Our recent discussion about whether licenses should apply to the user or the machine drew many interesting comments about the vagaries of Windows licensing. But it also led several readers to point at a surprising example of a vendor whose licensing policies seem to cut both ways against the user: Apple.
"A very interesting debate -- it made me think about the Apple iTunes licensing scenario, which currently offers the worst of both worlds," wrote one reader. "It licenses each song to the user AND/OR the registered machine. If your hard drive goes down and you lose the songs you have bought Apple gives you no recourse to download the songs you have licensed. So, despite the fact that you have licensed the songs in your name, it's your loss. This, in effect, licenses the music to your machine and runs contrary to the spirit of an individual license. However, if another family member logs in to that machine and creates their own account on iTunes then Apple will automatically bar them from playing any tracks downloaded by other iTunes users on that machine. This clearly demonstrates that the songs are licensed to the individual."
The reader only discovered that after he'd set up accounts on the same machine for each of his children. "If you only have one account on a machine, then it's really a PC-wide license and all users of the machine can use it to play downloaded tracks," the reader wrote. "But as soon as more than one person on that machine has an account it becomes an individual license. I have become very upset by this licensing scheme as I have found both my children have downloaded -- and paid for -- many of the same songs on their individual accounts because they haven't been able to listen to each other's downloads. Had I retained a 'family' account for all of us to use this would not have been the case. Apple needs to wise up and introduce a scheme that completely divorces its licensing from the machine, but gives the end-user a choice of an individual or a family license for downloading a track."
Another reader ran into a similar issue with Apple's licensing, but in a rather different circumstance. "I have a G5 dual-core Mac and a G4 Apple laptop," the reader wrote. "When I bought my copy of iLife 06, Apple's website described the $79 version as a 'single user license,' which I interpreted that to mean I, as one person, can load the product on my laptop. I'm really single; I don't have a family. Nobody but me, myself, and I will normally be using the product."
But when the reader looked at the EULA for iLife 06 (which I've posted in our EULA Library here), he saw that it stated pretty clearly that it could not be installed on two machines at all. "The first section is a bit confusing, because it says it can use it on 'one Apple-labeled computer at a time,' which sounds like the MS license that permits laptop usage. But then the next sentence says: 'This License does not allow the Apple Software to exist on more than one Apple-labeled computer at a time...' I spoke with Apple Customer Support and they agreed that rather than a 'Single User License' as advertised, it really should have said it's a single computer license."
The reader also learned that for another $20 he could have purchased a "Family Pack" that allows up to five copies to be installed, even though he's a one-person family. "I certainly would have gone that way rather than having to buy a second license if I'd realized I needed it," the reader wrote. "At least the Apple support people say they will try to change the order information so customers can see it can only be used on one computer. But it's ridiculous -- in the physical world nobody can say that your Gucci handkerchiefs can only be in one particular Gucci bag with which you have to associate it. How have we let the software world get so far away from the physical one?"
It has gotten pretty far, indeed, considering that we started this conversation talking about how PC users can lose their licensing rights to Windows when a hardware component fails. But perhaps it's not really that surprising that Apple turns out to have some issues, too. Until we stand up and refuse to accept a licensing concept in which the customer always loses, we can't really blame the hardware or the software vendors for taking advantage of us.
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