Apple is facing a putative class action lawsuit over the way consumers can “buy” or “rent” movies, TV shows and other content in the iTunes Store. David Andino, the lead plaintiff in this case, argues the distinction is deceptive. He alleges Apple reserves the right to terminate access to what consumers have “purchased” and has done so on several occasions. Andino claims he wouldn’t have gone through with the purchase, or paid as much, if he’d known the content could one day become unavailable.
Rejecting a motion to dismiss, a federal judge says it is plausible that consumers don’t know that access to purchased content can be revoked.
Eriq Gardner for The Hollywood Reporter:
This week, U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez made clear he isn’t ready to buy into Apple’s view of consumer expectations in the digital marketplace.
“Apple contends that ‘[n]o reasonable consumer would believe’ that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely,” writes 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.”
The lawsuit does lose its unjust enrichment claim, but Mendez does leave open the possibility of injunctive relief that could force Apple to change the way it sells content. We’ll see if the suit really gets there or is settled. Meanwhile, Amazon is facing a similar lawsuit over Prime Video purchases.
MacDailyNews Take: In our iTunes Store, accessed via Apple’s Music app, there aren’t even TV shows or movies availble to “buy” or “rent.” Now, in Apple’s TV app, there certainly are movies and TV shows with “Buy” buttons, so perhaps this lawsuit covers these with “iTunes Store” covering all of Apple’s media stores and apps. It will be interesting if Apple needs to do more than simply explain what “buy” really means beyond the legalese in their Apple Media Services Terms and Conditions document.
Welcome to the strange new world of online EVERYTHING! When you have anything online, you simply lose control. This applies to online storage/backups too.
I have long developed personal storage of everything I buy.
When it comes to online ANYTHING, Caveat Emptor!
One could make the case for the amount or reliability for, say, music. I will try:
1. A real person playing a real physical instrument.
2. A CD of that music.
3. A digital version on an external HD.
4. Cloud, the least permanent.
That’s not quite true. If you purchase DRM free digital products (e.g. ebooks from baen.com) you keep the file(s) and the seller has no right to remove it from your possession.
Apple does not assert the right to remove a downloaded file from your possession. It does, however, have the duty NOT to download a file to you without the permission of the copyright owner. If you did not download the file when you paid for it and do not have a backup, Apple cannot help you unless it still has the right to distribute the file when you want them to replace it. That is not something within their sole control. Artists, developers, and publishers do not sign over all their rights to Apple when they enter into a distribution deal. Distribution deals get cancelled all the time, and one of the consequences of that is that you cannot still get the copyrighted work from the old distributor after the contract ends.
Even “Buy” is moved into the realm of ambiguous, shifting and changing word definitions.
Honey, where’s the hemlock?
Since Apple is selling ‘access’ to the digital product and not a copy of the product itself, they just have to change every ‘buy’ button to ‘buy access’. The ‘buy’ distinction in this case would probably fall into the same rules as the 2nd party to an agreement having the benefit of the doubt on any ambiguity of any terms in the agreement.
Apple is wrong on this issue and deserves to lose. When you ‘buy’ something, you dont expect the seller to make it disappear from your possession.
They should send the (rightfully)complaining customers a Blu-ray and be clear on their sites. Buy is buy.
How is this issue unique to Apple? Amazon pulls purchased books from your Kindle without warning, Disney removes purchased content from their services, various streaming services that have gone out of business often take your movies with them, and even companies like Nest or Sonos will brick or invalidate your PHYSICAL purchases when they stop supporting their online controllers. Yes, it sucks that “buy” means “lease for as long as we let you” but it’s a cloud thing, not an Apple thing. Welcome to the connected world…
Another example: since Apple moved iOS app management out of MacOS iTunes several years ago, your backups—even local backups—no longer contain the actual app, but a link to the App Store. When you restore from that backup, the app is downloaded if it is still available on the App Store. If the app is no longer available, it just disappears from your device, no matter how much you paid for it.
To buy means to own it and to be able to use it whenever wanted. Period.
True… this is not just an Apple thing. It is a cloud thing. Many companies are taking advantage of the ignorance of buyers and getting away with it because few question it, let alone challenge it. But our culture has learned to accept the changing definition of words, so now companies mean buy=lease. But it is wrong… Buy is Buy. There should be provision to make ownership permanent.
Ha, one of my iTune songs I purchased all of a sudden sounded slightly different, at first I thought it was me. Turns out, they replaced the song with a k-tel like quality song. Really REALLY pisses me off! Effing joke!
‘Buy’ means afterward its mine. What part of that word don’t you get. Apple could just as well start it corrupt, lyingassdog small type agreements with the words … “When you buy, it is not yours, no matter what English definition you apply to it …” More Tim Woke Cook.
Anybody else think there might be interesting backstory re: why this guy ‘owned’ $25,000 of Apple content and why Apple terminated his account?
How about “PAY” to replace “BUY?” And accompanied by a small pop out text window that says, “Ha ha! Sucker!” Or how about something civilized: “Paying does not assure perpetual availability.”
Similarly, the contract between an app developer or musical artist and Apple does not assure that the developer will not someday pull the product from the App or iTunes Store. In the case of apps, it does not assure that the developer will maintain the product to keep it functional. However, the intellectual property laws DO assure that Apple cannot continue to make the song or app available without the creator’s consent, no matter how much the end-user paid for his license to use the product.
I think the suer has a good case because of long-standing assumption that to buy implies ownership. Yes, artists and distributors of that art are an integral parts of the chain of availability. But also technology, either an alteration or a complete replacement of the previous.
All the more reason to make it clear that an ‘access license’ is being purchased, not the actual product being accessed.
Buy should really be buy and I should be able to organize my movie library on the tv app.