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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

#451

Post by flyingshelf »

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…

This makes no sense. You can't force them to sell you the game. They'll just say "this is a 5-year rental" and that'll be it. The regulation can't even be retroactive

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

#452

Post by pc86 »

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?

You seem to be arguing that government regulation, on its face, is default-good while the GP seems to be arguing that it is default-bad. I bet if you actually engage with the argument in good faith instead of dismissing your imaginary strawman there could be a good conversation! But no the GP disagrees with you, so is therefore a complete moron, so no discussion will be had I suppose.

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

#453

Post by thombat »

ludicrousdispla wrote: post #406
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slave owners, such as all of the so-called founding fathers, were as much rent seekers as any king

not all of them, as 15 of the 56 signers of the Declaration did not own slaves. >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_and_the_United_States_...

Of those 15, it might be illuminating to know how many did not on grounds of principle versus merely that the cost/benefit didn't favour it for them at that time?

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

#454

Post by sdwr »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #383
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…

> Opposing rent-seeking is literally why we have American democracy, which paved the way for French, Brazilian, Canadian, Indian, Mexican and so many other democracies. Kings were the ultimate rent-seekers: every citizen was the product. It's really not. Opposing rent-seeking in a general sense isn't what motivated the American revolution; and the King of England in the 18th century wasn't primarily a rent-seeker. Th…

No taxation without representation?

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

#455

Post by mb_thd »

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 don't think people not understanding licenses are the problem. Licenses are.

It's just that for the longest time people didn't have to think about them, because if you had a license to consume a game/movie/album and also had a copy of it on physical media it was basically impossible for the media owner to take it away from you. But when everything is digital only, doing exactly that is easy as pie.

This feels like how sometimes laws from the 1800s are used to convict people of computer-related crimes. Maybe that was always possible, but it still seems unfair.

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

#456

Post by short_sells_poo »

yason wrote: post #361
reichstein wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that I don't agree, but lawyers will then ask you to define "buy" in such a way that it is distinguishable from a perpetual lease with a cancellation clause _to buyers_, without also disallowing a lot of actually useful leasing agreements. The thing is, you never did _buy_ that Steam game. And you never bought the software on the TV, which you did buy the hardware of, you bought a software lease along with t…

> It's not that I don't agree, but lawyers will then ask you to define "buy" in such a way that One fundamental thing would be to make it illegal to lawyer redefinitions of common words. If the sales of a game uses the word "buy" it should not be legal to redefine "buy" in that context to actually mean lump-sum lease or something. I'm pretty sure the game studios wouldn't like me to buy their games if I were to amend…

> it should not be legal to redefine "buy"

Your post made me go on a thought exercise: imagine a world where you could either own or lease software products. Game developers could decide whether their customers can actually buy the product (which involves ownership) or just the traditional licensing/leasing, which is the prevailing model today.

How would ownership actually work? What does ownership of digital goods mean? Can they even be owned? You get 1 copy of the bytes? How is this enforced? What's to stop you from just selling it multiple times?

If you can't resell it, then what do you actually own? The right to use the product in perpetuity? But that's just another form of lease, no?

Am I getting bogged down in semantics?

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

#457

Post by gosub100 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #436
silvestrov wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's not relevant though. What is being demanded is that a new term that means "less than purchase" be used, making it overtly clear that you are only renting. A pointer indirection to the real word doesn't count.

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

#458

Post by __natty__ »

Most of us know what is it about. The problem is Sony and other companies have plenty of money for lobbying governments. What options do we have? I know it’s mostly technical forum but is there any lawyer or government representative who can help?

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

#459

Post by gosub100 »

lurkerforawhile wrote: post #426
MYEUHD wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... >

People play games, not firmware. The claim is not to revoke sonys ability to update the hardware.

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

#460

Post by Grombobulous »

account42 wrote: post #419
Grombobulous wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason for that is because the physical disc has the right of first sale attached by being physical item, and there’s no practical/acceptable mechanism to prevent transfer of the license to someone else. Traditionally the whole industry has been fine with it as long as direct media copying was too hard for the layperson, especially since lending games around was like word of mouth advertising. Digital platfo…

Well those changes shouldn't favor corporations over consumers at every turn, that's the point.

I agree, my statement is more of a plain observation.
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