Impossible to de-authorising Apple IDs on lost, stolen, broken computers/devices.

This is more of a statement than a question, and to find the views of other itunes users, as I already know the official Apple stance on this.
You can only have 5 devices assigned to share any one apple ID. When you want to add another you have to de-authorise one of the previous ones. This can only be done on the device/computer that the authorisation was made from.
Here is my point.....
I am now stuck on 5 devises, when only 3 are in use. The other 2 devise can't send the de-authorisation request, as one is totally dead and the other passed to a friend.
Just like most people, I do not read all the way through apple agreements. Besides, some of the practical issues with using apple products, are not all within the agreement anyway. Some of this stuff is trial and error, just like most things in life. Or you find it when you come up against a problem. Yes, I would have de-authorised the computer that I gave to my friends daughter, if I knew that I had to do that. But, how many people really would know to do this? I am by no means, somebody who just hits install without reading options and clicking next like it was going out of fashion. But when I formatted the computer I gave away, I did not think for one minute that I would have had to de-authorise the ID, I really don't think many other people would either.
There are a few instances were de-authorisation is impossible from the original device/computer. Your device is stolen. Your devices was lost. Your device has a component change that has an impact on the authorisation. I think you get the point. So even if a person knew all the ins and outs to the apple agreement over itunes IDs etc. You could still be in my position due to the examples I have just listed.
It would be way easier for the owner of the ID, to be able to log into their apple account on line and manage their authorisations/devices. Not only would this option be easier and more efficient. But, and this is a big but. it would also be way more secure. A lost or stolen device will have a certain measure of risk to your security about it. OK, a third party may not know your password to gain access on the device. But why give any chance at all? Besides, in certain situations, a device will have other security issues that any of your apple info could be exploited for. Being able to use the lost/stolen device to gain access to your network and fleece your apple content, springs to mind for starters.
This whole situation really comes off as being at least an over sight by apple, and at worse just plain stupid, when you compare it to options for your itunes in the cloud account. Because, with this you do get the option to de-authorise any device from your web account, and does not have to be done on the device itself. Go figure!!!!!
It's really frustrating to say the least. I am a Windows PC user, who has worked on that platform since WFW, for doing pro audio and film production. But I have to be honest. For day to day personal use, you just can't beat the IOS platform and the hand held devices by apple. I love this stuff so much, that my home and personal entertainment needs are all fairly much covered by IOS. It may not be the very best, but it beats everything else hands down for convenience and intergration. Microsoft, Google and everyone else, all make great portable operating systems and devices. But for my use, IOS really does have the edge. This is why it so frustrating that the only solution to my problem. Is to wait another 7 months before I can de-authorise my whole account and start again. This is such a stupid solution, what brainiac at apple got paid for that idea?
Anyway, I would love to hear from other users on this point, or anyone from apple who can point out why this is the way it is, or if I am missing the point.
Cheers, Dave.

Neil.
Thanks for your really quick reply. I don't want to sound unappreciative, but I have a few questions in regard to what you have said.
How does this limitation help the reducution in possible abuse of the "iTunes Store authorization mode"?
Would this explination then mean that the "iTunes in the iCloud" authorisation options are at risk of abuse? As this option uses the very same method that you say is not used for " iTunes Store authorization model" to avoid abuse.
Why is this option of itunes store staff being able to perform additional de-authorisations, not mentioned on the user account pages, or in deed anywhere that I could see on the itunes site.
Again, if I am missing some obvious point here, please do let me know.
Thanks, Dave.

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    I'm posting an update to my own post after a few days of working with this.  The Apple ID is used in many, many places, and I start by listing them all here to define the scope of the problem.  At the end, I detail how we are currently set up and what is working well after a few days of use. 
    iBooks - keys off what is set for Settings->Store.  This affects book synchronization and must be different for two people reading the same book that each has more than one device (e.g., an iPad and iPhone) that they want to stay in sync.  This is one of the biggest problems in my house because we want to stay configured on the same "Store" account so that all purchases go through one account and are available to everyone, but we often read the same books and don't want one's reading to flip pages for the other when a sync of bookmarks occurs.  We also don't want to turn off syncing because we both have multiple devices and we want syncing to happen between our individual iPhones and iPads. 
    FaceTime - set in Settings->FaceTime.  Typically each user will want to get FaceTime calls at a separate "address".  You have two choices.  You can use the same Apple ID and configure FaceTime to respond at different email addresses, or you can use separate Apple IDs and there is no conflict at all.  For an iPhone you will already have separate phone numbers, but for an iPad people will use an email address to FaceTime with you, so the email addresses you use have to be different. 
    iMessage - set in Settings->Messages.  This is almost identical to FaceTime.  You have to provide an Apple ID, but you can distinguish different users based on email addresses. 
    App Store - set in Settings->Store.  The Apple ID used here is what is used for purchases.  This applies not just to purchases when you're in the App Store application, but also any in-app purchases, any bookstore purchases via the "Store" button in iBooks, any purchases in the iTunes app, and purchases from the "Store" button in Newsstand. 
    iCloud - set in Settings->iCloud.  Defines one fixed set of storage, mailbox, calendar, contacts, and Find My iPhone.  I'm going to split this up and talk about each area separately below.  The main choice here is whether two people should share an iCloud account or should have individual ones.  In addition, some people have proposed creating a third "family" iCloud account for sharing some information.  Much of what could be done with a family account could be done by adding each person's individual iCloud account to all devices, so I don't treat that separately here.  In addition to the reasons below, one good reason for having separate iCloud IDs is that you each get 5GB of free storage. 
    Mail - I don't know anyone that wants to share mail in a household, so this probably isn't a big problem and using separate Apple IDs is probably acceptable here.  For someone that wants to share this much, they would probably just all use one Apple ID anyway. 
    Calendar - iCloud actually has calendar sharing, it's just only available on the web as far as I have found.  If you log in to your account at icloud.com, go to the Calendar, and click one of the little icons on each calendar's name, you can share that calendar.  My wife and I have decided to make her calendar the "main" one, and she shares it to me for viewing and editing.  I can then view it on my iPhone and iPad even though I used my own Apple ID to configure iCloud.  When I go to the Calendar App and select the Calendars button in the upper left, her shared calendar is listed with "Shared by <wife's name>" under it.  Pretty slick. 
    Contacts - I wish iCloud allowed sharing contacts in the exact same way it shares calendars, but so far as I know it doesn't yet.  The best solution for now seems to be to add my wife's iCloud account as a secondary iCloud account on my devices, and turn off everything except Contacts.  There may be some downsides to this as secondary iCloud accounts on a device do not use push notifications.  This may mean that contacts only get updated when I open them individually or open the Contacts app, for example, this needs further verification.  We've just decided to not share contacts for the time being. 
    Find My iPhone/iPad - If two related people have separate accounts for this, then they cannot see all of their devices in one place in Find My Phone.  They can know both Apple IDs and passwords and log into Find My Phone with the appropriate set of credentials to see a particular device.  For example, if I want to find my iPhone or iPad I log in with my Apple ID, and if I want to find my wife's iPhone or iPad, I log in with her ID.  I have found the Find My Friends app to be a good replacement for this, but it is a different feature in that it follows a "person" and not a "device".  My wife configures whether her friends are following her iPhone or her iPad, and whereas Find My Phone can find her with either, Find My Friends requires that she be carrying the right device to be useful.  She almost always has her phone, so this is a satisfactory switch.  This may have other disadvantages though.  For example, if she ever hides her location in Find My Friends from her other friends (this is a switch you can turn on and off when you want privacy), she will also prevent me from finding her.  That may be her intent :), but Find My Phone wouldn't ever allow that.  We have found that Find My Phone avoids a lot of the "are you almost home" calls to each other.  Find My Friends looks like it will offer a lot more features and be better for that rather than misusing Find My Phone the way we were before. 
    Photo Stream - I currently have no good solution for photo stream.  From Apple's support documents it appears that the secondary iCloud account solution would not work, but I have not tried it.  For now I simply am not using it.  I sync all of our photos to a PC, then back out to each device once a week.  The PC also uses home sharing through iTunes to share with an Apple Tv.  I would still have to do this anyway as Photo Stream is only for storing your last 1,000 photos and as such isn't very useful to me (we have over 12,000 photos since my kids were born 4 years ago). 
    Other Cloud Data - iCloud is storing a lot of other data, like bookmarks, that two people may or may not want to share.  In my case, my wife and I visit pretty different websites, so we don't want to share bookmarks.  We also don't want to share Notes or Reminders, so this works out good.  If we did want to share these, then adding a secondary iCloud account would probably be the best solution. 
    Apple could do a few things that would almost completely alleviate my current problems.  First, allow specifying a separate ID in iBooks for the purpose of page/bookmark syncing.  I may want my wife and me to purchase books on the same account, but I want to separate our syncing of bookmarks.  Second, if iCloud Contacts had a sharing feature just like iCloud calendars do, we would be in good shape with contacts.  We have a very similar set of contacts, and we have no desire to maintain them separately.  Third, allow inviting others to a Photo Stream much like Find My Friends.  Then our whole family could share one Photo Stream. 
    So in the end this is how we have our devices configured:
    1) We each have a separate iCloud account (i.e., we use our individual Apple IDs for this), and only one iCloud account is configured for each device.  This means that we each get our own mail, contacts, calendars, bookmarks, and Find My Phone.  My wife shares her calendar to me so that shows up in my iCloud account (you can do this from the web on icloud.com).  The only downside I have noticed is that we do not currently share contacts in any way and we would like to, but we could do this by one of us adding the other's iCloud account as a secondary account on our devices.  For some reason I just don't like that solution and am avoiding the secondary account.  We also do not use Photo Stream yet. 
    2) We share one Apple ID for all purchases.  This is okay most of the time, but is a pain for iBooks as noted above.  What often happens is my wife signs out of my Apple ID and logs into her own if she will be using iBooks, but then she has to switch back again whenever she makes any purchases (including in-app purchases). 
    3) For FaceTime and iMessage we happen to use separate Apple IDs, but it is the email addresses that matter so this isn't significant as far as I can tell.  For a household sharing an email address, you might prefer separate Apple IDs for this. 
    4) My kids do not yet use email or any of the iCloud features other than Find My iPhone (which really I use on their behalf in case their devices get lost).  So for now iCloud for them uses my Apple ID just for Find My Phone, and the other services are disabled.  We have their restrictions (under Settings->General->Restrictions) locked down so they do not have access to Safari, the App Store, iTunes, or FaceTime.  Thus, they don't have any bookmarks to sync or other services to configure.  The biggest pain point for them will be when they start reading more (they are currently 2 and 4) if iBooks continues to leverage the App Store account for bookmark syncing.  Even then it will only be a problem if we all read the same book at the same time, which is less likely than it is between my wife and me.  Once they are old enough for their own email we should be able to repeat the above to give them their own iCloud accounts.  We will then all likely share mom's calendar for family events (perhaps in addition to individual calendars), and we will all add each other in Find My Friends. 

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