Apple Sued For Dividing Final Season of Breaking Bad Into Two On iTunes 458
An anonymous reader writes "Last night's episode of Breaking Bad was one of the most intense in series history, but for those who haven't seen it yet, don't worry, I won't be putting out any spoilers. You see, today's Breaking Bad news has nothing to do with Walter White's slow transformation into Scarface, but rather with a legal suit filed against Apple by a Breaking Bad fan. In a lawsuit that many saw coming, an Ohio man named Noam Lazebnik recently filed a class action suit against Apple upon finding out that the $22.99 he forked over for a 'Season Pass' of Breaking Bad was only good for the first 8 episodes of the show's final season."
Re:First World Problems (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you can be taken for an extra $20 in third world countries as well. Swindlers exist everywhere.
Re:Why is Apple the one being sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is Apple the one being sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
No but they are the ones who are selling a season pass for half a season.
Maybe things are different in the US, but in the UK at least the onus is on the retailer to make sure the products they sell are correctly advertised.
If it's genuinely not Apple's fault, then Apple gets to sue onwards to the provider of the product to recoup their costs, but either way the consumer's purchase contract was with Apple, so the consumer is right to take it up against Apple.
As usual, the legit users get punished (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the people who just download the series through torrents have no such problem.
Re:First World Problems (Score:2, Insightful)
I seriously doubt this was apple!s decision. Wrong party to sue.
AMC split season 5 (Score:2, Insightful)
Might be related to the fact that AMC split the fifth season into two sets of episodes that were aired at different times. For example, when the new episodes began airing last month, it was halfway through the final season making the one season feel like two. Perhaps someone at Apple made the mistake of thinking they were two separate seasons.
Re:Why is Apple the one being sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. AMC's official stance is that this is one season of 16 episodes. For Apple to make the decision to consider it two "seasons" as far as "season passes" are concerned--well, I hope they've got some good fine print on that, otherwise they're boned. To me, "season pass" means "season pass," not "half a season pass." If Apple doesn't like it, they should take it up with AMC.
Re:Why is Apple the one being sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are couple of problems with your quip. First, it seems this chap isn't going after money. The article suggests he is seeking only a refund... for all he deems swindled by this. Second, he doesn't seem to have sued more than his immediate interface in this chain of commerce. That is, he's simply trying to hold Apple to their apparently declared obligation.
Actually, however, there are a number of reasons to sue multiple parties in many cases regardless of the amount of money sought. Sometimes it's pretty clear who did you wrong. Here it seems rather clear that Apple made a particular promise prior to a proper appreciation or understanding of the intent of AMC. But often it's not entirely clear. Next, suing all involved parties forces them all to get their act together (individually and collectively) since if any party doesn't show at court judgement may default against them regardless of actual guilt/responsibility. Sadly, it seems litigation is often required to get multiple bureaucracies to work together... or against each other. Which brings us to another reason - getting your opponents' lawyers to do your work for you as they endeavour to show the other defendant guilty.
Re:First World Problems (Score:4, Insightful)
There's probably already a rule for this, but I'm going to go ahead and state that as a general rule, any one line objections raised about a story within the first 15 minutes of the story going up on slashdot are probably not really that insightful. If you think you've found a gaping hole in a legal strategy, maybe consider that the strategy is more complex than the headline suggests. If it's a story about a scientific study, and you don't bother reading the actual published paper, maybe don't bother spouting a one line rejection of it.
Perhaps it takes some slashdotters less than 15 minutes to read a scientific paper, digest it, and crystalize a major problem to one line, maybe there are slashdot lawyers out there who pull up the documents online and read through a court case and then explain in one single sentence the glaring flaw. But I doubt it has ever actually worked like that.
Re: Why is Apple the one being sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
why is Apple being sued even if all they did was set down a box and say "hey consumers, good stuff will be in here" and "hey producers, stick your stuff in here". You'd think with that kind of setup they're doing nothing but acting as a middle man bringing consumers and producers together so they could engage in a transaction of goods for money.
However, they didn't do this - to each side they said "we'll handle this", and charged a tidy sum for the privilege, Consumers don't see who produces the goods, and producers don;'t see who purchases them - Apple sticks a great big wall in between so that they, and only they, are the ones taking the big fat cut. As a result, the consumer has no-one else to sue - his business was with Apple.
now, Apple might well decide to sue the producer in turn for not supplying the described product, but I fear that Apple, in their greed simply set up the box like I first described and left them to it - in order to make as much money as possible with the least amount of effort. And this is the result, no-one to blame but themselves.
Re:Why is Apple the one being sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are couple of problems with your quip. First, it seems this chap isn't going after money. The article suggests he is seeking only a refund... for all he deems swindled by this.
^^ This is insightful?
Are we supposed to believe that this guy is undertaking the effort and expense of litigation all in the name of recovering his $22.99?
NO!
There is an army of lawyers here, FUNDING and waiting upon the outcome of this case before launching similar class-actions that will net them millions of dollars and all the "swindled" customers a free season something.
Good god man. Wake up. Read between the lines.
Shrug. Sometimes it's a matter of principle. As the OP said, he's apparently seeking a refund for a product he purchased and didn't receive. Going after the retailer for this is entirely reasonable. If the retailer was unknowingly selling half-full boxes of product, it's then the retailer's job to sue the manufacturer. In the IT industry it's called "one throat to choke". When you deal with a distributor, the distributor is ultimately responsible to the customer for the product matching the description. In this case "season pass" for half a season is clearly receiving a half-full box.
Re:AMC split season 5 (Score:5, Insightful)
Piracy means never having to deal with this kind of BS. Hint to companies: don't make piracy easier/better than watching legally. We have choices we never had before.
Re: Why is Apple the one being sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
why is Apple being sued even if all they did was set down a box and say "hey consumers, good stuff will be in here" and "hey producers, stick your stuff in here".
I would argue that the customer shouldn't have to dig to find out who is responsible. From the customer's point of view Apple sold him the content and was the point where the text was presented. Now whether it is Apple or the publishers behind, is for Apple to decide whether they pass the buck.
In the example of Best Buy the relationship between the box and the store is a bit clearer, but if Best Buy has an advert saying something that incorrect and it has the Best Buy logo on it, then it is Best Buy's responsibility, even it was the publisher behind changing the offering.
Re:Why is Apple the one being sued? (Score:4, Insightful)
It did say, however, that the season pass was valid for all season 5 episodes aired in 2012.
a) It did not say this at the time that I purchased Season 5. It was added later.
b) If you read the text of the suit, you will see that some Apple CSRs told customers would be getting all 16 episodes.
c) Another AMC series, Walking Dead, had a mid-season break and included all of the episodes for the season, before and after the break (which was split across calendar years), as part of the 'Season Pass'.
Re: Why is Apple the one being sued? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)