973
Why is Google allowed to remove purchases from our Play Store accounts without telling us?
(www.androidpolice.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
973 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
59605 readers
3438 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They’re not purchases, they’re leases.
Edit: it’s actually that you purchase access to their license of the media.
Are they really? Didn't you press a button that said "Buy"? Just because they want things to be something else, doesn't mean that the meaning of the words changed.
They can argue that you “bought” the lease.
No they fucking can't argue that! Words have meanings and Google is not entitled to change them.
It's pretty clear that you're leasing a car when you do it. Make it like that.
If it’s in the term and you sign it, then, for better or for worse, then that is true.
There are usually loads of unenforceable terms and definitions in the ToS you sign. Just because you sign it doesn't make it true or enforceable, and many won't hold up in court even if you've signed the document. But that requires you to spend the energy and money to fight these fuckers.
If a car dealership put a sticker on the front window of a car saying "Buy this car for $250 a month for 4 years" and then took the car from you after 4 years because their terms had some fine print, the dealership would likely be sued.
If they weren't sued they'd at least lose business. Unfortunately for everyone, that's not going to happen with Amazon or Sony or any other big company doing this shit because we're just letting them get away with shady business practices.
I'm not saying the terms are wrong or that what the companies are doing is illegal right now, but I do think it should be looked at closely by someone who can dish out some massive fines, or ideally change the situation.
Maybe that's true in a legal sense, depending on the jurisdiction, but in a moral sense, it's only true if you read and understood what you were agreeing to. You can't consent to something you were tricked into.
It’s in the terms you agreed to. Didn’t you read them?
I wish the terms and conditions had reading times at the top of them, and I also wish there was a law saying something to the effect of "buying a movie shouldn't require you to read 35 minutes of ALL CAPS TERMS AND CONDITIONS while holding a dictionary and a thesaurus after gaining a legal degree"
Agreed there should be a max word count for this kind of things.
Exactly. It should say "lease" instead of "buy" or just "price" .
They know that too but you know why they don't use "lease"? They would have WAY less sales. Almost no one would click that.
So they use "buy"/"price" to make you think you own it, and then think they are clever when they define it as "buying a licence" in the Terms.
That's plain and sneaky so I don't feel sorry for them when people pirate stuff.
I wish every dev had the option of "go to my website and buy this from me with an eternal licence included" as well as the option to lease it from the Play Store.
Same goes for music and movies.
On some storefronts the relevant button is labelled "Get"
I've just had a look on the Play Store, and they notably don't use the word "buy" anywhere that I can see. The button to "buy" the app is just a button with the price on it, and clicking through that it uses the language of "install".
Can't help but think that that's deliberate.
It does say "Buy" and refers to a "purchase", but everyone's arguing semantics; the Terms of Service say that you are buying a limited license to download and use the software. You may have a "one-click purchase"-type option enabled?