Yesterday, we covered a story regarding Bruce Willis allegedly preparing to sue Apple over iTunes’ Terms and Conditions.  See, the veteran actor wants to bequeath his vast collection of songs on iTunes to his daughters Rumer, Scout and Tallulah.  But the current terms and conditions of the service does not allow him to do that, as anything bought on iTunes does not actually belong to the consumer.  You’re just borrowing them from Apple, so you cannot transfer possession of that to anyone, not even your own daughters.

The Sunday Times (paywalled) and the Daily Mail claimed that Willis is supporting legal moves in the US that will give more rights to downloaders regarding their music collection.  This certainly caught the public’s attention and some even applauded Willis for his efforts, though others think it’s a moot case.

Fact check

Willis suing Apple is like his character on Die Hard coming to life: he takes on the bad guy and gives him a dose of his own medicine.  But, and this is a big but, is this actually true?  Is Willis actually suing Apple just so he can legally leave his song collection to his daughters?

According to some news sources, this may not be true, since the Sunday Times and the Daily Mail did not actually quote Willis saying he would sue Apple over this, and neither publication cites any sources regarding their claims.  Emma Heming, the wife of Willis, already said on her Twitter account that the story is not true, but it has to be noted that @EmmaHeming is not a verified Twitter account and Willis himself hasn’t said anything about the issue.

Another source states that if Willis has a song collection that includes albums from The Beatles and Led Zeppelin, then he probably has the CDs of the albums which meant he did not download those on iTunes, so he has every right to give those tracks to his daughters.

iTunes Terms and Conditions: Usage

I have to  be honest, I never read Apple’s entire terms and conditions until now.  I was so intrigued by the news that I just had to see for myself.

So here are some interesting things that I found: you’re only allowed to use iTunes Products for personal and not for commercial use; you can use iTunes Products on five iTunes-authorized devices at any time except for rented products; you can store iTunes Products from up to five different Accounts at a time on compatible devices, provided that each iPhone may sync tone iTunes Products with only a single iTunes-authorized device at a time, and syncing an iPhone with a different iTunes-authorized device will cause tone iTunes Products stored on that iPhone to be erased; you are authorized to burn an audio playlist up to seven times; you shall not be entitled to burn video iTunes Products or tone iTunes Products.

Based on iTunes’ terms and conditions and my understanding, Willis can share his iTunes Products to his daughters as he can store them on up to five different iTunes Accounts.  Feel free to correct me if I misunderstood this part.

Based on this, there’s a huge chance that this whole thing is not true.

Why does this matter?

So if this is not true, why are we still talking about this?  Because it’s important to know what happens to stuff you download and pay for when you die or decide to quit the service.  Will you be able to get those items back or would it just vanish?

Based on Apple’s terms and conditions regarding the use of their product, there is a limit on how many devices can have iTunes or how many times you can burn a playlist, but you can still share them legally.  So your iTunes collection won’t really vanish into thin air–a person can still have a copy of his purchased items legally.  But since you agreed to Apple’s rules, you have to follow them, if not, your account may be suspended by Apple.