This wasn't remotely deleted from his devices. What happened here was that he (reasonably) expected to be able to download another copy from Apple, and found out he couldn't. "Buy" doesn't mean "host it for me online forever". It was reasonable for him to expect to be able to do this, but it's not unreasonable for Apple to use the word "buy".
(However, he could move the music he had purchased from Apple and still had on his computer to his new Windows machine, unless I am mistaken, as they're not DRM'd. Not sure about movies.)
These online storefronts promise a service that's a combination of buying something and having them store the master copy so you can always access it from your devices.
You'd be upset if someone rummaged around your safe deposit locker and removed a DVD that you had purchased, right? Even though you're not handling that copy yourself, you expect it to be protected and accessible as long as the safe deposit lockers exist.
It's possible to carefully keep track of copies on your hard drive. But those are all secondary copies, far more ephemeral than a physical disc. There's nothing dumb about letting them be deleted when the master copy is still being promised to you. It's just unfortunate trust.
Yes, it does!
That is precisely the problem. My grandmother was born in 1939. Apple tells her that she can "buy" her copy of the Andrews Sisters Greatest Hits, and after she "buys" it she can play it on her iPhone whenever she wants.
If Apple was truthful and said, "you can sort of rent a copy of this album, unless someone you never meet makes a decision you'll never hear about, and then it might disappear. Oh, and also, you're really rolling the dice if you travel to another country," then they wouldn't have gotten my grandmother's money.
Apple is taking advantage of misleading language, telling my grandmother she can "buy" this music, when for the first 70 years of her life "buy" meant "it's yours forever unless you decide to get rid of it".
When you "buy" your music from Apple, you don't choose where to download your single copy of it, make sure you have storage, and back it up to tape for safe-keeping. Apple explicitly tells you that you can "buy" your music and "it's stored in the cloud (ooohh aaaahh it's magic). Instantly available on all your devices."
Yes, I understand that this abuse is industry-wide. That doesn't make it right. If they had tried this shit 40 years ago they'd have been on the losing end of several lawsuits. Trying to tell my 80 year old grandmother, "Ackshually, you didn't buy this music, you bought a license to this music, and we decided to revoke it because reasons. Would you like to buy the 2018 remastered edition and hope that we don't decide to do this again?" should make them liable for bait-and-switch and truth-in-advertising lawsuits.
I didn't expect my argument to take this turn, but I think this is a good example for why 80 year olds vote for Trump. Our "greed is good" hyper-capitalist society has practically weaponized taking advantage of people. They don't really understand what's going on, but they do understand that they're getting screwed, and they're angry about it, so they follow the people on TV who seem to be as angry as they are.
So if I buy a DVD from Wal-Mart, should they also be forced to give me another copy of the DVD if mine gets scratched or lost? Or is it my responsibility to take care of the things I've purchased and keep them safe?
With Apple, you don't spend your money on anything physical. You explicitely spend it on a service provided for you that allows you to redownload the file whenever you want.
Any exceptions to that should be clear from the start, not buried in a small font somewhere in the ToS.
No it doesn't. Buy means, it's yours, and in the future it will be still be yours. "Subscribe" or "Subscription" probably would be a more exact term. "Now it's yours but in the future who knows".
The change is that, in addition, you can generally download more copies. The limitations on this may be inadequately explained, but this is all on top of what you'd get if you 'bought' 40 years ago.
Stores keep using slightly misleading words, because people are more likely to buy then if they used slightly more accurate wording. Then we blame users for acting based on what they were told.