We have tons of purchased content from iTunes. Our household uses and enjoys this regularly.
Yes, we have a family plan, but when I pass, I would like to have someone else in my household take over as the head of the family plan. Otherwise, all my purchased content will eventually be unavailable to members of the family.
See How to add a Legacy Contact for your Apple Account - Apple Support. This article outlines the facility Apple have put in place.
In practice, at least in the short term, having a way to give a surviving family member a way to access the account as if they were you (e.g. password to your device and Apple Account) for approvals, and the ability to update the associated payment method, might be sensible. At present I don't believe Apple have a mechanism for changing the family organizer, so your successors may have to disband and then recreate the family share.
I keep my late wife's account active though I've always been the organizer. This reminds me I should make suitable arrangements for my kids to take control when I'm gone.
muguy wrote:
It cannot be passed on. You do not own the content, just a license to use the content subject to the terms of use.
While this may be technically correct (the best kind), possession, as they say, is 9/10 of the law. DRM free content downloaded to any of yours or your family's computers continues to remain available even if your account is closed. Video content, once authorised, should continue to work, but might break on account closure. I suspect the same is true of shared protected content which has been download if the family is disbanded. I don't know if gaining access as a Legacy Contact grants access to media, but if it does then there are also issues associated with downloading past purchases from multiple accounts to a single computer or device that I don't suppose get any easier in these circumstances. See Authorization vs. association - Apple Community for details.
tt2
See How to add a Legacy Contact for your Apple Account - Apple Support. This article outlines the facility Apple have put in place.
In practice, at least in the short term, having a way to give a surviving family member a way to access the account as if they were you (e.g. password to your device and Apple Account) for approvals, and the ability to update the associated payment method, might be sensible. At present I don't believe Apple have a mechanism for changing the family organizer, so your successors may have to disband and then recreate the family share.
I keep my late wife's account active though I've always been the organizer. This reminds me I should make suitable arrangements for my kids to take control when I'm gone.
muguy wrote:
It cannot be passed on. You do not own the content, just a license to use the content subject to the terms of use.
While this may be technically correct (the best kind), possession, as they say, is 9/10 of the law. DRM free content downloaded to any of yours or your family's computers continues to remain available even if your account is closed. Video content, once authorised, should continue to work, but might break on account closure. I suspect the same is true of shared protected content which has been download if the family is disbanded. I don't know if gaining access as a Legacy Contact grants access to media, but if it does then there are also issues associated with downloading past purchases from multiple accounts to a single computer or device that I don't suppose get any easier in these circumstances. See Authorization vs. association - Apple Community for details.
tt2
It cannot be passed on. You do not own the content, just a license to use the content subject to the terms of use.
Physical media was once subject to the restriction (grey area) that it could not legally be re-sold in the US. Then, through series of court cases and legislative changes (laws), it became possible. The First Sale doctrine.
In the EU, one can sell one's digital files -- in particular, software -- even if one does not own anything physical. This is regardless of what EULA the user clicked through to purchase a game, for example, on Valve.
I'm looking for help with something less extreme -- simply making it possible to inherit one's parents' movie collection. Or we could just say to the grandkids, sorry, Harry Potter died along with Grandpa last week.
It would be great to see Apple take the lead here, and do the right thing for families of the deceased, without needing to go through a long court battle and legislative process to move towards the EU model.
Sure, but the same is true of CDs and DVDs and Blu-Rays --- and yet, we all pretend we bought the movie on a Blu Ray disk and not just a LICENSE for the movie (which is what we actually bought).
So let me rephrase: How do I bequeath the licenses for the content I have purchased? Or do my kids need to pay again for movies we have been watching in the household for a decade?
I realize there are workarounds, like with digital media, such as creating a fake person that never dies, but I would hope Apple would be on the forefront of wrestling with this in a constructive manner.
Or, maybe, we have to wait for a court case, like the one that legalized video tape recorders being used to time shift, or something that establishes a first sale doctrine for digital content in the cloud, like digital content on a disk.
Physical media can be passed down or resold, you own the media. Digital cannot.
How do I bequeath my digital library to my household when I die?
