蘋果因數位內容可用性面臨集體訴訟 - iOS

原文連結：https://gamerant.com/apple-class-action-lawsuit-digital-purchases/

新聞原文：

Apple is hit with a lawsuit over whether it can take away customer's digital
purchases when an iTunes or Apple ID account is suspended.

Enthusiasts of all things movies, games, and music are often proud of the
collections they amass, with some record collectors owning thousands of
albums and some gamers owning an equally large amount of video games. As
media has moved into the online realm over the years, many of these fans have
moved to collecting digital downloads instead of physical discs, but now the
question being presented in a lawsuit against Apple is: Do consumers actually
own the digital downloads they buy?

As far as lawsuits go, this is far from Apple's first rodeo. In February this
year, Apple CEO Tim Cook was instructed to appear in court for a seven hour
long deposition in relation to Epic Games' recent lawsuit against the tech
giant, and every new iPhone release seems to come with a few consumer
lawsuits over battery or repair issues. This most recent suit, however, is
slightly new territory.

The crux of the suit, lead by plaintiff David Andino, is whether Apple has
the right to block a customer's access to media they have purchased on iTunes
or the App Store if their account has been suspended. Andino's suit argues,
"just like Best Buy cannot come into a person’s home to repossess the movie
DVD that such person purchased from it, Defendant should not be able to
remove Digital Content from its customers’ Purchased folders." Even though
Apple is being investigated for anti-competitive behavior in the fallout of
the Epic Games lawsuit and was ordered to pay damages in a recent consumer
battery lawsuit, the company appears to be saddling up once again to see
Andino's suit through the hard way in the legal system.

With the suit moving ahead, Apple has tried to claim that "no reasonable
consumer would believe" content purchased on iTunes would remain there
forever, however U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez dismissed this claim
stating, "In common usage, the term 'buy' means to acquire possession over
something." With in-app purchases at an all time high during the pandemic,
now is not a bad time to decide, in a court of law, whether these purchases
are actually owned by the consumer or not.

Judge Mendez goes on to state that the case would not be dismissed because,
"Reasonable consumers would expect their access couldn’t be revoked." Fellow
tech giant Microsoft recently settled a suit out of court over Xbox
controller drift, and it's technically not too late for Apple to settle out
of court as well, though there has been no word yet on whether the company
intends to move in that direction.

Earlier this month Apple tried to block witnesses in the Epic Games antitrust
trial, so if the digital download case does go to court Apple will likely
have similar moves up its sleeves. Amazon is also facing a similar lawsuit at
the moment, so whichever case is resolved first may just set the precedent
for the other company as well as all other digital retailers.

心得：略翻一下，美國由原告 David Andino 發起了集體訴訟表示，就算自己的Apple帳
號被Ban，仍應該有權訪問自己所購買的數位內容，包括電影與影集等，他說：「就像百
視達不能直接走進用戶的家裡拿走用戶正在看的電影一樣。蘋果不應該能夠從用戶那邊
刪除用戶購買的內容，但事實上他們可以，儘管有些消費者很幸運，不會碰上這種問題，
但總有一天人們會發現他們的數位內容就這樣消失了。」

但蘋果認為，沒有人會相信這些東西都能永遠保留在iTunes平台上，不過當地法官駁回了
這個說法：「通常而言，「購買」一詞代表著人們能夠佔有某物，通過支付獲得這個物品
的擁有權。」，蘋果試圖證明原告所稱的「傷害」只是純粹的推測，但法官仍然認為蘋果
在用詞上的誤導可能會讓消費者錯誤的理解對於數位內容的擁有權，或者對這些產品花了
本來不會花的錢，目前全案仍在審理當中。

而這個案子所造成的影響可能會比想像中來的廣泛，特別是對於現在這個數位內容大行其
道的時代，如果有一天使用者不能再使用我的帳號了，那麼我所購買的數位內容能否持續
保有？對於這些內容我能不能主張自己的所有權？這些或許都是未來廠商們要面對的問題。

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