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Apple Can Delete Purchased Movies From Your Library Without Telling You (theoutline.com)
Casey Johnston, writing for The Outline: When you buy a movie on iTunes, it's yours forever, until such a time as when Apple maybe loses the rights to distribute it, and then it will disappear from your library without a trace. This is what happened to Anders G. da Silva, who goes by @drandersgs on Twitter, and who tweeted about losing three movies bought on the iTunes Store.
When da Silva wrote to Apple to complain about the missing movies, 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." For his trouble in notifying Apple that it had disappeared three of his ostensible belongings for incredibly dubious legal reasons, Apple offered da Silva not even a refund, but two credits for renting a movie on the iTunes Store "priced up to $5.99 USD." After he argued that he was not in the market for rentals and would just like the movies he purchased, please, Apple tried to appease him with two more rental credits.
When da Silva wrote to Apple to complain about the missing movies, 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." For his trouble in notifying Apple that it had disappeared three of his ostensible belongings for incredibly dubious legal reasons, Apple offered da Silva not even a refund, but two credits for renting a movie on the iTunes Store "priced up to $5.99 USD." After he argued that he was not in the market for rentals and would just like the movies he purchased, please, Apple tried to appease him with two more rental credits.
Never buy Apple unless you are okay with being a slave to their dictatorial policies. Please support Linux.
This is why I buy the Blu-ray and rip it to my NAS; at least on shows I want to still have access to in 20 years. (Yes, I still have VHS tapes and a VCR)
You didn't purchase movies. You entered into an agreement which allows you access to content as long as Apple feels like providing it. LOL. Silly users, thinking you "owned" movies.
My kids have on occasion wanted to buy movies from Comcast and I have resisted specifically because I don't want to have to do business with a specific utility in order to maintain access to purchased content. Instead, I have allowed that content to be purchased from the equivalent of merchants like Apple and Amazon. This story sets a dangerous path that suggests physical media may still be the only way to go. It also gives a certain amount of moral license back to torrent downloads.
Why are you surprised?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
... f*ck itself.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Get used to this kiddies. You all wanted digital distribution; AKA NO OWNERSHIP RIGHTS AT ALL. This is what you want, this is what you get.
STEAM is next!
Just another reason not to "buy" digital media. I mean, damn. Why "buy" a movie for $15 or whatever? You'd have to watch it maybe 4-5 times just to break even. How many times do you want to watch the same thing?
Never understood buying VHS tapes or DVDs...definitely don't understand clicking on "buy" at five times the price of clicking on "rent".
...movies are always free on The Pirate Bay.
This is why we don't buy anything as a download. Physical media only. I'll take the time to rip it myself. If you want to own it, you have to have something physical to maintain control of it.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Digital purchases do not imply that you own the content. Digital purchases are a contract that you can have access to said content for as long as the distributing company has the right to distribute it.
Nothing new here, please move along.
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
This is why we need stronger consumer protection. This isn't a weird, difficult, complex issue. In my mind, there's a very simple solution to this:
Make it illegal for digital media stores to remove access to anything that has been purchased. If, for some reason, they're unable to continue hosting it for streaming, they should be legally required to provide you with a DRM-free download.
Or else, they should be barred from using words like "buy" or "purchase". They can offer "long term rentals" with clear and explicit wording that access may be revoked at any time. Those disclaimers should not be buried in a EULA or terms of service. It should be legally required to be displayed obviously each time the long-term rental is offered.
You could debate some of the details, but the basic gist should be clear: Either provide people with what they "bought", or make it clear that they're not buying it.
CLOUD.
Not "your" [local] library. The cloud...which in the case of iTunes is not dedicated to you, but is merely keyed against what you have purchased.
If you want to keep it, keep it downloaded. And if you want it in the âoecloudâ, but it in an unmanaged cloud not dedicated to licensed media delivery.
(And yes, Apple should, at a minimum, have offered an immediate full refund.)
"Rightsholder prevents user from downloading legally purchased content from Apple, because copyright forking sucks."
My understanding was for music at least, when Apple has lost distribution rights, any downloads you had made were retained, you just were no longer able to download it again. Has this changed or is it different for movies?
Or is this something to do with the DRM for movies compared to how Apple does not have DRM on audio files?
Looking in my files, it seems like the only movies I have "purchased" from Apple are ones that were not available as rentals when we wanted to watch them - the purchase price was low enough to justify an evening's entertainment for the family, so we have basically treated them as a rental. If I wanted to really "own" them, I would make sure I had copies downloaded into our digital archives.
The general consumer public seriously needs to wake the fuck up and connect the dots here. They flock en-masse to digital distribution because they're too fucking lazy, then get up in arms when the true cost of that bites them in the ass like this. These same idiots will proudly fly their millennial flag while making snarky comments that "physical is dead' and poo-pooing and insulting those old, backwards neanderthals who still buy physical media, ignoring the warnings those "old" people try to give them about the damage they're doing to the market and to their own self-interests.
I wouldn't care so much if the overall majority of the market was leading to physical not being available to the rest of us who can actually think past next week. This bullshit resulted in OPPO no longer making physical media players anymore, which is a tragedy beyond compare. The idiotic sheeple are not just shooting themselves in the foot but blowing the feet off from everyone else in their ignorance.
DRM strikes again, and everyone who lost movies deserves it!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Good reason to go back to bitTorrent. Buying should mean you own it.
I looked up ownership up in the dictionary and it said, "the state, relation, or fact of being an owner". This did not help me much so I looked up the definition of 'owner'. It said a "person who owns something". I looked up 'own' and it said "to have as property". I looked up 'property' and it said "something owned".
Well none of this was enlightening so I looked up possession and law and it turns out possession is "nine tenths of the law". Well, I'm sure as hell not reading nine tenths of the law. It'd take me ages. As much as I'd like to help, I can't because I don't know what ownership means...
You don't own anything. You don't even own your own personal information.
That's the whole fucking point of the iDevice walled garden.
Back when Requiem was still a thing - I'd purchase the title, then immediately remove the DRM using Requiem and save it to my streaming box (a 2006 MacBook Pro) with a backup.
When Requiem died, I stopped buying online content from them - now I buy the Blu-Ray and rip it.
#DeleteChrome
No matter how much money changed hands and what papers were signed... If you aren't in possession of the product it's not yours.
This should be illegal. Fraud.
Itâ(TM)s similar to games companies that only licence soundtracks for X years, then you load up the game one day and half the soundtrackâ(TM)s missing.
Fraud.
And therein is the Great Lie of the digital age... nobody buy's ANYTHING! You are simply paying for the right to view something as long as the owner / licensee allows you. You own nothing.
Think about that next time you choose an Amazon digital book over paper for roughly the same price. Don't be schmuck.
I don't think anyone realizes how cheap CDs and DVDs are nowadays. You can buy used CDs and DVDs from thrift stores and libraries for $0.10 on the dollar. I've amassed a huge CD collection, along with a decent sized DVD library, for a few hundred dollars.
Of course everything is on my Plex server, but I actually *own* it.
Did you purchase those movies, or did you temporarily acquire rights to view them. Did you basically pay $19.99 to rent a movie for a few years? When you could have paid $24.99 for that same new release on Blu-Ray. And keep that physical copy for potentially decades (archival life of non-writable blu-ray seems high). In addition your Blu-Ray disc falls under first sale doctrine (17 U.S.C. Sec. 109), so a few years from now you can sell it or gift it legally if you decided you didn't want it. Instead of waiting for Apple to delete it under the ever-shifting sands of distribution rights agreements for streaming.
People really want the convenience of streaming, and are apparently willing to pay a premium for it. But there are still some major drawbacks compared to physical media.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
In this case, however, she bought the movies and then deleted them from her system. She was relying on Apple's service to be able to re-download them again.
These are two seperate things.
If she had kept her local copies, Apple would not have removed these items from her computer; they were, however, unable to re-supply her with copies of the movies she'd bought via their service because thye'd lost the licensing rights to distribute said movies.
Imagine a store that you buy a DVD from that also allows you to stream a copy of the same DVD from their servers. If you lose the DVD, or destroy it, you can stream the movie until they lose licensing rights. If you don't lose or destroy the DVD, you don't have to rely on this third party.
The person in the story 'destroyed their DVD' and then their streaming provider lost their distribution rights.
She relied on a third party backup. She thought this was a guaranteed service. She was wrong.
None of this, however, has anything to do with buying vs leasing/licensing/renting and companies telling you you bought something when you merely licensed or rented it (although this remains an issue in digital consumer law in any number of countries). If she'd kept her downloaded copy, she'd still have it.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
For all of you streamers take this as a lesson. Unless you physically hold something, unless you have it on physical media that you can hold that is yours you don't posses anything. You don't own the movie in the first place. You only own the right to view the movie, to posses a copy of the movie for private viewing but you never own the movie itself.
I rip everything to my hard drives and keep a minimum of three backups with at least one being offsite in the event of a disaster. If you truly want to assure that you won't lose your digital treasures you should never rely on anyone else, especially the cloud.
Blu-ray content ripped to hard disks can't ever be recalled. No forced previews, piracy warnings, compression artifacts, buffering, "region" locks, wondering about how Vader is going to change the deal and screw me over next week.
New content worth watching is sufficiently rare I have no problem paying for a physical copy.
Meanwhile in stream land everyone is having pissing matches trying to become the next Netflix at the expense of the consumer who is now faced with having to subscribe to an expanding list of overlapping services and waste their time fumbling between them to get what they want. Fuck that.
If you really have to see a movie pirate it. Don't give these people another penny. It sad but pirating is now the moral thing to do.
From that what everyone over 12 knows about digital content department.
This is why I prefer UV for my movie purchases online. When Flixster went belly up, VUDU took over and my entire UV library that used to exist on Flixster was available on VUDU.
So free!
That's how it should work.
Piracy is alive and well.
Built a 'nas4free' like server while back and just upgrade or add drives as needed. Currently my movie library consists of 429 movies, and a ton of music currently just over 274 gigs of music, my own ebook "library of alexandria" haha. I have a netflix account, but i also download stuff i want, and keep those id rewatch again or think friends or family would like.
You thought you were BUYING that movie? Nope, you were only renting it!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Cheap two faced company
Amazon does the exact same thing. It happened to me years ago.
If you buy something, then you have to take possession of it - move it to your own computer.
Yes they are, by cutting the creators out of the deal. Pretty sustainable business model, no?
There's a PDF that covers the issue well.
https://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1573&context=chtlj
Also I see no final ruling but there's always the idea of a Digital Asset Trust to getting around the issue in the cases of separation or death.
https://www.lexisnexis.com/legalnewsroom/estate-elder/b/estate-elder-blog/posts/who-owns-your-itunes-account-and-bruce-willis
If this guy, who paid the full price for those 3 movies and now, have nothing to show for, goes to Piratebay and downloads these movies,albeit from not kosher sources, I personally have no problem with that. And I work in the media industry. This is chickensh!t what Apple is doing. Refund the guy's money to the last penny. Your corporate losing the right to distribute that movie, doesn't bind him to give his money to you unconditionally. And this is why I never buy any music or movies online. If they offer it to me free of charge as a promotion, yes, I'll take it. But I will never give my hard earned money to a soulless corporation, like Apple, Amazon, Walmart etc. for the privilege of enjoying my media as long as *they* allow me to.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Unless you have the bits in a DRM-free format you have not purchased anything other than a rental of unspecified length.
This is a universal problem with digital media, and the blame rests with the copyright holders. I have no confidence in purchasing this kind of content – from anyone – as long as they keep pulling these tricks with DRM. I've gone out and bought disks for all movies I bought inline (and enjoy) so I can be sure of being able to watch them in future and I won't buy more online as long as I'm able to still buy physical media. However, I can see the noose being pulled tighter with the growth of 'all-you-can-eat' streaming services. Make any attempt to protest or complain, and you can instantly find yourself with nothing.
I'm sticking to my own home server with ripped media and Plex/ServeToMe for the forseeable future.
I used to like Apple, an original fanboy with a rev 0 Apple II.
Fuckers are pure greed now, along with the media moguls.
Let's see if they can un-torrent my movie collection.
Apple is certainly to be avoided. What Apple does to its users is also an instance of a much larger problem—proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software—and we should all avoid nonfree software virtually all of the time. The only exception is for those who are reverse engineering the software to write a free replacement, but this requires controlled circumstances and is highly unlikely to come into play for most computer users. For most computer users proprietors and service providers are likely best avoided: Netflix treats users no better (movie DRM is rampant, Netflix's website conveys nonfree software to its users), nor do many popular game publishers, or any of a number of other software proprietors. This has been true for decades.
However services aren't free or nonfree, they raise different issues, and one needs to be clear to separate the benefits and harms services provide from the software used with the service. It's possible the harms of the service depend on nonfree software. I wouldn't give Apple money for a chance to possibly watch a movie even if iTunes were free software or if I could use a different free software program to interact with the iTunes service. I don't like the tracking that comes with streaming media, I don't like the nonfree software typically used to access streaming media, and I don't want the other software involved in typical use of the temporarily-accessed media (such as remotely erasing copies of books and promising never to do this again unless ordered to by the state, both of which Amazon did). I much prefer structural analysis which lets me know what other parties are capable of doing (whether they use their power or not) and looking into how they treat their customers and business partners. Hence I'm more likely to read books (not DRM-riddled eBooks) in privacy whenever and wherever I choose.
Digital Citizen
I'm sure this will be lost in the shuffle, due to my late arrival to the conversation... but the title, "Apple Can Delete Purchased Movies From Your Library Without Telling You," is misleading.
If your library is in the cloud, then the title is accurate. If you actually downloaded the movies/tv shows/etc to your computer, it is NOT deleted when Apple loses the streaming rights for that content.
So the title should say, "Apple Can Delete Purchased Movies From Your Cloud Library Without Telling You." Or, to be less sensational, "Apple Can Lose The Cloud Streaming Rights To Movies You Purchased, So Make Sure You Download Them To Your Own Devices."
...but it's more of just a long term rental. I've never bought an online movie. If I want to buy a movie, I go buy the DVD, and maybe rip it to my hard drive to watch on other devices.
Apple doesn't delete any purchased movies from your local library. What can happen is that the studios can expire the contracts that allow Apple to stream or download the movie even for people who purchased it previously.
However if you purchase a movie, and keep a local copy of the file, you can continue to play it.
Yes, I know, DRM sucks, but...
Having titles pulled from the store rarely does happen, and Apple will offer some form of less than equal compensation when you contact them.
More often though, titles are upgraded for free. I've had many 720p/1080p movies upgraded to 4K for free as well as some upgrades on SD titles. This doesn't happen with all titles, but it happens far more often than titles being removed.
Personally, I still strip DRM from the movies I purchased from Apple, because I want to play them with alternative software, but regardless, while there are advantages to disc formats, all of this should be put in proper context as disc formats also have defects, and can be damaged, experience defects or be susceptible to some of the very same DRM issues.
You can purchase a copy of Infinity War on bluray. That doesn't give you ownership of the copyright, it gives you ownership of the copy you've purchased. Your argument would apply to streaming services such as Netflix or Hulu, who have rotating libraries, but not for a copy that you have purchased.
Don't forget, you aren't even allowed to pass on your collection(s) to anyone else, in the event of your death. They just get deleted. Like others are saying, you are really just renting.
captcha; tyranny
I have recently had a number of books deleted from my Safari books Playlists and become 'unpublished'.
Aren't itunes movies part of Movies Anywhere now? Are the purchases available there?
...
When you make an unauthorized copy of a work, you are not stealing, the copyright holder still has their original, and arguably has been deprived of no income.
What we have here, instead, is theft of a purchased product. I'm coming up with a class-action lawsuit here, with a penalty, I don't know... about $25,000 per person per movie.
When are you all going to learn? Own your own copies of things. Eschew 'The Cloud'. Keep your own data!
Sometimes I like to watch their videos and hear how great their products sound. But then I hear about this kind of thing. Or walk into an Apple Store. Or read more about how their keyboards suck. Or see that Apple is out of touch with reality in their design goals, just upspeccing what they have, which is of course the safe route. Apple is hypocritical. They used to be about taking risks, changing the world, and doing the right thing when no-one else believed in them, at least when it came to design and integrity. Now they're the golden standard (literally, in the case of the original Apple Watch) of decadence and profitable stupidity. Eat shit, Apple.
I am curious if anyone that had purchased the same movies, downloaded them using iTunes, and kept a backup of their download (as Apple advises on their website,) would still be able to play the movie or if the digital license also gets pulled from the server making it impossible to verify authorization for the DRM?
It has been stated many times in previous years that Apple warns users it is the user's responsibility to download and backup their digital purchases and that Apple does not guarantee access to the title in the future.
Too bad Requiem was abandoned.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
Everybody thinks I'm old-fashioned and laugh at me because I still buy CDs and DVDs, rip them, and then hold on to the physical media. Who's laughing now smart guys?
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Yours to enjoy for years without some brand removing the content.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Apple iOS updates have broken over half the apps I Paid money to get.
Refunds? no- Apple says 'contact the developers'. Developers abandoned iOS and switch to Android.
VERSION CONTROL ? none.
Amazon is no better, kindle books Purchased can instantly vanish if Amazon loses the rights for Kindle.
Amazon Prime music & video, the same - VANISHED down the memory hole, 1984 style...
If you can't login to your apple iTunes ID,
you can't prove your PC has the rights to play the file.
Switch between two Apple IDs and the problems multiply...
Best to buy DVDs & Blurays & CDs.
And absolutely avoid 'streaming' services.
Streaming such as youtube is the most communist system.
You never get a downloaded copy, you have no physical copy. You pay full price $$$ and literally get nothing.
1. Buy discs.
2. Use discs as you see fit.
3. Donate discs & packaging to local library.
Our local Library has more movies than nexflix, and tons of donated books too.
You used it fair use, then share it with your community... and others do likewise.
Everyone savss money, and when Apple finally implodes on failed iphone sales and goes out of business, you will still have your library...
I am still waiting for my FIREFLY game on Steam... :-)
I personally only ever buy physical media or DRM-free downloadable content, I mean apart from eliminating any dependencies of having to be online to access your library, this is far from the first example of some egotistical megacorp arbitrarily denying people access to stuff that they have already paid for. Microsoft, Sony, and Barnes and Noble all come to mind as other examples and I'm sure there are many more.
Most physical media is far more easily rippable than drm-protected streaming, which is actually legal according to fair use, however try arguing with Apple that they need to provide DRM-free downloadable versions of any movies you buy.
I seriously wonder why many people still fall for buying streaming-only stuff and why people don't finally get a clue and en-masse avoid buying any service/product where they cant have local DRM-free copies.
Corporations Steal. Film At 11.
where you dont own commodities you paid for anymore, you just pay to use them (until we decide to not let you anymore and youre basically fucked)
If the platform holder so wishes they could yank that license for a multitude of reasons and you have practically zero recourse. I'm sure if you tried to sue them you'd even discover an arbitration clause. Perhaps none of this would be so bad if the digital copy were substantially cheaper than the physical one, but usually it isn't. Sometimes it costs more than the physical product.
At least with a physical product (with the exception of some software) it's yours to do with as you wish. Sell it, lend it, burn it. If a store loses the rights to sell that product, your product doesn't vaporise.
It boggles my mind that some institution like the EU hasn't sought to imbue digital property with as many rights as physical property has. If crypto currency can be a thing, then why not a transferrable rights to digital property?
This is why I always pirate movies and other content and never buy anything. What is on my hard drive stays on my hard drive forever. It is My Computer and My Life.
.. you then don't possess on your own physical media or your own idem encoding the data in an offline form. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Guess he should have just circumvented the whole system.