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Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

aginggamer.net

211–220 of 284 posts

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#211

I know I am in the overwhelming minority and that most people will just continue to buy Sony's stuff anyway, but I decided a few years ago when all the ownership crap came up that I am just not buying stuff that I don't own. Sony's PS4 went to my local electronics recycler and I haven't bought a Sony product since. I can't realistically do it with everything, there are some products I have to buy rather I get to own…

GOG is better, but I still really don't like buying video games that I don't own (ie can't resell). Come to think of it, I've only ever digitally purchased one game above $5, Minecraft, and Microsoft ended up stealing that from me.

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You own that physical copy due to the physical nature of it. However, you still are limited in what you can do with it. You can't make a copy of it and sell that copy. You can't read that book aloud, and sell the recording. In certain cases, you can't even read that book for an audience. The fact that you own it has embrued certain rights to you due to the physical nature of the book. Take away the physical medium an…

Let me stop you right there: no one is claiming that buying a book gives you copyrights to its content. That's a strawman. When you own a book, you own that copy of it. You can do whatever you like with that copy, short of distributing copies of it. You can sell it. You can lend it to friends. You can leave it laying around a doctor's office for a stream of people to read. Short of distributing copies of it, it's you…

The copy itself is incidental. It's the medium by which the performance of the license is executed through, and if some form of it requires a Sony online service to exist and to work or respond in a certain way and tied to your specific account, to gain access to the meaningful parts of the work, that's what you own. You can sell the physical copy, but you're only selling the actual material and whatever pieces exist on the disk itself. Caveat emptor.

The fact that some of the material exists in a form that is close to and within your control is irrelevant. That's like saying you own a copy of Google because some of the javascript code that runs the frontend is cached in your web browser. You don't.

"You will own nothing and be happy." better get used to that and make your peace with it

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#214
post #3

What I don't understand is why Sony is the one being targeted for this when this has been the case with any digital purchase for 20 years? I don't know of a digital marketplace that works differently. But instead all of the hate, the boycots, etc are all targeting Sony instead of focusing on actually figuring out how to improve digital purchase rights which extend beyond games (and far beyond Sony). I know that some…

Nintendo is the only one still selling video games that you own practically speaking, ie you own the cartridge and it has the game on it or at least has the key. Unless I'm out of the loop on that.

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#215
This is not a bold claim, this is just how it is.

If you ask any average gamer, "if you buy a game on Steam or on a CD from Walmart, do you operate on the understanding that you are now legally allowed to make as many copies of it as you want and sell those copies?"

The answer will unanimously be no. If they owned it, the answer would be yes. They might say they own it, but they will clearly and reasonably understand that they do not own it in legal terms, because they understand what they cannot do with it.

Some of them will understand that they can legally make copies for backups, but why would you need the law to tell you that it's legal for you to make a backup of something you own? You wouldn't.

You can buy a hard drive, but buying it does not give you the IP for all the technology that went into it. No reasonable person believes that would be the case, either. You can buy a car, but you can't then copy all the parts and start mass producing your own copies of that car. Do any of you go through the McDonalds drive thru and believe you now own the burgers, fries and all the packaging that goes with it to the extent that you can start up your own McDonalds with logo and all?

Whether it's physical or digital, even if people have contradictions in their head since they aren't lawyers, they understand enough about how things work to conclude that what they understood when they pressed the purchase button equates to not obtaining total ownership of all aspects.

It is simply true. This is so broadly understood that I don't even think you would need to use a jury. A judge could simply throw the case out at this point on that alone, if it hadn't already been settled in past legal precedent, which it has.

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#216
post #67

Sony is correct here? If I buy a CD or a cassette or a record, I own the physical media but I only have a licence to the music it contains - not the ownership, and not the copyright. Whether I can play that music as a DJ at an event or on the radio, or remix it as a backing track for another song I'm creating and so on, depends on licencing laws and royalty payments. That was true well before the internet, and it's w…

The important bit is that you can sell the CD or cassette or record.

Yes. Not just practically speaking, but legally, you own the disc.

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#217
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Class action civil case should still be doable? And 100k small claims court cases would hurt.

> Class action civil case should still be doable? Nope, because there's a stance in EULA's footnote (with extremely small letters) that you give up your rights to class action civil case.

So you've verified this? In this specific case? Or are you just being a wise guy.

Regardless, these sorts of things have been fought before, over and over. Often, courts don't care about an EULA when wrongful action has been taken.

The jurisdiction matters too, of course.

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#219
post #141
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On consoles in general, backing up digital media (if even possible) requires full-system exploits, thus bypassing DRM, and decrypting them also requires breaking DRM

Woah, we're not talking about cracking your games. I think every console from at least the last two generations has supported copying game files to external/removable media.

Disabling DRM is required for basic archiving if the issue is someone else having the ability to decide the thing you bought will self-destruct. Copying doesn't matter if it doesn't produce a usable backup.

If you remove the DRM, then you do actually own the thing for practical purposes. And non-ownership of things you buy is unjust, so entertaining the law here is silly.

Re: Sony makes bold claim about game ownership

#220
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be clear, you never owned the games To be clear, when I use the phrase "deny you ownership of your games", I'm talking in Common English, not legalese. We don't actually have to normalise this. Legalese aside, the social contract for decades has been that you own your digital purchases. Now that the social contract is being violated, we certainly should be striving to enshrine it in law via regulation, which wou…

I think you're under-appreciating the importance. It's not just pedantry. This has been true since EULAs have existed. And it's kinda insane that people think owning a disk gives them ownership of the intellectual property contained on it. You've always been given a license. The difference is that you can often transfer that license by selling the physical copy of a game whereas most digital licenses are exclusive. T…

Like the other commenter said, we don't have to normalize this. A reasonable jury can and should find that Sony pushing an update to intentionally brick Playstations is criminal destruction of property, regardless of what some EULA says. And we can make it very clear in the law that that's the case, and prosecute any individuals involved.
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