Imagine a bank marketing itself as "No reasonable consumer would believe that their deposits will remain in the bank indefinitely"

This is a really awe-inspiring, a complete rejection of the concept of ownership

Actually that is correct in many countries (including US). After a period of inactivity (typically 3-5 years) the bank is required to turn over the money from inactive accounts to the state. This process is called escheatment. I'm not joking.

You've implied it's permanent transfer of ownership to the state. It's not.

From wikipedia: "Escheats are performed on a revocable basis. Thus, if property has escheated to a State but the original owner subsequently is found, escheatment is revoked and ownership of the property reverts to that original owner."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escheat#United_States

That is a protection. The government holds the money and you can apply for it anytime. As can your relatives. Have you never received unclaimed funds you didn't know were due to you?

Is this what the 419 scam stories are based on?

> Have you never received unclaimed funds you didn't know were due to you?

No... have you?

Federal unclaimed property site: https://www.usa.gov/unclaimed-money

State unclaimed property index (find your state site at the top): https://unclaimed.org/search/#

Yes, I have. My state has a website where you can search for and claim your funds back. It's quite easy.

Happens all the time. They even used to publish lists of unclaimed funds in the paper. It's occurred to me twice in my lifetime.

I've got a $200 check sitting on my desk from this very thing.

Only on HN would you need to specify "active account" for such a clear cut analogy. Two replies and both are picking that nit.

Apple is admitting regardless of activity, studios can revoke their license to content, removing content from your active account

Threads with analogies are one of my favorite HN idiosyncrasies because they’re almost guaranteed to be followed up with something along the lines of “a better analogy would be $materiallySimilarAnalogy” or “that’s not a good analogy because $immaterialDetail”. Just an endearing quirk of HN users to have a tendency to be overly-precise, I think.

I had 19¢ in a bank account I that sat dormant for 4 year. Still there when I logged in and started using the account again.

Let's hope they don't close your account.

In Futurama's "A Fishful of Dollars"[1] Fry discovers that the $0.93 he had in his account when he was cryogenically frozen in the year 2,000 had grown at 2.25% a year to almost $4.3 billion when he was reawakened 1,000 years later.

Yes, the match checks out[2]: 0.93 * (1.0225 ^ 1000) ≈ 4,283,508,449.71

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fishful_of_Dollars

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.93+*+%281.0225+%5E+1...

Of course that episode conveniently overlooks inflation. In reality, 4 billion dollars in the year 3000 would barely buy you a stick of Big Pink - the only gum made with the breath-freshening power of ham.

It's not an inactive account if it is being logged in.

I didn't log in for 4 years.

would be nice if apple/amazon/google did that too

No reasonable lender would believe that I am paying that loan back.

oh no no THAT's unreasonable

I'm just back to pirating shamelessly. Emby, Radarr, nzbget.

I think the future is Popcorn Time + a patron-like model

Not sure tequila will really help this situation...

This is already reality. Paypal shuts down inactive accounts. (And guess what they do with the positive balance.)

PayPal isn't a bank. They don't have the same obligations or protection. When a bank closes your account, they mail you a check with the balance, and that balance is insured up to $250,000. I don't know how it works in other countries, but they probably have something like the FDIC.

It's a bank in the EU

Do they have the same reputation in the EU?

well i havent had problems with them even if i held large amounts there, but my business with them was rather straightforward. Their KYC was reasonable

as an European, yes, I've never heard someone get the money back when their account was locked.

Russian banks need to do the same

My understanding WRT buying a movie on iTunes was:

1. If you download the movie, you will always have the ability to play the movie you downloaded.

2. As long as Apple has the rights to distribute the movie, you will be able to re-download it again

3. If Apple loses the rights, and you don't have your own backed up copy, it's lost.

It's the same for Audible books; which is why I always d/l and backup any movie or book I buy electronically.

Buying a physical DVD is only #1. If you buy a physical DVD at Walmart or whatever, and then lose it, you can't go back to Walmart and ask for a second DVD; that's a perk of buying an electronic copy.

Compare this to buying a piece of software off a website for $30. You download the installer, install it, and use it. Six months later, the company goes out of business and the website does down. You can still use the software as long as you still have the installed version and/or the installer; but if you lose the installer, you lose access.

I guess the difference is that Apple is purposely blurring the line between "storing stuff in the cloud" and "redownloading" movies. What should really happen is that three months before Apple loses the distribution rights, they should send an email to everyone who's bought the move, telling them to either 1) Download it to their own local hard drive 2) Buy an iCloud subscription and click this button, and Apple will automatically "download" it from iTunes to your iCloud folder on your behalf. (EDIT: Which due to [1], will probably require actually shipping bits over some internal network for each individual user.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMG_Recordings,_Inc._v._MP3.co....

Luckily this has been true for Apple so far. But there is still the chance in the future that they stop supporting the DRM (either voluntarily or involuntarily).

Just look what happened to Microsoft's ironically named "PlaysForSure" DRM. They shut down the DRM servers in 2008 and made everyone's "purchased" content unplayable.

edit: I double-checked how Apple FairPlay DRM works to make sure I wasn't mistaken. But no, to play FairPlay DRMed content, you need to log in with iTunes which downloads your user decryption key. So if you got banned from Apple's services (credit card chargebacks, etc) then you can no longer log in to play your content, even if you have the media files. So you are only licensing it for as long as you agree to the terms of service, not buying it.

Right, so THIS aspect I totally agree with: If someone says "Buy", it must be possible for you to hand down a copy of that to play to your great-great-grandkids. That means it can't be turned off or lost because your account is cancelled; and shutting down DRM servers should require unlocking all DRM'd content first. Otherwise "Buy" really was a lie.

This is true, but movies purchased on iTunes can only be downloaded at 720p or 1080p. To play back in 4k/HDR it must be streamed. It sucks because I don't own a 4K blu-ray player but wanted a few movies to try out my OLED and bought some movies on iTunes. They look great, and comparisons online put them within close distance to 4k blu-rays in quality, but I can never "own" them in full resolution.

Good summary. Bought, you’re able to download and keep a copy. Only issue then is DRM and knowing where that file is (and being able to relocate it).

The files will show up under “Movies” and “TV Shows” within your iTunes media folder. If you have a NAS or external HDD (that mounts prior to the media server service starting!) you can change your media folder to point to it. It still has DRM tho.

The best of both worlds is movies that come with a digital code (usually moviesanywhere.com codes now) so you have both the physical media and the ability to enjoy the digital title on a digital library.

Streaming services are kind enough to notify when movies are leaving their platforms...

This has happened to me with iTunes, and Apple's contention in the suit has been expressed to me by Apple support.

A few months ago, I was browsing my iTunes cloud library and noticed that an album I had purchased years prior was missing a few songs. I contacted support, and the support agent explained to me that the rights holder had removed the songs from the store, and thus they were now removed from my library. (Inexplicably, the entire album is still available on iTunes, but apparently the version I bought was removed.)

The rep also helpfully recommended that I back up my downloads in the future. While I did in fact have all the songs downloaded on my Mac, I’m not sure what the official solution would be for someone whose primary device is an iPad or an iPhone.

I wonder if Match would have caused it to silently re-upload your missing files then supply them back.

It's the (supposed, it's very confusing) difference between Match as a standalone service and the Apple Music streaming service when it comes to your own library--Match will serve back your own music files to you if not already on the service. OTOH, I have no idea what it does if it thinks it matched on the service when first scanned, but the track isn't there anymore.

That's what I would expect the behavior with Match to be, but this was after I had switched back to Spotify and no longer had an active Apple Music / iTunes Match subscription. Without an active subscription, the library would revert to only purchased (excluding no-longer purchasable) items.

I would have demanded a refund

  > Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely

Pretty sure that many people would be led to believe that.

Heck, I believed it. That, for me, was the main pull of buying on iTunes vs. streaming, because (not being in the US) I've been burned one too many times by streaming services pulling content because their license ran out.

If iTunes might pull content I purchased at any time, that does make me rethink the whole thing.

> If iTunes might pull content I purchased at any time, that does make me rethink the whole thing.

Having spent well into the 4 digits, maybe 5, I’m rethinking this too. I feel like I’m being held hostage.

Perhaps Apple should begin explicitly telling consumers for how long they think it's reasonable to expect the content to be there.

As there's no physical degradation of a storage medium associated with a hosted service, I'd expect a service to be able to remain longer that a physical copy I purchase.

If that doesn't happen that's down to the business interests of the seller and those are not something consumers typically have to account for when buying media.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people believe that now and as near as possible to everyone believed that when the concept was fairly new and novel.

I am. Apple needs to prove i m unreasonable

It shouldn't only come down to "on the iTunes platform". What about the user's ability to maintain access?

I have a similar situation with Google. I've had a Google Apps for buisness account for a few years so I can can use email on my personal domain. I made the mistake of 'purchasing' some media on that account.

I've since switched my mail over to fastmail but can't quite bring myself to close the Google account because I paid for every episode of the American The Office and might want to watch it again ... one day.

Of course Google's customer service worse than useless. Can't transfer the 'purchases' to a free google account. Can't refund. Do I cut my losses or keep paying for the account subscription?

The answer is never buy anything from Google (or equivalent, such as Apple) but that's not a very mainstream solution.

Not that I want to encourage piracy, but at this point, if you already paid for them, why not torrent the episodes so you keep a copy?

Pirate it. That's easily more ethical than paying Google for nothing.

Yeah...technical legalities aside, I have no moral qualms with downloading an unencumbered digital copy of something I already paid for.

I guess you could argue that the cost I paid may have been lower due to the limited nature of the format/platform, but eh...I'm already trying not to be a total mooch so it'll do.

> but that's not a very mainstream solution

Sometimes you gotta get off the train that speeds towards a cliff, even if it means going by foot for a while.

Aside from the hassle involved, any reason you couldn't try to get a class-action lawsuit started?

While I personally agree, ownership should be explicit - their defence isn't as silly as it looks. "reasonable belief" is an actual mechanism in english law (the system, not the nation), and the learned behaviours of "buy it on Kindle", "buy it on Steam", etc, do support it.

It's essentially the "times have changed" argument; that the common nomenclature for "purchase a non-exclusive license with no fixed term" is "buy a copy", and "purchase a non-exclusive licence with a fixed term" is "rent a copy". And if that is true for the vast majority of consumers, the argument does hold weight.

When you rent something, you're supposed to be told very clearly up front when your last day when the thing is.

Isn't that the distinction though? A rental has a clear end date, enforced by Apple. A purchase does not, it can merely disappear from Apple's catalogue at some point, due to licensing issues. Apple has no idea how long that thing will be around, so they can't really quote a date your "purchase" ends.

one approach: if license expires old buyers still should be able to watch that movie and license expiration could be applied only on new sales.

on the other hand, apple is well educated how industry works and they are well aware that purchase is not full ownership of copy so you could interpret it as intentional attempt to mislead customers.

Sadly, the vast majority of consumers totally expects to be ripped off in one way or another. So, yes indeed.

But it's the exact opposite in reality, no? Any reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain accessible to them indefinitely.

On Steam, even content who's publisher has been banned off of the platform entirely is still accessible to customers who bought it before, and can be redownloaded at any time.

This is eerily similar to the Vitamin Water court case:

The suit alleged that the marketing of the drink as a "healthful alternative" to soda is deceptive and in violation of Food and Drug Administration guidelines.

(33 grams of sugar, etc)...

Coca-Cola criticized the suit as "ridiculous" on the grounds that "no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking Vitaminwater was a healthy beverage"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Brands#vitaminwater

And Fox "News" Tucker Carlson! Lies? Slander? Of course not - no "reasonable person" would believe he was telling the truth!

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-...

Perhaps it's time we stopped allowing lawyers, the planet's most unreasonable people, to argue what a reasonable person would think. Would it be simpler if we resolved these cases by just asking a hundred people?

> Would it be simpler if we resolved these cases by just asking a hundred people?

That’ll quickly end in mob rule.

So is the core of this issue that if I "buy" a movie on iTunes (say Kenneth Braunah's Henry V), and they lose the right to distribute it (as they did within the last year), I can no longer watch the movie?

And Apple is even calling you "unreasonable" for even believing that you could watch it in that situation.

More to the point, how much of a refund do you get if it's withdrawn? If Apple is sharing the licensing risk with you, the goods should come at a pretty steep discount.

If you did not download a copy on your disk, yes you won't be able to download and watch it again.

It is plausible for me to buy Braking Bad today, and for them to loose licence tomorrow. The series is so long it takes multiple days to watch.

What is the legal position in this case?

Wow, I guess I'm not a reasonable person then - because that's absolutely what I believed when I hit "purchase".

Has Apple been attending the Fox News School of Rationalization? No reasonable viewer would believe that Tucker Carlson is News.

> Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely

By this definition, any online locked down device (not just the software on it) can only be licensed or rented. Why should any online platform be treated differently from iTunes?

And let's add to this that you can very easily lose even the "rental" if you simply move to a different country. If I buy a physical copy, not only do I permanently own it, I can take it to the other side of the world with me if I want to.

I don’t think Apple should pay a penalty - because buying ‘licenses’ is a commonplace activity online, and is essentially always what you are buying when you buy a digital item.

However I agree with you. We should have a different word. Maybe even ‘license’ instead of buy.

Maybe I am unreasonable, but that is exactly what I expect when I purchase content.