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Apple-iTunes-Feature

Last week, we discussed the story of Anders K da Silva, an iTunes user who discovered several movies had been removed from his iTunes library. Apple confirmed the removal and told da Silva no refunds would be forthcoming, but would he like a few free video rentals? This came off rather poorly, to say the least.

The story, it turns out, is rather more complicated — just you wouldn't know that from reading Apple'due south own communication on the topic. The original message from Apple stated "Afterward reviewing this instance, I have noticed that the content provider has removed these movies from the Canadian Store. Hence, these movies are non available in the Canada iTunes Store at this time."

Apple-Communication

CNet contacted da Silva and somewhen discovered the source of the problem. Anders moved to Canada from Australia roughly 9 months ago and he bought the films in question in Commonwealth of australia before he moved. Some of his Australian content even so works perfectly, only 3 films — Cars, Cars two, and The Grand Budapest Hotel — aren't in his library. It'south not a question of the films not beingness for sale, either — all iii are still offered in the Canadian and Australian versions of the iTunes Store.

The trouble, in this case, is related to motion picture region lockouts — bogus barriers put in place to forbid film lovers from taking content from one market into other areas. We've seen such barriers falling in physical media. Blu-ray has 3 regions to DVD's half-dozen, and plain, about Blu-ray discs don't implement region locking anyway. But it's been deployed fifty-fifty more than widely in digital media of belatedly. Companies similar Netflix have begun dandy down more aggressively on customers who use VPNs to view the service from other markets.

With that said, it's articulate Apple had no programme in place for how to bargain with customers who move across the world and would reasonably like to retain access to content they purchased legally when they lived in Commonwealth of australia. The fact that the company miscommunicated the problems with his own account to da Silva is evidence of that. Apple has promised to send da Silva instructions for a workaround that volition allow him to nevertheless view content he legally purchased, simply he'll accept to cancel any of his existing Canadian subscription services and will lose any Canadian shop credit.

Even if Apple tree is able to restore da Silva's power to access content he legally purchased, the company needs a much better strategy for dealing with situations like this. Information technology doesn't actually change our ain conclusions from final week, either. Ultimately, customers don't care if they lose access to content because a reseller chose to finish selling it or because they moved. What they care about is losing admission to content they bought. Information technology doesn't sound like Apple really bothered to figure out what went incorrect in da Silva'due south case until the press got involved, which isn't a great look here, either.

Manifestly, Apple tree cannot just tell Disney or any other motion picture distributor how it will or won't license its content. At the same time, however, Apple is one of just a handful of companies with the potential marketplace power to influence how said content is delivered to the end customer. The App Store isn't just a storefront and digital distribution companies need to take pains to ensure the concatenation of buying is as secure for digital products as it is for physical ones if they want their customers to view a concrete and digital buy equally being functionally identical.

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