Man sues Apple for terminating Apple ID with $24K worth of content

[DrMacintosh]

Should accounts be arbitrarily terminated? Absolutely not. Is physical media better than digital media? Yes. 

 

How one spends $24K on iTunes and the App Store, I don't know. What I do know is that if you're collecting a media library, you should have at least some physical media that isn't tied to an online service. 

[RejZoR]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

Should accounts be arbitrarily terminated? Absolutely not. Is physical media better than digital media? Yes. 

Is it? Coz I sure don't remember missing installing games from 6 CD's. Or 4 DVD's. imagine installing CoD Warzone from DVD's. Or even BluRays...

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, RejZoR said:

Is it? Coz I sure don't remember missing installing games from 6 CD's. Or 4 DVD's. imagine installing CoD Warzone from DVD's. Or even BluRays...

We'll I'm talking about movies and music. In which case, yeah physical is better. 

[RejZoR]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

We'll I'm talking about movies and music. In which case, yeah physical is better. 

It's not. Last time I was using physical media for movies was VHS and for music, CD's. I'm "old school", but I just can't stand dumb physical movie formats.

[Kisai]

19 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

We'll I'm talking about movies and music. In which case, yeah physical is better. 

I’ve only been buying films on disc if they aren’t on Netflix (eg Disney), otherwise I’m content to watch them once on Netflix and leave it at that.

[Guest]

Amazon did this to me. There was a system error by Chase via their own Amazon card. It automatically reversed every transaction I had made for 3 months. They shut down my account and it was right when lockdowns for COVID started and they were not taking calls for billing related issues. They sent all manner of threatening emails from a "no-reply" account (10-20 a day between midnight and 5am) demanding money that was not returned to me. Lost access to all Amazon content and services. At this point I had Kindles, echoes devices, web services. All poofed. It took over a month to resolve and I've migrated away from any and all services since. Still use it for shopping, but that's it. 

[Brooksie359]

4 hours ago, elfensky said:

This is a clear example of why a lot of people still prefer physical media, buy consoles with disc-drives or CDs instead of paying for streaming. Stuff like this.
Sure what Apple did was (currently) within their rights... But it sure does leave a sour taste in your mouth, doesn't it?
 

Music I liked disappeared from Spotify. I know Apple themselves removed movies people bought from their account in the past. There's a reason I stopped paying subscriptions and moved to hosting my own Plex server.

 

I think there needs to a refactoring of ownership laws concerning digital content. Currently basically all of it is a "license to use", not an actual ownership. And while some licenses might be non-revocable, access to the content certainly is, and keeps being dependent on the service that provides them. And current Copyright laws and DRM can certainly get part of the blame.

I think Apple is actually currently being sued about their wording about "purchasing" movies on iTunes, when it was actually an "extended renter's agreement".

Terms and conditions doesn't mean it's within their rights. Rights are given by the state not Apple. Companies put stuff in terms and conditions that are clearly against the law all the time and people have to take them to court over it to actually hold them accountable. I hardly see what right they have to simply get rid of the persons access to the content he paid for simply because its in their terms and conditions. If someone puts a slavery clause in a terms and conditions that doesn't all of a sudden make slavery legal because someone agreed to the terms and conditions. I seriously don't get why people think terms and conditions have any legal significance if it conflicts with existing laws. Take for example my brother who had a lease agreement that said for every hour he didn't turn in the keys they would charge 200 dollars after the lease was up. Sure some would say oh its in the terms of the agreement so they have every right to charge 4800 dollars if you are a day late in turning in the keys but they would be incorrect. The reason being that the money the landlord potential loses does not justify the cost of the charge. The landlord ended up dropping the charge so my brother didn't have to pay the 4800 dollars. 

[XWAUForceflow]

From my understanding of the case it mostly comes down that Apple writes in the TOS that if they can pretty much decide at any point in time that you have done something wrong and suspend or delete your Apple ID without prior notice, without letting you know why your account was deleted and as such with no way to defend yourself.

If this is truly the case then it is a clear issue. Mistakes happen all the time, but if Apple (or any other company for that matter) can just take away your access to products you lawfully purchased without giving you any way to challenge their decision that is a huge problem.

 

In my personal opinion it also shouldn't be possible for companies to take away your purchased content on a simple TOS violation. I agree that they should be able to decide to no longer do any additional business with you, but content you paid for should stay available unless a court decides that whatever the user did was bad enough to take away his property.

[Bombastinator]

5 hours ago, XWAUForceflow said:

Summary

Apple has terminated an Apple ID whose user had nearly $24k worth of content attached to it which he can no longer access. He is suing Apple now saying that the TOS allowing Apple to do that is unlawful.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

I think that this is certainly a topic that needs to be discussed and be decided by a court. Though I think that this needs to go far beyond just Apple. The fact that companies can at any point in time remove your access to bought (sorry, *licensed*) content at any time with no way for the average user to fight this is just ridiculous. More so in an eco-system like iOS or Android where it might render your physical devices almost unusable. I agree that companies shouldn't be forced to do business with you, but things you already bought should remain accessible to you. And there needs to be a way for users to reliably and easily be able to challenge bans and account deletions plus a company needs to give you specific reasons as to why your were banned. (Otherwise there is no way for you to disprove a claim)

 

Sources

 https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/04/20/man-sues-apple-for-terminating-apple-id-with-24k-worth-of-content

Interesting.  There’s often critical details left out of stuff like this to make it more palatable to a given viewpoint. One question that is begged I think, is WHY he got terminated.  I’ve never heard of apple doing that before.  One of the complications of TOS contracts is if they put an illegal proviso in (which IS done a lot with a lot of contracts) is the ENTIRE contract is null and void.  Can cause HUGE sometimes business ending problems to a company relying on a contract being enforceable.  It may also be used as a precedent in other contracts depending on what is ruled illegal.  If it gets declared illegal ALL contracts with that proviso may also be null and void. Not sure how common their wording is but potential exists in these sorts of situations to shake up an entire industry.  Billions could be on the line here.

Edited April 23, 2021 by Bombastinator

[AnonymousGuy]

11 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

One of the complications of TOS contracts is if they put an illegal proviso in (which IS done a lot with a lot of contracts) is the ENTIRE contract is null and void. 

No.  In fact boiler plate contract language has a section that says to the effect of "if one of the provisions in this contract is found unlawful the rest still stand"

[trag1c]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

All of a sudden "it doesn't matter". I guess we should just close down the courts, we don't need the "reasons" anymore to make verdicts. Lets go back in drowning people and see if they float or drown to see if they are witches...

 

Jokes aside. As Much as I hate Apple I would have to agree that they probably had a very good reason to bring the ban hammer against that account.

[elfensky]

5 hours ago, tikker said:

I believe, but I could be wrong, that DVDs or Blu Rays are also nothing more than a license to view the content on that disc. The key difference is that if your local DVD shop disappears, you still have access to your license, so I think the problem here is: if the vendor loses their license to distribute said movie, does that immediately void your license to watch as well? (I don't think it should) In other words, what kind of license are you obtaining through these storefronts and are you purchasing said license or renting them.

You are correct, and even ripping them for a Plex server is technically still illegal, but there's a large line between "legally" wrong and "morally" wrong .
I firmly believe that an "I own the discs what the fuck do you want from me"-argument would hold up in court. And frankly is the reason no company ever (to my knowledge) went after someone ripping discs for personal use. Especially here in consumer-friendly Europe ^^.

What I think is that if the vendor looses the license, they should stop selling new access to the content, but past purchases should be guaranteed and still allowed delivery/access. Basically, the way Steam does it with games that get removed from the Store.

It's a much grayer line when it comes to streaming, but if you specifically bought a movie on, for example, Google Play Movies or iTunes, you should retain lifelong access to it.

 

This is not even touching the ability to transfer licenses to, for example family. I think we will see big upheavals in the latter part of this century as people who own a large amount of digital content die off and children sue for access to it.

[tikker]

7 minutes ago, elfensky said:

You are correct, and even ripping them for a Plex server is technically still illegal, but there's a large line between "legally" wrong and "morally" wrong .
I firmly believe that an "I own the discs what the fuck do you want from me"-argument would hold up in court. And frankly is the reason no company ever (to my knowledge) went after someone ripping discs for personal use. Especially here in consumer-friendly Europe ^^.

Ah yes the everlasting gray area where we are allowed to make copies for home use, but are not allowed to break the copy protection to do so.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

No.  In fact boiler plate contract language has a section that says to the effect of "if one of the provisions in this contract is found unlawful the rest still stand"

Hence proving the point.  It COULD be possible to prevent an entire contract from being nullified. IF that is in place.  There are still weaknesses though.  In that instance it specifically says ONE of them is.  If TWO of them are there is a danger the rest may come down to what judge you draw.  This is why judges make the big bucks and why what red does when it gets the opportunity in the US, is swap out as many judges as they possibly can. There was this whole thing about “activist” judges some years ago.  What is the opposite of active? Inactive.  They wanted judges who would let things stand even if obvious evil was being done.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, XWAUForceflow said:

 

In my personal opinion it also shouldn't be possible for companies to take away your purchased content on a simple TOS violation. I agree that they should be able to decide to no longer do any additional business with you, but content you paid for should stay available unless a court decides that whatever the user did was bad enough to take away his property.

In the event of a "termination of access" to services, such companies should be required to do one of the following:

a) Refund the original purchase price of everything on the account and everything tied to the account, including consumable "Service fees" paid for access to services provided and billed via the account (eg Apple TV), this is the cowardly action, and will result in people getting outraged by losing access to materials that are exclusive to one platform.

b) Offer to sell the account owner a "hard copy" backup of all materials attached to the account. (By which I mean, they will ship you 32GB SD cards with each product on them, 1 card per film, application/game, tv series, and 1 card per music album, of which you can select what you want a sd card copy of, and what you want to abandon.) This is the better compromise and forces the company to at least provide a way to backup/restore this software without access to the account.

c) Offer to TRANSFER the account assets to another store, by which you can see the problem here, since you can't run MacOS and iOS apps on other hardware. Music, TV shows, and Films can all be transferred to another service (eg Youtube, Amazon), anything that can't be transferred must then be given at NO COST to the account holder. This is the less ideal option, since your media might get transferred from a DRM-free platform to a DRM platform that doesn't work on your media devices you already own.

 

Like to be honest, with the Disney films, I was willing to buy them all once. Not the live action stuff, just the Animated ones. Netflix is the better option for all films, and kinda holds the same position steam does for me. Where I'm not willing to subscribe to Disney+, Paramount+, HBO Max, etc unless there is something I REALLY want. Which while some stuff on other services occasionally peaks my interest, I'd rather wait for it to all be done, sub once, binge watch it, and then cancel it if nothing else is interesting. Netflix most of the time has something I'd like to watch, so it's not hot garbage like gambling on what the other services might have.

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Kisai said:

In the event of a "termination of access" to services, such companies should be required to do one of the following:

a) Refund the original purchase price of everything on the account and everything tied to the account, including consumable "Service fees" paid for access to services provided and billed via the account (eg Apple TV), this is the cowardly action, and will result in people getting outraged by losing access to materials that are exclusive to one platform.

b) Offer to sell the account owner a "hard copy" backup of all materials attached to the account. (By which I mean, they will ship you 32GB SD cards with each product on them, 1 card per film, application/game, tv series, and 1 card per music album, of which you can select what you want a sd card copy of, and what you want to abandon.) This is the better compromise and forces the company to at least provide a way to backup/restore this software without access to the account.

c) Offer to TRANSFER the account assets to another store, by which you can see the problem here, since you can't run MacOS and iOS apps on other hardware. Music, TV shows, and Films can all be transferred to another service (eg Youtube, Amazon), anything that can't be transferred must then be given at NO COST to the account holder. This is the less ideal option, since your media might get transferred from a DRM-free platform to a DRM platform that doesn't work on your media devices you already own.

 

Like to be honest, with the Disney films, I was willing to buy them all once. Not the live action stuff, just the Animated ones. Netflix is the better option for all films, and kinda holds the same position steam does for me. Where I'm not willing to subscribe to Disney+, Paramount+, HBO Max, etc unless there is something I REALLY want. Which while some stuff on other services occasionally peaks my interest, I'd rather wait for it to all be done, sub once, binge watch it, and then cancel it if nothing else is interesting. Netflix most of the time has something I'd like to watch, so it's not hot garbage like gambling on what the other services might have.

Those might produce issues.  It could be possible to create an account that is too expensive to take action against even if rules are broken.  Creating the capacity to make “above the law” accounts could have their own problems. 

 

It does sound really really bad and kind of an open-and-shut. I wonder if there might be more to this one though.  

[Kisai]

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Those might produce issues.  It could be possible to create an account that is too expensive to take action against even if rules are broken.  Creating the capacity to make “above the law” accounts could have their own problems. 

 

It does sound really really bad and kind of an open-and-shut. I wonder if there might be more to this one though.  

Tough noogies for them. We need some kind of customer protection laws that protect users from having their data deleted, locked out or held for ransom.

 

Like let's say, theoretically, I had 100 films on Apple, and Apple closed the account for no particular reason. 100 films x cost of 1 BD per film = 100 BD-rom's, might cost Apple $60 if they had someone sit there and burn everything to disc. So assuming we had a 16x writer, at 23 minutes per disc, means someone has to be paid 39 hours to burn all of that, so that might cost $1000 in labor, not including the time to pack and ship it. Or $10.60 per film. How much does it cost to just get the original BD film? For Disney $30 per film (They're more expensive than the live action ones.)

 

One might make the argument that you're only renting a license to software, movies, tv shows, music, games, etc but that's like having the bank or insurance company come and demolish your house, with everything in it, for no obvious reason.

 

 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Tough noogies for them. We need some kind of customer protection laws that protect users from having their data deleted, locked out or held for ransom.

 

Like let's say, theoretically, I had 100 films on Apple, and Apple closed the account for no particular reason. 100 films x cost of 1 BD per film = 100 BD-rom's, might cost Apple $60 if they had someone sit there and burn everything to disc. So assuming we had a 16x writer, at 23 minutes per disc, means someone has to be paid 39 hours to burn all of that, so that might cost $1000 in labor, not including the time to pack and ship it. Or $10.60 per film. How much does it cost to just get the original BD film? For Disney $30 per film (They're more expensive than the live action ones.)

 

One might make the argument that you're only renting a license to software, movies, tv shows, music, games, etc but that's like having the bank or insurance company come and demolish your house, with everything in it, for no obvious reason.

 

 

 

 

The key phrase there is “for no particular reason”  if this IS a “for no particular reason” situation it’s an issue.  It might be.  I don’t know.  This is also why I don’t buy from app stores when possible.  Predatory TOSes are a thing and they’ve gotten rampantly more common. 

[Gaires]

I don't see the problem.

 

Either lockdown the his account so that he can only use it to use the content he has already bought, or just refund him.

 

If the guy has done something actually illegal, just file a police report and let the law handle it.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, Gaires said:

I don't see the problem.

 

Either lockdown the his account so that he can only use it to use the content he has already bought, or just refund him.

 

If the guy has done something actually illegal, just file a police report and let the law handle it.

The problem is the law only covers gross problems.  There’s a lot of room to do a lot of damage to others without breaking the law, and even then it’s got to be prosecuted.  I like the lockdown thing though. 

[ARikozuM]

This is pretty simple, really. Apple must now refund the ... $24K along with any device that is now locked out.

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

This is pretty simple, really. Apple must now refund the ... $24K along with any device that is now locked out.

Well they arguably may have to do something anyway.  24k is a bizarre amount of software.  I’m wondering if he’s quoting prices for stuff he got for free or has demo versions of or something.  That number is so high it strains credibility. 

[ARikozuM]

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Well they arguably may have to do something anyway.  24k is a bizarre amount of software.  I’m wondering if he’s quoting prices for stuff he got for free or has demo versions of or something.  That number is so high it strains credibility. 

Not quite bizarre. I have an estimated 8K in music and who knows how much in movies. It's entirely possible for someone to have much more considering how integrated products and software are in Apple's systems. 

 

5 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The key phrase there is “for no particular reason”  if this IS a “for no particular reason” situation it’s an issue.  It might be.  I don’t know.  This is also why I don’t buy from app stores when possible.  Predatory TOSes are a thing and they’ve gotten rampantly more common. 

Even if there was a "reason", there should still be a full refund of all money used on the account, barring fraud. 

[suicidalfranco]

15 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

any device that is now locked out.

didn't consider that

too bad you can just sideload stuff, or have alternative app repositories 

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Not quite bizarre. I have an estimated 8K in music and who knows how much in movies. It's entirely possible for someone to have much more considering how integrated products and software are in Apple's systems. 

 

Even if there was a "reason", there should still be a full refund of all money used on the account, barring fraud. 

This whole thing smells heavily of spin. 24k is what some new cars go for. That’s a lot of software to put on a phone.  It seems like a possible attempt to make Apple Pay for the results of a Savage candy krush addiction or something.