I buy hard drives, it is the best way to own a physical copy of media. Arr
Won’t help you in a case like Destiny 2, where all the content is hosted online by Bungie and they decided to completely remove 1/2 of the original base game plus the first few expansions.
When Destiny 2 came out in 2017, the conventional wisdom was that Bungie did not suck. Destiny 1 came out in 2014 and is still fully playable.
It wasn’t until 2020 that Bungie decided to start screwing everyone over with D2. Ironically, 1 year after ending their partnership with Activision.
Of all the various problems Destiny had, it looks like Bungie was the source and not big, bad Activision.
You don’t. You don’t even really own physically purchased digital goods (like BluRays or video games). It’s a great time to be alive folks!
The only difference between a physical and digital copy of a video game is the format of the license key (on disc vs attached to your account). In either case, you’re buying a license key that can be revoked by the manufacturer at any time. A playable game isn’t even on the disc any more, since games aren’t finished by the master date any more (so you need to have internet access regardless of if it’s a disc or digital copy)
At least California is doing something and forcing stores to make it clearer that you’re only getting a revokable license rather than actually buying the product: https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/26/24254922/california-digital-purchase-disclosure-law-ab-2426
This isn’t strictly true because most games do still have a playable version on the disk. What is more is that it’s not as straight forward to revoke a disc, especially for passive media and the license is legally transferable due to doctrine of first sale as I understand it.
This isn’t strictly true because most games do still have a playable version on the disk
At least on my Xbox, there’s games where it wouldn’t let me play them unless some updates were installed. “day one patches” are very common in the video game industry these days.
legally transferable due to doctrine of first sale as I understand it.
The first sale doctrine applies to physical goods. The game companies are moving towards the games always being digital goods, and the disc simply being a physical license key for the digital games. I’m not sure if the doctrine would apply in the same way in this case.
Except for the fact that Nintendo is doing exactly that on the switch. Physical games have a digital license embedded in the cartridge itself. In this way Nintendo can stop people from ripping games and sharing the backups with friends. With that said be careful when buying used switch games.
Great. More dems asking the hard questions. Acting as if business as usual when we have a literal Russian agent and fascist in the WH.
We’re doomed because of DT, complicency and continued complacency.
I’d like to see an economist explain the rationale behind the first-sale doctrine applying to IP on physical media but not if it’s not tied to physical media in the US (note that the EU currently does approximate applying it to non-physical media). I have a really hard time seeing a reason for that.
I can believe that the doctrine of first sale shouldn’t be a thing. And I can believe that it should be a thing, and should apply to all forms of media. But applying to one but not the other seems like a pretty hard sell to me.
Physical copies degrade over time, whereas digital information may not. Works in digital format can be reproduced without any flaws and can be disseminated worldwide without much difficulty. Thus, applying the first sale doctrine to digital copies affects the market for the original to a greater degree than transfers of physical copies.
Okay. But…so what? Why do we care whether the market for the original is affected? If that were a factor, wouldn’t we object to the legality of making backups? Wouldn’t we treat more-durable forms of media differently than less-durable forms of media, or take into account the decay in value of the IP itself that lives on the media?
Like, I could understand maybe an argument that permitting a vendor to restrict physical media transfers of IP is economically desirable but simply isn’t enforceable, ergo we’re better off without a lot of halfway attempts to restrain it. But I’ve never seen it explained with that as a rationale.
For some things, you can get non-DRM downloadable files, and those you do own. They’re very much the minority, though, and mostly limited to smaller, less-popular shops where they do exist.
I would very much like a law that says that streaming services and DRM’d downloads are required to use words like “rent” or “lease”, never “buy” or any synonym thereof.
No. Outside of VERY rare occurrences, you are still licensing that media. If you owned it you would be able to distribute it yourself and so forth.
And if you actually checked through the fine print for the old big box games you would see very similar verbiage. Presumably the same with music
I do think it would be good to make people more aware of what they are actually paying for. But once EVERYTHING says “lease” it will just kill the meaning of the word.
There are two different types of ownership here, and you’re conflating them.
One is the ownership of a digital copy on the same terms as a physical copy. That allows you to resell your copy, lend it to a friend, move it to a different device, retain the use of it even if the seller no longer exists . . . stuff that falls under the first-sale doctrine and other actions that are generally accepted as “okay” and reasonable. That’s what’s being called out here as not existing for most digital copies.
The other is the ownership of the copyright and permissions to reproduce additional copies. However, that isn’t what most people expect to get when they’re purchasing a copy of a media work, regardless of whether it’s digital or physical. How IP in general and copyright in particular is handled does really need an overhaul, but that isn’t a problem specific to the digital world—it’s equally applicable to print books, oil paintings, and vinyl records.
And to be honest, I’d prefer to see “lease” lose its meaning than “buy” go the same way, because apparently we can’t have both.
One is the ownership of a digital copy on the same terms as a physical copy. That allows you to resell your copy, lend it to a friend, move it to a different device, retain the use of it even if the seller no longer exists . . . stuff that falls under the first-sale doctrine and other actions that are generally accepted as “okay” and reasonable. That’s what’s being called out here as not existing for most digital copies.
And you still aren’t authorized to do that with a “DRM Free” copy (which gets into a mess since those aren’t actually DRM Free but…). In large part because there is no mechanism to transfer authorization for updates and so forth. GoG made a cheeky “take that” to Valve when they said they would allow you to transfer a dead relative’s account… but even that is a huge mess and had a LOT of fine print at the end. Again, there are exceptions but they are few and far between.
Same with buying Ghostbusters on VHS. There is no DRM to speak of involved. But any teacher who threw it on because they were hungover was technically in violation of the terms of purchase and there were a few medium profile cases where people learned about public performance rights when they were showing “their” copy of a movie or album.
You can make as many arguments as you want. Until those go to a court of law they mean nothing.
However, that isn’t what most people expect to get when they’re purchasing a copy of a media work, regardless of whether it’s digital or physical.
We are specifically talking about expectations versus reality. Which gets back to the reality that even when you bought that CD you were engaging in what was a hell of a lot closer to a “lease” than not.
How IP in general and copyright in particular is handled does really need an overhaul, but that isn’t a problem specific to the digital world—it’s equally applicable to print books, oil paintings, and vinyl records.
Which gets back to the original point that most of those purchases were always “leases” because of how the legal system is set up…
