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Comment by Joeri | Hacker News Reader

This isn't just games.

Apple has deleted paid music from my itunes account, despite it still being for sale, and refused to restore it when asked. They said the publisher removed that specific version of the album from the store (the new version has an identical track list) so their hands were tied, and to use the file backups I made of those files.

Microsoft threw away my e-book collection when they shuttered their first ebook store back in the day, with no (legal) ability to carry those books onto a new device, even if I copied the files.

So far the only long term reliable digital goods business I know has been amazon with the kindle, but I'm sure you can find horror stories there as well.

You don't buy this stuff, you rent it indefinitely.

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FWIW, I've been using Steam since the release of Half-Life 2, and in my limited personal experience it has been a far better investment than buying software on physical media. Steam has let me migrate software from machine to machine as I upgrade, and makes recovering from corruption or a lost hard drive a simple solution of merely redownloading the files needed. Physical media has not proven durable enough, nor media formats long-lasting enough, for buying hard copies to be a viable strategy in this particular use case. Incidentally the physical-media durability problem has driven me toward almost exclusively using streaming services for music, although the arcane copyright system applied to digital music is a factor here. If it were legal, I'd much rather simply make a few archival copies on various storage devices.

> So far the only long term reliable digital goods business I know has been amazon with the kindle, but I'm sure you can find horror stories there as well.

I'm surprised you haven't heard of this one:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/18/amazon_removes_1984...

I enjoy reading on a Kindle, but I side-load everything from my PC.

I used to buy books at Fictionwise, because it was the only place that sold certain books I liked in my country, all other stores only sold to some random northern-hemisphere country (seriously, what people that sell digital stuff have against South America and Africa?)

So, Barnes & Noble purchased them, and shut down them :/

I tried to access the books I purchased legally, even downloaded some BN reader for desktop... aaaaand, it told me I could only download my books from a US IP.

BN can go to that place O.O

And since then I never bought e-books again, if a book exists physically and ships to my country (or has publisher in my country) I buy it.

Amazon instant sometimes does this too. I stopped buying movies after I received a message that a movie I bought was currently unavailable due to a licensing agreement.

> so [Apples] hands were tied, and to use the file backups I made of those files.

Is it really a digitals stores duty to indefinitely offer re-downloads of material bought? Sounds like you should have taken better care of your own stuff.

When a seller sells you a digital asset that is not encumbered with copy protection, I find it quite fair that they don't see themselves as responsible for also being your backup solution til the end of time.

If they do, however, sell you an encumbered digital asset, which requires access to theirs or their 3rd party server in order to function, then yes, they do owe it to their customers to be available til the end of time.

Did you miss the part where Apple deleted the files?

They removed it from his iTunes account, not his local iTunes library.

Since it is a sale, I stand by my position that it is on the buyer to keep purchased files safe, and being able to redownload files from your iTunes account is a curtesy service that Apple offers, but you cannot expect them to guarantee it.

Joeri said Apple deleted the files from his account, which may or may not include the files on his hard drive.

Apple did not delete files from his hard drive.

Indeed they did not. But, they did break the (unspoken) promise that I could freely keep streaming and redownloading all my iTunes purchases from every machine. You can call it a courtesy service to provide that, and technically that's true, but that courtesy is a huge part of the convenience of iTunes, and definitely convinces people to "buy".

I think you just learned that unspoken promises are worth the paper they're printed on.

That said, the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions clearly state:

SERVICES AND CONTENT USAGE RULES

[...]

All Services:

[...]

- It is your responsibility not to lose, destroy, or damage Content once downloaded. We encourage you to back up your Content regularly.

[...]

REDOWNLOADS

You may be able to redownload previously acquired Content (“Redownload”) to your devices that are signed in with the same Apple ID (“Associated Devices”). You can see Content types available for Redownload in your Home Country at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204632. Content may not be available for Redownload if that Content is no longer offered on our Services.

So next time, I suggest you read the T&C before you buy something.

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