It reliably does what people expect, and in return everyone uses Steam instead of physical media.
If the media industry doesn't allow this model, I am not sure how they expect digital purchases and streaming to replace physical media and piracy.
[+] [-] sandov|7 years ago|reply
And do so in a computer you control, not in one controlled by someone else. I'm not talking only about having physical possession of the hardware, but also controlling what instructions that hardware executes. i.e. run free software.
The Amazon 1984[0] case comes to mind, where not running free software meant losing your data.
[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...
[+] [-] xienze|7 years ago|reply
Highly recommended. I buy disc copies of all my movies and rip them directly to my NAS with no additional transcoding, then serve them up via Plex. All the advantages of digital distribution, none of the drawbacks (the biggest one being "oops, we don't have the rights to that movie anymore").
[+] [-] bitL|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ewzimm|7 years ago|reply
Everyone was saying to buy physical media if you want to keep it around for a long time, but almost all the CDs I owned in 2003 are lost or destroyed forever, while music I purchased on iTunes or eMusic remains available to download or stream anywhere in Earth for free, and eMusic has changed ownership multiple times since then. Credit to Amazon for providing downloads of physical CDs purchased from them too. It's so much more than I expected.
[+] [-] SSLy|7 years ago|reply
Over 20, the story is from 1997.
[+] [-] neuralRiot|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qiqing|7 years ago|reply
I know that doesn't address the main point, but ... quibbles.
[+] [-] iamleppert|7 years ago|reply
Their response is to hold my entire library of “purchased” music and movies hostage until they get their $0.99. I can’t play or access anything.
Clearly, I own nothing in their eyes. This is the same as if Blockbuster would hold all your DVDs hostage you bought from them if you owed them any money. If you don’t own the unrestricted physical medium, you own nothing.
I guess there’s a reason Apple is dominant: aggression and brutality always win out in humanity. We are all just passive & submissive subordinates, Apple is our one true master and dark lord.
[+] [-] dymk|7 years ago|reply
Have we reached peak melodrama on HN?
[+] [-] lloeki|7 years ago|reply
How does that follow? Google, Facebook, Microsoft... are all equally heavy handed so I don't see how that makes Apple any more "dominant" than the other players in the field.
[+] [-] huhtenberg|7 years ago|reply
I was absolutely pissed when trying to re-install a rather expensive game (The Secret of Monkey Island) only to discover that I can't, because Disney yanked it from the AppStore after purchasing LucasArts. I paid for the damn thing, I used it then and I need it now. Talking to Apple is like talking to a f#cking wall. Absolutely pointless. Apparently I should've been making versioned backups of my iThing in order to preserve the binary. That was their actual reply. Ain't it something?
Caveat emptor, basically.
[+] [-] sidstling|7 years ago|reply
That's why it was so disheartening to buy the x-com remake and find nothing but a steam activation code inside the box. I don't feel like I own that game because it's tied to an online account.
I know that you can just keep a local copy of it, but it's still tied to the platform and if you wanted to go to a different platform, you couldn't take it with you.
[+] [-] bunderbunder|7 years ago|reply
For example: I bought the Monkey Island remake for iOS when it came out. It's no longer playable, because a 64-bit binary was never produced, and 32-bit apps don't work on iOS 11.
Similar things happened with computer operating systems, but holding on to an older version is so much easier to do on computers. I guess a 7 year usable life is decent for how much I paid for the game, but still, annoying.
[+] [-] TheRealDunkirk|7 years ago|reply
(And, for the purposes of my comment, I make no distinction between removing the ability to re-download, or reach into your hard drive and delete.)
[+] [-] lostmyoldone|7 years ago|reply
It is probably more likely, looking at the history of a couple of different online movie/music services, that Apple simply decided to play ball with the media companies to get better deals, and earn more money. Simultaneosly getting a foot in the door to stop the "rebel" companies entering the scene, crashing the media industries party, and Apples too.
While Apple with their positioning obviously has a lot to win on being the #1 choice of the media giants, I believe they went there quite willingly.
[+] [-] tunesmith|7 years ago|reply
If you download the movie, and it's removed from Apple's library, and you try to play it, are you able? Or does it say, "Sorry, you are not authorized"?
This would make a big difference for me because I've downloaded every Apple purchase for years onto my Drobo. If Apple prevents playback in these cases, then I may as well delete them all and save terabytes of disk space.
[+] [-] jboy55|7 years ago|reply
Then, if the movie is still popular, the renewal rights for this movie will be bundled with 100s of other movies my users hate, all with different time periods and locations. If it isn't popular, it gets thrown into a bundle that will be forced upon content providers so net out a few extra $ on movies no one wants to see.
[+] [-] Macha|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbostleman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|7 years ago|reply
This story that Apple does this too reminds of how insane IP law can be. Next up, when you travel to a different region (based on GPS) your iDevice stops being able to play media you've got on the local flash drive.
[+] [-] vonzeppelin|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smitherfield|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qiqing|7 years ago|reply
> Apple wrote back to him that “the content provider has removed these movies from the Canadian Store. Hence, these movies are not available in the Canada iTunes Store at this time.”
So, if the person in the article used a VPN to pretend to be in the U.S., would he have been able to redownload his movies? Or is the account itself tethered to the Canada iTunes Store?
I'm not sure how the country attribution for iTunes accounts works.
[+] [-] makecheck|7 years ago|reply
For instance, a “remastered” version can change content. A song might be completely rerecorded and sound different than the version I bought/liked.
If Star Wars teaches us anything, you can’t just rerelease something and assume it’s an improvement.
[+] [-] eric24234|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chooseaname|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robbiemitchell|7 years ago|reply