It could eventually mean “billions of dollars in damages,” one digital-ownership scholar explains
Sonic the Hedgehog’s “buy” and “rent” buttons are now part of a false advertising lawsuit against Apple. Photo: Apple One of the biggest, most beveled companies on the planet is in new legal trouble, courtesy of its own digital retail business. Apple was sued last week in Buffalo, New York, in a class-action alleging deceptive practices and false advertising over its use of “buy” and “rent” buttons.
All this amounts to deceptive business practices, false advertising, and unjust enrichment on Apple’s part, the suit claims, because if Apple didn’t own that copy of Montero anyway, it couldn’t “sell” it on iTunes in the first place. That’s the argument anyway. Bye-Bye, “Buy” Most of us probably don’t think too critically about what Apple does and does not own when click on the “buy” button, but the company’s lawyers have poured plenty of billable hours into lengthy documents explaining it in opaque contract language that we all ignore when we sign up for iTunes or rent a movie on Prime Video. “Putting aside legal knowledge, just the way these things are written is, by design, hard to understand,” Perzanowski says.
“I got an email from Disney a while ago, and it was like ‘Add these movies to your collection,’” he recalls. “A lawyer looked at this and said ‘Do not use the word “buy.” Do not use the word “purchase.”’ ‘Add it to your digital collection’ is a good way I think of avoiding the potential problem that Apple and Amazon have.” He also suggests “add” or “save for later,” as more neutral options. Apple could also replace “buy” with “get,” as it has in the past.
Put more bluntly, New York makes it easier to take Apple to the bank. If 200,000 New Yorkers grabbed a few $5.99 movies or $1.29 songs on iTunes over the past three years , and those transactions were multiplied by $500 and/or $50 a pop, well, Perzanowski joked that he’s not the best at math, but: “Pretty quickly in a state that’s as big as New York, we’re talking about billions of dollars in damages.
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