As exciting as the past several days have been for Apple fans, with the unveiling of the iPhone XS and Apple Watch Series 4, one slighted consumer is unsatisfied with the way the company handled his issue. On Monday, September 10th, Twitter user Anders G da Silva shared an email he received from Apple after he complained that three movies he had purchased (not rented) suddenly disappeared from his iTunes library.
Apple explained to da Silva that the content provider of the movies he bought has since removed the movies from the Canadian iTunes Store, which means that there’s no way that Apple can restore his purchases. Apple offered him two movie rental credits (up to $5.99 a piece) instead of a full refund or restoration of the movies.
The user’s tweet initial tweet with a screenshot of the email from Apple went viral just as the company was getting ready to kick off its latest iPhone reveal event last week, generating over 11,000 retweets and 19,000 likes. As such, Apple felt it necessary to respond, issuing the following statement on Monday:
Any movies you’ve already downloaded can be enjoyed at any time and will not be deleted unless you’ve chosen to do so. If you change your country setting, some movies may not be available to re-download from the movie store if the version you purchased isn’t also available in the new country. If needed, you can change your country setting back to your prior country to re-download those movies.
It’s worth pointing out that Apple has every right to allow content providers to remove content at their discretion. If you don’t want to risk having your digital purchases taken away from you, buy physical media instead. That said, as Apple states, you can download movies, TV shows, and other digital content on to your hard drive, which means that even if it leaves the iTunes Store, you’ll still have access to your own personal copy.
Of course, this just might not be a viable solution to someone who has collected a library of hundreds or thousands of movies over the past several years, as Slashfilm notes. If anything, this will hopefully serve as a valuable wake-up call to anyone who thinks their digital purchases will last forever, no matter the source.
