[HN Gopher] CA law means stores can't say you're buying a game i...
___________________________________________________________________
CA law means stores can't say you're buying a game if you're merely
licensing it
Author : sxp
Score : 201 points
Date : 2024-09-27 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.polygon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.polygon.com)
| NewJazz wrote:
| Not just games. The law applies to any copyrightable work,
| afaict.
| drdaeman wrote:
| So, cannot use "buy" for modern phones and cars either? ;-)
| ang_cire wrote:
| Uh, there is not any car that the manufacturer can take away
| from you at-will, only in-car "services".
| hedora wrote:
| Many cars have remote immobilizers and gazillion page
| license agreements that boil down to "we are liable for
| nothing, but you still agree to binding arbitration, and we
| can change the terms of this agreement at any time".
|
| Also, some companies (like Tesla) designed the cars so they
| can control the resale process by remotely dropping it into
| various limp modes.
| deely3 wrote:
| "Tesla repossessed my car due to an extreme oversight on
| their end"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37189216
| dmoy wrote:
| I like the idea of reclaiming the word "buy" to only be the
| traditional type of ownership transfer (first sale doctrine or
| whatever if it's a copyrighted thing). Mandate the use of the
| word "license" or "rent" if it's something else
| ravenstine wrote:
| Exactly. Conflating buying with renting indefinitely, without
| resale ability, is a deliberate way of confusing people for
| profit. My younger, more naive self, might have been surprised
| at just how long society has allowed this to slide.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Keep it simple and just use the word rent. No need to
| complicate it.
|
| "Rent until we choose to not allow you to access it for a one
| time payment of $x".
| falcolas wrote:
| I'm afraid that the connotations around rent (namely monthly
| payments) would only encourage the worst publishers to only
| go further.
| ronsor wrote:
| No one is renting a game for $70/month.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Not yet!
| rvnx wrote:
| Absolutely! Markets evolve, see, for example, nobody was
| willing to pay on things like Siri, and now millions of
| folks are spending 25 USD/month on Siri+.
|
| EDIT: sorry, just came from the future.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| Not sure of the cost of MMORPG, but at one stage they
| were like $12-$14, and Everquest even had a server that
| was lived for a couple of years, legend, where it was
| like $40/month, a bit pay-to-win server...I mean with a
| better CS support.
| NikkiA wrote:
| > but at one stage they were like $12-$14
|
| they (the ones that are subscription) still are.
|
| And most of them have micro-transactions on top of that
| as well. Some will give you a (very) limited number of
| micro-transaction currency-units per month.
| yencabulator wrote:
| $50 up front and $10/month...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sellers are smarter than that, they already go as far as
| they think buyers will let them. It is the buyers who need
| elucidation.
| diggan wrote:
| If you solution involves getting the general population
| to do something or "be better" somehow, it's not a
| practical solution.
| packetlost wrote:
| Idk, I think "rent" and "license" have different meanings.
| Modern definitions of "rent" include periodicity into the
| definition, which is at odds with the "one time until we shut
| off the servers" definition. I agree with the GP on the
| terminology for these reasons.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The whole point is to highlight, for the lay consumer, the
| periodicity of their purchase, regardless of the
| periodicity of payments. And hopefully create market
| pressure for sellers to sell things rather than rent them.
| packetlost wrote:
| Fair, I can get behind that reasoning
| scottmf wrote:
| I "rented" a movie on Apple TV last night. I'm quite
| confident I won't be paying again in 30 days :)
| ianburrell wrote:
| That is good reason to not use "rent" because it is
| already used in industry for short fixed-term rental.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| The button should say rent: 1 day or 7 days or "until we
| choose to no longer give you access".
| callc wrote:
| Is there a better word for this sort of transaction (non-
| resellable, arbitrary cancellation of service at some unknown
| point in time by some entities)?
|
| "License" seems too legal, and implies either a lifetime
| license or fixed term license, which is different than a "we'll
| shut down game servers whenever we feel like it"
|
| "Rent" already has a different meaning that is commonly
| understood.
|
| Is there any suitable existing word? Maybe the awkward phrase
| "revocable at any time license"?
| diggan wrote:
| "Lease" perhaps?
|
| > lease - a contract renting land, buildings, etc., to
| another; a contract or instrument conveying property to
| another for a specified period or for a period determinable
| at the will of either lessor or lessee in consideration of
| rent or other compensation.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Lease is pretty similar to rent in my mind -- you're
| getting a product for either a fixed period or for as long
| as you keep making regular payments, neither of which
| applies here.
| njbooher wrote:
| I don't think there'd be consumer confusion if they sold
| it as an 80 year lease for $60. Maybe backlash.
| jolmg wrote:
| > you're getting a product for either a fixed period
| [...] neither of which applies here.
|
| Typically, as a practical matter, the license ends with
| your death. You can't pass your kindle ebooks and steam
| games as inheritance like you can with physical books and
| game discs.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Ah, true!
| User23 wrote:
| It will be interesting to see this challenged in court,
| because it's a clear violation of the first sale
| doctrine.
|
| In any event you are within both your moral and legal
| rights, in the USA at least, to backup any software you
| have purchased and you should do so if you care about it.
|
| And nobody is going to be able to stop you from leaving
| those backups to your kids.
|
| It is interesting though how the software business has
| managed to, via the courts, meme software licenses into
| existence. The simple fact is that under written US law
| no license is required to run software you have acquired
| a lawful copy of. The law explicitly gives you the right
| to make additional copies as necessary to execute the
| program. Case law of course is another matter. And
| lawfare is another matter on top of that. Who wants to
| spend the rest of their life being sued by Adobe because
| they want to sell a copy of photoshop they no longer use?
| diggan wrote:
| Leases come in all different shapes, forms and
| conditions. To replace what the companies misleadingly
| call "Buy" today, they terms would just be "Pay X up
| front and get access until we cannot provide the service
| anymore for X,Y,Z reasons".
|
| In many places, ground/land is leased that way, where you
| pay a sum up-front and are allowed full ownership for 99
| years or something like that.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| Revocable license, temporary use, indefinite borrow?
|
| There's no good word because it's not a reasonable position.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I think they'd just switch from Buy to Pay. For what? For
| whatever ... so you can play now.
| layer8 wrote:
| Privilege
| mway wrote:
| Maybe a "conditional allowance" (noting that the conditions
| may be vague, and likely vary among products/companies) would
| be more in line with what's happening?
|
| Doesn't really roll off the tongue though.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Mark Lemley's _Terms of Use_ paper (2006) outlines how
| _property law /right_ (rights of us citizens) have been eroded
| steadily by _contract law_ (what other people say they can do
| to us). It 's so sad for technology to be so very strongly
| affiliated with such a critical defilement of the human spirit
| as this.
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=917926
|
| It's so sad that there have been so very few legal efforts to
| bolster property rights, to reassert some sovereign claim over
| the things we have about us & that fill our homes. In fact, the
| opposite keeps happening: anti-circumvention laws spread like
| the plague they are, making any attempt to exercise one's
| property right a felony offense.
|
| This is murdering the human spirit. Man the toolmaker's god-
| granted rare ability to understand the world about us, to model
| & learn, and then to adapt & alter is trapped in an infernal
| legal hell. What's happening is against my spiritual beliefs &
| is so terrible to suffer, is such high tragedy.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| Good point. It really flies in the face of the First Sale
| Doctrine when a game company says "you buy the game" when it's
| just a license, because if you had bought the game, then the
| FSD would apply (gloriously) in so many ways.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
| drewcoo wrote:
| > I like the idea of reclaiming the word "buy"
|
| Yes. Now let's do "steal."
| tantalor wrote:
| Are they going to require refunds when the license is revoked?
| Alupis wrote:
| That's not how _any_ license agreement works.
|
| ie. Your money is not collateral. You are paying for a license
| to use the software (game) for a period of time.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| What about physical game disks? I own the disk and can play
| the game as long as I have the disk. I can also resell or
| share the disk. Sony once demonstrated this on stage during
| the PS4 launch.
|
| Digital licenses take away all of this and add the
| possibility that your licence can disappear at any time.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| Physical game disks have maybe one console generation left.
| Nintendo might keep cartridges around for two tops. The
| future is basically all digital. When doing his Mea Culpa
| rounds about Xbox losing the console wars, Phil Spencer
| talked about how being second in the generation where
| gamers built up digital libraries was likely too much to
| overcome.[1] Most game sales already happen digitally[2],
| and the number continues to rise.
|
| [1] https://www.trueachievements.com/n53706/phil-spencer-
| intervi.... [2] https://academyofanimatedart.com/gaming-
| statistics/#:~:text=....
| WalterSear wrote:
| > I own the disk and can play the game as long as I have
| the disk.
|
| Depends whether the game is 'online-only' or not.
| Simulacra wrote:
| That's very different. In America at least, if you purchase
| a physical object, you own it. You can do whatever you want
| with it. It's called the first sale doctrine.
| foobarchu wrote:
| That doesn't hold with games, and that's exactly what
| this law is addressing. Many (if not most by now, I
| haven't bought many games recently) physical games are
| now just an unplayable kernel and you have to download
| the actual game. If you sell the physical good you are
| selling a piece of plastic. Quite a few don't even
| contain a cart or disc in the box, it's just a download
| code.
|
| Now, yes, you can say "but first sale still holds, you
| aren't prohibited from selling the object you bought",
| but most rational people are going to call that nonsense.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| I mean, that would be fine if specified except it's a
| perpetual license that can be revoked at any time. Whether
| it's one hour or 10 years I'm not sure how it is good-faith
| to sell such a license without explicitly specifying the
| license duration and terms. Of course in practice, it is more
| like "perpetual provided that the entity you are licensing
| from elects to re-license from the rights-holder every X
| years" but I really don't see how such an arrangement should
| even be legal. You shouldn't be allowed to sell those kinds
| of licenses where the duration is dependent on third-party
| negotiations that have nothing to do with the initial license
| sale.
| Alupis wrote:
| It's an odd world where we willingly trade dozens or
| hundreds of dollars for a couple hours of entertainment
| (golf, amusement parks, movies, dinner out, bars, vacation)
| but we're unwilling to trade similar amount of money for
| software (games) that give you many, many more hours of
| entertainment.
|
| There's people who have spent _literal days_ entertained by
| a game, but then complain they had to spend $70 for the
| privilege. Where else can you be entertained for a couple
| bucks an hour or less?
|
| In my opinion, if you license a game and play it for a
| dozen hours... you've gotten your money's worth already.
| That said, I too would be disappointed if a game I enjoyed
| was removed from my library.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| The point isn't whether or not it's a good deal. If I
| agree to license a game for 12 hours in exchange for $70,
| great. Like you say, I make deals like that sometimes.
| But that's not what we're talking about here, the
| licensor is misrepresenting it as a perpetual license and
| that should just be considered fraud.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Restaurants don't tell me that I'm buying a table in the
| restaurant; they tell me I'm getting a meal. Movie
| theaters don't tell me I'm buying a seat in the theater;
| they tell me I'm seeing a movie.
|
| Paying to play a game for some time is fine, but they
| shouldn't lie about what terms you're getting.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I think there are more factors at play in this situation.
|
| This is a case where even if you _wanted_ to pay money to
| continue or start playing a game, you can 't because
| someone else simply doesn't want you to.
|
| This is a consumer-hostile shift from earlier days where
| if you owned the disk, disc or cartridge and a computer
| that could play it, you could play the game, no questions
| asked. I think it's always worth fighting against
| consumer hostile shifts.
|
| Some people are collectors as much as they are gamers. A
| license (or whatever) is less valuable to a collector
| than a game.
| Alupis wrote:
| > A license (or whatever) is less valuable to a collector
| than a game.
|
| To be frank - nobody cares about collectors. That
| argument will not change how software is licensed one
| bit...
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I was not making that argument. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| The disagreement concerns the licence's period of validity.
| If I lease a car, I know how long I can use it. When I buy a
| licence to use a game, the publisher can revoke the licence
| the day after I buy it, and the contract is drawn up in such
| a way that nothing obliges them to compensate me. The
| situation would be much healthier if the publisher announced
| a '5-year user license, including server maintenance and
| security patches'. It's like all those 'lifetime' licences
| that only cover one major edition of a software and give you
| a royal 20% discount on the licence for the next version.
| It's a deceptive practice.
| Alupis wrote:
| > When I buy a licence to use a game, the publisher can
| revoke the licence the day after I buy it, and the contract
| is drawn up in such a way that nothing obliges them to
| compensate me.
|
| On Steam (from Valve) you would be entitled to a full
| refund in that scenario.
|
| Valve offers full refunds for any game you have played for
| less than two hours and owned for less than two weeks. In
| some other situations, they have also applied refunds
| outside that policy where the game turned out to be a fraud
| or something.
|
| There are also many titles in people's Steam libraries that
| are no longer offered on Steam, but you can still download
| and play if you purchased it prior to it being pulled from
| Steam.
| terinjokes wrote:
| Valve probably has enough leverage to hold it off for a
| while, but rightholders seem to be trying to close that
| loophole. A store I previously bought FLACs from emailed
| me this week that a new Terms of Service comes into force
| on October 1 where the change is the service can remove
| downloads when the rightholder removes the music from
| sale and requests downloads to be removed as well. A few
| hours later I got a notification that a number of albums
| in purchase history will be removed from my available
| downloads on October 1st.
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| What if I've played for more than two hours and I'd like
| to finish the game? What if Valve changes its refund
| policy? What if the publisher forces me to go through
| another online shop (EPIC game)?
|
| Valve is certainly a consumer-friendly company, but
| that's not the whole story and it doesn't change the fact
| that they're hiding vital information from consumers.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Valve doesn't refund you if the company shuts down their
| game servers, afaik.
| harshreality wrote:
| There has to be _some_ implied period of time for which it 's
| fully usable.
|
| No sane court is going to uphold an adhesion contract where
| someone pays $100 for a substantially multiplayer game (e.g.
| not Portal 1) yet the publisher is allowed to disable servers
| required for the game's multiplayer operation a week later
| because they cost money to maintain and the userbase hasn't
| hit targets.
| peeters wrote:
| If you are required to fully prepay, instead of pay a
| recurring fee, then the license term should be fixed to
| eternity, meaning a refund is in order if the license is ever
| revoked. Otherwise, it should have to be phrased as a
| recurring payment ($XX for first 2 years, $YY/year after
| that). This model that you pay fully up front but for an
| undefined term length is odious and should be illegal.
| stewx wrote:
| Willing to bet that the retailers will opt to change the button
| label rather than change business practices.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| I actually don't even see the word "buy" currently. I see "add
| to cart" and "checkout".
|
| That said, I doubt it has any real impact on sales. It's like
| "Beef chili" vs "Chili with beef". The average consumer
| wouldn't know the difference.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > It's like "Beef chili" vs "Chili with beef". The average
| consumer wouldn't know the difference.
|
| Idk, but where I lived before, at some point virtually
| everyone knew the difference between e.g. "cheese" and
| "cheese[-like] product", because it quite mattered - one is
| real cheese made with real milk, another is typically a
| plant-based substitute with quite different properties (and
| typically of much worse quality).
|
| Average consumers aren't exactly dumb (at least, not at the
| individual level) when things actually matter to them.
| They're just uninformed and don't _actively_ express the
| desire to learn (so they remain uninformed), so they can act
| not in their best interest because they aren 't aware about
| something. But when we know, when the information gap closes
| - we act differently, and that's not going back. Education is
| important.
|
| So it may impact licensing of digital media where user intent
| was specifically focused on indefinite access. E.g. movie or
| music sales when people had incorrectly assumed that "buying"
| means they can rewatch/relisten it whenever they like, no
| matter what (and then their "purchased" content disappears
| because licensing deal wasn't renewed or something).
| SG- wrote:
| Retailers will not be selling physical games for much longer
| tho. Walmart US has already started phasing them months ago.
|
| Game shops like EB are likely going to stop soon too I imagine
| which also conincides with all their gaming merch and toys
| thats taking up the majority of their store space these days.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| With limited exceptions, "physical games" for PCs today are
| just an alternative delivery mechanism vs. using one's own
| Internet connection: you still end-up going through Steam,
| Epic's store, or whatever - which means mandatory online
| activation - which means physical media is no guarantee of
| irrevocable use.
|
| Methinks we need something like a Criterion Collection but
| for games... which I suppose would be GOG.com - but if they
| carried triple-A games from day 1, instead of having to wait
| a decade first.
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Feel like it's worth linking to the Stop Killing Games campaign
| (https://www.stopkillinggames.com/) here! See also other recent
| thread on this story
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665593) where one of the
| organizers commented on the relevance
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41666381). :)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] More discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665593
| bena wrote:
| I don't think people really want "buy" either. Not deep down.
|
| For instance, I _bought_ Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo
| Entertainment System. That game is locked in. No fixes, no
| additions, no nothing. What is on the cart is what you get.
| Nintendo has no more obligation to me and I have no more
| obligation to them.
|
| But people expect updates and changes. Let's not talk about
| "incomplete games being finished through updates", games get
| updated all the time now. Even for physical copies. Games now
| often install on the hardware and check for updates on first run.
|
| So if we go to "buy", if you get a broken game, that's on you.
| Don't buy from them anymore. You don't get to hound the
| developers to "fix" the game. You paid for the thing, they gave
| you the thing. If you want a refund, return the thing.
|
| I think we still haven't _quite_ figured out how to work with
| ephemeral goods like software. It 's kind of like a performance,
| kind of like a physical item, etc. It requires far more effort to
| generate than it does to copy. And buyers want to buy on the
| value of the copying, but sellers want to sell on the value of
| generation.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| Even when you license a game on say Steam the developers have
| no obligation to fix any problems.
|
| You get to self-refund a game on Steam within a certain
| timeframe, after that it's on you.
|
| Game breaking bug? Eh, they got their money.
| falcolas wrote:
| I'm fine with the buy terminology. When I buy a car, I get
| fixes for manufacturing defects for free. Day 1 bugs are
| similar defects.
| bena wrote:
| But if you go to a shitty concert, you don't get your money
| back.
|
| If you buy a shitty album, you can't get your money back. And
| you can't get the band to "make it better" for you.
|
| Is software a thing? A performance? A recording? It has
| elements of each. And despite people saying "we've solved
| this issue", we haven't. We keep slapping on different
| metaphors and complaining when that metaphor inevitably
| fails.
|
| That and no one really wants to pay the actual price for
| complete, error-free software. What they want is to get
| complete, error-free software for the price they've paid.
| Which is different.
| jabbany wrote:
| > But if you go to a shitty concert, you don't get your
| money back. If you buy a shitty album, you can't get your
| money back. And you can't get the band to "make it better"
| for you.
|
| The difference is whether "shitty" is subjective or
| actually defective.
|
| Like, if you don't like the music, that's on you, someone
| else might like it.
|
| And, I've certainly been to concerts / movies / events
| where there have been "experience-breaking" technical
| difficulties and they've (partially or fully) refunded the
| tickets.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| I don't see why you think this can't work when the current
| system has only been in place for the last decade. The majority
| of things pre-2010 were all "fixed". If anything, quality has
| only decreased since then, because companies know they can
| release the absolute bare minimum, and only have to invest as
| much as it takes to get the majority of buyers to stop having
| the energy to complain about it. If that were a fixed game
| instead, putting in that bare minimum would be a one time
| event, after which no one would buy from them again.
| jachee wrote:
| > But people expect updates and changes.
|
| This entitled attitude is part of the problem. A game can't
| simply be shipped and done anymore. It means the quality can
| slip, because "we'll patch it after we ship." It also means the
| author has to continue development indefinitely, which means
| they're _also_ never done.
| gmokki wrote:
| People also buy cars and still expect major bugs in software
| and hardware to be fixed for free
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Companies in the past making games that you would pay for
| once were somehow still making lots of money despite
| providing support for the game for a few years after launch.
|
| The cost of a few years of support is built into the price of
| the software.
| ronsor wrote:
| > So if we go to "buy", if you get a broken game, that's on
| you. Don't buy from them anymore. You don't get to hound the
| developers to "fix" the game. You paid for the thing, they gave
| you the thing. If you want a refund, return the thing.
|
| No, it's the developers' responsibility to release a finished
| product that works _properly_. The ability to simply do updates
| later has introduced a cancerous mindset to almost all areas of
| software development, where it is now suddenly OK to release an
| unfinished, buggy, or broken product and "fix" it later.
|
| > You don't get to hound the developers to "fix" the game.
|
| Generally people purchase products with the expectation of them
| not being defective.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Okay but "buy" back then also implied that a game had to work,
| or else the reputation of a developer would be destroyed
| permanently rather than temporarily until fixes came out. And,
| correspondingly, there was not a culture of selling broken
| console games like there is today.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I personally have no interest in "buying" anymore, either.
|
| The games I care about are the ones that I can play with my
| friends, online. Nearly all of these have transitioned to
| driving revenue from other means than an upfront purchase.
|
| I'm arguably paying less now, than I did when I was younger. I
| used to have dozens of games that I played just a few times.
| $60 to sit on the shelf.
|
| Now, I "subscribe" to one or two flavors of the month. I pay
| perpetually, but my overall cost is lower since I'm only paying
| for what I actually use.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| When I buy a single player game I expect to be able to play it
| in 10 years or even 20. I should get DRM free binaries that run
| on Windows 11 or what not.
|
| If in 20 years I need to run an air gapped VM to play it, fine.
|
| What's not cool is if a single player game needs to phone home,
| and when it can't, my purchase is disabled.
| simion314 wrote:
| >But people expect updates and changes. Let's not talk about
| "incomplete games being finished through updates", games get
| updated all the time now. Even for physical copies. Games now
| often install on the hardware and check for updates on first
| run.
|
| How so, I do not expect that a developer will add more content
| to a finished game for free. And AFAIK in the games I own the
| content updates are paid DLCs, I can only think at No Man sky
| as an exception that added more free content, in fact the
| thrend is to have like 50+ paid DLCs and milk the players for
| at least a decade.
| WalterSear wrote:
| > For instance, I bought Super Mario World for the Super
| Nintendo Entertainment System. That game is locked in.
|
| And can't be taken away from you by the sunsetting of game
| servers. And this isn't just a problem for multiplayer games.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Hi, I'm a people. I want to buy games, deep down. I want to
| slap a cart into my console, press power and just have the game
| be ready to play. I don't want internet connectivity. I'll wait
| a year or two for the sequel if I enjoyed it enough. Maybe I'll
| trade it or sell it. Hell, if I _really_ enjoyed it, I want to
| be able to hold onto it and play it like this well past its
| original production run.
| Aloisius wrote:
| > So if we go to "buy", if you get a broken game, that's on
| you.
|
| What country doesn't have laws against selling broken goods?
|
| Even the US has an implied warranty of merchantability that
| requires a product work as promised.
| smeej wrote:
| It makes me wonder about the meta question about how to stop
| whatever the next iteration of this will be.
|
| Like, if we look back at this, surely there were people saying,
| "Hey, things have changed. You don't actually 'own' the thing you
| think you're buying anymore. This could come back to bite you,"
| but on the whole, not nearly enough people cared for it to shape
| the market.
|
| There is sure to be another thing like this, some other movement
| where yet another owner of something finds a way to sell you
| access to it in a way that makes you think it's "yours," but
| actually all you have is permission to use it as long as they
| remain happy with you and happy to continue allowing you access.
| How do we make sure people know and care next time?
|
| And what about the fact that, on the whole, most people are
| apparently fine with having access to things rather than
| ownership of them? How do you make the distinction when it
| matters, but allow both types of transactions? (For example, I'm
| glad I don't have to buy, and then sell, even a single room in a
| house to stay in when I'm traveling; paying to use it for a
| limited period is preferable to me in that situation.)
|
| We know putting the information in the terms of use won't help,
| but what would?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _And what about the fact that, on the whole, most people are
| apparently fine with having access to things rather than
| ownership of them? How do you make the distinction when it
| matters, but allow both types of transactions?_
|
| We could engorge the commons. If people are okay with mere
| access, then (for easy-to-distribute things, like books and
| videogames) free culture should naturally outcompete comparable
| proprietary works.
|
| Promote DRM-free cultural artefacts. If you'd drop $70 on a AAA
| title, drop $70 on a DRM-free game you like, and then tell your
| friends about it. (Try-before-you-buy is a feature, not a bug,
| though don't be stingy about this if you can afford not to.)
|
| This isn't generally-applicable, of course, but deconstructing
| the "everything is property" schema might make it easier to get
| another angle on it.
| smeej wrote:
| "Intellectual property" almost seems like a contradiction in
| terms. Like, I can't arrange the bits on my own computer
| hardware in a specific order because someone else arranged
| the bits on their own, separate computer in that order first?
| What?
|
| Or better yet, ideas. I can't think things in my own brain,
| arguably the thing that is _most_ obviously mine, and then
| talk about what I think about those things, because someone
| else thought them first and I didn 't come up with them on my
| own? I get why it's not cool to pretend I did come up with
| them. It's cooler if I _can_ remember where I heard them
| first and give credit for them. But if I don 't remember? If
| I connect two ideas I heard about ten years apart only once I
| hear the second one and I can't remember where the first one
| came from? How did that idea not _become_ "also mine" after
| being stored and then recalled from my own brain for ten
| years?
|
| I don't know how to solve the admittedly hard problem of
| allowing people to profit from the hard work it takes to come
| up with original ideas. But the "intellectual property"
| concept doesn't make a lick of sense to me as the way to do
| it.
| foobarchu wrote:
| People have indeed been warning about this for years,
| particularly in spaces like Steam where you don't even have a
| physical item to pretend you own. For a long time the response
| has mostly been "yeah right why would they revoke the
| licenses?".
|
| This just happens to have been kicked off by one of the first
| high profile cases of exactly that happening with games (that I
| know of). It also happened a lot this year and last with movies
| and TV shows that were allegedly "bought" on platforms like
| PlayStation and Crunchyroll but were actually licensed by the
| rights holders.
| teeray wrote:
| I have faith that the marketing department can spin this. "Why
| just BUY a game when you can get A LICENSE TO GAME. Show you
| friends how much of a badass you are with ALL YOUR GAME LICENSES"
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| "By purchasing the Terrasault Start Menu Launcher, you will be
| granted a FREE perpetual license to play Terrasault!"
| layer8 wrote:
| Perpetual seems unlikely.
| Manchit wrote:
| In this case, licensing should be more affordable than the
| physical sale given its ownership cannot be transferred.
| dang wrote:
| Recent and related:
|
| _Sony, Ubisoft scandals lead to California ban on deceptive
| digital goods sales_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41665593 - Sept 2024 (100
| comments)
| WCSTombs wrote:
| This is the bill itself, which is pretty short and
| understandable:
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
|
| I think it's pretty sensible. For any digital good (including
| books and movies etc., not just games), if you're supposedly
| _buying_ the thing, it can 't be given to you in a form in which
| your ownership can be unilaterally revoked later.
| paxys wrote:
| Plus you should be able to sell it to someone else.
| jbpnoy6fifty wrote:
| I wonder if this trend will expand to other goods, like when you
| "purchase" a car.
|
| You might be licensed to operate the vehicle but restricted in
| specific interactions with it.
|
| It seems the industry is moving in this direction, which is
| concerning due to the cost structure. It shifts control away from
| consumers and toward the IP owners of these products.
|
| Tesla may be a notable example, where you're unable to make
| modifications or repairs to the car without a proper license.
| tshaddox wrote:
| What are you referring to with the car? Of course there are
| traffic laws. Similarly there are lots of physical objects you
| "buy" yet are restricted from using them to bludgeon someone.
| WalterSear wrote:
| They are referring to no-resale and no-third party repair
| clauses, and the like.
| octacat wrote:
| "Pay for a temporary access" instead of "buy". For people who do
| not like "rent".
| hedora wrote:
| I wish they'd take the next obvious step, and say that if you get
| a license that lasts for more than N months without recurring
| payments, then the license is actually a sale.
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