原文连结：https://gamerant.com/apple-class-action-lawsuit-digital-purchases/
新闻原文：
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，美国由原告 David Andino 发起了集体诉讼表示，就算自己的Apple帐
号被Ban，仍应该有权访问自己所购买的数位内容，包括电影与影集等，他说：“就像百
视达不能直接走进用户的家里拿走用户正在看的电影一样。苹果不应该能够从用户那边
删除用户购买的内容，但事实上他们可以，尽管有些消费者很幸运，不会碰上这种问题，
但总有一天人们会发现他们的数位内容就这样消失了。”
但苹果认为，没有人会相信这些东西都能永远保留在iTunes平台上，不过当地法官驳回了
这个说法：“通常而言，“购买”一词代表着人们能够占有某物，通过支付获得这个物品
的拥有权。”，苹果试图证明原告所称的“伤害”只是纯粹的推测，但法官仍然认为苹果
在用词上的误导可能会让消费者错误的理解对于数位内容的拥有权，或者对这些产品花了
本来不会花的钱，目前全案仍在审理当中。
而这个案子所造成的影响可能会比想像中来的广泛，特别是对于现在这个数位内容大行其
道的时代，如果有一天使用者不能再使用我的帐号了，那么我所购买的数位内容能否持续
保有？对于这些内容我能不能主张自己的所有权？这些或许都是未来厂商们要面对的问题。