Read the EULA people, no one owns any software, never did.
Did the button in the store say “buy”? Then there is no reason (other than corporate bullshit) for a consumer to expect they don’t own the product.
The emails thanked me for my purchase. They never mentioned that they had been borrowed.
Even if they want to go the whole license route… versus owning the physical disc, etc. bullshit… then if your account is banned or they stop supporting a digital service (like the recent thousands of purchased movies people can no longer get to due to Sony) and you are unable to use your purchased licenses anymore, they should be refunding you since they are removing your access to what you purchased. GOG lets you download offline installers for all of your purchases, so you can continue to use them even if their service ends.
If they don’t want to deal with that, then they shouldn’t be selling digital products.
Thank you for your purchase ᵒᶠ ᵃ ˡⁱᶜᵉⁿˢᵉ ᵗᵒ ᵖˡᵃʸ ᵗʰⁱˢ ᵍᵃᵐᵉ
If it’s admitted they’re not owned, then ‘rent’ is logically what they should be marketed under. I don’t think I’m the first around here to suggest this.
This shouldn’t be hard for a decent lawyer, given Sony admitted this themselves.
I do hope a lawyer makes the argument about that kind terminology, that you’re not purchasing something but renting it, and using “purchase” is deceptive.
It’d be good to see, yeah. I think it’d make a significant difference to improving the rights of those purchasing console games in particular.
If digital ownership isn’t real ownership then piracy isn’t theft.
I’ve never liked how this argument fights on semantic vocabulary, rather than healthy consumer relationships.
What it seems to say is just: “Digital media companies are evil, take copies of everything without paying for it”. Another much better take, but not as easily implied, is: “When we pay for a digital piece of media, there should be a requirement that for the user’s lifetime, that product continues to be available in some form through the provider’s best reasonable efforts.”
Even the “piracy isn’t theft” part ignores the logical outcomes in favor of dictionary definition of “theft”. If an indie dev goes into debt making his one big game, and then 80,000 people pirate it and no one buys it, did the pirates “lose him money” or “commit theft”? Semantically, logically, no. But spiritually, by common understanding? Absolutely. Such a stupid wording fight.
Piracy has never been theft, but if people need this as a justification, I support it.
It’s just a good argument against the stupid “you wouldn’t download a car” nonsense, and the arguments about piracy being theft that are often made.
It’s a good clarification.
I’m sure that will help
Beyond that, Sony argues that anyone who pays for a digital game inherently understands that they can’t own it because, if they did, no one else could have a copy. This concept appears to draw a distinction between a digital copy of a game and a physical object that only one person can have at a time.
Well, the article asks for a free trial to read the rest, so I’ll base myself off this.
Sony is correct that we don’t buy ownership of digital stuff, because digital stuff is effectively the same as whatever can be copyrighted. Anyone can start banging their desk, clapping their hands and sing “We will rock you” by Queen - but being able to play does not necessarily mean the people involved have the right to play. The same has been true with software for a very long time, probably since the beginning. You can execute any proprietary software on your computer and even though you can make copies, unless otherwise stated, you don’t have the rights to do so.
Now, in ye olden times, software came within physical media - tapes, diskettes, CDs, ROM chips. In theory, you owned the media and anything contained within, though that still didn’t give you rights to make copies. Not only that, since the DMCA passed, we lost the right to reverse engineer, further cementing the notion that we don’t own digital goods, even if we paid for them and have physical retail copies.
This is all a problem, but it would be significantly smaller if the stores actually sold a digital copy (which is, to my knowledge, how GOG handles it), instead of a limited access - via their store - to a copy, which they can also remove without prior notice
They should at least have to add “rent” to all store info and price tags, AND duration. Ex: 5 years for 59.99$ … but with todays setup it would be: Rent for as long as we feel for it, only 59.99$
Can I upvote to downvote ?
There should be momentum around enabling unlimited transferable licences (for purchases) which would benefit consumers of any platform. The current you don’t own the copy approach should be reduced to short term loans similar to how you rent movies etc now.
