Bruce Willis Vs. Apple – Yippee Ki-Yay…

Ahoy there, mateys! Pontius returns with more virtual goodies from the front line of internet piracy.

The story goes that Bruce Willis is considering suing Apple because when he dies, they won’t let him leave his music collection to his children.

Of course, this kind of thing would never happen to your intrepid and piratical reporter, because I haven’t paid for a piece of music since George Michael’s last album in 2004. But noble citizen, John McClane, has been busy purchasing his top tracks from iTunes for the past several years. Except he probably calls it… dieTunes. Geddit? And he probably listens to them on his diePod. Am I right? Ooh, tough crowd.

Years into establishing what can only be a killer collection, Bruce has realized that he doesn’t actually own any of the music he has bought. He owns a licence to play the music that is non-transferable. In other words he cannot leave any of his songs to anyone else. He can, of course leave his children his diePad (still nothing?), but if they needed to access his account for any reason, Apple could decide to suspend the account completely.

Here is an example of the kind of content that Bruce would not be able to leave to his daughters, Rumer, Scout, Tallulah and baby Mabel.

Ouch.

Leaving aside the very real consideration that few children would ever want to inherit their father‘s record collection, Bruce’s possible legal action highlights the disconnect that exists for the modern music maven. You think you own it, but you really don’t.

Same goes for your Kindle, by the way. All those books you bought are not yours to lend, bequeath or donate to any of the people or places you may have been considering.

Sucks, doesn’t it? There you were, feeling all superior for not illegally downloading your favorite songs and shows and it turns out Big Media is screwing you over anyway and you only “virtually” own your virtual content, until all your licences, or you, expire.

I’ve got a message for Apple and it goes like this:

“If you disrespect everybody that you run into, how in the world do you think anybody’s gonna respect you?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CKsRLu1gnM