Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

popcar.bearblog.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 549 posts

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

#431

Post by inigyou »

Terr_ wrote: post #298
pseudocomposer wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think “when you buy a product, be it a game, a house, a car, a computer, a tractor, washer, TV, it should continue to operate without rent-seeking behavior” is the best type of straightforward, uniformly-applicable pattern of regulation one could hope for. Opposing rent-seeking is literally why we have American democracy, which paved the way for French, Brazilian, Canadian, Indian, Mexican and so many other democra…

Also: Those ownership/privacy obligations to customers should come first in bankruptcy proceedings, ahead of other debts. IANABankrupcyLawyer, but I believe the status-quo is that various promises like "we'll open-source the server in the end" or "we'll never sell your data" can become voided in the name of making a buck to repay the landlord or business-partner.

Reasonable compromise: do this or your copyright is voided.

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

#432

Post by NikolaNovak »

pseudocomposer wrote: post #222
feoren wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think “when you buy a product, be it a game, a house, a car, a computer, a tractor, washer, TV, it should continue to operate without rent-seeking behavior” is the best type of straightforward, uniformly-applicable pattern of regulation one could hope for. Opposing rent-seeking is literally why we have American democracy, which paved the way for French, Brazilian, Canadian, Indian, Mexican and so many other democra…

>>I think “when you buy a product, be it a game, a house, a car, a computer, a tractor, washer, TV, it should continue to operate without rent-seeking behavior” is the best type of straightforward, uniformly-applicable pattern of regulation one could hope for.

This is why I love Hacker News; I feel you genuinely believe this - that designing and enforcing the law around digital property rights is the easy, straightforward, and the priority/important law :).

(I don't disagree! I'm a computer geek too, this stuff is important and visible to me as well. But let's have awareness of a) the actual complications around crafting and implementing laws around something so massively complex and constantly changing, and b) where the actual priorities for vast majority of people in the world may be:)

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

#433

Post by inigyou »

reichstein wrote: post #360
rgmerk wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer Cite your sources. There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership. And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts…

> https://www.build.aau.dk/report-from-aau-warns-danish-homes-... The Danish Building code has requirements for retaining heat in the house, which is great in the cold winters, but devastating in the heart of modern summers. Combined with rules that practically require large south-facing windows to satisfy the total energy requirement limits, it gets very, very hot. And air conditioning subtracts significantly from y…

Practices that retain heat usually also retain cold, or?

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

#434

Post by inigyou »

mastermage wrote: post #337
rgmerk wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many European countries have draconian laws about air conditioning that are killing people this summer Cite your sources. There are specific issues in specific places (eg heritage restrictions in Paris), a higher prevalence of shared infrastructure rather than single family homes, and a higher level of renting rather than home ownership. And there are people on the green-left end of the political spectrum in parts…

German here: you are not allowed to install anything thats visible from the outside without the owners aproval (70% of people Rent in Germany) or even the aproval of the Apartment Owner Association (Imagine HOA but for Apartments and every bit as dumb)

Person living in Germany here: everyone does it anyway, if it's a temporary installation.

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

#435

Post by reichstein »

h4kunamata wrote: post #245

I pardon to disagree, it is a physical vs digital problem, and it is our fault. Companies started pushing digital content and we accepted it, Xbox GamePass has been a cancer (I am Xbox player) with all the games destroyed because of it. Nobody can disagree that digital games is convenient, turn your PC/Console on and that is it, load the game, start playing something else, etc, without leaving your sofa. We never tho…

The distinction is not physical vs (entirely) digital. If you buy games at GOG, you get entirely non-physical products, but you own and control those bits. You can download the game and keep playing it as long as you can provide it with a suitable runtime environment

The things you don't own are because they require an online service to work. No matter what you do, short of removing the dependency, aka "cracking", it will only work as long as the online service allows it to work.

Any feature of.a consoles with OTA software updates are in that category. Even if you own the hardware, you don't _control_ the software.

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

#436

Post by Cthulhu_ »

silvestrov wrote: post #401
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…

The KISS version of regulation would be that stores are not allowed to use the word "buy" when you don't get full ownership and must use the word "license" instead. Also it should be marked clearly that the company can rescind the license at any moment without giving any reason why.

I'm sure in the various services' Ts&Cs they explain that what you buy is a license to the game, not the game itself.

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

#437

Post by cabirum »

physical vs digital is a spectrum:

- a physical disc, playable as-is

- physical, with major flaws without online updates

- physical, was playable on release, now requires updates

- physical, unplayable without updates

- physical, contains only a launcher to download full game

- physical box without disc, contains download code only

- digital

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

#438

Post by Cthulhu_ »

swat535 wrote: post #146
eszed wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least that would be honest....

It should just say "Rent" instead of "Buy"

Except you don't rent, you buy a license with no expiry date, but which can be revoked one-sidedly. It's all covered by the legalese, else we would've had the major lawsuits and consequent legislation changes back when the first generation of digitally bought / DRM'd music was no longer available.

(iirc this was also Sony, ironically.

Fake edit, I looked it up; it was Sony that put a rootkit in its CDs, they were sued and settled out of court https://boingboing.net/2005/11/14/sony-anticustomer-te.html). Microsoft, Yahoo and Wal-Mart changed their services in such a way that music was no longer playable in 2008 (https://opensource.com/life/11/11/drm-graveyard-brief-histor...), with Yahoo even encouraging users to burn their music to CDs to keep it. In 2011 Rhapsody recommended to back up their older DRM'd RAX files to another format so they remain listenablle.

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

#439

Post by ragequittah »

account42 wrote: post #404
rplnt wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside air temperature isn't an issue. It's not like people drop dead the moment it hits 40. The problem is that after a few days of that everything is heated up through and you have no place to escape it. That's new and hasn't been happening before.

But "somewhat longer heatwave" isn't as scary sounding as "HOTTEST EVER RECORDED TEMPERATURE IN $LOCALE!!!!!!" which is why all the scaremongers keep screaming the latter.

We're warned of heatwaves and given instructions on how to not die all the time now. Not once did this occur when I was a child where I live. Record temperatures are more shown as an almanac style this is what's happened today whenever I see them. Personally I wish more scaremongering were happening right now.

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

#440

Post by mdemare »

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…

Companies will keep doing what they're doing now - they'll just use another verb than "buy" or "purchase". Which would be a small improvement, I guess...
Post reply on HN