
Apple didn't delete that guy's movies – what really happened - evo_9
https://www.cnet.com/news/no-apple-didnt-delete-that-guys-movies-heres-what-really-happened/
======
MatthewWilkes
While it is interesting to read more of the root cause, the tone of this
article is surprisingly pro-Apple to my ears. No, they didn't delete his
movies, but they did introduce a technical limitation to prevent him from
accessing content that they told him he was buying because of details of media
licencing.

This isn't something a reasonable member of the public would expect, and the
UX and customer service paths he experienced did not help him understand or
try to make him whole, they dismissed his concerns.

~~~
BurritoAlPastor
It's not something an uninformed person would reasonably expect, but neither
is it Apple's fault that corporate copyright holders insist on Byzantine
region-locking (to protect possible per-region licensee differences, maybe?)

If the fellow owns any movies on blu-ray or DVD and buys a new player, he'll
be delighted to discover that those are also hosed.

~~~
nothrabannosir
Apple has taken full responsibility for this by acting as the seller of a
product. If I sell you a washing machine and it breaks for whatever reason
under statutory warranty, I am responsible. No hiding behind “yeah but the
producer wants to make more money off you so it’s not really my fault.”

You take responsibility for what you sell in B2C. If you’re not happy, take it
up with your suppliers. Or the law. Or Santa Claus for all I care.

This is a vital part of our market rules. Otherwise people would never stop
pointing fingers.

(I want to add: it’s also true morally. Even if this is not strictly legally
their responsibility, moral responsibility is assumed all the same. This is
why we blame apple; they can’t have their cake and eat it too. There was this
cartoon of a villain who copied the power of every hero he met. When he met
Superman it all seemed lost; surely noone could defeat him now? In the world’s
hour of truth, the Batman approaches with kryptonite, and he buckles. “He
could not copy our strengths without copying our weaknesses.” So it is with
Apple and Hollywood.)

~~~
neom
By that logic, if I buy a DVD at the checkout of Marks & Spencer on my summer
holidays before returning to the states, I get to the US to find out it won't
work in the DVD player here, should I be annoyed at Marks & Spencer for not
posting a sign that explains media regions?

~~~
nothrabannosir
Yes. Region locks are a fabricated limitation, just another way for Hollywood
to extract money from the consumer. You should be annoyed with Marks &
Spencer’s for playing ball. Because while one drop might not turn the tide,
eventually the dam breaks and some retailer somewhere will find a way and sell
unlocked DVD players.

Effecting change in society is an exercise in finding the right pressure
point. Hollywood doesn’t care about our feelings on region locks. Sellers do.
Put the incentive in the right spot and watch the stars align. A well
leveraged arm cannot be overturned.

~~~
lotsofpulp
One benefit of region locks is its crude ability to charge people based on
their level of wealth, allowing more people to share in the experience. I've
been to national parks in some countries that charge more if you have a
passport from a richer country than if you have a passport from a poorer
country, which I think is a noble effort to be a little more egalitarian with
the distribution of resources. Obviously, not everyone from a poor country is
poor and vice versa, but in the absence of a better method it sort of works.

However, I'm not sold on region locks for media that has zero marginal cost to
reproduce, nor am I sold on selling someone something and then revoking access
to it based on their locale.

~~~
crtasm
You remind me of the last time I drove past Stonehenge in England. It's been
paid entry for a long time but I found it surprising to discover tourists get
a cheaper rate. It was a flat change though, not dependant on country.

------
zorkw4rg
The insanity of international copyright law has turned a lot of people into
basically just ignoring the laws which is 100% justified, reasonable and
morally sound in my opinion. It is not the consumer's fault that politicans
are too inept in understanding the current century we live in, it is not the
consumers fault that politicans are too corrupt to bring copyright law into
this century.

One of the creative ways of digital self defense is
[https://unogs.com/](https://unogs.com/) it lists all content on netflix and
in which region it is available. This way you can use a VPN service and
actually fully use Netflix as the service it was intended to be and you've
been payed for properly.

And for that matter it is not the corporations fault for exploiting all laws
to the greatest extend possible either, don't anthropomorphize corporations,
they are not moral agents, they are soulless thoughtless profit maximization
machines it is the fault of politicians and the population who voted for them,
to not regulating them properly.

~~~
nottorp
Considering most hollywood movies are interchangeable (the scripts are all
written from the same manual anyway), my solution is to not actually purchase
anything. If it's on Netflix or HBO, it's fine, otherwise I don't bother. Same
for music, if it's streamed somewhere, fine, otherwise no. I get blu rays for
really good movies, but they are so rare it ends up very cheap.

When they come up with a guarantee that I can access my digital purchases
forever from any corner of the world or solar system, then I'll consider
buying digitally from the movie/music industry.

~~~
nottorp
Looks like people are taking offense to me saying that all hollywood movies
are the same. If you can watch the same superhero movie 30 times (with
different skins and superhero names), power to you. I can't any more.

~~~
stephengillie
Books are someone's fanfic that someone else liked enough to publish. Scripts
are similar.

Most stories are written around the same small groups:

\- Single protagonist

\- Duo or buddies

\- 3 person team (heavy hitter, smart/tech/engineer, leader)

\- 5 person team (usually a 3 person team core with 2 additional members)

It's like "madlibbing" a story - using characters named "heavy", "tech",
"leader", any IP can slot in their characters. For these,
Teal'c/Carter/O'Neill or Raphael/Donatello/Leonardo or Hulk/Stark/Rogers.

Some plots will naturally be more widely adaptable to multiple IPs than
others. Any hero can be used to tell a sufficiently generic story, but not all
heroes work in all stories. Imagine doing Man of Steel in the MCU, or Infinity
War in the DCEU.

~~~
FabHK
You are complaining that movies are all similar, insofar as they tend to focus
on 1, 2, 3 or 5 people?

~~~
DonHopkins
That explains why they never made the "Two and a Half Men" movie!

~~~
stephengillie
Please do not give these bad ideas to Hollywood executives, or we might suffer
such a production.

------
mirimir
There's a simple solution. Don't use any content that can't be downloaded as
an actual file, with no DRM or other bullshit. That sometimes means that I'm
restricted to torrented stuff. But that's not my problem.

~~~
millstone
The simple solution is to not download this stuff, period. The above sounds
like rationalizing copyright infringement.

~~~
Youden
Or, since they're taking the position that you're not buying the media but
you're buying a "license", you can purchase it and then pirate a DRM-free
copy.

But really, when copyright is so blatantly one-sided against the people, why
should the people be expected to wholly support it?

I'm not advocating for ignoring it completely but some rules are just
ridiculous. For example ripping. DMCA says that circumvention of technical
protections is illegal. If I buy a Blu-Ray, why shouldn't I be able to rip it
and add it to my Plex library? What harm does that inflict?

Then there are more dubious questions like is it okay to pirate if there's no
legal option? My opinion is yes, it's totally okay. If there's no legal means
through which to give the copyright owner money, I'm not "taking" anything
away by obtaining it without doing so.

~~~
sokoloff
Copyright includes the right to not distribute your work (IMO and under the
law). Suppose person A takes an intimate digital photo of person B (with their
consent). Person A does not offer to sell it to you. It’s still improper for
you to take a digital copy. I think the media companies have that same right
in their copyrighted works. I realize that wasn’t your main argument, but feel
it important enough to mention.

I agree with your position on the first 3 paragraphs.

~~~
teddyh
> _Copyright includes the right to not distribute your work (IMO and under the
> law). Suppose person A takes an intimate digital photo of person B (with
> their consent). Person A does not offer to sell it to you. It’s still
> improper for you to take a digital copy._

That scenario has absolutely nothing to do with copyright law, and it is
disingenuous of you to suggest otherwise.

~~~
sokoloff
Any limited distribution of content (limited editions, privately commissioned
works, etc) absolutely has to do with copyright law (IMO of course).

My example was chosen as one type of privately commissioned work that everyone
could (presumably) quickly agree with the outcome being the correct one.

~~~
yebyen
It's a good example, but it's a better fodder for argument if you take out the
word "intimate"

I don't want my grandchildren or anyone else to have or reproduce intimate
photos of me, sure, but I do want the progeny to be able to freely make copies
of photos of me in my glory days, for a school project or shrine or whatever.
Meanwhile, say, I would like to be able to tightly control distribution of my
own image as long as I am alive.

If I used one of the DRM mechanisms available today to add a technical
protection preventing unauthorized reproductions of my image, ... I don't
think I have to say any more, you get the point right? Whatever incentives you
have today, Copyright was never meant to protect them exclusively, forever
(but the current law, since DMCA and Sonny Bono/Mickey Mouse, does essentially
allow for this, protection in perpetuity and without exclusion.)

Fair Use was a protection introduced in 1976 extension of US Copyright law
specifically with the idea of preserving for posterity and other uses with a
social benefit in mind.

Until much more recently, honoring posterity was always an explicit part of
the "social contract" provided by copyright protections. After a reasonable
span of time has passed, those protections should expire so that future
generations (or even sooner, other cases provided for by fair use) can benefit
from the work, in a historical perspective, or any other "fair" context.

At one time, nobody could stop you from traveling across a border with a copy
or original of some artwork without physically standing in the way. There was
also a time when "exploding copies" were science fiction, or maybe the stuff
of spy movies. None of these protections for public domain are effective now
in an era where these capabilities are real and available to the masses for
general use.

~~~
sokoloff
Fair point on confusing people with specifically intimate. Thanks.

But what if someone else _didn 't want_ their photos from their "glory days"
to be available? Shouldn't they have the right just as much as you have the
right to decide you do? Maybe they have a religious or spiritual objection to
it...

I personally tend to favor control of duplication rights being under the
control of the creator of the work. If I have a right to be forgotten while
alive, I think I also have a right to be forgotten after my death.

~~~
yebyen
I hope for the sake of my own family and the memory of our ancestors that we
haven't really found ways yet to make that technically possible. I think the
use of a person's image is a bit tortured too compared to other kinds of media
you might copy and employ fair-use on, but I'll admit that with "a bit
tortured" maybe I'm being willfully obtuse if I ever tried to argue that no
person's image is present in any entertainment forms that were recorded, like
movie or song.

I can always burn some embarrassing photo if it's on film, well or say,
embarassing blog post, ... there are technical means to signal to web service
providers like archive.org that act as public archivers that they should
forget their remembrance of your broadcast (via robots.txt or other means -
it's actually very easy to automatically disappear yourself off the internet
so that Archive.org won't even remember you, if you operated your own domain
and knew how to make that request to cease retention well-formed.) I don't
know if robots.txt has anything like force of law, but you can use it and
honorable, responsive service providers may all honor it.

But I don't think that anybody has a right to be forgotten, in the mind of any
public citizen, (and other than with respect to any service providers.) If you
broadcast your ideas to me, and in the process of my lawful consumption a copy
is made, or in the case of a piece of code that runs in my browser for
example, I believe that I should absolutely be permitted to take a copy for my
own remembrance, or analysis (given it is done without intent of reproduction
or for immediate re-distribution), and inclusive of the idea that I may intend
a lawful preservation for reproduction in the public commons when the
copyright has expired. The law as I understand it agrees, these are all
permitted copies. There are even more separate protections for patents and
protected trade secrets.

Any technical means you can employ that prevents this lawful exchange I view
as evil, and to me that's not up for debate. There are separate (legal)
protections that you can enact if you are concerned about commercial uses, or
wholesale ripoffs, or like, say, the disclosure of a trade secret by some
trusted (contracted) party that diminishes your market value – those are all
considerations that exclude a copy-ier from protections under fair use. But
those are the limits of your legal protections as I understand it, and if I
stand behind that line, the law should always tilt in my favor.

If I'm not diminishing the value of your work by taking a copy when you offer
it, and keeping it, then I think I can tell you to pound sand. The most you
can do, as a private citizen, is ask me to forget you, ... and I hope I can
always say no! (Of course, if you've used DRM technology to prevent taking the
copy, then the law is actually on your side today notwithstanding fair use.)

------
SideburnsOfDoom
> He moved to Canada, roughly nine months ago, after purchasing the films in
> Australia

Of course he moved countries, that would do it. The movie is available in both
countries, but in a different "version". The rows have different id, so the
query does not match them.

The legal details of online media purchases and country are crazy complex.
Like batshit, no reason for it, it got that way over time and now we're stuck
with it, "not fit for 21st century purpose but here we are". I worked in this
area and it's easily the most complex part of it and as far as selling and
streaming bits goes, pointless.

~~~
csydas
Agreed -- it's entirely non-sensical in how it's enforced as well. I'm a US
expat, and travel fairly regularly for work; when I first left the US, I
retained my Amazon Prime subscription, naively thinking "A video is a video,
who cares where I am?" Then I learned about distribution rights, and how
absolutely terrible companies are at informing people about whether or not
certain content is actually available in their region or not.

Unless something has changed since the last time I checked (2 years back, so
happy to be proven wrong), there is no official method provided to consumers
to determine if you can actually utilize most streaming services from any
given country/region, and this is extremely frustrating to me. Streaming
should be perfect for me as it's preferable to keep what I carry as light as
possible, and yet I know that I cannot rely on any streaming service to
reliably provide me with the content that I signed up with the intention of
viewing/listening to.

Granted, I guess that's my fault for traveling, but it just seems very silly
that one situation where streaming is the perfect solution, it fails
completely due to distribution rights.

~~~
IronBacon
They were going to force a "single digital market" in EU but I haven't heard
news about it recently.

------
Digital-Citizen
This article contradicts itself in at least one significant way without
providing a real explanation for the contradiction.

Early on the article claims "Apple tells CNET that it won't delete your
movies, either. At least, not ones you've downloaded.". But that's not a
useful answer because it doesn't provide any real security about one's
downloaded works.

Later CNET says "We can't be sure what will will happen if Disney -- or any
other content provider -- "recalls" a digital purchase, as a publisher did
with an ebook of George Orwell's 1984 on Amazon back in 2009.".

Keep in mind that Amazon made a similar pledge to what Apple reportedly told
CNET. As Richard Stallman rightly points out in
[https://stallman.org/amazon.html](https://stallman.org/amazon.html) "In
response to criticism, Amazon promised it would never do this again unless
ordered to by the state, which I find not very comforting.". In other words,
Amazon tacitly acknowledges it retains the power to do this again.

It's far more useful to examine the situation along the lines of which party
retains what power over the user, or to look at how much freedom users have in
the situation.

Therefore the real hinge here (which goes completely unaddressed in the CNET
article) is software freedom (the freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify
published computer software). If one uses free software to locate and
read/play the work, then one has a chance to make sure that the free program
won't betray their interests -- continuing to read/play the work at any time,
for any reason, and do so without spying on or reporting the activity to
others without explicit consent from the user.

But if one uses proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software to access a
downloaded copy of the work, one's access to the work is in jeopardy. One
can't be certain that copy will be readable/playable through that proprietary
software. Perhaps the proprietary software will delete that copy of the work
(putting aside what's legal or, more importantly, ethical for the moment, it
is worth noting that proprietors retain the technical power to do exactly this
in most people's common use of media). Perhaps the proprietary software will
report on the user's attempt to read/play the work thus notifying someone
what's being read/played and from where.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> In other words, Amazon tacitly acknowledges it retains the power to do this
> again.

> But if one uses proprietary (nonfree, user-subjugating) software to access a
> downloaded copy of the work, one's access to the work is in jeopardy. One
> can't be certain that copy will be readable/playable through that
> proprietary software. Perhaps the proprietary software will delete that copy
> of the work

Amazon only has the power to do this if you connect your Kindle to the
internet. You can be sure that Amazon won't reach out to your Kindle to remove
your books when it's impossible for them to do so.

~~~
Buge
How do you get new books if the Kindle never connects to the internet?

~~~
lsc
you can connect your kindle via usb and access it like a mass storage device
to add new books, if you want. I've tried this on a ubuntu box and a fedora
box, both default installs, and it just works with no extra drivers or
anything.

Of course, the whole _point_ of a kindle is that it's super convenient to live
in amazon's walled garden. If you don't want to live in amazon's walled
garden... you probably are using another device anyhow.

~~~
Buge
Theoretically if you got those new books from Amazon, they could contain a bit
of configuration telling the Kindle to delete your old books.

~~~
lsc
sure, But so far, that's not really how amazon operates; I mean, when I hook
up my kindle I can actually copy most (maybe all? I haven't checked
exhaustively) of the books off the kindle on to my computer, and then restore
them back to the kindle later; even if amazon _does_ delete the books off my
kindle, if I put any effort into backups (which I don't, 'cause amazon
removing a book is excessively rare) - I would still have the files. (how
useful those would be would depend on the level of DRM applied to it, which I
understand is controlled by the publisher and varies by book.)

That, and if you are giving up the convenience of the amazon ecosystem, why
would you pay extra for books from amazon? The amazon kindle is one of the
most expensive ways to get books, and the value proposition is that it's super
easy and convenient, and sure, I'll pay extra for a super convenient book
ecosystem. If you are willing to deal with inconveniences, there's much
cheaper ways to do it. Hell, I think buying used physical copies and sending
the book to the destructive book scan place is often cheaper than buying new
(the only option) for the kindle.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Having a book scanned produces a hard-to-read PDF for books with large pages;
you'd need either a very large reader or to tolerate very small print.

~~~
lsc
Yeah, I've got a A4-sized reader for scientific papers and other things that
come in PDFs that are sized for a full page. But the vast majority of my paper
books have pages closer to the size of a kindle screen than a A4 sheet of
paper.

OCR is another solution.

I mean, I'm not arguing that these other solutions aren't way inferior to just
buying the e-book direct from amazon; I was just trying to make the point that
living in the amazon ecosystem is a much more expensive way to consume books
than just buying used books.

------
techcode
TL;DR: No conspiracy - it's (slightly) different movies.

At least for Cars 2 - Australian version (right at the start of video) is
literally different from other English versions (around 3:30) -
[https://youtu.be/SaYmI7xANCg](https://youtu.be/SaYmI7xANCg)

Many other movies (and especially animated) have different versions with such
tweaks so story/jokes still continue to make sense around the world.

Considering it looks like I'm the first one to point this out - it probably
never crossed mind of Apple systems engineers that such things might need to
be handled. And even if it did - feature probably got bumped by other things
that impact bigger % of customers...

~~~
techcode
More "internationalization" examples of animated movies
[https://youtu.be/oB8Fr6Mm2zA](https://youtu.be/oB8Fr6Mm2zA)

------
seanalltogether
I moved from the US to the UK a year ago, and I'm still worried to switch all
my media accounts to UK territory. PS3, PS4, itunes, google, netflix, steam,
blizzard are all tied to my US account and credit card still. Articles like
this don't give me hope I should be switching

~~~
jagermo
Don't do it. Create new ones, if you must. Try to sign into your US accounts
from time to time using a VPN.

------
kwhitefoot
The article is being altogether too soft on Apple. Good customer service would
have been Apple simply fixing it for the customer instead of parroting the
letter of the rules.

------
isostatic
You don't buy digital movies. You license them under a license that says you
can use it for a limited amount of time at the discretion of the company
you're licensing from.

If you want to buy something, you need either a physical item like a DVD based
on common open standards (as you have coded to remove the encryption), or you
need a file that is playable in software you have the source code to.

Even then hardware wise it becomes more and more expensive to play old
purchases due to entropy, and time moving on. Try to play a c90 cassette now,
or a 78rpm record. Think how easy that is compared to a 1/4" video tape or
umatic.

~~~
justtopost
I decided last year to archive my old cassette recordings I made when I was
younger, and those of local bands I havent seen elsewhere. The tape deck,
pretty easy. A few thrift stores and I had a nice hifi model with dolby b, c,
decent heads. Most had badly misaligned heads, deteriorated rollers, and
broken drive belts at best. Even my better unit needed a full disassembly,
cleaning, lube, 3 electrolytic capacitors replaced, and custom rollers made,
and a 10 dollar belt kit. That is not even mentioning more routine maint like
head cleaning, path demagnatisation, and media prep. Old tapes before 1980s
often need to be baked or lubed to play properly without disintegrating in the
works. And then you have Bias, NR, and Tape speeds to worry about. I found my
old tascam ran at nearly 2x speed, and had unique head spacing, and 4 track
simutanious recording, making it nessassary to repair it as well at
signifigant cost.

Were CD's the last DRM unencumbered physical/digital format?

Fyi: Most dj style Neumark record players will play 78s, and sound quite good
depending on your stylus.

------
shmerl
This just shows how important is to buy DRM-free. And who is selling DRM-free
video exactly?

~~~
spacehome
Torrents and Usenet. Prices are competitive, too.

~~~
shmerl
Exactly the point. Film industry should sober up and start behaving properly,
by enabling legal DRM-free options, instead of being stuck up in their
backwards thinking DRM obsession.

------
jccalhoun
Even if apple didn't delete his movies, the fact remains that he can't watch
them. This is why I am very hesitant to buy online-only drm-ed goods if I
can't remove the drm.

------
msie
Reminds me of the time that I moved back from the US to Canada but I couldn't
change the billing on my Xbox Live account because I couldn't specify a
province in the billing address. I had to buy Xbox Live gift cards to renew my
membership year after year So sad. Xbox Live is state of the art but the
billing system is a dinosaur.

~~~
maccard
I have to buy PSN credit off eBay or get my parents to buy it because I moved
from Ireland to the UK. I stopped playing world of Warcraft when I moved
because I couldn't find a way to pay battle.net after I moved. It's insanity.

------
mark_l_watson
Buying digital media with DRM is a mixed bag. For eBooks I sometimes buy
directly from publishers to get no DRM versions, but for Google Play movies,
Kindle and Audible books, iBooks, and Play books I most factor the risk of
loss of access into the price/value purchase decision.

Buying DRM media from multiple companies is also a good hedge-my-bets
strategy. At the other side, renting access: I am a big fan of O’Reilly
Safari. For a yearly fee I can read their library. Much of my job and career
requires me to stay current with new tech and I generally prefer reading or
skimming a recent book to reading miscellaneous stuff on the web.

------
cmurf
It's perverse that we've accepted as OK, taking the concept of movie regions,
to books. It's perverse that we've accepted we're effectively licensing a book
rather than owning it, losing the right to loan out, or gift, any ebook the
same as any book. It is a corruption of good ideas into bad ideas. These
things should be called rentals at the time of sale.

Old complaint (2012) [https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-amazon-is-within-its-
right...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-amazon-is-within-its-rights-to-
remove-access-to-your-kindle-books/)

------
cm2187
But even if the movie has been downloaded, and unless there is no DRM, Apple
still has the capacity to lock you out of that movie and all you have left is
a rather large blob of random bytes on your hard drive.

------
ryanlol
Why is it difficult for this guy to switch his locale to australia? The
screenshot of the form shows the “NONE” payment option.

------
icu
Having moved countries, and lock-out regions, three times... this is precisely
why I still buy physical copies of media (mainly video games and movies).

I'm increasingly worried about video game console hard drives, and the digital
purchases I've made, surviving any future issues with the console or
download/streaming services.

------
heeen2
Tech companies want to sell you their cloud and tell you it's better than
local storage, to tie you to their platform and for a ongoing revenue stream
but this is where you notice the leaky abstraction.

------
mankash666
This is why I don't trust CNet's reviews of Apple's products. They'll convince
the customer that "you're holding it wrong" for bones from Apple!

