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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

Well, because of the way Apple licenses films from studios, you never really own them.

Presumably when Apple adds a film to iTunes for customers to buy they know how long they'll be keeping it on their servers for people to access it. It'll be part of the license. Unless Apple can guarantee that the film will be available after that time (eg Apple negotiated a non-revokable extension that they'll legally bound to take) then it doesn't seem entirely unreasonable that they should have to communicate the time limit to the user. Eg add some fine print that says "This film will be available in your Apple account until 2031, and may be available after that date" or something.

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If the customer purchased/bought the movie then Apple should offer a way to download the movie (in the case that Apple removes it from their catalogue). This would ensure customer has the ability to keep their purchase. When I buy something whether ebooks, movies, music then I do not expect it to be removed from access at a later date unless an option for me to store the item is offered.

Apple has the ability to delete media and apps from Apple devices. Offering a download would only work if it's not non-DRM (so not revokable), not tied to a specific device (you should be able to play your film on any device you own), and ideally not even tied to an account (you shouldn't lose your purchases if Apple close your account). Really it would need to be in an open format that works on non-Apple devices too.

From 2018: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2018/09/17/apple-res...

tl;dr: once downloaded to a device you have it until you delete it.

It’s not ideal and I do wish they would retain the right to keep an archived copy on their servers for all customers who have bought it so they could re-download or stream at any time without having to deal with backup and restore.

>When I buy something whether ebooks, movies, music then I do not expect it to be removed from access at a later date unless an option for me to store the item is offered.

That’s due to technical limitations. The copyright holders would like to have this possibility very much :^)

I wonder how this works internationally and I wish to see more local lawsuits. In Spain for example, if you have access to the original legally (e.g. you buy it, or pay for Netflix), you are legally allowed to make a private copy of it (even if the platform doesn't want/allow you to). It is illegal however to hack the service to make a copy, so it seems that a right is in direct contradiction of a prohibition here and it'd be interesting to see a case like that in my country's court.

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