Is this even legal? I mean people paid for the lifetime version.
If the new owners purchased the assets, name, and technology and not the company itself, then it’s beholden on the remains of the old company to honour the deal… Good luck with that.
Which is a problem of the legal system around it.
Within most(or all) EU countries this would count as a continuation of business and all previous liabilities (e.g. employees contracts, customers contracts, etc.) would need to be honored.
Why it is done this way? To prevent people from doing exact that.
How many people start companies, rack up a bunch of debt, then create another company that buys everything except the debt?
This is the exact reason GM still exists.
NOW you’re getting it.
Except what you’re describing doesn’t make sense. If the new owners purchased all of those things, then in reality they purchased the company. Courts are very likely to agree on this. It looks like a company-wide sale, therefore it probably is, even if someone tries to add a line saying “we aren’t liable”.
But imagine someone could “sell everything other than the liability”. In such a case, the seller would be putting themselves on the hook to pay outstanding debts (i.e., the seller would be liable). And we know they have money – they just sold the thing. So then the seller would pay… But they know that in advance, so they would not agree to such a sale in the first place, unless they were planning to steal that money through creative accounting of some kind… But both parties know all of that that in advance, so they would both be acting fraudulently.
It happens regularly. The most notable ‘tidy’ example I can think of would be when the Governments of US and Canada ‘bailed out’ General Motors. They did exactly what I’m talking about; they created a new legal entity called NGMCO Inc. which purchased almost all the Assets of the ‘old’ GM, including trademarks, names, websites, etc.
The key here is that the selling company was bankrupt. In such a case, the creditors want to try to get money back out of their ‘investment’ so the asset sale is done to cover debts. Selling liabilities generally doesn’t raise money for those creditors, so often after the money is all sucked out, whatever remaining liabilities exist are functionally void. Legally they remain until the corporation is dissolved, but with no ability to act on the liabilities (ie., no money to pay) this doesn’t functionally matter.
The ‘old’ GM changed it’s name to ‘Motors Liquidation Company’ and retained the liabilities. Shareholders of the ‘old’ GM were left holding the bag, so to speak. Technically, it was further split into trusts to ‘handle’ liabilities, but realistically ‘old’ GM sputtered out holding liabilities while ‘new’ GM carried on with minimal penalty.
You can have less ‘tidy’ cases as well, where substantial parts of a company are sold in an asset sale/purchase but leave behind a working company. In those cases the liabilities are not functionally abandoned. Disney purchasing FOX, for example.
Further reading:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/asset-sales.asp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reorganization
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_21st_Century_Fox_by_Disney
There’s probably some fine print in the ToS that says they can do this. It may or may not be legal but that makes it a lengthier court battle to try to prove.
There are so many ways they can put the squeeze on. Session time limit, throttle fraffic, restrict usage times etc.
Then you can sell a monthly VPN+ subscription and offer revisiting lifetime users 2 years free if they move to the new “better” service.
I’m not saying I agree with any of this, but it’s certainly not a new strategy. They’ve nothing to lose. Those who are pissed off will leave, you already have their money and those who want to stay will pay up.
The VPN company can have their cake and eat it
They should be refunded tbh.
No, they should get their lifetime membership. They paid the money for the membership because the membership was worth more than the money to them.
A refund on its own is never good enough because of gains from trade. The company broke a contract.
Yeah, pro rata it from the time they bought it to whatever time deathclock.com says for the user and then using time value of money arrive at a fair value to refund
This is also why if you hit the lottery, you should take the discounted upfront cash payout, and not get it paid in an annual annuity for 20 years. You never know if the government is suddenly going become moral about gambling, and cancel all lottery payments.
Take the money and run.
Absolutely. However, if you are not the best with money, or on the irresponsible side; it might be best to take the annuity. Mathematically it makes no sense to do so, but if it stops you from blowing it all on hookers and coke in two years then its for the best. In other words, if you having it all is riskier than the state keeping track of it.
Can’t you open up a trust with the money and put a provision on it saving you from yourself?
Sure you can… but that would mean you are responsible with money ahah
Im talking about someone who doesnt know wtf any of that means. Like the town idiot.
Even if you’re bad with money, take the lump sum and go get a fiduciary advisor to handle it and give you a regular payout. Being a fiduciary advisor is important since it means they are legally obligated to work to the benefit of your money, not lining their pockets. Using something like a trust is another good way to protect you from yourself.
I mean more like someone who is irresponsible and maybe dumb. I was trying to be polite. Someone that doesnt even know what a fidicuary is.
What’s wrong with hookers and coke?
Nothing… the real issue is all the other money you wasted.
Also because that lump sum is all there is. If you take the annuity they put the lump sum into an investment account and then pay you out of the proceeds (from which they take a cut, of course), and you can get the same returns they get, without losing their cut, doing it yourself.
They also take a big wet bite out of the total when you do a lump sum pay out. Then you pay taxes on it too. Oh and of you do the 20 year payout and die they keep it all. You can’t transfer it.
No doubt, but it’s still a lot better than doing the annuity. Half of fuck you money is still fuck you money.
Biggest mistake people do is put it all towards a house for a low or no monthly mortgage. It’s better to invest it. Buy two. One to live in and a multi to rent out.
Yeah, my plan would be to buy a (small, perhaps even cozy) house to live in right now because my living situation is not ideal, set some small portion of it aside just to blow on stupid shit to get it out of my system, and then invest the rest to ensure that I can live off the proceeds for the rest of my life. Anything beyond what is necessary to secure myself a modest but comfortable lifestyle is going to be given away to help people.
To be fair, it’s best to not participate in the lottery.
True but that is a situation that doesn’t really apply very often in the “if you hit the lottery” situation mentioned in the post you replied to.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re being smart about the lottery by thinking about which is the smarter course of action in case of a win. The only way to be smart about the lottery is to not play.
The only way to be smart about the lottery is to not play.
I don’t disagree, but I also thing playing the lottery once in a while is fine if you’re just doing it as a daydream or something. Back when I worked in an office, if the jackpot got high enough we’d do an office pool and everyone that wanted to would throw in 10 bucks or something. And I’ve also done the same myself for the above reason but I play at most once or so a year.
That’s the responsible way to enjoy it! But you can’t have any expectations that it’s a good idea beyond having fun with it. And I find that sometimes these posts about how to do the lottery in the smartest way possible kind of detract from the fact that it’s wrong and possibly harmful to think that it’s anything aside from a potentially fun thing to do.
I learned my lesson about “lifetime” thanks to SiriusXM.
When Howard Stern got lured to SiriusXM they offered a deal where you buy the receiver and pay $500 for a lifetime subscription with unlimited transfers to different receivers. Fat forward to 2017ish when I bought my last car that had the receiver built into the radio and tried to transfer to the new one. I was told that was the last time I would be able to do that and in the future I’d be paying a $75 transfer fee and be forced into a monthly subscription.
Lifetime is a hoax.
Lifetime is a hoax.
No, it’s fraud.
The difference is that one is a funny joke and the other is a criminal act that ought to land corporate executives in prison, if the US weren’t an oligarchy too corrupt to prosecute.
This may be your lucky day then! You can likely use that lifetime sub now!
I did the Sirius lifetime deal a few years offered before the one you did (in 2003 I think?). At the time they called it the “Friends and Family” promotion. It was only $300 at the time for lifetime sub, and they gave you the hardware for free. I’m still using that same lifetime sub today.
I was told that was the last time I would be able to do that and in the future I’d be paying a $75 transfer fee and be forced into a monthly subscription.
This was absolutely true this was the rules at one point. However there was a rule change (via lawsuit maybe?) that allows UNLIMITED TRANSFERS and the fee is only $35/transfer. Its even on the SiriusXM website FAQ:
“Please note: You may transfer an active Lifetime Subscription to another radio an unlimited number of times. For each permitted transfer of a Lifetime Subscription, you will be charged a $35 transfer fee, and the transfer must be effectuated through your Online Account.” source
Your account is likely still alive with your name on it! Contact them and get back into it!
Further, back when you and I bought our lifetime subs the SiriusXM streaming service didn’t exist. It is actually pretty robust now. With your lifetime sub (even without it being on a vehicle), you have full access to unlimited commercial free streaming in their best quality bitrate (there was a time that they offered reduced bitrates for lifetime users but that’s gone now too).
For me, because of a further discount I only paid $230 for my lifetime sub because I got a credit for my previous monthly service and I’ve now had it for over 22 years. So if you do the math, I’m paying 87 cents per month for full in-car and streaming SiriusXM. Lifetime deal was SO worth it!
I have bought a lifetime VPN for 15$ in 2018 or 19, still kicking :)
Dang, whio’s it from?
vpnunlimited
Someone selling their data probably
nobody knows dude :)
but now they charge 200 usd for it
Yes, name and shame the suckers already in the headline so they get what they deserve! VPN SECURE , yeah, right.
This is also why I stopped prepaying for things. Sure I’m spending $50 more a year but at least I have flexibility.
Agency… people need to be more mindful when they are giving it up. It leads to bad places unless you know what you are doing.
It’s BS they didn’t know about it. They got the financials before the deal. Even if it wasn’t directly listed as a line item it would have been a part of the expenses.
They still thought the deal was worth doing as it was based on incoming revenue and outgoing expenses.
Well, any time you buy any service from any company, you’re depending on them to keep their word.
I’m not saying this is right, or ethical. But you’re taking a chance they’ll honor their service.
Sorry if anyone got screwed.
Genuinely curious, what was the point of you typing out all of this to put on the internet?
I don’t know how to say this without being rude.
I’m wondering if you’re a bot that just churns out a few semi-relevent sentences or if you thought this was going to contribute to the discussions at hand? Because it felt like it wanted to blame the victims and then pulled back at the end and I ant fathom why you stepped into the tightrope wire in the first place.
removed by mod
Lulwut? When did /r/TD start leaking into Lemmy. Did any of what you said have anything to do with what I said?
Are you feeling alright, man?
Edit: seriously leaning towards ‘bot’ at this point. Humans that find their way into Lemmy have generally been much more capable, and much less MGTOW
You’ve never heard of a contract?
Companies aren’t held to contracts like people are held to contracts. One buyout, restructuring, name change, no more contract. It’s meaningless
Is this the case everywhere?
Way to not see the forest for the trees.
I’m stating they don’t always honor the terms of the contract, and change the terms on a whim.
Good luck collecting a check for $0.72 from the class action lawsuit. A fraction of a percentage from their profits.
Depending on the terms and jurisdiction, there may be penalties for not honoring a contractual agreement.
Good luck collecting a check for $0.72 from the class action lawsuit. A fraction of a percentage from their profits.
This would be an issue of enforcement.
Yeah, you’re going to have to defend capitalism with someone else.
🤦
I assume most companies write somewhere in their terms that “lifetime” means effectively “whenever the fuck we want”.
If there is a company that uses the word lifetime properly they may be worth a mention.
That shouldn’t matter
If we had the most basic of regulatory practices over businesses in this country, especially the tech industry, this practice simply wouldn’t be allowed. Even the bullshit doublespeak “life of the product” version
Lifetime means lifetime. If you can’t honor that don’t offer it. If you go back on it you should be harshly penalized.
Looking at you t mobile, rolling stone magazine, filmora, Dropbox, salesforce, mcafee, etc
This should also include if you remove features from lifetime subscriptions and make them contingent on paid monthly subscriptions (looking at you adobe, Evernote, and probably plex in 3-5 years)
I’ve read that laws of most countries have become orders of magnitude more complex since the time when ESG wrote his Perry Mason books.
One could also think that all of the laws functioning in a country at one moment being possible to grasp for one person in a week are a requirement for Heinlein and Asimov’s visions of good future too.
Often touching upon the fundamental aspects like this one - a company sells not what it advertises, but it has somewhere in agreement a line that says otherwise.
While we have enormous amount and volume of active laws that don’t change any fundamental aspects, but function as a minefield for an honest person trying to navigate reality.
A combinatorial explosion if you will.
When the legal apparatus as a whole stops functioning as law and becomes yet another power in the society. In some sense having law is a disturbance, and laws becoming so complex that they are not laws again, but something like medieval privileges, with complex interpretations depending on each side’s power, and sometimes inevitable contradictions, just means that the system of society has responded to that disturbance.
In this instance at least the regulatory process is simple though
Say what you mean, mean what you say.
We can maybe have some nuance over lifetime being the lifetime of the consumer buying it vs the lifetime of the company although that has to be carefully worded to prevent situations like this. But it’s probably somewhat fair that if your company completely fails the product is done. This should be clear that the company has to completely fail, not a “apple sells lifetime subscription and decides the product isn’t viable so they kill it” situation or “subsidiary company of google fails and google could easily partially refund the lifetime subscription fees as the parent company” situation
But I would argue it’s not as much about legal complexity here but about regulatory capture. There are really two forces on this issue: businesses looking to keep a lack of regulation and continue utilization of vague misleading language, and consumers that would benefit from regulation against said language.
The businesses are aligned, obviously have vast resources, can influence propaganda on the matter, and can lobby lawmakers directly.
The consumers are fragmented because of the propaganda and a lack of education on the issue, they don’t have strong representation among lawmakers, they don’t have resources, etc. they are scattered unless someone decides this specific issue is annoying enough to get up in arms about and make some kind of action network over, gathering people and support. While it is a serious problem there are just so many serious problems facing consumers and Americans right now, so why focus on this?
And thus, our regulatory bodies yet again fail us
Lifetime means lifetime
No, actually that is part of the problem, they shouldn’t even be allowed to advertise ‘Lifetime’ without explicitly stating whose lifetime.
I guess Nebula should be meantioned then?
https://go.nebula.tv/lifetime?ref=nebulablog
It’s the only company that comes to mind that still offers something like that.
They often tie it to current offerings. So your plan may have unlimited 4G data for life, but won’t include anything faster/newer. So once you want/need 5G, you have to switch to a different plan.
And even then it’s dependent on the availability of the 4G network or whatever. They’re currently sunsetting 2G and 3G networks, that means a lot of old school devices have to be upgraded or cut off, upgrades come with new contracts.
I remember when AT&T had “unlimited” data when the original iPhone came out and severely underestimated how much data people used.
Today, every cell phone provider has an “unlimited” plan and in the fine print says “up to x GB, after which you will be throttled.”
That shit should be illegal.
I’ve seen “fair use policy applies”
I’ve seen some saying that “lifetime” refers to product lifetime, which is not expected to be more than X years. So yeah, slimes gonna slime
In the fine print, “lifetime” is defined as the lifetime of a particular mayfly that has not been all that well-treated.
removed by mod
VPNSecure is the company.
Odd how they didn’t just put that in the title.
What’s odd is that it’s not in the Wired headline either, this is a direct copy of their headline.
Guessing it was a force copy title for the sub and the article wanted you to click. They put it in the body of the post at least.
Oh boy. Someone dig up the Tumblr post I gotta go to bed.
no no no nonononono come back and post it
Off topic: the onion needs to resume making videos again. Their “news” videos were amazing and most of them are still relevant today even though most of them are 12 years old. Also sex house was hilarious. Please bring these gems back 🙏
They have literally recently done so. Just news for now though.
Because zero-click internet kills the revenue model. It’s unfortunate, but understandable until something better comes along.
Would love to see a co-op model spring up where views on sites like Lemmy generate revenue for publications without the click. I.E. pay $1 a month to a shared fund that’s distributed by percentage.
That would require us to pay for Lemmy, right? Or how do you mean? Where would the money come from, sort of?
Yup. Or perhaps pay into features, like full-page content inside the post. I.e. offset the revenue of the click. Oddly enough, that model would replace ads, too.
deleted by creator
What happened to plex’s lifetime sub?
Still there
Nothing
It’s not that it’s gone, it’s that the platform continues to enshittify.
It’s really hard to remove all their bloatware garbage, and features seem to get worse all the time. Subtitles had a big change and they really don’t do a good job of supporting them anymore, as an example. Had one show that no matter what I did the subtitles just wouldn’t work after updating to a modern version that had the modern ‘updated’ subtitle handling. I’ve continued to update but it’s still questionable.
When I got it they never had ‘ad supported plex tv’, now they do and they promote it everywhere. All I want to do is keep supporting what they have, newer modern codecs, squash bugs, and act as a crappy dynamic dns so I can not setup a domain that goes to my home network connection which is a dynamic ip.
What I don’t want is to have to go into settings to disable or hide all their garbage ad revenue supported services everywhere in my private media library I paid a lifetime license fee for. It didn’t have that advertisement when I bought it, they shouldn’t be adding it afterwards, and I shouldn’t have to keep updating my config just to stay on a version that supports evolving hardware.
I tried Jellyfin but it’s even worse for subtitles which are unfortunately mandatory in my household.
Edit: this literally just popped up in my lemmy feed. https://lemm.ee/post/63954487
Hell yeah, diablo with guns.
Yep, two years before Borderlands delivered a much superior experience.
At the time I had spent six years playing EverQuest, Ultima Online, Anarchy Online and World of Warcraft in various capacities, and this was looking like an MMO borderlands like thing. Few MMOs had gone under so soon after release.
Apparently the same devs are making a sequel, and I think i’ll make sure to pirate it unless they give it away to lifetime Hellgate London subscribers.
Nowadays I know better than to trust any kind of weird offer like this announced before launch. They’d only do it if they knew they were going to win… or were so worried they were going to go under.
Yeah it was a different time. The gameplay was solid though imo.
Lifetime memberships are kind of a trap, for users and a company. The company gets revenue once and then never again. That is great now, but won’t pay your bills in 2027 or 2032. And the company knows that there are users who are willing to pay a huge amount of money for the service and who are using it. Of course the upper ranks will try to find a way to get money from them.
This is going to be Plex Pass in a few years if Plex sells out even more
This is why the first question is, is it open source?
I’ve had a lifetime Plex pass for many years. I have converted completely over to Jellyfin after trying it.
It’s more involved to set up for secure remote access, but once in place it is so much smoother to use.
deleted by creator
nope, nope, nope! buy a business, own it’s debt and contracts. CLASS ACTION SUIT!
Unless the TOS included the common language that the company can change the TOS whenever they want.
True but they could shorten it up if they used Eric Cartman’s phrasing, “What-eva, I do what I want!”
