
Apple can delete purchased movies from your library without telling you - Y-bar
https://theoutline.com/post/6167/apple-can-delete-the-movies-you-purchased-without-telling-you
======
afandian
It's frustrating that the word 'purchase' is used for this kind of
transaction. Like 'unlimited', it's use is fundamentally dishonest and vendors
get away with it because everyone knows they lie.

If I buy a paperback book or a drm free ebook, that's a purchase.

If I pay for a drm movie or kindle book, that's a long-term rental.

~~~
wongarsu
If I buy a game from Steam then contractually that is a rental, but it behaves
like a purchase. I can install it anywhere I like, I can back it up to a
physical disk, and most importantly I can redownload it in perpetuity; even if
the same item is no longer for sale on Steam.

The only risk in comparison to a physical copy is that Valve fundamentally
changes or goes bankrupt. Both seem unlikely. This makes any purchase on Steam
basically as safe as a physical purchase, resulting in Steam basically
replacing physical game purchases on the PC.

~~~
eslaught
Or they delete your account.

I'm not sure about Steam, but there are plenty of horror stories on the
internet about "bought X on Y platform and then Y revoked account". The
majority of users may never experience this, but the fact is that when you use
a service like this you're at the mercy of the service provider, even for
basic things like maintaining access to your account.

What I'd like to see is some sort of movement towards "if it looks like a
purchase, then it is a purchase". That is, if I pay a one-time up-front free
for access to something (even with DRM), we should pass legislation to make it
behave like a purchase and limit the shenanigans that providers can pull.
(Granted this is a very ill-formed idea and there are lots of details to work
out in order to implement it.)

~~~
Analemma_
> I'm not sure about Steam, but there are plenty of horror stories on the
> internet about "bought X on Y platform and then Y revoked account".

The worst part about this is that it often happens when consumers exercise
their legitimate rights to e.g. chargebacks. And yes, Steam does it too: if
you chargeback a Steam purchase, even a fraudulent one where the CC company
sides with you after the investigation, usually this will result in your
account getting locked and held hostage until you undo the chargeback and eat
the cost.

~~~
rosege
I dont know how easy is it to transfer games to another account - but if
possible you could do that then initiate the chargeback

~~~
rizzin
You can't transfer games between accounts on Steam

------
lathiat
It's not clearly stated in the original tweets, but I'm glad this article
covered it. The Movie was not "physically" deleted from their library.

They didn't have a downloaded copy of it, and the ability to re-download (or
stream) a new copy from iTunes no longer exists.

This is an understandable frustration since the workflows for iCloud, Apple
Music, etc are pushing the cloud downloadability to be a first class feature
and you would expect your purchases to stay there. That's sadly not always the
case.

But I think this is an important distinction

~~~
gambiting
It's the same with Apple store apps - I've bought Rayman 2 and Tony Hawk Pro
Skater 2 on my iPod touch years ago, and while these games are in my purchase
history, there is no way to download them - there is no download button. So
I've paid money for something that I can't get anymore. However, if I still
had that iPod I'm sure they would still work.

~~~
todd8
Yes, I've had to delete my most played IOS game, Wurdle. It doesn't run on IOS
11 and the developer has never updated it. It was a remarkably simple game,
finding as many paths on a 5x5 grid of letters that formed words in two
minutes.

It was the perfect way to pass the time while standing in line, and with
practice some people (like my wife) could get almost supernaturally fast at
finding words (I could never beat her). Sadly, there is nothing quite like it
on the current App Store.

To be fair, it was an inexpensive game and I got a lot of use out of it.

~~~
J_cst
You may still have it on your Linux machine under /use/games or similar paths
(if you have Linux machine, actually). It's part of the classical Bsdgames
collection and it's called 'boggle'. Man page here:
[https://www.mankier.com/6/boggle](https://www.mankier.com/6/boggle)

I recently bumped into it by accident!

~~~
J_cst
Edit due to bad auto correction:

/usr/games

(Sorry for the double comment, but I cannot edit my comments via the app I'm
using on my mobile)

------
rajat
It does seem obvious that short of having your own copy of something purchased
(in this case, a movie), this will happen. Purchasing the right to see a
movie, listen to a song, on a service, will never be the same as holding a
physical copy. I wonder if it's even legal for Apple to maintain a copy of the
movie in iTunes for customers who've already purchased it once they have lost
the right to host it. Clearly, most of us don't appreciate the difference
between what it meant to purchase something, and what it means today in the
digital, subscription world.

So, if you really want to own a movie or a song, buy a physical incarnation of
it, or make a digital copy of it.

~~~
danShumway
It probably shouldn't be called a purchase then.

Consumers understand the distinction between buying a car and leasing a car.
Nobody says in common conversation, "I bought Spotify," they say, "I
subscribed to Spotify."

It's no accident that companies like Apple lean on terminology like "purchase"
instead of "license." Apple knows that the iTunes buy button would be less
attractive if it used language that was more transparent. So instead they are
capitalizing on that confusion - they want the customer to feel like this is a
permanent transaction. They want a movie license to feel the same as the
experience of buying a DVD.

If most consumers don't understand the difference, then businesses should use
less confusing language within marketing and store interfaces. If they're OK
with consumer confusion or if that consumer confusion is actually the point,
then they should also be OK with the blowback they get when customers
eventually feel misled or betrayed. They have to take the bad with the good.

~~~
thedirt0115
I think you're right, "license" could sound off-putting. Maybe calling the
movie/music things you buy "tickets" or "passes" might make it more
understandable? We still use the word "purchase" when we go to a movie theater
to watch a movie -- but we purchase tickets, not the movie itself. Or at an
amusement park, you buy a day pass or week pass or whatever. Everyone
understands these concepts of temporarily getting access to something, it's
just different terminology.

~~~
paulddraper
> I think you're right, "license" could sound off-putting.

Reality often sounds off-putting.

That's why we've developed the ability to lie.

~~~
CharlesW
But also the ability to detect lying. "Lie-sense", if you will.

~~~
paulddraper
Ha!

------
bitL
Can't wait getting some classics removed from my movie library automatically
when the algorithmic Zeitgeist decides they violate some new sensitivity.
Funny this was predicted in detail 10 years ago (how to build such a system
starting with secure boot loader) and we just go full steam ahead. "Masters"
now have a perfect tool to rewrite history; all contradicting documents can
disappear from devices at will. Seems like mindless hedonistic consumption
bruising quiet virtuous parts of population without loud voice will be the
only thing allowed; everything else would be polarizing and suppressed.

~~~
SSLy
>this was predicted in detail 10 years ago

Over 20, the story is from 1997.

~~~
BrandonMarc
Which story? I mean, Orwell's 1984 comes to mind frankly, but that's from the
mid 20th century, not 10 or 20 years ago.

~~~
SSLy
Right to read.

~~~
BrandonMarc
Ah, I remember that one. It fits the time frame. Thanks for reminding me of
it.

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html)

------
iamleppert
The same thing happens if you owe them any money, however small. Right now I
owe Apple $0.99 because I’m waiting on a new card to come and one of my recent
previous purchases failed.

Their response is to hold my entire library of “purchased” music and movies
hostage until they get their $0.99. I can’t play or access anything.

Clearly, I own nothing in their eyes. This is the same as if Blockbuster would
hold all your DVDs hostage you bought from them if you owed them any money. If
you don’t own the unrestricted physical medium, you own nothing.

I guess there’s a reason Apple is dominant: aggression and brutality always
win out in humanity. We are all just passive & submissive subordinates, Apple
is our one true master and dark lord.

~~~
dymk
> "... aggression and brutality always win out in humanity. We are all just
> passive & submissive subordinates, Apple is our one true master and dark
> lord"

Have we reached peak melodrama on HN?

------
huhtenberg
It's the same bullshit with AppStore purchases!

I was absolutely pissed when trying to re-install a rather expensive game (The
Secret of Monkey Island) only to discover that I can't, because Disney yanked
it from the AppStore after purchasing LucasArts. I paid for the damn thing, I
used it then and I need it now. Talking to Apple is like talking to a f#cking
wall. Absolutely pointless. Apparently I should've been making versioned
backups of my iThing in order to preserve the binary. That was their actual
reply. Ain't it something?

Caveat emptor, basically.

------
sidstling
I view any digital distribution platform where your content is tied to the
platform itself as renting rather than buying. Makes things much simpler.

That's why it was so disheartening to buy the x-com remake and find nothing
but a steam activation code inside the box. I don't feel like I own that game
because it's tied to an online account.

I know that you can just keep a local copy of it, but it's still tied to the
platform and if you wanted to go to a different platform, you couldn't take it
with you.

~~~
bunderbunder
With iOS it's even worse, because you end up tied to a specific version of the
platform.

For example: I bought the Monkey Island remake for iOS when it came out. It's
no longer playable, because a 64-bit binary was never produced, and 32-bit
apps don't work on iOS 11.

Similar things happened with computer operating systems, but holding on to an
older version is so much easier to do on computers. I guess a 7 year usable
life is decent for how much I paid for the game, but still, annoying.

------
TheRealDunkirk
Scrolling through the comments, the focus seems to be mostly on Apple, but
this isn't about Apple. This is about the entertainment companies, copyright
law, and the fact that these industries are so large and protected by
regulatory capture that they can dictate to companies the size of APPLE how
they should enforce their will on customers. The same caveats apply to Steam
or Comcast or anyone else who is "selling" you something they can yank back
away from you

(And, for the purposes of my comment, I make no distinction between removing
the ability to re-download, or reach into your hard drive and delete.)

~~~
lostmyoldone
Isn't it rathwr unlikely they dictated anything to Apple, as Apple isn't, and
wasn't exactly at the brink of bankruptcy. They could have chosen a different
path.

It is probably more likely, looking at the history of a couple of different
online movie/music services, that Apple simply decided to play ball with the
media companies to get better deals, and earn more money. Simultaneosly
getting a foot in the door to stop the "rebel" companies entering the scene,
crashing the media industries party, and Apples too.

While Apple with their positioning obviously has a lot to win on being the #1
choice of the media giants, I believe they went there quite willingly.

------
tunesmith
The article frustratingly doesn't make clear what happens if you had
downloaded the movie.

If you download the movie, and it's removed from Apple's library, and you try
to play it, are you able? Or does it say, "Sorry, you are not authorized"?

This would make a big difference for me because I've downloaded every Apple
purchase for years onto my Drobo. If Apple prevents playback in these cases,
then I may as well delete them all and save terabytes of disk space.

------
jboy55
How much of this is Apple's fault and how much of it is the RIAA and MPAA's
fault for enforcing this region based DRM structure where every possible use
of media is split up and locked from each other. Oh, I was only able to
purchase the rights to allow my users to download this movie in the USA until
01/20, English Canada until 6/19, Quebec until 1/19, UK until 1/22.

Then, if the movie is still popular, the renewal rights for this movie will be
bundled with 100s of other movies my users hate, all with different time
periods and locations. If it isn't popular, it gets thrown into a bundle that
will be forced upon content providers so net out a few extra $ on movies no
one wants to see.

------
Macha
This is why I strip the DRM and backup anything I purchase locally, and don't
use services that don't have any method to acquire a raw copy (like the google
play store). It's a strong selling point if it's provided by the vendor (e.g.
GOG for video games), but sadly hollywood is an industry that hates the
concept.

~~~
gruez
>and don't use services that don't have any method to acquire a raw copy (like
the google play store)

are you sure you're not confusing that with the app store? it's trivial to get
the .apk from a bought app after it's on your phone, but it's not trivial to
strip the playfair DRM off an .ipa.

~~~
dragonwriter
I'm pretty sure the reference is to video content from the Google Play Store,
not apps or (even easier to get raw content) audio content from the same
store.

~~~
Macha
Yes, I was talking about the movies on the play store.

------
mbostleman
My landlord can put a lock for which I don't have a key on my apartment door
without telling me too. The question is not whether he can or can't lock my
door. The question is whether or not the terms of our agreement allow him to
block my access or not. The fact that people often don't understand the terms
of there agreements is definitely a problem, but that's not what the headline
implies unfortunately.

~~~
Timmah
> people often don't understand the terms of there agreements

To me the problem is that we allowed corporations to invoke complex legal
maneuvering such as redefining the legal definition of watching a movie, and
requiring a _legal agreement_ to do so, all for the purpose of further
enriching apple and the movie industry.

Also I dispute whether it is an "agreement" after all. Did each consumer sit
down and read a printed contract, forward it to their counsel for review, then
sign on the dotted line before they watched _The Incredibles 2_ ? No, they
didn't. There wasnt an "agreement" but rather a surrender of previously
existing legal rights.

In fact, I think all these one-sided contracts should be called "rights
surrenders" instead of "license agreements". _By clicking "I surrender", you
are now allowed to watch your digital copy of The Incredibles 2 some
indeterminate non-zero number of times before it's randomly removed from your
possession_

~~~
mbostleman
Agreed. If there was no agreement, then there's definitely something to talk
about. My position relies entirely on there being an enforceable agreement.
Much popular debate these days ignores this fact and focuses instead on
whether or not people think agreements are "fair" after they've been entered
in to voluntarily.

------
ChuckMcM
It gets weirder, our _public library_ was asked to destroy their copy of "Eyes
on the Prize", which they had either bought or been donated (it was a
commercial product at the time), by the Martin Luther King family because of a
dispute over rights. That dispute was settled (with the injection of money
apparently) and it became available again but the library has not (the last
time I checked) re-acquired it for their collection.

This story that Apple does this too reminds of how insane IP law can be. Next
up, when you travel to a different region (based on GPS) your iDevice stops
being able to play media you've got on the local flash drive.

------
vonzeppelin
I've noticed a lot of my older purchased music on Amazon Music is now
unplayable without any notice to me. Usually the complete album is gone but
sometimes it leaves me with just a few of the songs still playable from the
album.

~~~
metildaa
Perhaps using a reputable service like Bandcamp would avoid this issue
entirely. Amazon Music looks like a me too service, akin to MSN Music or MS's
later attempts to sell music.

Often, these giant tech companies will happily make it so you cant get your
songs or play them on the devices you want to:
[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2008/04/drm-s...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2008/04/drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-nuke-msn-music-drm-keys/)

------
smitherfield
Good customer service lesson here: Apple should've offered either a refund or
to mail him the Blu-rays of the movies. I imagine this is a rare enough
scenario they can easily afford for that to be their default response to such
a support ticket, and the customer would most likely either tweet positively
about the experience or not at all. (There still might be the odd unreasonable
one who complains "I wanted to watch it _now! "_ but that can't be avoided).

------
qiqing
This part jumped out at me:

> 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.”

So, if the person in the article used a VPN to pretend to be in the U.S.,
would he have been able to redownload his movies? Or is the account itself
tethered to the Canada iTunes Store?

I'm not sure how the country attribution for iTunes accounts works.

------
makecheck
It’s not just deletion; items are _replaced_ based on “someone’s” judgment
that the new item is equivalent. The later version is sometimes obviously
different and often worse.

For instance, a “remastered” version can change content. A song might be
completely rerecorded and sound different than the version I bought/liked.

If Star Wars teaches us anything, you can’t just rerelease something and
assume it’s an improvement.

------
eric24234
RMS is right. Long live RMS. [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

------
chooseaname
I thought you never owned a movie, you only had a license to view it. Even on
BR, you only have a license to view it for as long as the physical disk is
playable (or some such nonsense).

~~~
shrimp_emoji
Do you want your movies DRM-free and in a convenient format? 5€/month for a
decent VPN to torrent[0] behind is way cheaper than Netflix. :3

0: [https://rarbg.to/torrents.php](https://rarbg.to/torrents.php)

~~~
turbo_fart_box
Http://real-debrid.com. Far better. Loads of plugins for Kodi apps and instant
streaming

~~~
dmix
How exactly does that work?

Does it provide premium access to multiple file hosting sites ala 4shared and
FileFactory? Or is it just a way to download free from those sites easier?

Edit: tested it out, that's pretty cool.

------
robbiemitchell
Apple should not be "selling" content for which they do not have a perpetual
license to resell. Full stop.

~~~
tantalor
It doesn't really matter if Apple loses the license to distribute it, since
_you_ as the purchaser (should) have an irrevocable perpetual license to
streaming/download the content.

The distributor, who made the content originally available to Apple, is a
party to the agreement, and they are obligated to make the content available
under the same streaming/download service terms.

In other words, they have a liability to provide the streaming/download
service _forever_. If they go bankrupt, then you could sue for recompense as a
creditor. If they sell the rights to another company, then your
streaming/download access goes along with it.

~~~
Spivak
Don't get me wrong, I would love to live in your universe but we're a long way
away from distributing content like that.

It would be nice if licensing any sort of copyrighted content came with a
physical/digital transferable license that could be redeemed by the owner
under with some reasonableness standard attached.

~~~
neuralRiot
How about a blockchain for DRM?

------
ceejayoz
Headline is a bit misleading.

From my reading, this isn't Apple reaching into your local library to delete
them - if they'd kept the originals they'd still be there.

They're just not available for re-download, which is similar to losing a DVD -
the store isn't gonna give you another one for free.

~~~
headhuntermdk
Not quite.. it also means that you can't stream it from your library either.
So effectively it is the same. This is a cautionary tale for those who are
buying iTunes 4k movies and can't stream 4k from a local device on their
network [https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/21/itunes-4k-content-
strea...](https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/21/itunes-4k-content-streaming-
only/)

------
yason
That's the reason I've never subscribed to any of the itunes, spotifys, or
whatever services there are for music and video. I always went "Oh, I'll join
a bit later when these services can be trusted as much as my local copies" and
that never happened.

In my opinion these "purchases" aren't really even "renting". Even renting has
terms more solid than "Oh, we just had to take it away from you, sorry".
Making things you've collected vanish would be extremely bad customer
experience even in a free service, not to mention one that you actually pay
for.

------
jakebasile
Steam handles this much better. If a game is removed from sale for some reason
people who already purchased it still have access. For example, I still have
access to the original Prey even though it's no longer available.

~~~
fastball
Sometimes you actually get an improvement.

I purchased the original version Deus Ex: Human Revolution on the Steam store.
A year or so later, they released the "Director's Cut" of DE:HR. Steam
automatically "upgraded" my copy, so now I have the Director's Cut version in
my Steam library.

~~~
discreditable
Same here with Red Faction: Guerrilla, and the Re-mars-tered edition.

------
seymour333
Just wait until Amazon changes the content of your books without telling you

~~~
bambax
Calibre (unsupported) plugins let you remove DRM from Kindle books, so you
actually can save a local copy not connected to Amazon in any way. I keep
buying Kindle books while this is still possible, and will stop if it ceases
to be.

~~~
realusername
be careful with sharing books you got with this method. The Calibre plugin
does remove the DRM but not the Amazon User ID they embed inside. Keeping it
for you is fine, otherwise you need to be more cautious.

~~~
bambax
I don't share books, I just store them in epub format so that I can read them
in Marvin. But thanks for the heads up. Do you know if the Kindle user Id is
saved in the epub file when converted with Calibre?

------
tyingq
Frontier did this to me after they took over FIOS from Verizon. No recourse
either...I tried several times to fight them. Ended up just dropping them and
losing my purchased movies.

------
JohnTHaller
If, say, you'd purchased and downloaded the movie on your iPhone 7 and then
the movie was removed from Apple's store, could you then copy the movie to
your iPhone 8 when you upgraded? If not, then this is about as far from
"owning" a movie as you can get.

Remember, if there's cloud-based licensing involved, you're not "buying"
anything, you're just leasing.

~~~
robteix
I don't know about movies, but you can definitely lose apps. I used to own a
game called X-Plane that I played on my iPad. Then the authors created a new
"version" (as a new paid app.) At some point, I reset my iPad and set it up as
a new device and there was no way to download the app anymore as it had been
removed from the app store. It is still hosted there somewhere, so if you have
the backup, it will download the app from the app store, but it is not
"findable" so if you have a new device, so sorry.

~~~
larrik
It should appear in your "Purchased" list in that case.

------
moskie
A practical reality that dawned on me one day has changed my perspective on
this situation a bit: it's the fact that I no longer have my VHS or cassette
tapes. I got rid of them at some point. So the idea that purchases of physical
media result in me having a thing forever, while digital purchases are
inherently temporary at the behest of companies like Apple, Google, or Amazon,
doesn't really hold up to what I (and many others) actually experience.
Because my physical purchases are also, eventually, temporary.

Will these companies do something, or go bankrupt, such that one day I no
longer have access to my "purchases?" Maybe? Probably? Who knows. And if they
do, I hope laws or class action lawsuits step in to mitigate the issue... But
it ultimately feels a bit Chicken-Little-ish to me to suggest this is some
kind of disaster. We've all re-bought our favorite books/movies/shows/music in
various formats as time goes on. Our digital purchases will be no different.

------
superice
What I mostly do not understand is that Apple did not structure this as a 'we
will store your library for you' instead of a 'you can redownload from the
store anytime'. The first case would mean that rights holders cannot force
Apple to not redistribute that data anymore, because either it would be
transparent to Apple, or at the very least the ownership for that copy of the
data would lie with the customer, not with the rights holder. (And ofcourse it
could be a nice implementation detail that Apple deduplicates multiple copies
on their servers).

The only conclusion to be drawn is that Apple does not care for the best
interests of their customers, and probably gave in to the demands of rights
holders, which is concerning.

------
aethertron
It's not 'your library' if it's on someone else's computer.

------
Joeri
I had the same thing happen with a music album. The publisher retracted the
album and then republished it. I lost access to the old version but did not
gain access to the new version. Apple refused to help out. They said I should
resort to my file backups.

Luckily I kept those file backups so I can still play that album, but it can
happen to any content purchased through itunes (or amazon, or ...). You're not
buying it, you're renting in perpetuity.

------
botskonet
Does anyone _notify_ you of upcoming removals? We've maybe purchased hundreds
of movies over the years and we'd never know something was removed.

------
mihaela
That is Holywood for you. That is why torrents exist.

------
tzury
Long before Apple Music subscription was available, I purchased dozens of
albums and songs from iTunes.

As the service become available, I joined it for about a year or so.

One day I decided to cancel my Apple Music monthly subscription. As I did so,
all the albums and songs I purchased prior to the Apple Music subscription
simply vanished.

That is to say, not only Obie’s, rather anything.

------
ishikawa
The same is valid for my iPad 1. Several apps I bought for it I no longer can
download again if I need, because of new OS versions or because they are no
longer in the store. And believe me: my iPad 1 still works great and I have
several educational apps that my toddler is now enjoying the same way his
older brother did 6 years ago.

------
on_and_off
This is why I use Play Music : I can upload my own tracks and download my
library if need be.

For games I largely favor GOG : all the games are playable even without their
launcher (even though I use it) and you can back them up.

For movies/series, is there such a solution ? apart from torrenting of course.

~~~
flukus
> This is why I use Play Music : I can upload my own tracks and download my
> library if need be.

This was to get easy adoption from people with existing music collections,
don't be surprised when they cut this feature in future. With people growing
up with spotify and the like I doubt it's even that important for new users
anymore.

~~~
on_and_off
if/when they cut it I will just download my library and bring it somewhere
else, that's the whole point.

------
smsm42
Isn't it kinda old news? I've heard stories about Apple removing digital
content (and not only Apple of course) for years. In general, if you get DRMed
digital content from somebody, they control your access, that's the whole
point of the DRM! So no surprise whatsoever.

------
dj43nq
I tend to think of these electronic “Purchase” transactions as a purchase of a
temporary license. This mindset means the price should be significantly
cheaper.

You never really own these digital assets. A good test is trying to gift/sell
something in your library to someone else.

------
dijit
I spoke about this phenominon before. If they remove it from the store; they
remove your entitlement.

[https://blog.dijit.sh/importance-of-self-hosted-
backups](https://blog.dijit.sh/importance-of-self-hosted-backups)

------
fghtr
Just in time before the International Day Against DRM. Act against it!

[https://www.defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm](https://www.defectivebydesign.org/dayagainstdrm)

------
emptybits
In a nutshell: > _the “Buy” button in digital stores is, at best, mislabeled_

------
hawkice
I'm most frustrated by a particular song I purchased in iTunes maybe 15 years
ago, which is not just gone from my iTunes library but disappeared from almost
all existence. Real art is being lost here.

------
Chazprime
Apple really needs to implement a means to notify users that content is
“rolling off” their service and give those who have purchased it a means to
download it before the end date.

~~~
GeekyBear
Going forward, they need to specify in their contracts with content providers
that losing the right to sell new copies of a given work does not mean that
customers who have already purchased that work can no longer stream and/or
download it.

------
tim333
On the one hand they can delete stuff which is kind of bad. On the other you
can just download it from bittorrent which sort of gets around the issue.

------
lgregg
I wonder if there is anywhere on the internet where you can buy and download
movie files. Of course, you can torrent them but that's illegal.

------
polskibus
Apple should warn users that have bought movies that are about to be removed
from their offering, so they could download them before they disappear.

------
debt
Please feel free to enjoy this copyrighted experience. You may purchase or
rent or use whichever verbs you deem appropriate to procure this experience,
either way, we as the mere provider of such copyrighted experience may have to
revoke your access to such experience for reasons both within and without our
control.

Your purchase may or may not grant you at least a single viewing of the
copyrighted experience.

Regardless if you have or have not purchased, you may not store or download or
copy or backup any portion of the copyrighted experience.

Enjoy!

~~~
msla
> copywritten

As distinct from copyrighted, then?

As usual, people have no sense of humor.

~~~
zem
the internet is for ads

~~~
msla
> the internet is for ads

... did you reply to the wrong comment, zem?

~~~
zem
no, it was a pun on "copywritten"

------
matheusmoreira
I think it is hilarious how copyright actively prevents content distribution
companies from properly competing with piracy.

------
thefounder
This is the result of DRM...you don't own anything. You are at the mearcy of a
handful of companies.

------
ChickeNES
Does anyone know which movies were removed? I wonder if they have something in
common.

------
mindslight
I've never recall Oink or What.CD doing this, even when they shut down.

Just sayin'.

------
Bud
This article is intentionally misleading, in that it does not even refer to
the fact that this user could have avoided losing these files in several
different ways, including simply by making a backup.

This is about losing the ability to re-download and _nothing_ else.

------
aaaaaaaaaab
Daily reminder that the “cloud” is just someone else’s computer.

------
faragon
"All your library are belong to Apple" [1]

[1]
[https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us](https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_your_base_are_belong_to_us)

------
adrian_mrd
And Apple can also add non-purchased music albums into your library without
telling you too - refer to that debacle involving the U2 album 'Songs of
Innocence' from 2014.

------
spiorf
Haha, "your" library...

