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It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

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Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#421

Post by GaryBluto »

feoren wrote: post #103
jbombadil wrote: post #39

I am generally not in favor of adding regulation, but this is a place where I would support it. Anything that you BUY needs to be your property. This means you must have the ability to: 1. Transfer ownership of it (either temporarily as a loan or permanently as a sale). Digital-only doesn't preclude this: the store can have a "transfer" functionality. 2. (Within reason) use it at your discretion at any point after th…

You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about. All the oversight and regulation about everything you don't care and/or know about is big bad government overreach. Every government agency is a useless waste of your tax dollars, except the ones you rely on and the ones where you have friends that work there. Do I have that right?

[flagged]

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#422

Post by Telaneo »

Uvix wrote: post #402
Telaneo wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they have form for disallowing redownloads of old ebook purchases. If you dared to buy ebooks from them pre-Kindle, you can't access them anymore. Well that's bad and also shouldn't happen. They should not be able to come down from heaven and turn your books into rocks. > If you hold onto your Kindle devices for too long instead of replacing them with a newer model, you can't access your old books that aren't a…

Per your link, Sony will soon be disallowing new purchases, but has not set a date for disallowing downloads of existing purchases.

Correct, but I don't expect Sony to keep those servers up for long when people can't even buy anything there. It's nothing but a cost centre for Sony at this point.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#423

Post by account42 »

pocksuppet wrote: post #193
acchow wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and nothing would stop you playing it Not true for PS5 games. Sony can push a firmware update to disable games, even if you own the disc.

Not true for Blu-Ray movies, either. Just saying that's how it used to be .

That's an argument why the DCMA anti-circumvention clauses should be repealed, not an argument for adding more of that crap in the digital realm.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#424

Post by scheeseman486 »

deadbabe wrote: post #238
Telaneo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Focus on enjoying games now, in the time when they are relevant. No matter how hard you try, all those games will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. I've enjoyed games that came out 20 years before I actually played them. Many games I enjoy are years old by the time I play them. I wanted to play The Crew. Doing that officially is literally impossible now. Maybe I'll get to play it if the pirates can do their…

Most books are lost in time. The ones that survive are just popular enough to stay in circulation. Like you will most likely always have some kind of access to something like GTA 6 in some way. Only obscure titles get truly lost. They are obscure for a reason.

> Only obscure titles get truly lost. They are obscure for a reason.

They can be obscure for many reasons, only one of which are it's quality as a piece of art.

There was an album, "Begin", released by a group of session musicians calling themselves The Millennium. Released in 1968, it was a borderline experimental sunshine pop rock in the vein of Sgt. Peppers and Pet Sounds, with songwriting and production in the same ballpark. It completely flopped, having landed a bit too late, and made virtually zero impact on music history. It only started to get rediscovered by the public after some CD releases in the early 90s, but that mostly got it out of total obscurity into being an extremely deep cut.

But it's fantastic and in spite of it being out of it's time when it released in terms of genre, did a lot of cool experimental stuff that makes it sound shockingly modern. It's seen some greater recognition in recent years, but we're in literally another century. I found out about it through a Spotify recommendation and based on searches, so did a lot of other people. When it got recommended to me in the late 2010s the play count for most of the songs was in the low thousands, but it's gotten a bit higher now.

The album didn't get re-issued because of it's quality, but because CDs were booming and labels were looking for any old junk. There was also a resurgence of interest in baroque pop in that era. If the circumstances weren't just right, it would never have been re-issued, it'd likely have continued to be completely forgotten and I wouldn't have ended up listening to it and loving it.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#425

Post by account42 »

RHSeeger wrote: post #45
jbombadil wrote: post #39

I am generally not in favor of adding regulation, but this is a place where I would support it. Anything that you BUY needs to be your property. This means you must have the ability to: 1. Transfer ownership of it (either temporarily as a loan or permanently as a sale). Digital-only doesn't preclude this: the store can have a "transfer" functionality. 2. (Within reason) use it at your discretion at any point after th…

> I have no problem with Sony not offering DRM free versions of games that I can still download and play with the store. But if that goes away -> you must give me a path to local ownership. I worry about shenanigans where you "buy" the game from a shell company and that shell company "folds" and doesn't uphold it's promises. Same is true for a smaller, but not shell, company. If the non-DRM version isn't already crea…

"Current copyright holder is ultimately liable for making all buyers whole." Problem solved.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#426

Post by lurkerforawhile »

MYEUHD wrote: post #180
acchow wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and nothing would stop you playing it Not true for PS5 games. Sony can push a firmware update to disable games, even if you own the disc.

Is there any evidence of this? They can delist a game from the PS store, but I doubt they would make a game unplayable if it's already installed or if you own it physically.

Firmware anti-downgrade functionality with eFuses is common across all kinds of consumer devices. The physical evidence is there, if you can find it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFuse> https://free60.org/Hardware/Fusesets/#fusesets-07-11> https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Fuses#Anti-downgrade> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/google-gives-develop...>

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#427

Post by jscd »

xlii wrote: post #403

Geez, people have no idea how licenses work... License is not an ownership - It's limited right to use something. Any action anyone does that isn't covered by license (in software) is called "piracy". Games were never sold. Mediums were sold with attached licenses. And most of the licenses as early as 2000 contained something like: "This license is personal to you and may not be assigned, sublicensed, or transferred.…

I mean yes, you never “owned” the IP, but this doesn’t change anything. You also never owned any movie on a DVD, song on a vinyl, or text in a book. Software is a strange beast in the world of copyright law, but, at least in my lay understanding, video game discs still have had protection under the first-sale doctrine, which means you were always allowed to resell, rent, give away, or destroy your copy. Ownership of the medium is still something.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#428

Post by istoleabread »

hahahaa wrote: post #297
TyrianPurple wrote: post #295

Once you buy something (physical or digital), ownership of it should rest solely with the purchaser and no one else.

How does that work with SaaS though? Or are you saying to ban SaaS.

The difference is you're buying games vs licensing software. There should be a clear difference between buying and licensing softwares/games and should be told upfront.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#429

Post by pjmlp »

360MustangScope wrote: post #411
pjmlp wrote: post #281

> Because PC is an open platform, people have figured this out and will continue to figure out bypasses in case things go south (which they haven't so far, thankfully Actually not quite, as security measures keep increasing across macOS and Windows. Before someone brings Linux into the picture, most folks don't know Tuxedo, System 76 and co exist, what matters is what is on display at Media Markt, Saturn, FNAC, Publi…

Who cares what people know about? PC is still an open platform for you to boot alternative software. Most people don’t know how to even “acquire” software without the DRM. It’s not really anyone’s job to spread news and tell people to go learn. If they get interested and care that much to preserve what they have, they can google and learn. Many have learnt about Linux due to the recent PS5 jailbreak for instance.

Still is the magic word here.

Re: It's not about physical vs. digital games, it's about ownership

#430

Post by NikolaNovak »

feoren wrote: post #103
jbombadil wrote: post #39

I am generally not in favor of adding regulation, but this is a place where I would support it. Anything that you BUY needs to be your property. This means you must have the ability to: 1. Transfer ownership of it (either temporarily as a loan or permanently as a sale). Digital-only doesn't preclude this: the store can have a "transfer" functionality. 2. (Within reason) use it at your discretion at any point after th…

You're not in favor of adding regulation, except when it comes to issues you understand and care about. All the oversight and regulation about everything you don't care and/or know about is big bad government overreach. Every government agency is a useless waste of your tax dollars, except the ones you rely on and the ones where you have friends that work there. Do I have that right?

Yes; and to make it extremely politically explosive, I do enjoy observing American politics and seeing each side (there are, brilliantly, two, because there ARE only two sides to every story and they neatly correlate with each other 100%:) massively enlarge the government, apply massive new restrictive regulations, but one side claims they don't do that because of somewhat specific types of massive government regulations and enlargements they do :)

At its best, a government law/regulation/policy is people saying "Ouch, that hurt, let's not do THAT again!", or "Oooh, I like this, this is good for us, let's do more of THAT please!".

At its worst, its self-preserving bureaucracy run rampant.

Any oversimplifying platitude like "I'm against big government!" or "I'm against government regulation!" so tremendously lacks specifics as to be worse than worthless.

And this is an extremely complicated issue which a tiny minority of people care about that'd be ridiculously over-complicated to implement with huge difficulty in tracking and enforcing! But because where we are, it resonates with us, and we on Hacker News feel it's an obvious and easy policy to apply :). You know, unlike the minor issues of war and peace and hunger and poverty and economics and minority rights et cetera :)

100 internet points and tip of a hat to you sir :)

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