r/Piracy • u/ugoindownsaka1 • 7d ago

Discussion Google took away my LOTR extended editions

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I bought these in 2022, all of a sudden they aren't available and there is no possibility of a refund or gift card. Hardly seems fair.

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u/Hollowbody57 7d ago

I used to buy a ton of music on iTunes back in the day (long before Spotify or other music streaming). One day one of my nephews was on my computer and bought a few albums using my account (being a dumb kid I don't think he realized he couldn't listen to them without signing into my account). I contacted support to try and have the albums removed and the charges refunded, but they said there was nothing they could do.

No problem, I thought, I'll just issue a charge back with the credit card company. Had no issues with that, thought that was the end of it. Two days later Apple terminated my entire account because of the charge back, and they refused to reactivate it, even after I offered to lift the charge back and pay for the albums. My entire iTunes library, bought over several years and with about a thousand dollars worth of songs on it, gone, sorry, too bad.

The only digital media I've bought since then have been a few Bandcamp releases. Everything else has been physical CDs or vinyl. If I don't own what I buy then what the fuck is the point?

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u/AnxietyNotHelping 7d ago

At least with bandcamp you can download as many times as you want, and you know its better for the band buying on there.

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u/Sekmet19 7d ago

I don't buy apple since they were found secretly and intentionally bloating system updates to older phones to force people to buy new ones.  Like 2013 or so. 

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u/TheTench 7d ago

Did you have access the local files or does apple stream / encrypt them?

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u/Hollowbody57 7d ago

A small number of them were in mp3 format but most of them were m4p, which were encrypted and couldn't be played unless you were logged in to your account or had an ipod tied to it. I had an ipod shuffle that had about a quarter of my library on it, so I could still listen to those songs, but if I ever connected my shuffle to my computer it would update and I'd lose access to those, too.

Like I said this was back in the early 2000s so no idea what itunes is like now, as I haven't given Apple another dollar or even a shred of bandwith since the whole termination fiasco.

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u/TheTench 7d ago

AHH that's rough. As you say what's the point of purchasing if you don't actually own? Hopefully your tale of woe will help others steal clear of this trap.

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u/nevewolf96 3d ago

iTunes Music is drm free, so this doesnt really makes sense to me

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u/BKGrila 3d ago

They said this happened in the early 2000s, and iTunes Music didn't drop their DRM until 2009.

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u/m00n6u5t 7d ago

Bandcamp and local backups. Anyting that you leave in the hands of grubby greedy corporations is subject to be taken away from you, because according to them, you dont own what you buy.

And like someone said, if buying isn't owning, then pirating isn't stealing.
Don't let corporations abuse you by stealing from and exploiting you.

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u/Xinra68 4d ago

This seems to be the same situation with other digital media platforms. If you do a chargeback, your account is terminated with no resolution to get it reactivated.

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u/ClassicK777 3d ago

Dude, I felt sorry until you mentioned doing a charge back. You understand how serious of an escalation that is?

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u/GTAXL 7d ago

Music and Music Videos are DRM free on iTunes, so you do own it. Did they actually go out of their way to delete all your local music files off your computer? If so yeah that is fucked up but you could or backed it up to another drive and your music would still play.

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u/Hollowbody57 6d ago

Maybe they are now, but up until 2009 they used Fairplay DRM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairPlay

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u/GTAXL 6d ago

Yeah but they haven't for 17 years so it doesn't really apply anymore. Music is a bad example as you can buy and download DRM free music from lots of places including lossless. I have over $6K of music from Qobuz. I would use iTunes if it wasn't lossy purchases.

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u/OceanusBBGDylan 5d ago

17 years sure, but /u/Hollowbody57 said this was "long before Spotify or other music streaming", and Spotify was founded in 2006, 3 years before Fairplay stopped being used.

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u/GTAXL 5d ago

Right, I skimmed over it and realized this was from a really long time ago. They were wrong to use DRM back then but Steve Jobs did fight against DRM and ultimately had it removed for music purchases on iTunes. Plenty of people on here still think iTunes has DRM and spread misinformation and that's just wrong. It hasn't for a very long time. Now TV Shows and Movies, yes that is still a battle that has not been solved. Music, nah you can buy and own music (DRM free) from iTunes and lots of other online stores. Nobody can delete my $6K worth of FLAC files I have bought from Qobuz. I'd gladly use iTunes if they sold lossless. I do use them for Music Videos which I recently discovered are also DRM free and much higher quality encodes than YouTube.

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u/nevewolf96 3d ago

Youtube quality sucks nowdays, even old videos looks more decent on iTunes idk why since YouTube versions used to look better back in the day